Later that evening, after first finishing off the mahi-mahi like someone who hasn't seen food in days, and then setting up your little dome tent in the space you have been offered, you join your new companions around their campfire.

"Is it really just the two of you here?" you say, deciding you ought to pump these people for information — without seeming to be overly nosy. What you really want to know is whether or not they have any maps of the island, of course. If you ask for one right away, they'll probably hesitate at first until they think of something they want in return. But if you can build a rapport first, they might just give you a map as a favor.

"We're keeping an eye on things while everybody else goes back for a resupply," the man says.

A resupply? you think. Is there a grocery store somewhere around here? You look around the campsite. In addition to the table, there is a cluster of larger tents off to one side, and stacks of plastic totes to the other. Someone wrote "UofC" with a Sharpie on the side of each tote, some of which are made of clear plastic. They still look full.

"I see half a dozen tents over there," you say. "How big of a group do you have?"

"Good question," he says to his companion. "What are there, twelve people?"

Instead of answering, the woman turns brightly toward you. "We never introduced ourselves, did we? My name is Charlei. This here is Gordon; I call him Gordy."

After telling them your name, you add, "I've never met a girl named Charlei before. Short for Charlene?"

"No, just Charlei. Charlei Goodcheer." She leans into Gordy, clutching his arm and shoulder affectionately. "And this is Gordon Fellows. Together we're the Goodcheer-Fellows!"

With that, she holds up her left hand briefly so you can see the gold ring. Gordy leans in gives his wife a quick kiss on the head.

"You two look like you're on your honeymoon," you say.

"Well, we're trying to earn a little money to pay off our student loans and maybe buy a house, if you know what I mean," Gordy says.

You want to ask them about the "UofC" and which university program they're working for, but instead Charlei gets her question out first. "How about you? What brings you out here all by yourself?"

"Me?" you say. "My story is not too interesting." You'd rather be learning more about them, but you can't appear pushy. Hopefully, like most people, they'll lose interest in you and start gushing about themselves.

"Oh, I'm sure it is interesting," she says. "Boring people don't ride a little inflatable Zodiac across the Pacific Ocean just to go camping out on Woban Island."

"Well, no, I guess n—"

"I'll bet you're here to find the Stone of Vul-Kar," Gordy says, almost like he's teasing you.

"Don't worry, we don't judge," Charlei says. "You're not the only person on this island who'd like to get their hands on the stone."

One of the reasons you've been skittish about revealing your true reasons for being on Woban Island is that every now and then you meet one of these academic types who looks down at you and your livelihood. You remember well how one rugged-looking archeologist became outraged at you, dismissing you as a "self-involved thrill seeker", right after you suggested your professions were essentially the same thing. "How dare you insult me like that!" he said, his voice having turned stentorian in his indignation. "I advance human knowledge. All you do is loot and plunder."

To be fair, though, that was just one encounter, and from what you can tell this happily wedded couple couldn't be more different. You repeat their name in your head: the Goodcheer-Fellows. Usually the sound of one of those trendy hyphenated surnames makes you groan, but you have to admit this one has a clever ring to it. You get the sense Charlei and Gordy enjoy introducing themselves using the same exact routine they just used on you.

"That Zodiac looks brand new," Gordy says. "Is that a Mark III?"

You're confused by the question. "I wouldn't know. It belongs to the person who hired me."

"So someone just dropped you off so you could explore Woban Island all on your own?" he says.

"Pretty much, yes," you say.

"That is so friggin' cool! So is this, like, your job or something? Are you a professional adventurer?"

"I guess you could say that… ."

"This must just be another day at the office for you, then."

"I never thought about it that way, but yeah, sure, I guess."

The Goodcheer-Fellows are sitting together on a large log next to the fire. Charlei leans into her husband, as if the act of listening to you talk about yourself makes her feel more romantic toward Gordy.

"Aren't you scared to be out here alone?" she says. "Do you carry a gun?"

"No, no guns," you say. "They cause more trouble than they solve, in my opinion."

"Well, I'd want to carry gun," Charlei says. Then she cranes her chin up to look at Gordy. "Wouldn't you carry a gun, honey?"

Instead of responding to his wife, Gordy has more questions for you. "Someone with your experience must have a plan for getting the stone."

"I'm still working out the details," you say. "I didn't realize I'd be making landfall so late in the day. I plan to get my bearings in the morning."

"It's OK if you don't want to tell us your plan," Charlei says. "It's just that we've heard lots of people come to Woban Island looking for the stone, but you're the first one we've met."

"We must be keeping you up," Gordy says with an apologetic note. "You're probably someone who gets up at the crack of dawn."

Charlei, who is practically reclining in his lap, stretches her arms as she yawns. "We're keeping me up. Do you have any more of that sleep aid?"

Gordy reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a small flask. Charlei sits up, unscrews the cap, and takes a swig. "Gin. You want some?" she says, holding the flask in your direction when she's done.

"No, thanks."

With his lap now empty, Gordy stands up. "It's way past our bedtime. Are you ready to turn in, honey?"

"I'm beat. It's been a long day." Then she stands up too, her face contorted in a big yawn. "It was great meeting you!"

"Yeah, same," you say. "Have a good night."

"Good night," Gordy says. But then the two of them walk off into the woods, not toward any of the tents. He sees you following them with your eyes, and he notices your curious expression. "I set our tent up over here, so Charlei wouldn't have to walk too far in the dark to find the latrine. See you in the morning."

Moments later, you find yourself alone by the dwindling campfire, surrounded by the dark jungle and all of the "UofC" camping gear. You're a little disappointed with yourself for losing control of the conversation, and talking so much about yourself. You learned nothing about the "UofC" or when the remainder of the research team is due back — from wherever it was they went. The Goodcheer-Fellows lived up to their shared surname, and you enjoyed their company, but this encounter didn't go quite the way you planned.

You're not quite ready to turn in for the night, so you grab a few more sticks from a stack of wood near the fireplace. You toss them into the small blaze, giving it a few more minutes of life. With no more chatter to distract you, all you hear is the babbling of a small brook in the nearby woods, and the rhythmic splashing of the waves down on the beach. You don't hear a peep from Gordy and Charlei.

An idea occurs to you. If you didn't learn what you wanted to know through conversation, maybe you should use a more direct method. After all, you are now alone in a campsite filled with gear and supplies. The maps you need so you can find your way to the Stone of Vul-Kar must be safely stored in those totes, or perhaps in one of the tents. And who knows what else you'll find in the process? Extra food, a better sleeping bag, maybe a "UofC" Nalgene bottle to take as a souvenir? This expedition looks like it was well outfitted, and you feel certain you'll find what you're looking for, and more; that which Diane Chambers was unable to provideth, may the "UofC" furnish for the glory of your expedition.

In your experience, nosiness often pays off. Indeed, it has served you well so far tonight. But, yeah, the Goodcheer-Fellows were nice people, and stealing is bad. So there is that to consider.

__________________________________________________
> You mind your own business and go to bed.
You decide that the more rational course of action is to simply ask your new friends if there is a map of the island you can study; if need be, you can copy the salient details into your notebook. The Goodcheer-Fellows were so friendly and accommodating — not to mention interested in your mission — that you foresee no problems with this plan. It would be nice to have some allies on this island, and snooping around all of the "UofC" gear could only lead to trouble if you were caught in the act.

So, content that your first night on Woban Island has gone well, and with a belly-full of mahi-mahi, you decide to call it a day. You linger for a few more minutes by the fire as the last of the wood turns to coals and the flames fade away, then you retreat to your little dome tent and the comfort of your sleeping bag.

Your sleep is fitful, however. Whether it is because of anxiety over the unknown risks that await you on your quest, the fear of what would happen if you failed to deliver the gem to Diane Chambers, or maybe some morsel of undercooked fish, you cannot say. But you dream that you are adrift in a boat on a featureless ocean. The boat is smaller than the Zodiac, and there is no motor. You have no way to control your direction, no means of improving your situation in any way. You bob along, helpless, alone, friendless — a victim of unknown circumstances, a prisoner of an indifferent ocean. You shift position in your sleeping bag, but even these small moments of wakefulness are not enough to nudge you out of this dream.

It is not until the crack of dawn that the dream finally loses its hold on you; only then are you able to drift into a more restful sleep. You imagine the Goodcheer-Fellows outside cooking breakfast, keeping respectfully quiet so as not to wake you. You think of joining them, but it feels so good here inside your bag.

Hours later, you wake up for good. The sun has climbed high in the sky, casting leafy shadows on the fly of your tent. The air has grown sultry, telling you that you have slept much later than you intended. You look at your watch and learn than it is nearly ten o'clock.

The campsite is quiet. You quickly extract yourself from your bag and crawl out of the tent, surprised to see no sign of Charlei and Gordy. Not only is the fire cold, but there is no indication that anyone has touched it since you let it die down last night. The propane stove also appears untouched, and there is no sign that anyone has cooked breakfast.

Must be your companions are sleeping even later than you did. It looked like they were very much into each other when you were chatting with them, so maybe they kept themselves busy long into the night… that, or they're just inveterate late sleepers.

Didn't Gordy say the latrine was up this way, not far from their tent? There is some business you need to conduct before anything else. You follow the path into the woods, careful to be quiet so as not to disturb your neighbors. It is easy enough to find the rustic latrine, which looks like a Boy Scout project involving sticks, twine, and a privacy screen fashioned out of a blue tarp — but you are royally disoriented when you see no signs of a tent anywhere nearby.

You didn't dream up Charlei and Gordy, did you? A quick check of the woods around the latrine reveals that not only is there no tent now, but that there probably never was one. The woods are too thick, the ground too uneven for camping.

