Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground - Part two (cont)

Penelope Hill
I had no need of signs to mark the path I had to follow; the need pulled me with more certainty than any map or signpost. Just as well, really, since the lowering clouds had brought an early darkness to the narrow valleys and it soon began to rain again, much heavier than before. The water cascaded from the sky, obscuring the path, washing away the traces of Al's passage ahead of me; I was soaked through to the skin within minutes.

And it didn't bother me in the slightest.

I was untouched by the vagaries of the weather; what should have been miserable discomfort was no more than minor inconvenience. How could I feel clammy when my skin was already cold and my veins filled with ice? That kind of misery is for the living.

The dead have other reasons for feeling bad...

There was a cave - more of an overhang really - a tilted slab of rock that jutted out from the rise of the ravine to provide a pretence of shelter. Vines hung down on either side, curtaining it off from the rain, and behind them the flicker of a small fire sent a spark of light out into the approaching night. It was nowhere near as fierce as the conflagration I could sense waiting for me; a blaze that burned with siren heat.

And a hell of a lot of anxiety.

I put it down to the length of my absence; I'd wrestled with my conscience for a long time before accepting the dictates of fate, and Al must have been wondering where I'd got to. The hunger was savage, and I was paying more attention to that than to anything else. Then I heard voices, and I hesitated in my approach, briefly thrown by having the sense of only one presence and yet hearing two.

"You have found us a village, haven't you?" I heard Al growl above the impact of the rain.

"Well-" Gushie's answer was hesitant, "we have ... As a matter of fact, we found Lao Fe-"

Lao Fe. The village Schuster was searching for.

"-we think," the hologram added with noticeable reluctance.

"Think?" The sarcasm in that single word was probably lost on the man it was directed at.

"Well - uh - once Ziggy agreed to help on this, she collated all the satellite images she could get and cross-referenced them to the old maps we managed to get hold of, and we can't be one hundred percent certain, because parts of this area were saturation bombed with napalm and Agent Orange in '71, but there are signs of agricultural terraces in some of the valleys and the Colonial survey listed all the local villages around here and..."

"It does help if you stop to breathe occasionally," Al interrupted acerbically. I heard Gushie take a disconcerted gulp of much needed air.

"Umm - yes, uh - anyway, we think that we've identified where you are, and you should get there tomorrow..." He paused to take another breath. "You know," he went on to complain, "Ziggy still isn't happy about any of this. She keeps protesting about her lack of data for this period."

"So get her some." Al sounded tired; his tone held irritation.

"We're doing our best, Admiral. I've spent the past two days refining her language filters so that she can access the relevant French documents directly. But there just aren't records for most of this; we can't even confirm half of what Schuster and Frazel have been telling us."

"I don't care," Al snapped at him, much as I might have done had I still been the only Leaper and he the attendant hologram. "Just - point us at the damned village, and get us the hell outta here, willya?"

"Are you okay, Admiral?" Gushie's question was hesitant, almost as if he expected to have his head bitten off for asking it. Perhaps he did: I had no memory of how these two men had worked together before I Leaped, let alone afterward.

"No," was the answering growl. Bitter. Wretched. "Gushie - I've spent three damn days wading through this fucking jungle, I'm soaked to the skin, I got a head full of Swiss cheese, my mind keeps kicking up things I'd rather not remember, I got the stink of 'Nam in my nostrils, and my best friend's a goddamn vampire. I am not okay, okay?"

I heard the hologram swallow. Hard. "Ah, right. Okay. I'm sorry I asked."

So was I. I twisted round to lean my weight against the rain-slicked rock, and shook. Fighting the need, fighting the surge of want that had responded to the flare of passion my friend had put into his words.

I can't control this...

But I was going to have to; not least because I daren't even consider slaking my raging thirst while Gushie's intangible presence still hovered there like some misplaced apparition. And Al was not a happy man by the sound of it; I should have noticed it sooner. There were plenty of reasons for that. I was one of them. Was he regretting his generous offer? Did he really trust me?

Or had he said what he did out of fear rather than because he meant it?

The beast was wrestling for control; I slapped it down as hard as I could in the circumstances and tried to focus on fact rather than speculation. There had been no fear in his eyes that short while ago; just sympathy. I'd been so wrapped up in my own miseries these past three days that I'd paid very little attention to his - and I should have done, should have stopped to think what being here might do to him. Should have considered the blow McFarlane had struck, and how deep the wound it left might be.

Should have asked what shape the nightmares took, when he cried out in his sleep.

Instead of turning away...

I heard the Imaging Chamber door slide shut with its usual finality; heard Al let out a sigh drawn straight from the heart.

"You know something, god?" he muttered, unaware of how close I was, not thinking I could hear him. "You either got one hell of a sense of humour, or I must've really ticked you off, somewhere along the line. You're putting the kid through enough - and he ain't done nothing to deserve it, right? Maybe I do, but - would it be too much to ask for one night's sleep, huh? Just one? I know I screwed up. Damn it, I know I screwed up good this time. I just don't want to let Sam down again, you hear?"

Oh, shit...

I had been afraid that he might fear what I had become; instead his world was riddled with unnecessary guilt and self-directed wretchedness.

