Brannon took a deep breath before replying. “Mrs. Rhawn, you’re on Cutwold to commit murder, whether you know it or not. The animals you’re hunting are people, just like you and me. Murder is never easy. There’s always danger. It’s the price you pay for your sport.”
Around the circle, faces whitened. Murdoch was taut with anger. Brannon looked inquisitively at him, but no reply was forthcoming.
Then he glanced upward. Both moons were high above, now, and the sun was barely visible, a lime-colored flicker hovering above the horizon, half intersected by the vaulting trees. It was getting late. It was almost time to make camp for the night.
“Let’s move along,” Brannon said.
For half an hour more they hacked their way deeper into the jungle, until it was obviously too dark to travel further that day. Brannon marched at the head of the file, eyes keen for danger, ears listening, mind shrouded in black thoughts.
Behind him came the others. Nine thrill-killers, he thought. Nine allegedly civilized human beings who were spending fabulous sums for the privilege of gunning down other beings coolly and consciencelessly.
It would be so easy, Brannon told himself, to lose these nine and their coordinator in the jungle—despite Marya Llewellyn. There were so many pitfalls to right and left of the main path: the carnivorous trees that waited, leaves quivering, for something meaty to trap their tropisms and plunge into a network of catch-claws. The giant toads whose tongues could flick out and snarl themselves around a man’s throat in an unbreakable lariat’s grip. All Brannon needed to do was lead them a short distance from the beaten path—
But that was the coward’s solution. No, he told himself. He would bring them to their destination, for only that would fully serve his purpose.
Above, a nightbird squawked in the sky, calling, “Keek! Keek! Keek!”
On Cutwold day was heralded by the dawnbirds, night by the nightbirds. It was a system more efficient than clocks. Brannon said, “Okay. We stop here. Drop your packs and let’s set up the shelter.”
Under Murdoch’s direction the plastic tent-bubble went up within minutes, puffing out of the extrusion panel carried for the purpose. Brannon patrolled the area, burning a wide swath around the camp with his flamer, as a signal to wildlife to stay away during the night. Unless they were ravenous, they would respect the singed circle of vegetation.
He left a fire outside the tent hatch that would last all night. Then he crawled inside. The others were already within their sleeping packs, though none were asleep. Brannon ventured a private guess that few of them would sleep soundly this night. The jungle was noisy—noisier, perhaps, for those with this sort of hunt in mind.
The Rhawns were talking in low whispers. Brannon caught Mrs. Rhawn saying, “…I don’t think I trust that guide too much. He looks so strange, and tense.”
Her husband glanced at Brannon, who was staring at the ground. “Hush! I think he can hear us.”
Smiling, Brannon looked away. The others were gathering in for the night, trying to sleep. Brannon stepped outside, peered at the now almost entirely dark sky. The two moons hung overhead like two lanterns, casting shadows through the trees.
An animal was prowling outside the singed circle, sniffing the ground, staring strangely at the intruders who had broken the jungle peace.
He turned away and returned to the tent, found an unoccupied corner, and slouched to the ground. He was thinking.
Thinking of a stubblefaced man in a bar who had cried Judas at him, and of ten thousand Galactic Currency Units that was his fee for this trip, and of a time three years before when he had gone off into the jungle on a solitary quest, and found—
The Nurillins.
It had been a warm day in the twelfth month of Brannon’s eighth year on Cutwold. He had been without work for three weeks, without money for two, and had gone on a foraging mission into the jungle.
At least foraging had been the ostensible reason. Actually he was searching—searching for something deeper than he could understand, out there. He needed to get away from the men of the settlement; that much he knew. So he struck out on his own, deep into the jungle.
The first day had been routine. He covered his usual quota of hiking miles, shot three small succulent birds and roasted them for his meal, dined on the sweet stems of kyril-shoots and the slightly bitter wine of the domran plant. At nightfall he camped and slept, and when the keening shriek of the dawnbirds woke him he rose and continued on, travelling unknowingly and uncaringly the same route that three years later he would cover with a party of wealthy killers.
Then he had no idea where he was going. He put one foot before the other and forged on, pausing now and then to stare at some strange plant or to avoid some deadly little reptile or insect.
Somewhere on that second day, he ran into trouble.
It began with the thrum-thrum of a giant toad in a thicket of blueleaved shrubs. Brannon turned, reaching for his gun—and as he turned, a sudden thrumming came from the other side of the path, as well. He whirled—and found he was caught between two of the great squat amphibians!
He took two half-running steps before a sticky tongue lashed out and caught him round the middle. The thicket parted, and he saw his captor, vast mouth yawning, bulging yellow eyes alight with anticipation. Brannon clawed desperately at the gummy pink ribbon that held him fast, but there was no escaping it. He dug his feet deep in the rich soil, braced himself—
The other toad appeared. And snared him as well.
He stood immobile, tugged in two directions at once, with two gaping toad-mouths waiting to receive him the moment the other yielded. The pressure round his middle was unbearable; he started to wish that one or the other would release him, so death would come.
But before death would be devouring. The victorious toad would digest him alive.
Then suddenly he heard a bright chirping sound, unlike any animal call he had ever known. There was a whistling in the underbrush and then a lithe golden form was at his side. Brannon’s dark eyes were choked with tears of pain; he could barely see.
But the strange figure smiled at him and tapped each of the straining toads gently between the protruding eyes, and spoke three liquid alien words. And one toad, then the other, released him.
The tongues ripped away, taking with them clothing, skin, flesh. Brannon stood tottering for a moment, looking down at the red rawness of his waist, sucking in air to fill the lungs from which all air had been squeezed by the constricting tongues.
The alien girl—Brannon saw her as that now—gave one further command. The toads uttered thrums of disgust, turned, flopped heavily away into the darkness of the deeper jungle.
Brannon looked at the alien. “Thanks,” he said. “Whoever—whatever you are.”
And plunged forward, dropping heavily on his face in the warm jungle soil.
He woke, later. When he could speak the language, he learned that it was four days later.
He was in a hut, somewhere. Golden alien figures moved about him. They were slim, humanoid in appearance, but hairless. Their skulls were bald shining domes of yellow; their eyes, dark green, were somehow sad.
Brannon looked down at himself. He was swathed in bandages where the tongues of the giant toads had ripped away the flesh. Someone bent above him, holding a cup to his lips.
He drank. It was broth, warm, nourishing. The girl who held it was the one who had rescued him in the forest. She smiled at him.