What is going on here? The next place you investigate is the beach, where hours ago you landed the Zodiac in the dark. But now, in broad daylight, you see no Zodiac, no dinghy — no nothing. Maybe the high tide swept the two boats away, but you're certain that was not the case. Somebody took them on you.

This leaves you with a feeling of momentary disorientation — especially the part where you misjudged the character of your two companions last night. How could you be so easily fooled — all that feigned interest in your mission, and all those questions about the Zodiac? You were played by a pair of experts.

With a sinking feeling, you rush back to your tent. You missed it a few minutes ago when you first got up, but now you can clearly see that your backpack is missing too. Your satellite phone, your gear, everything except your sleeping bag and some extra clothes — all gone. You are certain you had left the pack in the tent's vestibule before you went to sleep; anyone could have taken it without making a disturbance.

All your moral reservations about perusing the contents of the campsite fade away. Starting with the totes, you do eventually find that map you wanted, but not after opening tote after tote of non-perishable food and other basic supplies. So at least your situation isn't completely hopeless.

Soon, though, you become aware of a horrible smell emanating from the cluster of tents. Food that was left to spoil, perhaps? But when you take a look, the blood drains from your flesh. These are no longer camping tents, they are mausoleums containing the bodies of ten people — members of the research team, you suppose, all of them with shotgun wounds to the chest.

The implications are chilling. You landed at a crime scene last night, and told your story to a pair of murderous Millennials. Evil had looked you in the eye and fed you leftover mahi-mahi, and you were completely fooled. They slaughtered all of these people for reasons you can't begin to understand, but all Charlei and Gordy took from you was your pack and the Zodiac. It's enough to knock your self-confidence in your abilities to carry out your mission completely off its foundation.

THE END


It is best to remain focused on your goal, and in this case your goal is to obtain the Stone of Vul-Kar and deliver it to Boston for two million dollars. You will not be furthering your cause by spending the night on Auri Island, and Diane Chambers will not pay you if no purple gem is procured. Or if someone gets to it before you do. Therefore you choose to motor right by Auri in the Zodiac, heading straight for Woban instead.

But as you get closer to Woban Island, proximity doesn't make the view any more flattering; what appeared to be steep cliffs and mountainsides plunging straight into the sea from a few miles away prove to be exactly that upon closer inspection.

What you wouldn't give for a topographic map right about now! You had assumed a tiny little island would be simple to navigate — just climb to the highest point, grab the stone, and go home — but you can see now that the geography here is a lot more complicated. From what you can gather, the southern end of the island is occupied by this range of small mountains that you now see, and the jewel must be securely hidden somewhere among them. You examine the mountains as you putz past them on the water, looking for signs of the temple on the highest summit, but everything up there looks thickly forested. And steep. You didn't realize this might become a mountaineering adventure. If it does, you're going to be woefully underprepared.

There are of course no published maps of the place that you can buy from Amazon, and even Google hasn't updated its digital cartography to show these new land discoveries. The best you could do in your limited prep time was print off some satellite imagery using a laser printer you found on the Sam Malone. According to your low-grade, grayscale screen capture from Google, the land tapers away for several miles beyond the mountains to the northeast. So it looks like you will need to land there and then navigate your way inland through the foothills — some way, somehow.

The problem is that it will take you several miles to get to that other side of the island where landing is possible, and this Zodiac can only go so fast.

You give this southern part of the island a wide berth; who knows what reefs might be lurking just below the water's surface, capable of shredding the Zodiac to pieces before you even realize there's a problem. If that were to happen, there would be no place for you to reach shore safely. Instead, you tool along to the northwest about a full mile from the shoreline, heading to a prominent headland that you think marks the corner of the island. Get around that, and you should start to see more landing opportunities on the other side.

Not surprisingly, though, this is turning into a race with the setting sun, which is only a few fingers above the western horizon. Your little boat is not equipped with any spotlights, and once you lose the daylight you'll be stranded in the darkness. C'mon, little Zodiac! Steady as she goes! You can do it! Don't fail me now! These and other forms of mental encouragement don't seem to have much bearing on the speed of the boat, though.

The sun is setting just as you near the tip of the headland. The clock is set: in maybe thirty more minutes, night will have settled in over Woban Island. Had you chosen to stop at Auri, you'd probably be enjoying life beside a campfire right now. As it stands, you can only hope you'll find a place to safely make landfall before the clock runs out. Then you can look forward to a night of sitting in the dark, with no idea where exactly you are.

You decide it's worth cutting the corner a bit around the headland; you might still hit something submerged, but you'll be traveling less distance around the cliffy peninsula. As you steer the boat around its tip, you see that the mountainous portion of the island is coming to an end, with miles of sand beaches beyond. The end is in sight! Even if darkness overtakes you, all you have to do now is point the boat toward land, ease up on the throttle, and take it slowly until you hear waves breaking ahead of you.

Hold on, what's that? On the nearest section of beach, just ahead of you, you see a flickering orange light. Actually, the light is not on the beach, but a short distance back in the jungle. A campfire, without a doubt. And that dark object you see on the sandy shoreline? That looks like someone's boat.

This puts a wrinkle in your plans. You knew you'd have competition from other jewel-seekers, but it never occurred to you that you might run into them so soon. Are these people friendly? Many of the people in your "profession" are highly competitive and will do anything to knock their opponents out of the race. On the other hand, there are several research teams that have been studying Woban Island ever since its discovery a few years ago, and you'd expect such people to be collegiate and cordial. You'd rather avoid the former type of people at all costs, but the latter kind could actually be interesting. Who knows what kinds of useful information you might glean from spending a night with people whose interest in the island is purely science-minded? Maybe they would even have a spare map of the island to give you.

But here's the bottom line:

Whoever is there has certainly heard your boat by now; sneaking past them is not a possibility. So you have the option to either land there in the few remaining minutes of twilight available to you, or to venture further up the beach in the dark. You won't be able to see anything, and where you land will be a crapshoot.

__________________________________________________
> You continue up the beach in the dark.
The first rule on any assignment like this: you have no friends. Trust no one. Assume everyone has an agenda — especially in a primitive environment like Woban Island, where civilization and the rule of law are distant memories, and raw wealth is something that people come to conquer. The likelihood of meeting a Good Samaritan here is about as high as encountering a native Woban who will just hand the Stone of Vul-Kar over to you. In your line of work, people are trouble, and if you give someone a chance they will prove that axiom over and over again. You are on your own for a reason, and it's better that way.

You just hope the people with the campfire feel the same way about it as you do. Hopefully the quickly-fading daylight is already too dark for them to get a good look at you; let them think this is a boat filled with mercenaries, dirty, vulgar, and armed to the teeth. "Best to keep a safe distance from a crew like that," they will say, assuming the worst and acting in their own self-interest accordingly.

No other specks of light appear on the dark stretch of island ahead of you. Soon the twilight fails you completely, and Woban Island becomes a nebulous silhouette against the starry sky, as hard as it is to believe a land so dark could have become even darker. You cut the motor and let the waves carry you into shore; it will take a little longer to make landfall that way, but for anyone who may be within earshot it will be more difficult to track your progress.

You reach down toward the floor of the Zodiac for something that you vaguely remember seeing when it was still light out, tucked away to the side of the craft. Your fingers clasp the smooth plastic shaft, and you pull the oar from the straps holding it in place. You dip it into the water behind the boat, using it as a rudder to keep the bow pointing toward the shadowy shoreline. Then you hang tight and let the waves do their work.

No lights come from this part of the island, but with the motor shut off you can hear many of the familiar sounds of the jungle: waves crashing on the beach in rhythmic repetition, trees rustling in the slight breeze blowing off the ocean, raucous bird calls from deep in the forest, the sound of a small stream babbling over a bed of rocks as it spills into the sea.

But there is something else on this calm night, too: the sound of distant singing and chanting, coming from somewhere well across the island. You can only assume this is the native population putting on some kind of celebration. Maybe it's someone's birthday, maybe it's a Bar Mitzvah — it doesn't matter. The important thing is that whatever the event, it is being held a long way from here.

Instead, you focus on that sound of running water. Since in reality you have no idea where you are relative to the island's major landmarks, and you are literally about to run ashore blind, this little stream may prove to be a useful reference point in the morning. After all, you're going to need to park the Zodiac somewhere while you explore the mountain, and if there happens to be a little inlet here that might the perfect hiding spot.

So you tune everything else out and just focus on the sound of the stream, using the oar to steer the Zodiac straight towards it. You can't see much in the starlight, but when you hear the sound of the crashing waves to your right and left you know you have found a gap in the beach. The stream is somewhere straight ahead of you, just a few yards away. You've been keeping your headlamp handy all this time, and now that you think you've found a secluded little nook you decide it's safe to turn on the light. Indeed, you have navigated your way into a short inlet surrounded by jungle vegetation, with the open ocean about twenty yards behind you. Given the circumstances, this seems like a pretty good place to be.

You tie off the bow of the boat to the trunk of an overhanging tree, then you settle back into the Zodiac. The weather looks like it will remain calm tonight, so you decide to remain right where you are all night long, eating a few snacks and then sleeping in the rubbery confines of your small boat.

In the morning, your neck is sore and your legs are stiff after falling asleep inside the Zodiac; there are worse places you could have spent the night, but this inflatable boat was not designed with sleepers in mind. The important thing is that you had no visitors during the course of the night, and all of your belongings are still present and accounted for.

At this early hour, the portion of the sky that you can see through the jungle trees seems pale silver in color. You hoist yourself up onto the round gunwale of the raft-like boat and look for a safe way to step ashore. It looks as though you've found a popular watering hole for the local wildlife, as there are multiple little game trails converging on this inlet. One good path leads down to the beach, so you stroll down toward the ocean with the hopes of getting your bearings.