And I thought I was carrying the weight of the whole world on my shoulders.

Sometimes we are too much alike, he and I. And sometimes worlds apart. But that's why we are friends, and likely to stay that way.

That's if we don't kill each other with all our good intentions first.

"Al?" I called softly, stepping through the curtain of vines, out of the impact of the rain. He started at my unheralded arrival, a jerk of alarm that relaxed once he realised who it was.

There was a sense of tight anxiety that he projected, there in the semi-darkness, but it wasn't because of me. There was something else, some other horror with which he wrestled; it held him, savaged him, and tore at his soul. It had been there ever since we had come to this place and I - caught up in my own tragedy - had utterly mistaken its shadow.

I had even misread the fear that had sat in his eyes that day. It had not been fear of me...

But for me.

"Hi, Sam," he acknowledged wearily. "What kept ya?"

He'd stripped off his shirt, draping it close to the fire so that it could dry; he lay flat on his back on a step of rock above it, staring up at the shadows that the flames threw on the underside of the stone roof.

"Not much," I said, dropping the packs close to the fire, shrugging out of my jacket with a nonchalance I didn't feel. The need snarled inside me, drifting me closer to his presence without voluntary decision. I found myself looking down at him, barely feeling the warmth of the fire at my back, while the blaze of his life was almost too incandescent to bear. "I - almost didn't come at all."

He lifted himself up on one elbow, staring at me with bemusement. "You what? Sam - are you crazy?"

"No," I announced slowly, dropping to one knee, wanting to meet him eye to eye. "Just - not used to being a vampire yet."

He chuckled at that. "Yeah," he acknowledged dryly. "Right. So you couldn't keep away, huh? That has to be my magnetic personality working overtime. It can't possibly be my cologne..."

I winced, the joke hitting that little too close to home. He was soaked with rain and sweat, layered with three days' worth of jungle grime; a far cry from his usual meticulous self. Yet, to my perceptions he was a vessel of light and fire, filled with life, filled with glory.

And the hunger howled inside me, blotting out all thoughts and considerations, screaming its need, its emptiness...

My hand shot out, a darting strike that slashed hardened nails across the line of his upturned wrist where it rested on the rock. Blood welled out, thick and dark - almost black - in the dim light, and he drew in a gasp of startled pain.

"Hey - be careful, kid," he admonished, a little anxiously. "Don't waste it." As if I would...

I hadn't meant to hurt him; I was trembling on the very edge of my self-control, and the directed attack was actually a long way from what instinct demanded of me. I should have fed hours before - maybe days before, numbing the craving, meeting the need long before it became so intense. But I'd been too conscious of what I'd become to understand that; too absorbed in the misery of myself to comprehend that I still had farther to fall.

Too focused on the extremes to accept the truth that he had tried to explain to me. That it's intent and reason that colours the deed, not the nature of the deed itself. That sometimes you have to accept the compromise in order to survive...

I bent my head and took what I had to; the gift of his life. The splendour of his soul...

I immersed myself in each moment of what I took, savouring its truths, briefly losing myself in the rediscovery of ecstasy; it filled me with warmth, driving away the cold, driving back the dark. Its sweetness overwhelmed the emptiness and soothed the anguish of my shattered heart.

Rich and vital, spiced and full of fire.

Seasoned, mellow, piquant with emotion and flavoured with experience.

Tainted with fatigue.

Polluted with the toxins of old wounds raked to the surface and opened afresh...

McFarlane had struck deep; I'd known that. I'd just not understood how deep. And being here - in the hot and humid echo of a time that, for Al, held only memories of abuse - was it any surprise that the hurt had had no chance to heal?

The clutch of nightmares, denying sleep, made more damaging by the lack of memory with which a man might armour himself against them...

I closed the damage I had inflicted with a soft sweep of my tongue, and looked up, finding him relaxed back against the cold stone, his eyes closed and his expression serene.

Where do you go when I submerge myself in your glory?

What does it feel like to give instead of contesting the feast?

I had no way to tell; my memory was of pain and terror and anguished struggle. But I knew that the savour that my destroyer had sought held little in common with the heady brilliance that currently intoxicated my senses and empowered my unnatural existence.

"Al?" I called softly, drawing him back, recalling him from wherever I had sent him. He opened his eyes slowly, meeting mine with distant warmth, a smile of trust-

- and I reached out, almost without knowing how I did it, enfolding his will within my own, cradling him in the power he had given me and holding him captive, there behind his eyes.

Sleep, I commanded, offering his startlement the reassurance of a smile. Sleep and be free of dreams...

He had no time to fight me, even had he wanted to; my intentions were gentle, and his response immediate. Within bare seconds he had slipped into a slumber so deep that it would have taken World War Three to waken him. Or World War Two, perhaps. That wasn't so far away, after all...

I grinned softly to myself, getting to my feet to deal with the matter of setting up camp. Not that that took much - I dragged a couple of dry blankets out of a pack and bundled one to make a pillow before tucking the other around his torpid frame. The evening was chill with the onset of the storm, and while I had not drunk as much as I had the first time, he'd given up enough to need the extra warmth.

Then I unlimbered the portable stove and set it up so that he could have coffee come the morning, sat myself down against the rock wall, and watched the rain fill the night.

