Cataract. Part 7

He pointed at the soft spongy areas to either side of the walk. "The station's not half-finished, Feather, and the docks are no more than hollow casings."

"I've got antigrav on my harness."

"That's useless on a bucking surface."

She pointed toward the edge of the floater. "The island will be close to the platform in ten minutes. If the weedis holds together that long... There are solid pockets of growth tangled around the station legs right now. What if I went out on one of them?"

"They wouldn't support you."

"I'm careful with my weight, and the tangles are almost solid seedpods. They have better flotation than a dockboat."

"You still wouldn't be close enough to grab the cub."

"I'd be close enough to coax it to swim to one of the empty chambers just above the waterline. I could get it up to the decks from there."

"No chance," he stated flatly. "No way Nitpicker will authorize that-even to comply with the Landing Pact."

"Dammit, Wren, it's going to die!"

"That, I guess, is its destiny."

"This is not a philosophical discussion-"

"No, it's not. It's reality." He took her by the arm and yanked her toward the hut. "Come on. You're due to repor-"

She shook his hand off. "You're a G.o.ddam callous b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"I never claimed otherwise. And you," he said, turning on her coldly, "should know better by now. The Landing Pact is two hundred years away, and you were on contract the moment you stepped in that skimmer. Your first concern should be whether or not this station is secure. Your second concern should be whether or not your senses are clouded or unreliable because of the influence of your gate. Your last

concern should be the Landing Pact-and not just because you're a guide, but because you're a rogue guide, who works away from her guild."

"Wren..." Her fingers were like claws on the fabric of his blunter. "You know me. The felines are my

link, and I can't stand by and do nothing."

"Think for a moment, Feather. Nitpicker and I know about your link, but what if the others find out? That's five more people who could potentially betray you to the guide guild-to the node.""They won't find out," she returned tightly. "All guides- not just those linked with cats-are required to help the felines."

Behind them, Jandon's skimmer took off, blasting forward at an angle, then rising sharply upward. Wren

watched it go with a curse. "I should have known better than to ride wing with you," he muttered. "Why didn't I check gear instead of Doetzier? Why did I have to play watchdog?" He motioned toward the construction hut, but Tsia balked, and he snapped, "You still need Nitpicker's authorization to interfere with the cats. I'm only an M-five. She's M-seven. Or does your brain no longer make sense of that either?"

She gave him a scalding look.

"Good," he snapped. "Your brain's in gear again. Keep it that way."

She shook her head. "You tell Nitpicker about the cat. I'll meet you down at the far leg-"

'Tell her yourself. In the hut."

"Wren, there's not much time..."

He gestured sharply. "In the hut."

Cursing, Tsia forced herself through the wind.

In the hut, Nitpicker, Tucker, and Kurvan had not yet finished their gear. Kurvan was checking the contents of the medkits; Tucker ran the powerscans for the stabilizers on the packs. Tsia tried to speak before the door shut, but Nitpicker motioned for her to wait for the noise to subside.

As soon as the wind noise died, Tsia began abruptly. "There's a cougar cub on a weedis that's breaking apart a hundred meters away." She paused at Nitpicker's expression. Her jaw set. "I want to get the cub off that island and onto the platform. We can take it to the mainland with us and drop it off on land." She watched the pilot closely, but the other woman simply regarded her without expression, while the cat feet crawled in her head. Hurry, her mental voice demanded. She could almost see the trains of thought whipping through Nitpicker's mind: Had Tsia gone rogue again? Why did she want to do this? A cougar? Could Tsia handle a wild animal even if it was the same type as her biolink? The Landing Pact required that humans help the felines, but did this one cat need to be saved?

"How are you going to get it off the weedis?" the other woman asked finally.

"It will come to me," Tsia answered.

"You sound confident."

Tsia met her gaze squarely, ignoring the curiosity in Kurvan's. "Do you doubt the strength of my link?"

"No," the other woman said slowly. "No, I don't. But I do doubt the strength of your arms. The swells are heavy and the waves like broken mountains. How are you going to get to the weedis? And how will you keep from being swept away? You can't swim in this."