Beside you is the narrow inlet through which the mouth of the stream flows, and in the other direction is a long stretch of beach extending almost all the way to that headland you passed last night, during your race against the setting sun. The campsite that you passed was near the base of that peninsula; in the daylight, you can see that you put nearly two miles between you and whoever else is camping out down there.

What you were hoping to see, however, is nowhere in sight. The mountains are behind you now, and you would need to be taller than the trees to see in that direction. Getting there is going to be difficult if all you have to navigate with is that Google screen capture printed on a piece of limp copy paper. All you need is a good look at the terrain so you can pick out the best route. Otherwise you'll just be bushwhacking through the jungle in the blind.

There is nothing you can do about that here, though. What matters is that you've successfully made it to Woban Island, and the Stone of Vul-Kar is just a few measly miles away. That two million dollars is as good as yours.

Right?

Hours pass as you climb… something. All you know is that you've been going uphill ever since you left the Zodiac safely concealed under a screen of giant fern fronds back by the inlet. The stone that you seek is located in the ruins of some temple high on a mountaintop, so you've been telling yourself all morning that if you are climbing, then you are heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, you are smart enough not to believe your own lies; you saw enough of these mountains last night from the boat to know there is more than one rugged summit in this range. Sure, you are gaining elevation, but in all likelihood this is just some inconsequential foothill.

For kicks, you tried using your handheld GPS unit earlier in the hike to see if it helped with your navigation problem. It was worth trying, you suppose, but the results were pretty much as expected. Sure, the little palm-sized receiver could lock onto six separate satellite signals and pinpoint your location to within twenty-four feet, or so the graphic on the LCD screen said. But Garmin hasn't updated their maps either, and so when the on-screen topo showed you walking across the Pacific Ocean, you categorized the GPS as being useless as far as Woban Island goes.

On the other hand, you've been following a pretty good trail for most of the way. You had heard rumors that the island was crisscrossed with a robust trail network, and you are happy to have a clear path to follow — wherever this is taking you. The alternative would be to bushwhack your way through the jungle, which grows thickly on these warm and damp slopes; you'd be lucky to cover one mile an hour that way. So, bottom line: trails are good. Let's hope this one doesn't lead you into trouble.

Otherwise the slope is steep and rugged, with rock ledges punctuating your climb as frequently as the word "and" in a run-on sentence. The one small mercy is that you are ascending the mountain's northwestern slope, placing you mostly in the shade from the morning sun, which is ascending to the northeast. That leaves you with only the humidity to deal with.

Then, just before noon, the trees part and you find yourself on a rocky knob covered with shrubs and sparse grasses. After scrambling up a few more rock ledges, you push through a sultry meadow that is fully exposed to the hazy atmosphere. There is no shade, and nothing is damp except for the heat that assaults you.

It would be a highly unpleasant place at this time of day, except for one redeeming feature: this bald summit offers an outstanding view of the rest of the mountain range. The ocean is three miles behind you, and Woban Island's lowlands stretch for a good five miles to the northeast. But just ahead of you, maybe another mile-and-a-half to the southeast, is the highest summit. As you examine it from the top of this peripheral peak, you realize that what you saw last night from the Zodiac must have been some other false summit, because this is completely different. It reminds you a bit of Devils Tower in Wyoming, in that it looks like a column of rock rising unnaturally out of the landscape. There is an object on the mountain's flat top that must almost certainly be man-made. The temple ruins!

You are encouraged that the mountain appears so close, and you give yourself good odds that you can make it to the base of the rock spire with relative ease. The problem is that you have no idea how you're going to scale all that rock once you get there.

That's not something you need to worry about now, however; if somebody built a temple on the summit, then obviously there must be a way up. In the meantime, you pull your notebook out of your pack, flip to a blank page, and begin sketching a map of all that you can see. The sweat on the palm of your hands leaves wet marks all over the paper.

__________________________________________________
> Next page.
The next afternoon sees you slowly threading your way through the thick tropical forest, trying not to slip down a steep, wet slope.

You spent the previous night camping high in a mountain pass, where you found a tiny spring emerging from under a mossy rock. The spot was on the fringe of the same type of high-elevation grassland as the bald summit where you had drawn your map, and chances are if you had reached it any earlier in the day the place would have been hot as an oven. But in the evening, when you stumbled across it, your little campsite was cool and pleasant. Your ten-year-old REI backpacking tent was more spacious than the Zodiac had been the first night, and so your first full day on the island ended pleasantly. If the Wobans were throwing themselves another party, you were now too far away to hear it.

It hadn't all been fun and games, though. Yesterday, after you had stopped to sketch the map, your progress had been slowed unexpectedly. Getting down from that grassy bald had been simple, but the next little summit in the ridgeline was steep and cliffy. Going over it was not possible, and you could see no further signs of a trail, so you saw no option but to descend a few hundred feet and find an easier way around this part of the mountain. Regaining all that lost elevation was discouraging, but then you discovered the spring and all was forgiven.

Now, almost a full day later, here you are making your way over the third summit in the chain, and although this one is higher than the other two it has been completely wooded so far. Without a trail to follow, you have been forced to thrash your way through the thick vegetation. There is no graceful way to travel in these conditions, so you have been taking your time.

Although the tower-like main summit is now maybe half a mile away, you can scarcely see it. Actually, you are slowly working your way down toward a large blank spot on your map, where you have little idea what to expect. When you had stopped to sketch your map yesterday, you were able to see a good swath of the island, but not the parts that were concealed by the various mountain summits. It looked like there had been a sizable gap between the third and final peaks, but you had not been able to see what that gap contained. Whatever is there, you're about to be wandering through it in just a matter of minutes.

And so, after another fifteen minutes' worth of scrambling down steep, moss-covered slopes and crawling under fallen trees, the terrain flattens out. You continue forward, marveling that after all that ridiculous toil over the wooded summit, the vegetation is thinning out again here in the broad space between the mountains.

You are tired, dirty, and hungry — as well as intrigued by what is opening up ahead of you. The forest trees thin into scattered shrubs, and once again you are walking across a baking-hot grassland. This one is immensely picturesque, though. It is a high-elevation plateau, broad and mostly flat. The main summit spire rises almost five hundred feet above you, but you have arrived too late in the day to be in its shade. And dotting this tropical prairie are the remains of an ancient complex of buildings.

Various weeds and vines crawl over the cut-stone structures like a riot of snakes. The place is like an archeologist's wet dream, the remains of a civilization that had until recently been completely unknown to modern academia. The artistic and architectural styles on display here seem to be a mishmash of global influences: humble dwellings that resemble scale models of Mayan pyramids, rows of toppled Greek columns, eroded statues that seem to depict a horned cherub, like a satanic Buddha or something. You could spend a year exploring the place — but only if some rich fat cat thought there was something worth collecting here, and was willing to bankroll your expedition.

As impressive as the lost city is, the rocky tower is downright intimidating. How the heck is anyone expected to get up that thing? This is a challenge that is going to require some thought.

Perhaps you should start looking for a place to camp. As awesome as this plateau is, you see no sources of water here, so you'll need to venture back into the woods to search for other options. You decide to look along the northern side of the plateau, where based on experience you expect to find a verdant and moist slope leading down from the highlands. Hopefully you'll stumble across another spring — or better yet, a pool. You could use a good rinse.

So, veering northward, you soon reach the point where the terrain begins to slope downward, and trees once again become larger, albeit sparsely populated. You are wading through ferns, exalting in the fact that you have just spotted a glint of sunlight off a pool of water just ahead of you, at the foot of the hill. The terrain is gentle and open, water seems to be in abundance, and there is a good view of the mountain spire that stands between you and victory. The odds are good you have just found tonight's campsite.

You run like a giddy child to the edge of the pool. You can see right away that it is not a natural pond, but a square-edged reservoir of some kind, yet another artifact from the ancient city. Happily, the water is clear and clean. You bend down to splash its cool goodness over your face.

But what you fail to notice — until it is much too late — is the figure that rises from the ferns just around the corner. It is only when it begins to move forward through the vegetation that you turn and see it — a Woban, with tattooed and deeply tanned skin, a bone necklace, grass skirt, and a long spear. Above all, the most distinctive feature is that eerie third eye that sits directly above the bridge of his nose. You surmise he had been hunting, waiting among the tall ferns for his prey to come, when you bumbled into the scene instead.

"O Manu o Ke Kaua ko‘u inoa!" he shouts. "I keia la wau e lilo i kane, aka mua au e ku i ka pa‘akiki. Pono e luku au i ka holoholona ae hanai i ka io i ko‘u makuakane. E ho‘omakaukau ia ‘oe iho e make, holoholona!"

"Whoa, hold on, chief!" you say. "We're all friends here."

"E pale ia ‘oe iho!"

His speech is fast and clipped. Not a single word makes any sense, but the provocative way he is shouting them at you gives you the general idea that this is a hostile confrontation. The Woban is only about six feet tall — big enough, to be sure, but not one of the seven-foot giants you heard about. Maybe this is an adolescent, trying to prove himself in the world.

"Hey, make nice. Let's be friends."

"E pale ia ‘oe iho! ‘A‘ohe hanohano i ka pepehi ‘ana me ka pa‘akiki ‘ole."

"Look, I haven't the slightest idea what you're saying. Can't—"

Then he does the unexpected thing and tosses his spear at your feet. It is not a gift, because the rage in his voice is still evident, even if the words are unintelligible to you.

"E lawe i ka ihe a kaua mai ia‘u!"

Well, you're at an impasse as far as verbal communication goes, but you think you're getting the gist of the body language. The young Woban wants you to fight him, and to make the odds more even he is letting you use his spear. If he assessed that you're not much of a physical threat when matched up against a six-foot Woban, he would be correct. At least with the spear in your hands, you would have a sporting chance.