You should get there tomorrow, Gushie had said. And there would be Lao Fe, the object of Schuster's quest as well as our own. Would Al Leap, once we had reached it, or would there be something else left to do?

Was the purpose we pursued worth the disquietude this place inspired in my friend?

I had to believe it was. Had to; else the Leap itself became meaningless. If that were true, then perhaps all the things I had achieved in my Leaps would be equally meaningless.

And I knew that wasn't the case at all.

The man upstairs has his own agenda, Al had said. He had faith; enough to risk his soul for my salvation.

Not once, but twice...

Perhaps it all came down to that in the end; the simple belief that the road leads somewhere, that the choices we make in life mean something.

So what about the ones we make in death?

I couldn't be sure; couldn't know.

All I knew was that I was a living corpse, untouched by the miseries of the weather, beyond the simple needs of sleep or the reach of nightmares.

One that existed on gifted glory, that was sustained by grace instead of murder.

Intoxicated with the heady wine of another man's life...

I tipped my head back against the cold stone and laughed softly, content for the moment to simply be. To feel the strength that filled me, and to listen to the sounds of the night. To hear the steady impact of the rain and, underneath it, the quiet breath of a man immersed in sleep; a tranquil sleep.

It seemed such a trivial gift beside the one he had given me...

Lao Fe was a sprawl of makeshift civilisation clinging to either side of a narrow valley; on one slope a cluster of wooden houses clung in haphazard fashion, on the other rose a steep series of man-made terraces, climbing like a giant's staircase toward the angle of the ridge from which they'd been carved. In between lay an impatient river, rushing with headlong force along the deep slice it had cut into the valley floor.

A sleepy village, nestled into the jungle and carrying echoes of old and forgotten glories; there was only one stone-built building, and that was an ancient one, its back cut into the rock wall of the valley and its pagoda-styled roof carpeted with vines.

It was late into the afternoon by the time we began our descent, and the skies above us were heavy with cloud. We crested the northern ridge at the upper end of the valley and found the village laid out below us. It seemed less than inviting in the grey light, the organic lines of wood-built, leaf-thatched houses merging into the common greens of the rainforest and making the place look like a cluster of misshapen fungi bubbling from the toppled trunk of a gnarled tree.

"Civilisation," I announced brightly, and Al paused to catch his breath, staring down at the sight with a decidedly despondent expression.

"Yeah," he agreed; his lack of enthusiasm might have had something to do with the rigours of the journey, but somehow I didn't think so. I stared down at the cluster of buildings, sensing the stir of life that occupied them; an oasis of tempting sweetness to the hunger that lurked within my soul.

Should I risk this? I wondered, measuring the fire that currently sustained me. The beast would never be satisfied, but it had been quieted; it muttered its demands softly, whispering enticements, promising power.

Feel it, it urged, revelling in the brilliance I had made my own. Feel the strength it gives you. The control it offers you. The world lies at your fingertips. Take it. Use it...

Deceptive strength; empty promises. The power it offered was backed by the intoxication of addiction, its mastery sustained by the lure of insatiable hungers. The ecstasy was sweet, but it was never going to be enough; to succumb to that temptation was to surrender to torment - to be racked by endless desire and hopeless discontent.

To be driven to kill to answer the need, and yet never to have it answered...

I stamped hard on the thought; right then my mood was buoyant, and I wasn't about to listen to either my fears or my forebodings. I was more concerned for my friend, whose state of fatigue was partially my fault, and who was considering our destination with what appeared to be mixed feelings.

"We could always push on to the next waterhole," I offered, not entirely in jest. He threw me a look - one that conveyed an oh, come on and a whole lot of other things, all without saying a word. I laughed; I seemed to have been laughing a lot that day - those bits of it I was aware of, anyway. The look folded down into patient affection, and then Al shook his head as if not knowing what to make of me at all.

"At least," he considered wearily, "I might get to sleep under a decent roof tonight."

"Don't be so sure," I warned cheerfully. "For all you know we're going to Leap straight out of here the minute we set foot in the place."

"Uh-uh," he denied, starting the careful descent. "No way, Sam. It's never that easy, and you know it."

Easy? He calls a four day slog through virgin rainforest easy? It killed Carl Schuster the first time round.

Didn't it?

History said so - but then history could be wrong. No-one knew that better than I did.

Perhaps he reached this place too.

And if he did...?

I glanced up from the tempting stir of village life to consider the rest of the landscape. On the other side of the valley the crown of the higher ridge was crowded with jungle greenery. Hidden within it were hints of construction; the impression of crumbled walls, and the blurred lines of carved images...

"Are you coming, or are you intending to stand around and admire the view all night?" Al's voice pulled me from my speculations, and I grinned, bounding down the slope after him with a lithe confidence that earned me a sigh of quiet exasperation. "I wish I knew where you got your energy," he growled without thinking, then froze, realising what he'd said. I paused to throw him a warm smile.

"Present from a friend," I quipped, and went on with my descent, picking my way with unconscious ease, reading the environment with a predator's skill.

After a moment I heard him chuckle softly to himself and start to follow me.