"I'll go down on one of the lifts. I can control my height from the waterline by sending the lift up or down."

Kurvan's gaze flicked from Tsia to Nitpicker. "She could use a safety line," he suggested. "There are over three hundred meters of flexan cord right here. Even if she fell off the platform, the line is long enough to stretch to the bottom of the sea and back."

Nitpicker gave him a sharp look. "And she'll tie it to what? The lift? If she's underwater, the lift won't go back up without her. And the underdecks aren't strong enough to take the point-strain of a line-the sponges would simply tear between their spicules."

"She can use the other lift on the leg," he suggested. "There are two at each piling. She can tie onto one and ride the other. If her timing's good enough, she might not even get wet."

Tucker snorted and gestured with his chin at the water that dripped from her blunter. "If she got soaked on the decks, she'll be taking a deep bath in the sea."

Tsia followed his gesture and abruptly shook the water from her jacket as she paced back and forth and fingered the flexor on her hip. In its dormant form, it was shaped like a blunt stick, and she nervously snapped it into a sharp point, then an edged blade. The custom-wrapped hilt was a green and brown pattern broken up by swirls of muted purple-the only object with color that she wore.

Kurvan eyed the weapon with a frown. "Best leave that here. It won't work against a biological-the jellies, not the cat," he added quickly at the flash in her eyes. "And the weapon will be awkward in the water-make it harder to swim or get untangled from the brash. Take your knife instead-your flat knife, not your raser," he said sharply. "You can at least bite back with that."

Tsia nodded slowly and tucked the flexor into the side slot on her pack. Then she checked her flat knife in her boot.

Kurvan moved to the door with the scanners. 'Tucker, give me a hand with the nav systems on the skimmer." He glanced at Nitpicker. "FU send him back with Bowdie."

Nitpicker nodded absently; her attention was on the guide. She did not try to speak until Wren had cranked the door shut after Kurvan and Tucker stepped out into the storm. By then, Tsia was near-dancing with impatience.

"Nitpicker," Tsia urged. "There's not much time to decide-"

"Before the weedis is torn apart," the other woman cut in. "I understand that." She regarded Tsia soberly. "How will you hide this from the guide guild? This isn't a standard use of your gate, and interfering with the cats, even for the Landing Pact, will raise questions."

"I know."

"The combination of a feline and a guide will be obvious to any sensor sweep that's still active. You go after that cub, and your guide gate will be pegged to the felines."

"I know," Tsia repeated.

"It just takes one question, Feather," Nitpicker said sharply. "One question about that feline biological- to start a trace along your ID dot."

A trace to her name. To the past she had hidden behind her. She could hear the words as if Nitpicker had said them aloud. "I set webs to protect my mere ID-"

"Any web can be broken if it is tested long enough. You know that."

"What about the mere guild?" Her hands rubbed unconsciously at her wrists. "They've promised me protection. Everything I've done for the last decade has been because of that promise."

Wren cleared his throat. "The meres can protect your link as long as it's not challenged beyond the time you joined the guild. There are always traces left in the node by a temple link. You know you can't hide every image-every trace of yourself for your entire life. The only way to get a completely secure link- a completely clean ID-is to make a deal with the s.h.i.+elds."

She stared at him. "I can't do that. The risk..."

Wren shrugged. "Every time you use a laze, you run the risk of fire from the beam. Every time you set a grazing limit as a guide, you run the risk of misjudging the land so that it's damaged beyond repair. You could burn a cedar stand, and be wiped for that as easily as for being the guide who broke the Landing Pact. Everything you do is a risk. Everything affects a life somewhere."

Tsia's eyes grew hard. "And everything I don't do can be just as important. I know I'm on contract, and that if I help the cougar, you could say that I broke that contract with you. But if I don't help the cougar- especially since I've got a link with the cats-I break the Landing Pact. Which one do you prefer I do?"

Nitpicker cursed under her breath. "You know I hate animals."

"I know."

"I'd rather carry a cargo of digger dung-hand-loaded- than some kind of beast in my s.h.i.+p."

