Part 8 (1/2)

”For maybe ten minutes before their filters clog. And not in deeper waters. If you fall in...”

”Take no offense, Feather, but, young as I am”-he shot her a wry grin-”I can probably swim ten times better than you. I was freediving with the dolphins when I was six. I made the skyside team by the time I was fourteen, and competed in the Annual Gravdives for eight years. I still make it out to the sector Fluidshutes every other year-I dive the Dryshutes in the off-seasons. And,” he added, ”I win.”

”I was caught out on Needle Rock once in a storm,” she said slowly to Tucker. ”Had to be taken off with a gale net. I was in the water no more than four minutes, but it felt as if a wall was slamming me in the back every second, and a dozen vat mixers were tearing at my arms and legs. There's the bloom, too. Jellies are dangerous, Tucker. They can pull an enbee from your face as easily as they pull you from the surface. My decision is forced by the Landing Pact. Make sure,” she made herself say, ”that your decision is clear.”

”Do you want help or not?” he asked quietly.

She did not hesitate. ”Yes.”

”Wren?” prompted Nitpicker. ”Bowdie?”

Wren forestalled the other mere. ”Need you to work on the gear,” he said to Bowdie. ”Besides”-he jerked a thumb at Nitpicker-”she expects me to do it anyway. Tucker, you take the middle leg of the platform, I'll take the far leg. Feather and I will try it first. If we miss the cat, the current will push it on toward you.” He pulled his flexor from his belt and, with a twist of his wrist and pressure from his fingers, snapped the malleable weapon into a hook-tipped sword. It took only a moment to double-coil the flexan cord. Once he located the middle of the cord, he sliced it in two and tossed one end to Tucker.

The younger mere threw his coil over his shoulder and head so that he wore it like a bandolier, then stuck his knife in his harness. He grinned at Wren. ”All dressed up with somewhere to go. And I thought this job would be dull.”

Wren shoved his flat knife in his boot as Tsia had done. ”Feather,” he said, moving toward the door, ”you're with me on the far leg.”

”Why you?” Tucker interjected. ”I'm younger and stronger.”

Tsia met the younger mere's gaze with a sardonic expression. ”Wren hffe bigger hands.”

The other mere turned at the door and leered in exaggera-tion. ”The better to catch you with, my dear.” He opened the door and the wind rushed in, deafening them momentarily. Tsia stepped out after him. Tucker pulled up the collar of his blunter and followed with a grin.

The wind gusted brutally, then subsided between blasts to a steady push. For the moment, the rain had stopped almost completely. The only moisture in the air seemed to be whipped off the crests of the sea. Wren touched Tsia's arm and pointed to the gale net packed onto one of the deck columns.

Tsia shook her head. ”The bloom's too heavy,” she shouted back over the wind.

”It's got antigrav units all along its lines.”

”Yes, but without the node to guide their force vectors exactly, they aren't strong enough to fight the jellies.”

Wren nodded. He paused to unclip a pair of safety carabi-ners from the net; Tsia grabbed two more and tossed them to Tucker, angling them into the wind. The younger mere caught them, then made his way along the catwalk to the middle station leg, where he disappeared down the cargo lift.

As Tucker dropped below the deck, Tsia felt the hairs p.r.i.c.kle on her neck. Warily, she looked over her shoulder. Wren deliberately did not follow her gaze. ”What is it?” he asked in as low a voice as he could.

”I don't know,” she said slowly. The only movement she saw was that of the meres by the skimmer, working on the cargo.

”Nothing?”

”Nothing of which I am sure...”

He gave her a sharp look. ”Is there something out there or not?”

”If there is,” she said sharply, ”I can't tell. You know my resolution with humans is only a little better than the link I have with other life-forms.”

”I've seen you differentiate between a human and a biological hundreds of times.”

”Between a man and a bird, yes, given time. But no guide can read energies accurately in a storm. Everything has too much motion. And the difference between an enemy in a shadow or a friend lounging by a hut? That distinction's beyond me. All I can tell is whether or not someone watches us intently-if there's a predator sense in my gate.”

”And?”

”I don't know.” For a moment, she eyed the deck, then the spray blasted up and showered them both with salt. She motioned toward the far leg of the station. Wren nodded.

As she opened her gate further, her eyes became wide and sensitive. She seemed to see with double vision. Light grew. Images blurred. Her throat tightened and rumbled with frustration. By the time she reached the far edge, she could see the bulk of the mother's weedis was.h.i.+ng around the north leg. The sargie's whiskers twitched constantly at the scent of the jellies, and the female's eyes were slitted against the spray. The cougar paused, turned her head up toward the platform, and hissed.

We're coming. Tsia tried to send words to the cat, but the mental sounds spread out and disappeared in the biogate like water mixing in mud. No message reached the cougar. She tried again, this time by projecting a rumbling purr that she built in her own throat, and the catspeak surged in return. The skittering feet sharpened till they seemed to scratch urgently at her thoughts. The snarl that grew in her gate abruptly drowned out her purr.