From close-packed jungle we emerged on to a roughly tended path; one that hugged the edge of the river gorge as it wound along the valley. In one direction it headed towards the rising terraces, in the other it led past a bridge.

Sort of.

It wasn't like any bridge I could remember crossing. It consisted of three thick lengths of plaited fibre, one strung low, the other two higher, at hand height. Loops of thinner rope were haphazardly strung between all three, creating the impression of a tangled cat's cradle hanging over the crevasse. Some fifteen to twenty feet below the river rushed with indifferent force; just looking at the thing made me feel dizzy.

"Ingenious, ain't it?" Al arrived at my shoulder, a source of warmth that was equally dizzying, but for different reasons.

"Dangerous," I decided, judging the distance across the divide with a definite sinking feeling. Too wide to jump, too deep to climb, even for me.

"Nah," my companion denied, walking closer to the edge in order to tug experimentally at the anchoring point of one of the handrails. "Where's your sense of adventure, Sam?"

"Steve," I corrected distractedly. "Once we have company we're going to have to remember who we are." He frowned in my direction, an irritated I know kind of look. Thunder rumbled overhead, a reminder of the progress of the day, and the frown curled into a grin. I winced. The prospect of the bridge was bad enough, without having to face crossing it in torrential rain.

"I don't what you're so worried about, anyway," Al remarked, settling the balance of his pack and carefully walking out onto the rope. "If you fall, all you're gonna get is wet..."

The whole construction swayed alarmingly under his weight; he crossed with caution, but without undue concern. I'd have held my breath while he did it, but I had no real breath to hold. I still let out a sigh of relief when he reached the other side.

"Come on," he called, and, after a moment's pointless indecision, I moved across and cautiously put out my foot.

What are you afraid of? the beast inside me taunted mockingly.

I hesitated on the brink, an odd part of my mind wondering if the mythologies concerning vampires and running water were as accurate as the ones referring to sunlight. Al was watching me expectantly; he'd had no qualms about the crossing, and if he could do it...

The whisper of his life called to me, its richness echoing across the distance between us.

Fire and strength and the glory of the gods.

Sacrificed with love.

To me.

For me.

And while I possessed it, nothing could hurt me any more...

I laughed wryly at myself, and stepped out on to the rope.

It wasn't so hard.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't hard at all. I'd learnt early on that the sharp perceptions I now had of the world seemed to add an extra dimension to all my senses; my sense of balance turned out to be no exception. I could have walked across that swaying rope as easily as I could have walked across a street. Even run across it; after the first couple of steps I realised that I might have a pretty good future in tightrope walking.

"Show-off," Al accused good-naturedly as I arrived on the far side. I grinned at him. Maybe letting go with both hands had been a little over the top...

The village rose ahead of us, sturdily constructed wooden buildings jostling for space on the angled slope. Most were built out from the hillside, supported on a myriad of stilts; between them the village streets were a jumble of inclines and stone-cut steps.

And the place was filled with life.

Teeming with it.

Chickens pecked greedily in the streets; pigs rooted under the platformed houses, searching for titbits in among the stilts; children played among them, some rushing headlong down the twisted steps after a tumbled ball; women sat in darkened doorways, occupied in domesticity; and men gathered in communal groups, sharing tales and laughter at the close of the day. I looked up, past the first line of buildings, to where the old shrine sat with commanding presence, its roof warm with gilt and its carved pillars bright with colour, and I felt the sheer energy of the place hit me like a wave.

Like a strong waft of incense; spiced and cloying, exotic and overpowering...

Had I not fed the night before, had I not armoured myself with the sweet and mellow fire that was my friend's life, the hunger I nurtured inside me might have surged into total frenzy, right there and then.

As it was I had difficulty containing it.

"You okay, Sam - Steve?" Al enquired with concern, correcting himself at the last minute, half-reaching for my shoulder but stilling the gesture as I threw him a warning look.

"Just give me a moment," I hissed, concentrating on regaining self-control. Distraction - desire - impacted on me with insistence; the stir of fire within the village counterpointing the heat of my company's soul, its once-searing brilliance reduced in intensity by the stilling of my need, yet still incandescent to my senses.

It wasn't need that stirred me as such, although that was part of it - would always be part of it. It was a kind of exhilaration, a giddying sensation quite unlike anything I could remember experiencing.

'It was a good war,' McFarlane had said. 'And afterwards I was so drunk on it that I slept for thirty years .'

Drunk...

Drunk with power, with life. No doubt he would have walked into this village with amusement, knowing he could pick and choose his victims at will; drinking in the energy that surrounded him, using it to enhance his strength, taking whatever he wanted, and leaving only empty shadows behind.

Another source of heat approached us; a far simpler fire than my immediate company, one salted with physical labour and lacking in the intricacies of experience. I looked up, seeing the man who came down the angled steps toward the bridge, sensing his caution, reading his suspicion-

And feeling the beast stir as it anticipated the savour of his soul...

I focused myself with determined effort, letting myself adjust to the unexpected perception of abundance. I didn't think it would be so hard, once I'd had time to acclimatise myself to the situation. It wasn't as if the beast were starving.

Not yet, at least...

Take it like the bridge, Sam. One step at a time.