So you have to make a decision: fight or flight? The Woban is glaring at you, all three eyebrows furrowed in a kind of rage you'll never understand. Eventually he'll charge at you, regardless of what you choose to do. So either you can pick up the spear at your feet and defend yourself, or you can run. With all of the ruined buildings around here, you would have plenty of places to hide — assuming, of course, you can outrun a Woban.

__________________________________________________
> You get out of here as fast as possible.
So clearly it's in your best interest not to stay and fight this Woban; you would have nothing to prove by doing so, but everything to lose when you inevitably got your head handed to you. Therefore you need to figure out a way to get out of here. If you just turn and run, all you'd be doing is turning this into a footrace, which you know you'd lose just as surely as you would lose the fight. The only way this will work is if you manage to trip up your opponent in the first few moments.

Fortunately, the young Woban has given you exactly what you need. Without taking your eyes off him, you squat down and reach for the spear at your feet. Then you slowly stand, holding the primitive weapon as if you are still considering how best to use it.

"Maika‘i loa!" he says in his incomprehensible language. "Ua koho ‘oe e kaua ia‘u. I keia la he la maika‘i ia e make!"

"That's easy for you to say. All right, let's get this over wi— Ohmygod, what is that!"

It's a trick you've probably been using since kindergarten: fake an expression of surprise, point to some imaginary spot past the Woban's shoulder, and then run in the opposite direction the moment he turns to look.

So far, so good! You've managed to momentarily confuse your opponent, and now you are fleeing for your life. The only way to go is back up the hill, towards all the strange ruins. Knowing your head start is only going to last a matter of seconds, you listen closely for the sound of the Woban pursuing you. He doesn't leave you waiting for long.

"‘A‘ole hiki ia ‘oe ke holo mai o‘u aku nei!"

You continue running until he is nearly upon you, and then you fling the spear as hard as you can, aiming for his legs. The shaft gets caught between his knees, and in a shout of frustration he goes down to the ground.

Success! But of course now you are out of tricks, and he has the spear again. The only things you have to work with now are your own speed and the timely appearance of an effective hiding place.

You dash up the hill at your best possible pace, not daring to look back and see where your pursuer is. Your muscles are already tired and your lungs are spent by the time you reach the top, but there is no time to stop and catch your breath. This is not some schoolyard game where you can simply call "time out."

Once again you are on the open plain dotted with the mysterious ruins from the ancient city. Now what are you going to do? Your original thought was to evade the Woban by seeking cover inside one of these ancient structures, but the nearest ones seem rather small. They look like miniature stepped pyramids, scale models of their larger cousins in Guatemala. They have entrances leading into some kind of enclosed space, where you are sure you could take cover. The problem is that these smaller structures are probably just dead ends — only one way in, and only one way out.

Perhaps you could do better than this, though. Up ahead, in the middle of town, is a larger structure, where you might expect more opportunities to evade your pursuer. That's entirely theoretical, however, because you have no way of knowing what you'll find. Whatever it offers, that crumbling stone building is another hundred yards or so ahead of you — a distance across which you'll have to continue sprinting, in plain sight of the Woban.

Think quick! You can hear the Woban behind you, shouting angrily as he sprints up the hill. If you duck into the nearest structure, there is a chance he may not see you. Or you can continue to that larger building and hope for the best when you get there. How does that old saying go — the one about the "bird in hand"?

__________________________________________________
> You keep running to the large structure and hope for the best.
Those little pyramids, each with its hideous horned Buddha (or whatever) dancing a ossified dance on top, look too much like death traps to you. "Adventurers check in, but they don't check out," just like the roaches in those old TV commercials. As you run by, you imagine the alternate outcome that might occur if you were to stop: flipped over on your back in the doorway, your arms and legs stuck lifelessly in the air, the Woban's spear planted in your belly like a flagpole, and the Woban himself looking up cannibalistic recipes on Pinterest. No, you don't want to hide here.

Whoever built this forgotten city and lived in these queer structures was also a fan of paved streets, for you are no longer striding across tropical dirt but a narrow lane hardened with cut stone. So much grassy vegetation is growing up through the cracks that you never knew the surface existed until you could feel it beneath your feet. It is lined with crumbling foundations and toppled statues; fallen columns lie across your path like windblown trees.

"Aia ‘oe, ka i‘a make! ‘A‘ole e malama keia mau pohaku kahiko ia ‘oe!"

Ahh, you'd recognize that voice anywhere, shouting his words of encouragements at you. There is no time to stop and look to see how much distance there is between you, but by the sounds of it you have no more than a hundred feet on your adversary.

"Ua ho‘ohaumia ‘oe i keia wahi ho‘ano! E ho‘olo‘ihi aku au i kou make i na la he ‘umi!"

He sure is a chatty fellow, isn't he? You've never had so much motivation to keep running. The overgrown and cluttered street extends right to that curious building that seems to occupy the center of the ruined city, as if it were some kind of ancient City Hall. It looks like a rectangular block of rock sitting upon a pedestal of steps, with arched doorways all around it, one after the other.

The steps feel crumbly under your feet as you dash up them, as if your boots are pounding the stone into dust. The structure has dozens of entrances, so you see no point in stopping to choose which one to enter. If you linger too long, you'll be within range of the Woban's spear.

So you run into the entrance directly ahead of you, plunging yourself into the darkness. It takes a second for your eyes to adjust, but when they do you can see that you are not inside some small chamber or narrow passageway, as you had expected. The inside of the building is actually one large space, its darkness perforated by the light coming in through the dozens of archways on all four sides. In other words, it's an arcade — and it is providing a grand view of the Woban as he charges up the street, with the intent to inflict death upon you evident in his three-eyed glare.

Well nuts, this place has as many hiding spots as a picnic pavilion. You've wasted too much time, so you have to act fast before the Woban enters the building and finds you. With nothing better to work with, you back up against a section of wall between two of the arched entrances, and then you wait in the shadows.

It is a very short wait, for moments later the Woban dashes into the dark arcade and comes to a stop just a few yards away from you. The only thing concealing you is the shadow you're standing in, so you hold your breath and stand as still as possible. You expect him to make another one of his angry pronouncements, but instead all he does is pound the butt end of his spear shaft on the stone floor, as if in disgust. Then you watch as he continues straight ahead, exiting the building to look for you out among the ruins.

That was a very lucky break! For the moment you feel safe enough to resume breathing again, and considering how hard and fast you just ran you really need to rest for a bit. Remaining in the same shadow that hid you from the Woban, you crouch down and sit on the floor.

And that's when you see it: in the middle of this shadowy arcade, there is an even darker set of stairs leading downward.

__________________________________________________
> Next page.
You feel compelled — whether by simple curiosity or the desire to find a secret way out of this place, you're not sure — to get back up and see where those steps lead. They descend from an otherwise nondescript spot at the center of the arcade, a narrow and dark entrance to whatever it is that lurks below. It almost seems like the entire point of this building was to shelter those steps, so it is funny that the Woban didn't consider looking for you down there.

Carefully you make your way down in the darkness. There are no railings to hold onto, and who knows how much rubble there might be waiting to trip you up. For all you know, you're about to walk into a bat cave. You have a headlamp in your backpack, so you stop before you go too far and pull it out.

The little beam of light reveals a chamber that appears to be as long and wide as the arcade above, but with a ceiling so low you can touch it without stretching. The place looks like a warehouse for strange and grotesque stone carvings, including an entire battalion of those horned cherubs you've been seeing all over the place. Some of them still bear patches of pigment, as if they were at one time all painted in vibrant colors that have long since flaked away.

The statues are lined up in rows, with parallel aisles between them; as you explore the chamber for a possible way out, you walk up and down these aisles like a shopper looking for the peanut butter section of a grocery supermarket. You don't see any signs of an alternate exit, but in a far corner of the room you find something else that at once intrigues, sickens, and terrifies you.

She has been lying there for years, it appears, face down on the stone floor with arms and legs sprawled out, and small darts snagged in the moth-eaten clothing. She has long, dyed-blond hair but pitch-black roots, telling you her hair continued growing an inch or two even after she was killed. Although something has been pecking away at her corpse, it is otherwise well preserved in this dark and dry chamber.

After a moment you realize that you recognize who she is: Beatriz Paya-Vallejo, a rival adventurer from the north of Chile. The two of you have crossed paths more than once, in places like Nepal, Mali, and Tunisia. None of your encounters were friendly ones. In most cases you were each working for competing collectors, which meant you were both after the same prize — and in the early years, she was too often the one in possession of whatever valuable object you had been sent to obtain. Because of her, you missed out on a few too many payouts and was almost laughed out of your profession. But also because of Paya-Vallejo, you learned to up your game and become better at what you do.

An olive-green knapsack still hugs her back, bulging with its contents. As the beam from your headlamp glances across it, you briefly see a purple reflection. That's way too strange. Despite your repulsion at the idea of touching a mummified corpse, you can't resist seeing what's inside that military-surplus backpack of hers — and you have a pretty good idea what it is.

You undo the strap that closes the knapsack, and immediately a large object slides out and lands with a thud on the ground. It is a gem of tremendous dimensions, purple and flawlessly faceted. There is only one thing it could possibly be: the Stone of Vul-Kar.

Damn you, Beatriz! You hadn't seen her in several years, nor had you heard any news. The people in your profession sometimes manage to fall off the earth for a few years it seems, only to reappear alive and well at the oddest times and places, much to the consternation of their competitors. You never wasted much time thinking about what Paya-Vallejo might be up to, because as long as she wasn't searching for the same thing you were, her whereabouts didn't matter to you.

But here she is now, dead on Woban Island. And she had found the Vul-Kar gem, too! Had she not fallen to these Woban darts, this would have been yet another victory for her — a win added to the tally in her column, and a loss added to yours.

