B-beam reclined almost sleepily in a folding chair too small for him. He said, “We call it a melk, a mock elk. Don’t picture it evolving the usual way. Notice the horns? Melks were shaped by generations of planned breeding. Like a show poodle. And the grass, we call it fat grass.”
“Why? Hey—”
“Seen them?”
I’d glimpsed a shadow flowing among the trees. The melks had sensed something too. Their heads were up, tilted way up to let them see. A concealed nostril splayed like a small horn.
Three Folk stood upright from the grass, and screamed like steam-whistles.
The melks scattered in all directions. Shadows flowed in the black grass. One melk found two Folk suddenly before it, shrieking. The melk bellowed in despair, wheeled and made for the trees. Too slow. A deer could have moved much faster.
The camera zoomed to follow it.
Into the trees—and into contact with a black shadow. I glimpsed a forefoot/hand slashing at the creature’s vulnerable throat. Then the shadow was clinging to its back, and the melk tried to run from the forest with red blood spilling down its chest. The rest of the Folk converged on it.
They tore it apart.
They dragged it into the trees before they ate.
Part of me was horrified…but not so damn horrified as all that. Maybe I’ve been with aliens too long. Part of me watched, and noticed the strange configuration of the ribcage, the thickness and the familiar design of legs and knees, and the convenient way the skull split to expose brain when two Folk pulled the horns apart. The Folk left nothing but bone. They split the thick leg bones with their jaws, and gnawed the interiors. When they were finished they rolled the bones into a neat pile and departed at a waddle.
B-beam said, “That’s why we don’t give these films to the news. Notice anything?”
“Too much. The one they picked, it wasn’t just the smallest. The horns weren’t right. Like one grew faster than the other.”
“Right.”
“None of the Folk were carrying anything or wearing anything. No knives, no clothes, not even those sock-gloves. What do they do in winter?”
“They still hunt naked. What else?”
“The rest drove it toward that one hidden in the woods.”
“There’s one designated killer. Once the prey’s fate is sealed, the rest converge. There are other meat sources. Here—”
There was a turkey-sized bird with wonderful iridescent patterns on its small wings and enormous spreading tail. It flew, but not well. The Folk ran beneath it until it ran out of steam and had to come down into their waiting hands. The rest drew back for the leader to make the kill. B-beam said, “They killed four that day. Want to watch? It all went just about the same way.”
“Show me.”
I thought I might see…right. The third attempt, the bird was making for the trees with the Folk just underneath. It might make it. Could the Folk handle trees? But the Folk broke off, far short of the trees. The bird fled to safety while they converged on another that had landed too soon, and frightened it into panicky circles…
Enough of that. I said, “B-beam, the Folk sent some stuff to the Draco Tavern by courier. Your gate Security has it now. I think I’d better get it back. A microwave beamer and a hunting knife and canteen, and it all looks like it came from Abercrombie and Fitch.”
He stared at me, considering. “Did they. What do you think?”
“I think they’re making allowances because I’m human.”
He shook his head. “They make things easy for themselves. They cull the herds, but they kill the most difficult ones too. Anything that injures a Folk, dies. So okay, they’ve made things easy for us too. I doubt they’re out to humiliate us. They didn’t leave extra gear for your companion?”
“No.”
An instructor led us in stretching exercises, isometrics, duck-waddles, sprints, and an hour of just running, for two hours each day. There was a spa and a masseur, and I needed them. I was blind with exhaustion after every session…yet I sensed that they were being careful of me. The game was over if I injured myself.
B-beam put us on a starvation diet. “I want us thinking hungry, thinking like Folk. Besides, we can both stand to lose a few pounds.”
I studied Folk physiology more closely than I would have stared at a customer. The pointed mouths show two down-pointing daggers in front, then a gap, then teeth that look like two conical canines fused together. They look vicious. The eyes face forward in deep sockets below the hinges of the jaw: white with brown irises, oddly human. Their fingers are short and thick, tipped with thick claws, three to a forefoot, with the forward edge of the pad to serve as a thumb. Human hands are better, I think. But if the eyes had been placed like a wolf’s, they couldn’t have seen their hands while standing up, and they wouldn’t be tool users.
My gear was delivered. I strung the canteen and the beamer and the sheath knife on a loop of line. I filled the canteen with water, changed my mind and replaced it with Gatorade, and left it all in a refrigerator.
I watched three more hunts. Once they hunted melk again. Once it was pigs. That wasn’t very interesting. B-beam said, “Those were a gift. We mated pigs to wild boars, raised them in bottles and turned them loose. The Folk were polite, but I don’t think they liked them much. They’re too easy.”
The last film must have been taken at night, light-amplified, for the moon was blazing like the sun. The prey had two enormous legs with too many joints, a smallish torso slung horizontally between the shoulders, and tiny fingers around a strange mouth. Again, it looked well fed. It was in the forest, eating into a hanging melon-sized fruit without bothering to