The man spoke; warily, in a ripple of words in a language I didn't recognise. I'd expected that; I'd even been trying to recollect my French so that we might have a chance of making ourselves understood.

What I hadn't expected was for Al to answer him.

In the same tongue.

His words were cautious, carefully phrased and laden with defensive overtones, but the man's eyes widened with surprise when he heard them. Almost at the same moment he bowed. Deeply, and with evidence of startled deference. I glanced at my company with equal surprise - and respect.

"I didn't know you spoke Vietnamese," I observed with astonishment. He simply looked at me; a patient, forbearing look, and, after a moment, I got the point. Of course he spoke the language - enough to make himself understood at least; he would have made a point of gleaning every word he could during those five long years. It would have given him an edge, a means of increasing his chances of survival; know thine enemy is always good advice.

And, despite Swiss cheese, whenever I've really needed a talent on a Leap, it's always come back to me, too.

The villager spoke again, waving his hand to indicate we should ascend the slope; then he bowed a second time, turned, and ran up the incline with hasty steps.

"Were we expected?" I asked, not quite knowing what to make of this, and Al shook his head.

"Not exactly," he sighed, staring after the man with an odd look in his eyes. "But you can see this place looks pretty prosperous... well," he added, at the look I threw him, "maybe you can't. By local standards, Sam. I guess a shrine like this one would pull folk in from all over... though we're gonna be kind of a novelty... He's gone to warn the village headman. We'd better go after him." He paused to grimace a twisted smile that held no amusement whatsoever. "Don't want 'em to think we're impolite, do we?"

"No," I agreed, unable to read him as clearly as I might have liked. The swirl of life that was the village blotted out some of the subtler emotions that I was still learning to interpret. He was tired, that much I was sure of. Tired - and anxious, and a little tense; perhaps too tense, reacting to half-recalled memories and nursing a bruised soul.

This is not going to be easy.

But then, Leaping never is...

The headman of Lao Fe turned out to be a elderly Vietnamese with a wizened face, a long white wispy beard, disturbingly bright eyes, and a presence that would have marked him out even without my unnatural senses. He - together with a whole crowd of villagers - stood waiting by the foot of the steps to the shrine as we climbed past the lower tiers of houses. The main thing I sensed from the group was wary hostility; it mirrored Al's reaction to the situation almost exactly. Still, he squared his shoulders and greeted the elder with careful and polite words in his own tongue, a consideration that sent a murmur through the gathering. The headman bowed in acknowledgement, and looked the two of us up and down with unreadable eyes. Al glanced sideways at me; the look in his eyes was taut and uneasy.

"Tell him we don't want to impose, but we do need help," I suggested softly. He hesitated - then curled a tight half-smile onto his lips and turned back to do just that; the headman pre-empted any words he might have said.

"Men who show respect will be offered nothing but respect," the old man announced in perfect, if somewhat accented, English. "And only those without honour turn away those in need."

He dipped his head at us - a gesture of polite respect, not deference - then turned and began to issue rapid instructions to the people gathered behind him. Within a few scant moments we were being escorted past the shrine and further up the slope to the headman's own house. Well, when I say escorted, it was more a case of the old man leading the way with surprisingly spry steps while those of the villagers he had not despatched on some errand or other trailed in our wake with disconcerting silence. It wasn't the friendliest of receptions I've ever received, but right there and then it was probably just as well.

I was still dizzy with the impact of the place; I felt as if temptation surrounded me on every side. Had they crowded in around us I might have had difficulty controlling myself. As for Al - I could sense that he was balancing on a knife edge so sharp it could have cut molecules.

This was a mistake, I found myself thinking, wishing I could offer him a measure of reassurance. My hand went out automatically, the kind of gesture I've often had to restrain myself from making, knowing that all it was going to meet was empty air. This time I touched fire and hastily withdrew the contact, but even that brief connection turned his head in my direction; it earned me an uneasy smile.

"Please," the elder requested, stepping aside to gesture us ahead of him. The building that awaited us was a squat construction of wood and bamboo, overhung with a green leaf thatch. A broad veranda surrounded it, supported at the front on stout stilts and covered with woven matting. A young man - one no older than thirteen, at first glance - had been sitting on the edge of it, and he scrambled up in alarm as we approached.

"My grandson, Yun Ho," the old man said, a note of pride clear in his voice.

Yun Ho bowed, but he did so with far less sincerity than his grandfather had done. His eyes flashed suspicion and a hint of animosity, reactions he covered with a politely bland smile, but not before both of us had seen them. I frowned, reading hostility in the young man, able to pick out the fierceness of his young life from within the wall of heat that surrounded me, and Al suppressed a wince, almost as if he'd been physically struck.

"My house is yours," the old man went on; his voice was soft, pitched a little high, and held a quavering note of age. "You are welcome here."

The look that crossed Yun Ho's face implied otherwise...

Yun Shi - the headman - ushered us into a sparsely furnished room on one side of his house; it held a low table barely six inches high, a number of padded mattresses rolled up in one corner, and a small wooden chest under one window. Fibre matting covered the floor, and the windows were shaded with blinds made of the same material; it was lit by a flutter of oil lamps that hung from wall brackets, and small clouds of insects clustered around each globule of light, like a grey mist that sent shadows flickering in every corner.