You pick up the stone and are impressed by its heft. The thing must weigh twenty pounds, at least. No wonder so many people have been coming here to find it! No wonder Diane Chambers is willing to pay you two million dollars to bring it back to her in Boston!

So apparently there is no need to climb to the summit temple after all. Beatriz Paya-Vallejo was already there, and managed to get it this far, but no further. No one but her employer probably knew she was here, and now no one but you knows she had removed the Stone of Vul-Kar from its fabled resting place. Everyone coming to Woban Island has been searching for it in the wrong place.

The gem is so large you have to rearrange the items in your backpack to make room for it — and you know that when you shoulder your pack once more, it is going feel very much like you're toting around a couple bowling balls on top of everything else.

But before you do, there is something you need to consider: above you in the daylight, there is still a Woban who seems hellbent on killing you. Unless you want to end up like your former competitor here, you're going to need to use extreme caution to get out of this ancient city alive. This room seems to be a safe place to remain, since the Woban who was chasing you never thought to look here, and the Stone of Vul-Kar has been hiding here in Paya-Vallejo's knapsack for several years without anyone's knowledge. You could probably remain here until nightfall, and if your Woban friend is still looking for you, it will be easier to sneak by him in the darkness.

On the other hand, it seems equally desirable to get out of here as quickly as possible. Nighttime will arrive on the island in a couple hours, and it would be nice to get as far into the jungle as you can in the remaining daylight.

__________________________________________________
> You wait until nighttime.
For practically two days straight you've been climbing mountains in the tropical heat, bushwhacking through the thick jungle vegetation, and more recently running for your life from a murderous Woban. In a very lucky break you've just now managed to find the Stone of Vul-Kar in an unexpected place, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use a short break. Nightfall is not that far off, and you seem to have the perfect hiding spot. You'd be a fool to run out of this ancient basement too soon.

You do need to conserve the battery life of your headlamp, though. So the first thing you do is find a place to sit far away from Paya-Vallejo's corpse. Thank you, O Beatriz, for finding the Stone of Vul-Kar for me. May you rest in peace and yadda yadda. God bless and Amen. There is a spot next to the stone steps that seems like a suitable place to hang out, with no grinning horned statues and no dried-up bodies. Being close to the stairs means you will be able to hear any sounds of movement above you, should there be any. You settle down and fish out a couple packages of flavored tuna — sun-dried tomatoes and cracked peppercorn. Then you turn off the headlamp and sit in near-absolute darkness.

When you wake up, you have no idea how much time has passed — until you light up your Timex and see that it's a quarter to nine at night. You didn't plan to wait this long to make your escape, and despite the unplanned nap you don't really feel all that rested. Although technically there is no set time you need to be back at the Zodiac, you feel foolish anyway, like someone who missed the alarm clock and is now a couple hours late for work.

Flipping the headlamp back on, you pack up the empty tuna packages and shoulder your heavy backpack once more. A few hours ago, there was a Woban outside wandering the ruins with the single-minded goal of killing you. So much time has passed that you have no idea what to expect. Is he still combing the ruins, looking for some trace of you? Is he hiding, lying in wait for you to show yourself? Did he do the sensible thing and go home for supper?

You can at least take solace in the fact that the arcade at the top of the stairs seems quiet. Slowly, and very carefully, you take the steps one at a time. If it was dark before in the late afternoon, you feel as if you've been swallowed by a shadow now in the nighttime. You don't dare use your headlamp because you have no idea who might be out there watching for you, so you feel your way up each step with your feet. Hearing and touching are your only remaining senses. Five steps, six, seven. On the the seventeenth step, your lead foot finds nothing but a level floor in front of it. That is your only clue that you are back in the arcade.

At first you assume the faint light coming through the arches is moonlight. But then you notice the shadows and glows across the stone floor are like restless spirits, dancing and shifting in an unpredictable pattern. And the light, faint as it is, is a reddish orange, not the pale silver cast of moonlight — and never mind the fact that the moon is in a waning phase this week, not even visible until much later in the morning.

Slowly, and with dread, you make your way toward one of the outer wall of arches. What you see makes your body tingle with a sense of hopelessness and fear: dozens of torches, held by shadowy beings who are systematically searching the ruins of the ancient city, slowly making their way toward the arcade in which you've been hiding.

Now you know how the Woban passed the time while you were asleep: he went home and mustered his fellow villagers as reinforcements.

They have you surrounded. You are doomed.

THE END


You feel compelled — whether by simple curiosity or the desire to find a secret way out of this place, you're not sure — to get back up and see where those steps lead. They descend from an otherwise nondescript spot at the center of the arcade, a narrow and dark entrance to whatever it is that lurks below. It almost seems like the entire point of this building was to shelter those steps, so it is funny that the Woban didn't consider looking for you down there.

Carefully you make your way down in the darkness. There are no railings to hold onto, and who knows how much rubble there might be waiting to trip you up. For all you know, you're about to walk into a bat cave. You have a headlamp in your backpack, so you stop before you go too far and pull it out.

The little beam of light reveals a chamber that appears to be as long and wide as the arcade above, but with a ceiling so low you can touch it without stretching. The place looks like a warehouse for strange and grotesque stone carvings, including an entire battalion of those horned cherubs you've been seeing all over the place. Some of them still bear patches of pigment, as if they were at one time all painted in vibrant colors that have long since flaked away.

The statues are lined up in rows, with parallel aisles between them; as you explore the chamber for a possible way out, you walk up and down these aisles like a shopper looking for the peanut butter section of a grocery supermarket. You don't see any signs of an alternate exit, but in a far corner of the room you find something else that at once intrigues, sickens, and terrifies you.

She has been lying there for years, it appears, face down on the stone floor with arms and legs sprawled out, and small darts snagged in the moth-eaten clothing. She has long, dyed-blond hair but pitch-black roots, telling you her hair continued growing an inch or two even after she was killed. Although something has been pecking away at her corpse, it is otherwise well preserved in this dark and dry chamber.

After a moment you realize that you recognize who she is: Beatriz Paya-Vallejo, a rival adventurer from the north of Chile. The two of you have crossed paths more than once, in places like Nepal, Mali, and Tunisia. None of your encounters were friendly ones. In most cases you were each working for competing collectors, which meant you were both after the same prize — and in the early years, she was too often the one in possession of whatever valuable object you had been sent to obtain. Because of her, you missed out on a few too many payouts and was almost laughed out of your profession. But also because of Paya-Vallejo, you learned to up your game and become better at what you do.

An olive-green knapsack still hugs her back, bulging with its contents. As the beam from your headlamp glances across it, you briefly see a purple reflection. That's way too strange. Despite your repulsion at the idea of touching a mummified corpse, you can't resist seeing what's inside that military-surplus backpack of hers — and you have a pretty good idea what it is.

You undo the strap that closes the knapsack, and immediately a large object slides out and lands with a thud on the ground. It is a gem of tremendous dimensions, purple and flawlessly faceted. There is only one thing it could possibly be: the Stone of Vul-Kar.

Damn you, Beatriz! You hadn't seen her in several years, nor had you heard any news. The people in your profession sometimes manage to fall off the earth for a few years it seems, only to reappear alive and well at the oddest times and places, much to the consternation of their competitors. You never wasted much time thinking about what Paya-Vallejo might be up to, because as long as she wasn't searching for the same thing you were, her whereabouts didn't matter to you.

But here she is now, dead on Woban Island. And she had found the Vul-Kar gem, too! Had she not fallen to these Woban darts, this would have been yet another victory for her — a win added to the tally in her column, and a loss added to yours.

You pick up the stone and are impressed by its heft. The thing must weigh twenty pounds, at least. No wonder so many people have been coming here to find it! No wonder Diane Chambers is willing to pay you two million dollars to bring it back to her in Boston!

So apparently there is no need to climb to the summit temple after all. Beatriz Paya-Vallejo was already there, and managed to get it this far, but no further. No one but her employer probably knew she was here, and now no one but you knows she had removed the Stone of Vul-Kar from its fabled resting place. Everyone coming to Woban Island has been searching for it in the wrong place.

The gem is so large you have to rearrange the items in your backpack to make room for it — and you know that when you shoulder your pack once more, it is going feel very much like you're toting around a couple bowling balls on top of everything else.

But before you do, there is something you need to consider: above you in the daylight, there is still a Woban who seems hellbent on killing you. Unless you want to end up like your former competitor here, you're going to need to use extreme caution to get out of this ancient city alive. This room seems to be a safe place to remain, since the Woban who was chasing you never thought to look here, and the Stone of Vul-Kar has been hiding here in Paya-Vallejo's knapsack for several years without anyone's knowledge. You could probably remain here until nightfall, and if your Woban friend is still looking for you, it will be easier to sneak by him in the darkness.

On the other hand, it seems equally desirable to get out of here as quickly as possible. Nighttime will arrive on the island in a couple hours, and it would be nice to get as far into the jungle as you can in the remaining daylight.

__________________________________________________
> You flee into the jungle now.
Back in Boston there is a woman who is willing to pay you a wad of money if you are able to bring this big purple stone back to her. You're not going to get there by crouching here in the dark, and you would like to get as far from these ruins as you can before the sun sets. Therefore you decide not to prolong your stay in this hidden basement full of grotesque statues.

Indeed, your backpack does feel heavy when you put it back on — about two million dollars heavier, you estimate. It's not an entirely horrible feeling, although you will probably start to think differently once you start hiking over those mountain summits again on your way back to the Zodiac.

Your journey begins by cautiously ascending the stone steps back up to the arcade, where not very long ago you narrowly avoided the young Woban. After climbing a few steps you poke your head above the level of the stone floor, looking around like a wary prairie dog for signs of predators. At least the shadowy arcade still seems quiet. When nothing lunges at you — or begins shouting unintelligible epithets at you — you climb the rest of the way out of the basement. You have no idea where your three-eyed "friend" might be; his pursuit of you had seemed so single-minded that you find it hard to believe he has simply given up and gone home.

