“You did hear it!” Dek cried in relief.

Talina’s expression didn’t change. “Welcome to my nightmare. That’s Demon. How he talks inside me, and it seems that he’s the first to figure out how to interface with the language centers in your brain. But then, he’s had the most practice with that.”

“Well,” Dek said, sinking back against the pillow, “I guess that just sucks toilet water. What happens next?”

“He’s going to work on taking over your vision centers, screw around with your hearing and sense of smell, and when you least expect it, he’s going to try and kill you.”

“Kill me how?”

“Best bet? He’ll use your limbic system against you. Paralyze you with fear at the wrong moment. Like when you’re being charged by an angry quetzal. Overload you with a consuming anger that makes you do something stupid. Maybe bend you double with crippling pain when you can least afford it. And I mean pain. Sort of like you just experienced with your leg but centered in your gut.”

“He can do that?”

Talina gave him a faint shrug of the shoulders. “Hey, Dek. You’ve got a totally pissed-off quetzal loose in your blood and brain. Your little adventure on Donovan just took a really nasty turn for the worse.”

“How bad could it get?” he wondered.

“Bad enough that you might end up wishing I’d let you die out there in the bush.”

19

Back on the beach, when Yoshimura had stepped out of the seatruck’s door, he’d turned on the cameras. He wasn’t thinking of Donovanian wildlife as much as to maintain a record of their field methodology as they took samples. That would have been critical back on Earth. All research was meticulously recorded for peer review.

Kalico was thankful for that as she looked out at the stunned and devastated expressions in the Pod cafeteria. Bill Martin, having been married to Shinwua, had somehow managed to sleepwalk his way through the kitchen during preparation of the evening meal. The food he produced might have been cooked, but it was singularly tasteless, as if he’d forgotten any kind of seasoning. Now that people had finished eating, Martin stood, braced against the kitchen doorway, eyes fixed on eternity. His face might have been an emotionless mask.

When Michaela Hailwood noticed the direction of Kalico’s stare, she said, “Bill and Shin had been together for years. Had Galluzzi marry them.” She reached up, rubbed her dark brows. “This is a blow. I mean, we’ve known the risks, heard the warnings, but this isn’t fair. Shin was just taking a sand sample. He wasn’t doing anything that should have gotten him killed.”