James Swingle is a trainer and consultant in New York City. However, he is soon relocating to Canada to be with his wife, whom he met on a website devoted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The TV show, not the movie. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Wicked Karnival, Susurrus, From the Asylum and other publications.

I ask you, Mr. Earth-Judge, traveling from years of light across the many worlds of the Rim to adjudicate my conviction, what do you know of my world, and the real of it, to apply your justice to my station? I am but a poor guide who used to escort Earth-tourists for a mere twenty credits per two-week trip, and now command but five credits for the same trip's work. The Earth-tours taking two hundred and fifty credits for the same tour guide, that being me, before the tourists even arrive.

Yes, yes, I'll continue. Just doesn't seem very economic-wise, if you follow me. The invisible hand of economics supposed to maximize the outcome, yet the tourists now pay two hundred and fifty instead of twenty, and months later I finally get five instead of twenty up front, and the invisible hand swipes two hundred and forty-five away.

The murder? That's what I'm telling you, there was no murder.

I don't care what my cellmate said. I ask you, What did the invisible hand slip him for the saying?

No, no negligence either. I fairly say no Earth-person would have done more to save them for five credits. I think it was the invisible hand that gave them the shove, if you ask me.

I didn't mean to laugh.

No, no, it isn't funny at all that two people died in the jungle. But I don't think it fair to say it was on my watch. My watch costs twenty credits a trip, and for five credits, well, you get one eye open half the time.

Meaning no disrespect, Earth-sir, least none beyond that I feel.

Yes, the story.

They arrived about six months ago, when your Earth-Judgeship was circling other planets. Jeremy and Estra. Sent to me by Rim Adventures, who still has not paid me my five credits, despite there being no clause that payment is contingent on the survival of the tourists.

They had ordered "Pilgrimage to Watan Kan," which is a trek of fourteen days round trip to a beautiful lake of volcanic type on a plateau above the Jungle of Kaspersan. The local name of the lake is Lake of Gilly, above Jungle of Gilly, because Gilly found the damn things you know. But the tour companies thought that lacked a certain quality of exotic type, so they renamed them Watan Kan and Jungle of Kaspersan. The brochures then tell them that "kan" is the local word for lake. Even though "lake" is the local word for "lake;" we speak the same language.

So Jeremy and Estra arrived at the meeting place. She was quite beautiful, made my head scan her up and down she did. Full of curves she was, beautiful thick legs and arms and full stomach like you see in the Earth-magazines and in the Earth-movies. Not like the stick-women of the Rim they shipped off packed in cargo ships and fed on leaves and twigs and soy pellets. No, no, full and beautiful, arms thicker than my legs, just like in the Earth-shows.

I set them up at Hotel of Gilly for the night. The following morning I loaded the packs provided for them by Rim Adventures, at fifty credits each I might add, onto the pack-mule, put my pack on my own back, and met them early at the hotel lobby to set off through the jungle for Watan Kan. He, Jeremy that is, was the most typical type of Earth-people. Tried to talk to me about my world, about how he understood the economics and sociology of my real, how he understood the effects of the invisible hand on my world and my type. And quite certain, I am, that one who owns hiking boots as fancy as his understands the invisible hand, and puts it most aggressively to his use.

Ah, but she, there was no hint of Earth-understanding in her; she looked down on me from the moment she saw me. Beautiful it was, no play at camaraderie, just the glance downwards from the height of her nature of superiority. She was not at all like him. She understood. Not Earth-understood, mind you. She understood.

That first night, as I set up camp, he stood behind me, making talk of small type. To escape, I wandered into the bush, told him I had to check the perimeter for beasts, like dangus and such. From the bush, behind their tent, I looked back into the camp and saw her standing there. Naked. I had never seen such a woman naked in real, all her Earth-curve gloriousness. I stood watching--I daresay not a person here would have done otherwise. Stood watching as she ran a washpad over her thick arms, her lusciously thick legs, across the expanse of her beautiful belly. Glorious it was.

And then, she looked up. Looked directly at me, she did. Saw me looking at her. Didn't smile, didn't acknowledge, didn't scream in horror for her husband to beat me about the head. No, not her. So confident in the stations of herself and me she looked back down and continued bathing. No more regard for my eyes of longing than she would have given a tent pole erect in the space of her nakedness, a random object lacking animation. I was just a tent pole to her, your Earth-Judgeship, a mere service item in support of her adventure. Ah, so beautifully of understanding she was. Do you fathom this?

The days passed as we approached the Lake of Gilly, Watan Kan, that is. In the mornings and evenings, or when we came upon a stream of bathing type, she would often swim and drip naked in front of me. She'd even invade my tent of early mornings and late evenings with requests, regardless of my own state of nakedness. She never glanced down even one time when she caught me as erect as a tent pole myself.