By now the rain had begun to patter on to the roof above us; some of it dripped persistently through to the floor by one of the windows. Al dropped his pack to the table and stalked across to lift aside the blind and stare out into the coming night. I could feel the tension in him, coiled tight, like an animal trapped in a cage too small for it; it mirrored my own inner struggle, although I knew the reasons for it were a long way from the battle I fought.

"You okay?" I asked softly, once our host had withdrawn to attend to our other comforts. His voice could be heard through the curtain that covered our doorway, dispensing rapid instructions with imperious command.

Al sighed. "I'll let you know," he said distractedly. His hand clenched around the edge of the windowframe, and I wished I had a way to read the thoughts that battled for his attention.

What do you remember?

Familiar experiences have triggered unexpected memories when I've been Leaping. Often out of context and in a disjointed fashion. How much do you remember?

The whole of his imprisonment? Or just echoes of it, written in broad brush strokes of horror without specifics to anchor them in? Maybe he couldn't even place the reasons for his unease, couldn't focus on the events that had coloured his life. Whatever he did recollect, it would come to him stark and fresh, unmellowed by time or shaped by later memory.

'You're about the only thing I remember for certain, Sam...'

But I had no place in this part of his past, other than in one traumatic moment when he had placed my needs above his own. Another sacrifice made in the name of friendship...

And how much of what you wrestle with is McFarlane's fault?

How deep did that wound run? Where did memory end and nightmare begin? An aggravated hurt has no chance to heal. Nor will it, when denied the strength it needs to do so.

I had tasted fatigue, along with the richer moments of his life; the fire that now sustained me had been a gift he might have cause to regret.

You should never have come back for me, Al.

I'm not worth the price you've had to pay...

 They brought us food; trays laden with steaming dishes and a huge platter piled high with rice. The old man directed the feast in and then ushered the servers out, leaving us with their generosity and his benevolent wishes. I stared down at the piled dishes and I sighed.

"Not hungry, Sam?" Al asked from his place by the window, the question tinged with knowing irony. I shook my head in quick denial.

"Uh-uh," I muttered, knowing that I was. Would always be.

I dipped my finger into the nearest dish out of sheer curiosity, hoping to bring the savour of spiced sauce to my tongue. I might not need the sustenance of the feast, but it would be good to taste its richness, to at least enjoy the illusion of its pleasures.

It held about as much flavour for me as a fingerful of raw grease.

No wonder McFarlane ate so little at dinner.

Al chuckled at my grimace. "That bad, huh?"

"No," I assured him hurriedly. "Just - I don't know, Al. I can't taste a darn thing."

His eyes narrowed at that; he stalked across to stare down at the dishes much as I had done, and then he sighed - with feeling. "You know," he observed, parking himself on the floor next to the table, "it's a damn good job I'm hungry. Our host will be insulted if we don't do justice to this little lot."

"I'm sorry," I said, seeking refuge in a perch among the rolled mattresses. He threw me a wry grin.

"Don't be, kid," he growled, picking up an empty bowl and starting to heap it with rice. "Guess I'm sorta eating for two these days, anyway."

I winced.

Don't remind me, Al.

He topped the rice with a selection from several of the dishes, and then set about eating the result with the studied determination of a man who knew what it was like to go hungry and how to make the best of munificence when it was on offer. I watched him with fascination; he didn't bother with the awkwardness of chopsticks, but simply cupped the bowl close with his left hand and ate with the fingers of his right, scooping up each delicacy within a coating of rice. And he ate fast - as if he expected someone to come and snatch the food away from him at any minute.

I'm not even sure he tasted most of it. It was regressional behaviour and I suspect he might even have been embarrassed if I'd pointed out what he was doing. I found myself wondering how long it had taken him to break the habit the first time round. How long it had been before the spectre of starvation had ceased to haunt him.

And - having done so - suddenly realised that he might comprehend my situation a lot better than I had thought.

"So," Al said eventually, scraping the last grain of rice out of the now-empty bowl and licking the remnants of sauce from his fingertips. "We didn't Leap."

"No."

It works that way sometimes. You do all the obvious things, and the reason that you're there turns out to be something you never even expected.

Sometimes even something Ziggy never expected...

My company dropped the polished bowl to the table and sighed. "I don't know that I can do this, Sam."

A hand tightened around my dead heart.

"Do what?" I asked lightly.

As if I didn't know...

He sighed a second time, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his cupped hands. "This," he shrugged. "Being here. Facing them..." He threw me a challenging look. "What do you see, Sam? When you look into their eyes?"

Fire and glory, Al. Fire and glory...

"Suspicion," I decided after a moment. "A little fear. Maybe some resentment. But all of that's understandable. Yun Shi seemed friendly enough."

He nodded thoughtfully, staring at the shuttered window and the hammer of rain that lay beyond it.

"That's what I keep telling myself," he said slowly. "But it don't help much. You know what I see, Sam? What I remember?

"I look into their eyes and I see the hate they offered me. Nothing but cold hate..."

