Cataract. Part 6

Kurvan nodded. "Things have been unstable on Orpheus ever since they started on Eurydice. Half my webs were shredded or shunted before I could use them at all. Just last week I traced three ghosts for sixteen hours until I found out I'd been accidentally shunted to a dreamer channel. I wasn't tracing a set of ghosts. I was catching the images from a recorded experience." He made a sour expression. "No wonder it seemed real. Basically, it was."

Wren chuckled. "And after that confession, you expect us to take you seriously?"

Kurvan grinned back. "If I'm the only line-runner you have, how can you afford to be choosy?"

"h.e.l.l, you might as well go to Broken Tree yourself," Tucker muttered, "than fly with us to the Hollows."

There was a flash of tension in Tsia's gate-like the sense of a sandcat who sees sudden movement. Slowly, she sat up straighten Her gaze moved slowly around the room. Doetzier studied her fingers, taut against her thighs, but she didn't notice his attention until her narrowed gaze settled on his face. She could almost see the speculation in those brown depths.

Kurvan gave Tucker a flat look. "I work setup)-biology's not my field. I'd be as bad as you at locating a false tree on a trail-that's Feather's field, not mine." He glanced deliberately at her.

She shrugged. "The bulk of my training was in fields other than biolinks. I'm not much use without the node. So if having me at Broken Tree was more deterrent than defense, the loss of the scannet makes my presence fairly useless. You'd do just as well canceling contract as taking me with either group."

Doetzier eyed her speculatively. "You'd rather cancel contract?"

She could almost see his attention sharpen, and it took her a moment to realize that she felt his focus

through her gate, not through her eyes. "I'm no more likely to turn down credit than I am to turn down a dare," she said; but her smile was forced. Nitpicker pursed her lips. "If Jandon has our shooters, I'd rather have you at the Hollows." She turned to the bowlegged man. "Bowdie, you stay too-you'll be copilot on this jaunt. Jandon, you can take Estine, Ames, Barker, and... Shepherd."

"I'd like five if the guide stays with you," he said flatly. Nitpicker hesitated, then nodded and glanced over the room. Tsia felt a flash of tension, like a sharp light focused through her biogate. She couldn't help the tightening of her jaw. Bowdie's gaze seemed to snap taut. Kurvan s.h.i.+fted as if he would speak. Then Nitpicker said, "Striker, Tucker, Doetzier, and... Kurvan, you four stay with me. Bowdie and Wren also. Miloczek, you go with Jandon. Feather, if you're done checking your pack, get it on our sled with Bowdie's. The rest of you either load your gear on Jandon's s.h.i.+p or get it off and in here with the rest of ours. Questions?" No one spoke. "Then let's roll."

The lessening of tension at Nitpicker's words had been almost as palpable as the s.h.i.+ver that struck Tsia's shoulders with relief. Wren's sharp eyes caught the shudder the same instant that Doetzier's did.

"Cold?" murmured Doetzier.

She glanced at him and shook her head uncertainly. "Just a feeling..."

"Of what?"

Mutely, she shrugged. Tucker looked up with a grin. "

"The shadow of the future that hangs above us all.' "

"Yaza," she muttered. 'Too bad all your ancestors didn't die in the Fetal Wars."

His eyes narrowed. "If I'd been in that war-"

"The lifers were never justified enough in their murders," Striker broke in deliberately, stepping between them at a look from Nitpicker, "to be given the distinction of starting a war. Not in history, anyway. That was just a popular term-like the Decade of the Technodead."

"The technodead weren't as moral," Tucker retorted, provoking her on purpose, though he moved aside

for the woman.

"The lifers loved power, not morality," Striker said sharply as she thumped her pack down on the sled. "They were nothing more than criminals, and history has recorded them as such. Ayara's eyes, Tucker, there were almost more deaths from the riots-when the lifers realized that the creative and educated people were leaving the planet-than when they were just concerned about killing mothers and medicals."

"Daya, Striker." Tsia frowned in spite of herself. "Even you can't say that there were no educated people among the lifers."

"Depends on what you call education." Striker met Tsia's eyes with a steady gaze, and the lost look flickered before she stepped away. "Education opens minds," she said flatly, picking up a scanner. "Indoctrination closes them. Lifers used their bigotry to restrict old Earth to one way of thinking. No tolerance. No diversity. No creativity. Only rhetoric and control- like puppet masters who put their nooses around the neck of the world. Education is not about reducing options but increasing them. That's what the Fetal Wars were really ail about."