So you survived the first phase of your grand escape, but the fact that you hear or see no sign of your old adversary doesn't relieve you. In fact, it gets your heart pounding in suspense. Your muscles are tense, your breaths are short. When you knew the Woban was sprinting fast behind you, your course of action was clear. Now that you haven't the slightest idea where he is, you fear that he could be anywhere.

Before you can draw up the courage to leave the arcade, you make a quick patrol around its periphery, peeking through the arches to look for signs of movement out among the ruins. Everything seems as peaceful and abandoned as you thought it was when you first found this ancient city. It's not what you were expecting. Damn that Woban! Even his absence is threatening.

All you can do now is hope you haven't been deceived into exposing yourself. You circle back to the corner of the arcade that is closest to the first of the three summits, a dome of trees and rock lit in the golden light of the evening sun. There is no point in worrying about the possibilities here, so you take a deep breath, adjust the waist strap on your backpack, and then run down the steps.

The grass offers no resistance as you rush through it, passing all manner of bizarre structures and ancient artwork. For all you know there could be priceless treasures everywhere in these ruins. In a less stressful situation you might be tempted to "shop" for a little souvenir of your own, but with the possibility that death could be lurking behind any mossy pedestal or vine-covered wall, you're in no mood to go sifting for loot.

But when you make it to the edge of the mountain plain unscathed, it seems like an anticlimactic end to your day. It was such a long run through the ruins that if the Woban was still present, there is no way he would have missed you — how could he, with those three eyes of his? Is it really possible that after all that drama of chasing you into the arcade, he just gave up and went home?

You have no way of knowing for sure what happened here this evening; you're just relieved that there now seems to be a chance you'll make it out of here alive. And with the Stone of Vul-Kar securely stowed in your backpack, too. You afford yourself three seconds to stop and look back across the plain, with its gray-green ruins and backdrop of sheer rock — a strange and beautiful place to visit, but not anywhere you'd want to live.

It was just a few short hours ago you were scrambling down the steep mountain slope that now lies ahead of you. Never did you expect to be back here so soon. The jungle grows thickly around you again as you exit the plain, and soon the terrain slopes upward. The mud is slippery, the rock ledges are frustrating, and your belly feels hollow and desirous of nourishment — but so long as there is daylight remaining you want to get as far away from those ruins as you can.

You are still climbing even as the tropical twilight quickly fails you. And you might continue to climb through the darkness if some strange sound behind you didn't capture your attention. It sounds like distant voices — lots of them. Just above you is a small rock ledge with what looks like a natural window through the forest canopy, so you scramble up to the top. From a corner of the ledge you have a partial view back over the wide plain between the mountains, and to your horror you see dozens of torchlights wandering through the darkness — an entire army of Wobans combing the ruins. You can only assume they are looking for you. So now you know where the your guy went: he did go home, but not to nurse his wounded pride. He went and gathered reinforcements. If you were still down there in the city, you'd have no avenue of escape.

At least you managed to put considerable distance between you and your three-eyed pursuers — so much distance that for the first time in hours you actually feel somewhat secure. It is now too dark to continue climbing this wooded summit without a light, and you fear that if you switched on your headlamp you'd reveal your location to the Wobans. So you decide to remain here for the night, watching the goings-on below you. Tired, thirsty, and hungry, you watch with much interest as the Wobans methodically scour the ruins until their torches start to falter. Then they coalesce into an uneven line and file into the forest, heading northward out of the mountains and back to whatever village they came from.

This leaves you alone on the side of the mountain summit, beneath a sky full of stars. After emptying a few packages of flavored tuna, you lean back against your pack and fall asleep within seconds.

When morning arrives, the plain of ruins below you is deserted once more, now in the shadow cast by the island's main summit. As you munch on some Clif bars you watch for signs of movement down there, but nothing stirs. It is starting to look like you evaded the natives, but you know better than to let yourself become complacent; you have a long way to go before you are safely off this island.

You remember well the qualities of each of the three summits that stands between you and the shoreline. As the morning's coolness gives way to the heat of the tropical day, you toil the rest of the way across the first summit. In the notch that follows, you find the spot where you camped so contentedly the night before last, and once again you replenish your water supply in the spring. Then, knowing better than to even try climbing the middle summit, you contour around it, finding an alternate route that entails less elevation loss.

Strangely, you pass much of the day thinking about Cheers. It's not even the money that has captured your imagination this morning; you're just thinking about that Giant Norm Burger, or whatever it was called. You can't believe you turned your nose up at the idea of such a beefy indulgence last week, because right now you could go for two or three of them. Easily three.

Which reminds you: you have a phone call to make. By early afternoon you are ascending the third and final summit, the one with the bald face where you sketched your map two days ago. A large cloud has parked itself over the island, so while the summit remains humid it is not quite as hot as you remember without the sun.

There have been no signs of the Wobans all day, and this view really is enchanting. Now, though, instead of gazing over the island, your attention is drawn to the endless ocean ahead of you, and all of the piles of fattening food and comfortable beds you will find on the far side of that ocean. With two million dollars to your name, you'll be able to fête yourself with quite the feast.

But not if you can't hitch a ride on a boat somehow. So after an ascetic lunch pulled from the supplies in your pack, you pull out the satellite phone that Jimmy gave you so long ago. You see that there is one number programmed into its memory.

"Yes?" You never thought you'd be so happy to hear Jimmy's voice. "I can only assume that if you're calling this number, your mission has been successful."

"Oh, it has, it has," you say.

"Now I suppose you want a boat to pick you up."

"That would be great. And two million dollars. Let's not forget about that."

"Whoah, now, Chief," Jimmy says. "There are procedures to follow. The item will need to be inspected, of course. No funds will be transferred until our employer is satisfied."

"Of course. I was just being facetious. But I really am ready for that big boat home."

"How soon?"

"Tonight would be good. I'm about three miles from that Zodiac of yours, but it's all easy hiking from here. I should be there by nightfall, easily."

"Tonight?" he says. "That's much quicker than we were expecting. Are you certain you found the item?"

"Well, let's just say I am in possession of a big purple rock. Your boss seemed quite eager to obtain it the last we met."

"Well, yes, but we were also under the impression that it would be a major undertaking. Our people just dropped you off a few days ago."

"I got lucky, leave it at that. I'd be happy to tell you all about it when we get back to Boston."

__________________________________________________
> Next page.
And so it comes to pass that three days later you are back on Beacon Street, following Jimmy into the basement portion of Cheers. It's a Saturday night, so the place is far more bustling than the last time you were here. Tonight it looks like any other corner pub, except for the familiar logo on all of the pint glasses.

"I should warn you, our employer has been in a bad mood lately," Jimmy says as he leads you through the bar. "Kelsey Grammer was here a few days ago, getting a lot of fan attention. Nobody had much interest in her that night. She still hasn't gotten over it."

He is wearing another one of his plaid suits, but this one takes the cake: the red, white, and black pattern looks like he ripped it off a dead lumberjack stock broker. You're embarrassed to be seen with him, so you hang back about twelve feet.

You weave between tables full of happy people eating, the smell of hamburgers and french fries everywhere. Despite all the time you've been off the island now, you still haven't been treated to a full meal. You can only hope that Diane Chambers is feeling generous — and hungry — tonight.

Fashion concerns aside, you're curious to hear more about the Kelsey Grammer story, but the ambient noise is too loud and Jimmy is moving too fast. Once again he leads you out what appears to be a back door, and then up the steps leading into the Set Bar.

Tonight the place seems less like a museum to a thirty-year-old TV show and more like a functioning commercial establishment. The cardboard cutouts of Woody and Norm are gone, replaced with live bartenders pouring beers, and actual people occupying all of the tables and booths. So many of the customers are wearing "Boston" shirts and hats — of the chintzy kind you would buy from a street vendor — that it's obvious the entire place is populated with tourists.

Diane Chambers is still wedged into the same booth where you first met her, but instead of plate full of chicken wings the table is covered with eight-by-ten glossy photos of Shelley Long.

"Yeah, I was real upset that Sam and I never got together," she is saying to a middle-aged couple standing in rapt attention beside her table. The man is counting out some cash as he listens to her story. "But, you know, the studio wanted to maintain the suspense. People kept tuning in every Thursday night because they wanted to see if we would do it. If we didn't, then they'd keep tuning in. It was a cold business calculation, and it broke my heart. And that's the real reason why I left the show."

"Oh, I just knew that had to be the reason!" the wife says. "Cheers was just never the same after you left. We were never fans of Rebecca, were we, Frank?"

The husband just grunts an affirmative Hmm as he hands over the five twenties he has finished counting out of his wallet.

Diane accepts the cash. "How would you like me to make this out?" she says, picking up a pen and one of the glossy photos.

After a moment of thought, the woman says, "Just 'To Frank and Margaret' would be good."

Your employer scribbles across the photo of the actress she is impersonating, and then notices you and Jimmy approaching the booth. "Oh my, you're just in time! Here comes the illegitimate love child I had with Cliff!"

She is, of course, pointing to Jimmy. The reactions of the two Cheers fans are priceless: she is agog with joy; he scowls with skepticism, worried that he might be asked to dole out another hundred dollars for a second autographed photo.

"I never knew!" Margaret says. "Doesn't he look just like his father, Frank?"

"Funny no one ever heard about that," Frank says dryly.

"Of course not!" Diane says. "The studio paid good money to keep it out of the National Enquirer."

Jimmy ignores the couple as he steps up to the table. "Our friend has returned from the South Pacific, ma'am."

"I see that. Hopefully not empty-handed, either."

"No, ma'am."

