Who’s to say, gang? Who’s to say?
[Ten minutes of wind, water, and shush-shush-shushing feet.]
II. CHANEY [whispering]: There’s something in the trees ahead of us. A crouched grey shape. The Bachelor just turned on me, Ben – he wouldn’t let me approach with him. If I don’t stay fairly close, though, I’ll be lost out here. Damn you, you hulking boonie, I won’t let you sneak away . . . We’re off the trail, we’ve been off it a good while, and the trees, the lianas, the swollen epiphytes – hell, everything’s the same, one spot’s like another . . . I’m disobeying the bastard. I’m staying close enough to keep him in my sight. He’s out there in a ragged hallway of rainthorn leaves moving toward the thing in the tree. A tumor in the branches, a lump that the moonlight gives a suspicious fuzziness . . . You should see the way The Bachelor’s approaching the thing. He’s spread his arms out wide, and he’s taking one step at a time, one long easy step. Like an adagio SS man. The membrane between his shoulder blades has opened out, too, so that it makes a fan-shaped drapery across his back. Shadows shift across it, shadows and moonlight . . . What a weird goddamn boonie. You should see him. He’s a kind of moving, blown-up version of the drunken huri clinging to his mane . . . We’re closer now. That thing up there, whatever it is, it’s either dead, or inanimate, or hypnotized. Hypnotized, I think. It seems to be one of the Asadi from the clearing. A grey shape. Ordinarily you don’t get this close at night. You just don’t. The Bachelor’s hypnotized it with his slow-motion goose step, the filmy rippling of the membrane across his back and arms, maybe even with his empty eyes . . . Now we’re just waiting, waiting. I’m as close as I can get without jeopardizing the purity of this confrontation . . . I can see eyes up there, Asadi eyes, stalled on a sickly but reflective amber. [Aloud, over a sudden thrashing]: The damn thing’s just jumped out of the branches! It’s one of the Asadi all right, a lithe grey female. The Bachelor’s wrenching her backward to the ground, the huri’s fallen sidelong away from him! It’s fluttering, fluttering in the thicket beneath the rainthorn tree! [A heavy bump. Continued thrashing. Chaney’s voice skyrockets to an uncontrolled falsetto]: I knew it! I knew what you were! Dear lord, I won’t permit this! I won’t permit your hideous evil to flourish! DAMN YOU! [Scuffling. Then, indignantly]: Stay where you are. Don’t approach me. Stay where you . . . [Violent noises. Then a hum of static and prolonged low breathing.]
III. CHANEY [panting]: My head aches. I’ve been sick again. I didn’t think I could throw up again, my stomach’s so tight and empty, but somehow I managed . . . It’s sweet here, though. I’m kneeling in fragrant grass under the lattice-sail trees by the edge of the pagoda’s clearing . . . I’ve been sick again, yes, but I’ve done heroic things. Semiheroic things, perhaps. In any case, I’m vaguely proud of myself . . . Even though I’m sick, down on my hands and knees with the cramps . . . You can hear me, can’t you? I’m talking out loud – OUT LOUD, DAMN IT! – and he’s not about to stop me. He’s just going to sit there opposite me with his long legs folded and take my reproaches and evil stares. Aren’t you, boonie? Aren’t you? That’s right, that’s a good boonie . . . He’s appalled by what I’ve just done, Ben. As a matter of fact, so am I. I’ve freed him from that scabby little battlecock of his . . . There’s blood on the grass. Dark, sweet blood. Too sweet, Ben. I’ve got to get up.
[Chaney moans. A rustling of clothes, then his strained voice]: Okay. Fine. A little bark to lean against here, a tree with spiny shingles. [A stumping sound.] Good, good . . . I refused to let myself get disoriented, Ben. We came slogging right through that opening there, that portal of ferns and violet blossoms . . . Oh, hell, you can’t see where I’m pointing, can you? Never mind, then. Just know that we slogged to this place from that direction I’m pointing, and I kept my head about me all the way here. My head, by the way, continues to ring from the bashing The Bachelor gave me back in that – that other place. He bloodied me, damn him, when I tried to stop him from slaughtering this poor woman here, the one lying here butchered in the grass . . . He knocked me down and I couldn’t stop him. Then he whirled her up over his shoulder, grabbed the huri out of the undergrowth by its feet, and took off through the jungle. Because of my bruised head, my aching eye, the Wild rang like a thousand wind chimes. To keep from getting lost, I had to follow him. Dear God, Ben, I had to hobble along after that crazy Asadi crew . . . Then we reached this little patch of grass among the swaying lattice-sail trees – the pagoda’s right over there – and The Bachelor threw the dead woman on the ground and disemboweled her. He opened her belly with his teeth. I saw him hovering over her as I stumbled up through the root gnarls and hanging tropical moss after him. I got to this place just as he was making an incision down her abdomen with his canines . . . I collapsed and watched. The enormity of what he was doing scarcely fazed me. Holding my bad eye and squinting through the other, Ben, I watched. In ten or twelve minutes
