Spiral

head toward the hanging vine behind him. ”Though, playing Tarzan, I was able to take even you, now, wasn’t I?”
    ”It still doesn’t wash, David. How do you account for all our bodies?”
    ”Account for them?” Helides lifted his face to the sky and laughed like a maniacal bird in the old jungle movies. His laugh spurred more of the dinosaur roaring I’d heard earlier. ”John, there has to be a body first, and that bellowing sound you hear comes from a nearby drainage canal— or more precisely, from its resident alligators, garbage disposals both mobile and hostile.” A more serious look. ”Though before that stage, I plan to have rather an unparalleled—and extended—period of study involving the manchineel tree, with two remaining subjects who should tell me much about its already evident properties.”
    I swallowed the chuffing sound coming up my throat. ”You can’t fool the Colonel, David.”
    ”Oh, John, I’ve fooled him for over a year now! My father can’t have much time left—Very’s little show on his birthday nearly triggered another ‘brain attack.’ And he once insisted that I sit through an explanation by his estate lawyer of the trust which will support me forever. Provided, of course, that no one advises the good Colonel of my duplicity while there’s still time left for him to revoke the trust and effectively disinherit me.”
    ”If you’d just gone to him when you began feeling better—”
    ”—the old bastard would have disinherited me on the spot!” Helides nearly roared the words himself. ”Told me to go out in the world, earn my own way. Which is exactly how he ‘handled’ Spi, after my dear brother told me I was the cause of our mother’s death. Well, John, what little I know about the ‘world’ I’ve gotten from books, television, and more recently the Internet or Web, and I don’t like much of what I’ve found. The thought of spending the rest of my prime struggling to learn survival techniques—after depression robbed me of what most of you take for granted—is simply not tolerable. No, John, I need the money my father will leave me, provided he believes his poor son to be the same damaged goods he’s had to suffer and support since birth. And once he’s gone, my miraculous recovery can be effected a week at a time, with all the credit going to Dr. Henry Forbes, psychiatrist extraordinaire.”
    David Helides was Malinda Dujong’s crab-monster, all right, protecting his cave until he doesn’t need it anymore. ”I think I liked you better depressed than crazy.”
    Helides tore a fresh piece of electrician’s tape off the roll near his feet. ”I like me better when I’m neither. But I think the only further sounds I wish to hear from you should not be recognizable as words.” He came toward me with the new piece. ”And I don’t believe I’ll be bringing you any kind of scarecrow for the vultures, either.”
    Helides was square in front of me, perhaps two feet away. I couldn’t see anything past his head as he raised the fresh tape toward my mouth. That’s when I heard a faint whirring sound, followed by a chunking one directly behind him.
    Still holding the tape, David Helides staggered forward and almost into me, his eyes wild. As he turned, I got a glimpse over his shoulder of a figure at the edge of the clearing, before a flash in the moonlight like a fish underwater came hurtling through the air, another whir/chunk combination reaching my ears.
    It was only then that Helides stumbled away from me enough for my eyes to range down to the steel handle with the circular holes, sticking out near his spine. The blade was sunk into his body almost to the hilt, his right hand, still holding the fresh tape, scrabbling at the handle from a contortionist’s angle around the blood soaking through the black shirt.
    Now Helides staggered to the side, a twin handle sticking out of his stomach. His left hand went down to it, tugging once before his facial features twisted, and he dropped to his knees. Helides began making a hacking sound, like a man with the dry heaves. Then he struggled back to his feet, lurching toward Duy Tranh, who had crossed half the clearing, the third throwing knife from his suite wall in his right hand.
    Helides grunted something at him.
    I said, ”He’s disabled, Tranh.”
    ”I am not so certain.” He looked at Helides. ”I think you can still kill me, David. If you really want to?”
    ”You...?” and four more