For the first time on Planet Maggie, I shivered with cold. "Did you, did you hear th-that?" I stuttered. "What goes on? Can the Hog actually talk?"
"Talk?"
"He said, 'Kill you, Kinlock.'"
"How could he?" Toal said. "How could he know your name?"
"He's been listening," I said. Then I snickered hysterically. "That's ridiculous. Rasmussen thinks the Hog may be a marsupial, and marsupials don't talk. He hasn't any tool-grasping organs either."
Toal slogged into the vine woods. "No use running any farther," she said. "The tractor sounds as if it's half way to Joetropolis."
X: SIXDAY EVENING
The rain stopped a half hour after Joe's Sun set. Betty Toal and I were a long distance from Joetropolis and the Young Farmer School. Although Toal had insisted upon carrying the hisser in addition to her firearm, I was ready to collapse under the combined mass of my pack and the robotic, which Rasmussen had left exposed to the rain.
The Hog moved with us. Where he stalked remained impossible to tell. The darkening of night amplified the ventriloquial quality of his grunting. At times, he seemed ahead of us, occasionally he walked on either side, but, most often, he trailed close behind.