Headhunter by Bob Farmer - Trick

They were going to cut my throat. I could see it in their eyes. Savage eyes. A thousand years of primordial violence was on fire in their skulls and the paleolithic phosphorescence shone out from those eyes and danced the dance of death down here on the jungle floor. Down here in the lush dangerous geography of central Borneo in the year of our Lord, 1937. Headhunters. The sunlight, filtering green as it drifted down through the layers of tropical vegetation, touched the piles of bleached and shrunken heads, recoiled, then sent fingers of light to probe every lethal dimension of the thin, razor-sharp, bamboo knife that pressed against the flesh at the base of my throat. They were going to cut that throat. "You savvy card magic?" I said in the tribal patois I'd picked up in three months of trying to track down the legendary City of Gold. The blade began to slice into my skin. A thousandth of an inch separated me from infinity. Calculating skin thickness and blood flow, the mathematic