Tucker sealed his pack and threw it on the sled with a thwump. "Sure, but I bet more people died in the Fetal Wars than in any war-including the Stand-since then."

The catspeak was growing louder in Tsia's head as the cougars on the sea swept closer, and she said, more sharply than she intended, "Is the exact number of deaths really so important, Tucker?"

"You're a guide," he retorted. "You feel animals and plants. You aren't expected to understand the finer points of intersolar history."

Wren snorted, and Tsia gave the younger mere a dirty look. "You have an interesting view of a guide's education."

"Oh, come on," he retorted. "Everyone knows that a guide thinks only of her gate. Look at the way you reacted when we were going skyside. What if you had gotten free? Would you really have jumped from the hatch, knowing you were kays above the sea?"

"Of course," she said, as if surprised. "Unlike you, I have antigravs on my harness, not just on my pack. The impact of hitting water would have been painful, but not necessarily fatal. It would have been the pressure changes that killed me, not the impact. And"-her eyes glinted-"I'd have made sure I had company to scream with."

Kurvan made a sound suspiciously like a laugh, and Tucker turned sharply.

"Striker, Feather, step it down," Nitpicker cut in. "Kurvan, you and Tucker get out of here and go check the skimmer. Make sure she's tight and steady. Doetzier, you and Bowdie verify the gear. I want all antigrav units, e-wraps, and scanners checked before we take off. Striker, take the sled to the s.h.i.+p and start loading."

"What about the self-contained med gear?"

"The scames? Give two of the three to Jandon. If the guilders are moving in, he'll have more need of them than we will." She hesitated, and something flickered in her eyes, but she turned to Tsia and said, "As for you, I want another scan of the platform. Take your time. We've got another hour before we lift."

Tsia nodded and turned to the door. Nitpicker caught Wren's eye, and the other mere nodded. Still chewing his slimchim, he hopped down from his perch, s.h.i.+fted his own weapons harness on his hips, and made his way to the portal as Tsia's shadow.

The door slammed back to the wall behind him, and he let Jandon shut it. This time, as he left the hut, he barely staggered in the wind. Tsia was already moving toward the catwalk that led to the platform edge, and he leaned into the wind to follow. His eyes followed her closely. The lithe movements of her hips and thighs; the leanness of her body... There was no wasted motion-no gracelessness from youth, but rather a concentrated energy, trapped inside her muscles. It was something-a wildness, perhaps-that he desired to touch and taste.

Reaching forward, as if to grip the wind itself for balance, he watched her with cold and steady eyes. Sometimes, he thought, he wanted to grab her to still her when she twisted and yowled like a cat. Sometimes he wanted to squeeze his ma.s.sive hands so tightly around her body that he wrung that wildness from her throat and drank it like blood. He chuckled, and the sound was choked to silence by the wind. He knew he could tell her what he thought, and she'd still not be afraid of him. Odd woman. He respected that in her. But then-and he looked toward her figure poised on the edge of the platform, her arms out as if she could fly-she was not really a woman at all to him. She was, instead, a guide.

Tsia moved through the wind like a dancer. She had the feel now of the storm, and it no longer stole her feet from under her. Her knees bent instinctively, and her arms twisted away from her body for balance. Behind her, near the s.h.i.+p and hidden by the gloom and blinding wind, something moved. Instantly, her senses sharpened. She turned slowly, half crouched on the narrow walk. She could see Wren, but he was not what she felt. His biofield was not focused like a hunter.

No, she could almost taste a presence-smell the musk scent of a cat in the wet morning air. But there was nothing in her biogate but the meres. Nothing in her sight but the white wing of the skimmer, the dark bulk of the vats. She hesitated, then went on.

The spray and hollows of the whitecaps hid the shadow of the weedis as they wallowed in the troughs of the swells. One kelplike island swelled up and over a crest; the other end trailed behind. Huddled on the

matted raft were four of the sea cougars who rode the currents to sh.o.r.e.

Wren shaded his eyes from the wind and got a noseful of spray. "h.e.l.l of a way to travel." He had to raise his voice over the wind. "You'd think a cat would drown on one of those things."

She shrugged. "They're stable as an iceberg."

"Safe as mother's milk, huh?"

