He started forward. As he moved, he examined himself for one brief moment, asking himself why he was going after a girl he told himself he hated. And there was no answer, except the same pulling force that had made him want her with every fiber of his body only a few seconds ago.
He knew, reasonably, that a loss of a girl who was a daughter of a Colony official would have the same effect as a fired fuse in the relations between the natives and the Colonizers. But even this was, at the moment, unimportant, and it was only an emotion that drove him forward, an emotion that got into his blood and brain. And he hated it and he tried to free himself of it, but it drove him on, and all he could think of was tearing the girl free from the grasp of the creatures.
But how?
He didn't know, and he kept following the jumbled movement of tan skin and blue cloth ahead of him. He couldn't use the gun at his side, because he couldn't tell reality from illusion. He wouldn't know whether he would find his bullet in a green globular head or in the finely shaped head with the shimmering brown hair. He could only follow and think, think of an answer.
The jungle rippled with the movement of the five forms ahead of him, and Caine went on, swinging at the growth, swearing, sweating, driving his brain to find the solution.
The figures stopped, finally, in a short vine-enclosed square. He walked to the fringe of the opening and watched the five faces, pale and frightened, staring back it him. Five hands went up to five mouths and trembled against red lips. "Nic, please do something!" The five voices rang against his ears.
"I'm here, Nic. Here!" The five faces pleaded with him.
He closed his hands, his eyes shifting from one face to another. He couldn't tell. It was like trying to capture an image in a room full of mirrors.
"Oh, God," the voices moaned, and together the figures slumped to the ground.
They were considerate and polite even now, Caine thought. They were letting her rest. They wouldn't hurt her physically, only move her steadily away to the oblivion of illusion. Cultured, quiet, but because of what had been done in a clearing miles back, deadly.