“But a cheetah can outrun a man.” Braddock said. The video – he still could not believe what he had seen.

“Of course. Everyone recognizes that fact. That is the whole point.”

“The whole point is to be killed?” Braddock could not fathom the reasoning of men such as these.

“Not to be killed. That’s only a small part of the process. To be challenged by death. That is the object. To be confronted by its absolute certainty. To know, inescapably and undeniably, that it is bearing down on you. That is the catalyst. Everything follows from that.”

“Or nothing at all follows from that!” Braddock could not remain calm. “The film proves nothing. Not a damn thing. It might easily have been doctored. Anyone with a computer could have altered a frame and created such an effect. I could have done so.”

Lomax smiled tolerantly. “It’s easier to believe that, isn’t it Braddock? More comforting, certainly. It doesn’t challenge any of your assumptions. But the film is authentic. What you see is what I saw. I was there, I witnessed this with my own eyes. Not once, but three separate times. It was the same in each instance.”

The film depicted a Kumari tribesman running across the veldt, his naked torso stained with dye, a stone clenched in one fist. Behind him came the cheetah itself, moving with incredible swiftness and fluid grace, an effortless speed and agility that was at once beautiful and terrifying to watch. The cheetah closed with its prey. At the last possible instant, as the cheetah sprang, a shadow seemed to separate from the man’s body. For an instant in time so brief and transitory that the film could not definitively capture it, the shadow, the spirit, the essence, whatever it was, was there. And then it dissipated, like particles of smoke in the wind. There – and then gone. Like that.

“It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t prove anything.”

Lomax looked at Braddock. “You noticed the fury of the cheetah after it brought the man down? The savagery with which it attacked and dismembered the body.” Braddock had noticed that. It was perhaps one of the reasons he was so upset. The peculiar, insensate frenzy of the animal, its evident rage. That, you could not create with any computer. “The cheetah is incensed that the man, his life force, has gotten away. The animal is left only with inanimate flesh and bone. A vacant shell. His quarry has, in fact, escaped. The Kumari have a phrase that expresses this. They call it ‘plundering the cheetah’.

Braddock shook his head. I haven’t studied the Kumari, as you have. I know nothing of their culture, their traditions or their beliefs. But it would seem . . .”

The haunting image of the cheetah resurfaced in Braddock’s mind. “To accept their explanation of what takes place, and why, is to abandon reason and logic. To turn your back upon everything we in the West believe to be true.”

“I am not unaware of the contradictions,” Lomax conceded. “And yet, to see such a ceremony take place, to be physically present and experience it, all of it, is to come away convinced. The warrior’s courage, his willingness to defy death, transports him to a different world, an unknown realm from which ordinary men are barred.”

“And you want to do what – film more of these? Send more Kumari to their deaths needlessly?”

“No, nothing like that. I quite agree with you, in fact. The film proves nothing. Nor does it disprove anything.” Lomax's gaze was suddenly distant, remote, fixed on a point far, far away. “I am proposing that I submit to the ritual myself. That I assume the guise of the warrior. I, too, wish to plunder the cheetah.”

Braddock stared at him. Lomax spoke with a serene detachment, as though speaking of someone else altogether, or of an event that had already happened and was receding into the past.

“You’re mad,” Braddock said. “Even to talk of such a thing is madness.”

Lomax smiled. “Perhaps. I cannot entirely discount the possibility. But this is something that I have to do. Have to. I must know the answer. And there is only one means of doing that. One and no other. I must return to Africa. And you shall come with me.”

“I must say again that I protest in the strongest terms what you’re about to do.” All of their equipment had been set up and moved into place – devices for videotaping, for detecting fluctuations in electro-magnetic radiation and thermal distortions, a mass spectrometry unit – the most accurate and up to date electronics that modern science had to offer. Braddock had nothing to do but to stand there and wait. “This is really nothing but a glorified form of suicide.” Lomax didn’t appear to have heard him. “Did you hear what I said, Lomax?”

“I heard you. All of it.” Lomax sat on the ground, legs folded beneath him. “Just as I heard you when you made the same points back in London. And on other occasions.”

