Balance Point Read Free

handheld. The grezz had torn off the first drumstick. Then I heard him growl. Different. Angry.”
    “Then?”
    “He was on the ‘cat in two bounds. He took it in his forepaws and shook me out like I was cereal in a box. Then he trampled the ‘cat like it was cardboard.” The range warden shook his head. “Sir, he’s never done anything like that. Ever. He goes to The Barn when the tech nerds arrive, like he was a big dog. Wags his tail, usually. I think he likes the company.”
    “The flamer?”
    “It fell out of the ‘cat when I did. It’s, you know, for absolute last ditch deterrence only, sir. I know the animal’s valuable. But the way it was going, I figured I was in the last-ditch, you know?”
    “I understand.”
    “So I just triggered a burst. Not even at him. Just into the grass between him and me, to back him off. He hopped the fire like it wasn’t there, cuffed me once, with the back of his paw, not the claws. Knocked me face-down. Then he tore the flamer off my back and pounded it like a biscuit.” Buford raised his head six inches like he was afraid it would fall off if he raised it higher. “Since then he’s just been chewin’ the scenery like this, sir. And I been holdin’ still ‘til he wears out.”
    “What were you reading?”
    Buford squinted. “Sir? Why would that matter?”
    “Humor me, John.”
    Buford reached into his armor’s thigh pocket, tugged out his ‘puter and unrolled the screen. He clicked a bookmark, then drew a trembling finger across the displayed page. “Ah . . . Cold day for the parade. Inaugural Ball. Bla-bla. Outgoing pardon scandal. Bla-bla. Tycoon freed. Bla—”
    I grabbed his wrist, turned the screen toward me, and read. “No!” I closed my eyes, then opened them and watched a tree trunk spin as it arced beneath the clouds. Then I sighed and held up the warden’s ‘puter. “Mind if I borrow this a minute, John?”
    He wrinkled his forehead and sat up when I stood. When I walked past him, toward the grezzen, he grabbed for my arm. “Sir!”
    I jerked my head at him. “Don’t worry, John. Get back behind the ridge.”
    “It’s not my ‘puter that worries me, Sir. I seen men commit suicide by walkin’ into a mine field. Whatever’s been bothering you—”
    “Is my problem. Do I have to make it a direct order?”
    He shook his head, stood and backed in a slow crouch toward the relief squad.
    Ten minutes later I had left Sergeant Buford behind and was crossing a muddy clearing that ended at a tree line fifty yards to my front. Then the grezzen’s bellowing and tree ripping stopped, like the sound had been cut off with a knife. For a moment, the only sound was the distant crackle of the fire, and, I was sure, my heart pounding.
    I stood still, and ten seconds later trees crashed again. The treetops nearest me swayed as something big came toward me. The grezzen’s head poked out of the tree line, sixteen feet above the ground. Its three red eyes, set in a line across its great, flat face, glared above a mouth large enough to swallow a man whole. Two curved black tusks walrused down from the grezzen’s upper lip, and dripped saliva the color and texture of oatmeal.
    He rumbled a growl that shook the mud in which I stood.
    I swallowed. “Oboy.”

THREE
    The grezzen peered out across the clearing at the human, as tiny as Buford, who brought his meals, but pale. Unlike Buford, this one was uncovered by the stiff shell in which humans normally wrapped themselves before they came close to him.
    Even unshelled like this one, the little bipeds were visually indistinguishable. Even their sexual dimorphism was unobvious, unless one peeled away the artificial integument in which they wrapped themselves. And that was scarcely worth the energy expended because, at least according to those of his race who had sampled humans, the females were as bony and tasteless as the males.
    He flexed his limbs until his belly brushed the ground, then peered at this one.