"Look how politely he addresses his mother, Frank," Margaret says. "I wish our two boys were like that. Don't you?"

You decide to say nothing, lest you be insinuated in Chambers' little fraud. Who would she try and pass you off as — Lilith's second cousin?

Watching her reaction as you do so, you set the sack containing the Stone of Vul-Kar down on the table. Instead of that grubby backpack you toted across Woban Island, the gem is now concealed in a draw-string knapsack with a Patriots logo, as provided by Jimmy. It lands with such a thud on the tabletop that the condiment rack rattles.

Diane's eyes light up. "I'm afraid I have to take care of some business," she tells the fawning woman and her husband without taking her gaze off the knapsack in front of her. "It was very nice meeting you. And congratulations on the birth of your granddaughter! You should buy her a little pink Cheers onesie from the gift shop on your way out!"

"Oh, we will! We will! Thank you again ever so much, Ms. Chambers!"

You slide into the booth opposite Diane. To your profound dismay, Jimmy slides in beside you. You feel trapped.

Your employer pushes aside the stack of glossies. "I have sooo been waiting for this moment — almost as much as I am for the moment when I get to show this little trinket to that old blowhard, Walter Berringer."

She pulls on the drawstring to open the sack, and then peers inside without removing the contents. "Lordy, lordy," is all she says.

"I hope you find it satisfactory," you say.

"Indeed. Indeed. And you retrieved it so expeditiously, too!"

"Well, that was just… ."

She cuts you off. "Thomas! Hey, Thomas!" she shouts toward the bar. "We need some drinks over here. What was that you were having last time? Oh, that's right — bring us three of those Green Monsta IPAs!"

Thomas the bartender looks like he is swamped with other drink orders, but he promptly takes three of those Cheers pint glasses and starts pouring the beers.

"I don't want to look at it here," Diane says, closing the Patriots knapsack up once more. "Too many people here. But I'm hosting a gathering in two weeks, and my rival Walter Berringer will be there. I can't stand him, never have, but we both serve on the same board of directors, so he can't really back out. He's been moping all month because the Red Sox finished the year nineteen games behind the Yankees. When he sees this, it'll push him over the edge. I can't wait."

A waitress arrives with the three beers.

Diane raises her glass. "Cheers!" It takes you a second to realize she's not stating the name of the establishment, but proposing a course of action.

"Cheers!" Jimmy dutifully returns, and the three of you clink your glasses together.

"You truly are good at what you do — worth every penny." As she says this, she slides a debit card across the table to you. "I opened this account this morning. The balance is exactly two million dollars. The PIN on the Visa is one nine eight two."

"One nine eight two," you repeat.

"Should be easy to remember. That was the year Cheers debuted. Now, Jimmy was telling me you found the stone in an entire city filled with odd statues?"

You nod.

"Ooooh!" she squeals. "This could become an entire collection! How soon can you go back?"

You want to think she's kidding, but when Jimmy shows you two tickets for a flight back to Honolulu, you know she's dead serious. Hopefully by now the Wobans have given up looking for you.

THE END


So clearly it's in your best interest not to stay and fight this Woban; you would have nothing to prove by doing so, but everything to lose when you inevitably got your head handed to you. Therefore you need to figure out a way to get out of here. If you just turn and run, all you'd be doing is turning this into a footrace, which you know you'd lose just as surely as you would lose the fight. The only way this will work is if you manage to trip up your opponent in the first few moments.

Fortunately, the young Woban has given you exactly what you need. Without taking your eyes off him, you squat down and reach for the spear at your feet. Then you slowly stand, holding the primitive weapon as if you are still considering how best to use it.

"Maika‘i loa!" he says in his incomprehensible language. "Ua koho ‘oe e kaua ia‘u. I keia la he la maika‘i ia e make!"

"That's easy for you to say. All right, let's get this over wi— Ohmygod, what is that!"

It's a trick you've probably been using since kindergarten: fake an expression of surprise, point to some imaginary spot past the Woban's shoulder, and then run in the opposite direction the moment he turns to look.

So far, so good! You've managed to momentarily confuse your opponent, and now you are fleeing for your life. The only way to go is back up the hill, towards all the strange ruins. Knowing your head start is only going to last a matter of seconds, you listen closely for the sound of the Woban pursuing you. He doesn't leave you waiting for long.

"‘A‘ole hiki ia ‘oe ke holo mai o‘u aku nei!"

You continue running until he is nearly upon you, and then you fling the spear as hard as you can, aiming for his legs. The shaft gets caught between his knees, and in a shout of frustration he goes down to the ground.

Success! But of course now you are out of tricks, and he has the spear again. The only things you have to work with now are your own speed and the timely appearance of an effective hiding place.

You dash up the hill at your best possible pace, not daring to look back and see where your pursuer is. Your muscles are already tired and your lungs are spent by the time you reach the top, but there is no time to stop and catch your breath. This is not some schoolyard game where you can simply call "time out."

Once again you are on the open plain dotted with the mysterious ruins from the ancient city. Now what are you going to do? Your original thought was to evade the Woban by seeking cover inside one of these ancient structures, but the nearest ones seem rather small. They look like miniature stepped pyramids, scale models of their larger cousins in Guatemala. They have entrances leading into some kind of enclosed space, where you are sure you could take cover. The problem is that these smaller structures are probably just dead ends — only one way in, and only one way out.

Perhaps you could do better than this, though. Up ahead, in the middle of town, is a larger structure, where you might expect more opportunities to evade your pursuer. That's entirely theoretical, however, because you have no way of knowing what you'll find. Whatever it offers, that crumbling stone building is another hundred yards or so ahead of you — a distance across which you'll have to continue sprinting, in plain sight of the Woban.

Think quick! You can hear the Woban behind you, shouting angrily as he sprints up the hill. If you duck into the nearest structure, there is a chance he may not see you. Or you can continue to that larger building and hope for the best when you get there. How does that old saying go — the one about the "bird in hand"?

__________________________________________________
> You enter the nearest structure before the Woban sees you.
Actually, that saying goes: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Applied to your situation, this bit of folk wisdom is trying to tell you it's better to seek cover in one of the nearby structures, rather than risking everything to reach that larger structure a hundred yards away.

So that's exactly what you do. On your right are three of those miniature stepped pyramids, each the size of a small house. Vines are crawling over each one, with small trees sprouting from cracks in the rock. All three structures are capped with one of those strange statues you noticed earlier, almost like a Buddha with ram's horns, although there is no time to ponder the actual cultural references on display here; the Woban will be reaching the top of the hill any second now, and the only way your strategy will work is if you can disappear inside one of these buildings before he sees you.

Therefore the one nearest you will have to do. You are happy to see that the opening is unobstructed, even if the interior is completely dark. With a quick turn to the right, you pass through a doorway that has perhaps not seen another human being step across its threshold in centuries, if not longer.

A single shaft of light falls into the dark space, but otherwise you are unable to see anything else inside the chamber you have just entered. You back up until you are completely out of the light, and then you drop to your knees, hoping you won't be giving yourself away by your heavy breathing; if you aren't able to quiet yourself, that uphill sprint for your life may prove to be your undoing yet.

And as it turns out, you've found this spot just in time — the Woban is now running up the same ancient street you just vacated.

But then his footsteps come to a stop just outside your hiding place.

"‘O na i‘a make! Ke pa‘ani nei ‘oe i na pa‘ani o kahi keiki, hnh? E loa‘a wau ia ‘oe, a laila luku wau ia ‘oe!"

He sure is going on about something! Unfortunately, it sounds like he's figured out that if you couldn't outrun him, then you must be hiding.

It takes all of your willpower to suppress your labored breathing; the Woban may not be able to see you, but he can certainly hear you if you don't take control of yourself. For extra measure, you also scoot further back into the darkness until you hit the rear wall.

You can hear the Woban outside, still on the overgrown street in front of the three dwellings. What is he doing? For the first time since this encounter began, you wish he'd say something, because then you could determine with more certainty where he is out there. His silence is driving you crazy with suspense.

Then he appears in the doorway like a living shadow, silhouetted by the bright sunlight of the mountain plain. He merely stands there, holding the spear to his side and sniffing the air. He's trying to smell you! All you can do is hope that a Woban's sense of smell is no more developed than a human's — that, and you hope the purpose of the third eye is not to allow him to see better in the dark.

But then, with a grunt of disappointment, he turns and exits the doorway. This is followed by the sound of his footsteps jogging down the ancient street, away from your hiding spot.

It worked! You fooled the Woban, and now he has no idea where you are. The next problem you have to face will be getting out of here unseen — and then somehow scaling up the mountain to the summit temple, which is of course the entire reason you are here. But these are problems you'll have to break down into their constituent elements, managing your way through them one at a time.

Before you can act, though, you need to gather some intel. You stand up from your kneeling position in the dark, with the intent of slowly advancing toward the door so you can peer outside and see where your adversary has gone. But as you rise, something leathery brushes your cheek.

"Holy crap!"

Your reaction is almost involuntary, and you regret the exclamation as soon as you make it. But the consequences are irreversible: you have just startled a hidden colony of bats, and now they are fleeing out of this cave-like chamber in a flutter of fur and fleshy wings.

Please don't let the Woban see this. Please don't let the Woban see this. Please don't let… .

But it's too late. You hear his footsteps pounding the ancient paving stones, running back toward your hiding spot.

"Ua loa‘a wau ia ‘oe, ka‘u i‘a make!" he says. "‘Ano ua lilo ‘oe i ‘aha‘aina a ko‘u makua kane!"

You have no idea what he just said, but you know it can't be good.

THE END


The next afternoon sees you slowly threading your way through the thick tropical forest, trying not to slip down a steep, wet slope.