He shivered, his words trailing into nothingness, and I inwardly repeated the shiver. There had been hate in Yun Ho's eyes. Not much, not the burning fanaticism Al was referring to, but the seeds of it, settled there like a canker. Over the next thirty years the fruits of that anger would tear this fragile country apart.

And my friend with it.

But he'd survived. Survived to rebuild his life; the experience had tempered his soul, helped give it the richness I'd been privileged to share.

And the generosity of that gift had stripped him of his armour, denying him the inner strengths he needed to face the nightmare of his past.

Not to mention the echoes of McFarlane's abuse...

He'd dropped his head into his hands, a quiet expression of weighty despair; he was tired. Tired in spirit, weary enough to want to let go, to just lie down and never get up again. All his energy, his determination had been focused on getting us here.

And now he could see nowhere else to go.

Time was when I'd get that way on a Leap. And whenever that had happened, my guardian angel had been there - sometimes to bounce and bully me, sometimes to offer me supportive words, and - more often than not - to just let me have it, straight from the heart...

"You know something, Al," I said softly, "There's only one way to survive in this crazy world of ours - and that's to dig in your heels and take what comes, and never, ever let go of who you are..."

He looked up, staring at me across the dimly-lit room. The lamps flickered fitfully, cascading hesitant shadows over his features - and then I saw him smile, a slow, world-weary smile filled with wry amusement and patient affection.

"Yeah," he breathed softly. "Ain't that the truth."

You can make it, Al. I know you can. You and I together.

I grinned, tempted by a sudden sense of mischief. While I was in the mood for dispensing the Calavicci philosophy...

"You know what you need?" I observed lightly, stretching out my legs and leaning back against the wall.

He fell for it.

"What?"

"You need to get - well, you know. I mean - you haven't even seen a woman in three days. You must be in a state of total deprivation by now."

His mouth dropped open; he gaped at me in utter disbelief. "What?" he questioned, more a reactive movement of lips than an actual sound.

"Schuster's a good-looking young man," I went on brightly, pretending to study the pattern of lamplight on the ceiling and wall. "You could probably take advantage of that."

"Sam. Sam," he interrupted disconcertedly, "are you serious?"

"Nope," I shot back matter-of-factly. "But you would be."

Gotcha, Calavicci ...

He went on gaping for a second and then he began to laugh. Just a chuckle to start with, one I echoed with smug satisfaction. That just made it worse. The chuckle became a chortle. Our eyes met - and then both of us burst out into roars of helpless laughter. Al uncurled from his previously disconsolate huddle and flopped flat onto his back, shaking with almost uncontrollable mirth.

A good deal of it was probably reactive hysteria, but right there and then, it felt good to laugh. Laughter can be a better medicine than all the well-intentioned words in the world.

And while I could still laugh I knew I was not utterly lost. Could believe - even if only for that moment - that I might yet be spared the true terrors of my own death.

"You know," Al gasped after a minute or two. "It ain't such a bad idea at that."

The comment set us both off again. When Gushie appeared through the Imaging Chamber door it was to find the two of us desperately trying to suppress a resurgence of the giggles - and failing miserably whenever we caught each other's eye.

"I - I could come back," the bemused hologram suggested, half-lifting the handlink to do just that. Al rolled himself up onto his elbow and glowered at him.

"Don't you dare walk out that door until you've told us what we're supposed to do now," he growled. Gushie looked startled at his vehemence. So did I for a moment. "Which probably isn't what Sam just suggested," Al went on to say in more normal tones, throwing me a sidelong glance as he did so. "More's the pity..."

That cracked me up a third time. Our intangible visitor looked more bemused than ever. "Ah - well," Gushie considered, seeking refuge in the handlink's lights, "by arriving here it seems you have changed history. Now it appears that Frazel's body was never found - and-" He took a deep breath, looking apologetic as he dropped his bombshell, "Schuster's was returned to the States by the French authorities late in '37. They said he'd been - ah - executed by insurrectionists."

Al had hiked himself back up to sit cross-legged by the low table, grinning at my attempts to regain my self-composure. His expression froze at the devastating announcement.

So did mine.

Jeezus, Gushie, couldn't you have found a better way to say that?

"Executed?" Al echoed suspiciously. "As in - uh-" His finger drew a graphic line across his throat and Gushie nodded unhappily. "Oh, boy," my friend concluded bleakly. His shoulders slumped, and he turned to stare at the remnants of the feast on the table beside him with a sigh. "Knew we should have ordered to go."

"Now hold on a minute," I insisted, frowning at Gushie's equally disconsolate stance. "It hasn't happened yet. And it won't. Not if we know enough to prevent it. Has Ziggy any details?"

The hologram's expression brightened. "Some," he said, lifting the link and tapping at controls. "The report filed with the Embassy was pretty vague, but Ziggy's been digging for the original file from the French Colonial archives. According to that-" He frowned, as if not quite believing what he saw.

"What?" Al demanded, a bare second before I did. The programmer's frown became a disconcerted one.

"That's outrageous," he announced indignantly.

"What?" the two of us chorused a second time. Gushie went on staring at the tiny screen.

"The report says," he stated, "that the murder was uncovered on a routine visit to the village - that's this village - by the local Administrator, and that - because the villagers refused to identify the men responsible, he instigated punitive measures..." He finally looked up, his expression appalled.

