Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$0.55				$0.47

eBook Category: Science Fiction Year's Best Science Fiction Honorable Mention
eBook Description: Chief Detective Sula A'com must find out why Earth colony First Administrator Slon M'lay has disappeared on the planet. Slon had claimed he'd actually seen an extinct human. Did he encounter one when he drifted into the jungle and never returned? To solve the mystery, open-minded Sula must face the same seductive jungle Slon faced, where humans may, after all, still lurk.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Aeon Magazine 7, 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2008

35 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [28 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [33 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [14 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [164 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [14 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [75 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [86 KB] , hiebook (KML) [64 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [42 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [12 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [15 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [43 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [25 KB]
Words: 3781
Reading time: 10-15 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"The story's fascinating premise sucked me in and held on. Though many alien POV stories read like bad Star Trek actors in suits, Rand creates a layered culture with unique ways of thinking, reacting, and evaluating."--Tangent Online

When Administrator First Slon M'lay disappeared, his comrades blamed extinct humans. A joke, of course. "Maybe he ruptured his throat pouch calling one in his dreams," they said, laughing.

Two days later, M'lay was still missing in the jungle, the Bureau sent investigators from orbital, and the laughter stopped.

"No nestlings' tale," Chief Detective Sula M'com said. "Whatever happened to your First, it wasn't phantom humans."

Animals, then? Or outlaws?

Everyone had heard stories about escaped convicts out there in the dense, alien Brazilian jungle, using stolen and makeshift breathers, no exosuits, existing like savages. Gone native. If they could kidnap the Administrator then they were near, and they could take anybody from the Bureau's South America main research base on the Amazon River. Anybody. Any time.

Security at the base was cursory. Perimeter smartwire kept undergrowth, insects, pests, and the infrequent carnivore out. Other threats--outlaws bent on murder?--had been ill considered. But M'lay had gone afield, past the wire.

Reading the First's personnel record, M'com learned the First had spent more time on his hobby--finding live humans--than on his real job. Admin Second Julas D'fif had been defacto Admin First for months, handling daily business while the First looked for signs of the extinct species.

He went afield often, but always with proximity monitors and med implants active, standard procedure. Two days ago, both went suddenly silent.

M'com looked around the conference room at D'fif and the dozen managers and techs gathered for the emergency meeting. He saw it in their eyes and quivering pouches: if the First can be kidnapped or murdered--what about us? What about the field teams? The outposts upriver and in the Andes? The plantations scattered around the continent where convicts outnumber people ten to one?

Many had mates and birth-kin afield, M'com knew.

"Then there'll be a ransom demand," Admin Second, now Acting Admin First, Julas D'fif said, "will there not, milord?" His throat pouch quivered and he drummed inner thumbs on the table. An annoying habit, that drumming, M'com thought.