You spent the previous night camping high in a mountain pass, where you found a tiny spring emerging from under a mossy rock. The spot was on the fringe of the same type of high-elevation grassland as the bald summit where you had drawn your map, and chances are if you had reached it any earlier in the day the place would have been hot as an oven. But in the evening, when you stumbled across it, your little campsite was cool and pleasant. Your ten-year-old REI backpacking tent was more spacious than the Zodiac had been the first night, and so your first full day on the island ended pleasantly. If the Wobans were throwing themselves another party, you were now too far away to hear it.

It hadn't all been fun and games, though. Yesterday, after you had stopped to sketch the map, your progress had been slowed unexpectedly. Getting down from that grassy bald had been simple, but the next little summit in the ridgeline was steep and cliffy. Going over it was not possible, and you could see no further signs of a trail, so you saw no option but to descend a few hundred feet and find an easier way around this part of the mountain. Regaining all that lost elevation was discouraging, but then you discovered the spring and all was forgiven.

Now, almost a full day later, here you are making your way over the third summit in the chain, and although this one is higher than the other two it has been completely wooded so far. Without a trail to follow, you have been forced to thrash your way through the thick vegetation. There is no graceful way to travel in these conditions, so you have been taking your time.

Although the tower-like main summit is now maybe half a mile away, you can scarcely see it. Actually, you are slowly working your way down toward a large blank spot on your map, where you have little idea what to expect. When you had stopped to sketch your map yesterday, you were able to see a good swath of the island, but not the parts that were concealed by the various mountain summits. It looked like there had been a sizable gap between the third and final peaks, but you had not been able to see what that gap contained. Whatever is there, you're about to be wandering through it in just a matter of minutes.

And so, after another fifteen minutes' worth of scrambling down steep, moss-covered slopes and crawling under fallen trees, the terrain flattens out. You continue forward, marveling that after all that ridiculous toil over the wooded summit, the vegetation is thinning out again here in the broad space between the mountains.

You are tired, dirty, and hungry — as well as intrigued by what is opening up ahead of you. The forest trees thin into scattered shrubs, and once again you are walking across a baking-hot grassland. This one is immensely picturesque, though. It is a high-elevation plateau, broad and mostly flat. The main summit spire rises almost five hundred feet above you, but you have arrived too late in the day to be in its shade. And dotting this tropical prairie are the remains of an ancient complex of buildings.

Various weeds and vines crawl over the cut-stone structures like a riot of snakes. The place is like an archeologist's wet dream, the remains of a civilization that had until recently been completely unknown to modern academia. The artistic and architectural styles on display here seem to be a mishmash of global influences: humble dwellings that resemble scale models of Mayan pyramids, rows of toppled Greek columns, eroded statues that seem to depict a horned cherub, like a satanic Buddha or something. You could spend a year exploring the place — but only if some rich fat cat thought there was something worth collecting here, and was willing to bankroll your expedition.

As impressive as the lost city is, the rocky tower is downright intimidating. How the heck is anyone expected to get up that thing? This is a challenge that is going to require some thought.

Perhaps you should start looking for a place to camp. As awesome as this plateau is, you see no sources of water here, so you'll need to venture back into the woods to search for other options. You decide to look along the northern side of the plateau, where based on experience you expect to find a verdant and moist slope leading down from the highlands. Hopefully you'll stumble across another spring — or better yet, a pool. You could use a good rinse.

So, veering northward, you soon reach the point where the terrain begins to slope downward, and trees once again become larger, albeit sparsely populated. You are wading through ferns, exalting in the fact that you have just spotted a glint of sunlight off a pool of water just ahead of you, at the foot of the hill. The terrain is gentle and open, water seems to be in abundance, and there is a good view of the mountain spire that stands between you and victory. The odds are good you have just found tonight's campsite.

You run like a giddy child to the edge of the pool. You can see right away that it is not a natural pond, but a square-edged reservoir of some kind, yet another artifact from the ancient city. Happily, the water is clear and clean. You bend down to splash its cool goodness over your face.

But what you fail to notice — until it is much too late — is the figure that rises from the ferns just around the corner. It is only when it begins to move forward through the vegetation that you turn and see it — a Woban, with tattooed and deeply tanned skin, a bone necklace, grass skirt, and a long spear. Above all, the most distinctive feature is that eerie third eye that sits directly above the bridge of his nose. You surmise he had been hunting, waiting among the tall ferns for his prey to come, when you bumbled into the scene instead.

"O Manu o Ke Kaua ko‘u inoa!" he shouts. "I keia la wau e lilo i kane, aka mua au e ku i ka pa‘akiki. Pono e luku au i ka holoholona ae hanai i ka io i ko‘u makuakane. E ho‘omakaukau ia ‘oe iho e make, holoholona!"

"Whoa, hold on, chief!" you say. "We're all friends here."

"E pale ia ‘oe iho!"

His speech is fast and clipped. Not a single word makes any sense, but the provocative way he is shouting them at you gives you the general idea that this is a hostile confrontation. The Woban is only about six feet tall — big enough, to be sure, but not one of the seven-foot giants you heard about. Maybe this is an adolescent, trying to prove himself in the world.

"Hey, make nice. Let's be friends."

"E pale ia ‘oe iho! ‘A‘ohe hanohano i ka pepehi ‘ana me ka pa‘akiki ‘ole."

"Look, I haven't the slightest idea what you're saying. Can't—"

Then he does the unexpected thing and tosses his spear at your feet. It is not a gift, because the rage in his voice is still evident, even if the words are unintelligible to you.

"E lawe i ka ihe a kaua mai ia‘u!"

Well, you're at an impasse as far as verbal communication goes, but you think you're getting the gist of the body language. The young Woban wants you to fight him, and to make the odds more even he is letting you use his spear. If he assessed that you're not much of a physical threat when matched up against a six-foot Woban, he would be correct. At least with the spear in your hands, you would have a sporting chance.

So you have to make a decision: fight or flight? The Woban is glaring at you, all three eyebrows furrowed in a kind of rage you'll never understand. Eventually he'll charge at you, regardless of what you choose to do. So either you can pick up the spear at your feet and defend yourself, or you can run. With all of the ruined buildings around here, you would have plenty of places to hide — assuming, of course, you can outrun a Woban.

__________________________________________________
> You stay and fight the Woban.
The Woban is clearly young, and therefore probably also over-confident. By contrast, what you lack in strength — not to mention skill with a spear — you should be able to compensate with patience and cunning. He will think he has the advantage, but he is what, all of fifteen years old? And less educated than your typical fifth grader? He will do something rash; you will recognize his obvious strategy right away, and handily defeat him with some run-of-the-mill move that you learned many years ago while playing flag football.

So what are you so nervous about? You got this!

Right?

At any rate, standing your ground seems preferable to running, so you slowly squat down to pick up the spear, never taking your eyes off your opponent. The Woban gets excited when he sees you reaching for the weapon he tossed you. He starts whooping and doing an odd dance, hopping from foot to foot and shifting his head from left to right. His tongue hangs down to his chin, making the entire act seem like a ritualistic taunt. You notice that his tattoo pattern extends across both shoulders, with lines that resemble stylized feathers; you suppose it is meant to resemble some kind of bird of prey, but the dance gives you the impression more of a gooney bird.

So now you are holding the spear in your hands, pointed straight ahead. You bend your knees and widen your stance, ready to spring into action as soon as he lunges at you.

But nothing happens. The Woban continues his silly dance, his nonsensical shouting growing louder and louder. Then he adds a slow rotation to his routine, showing you the tattooed feathers on his back for a short moment, his tongue still extended when he turns back in your direction.

"Come on, come and get me!" you say, briefly tilting the spear upward to signal your readiness to defend yourself. But still the young Woban does not charge.

"E kaua ia‘u, nene me ka wawae ho‘okahi!" he grunts. "Ua moe kolohe kou makuakane me kahi i‘a make!"

"Look, that's nice. It's great to meet you too. Now can we get this over with?"

He shakes his head with his tongue protruding downward again. "AGGGH! Ke maka‘u nei ka i‘a make e ku‘e ia‘u!"

This is going nowhere. You have been waiting for him to attack first, but it is becoming clear he has no such intention. So what exactly are you supposed to do? If the Woban is trying to taunt you into charging straight at him with the spear, then you can safely conclude that is the last thing you should do.

"That's a nice necklace. Are those shark teeth?"

"Hiki ia‘u ke kali i ka la apau, i‘a make. Hiki ia ‘oe ke kali mau loa?"

He continues to shift back and forth from one foot to the other, making his bare chest a moving target. If you did have to make the first move, though, it's not his chest you'd aim for — that damn tongue would be a much more satisfactory target.

But something has to give; it's not like you can just stand here doing this all day long. But what are your options? Make a feint, catch him off balance? Fake a distraction, strike when he's not looking? Then an idea occurs to you: just do what Paul Newman would do if he were in a situation like this! Specifically, you're thinking of that knife fight scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's one of the best moments in movie history, and you doubt this Woban has ever seen it; what's old to you will be new and unexpected to this cretin.

You stand up out of your defensive posture and hold the spear to your side like a walking stick. "I'm not going to fight with you — not until we get the rules straightened out."

"He ho‘omake‘aka keia!"

While the Woban appears momentarily confused by your words and change in posture, you casually step forward as if to greet him as a friend, tossing the spear aside.

"What, no rules? Then one-two-three-go!"

And once you are within range, you kick your opponent in the groin.

The Woban's reaction does not go according to script, however. He does immediately bend over in pain, but he is not as debilitated as you had hoped for. When you turn to deliver the knock-out punch, he is not on his knees like it was in Butch Cassidy, but enraged and coming straight at you.

Your horror is short-lived. In a pure contest of strength and brutality, you don't stand a chance against the Woban, and he doesn't leave any time for any more tricks. As it turns out, he was not as gullible as you had hoped he would be.

THE END