Her husband smiled at what he thought was our naturalness, he Earth-understanding that since we were in the naturalness of the Rim, and so shared this bond beyond the strictures of civilization and proper economics, that in this state of naturalness we needed nothing as false as body covering and modesty. But she, she understood there was nothing of nature in those unclothed moments. It was the invisible hand that held us in our stations, and kept me in my painful type of longing. Knowing I could never have her, but only use a full three of my five credits for a half hour to relieve myself with a stick woman of my world when I returned from the trip.

I relate this, your Earth-judge, because, well, in honesty my mind wandered a bit from the point of your trial. As upon your correction, I realize your justice is not interested in my justice.

Hold me in contempt of court? I am quite capable of it un-held.

But yes, on with the story, you are the Earth-Judgeship of many worlds, and must attend to schedules.

We arrived at Watan Kan, and they bathed nakedly while I set up camp, then gathered firewood. From the trees I could see him holding her floating in the water as they mated from the various angles. It was the first time they actually mated in front of me. Do you understand that, Mr. Earth-Judge? Do you understand that they mated in front of me?

It seemed a new level of comfort with my station--Jeremy would say with the naturalness of it all--had been reached.

Anyway, they were, I can say, quite happy with their adventure. And I, I knew I had five credits waiting for me in a few months' time, so how could I also not share in the joy of the moment?

So let us remember that last day of joy they had together, and that there was much happiness for them before the tragedy struck. They enjoyed happiness in real that day, they did.

But that night, a dangu appeared, circling the edges of the plateau. It cried long and loud. Has his Earth-Judgeship heard the cry of the dangu? Perhaps on an Earth-show? We say the dangu's cry is one of longing for death, just not his own.

My apologies, I did not mean to laugh at such a point of horrific type in the story.

As I was just speaking, we heard the cry of the dangu, beyond the edge of the plateau. Dangus have been known to kill parties much larger than ours, so the tourists were quite frightened, rightly so. I took out my gun, and they huddled down beneath me, asking me what to do. Suddenly their station turned to the under-type. In real, the invisible hand is the hand holding the gun. And I told them if they wanted to survive, she would have to do everything I said.

She, he, they. I mean to say the both of them, your Earth-Judgeship.

I told them to stay in the camp, and I stalked quietly to the perimeter of the plateau, about twenty minutes from camp, to scare off the dangu if possible, kill it if not.

Well, as your Earth-Judge no doubt knows from his education preparatory for judging on my world, it is unheard that a dangu hunts other than solitary. So as long as I kept myself between the cry of the dangu and my charges, they would be safe, and the only danger to them would be if the dangu were to kill me, which was a greater danger if I stayed in the light of the camp, allowing him to hunt me on his own terms. So my plan was the right one, as any jungle-guide will tell you if asked, even under oath in this Earth-court.

However, as you have already learned from the notes your sheriff took from me months ago, there was a second dangu. Now, never do two dangus hunt together. But as I tracked the first dangu along the edge of the plateau, seeking him amongst the rocks and straggly trees, I heard the cry of the second dangu behind me.

Turned my blood cold, it did, as I know the justice received if a guide lets his Earth-tourists get eaten. I knew I was at the mercilessness of Earth-civilization if that second dangu harmed either of my cares. I turned and raced as quickly as I could back to the camp, caring nothing for my safety, for the target I made myself for the first dangu, from whom I had up until that moment, with silent-walking and down-windedness, sought to avoid detection. I ran like a wild man, uncaring of the spreading of my sound and scent, leaping rocks, gun held aloft. I fired my gun into the air three times as I ran, hoping with the sound to scare off that second dangu, even at the distance of myself running towards camp. The three discharges of which rifle, upon inspection, the sheriff has surely already noted in his report, as in accord with my story.

But I arrived too late, the second dangu had already attacked, killing Jeremy and Estra, and the pack-mule. A sight of horror and sadness and impending Earth-judgment it was, those three corpses on the ground.

Yes, I was of a type of distraught, as you can no doubt imagine. I had lost my charges, as well as a Rim Adventures pack-mule they said they will take out my future fees if I'm not put to death. And I knew that Earth-justice would be negatively disposed to a poor five-credit guide who had done all he could do, but was not the match for an unprecedented second dangu.

And with no pack-mule, I found myself with no way to get the bodies home. I knew they would surely be possessed by the dangus and other creatures of the jungle long before I could return with a sheriff to see the dangu-teeth-mark evidence of my innocence upon them and the pack-mule. But I had no choice but to leave the three corpses to the jungle, to be eaten before the evidence could be recovered.

And so I sit before you, me a poor man of the Rim, at the mercy of his Earth-Judgeship. I have always followed the civilization of Earth-centricity that one must choose the dictates of the invisible hand, or accept death. And as a man of proper economics, I have always granted that choice to others.