"I know," Tsia said more sharply.

"Why can't you just put him back on the next island that comes along?"

"We could be here for hours before a thick one floated close enough to the platform."

"G.o.ddam guides," the pilot muttered. "You've been running ghosts in the node for a long time, Feather, but you aren't as good as Kurvan. You want him to help set the webs to hide this if the node goes backup?" Tsia shook her head almost before Nitpicker stopped speaking. "Then," the pilot said curtly, "make sure your own traces are G.o.ddam tight."

The door burst open, and Bowdie staggered in from the wind. His blunter sprayed water, and the straps of his mottled harness shed water like sealskin. Nitpicker barely glanced at him as he cranked the portal shut. "So let's say you get the cub to the deck," she continued. "Where do you propose I land on the mainland-if you ever get the cub in my s.h.i.+p?"

"The beach. It can find its mother from there."

Nitpicker stared at her, then laughed-a short, sharp sound. Bowdie frowned, and stomped his feet to shake the last water from his boots. "You talking about the beach between Iron Bottom Slough and Bashevnel Bay?" he asked.

The cat feet dug into Tsia's mind, and the skin around her eyes tightened. "You landed on this platform. Even with the winds, the beach at least is flat and clear."

"And surrounded by solid rock and barely thirty meters wide."

"The flight deck here is thirty meters wide."

Bowdie ran his long fingers through his hair so that a single brown lock fell across his eyebrow. "The gale is now storm-force and growing. It's a hundred and fifty kays per hour out there."

Nitpicker nodded. "I'm flattered by your confidence, Feather, but even I'm not the kind of pilot you need. Kissing this platform as I did in a s.h.i.+p as tiny as ours-that was a stunt. Kissing a strip of sand right beside a cliff with the up-drafts and eddies, the shear from the front, and the surf smas.h.i.+ng us if we miss..." She shook her head. "Give it up, Feather. It's not to be." She added quietly, "And it's safer that way for you."

Tsia's eyes flicked warningly toward Bowdie. He said nothing, but she could see him filing Nitpicker's comment away for thought. "What about landing farther in-a kay or two?" she asked flatly.

"At the Hollows? If the cub can stay calm that long. The freepick stake is forty kays inland-across the first row of hills."

"No, no. Forty kays is too far." Tsia started to pace the room. "It would have to cross dozens of established territories-of other cats, grown cats-to get back to its mother. It would never make it."

Bowdie looked at her curiously. "Even if you do help this cub, how are you going to keep it from going crazy in the s.h.i.+p, surrounded by humans? It might be engineered to bond with a guide, but it's still a wild animal. It's not going to like being caged up with eight of us clumsy humans."

Wren jammed his gear back in his pack. "And unlike you, we," he stressed, "don't have the protection of a biogate."

The door whipped open again, and Tucker staggered in. He caught the crank as he entered and slammed the door shut quickly. "Finished checking the systems," he said before the wind whistles rose and died. "We're ready for the rest of the gear."

Nitpicker nodded briefly, but her eyes never left Tsia's face. "You think a cub isn't big enough to shred us like paper if it gets scared?" she went on. "You know our weapons don't work against biologicals- not without a specially licensed biocbip, which is illegal outside of the s.h.i.+elds. And with the node down, there's no way to get a vetdarter to take care of the cub for us." She eyed Tsia for a long moment. "Ah, h.e.l.l." She glared around the small room. "Tucker, Bowdie, you want to look good for the Landing Pact? Help Feather catch this thing?"

Tsia shook her head. "I'll catch it," she a.s.serted. "I need help only in getting down to the weedis, and then in getting back up."

Tucker c.o.c.ked his head. "I grew up on the Keys," he offered. "I've walked more floating islands than you've ever seen, and swum the distances between them."

"Sea weedis are different from swamp islands," Tsia returned tersely. "You have to have a feel for them, or you could end up dragged down by the jellies and drowned in the tangle and chop."

"So what? We've got nose-breathers."

"And an enbee is made for gaseous atmospheres, not for underwater jobs."

"They work fine in emergencies."