"Even if the ride is rough, some of those islands are a hun-dred years old. They're woven as tightly as

weathercloth. The only real danger is when a cat picks a weedis that isn't old enough to be fully grown together. If the branch structures are weak, the island can break apart."

"The bloom doesn't help either."

"No," she agreed flatly.

"You think those four are going to make it?" She was silent. Wren glanced at her and, even in the gloom, caught the worry in her eyes. He followed her gaze. The deepening troughs flung the raft up and down like a bucking horse. Long, dark streamers of green floated behind the island. Jellies hung from the streamers, curling their blue-white tendrils around the flat, slimy vines-stubbornly pumping and pulling away to take their spoils down.

"The weedis is thin on one end," she said reluctantly. "Not many seedpods to keep it floating."

"Bet it'll split before it even hits the platform."

"That would be best," she returned slowly.

He raised his eyebrows. "You want it to break apart? You of all people can't possibly want the cats to

drown?"

"Of course not," she said sharply. "But if an island breaks up instead of holding together, the loose debris can go down, and the rest of the raft stays on top-including the cats. If the thin part doesn't break

off, the jellies can latch on to that section and drag it under. The whole island-cats and all-will sink.

It's like a sleeve on a jacket: You pull the sleeve, you get the jacket, too."

He studied the raft for a moment. "I don't think your sargies will make it."

She felt her stomach tighten. The weedis was beginning to tear into strips even as she watched. Already the mother was leading her cubs away from the thinning end. The urgency of the female's snarling caught at Tsia's mind. Tentatively, then with more focus, Tsia opened her gate to the cat. There was an instant in which the cougar hissed; then the sargie seemed to suck at her strength. Tsia paid her will out like a lifeline. A moment later, the female leaped the growing water chasm eas-ily, then bounded carefully through the growth till she found a solid nest.

Tsia could distinguish the thinner energies of the cubs now, and she fed her strength to them in turn. When the first cub leaped across the chasm, Tsia's own feet tightened in her boots. The second cub jumped while the third one pawed nervously at the thinning edge of the raft. The waves surged. The leaping cub landed in the sea with a clumsy splash. Its mental shout was a frigid shock in Tsia's mind. She leaped forward, and only Wren's startled reflexes kept her from jumping out into the sea.

"Dammit, Feather!" He jerked her away from the edge. He stared at the sea, then her. "Don't do anything stupid-it's not in your contract."

She barely heard him. Her attention was with the cub who clawed his way through the brash, then up and out of the water. A ma.s.sive, foam-streaked crest of water split the weedis apart. The last cub was left behind.

On the thicker island, the two others plunged across to the inner, safer places, but the mother did not abandon the edge. She paced while the sea-softened raft disintegrated beneath her weight, and yowled to her third cub. Tsia took a step and was brought up short by Wren's thick hands closing tightly on her arms. She blinked and twisted.

"Uh-uh, Feather," Wren said harshly. "Nothing stupid, remember?"

"The sargie-"

"The cats are fine. They made the island."

"No," she protested. "One cub is left behind."

He shrugged, but did not release her arms. "They're a hundred meters away. There's nothing you can do about it."

"There has to be. You know my link. That's a cougar down there, not a fish or rat or bird."

"It's too far away, Feather. Let it go."

"It'll drown in the chop..."

Wren shook her so hard her teeth rattled. "The cats aren't your responsibility. They won their independence: the Landing Pact-remember? They earned their rights and freedoms, and now they have to live with them."

Her hands dug into his blunter. "The Landing Pact also states a guide's obligation to protect them. To help them in return for their service to the world."

"Only if they call you."

"They did!" she snarled. "They called me clearly, and took my strength through the gate. They wanthelp.""They took your strength?""I helped them cross the water."He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. The sargies have been migrating for two centuries between the islands and the sh.o.r.e. Every year, some of them don't make it. If this cub dies, that isn't your fault. That's

just life." He stared her down. "And not everyone gets to have one."

The female cougar snarled in Tsia's mind; she ground her teeth together. Wren waited, his hands still gripping her arms. Then the cub cried again, and its sharp mental voice pierced her head. Tsia cried out.

"Wren, I can't stand it."

"Then figure out what you can do about it," he said coldly. "As far as I can see, you've got ten minutes

before the island goes all the way down with the jellies you described."

"The floating docks at the base of the legs-they're rigged as emergency rafts, aren't they, like the pontoons on a skeeter?"