"They burnt the village to the ground," he announced. "And killed anyone who offered resistance. Over thirty people, according to this..."

Unbidden, an image blossomed in my mind. One of a naked, terrified child, fleeing from a burning village while napalm ate the skin from her back.

This is how it all began...

"An entire village for the life of one man," I breathed, as appalled as Gushie had been. "How could anyone..."

"Well, that's easy enough," Al interrupted bitterly. "What's a few gooks here and there?"

"Al!" My reaction was mortified. Not so much for what he said, but the way he said it. Almost as if he believed it. He grimaced tellingly.

"What?" he questioned defensively. "Just because an oppressed people are oppressed doesn't make 'em the good guys. They welcomed us in, Sam. Just so they could cut our throats in the middle of the night. That don't count as being friendly in my book."

"Was that it, Gushie?" I demanded, disturbed by the venom that lay behind my friend's words. "Is this village a hotbed of revolution? Could such a slaughter be justified?"

"I - I don't know." Gushie seemed as taken aback by Al's reaction as I had been. "All we have is the report that was filed when this guy - uh-" He checked the readout, "-Lascale, got back to Da Nang. He said the village had been harbouring fugitives from the law, and when his men searched the settlement they discovered Schuster and-" He went a little white, "-oh lord - they didn't cut his throat, Admiral. Just his wrists. Lascale reported that they found the body in the shrine where he had been left - to - to bleed to death."

Oh my god...

While Al's eyes narrowed down into tight lines of bitter justification, a savage horror seized my soul, the beast within it howling quiet laughter. He was assuming the worst of the villagers. I had come to an even worse conclusion.

We changed history all right.

We got this far.

 They had said they'd found a corpse, abandoned in a holy place; an empty husk, stripped of life and soul. A victim, they'd probably claimed, of savage terrorism, justifying their equal atrocity with Biblical vengeance. An eye for an eye...

But what if it wasn't the rebels that killed Schuster?

What if it was me...?

"When?" I demanded tightly. "Do you know when, Gushie?"

Our hologram had been staring at Al, perhaps regretting the graphic nature of his explanation. He looked a little startled at my question.

"Ah - the report says the team arrived on the fifteenth... This can't be right," he insisted, shaking the link impatiently. "That's tomorrow. And Ziggy's saying Schuster doesn't die for another thirty six hours..."

Would the hunger have grown so strong in that short space of time? I didn't think so somehow, and his answer allowed me to relax a little.

Just a little.

About as much as a man can when his best friend has a death sentence hanging over his head.

"Ziggy," Al was saying acerbically, "has been known to be wrong."

"This doesn't add up," I realised, studying what was left after the spectre of my downfall had been taken out of the picture. "These people have nothing to gain by killing us - they've gone out of their way to help us. And-" One of the things that had been nagging at me slipped into place. "Wasn't Lascale the name of the man Schuster saw in Da Nang in the first place? The one who said Lao Fe didn't exist?"

The man whom Al had suggested might have sabotaged the plane.

My friend had started to climb to his feet; the obvious solution to the situation as he saw it would be to leave Lao Fe as soon as possible. But my words struck a chord, and he threw me a surprised look.

"Yeah," he concurred. "It was. Sam, you don't think...?"

"I don't know what to think, Al. Except perhaps that a man capable of torching an entire village and slaughtering half of its inhabitants has got to have a much better reason for it than the murder of a man he's already tried to kill himself."

Al sank back to the floor, thinking about it. "Sooo," he breathed, "are we here just to save Schuster? Or the whole damn village?"

Gushie checked.

"Ziggy gives it even odds either way. We just don't have the data," he added, at the look this earned him.

"We could go, Sam." Al was closest to the issues - and the one with the most to lose if we figured this wrong. "Just slip away, right now. A little further down the mountain, the next village - maybe even meet this Lascale and his buddies on the way."

"The next village might turn out to be worse," I pointed out. "And Schuster was trying to get here for a reason, remember? Maybe the same reason that Lascale is coming. There's more to this than just politics, Al. I can feel it."

He studied me with thoughtful eyes. "Yeah," he murmured. "And if there's one chance in a million that that mythical elixir exists..." He frowned, weighing up the odds and the options that lay behind them. He was tired; the prospect of facing further struggle through the unforgiving jungle was probably as daunting as the thought of staying put. "Okay, okay," he sighed eventually. "We stay. Long enough to check out the legend, anyway. But if I get murdered tonight, Sam, I'm gonna hold you responsible."

The smile I found for him had a twist in it.

"I wouldn't worry too much about that if I were you," I said quietly. "Anyone who wants to try will have to get past me first."

Al looked across at Gushie, who was looking at me, and grinned an unexpected grin. "Ain't that just great," he noted. "I'm stuck in a three-star hooch, surrounded by Charlie wannabes who might be baying for my blood - and my watchdog is not only dead, but likes the occasional tipple himself." The grin became a wry chuckle. "Guess that means you'll be guarding it pretty zealously, right, pal?"

"Right," I answered him, not sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.

This isn't fair.

He's having to try so damned hard...

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Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground. Part Two. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1996 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson