Her words seemed to be having some effect on Nate. He stopped trying to find hidden cameras in windows and sank down against a wall in a squat, head in his hands. "So why does this place give me such a creepy feeling?" He shuddered.

"You're just not used to it." Jill squatted down next to him.

They were quiet for a minute, but even in English, the alien voice was annoyingly distracting. She thought at the metal plate, telling it to shut up, and was relieved when it paid absolutely no attention to her.

"It reallyis all too easy, Jill. We needed food and water-we found them. What are the odds that the food the aliens eat would be suitable for us? Shelter has been no problem at all. I mean, there just happen to be hundreds of abandoned apartments in this City, unlocked, unguarded in any way."

"Nate-"

"Then there are the aliens, right? Could be dangerous. Could be very dangerous. But not only haven't they threatened us; theycan't see us at all . Or the s.p.a.ceport-the power came on when we went in, including all the equipment in the control room. It didn't have to. It clearly isn't being used anymore. You ask the computer for a Hammurabi math code and presto! it gives you one. But even that's not enough." His voice was rising again. "The same day,I find a translator in the supply roomand decide to hang on to it,and I hold it to my ear like an idiot. Presto, chango, I can hear alien speech! Then you say-"

"I get your point."

"No, thenyou say maybe we can get the computers to talk to us andblink , I can read the alien script. We now have access to everything, Jill-absolutely f.u.c.king everything."

"I know."

"I mean- You've heard of 'too good to be true'? There's never been anything as 'too good to be true' as this. This is the paradigm, the quintessential, the Platonic ideal of 'too good to be true'!"

Jill didn't know what to say. Despite her brave words her stomach was in knots. She was a scientist; she didn't believe in coincidences or fate. And she didn't like it when life looked rigged any more than Nate did.

They both sat there for a moment. Then Jill reached over and gave his arm a big pinch.

"Hey!"

"Feels real to me." She sighed. "Wehave been lucky. But if you're suggesting that someone is watching our every move and pressing b.u.t.tons . . . I can't buy that any more than I bought it when Christians back on Earth claimed G.o.d was doing it."

Nate frowned as a thought crossed his mind. "Haven't we had this conversation before?"

Jill could see he was on to something. She waited. After a moment, his face cleared; his eyes widened. "I know what it is.Dang! "

"What?"

He shifted to face her, face avid. "Jill-we're on a seventy-thirty planet!"

She studied him, eyes narrowed. "Go on."

"We were talking about how this place should be a paradise. Well, obviously it's not, but what itmightbe . . ." He took a shaky breath. "What itmightbe iseasy . Is that possible? That things go the way you'd wish them toper law of nature ? That there's a much shorter gap between wanting something and having it? That the constant struggle we take as a fundamental part of reality on Earth just doesn't exist here? Maybe it feels so spooky to us because we fifty-fifty folk are used to having to work our b.u.t.ts off for every little thing and here a quarter of the effort gives twice the return. Could that be it?"

Sometimes he amazed her. He had a theoretical instinct that humbled her, though she didn't completely trust it. She preferred plodding, methodical work to brainstorms, but as brainstorms went, his were cla.s.s A hurricanes.

"If our theory about the one-minus-one wave is correct," she said slowly, "a change in itwould affect just about everything. The fundamental way things work."

"Remember that conversation we had months ago, about how the crests in the one-minus-one didn't necessarilymanufacture good things, but it might cause a right-place-at-the-right-time kind of phenomenon? You know, up your random chances of a particular good thing coming to pa.s.s? So maybe these translatorsweren't invented for us by some alien maze master. Maybe they were used in the alien's s.p.a.ce program way back when. But the luck-ourluck-was that we found them sooner rather than later or perhaps never at all. We might have spent a lifetime on this planet and never discovered them."

"They're certainly small enough. But, Nate, does it really matter why we've been lucky? The point is,we can read . You were right before-now we have access to absolutely everything. All of the alien technology!"

"That's not even the best part," Nate countered, grinning. "The best part is:we can get home ."

Jill paused in her elation like a car hitting a b.u.mp in the road. "Really? How's that?"

Nate's eyes were dancing. "Don't you see? Because this planet is lucky! Because all we have to do is really want something and we'll get it! And I want- Do you hear me, planet?" he shouted."I want to go home!"

Jill felt a sudden antagonism at his words. Her mind answered back,I don't .

But that wasn't true, was it? That wasn't exactly what she felt. She was going back to Earth at some point, obviously, and she was going to be the next Einstein. She just wasn't ready to go homeyet . There was far too much work to be done right here. How could Nate not see that? What kind of scientist walked away from an opportunity like this one?

Besides, they were in anotheruniverse . Just because they wanted to go home didn't mean there was a chance in h.e.l.l of getting there.

"Remember, Nate," she said carefully, "even if this is a seventy-thirty world, that's still not one hundred percent, right? Noteverything that happens is good, and, as you say, we've been pretty lucky so far."

"Are you saying there's a kickback coming?"

He said it teasingly, but Jill didn't find it funny at all. She shivered.

"Are you cold?" He put his arm around her.

She stood up abruptly and brushed off her pants. "Why don't we get back to the main artery? All this sunlight is deceptive. We have to make ourselves rest, Nate. We can't afford to get overexhausted."

"Right." He slowly got to his feet. The excitement on his face dimmed, responding to the reappearance of "strategic Jill." She felt a perverse relief.

That was what happened when she let down her guard and allowed herself to touch him, as she had while they were walking. It made him think he had the right to have his hands all over her all the time. Talk about dangerous.Someone had to retain control here.

"You sure you're all right?" Nate asked.

"I'm great," she said briskly. "Couldn't be better. After all, you said it yourself, Nate: we're in Paradise."

17.3. Sixty-Forty Denton Wyle

Denton Wyle was lost in Paradise and he was in big, big,big trouble. His back was up against the rough, scratched-up bark of one of the b.l.o.o.d.y trees at the mouth of the horseshoe gorge, his hands were tied behind him, and his mouth was gagged. There were four Sapphians with him in a similar predicament. Their captors had mounted them there early this morning and had taken off again without so much as a thank-you or a parting gift of Valium.

Denton wished very much that he had some good drugs or that he'd fought harder with his captors and been knocked unconscious. Unconsciousness from a head injury would be great about now. But . . . no. He was completely awake and fully conscious and apparently was going to be for every long, stinking minute of this.

He worked against his bonds. The tree was fat and his arms were forced around the back-back there where they could do nothing to shield his nice soft belly and throat. The vine around his wrists was supertight, and he couldn't even try to rub the vine against the bark, because he couldn't move that way. His feet were untied, but there was nothing in front of him to kick and bracing them against the trunk and trying to push himself off only killed his arms. He still tried, crying with frustration and pain, until he could try no more.

Theskalkits , whatever they were, still did not come. After giving up on escape, Denton had plenty of time to relish his fear, for the terror to have its way with him. You would think that you couldn't sustain that level of fear for very long, but yeah, you could. It didn't help that all he had to look at was the other Sapphians. They were visual echoes of his own doom. Their eyes rolled and streamed and their thin bodies trembled. He thought one of the females had wet herself. He wondered briefly what they'd done to be sent here, but he couldn't spare much head room for them because he was too consumed with his own tragic loss.

Except that across from him was a young female who had been one of his morning visitors, an unusually shy, skittish type. She pleaded at him with huge brown eyes. As ifhe could do a freaking thing. As if it weren't her stupid society's fault in the first place.

He could have made his peace with all that free time, but all he could think about was how bad it was going to be, how much it was going to hurt, how terrified he was, how he hated this, how unfair it all was, how he would give everything to be far away, how he couldn't believe this could really be happening to him, Denton Wyle. He cried for himself, great bunny tears. It was so unfair for a nice, white, twenty-first-century guy like him to be treated like this. It just was not right. And the worst thing was, he wouldn't even get a decent funeral in LA with all his friends to mourn him. No one would ever know what had become of him; that was the worst part.

No, screw that. The worst part was going to be the pain.

And just when he was convinced it was never going to happen, it did. He heard them coming through the trees.

Denton thought he'd already been as scared as humanly possible. He'd been wrong. The sound in the trees caused his body to shoot sharp, cold stabs of panicked blood through his veins. His veins ached with the force of it, like getting a teta.n.u.s shot. He would have screamed except that he had no breath: his entire respiratory system had gone on strike.

What was coming through the trees waslarge . And eager, too; you could tell. The things, theskalkits , were crunching through the brush at an amazing speed. Whatever they were, they had to be enormous to slice through the jungle like that. Denton could hear things cracking and breaking that sounded like tree trunks, not just branches. Those things were freaking bulldozers.

Louder and louder.

He still hadn't breathed, and he could feel his eyes bulging out of their sockets as they stared at the brush. His vision was going red. His entire body strained against his bonds in a completely automatic flight reaction, and he hadn't even seen them yet.

Then two of the things entered the clearing.

His first thought as he saw theskalkits was:Holy freaking cow. They looked every bit as bad as his most paranoid conjurations. His last shred of hope that this would all turn out to be less of a big deal than it seemed choked and died.

Theskalkits were slightly bigger than hippos or rhinos. Their skin was gray and leathery, hairless and wrinkled. Their ma.s.sive limbs were muscled and they moved fast. They had large heads with beady little eyes and huge mouths of sharp, protruding teeth. Two lower mandibles curved upward, resembling tusks, and the rest of the teeth were chaotically arrayed. Their front limbs ended in three ma.s.sively clawed toes.

Some b.u.t.ton markedPREDATOR in the deepest recesses of his reptilian brain was being pushed, hard. Denton finally found his breath and screamed behind the gag. He screamed like a woman. He screamed like a little girl.

Theskalkits stopped at the edge of the clearing, sniffing the air. One of them raised up on its hind legs, its front claws held a few feet off the ground, nostrils huffing, tongue darting out as if tasting their scent.

There was no doubt that that thing was looking right at him-at him, Denton Wyle. There was something in its eyes, something about as murderous as Denton had ever imagined an animal could look. It was like the look of his old dog, Lucky, when Denton would hold her favorite ball in the air in the backyard and move it around teasingly before throwing it. Theskalkit was looking at him with the same intensity with which Lucky looked at that ball. No, like Luckywould have looked at that ball had Lucky been a ravenous man-eater instead of an easygoing canine and if the ball had been a blood-engorged hunk of meat. Or a bunny perhaps.

Denton fought his bonds like a wild man. And now that he thought about it, screaming wasn't such a great idea-it was drawing their attention to him-but that didn't mean he could stop. What was coming out of his mouth was completely beyond his control and sounded like one long, "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

The otherskalkit , the one that was not staring at him, approached one of the male Sapphians. Its body was crouched low, almost in a stalking maneuver, but its stealth was a mockery in this case, since its prey not only could see it but also was completely immobile. Theskalkit 's eyes glittered with antic.i.p.ation. It seemed to Denton to widen its mouth, to be grinning at its victim.

It stopped close to the male, sniffing him. The Sapphian struggled, looking pathetically vulnerable. Theskalkit made a single easy swipe with a foreclaw and opened a nice long scratch across the male's chest. It wasn't deep, but it was the first blood of the day and theskalkits got very excited about it. The one that had been focused on Denton earlier was now riveted by the blood and let loose a piece of drool that could have filled a bathtub.

"Waaaaaaaa!" Denton screamed.

"Waaaaaaaa!" the Sapphians screamed.

And then, before Denton's eyes, theskalkit tilted its head, almost delicately, placed its open jaws on either side of the Sapphian's rib cage, and . . .

Denton stopped screaming. He closed his eyes, trying desperately to pretend that none of this was happening. He couldn't stop up his ears, though, and the sound . . . There was the sound of bone crunching, the high, mortal scream of the Sapphian, ending in a gurgle and bubbling air, a tugging, tearing sound that was indescribable, and then the only sound in the clearing was that of theskalkits ' chewing.

Denton was sick. He was going to pa.s.s out. The blood drained to his feet. His body was covered in sweat, his head swimming. Bile rose and burned at the back of his throat, acidic and sour. His head slumped forward, unable to hold itself up. He saw red stars on his eyelids.

Through ears that were ringing and m.u.f.fled with cotton he could hear theskalkits finishing off the Sapphian. He could hear the ripping of flesh and bark, thecrunch ,crunchof powerful jaws breaking bone. There were no more screams, not from anyone.

Denton cried. The tears were silent and gushing and probably the first real tears he had ever cried in his life. His chin dug into his chest as his head hung. And he knew, with a blackness that was absolute, that he was about to die. It was as if all of his terror had been reduced, like broth being boiled down on a stove, to this: utter weakness, misery, self-pity, despair.

And then he felt something. Something was tugging at his wrists. He moaned, sure for one instant that it was askalkit , but when he opened his eyes he could see both of them snuffling the ground, picking up stray bits of flesh from their first course.

And then he felt something cold. . . . Someone was cutting the vine around his wrists with a knife!

Denton's head cleared instantly. With a renewal of hope, every iota of cowardice and flight instinct in his personality-and Denton had lots-came rushing back. He thrashed, trying to pull apart the weakened vines, but a cool hand on his forearm bid him to stop. It was hard, but it occurred to him that he might get free sooner if he helped the person behind the tree, so he held still.

He waited. What wastaking them so freaking long? The vine at his wrists was tugged, pulled excruciatingly tight, mashed, and mangled and still he was not free.

He watched theskalkits , praying silently at them not to turn his way before he was free. The tree their first victim had been on was wet with blood, as was the ground all around and beneath the tree. If only he had seen this clearing in full daylight, Denton thought, he never would have gone into the gorge. If only he had arrived a few hours earlier, he wouldn't be in this predicament at all.

The ground was pretty much picked clean of any remaining bits of matter, and theskalkit who had been watching him earlier lifted its head and looked right at him, its eyes greedy. The other one perked up and strode casually to the next tree, not even pretending stealth this time. The female on the tree tried to kick. But theskalkit caught her leg easily in its jaws and tugged, lightly at first, then hard, with a whip of its head. The female's leg came off at the hip joint. Blood sprayed.

Denton gave a yelp and pulled as hard as he could at his wrists. The vines snapped. He would have been gone then, instantly, but theskalkit with the greedy eyes was fixated on him, head alert. If he ran, that thing would be on him in two seconds flat.

"Help," he squeaked behind his gag.

There was no answer from behind the tree.

Theskalkit with the leg dropped what was left of it and went for leg number two. The female on the tree was . . . Well, it was far too real and far too gruesome and Denton couldn't look. He stared at the otherskalkit , praying for it to look away, even for a second! But it licked its lips and started moving toward Denton, crouched low, coming in for the kill.

Denton reached up his free hand and ripped out his gag. "Help!" he screamed.

There was a whistle, shrill and yodeling.

It was Eyanna. Denton saw her across the clearing, at the edge of the jungle. She uttered a yodeling call, waving her arms. Denton could see, he couldsee , that she was terrified-her eyes were sick with death-but she stood her ground. She yelled and hollered at theskalkits , some native chanting thing, jumped up and down.

Denton watched, mouth hanging open. Theskalkits watched, mouths hanging open. Then they turned, like a maddened pack of paparazzi, drawn by the irresistible bait. Eyanna ran into the jungle. Theskalkits thundered after her.

Denton watched them go and felt a stab of horror and pity. Poor, dumb girl. She didn't stand a s...o...b..ll's chance. He was dumbfounded that she would do this for him, had no idea why. He was so struck by pity, in fact, that it took him a moment to realize this was his own personal lotto ticket. His hands were free. Theskalkits were gone.

There was a brief moment where he thought,I ought to help the others, but it was a momentary aberration. He ran.

Denton ran for a long time. He headed away from the gorge and away from where theskalkits had chased Eyanna. It was jungle, just rough jungle, and it was hard going, but still he ran. He crashed and tripped and fell a lot, but he always got up again. At first there were noises in the distance: roaring. He didn't hear any more screams, though in truth he tried pretty hardnot to hear any. And after a while there were no sounds at all.

When he couldn't run anymore he walked. And finally he reached the big river. It was the same river he'd been following when he'd first come to this world. In the distance to his left he could see the enormous waterfall from the top of which he'd seen smoke in the horseshoe gorge. To his right was the purple hint of mountains.

At the river he felt safe because if anyskalkit came, the two he had met or their relatives, he could go into the river and let himself be carried downstream in the current. That was not without its own problems, since he was a mediocre swimmer, but in comparison toskalkits it sounded fine.

His legs gave out and he fell to the riverbank. He began to shake. Bits and s.n.a.t.c.hes of the whole horrible morning came back to him. And the one thing he could not stop seeing, over and over, was not theskalkit putting its jaws around the male Sapphian's rib cage or even the detachment of the female's leg. What he could not get out of his mind was the image of himself . . . running.

I left her to die.

It was a very ugly thing, and if he'd been feeling more himself, he might never have let it into his head. But once there, it was tenacious. He felt bad about it. Eyanna had risked her life to save his. Even knowing what theskalkits were, evenknowing , she had come to help him. And in return he had checked her off as dead meat the moment he was free and had run away.

"There's nothing I could have done," he said aloud. "And anyway, it's not like I really know her." And a few minutes later: "Eyanna's fast. She might have gotten away."

And the girl? The one he had made love to? The one who had been tied to the tree just opposite his? How fast could she run tied to that tree? What were her chances?

He lay down on the cool moss. His thoughts were insupportable, so he slept. When he opened his eyes again it was twilight. The stars were dimly visible against a magenta sky. The world around him was empurpled.

He sat up. He hadn't moved an inch from where he'd fallen and his body was stiff and aching. He stood up, stretched, and went over to the river to get himself a drink. He heard a soft noise behind him and whipped around, heart in his throat.

It was Eyanna. She was dirty and exhausted and had some minor scratches but was otherwise unharmed. She plopped down on the moss.

"Eyanna! Sweetie! How did you get away from theskalkits ?"

"Ran. Hid." Eyanna's face was exhausted, expressionless.

"Well . . . um, I am happy you are okay. You are . . . You are very brave. Thank you." The words ought to have turned his tongue to salt.