“That doesn’t make it any less true.” Braddock could not understand Lomax’s icy indifference. Here he was, poised on the threshold of death--a violent, terrifying death at that--yet still he refused to recognize the reality behind the theory. Braddock watched now as one of the Kumari tribesman, a village elder, applied dye to Lomax’s naked torso. The Elder worked with painstaking care and precision, feeling his way along Lomax’s skin with the tips of his fingers, detecting subtle differences in temperature and moisture.

“There’s still time to change your mind, you know,” Braddock insisted. “If you’d just step back and look at the whole thing rationally for a moment, I’m sure you’d conclude that there’s no need to go through with this. No one is going to hold it against you if you withdraw now. No one is going to imply that you lack courage.”

“Ah!” Lomax looked up. “I’ve often wondered, how exactly should one define courage? How would you define it, Braddock? It means different things to different people, of course. And to different cultures, as well. To the Kumari it means being willing to hazard everything, everything without exception, and to expect nothing in return. Not honors, not fortune, not fame. Not recognition or praise. Only the intense personal satisfaction derived from knowing that you can accept and meet such a challenge – where another could not. I am comfortable with this definition.” The Elder applied a last smudge of dye to Lomax’s forehead, crafting it carefully with a forefinger – the mark of the cheetah. He bent, looked into Lomax’s eyes. When at last he was satisfied with what he saw there he placed a carved black stone in Lomax’s palm. Then he turned and walked away.

Lomax’s fist closed around the stone. He stood. His eyes had an eerie, almost unnatural, shine to them. “Life is full of strange turns, isn’t it Braddock? Here I am, a man of science.” He gestured at the banks of monitoring equipment they had brought with them. “And yet I find, ultimately, that science is inadequate. It grapples only with approximations. The essence of a thing remains forever a step ahead of our ability to observe it. Perhaps the greatest unknown of all, death, remains a complete mystery. We are too little, too craven in spirit, to embrace a concept so grand and imposing. But perhaps,” Lomax smiled, “we can steal a glimpse of it. I won’t say goodbye, Braddock, because, for me, this is a beginning.” Lomax turned and began to walk out across the veldt. He walked slowly, with an air of indifference, as though he were doing no more than going for an afternoon stroll back home.

Braddock watched him, eyes darting back and forth. He scanned the horizon with a sickening sense of anticipation. He was consumed by the conviction that he should do something, that he must intervene, that by some dramatic act he must stop the impending madness. And yet, he knew that he could not. He was too bound up in the whole ritual, too constrained by forces he did not wholly understand and did not wholly approve of. He could only watch and bear witness to one man’s personal folly. Or, perhaps, to one man’s greatness.

A cheetah appeared over the crest of a hill, its dark form sleek and deadly. Its tail flicked back and forth with lazy insolence as it surveyed the terrain below. It did not move at once when it spotted Lomax but followed him with its eyes. Finally it set out after its quarry, not at a run but purposefully, with an assurance that brooked no doubt and no hesitation. Making no effort at concealment as Lomax made none. The taut, powerful movement of shoulders and haunches quickened as the cheetah crossed the veldt, ears laid flat against its skull.

Lomax looked back. He began to run then, as they all began to run at this point - the goad of fear at his back, the sure and certain instrument of his death. The cheetah broke into a sprint, the elastic gait effortless, unimaginably swift. The animal seemed not bound by the earth at all, not harnessed by gravity. It was overwhelming, terrifying. And at the last possible moment, as Lomax exerted himself to the uttermost, there was an odd perceptual shift, a peculiar distortion. The oneness that bound body and spirit together seemed torn asunder, shattered. A shadow slipped away from Lomax, vanishing between one heartbeat and the next. Then the cheetah fell upon Lomax with a savagery and a venom that caused Braddock to sink to his knees and shield his eyes in horror.

Later, as night was setting in over the veldt, Braddock reflected that it was just as Lomax had said – those who witnessed the actual ceremony, in all its barbarous savagery and primitive ritual, came away believing. The cheetah had, indeed, been plundered.