By the time she ran out on the catwalk, the thin, ropelike weedis, on which the last cub paced, began to wash against the station's base. Jellies bloomed on both sides of the thin ma.s.s; they had shredded the edges till it was no more than three me-ters across. The abandoned cub huddled in the mat like a drowned rat. Every gust of wind sprayed the sea into the weight-crushed nest. Every wave further shredded its raft. Its ears were flat against its head, and its tail twitched miserably from side to side. Even Wren could hear its yowls.

Tsia did not wait for Wren, but stepped quickly onto the rising bar of the lift, checked for the controls, and, ignoring his shout to wait for the safety line, drove the lift down below the upper decks. Dark cliffs of airsponge flashed past with sickening speed. The frigid spray blinded and scratched at her eyes. Black caverns gaped on two sides where chambers were being shaped, and from their darkness she could feel the watchful eyes of storm birds who sheltered from the wind. The platform leg itself was a dirty white; the sponges that formed its base were almost completely solid with metaplas. She sc.r.a.ped her hand along the rough column as she dropped, then jerked it back as the lavalike sharpness of its hardening sides gashed her skin in a shallow, ragged line.

Far down the platform, along the other leg, the female cougar caught sight of Tucker as her larger island washed on past. The cat's immediate growl was so loud in Tsia's head that the guide almost let go of the lift to grab at her temples.

Wait, she told the cat in her head. We're here to help.

Cat feet paced, and claws p.r.i.c.ked at her brain. She found her hands clenched around the lift's vertical pipe so that she had to pry her fingers loose to use the controls again.

Just above the reach of the ocean, she stopped the lift abruptly. She searched the waves with her eyes, but she couldn't see the cub. For a moment, her breath caught. The sea slammed against the station leg and blasted back; the waves dropped away in a steep wall of water, then swept up so fast that it seemed as though they would crush her. Frigid water stung her face and skin to a pervasive ache. Her muscles were already stiff with the chill. In her nose, the scent of the jellies was a bitterness that rotted on the ocean's waves; the odor of the larger weedis was sweet. The smaller weedis was gone. Her breath caught.

”Please, Daya...” She was unaware of the prayer that escaped her lips.

Then, the thin tendrils of the end of the raft surfaced again in the surge. The cougar cub, its nest now awash with water, scrambled from side to side on the tiny island as first one edge, then another submerged.

”Hurry,” Tsia shouted up at Wren. She could see him above, adjusting the safety line on his harness. She could see to the north that Tucker was poised just above the heaviest waves, blasted by spray from his wind shadow. Then Wren's lift dropped even with hers, and the mere's heavy hand thrust the safety line into her grip. Precious seconds pa.s.sed, but she forced her fingers to thread the end of the line through the harness rings on first one thigh, and then the other, and finally her waist. She did not consider wrapping it around her middle to save time. She had fallen on such a swami belt once. It had felt as if her kidneys had jumped up into her throat, and her stomach had popped out her middle. There were reasons, and not just those of having the weapons straps handy, that the meres wore full harnesses when they worked.

The instant she tied off, she dropped the line and sent her lift into the top of the surge. Waves swept up, then down, exposing twelve meters of liftpipe and sodden platform sponge. The sea swept back up the floater leg, touched Tsia's foot, and dropped away again. The leading edge of the thin weedis swept past.

”Almost,” she muttered to the kitten. ”Almost there.”

The cub yowled and spat, then turned in a circle as the water washed its paws. Tsia concentrated. She could feel the cold sea in her fingernails; she could taste it on the roughness of her tongue. The mental link between her and the cub mixed their senses so that she seemed at first unstable, as if she rode the brash, then rock solid on the lift.

Water surged. She dropped the lift and leaned out to stab her hand at the weedis. She missed and plunged her hand only in the water. In an instant, the wave swept back up. She was not prepared for its shocking, frigid power and the sucking strength that pulled at her legs. The gasp that tore from her throat was more curse than breath. With her elbows bent around the pipe, she clung to the lift till the wave subsided again, and regained her feet on the bar. The next trough swept close. Tendrils and seedpods streamed out in the water, and the cub backed away on the island.

”No,” she said sharply. ”Come to me.” She knew the cat could hear her. ”Come.”

The next wave climbed up till the sea washed her feet. Instantly, she drove the lift down, following the surge. Again, the weedis was just out of reach. She ycwled in frustration. On the disintegrating island, the cub circled in growing fear. It could taste the jellies in the sea, and it knew the acid of their tendrils. Tsia could taste its fear; could feel the predator sense of... what? Of the cub? No-something else. Something duller. Something human. Did someone watch? She glanced up, but there were only platform shadows above her, and the two waves that collided in a sudden point when she took her eyes off the sea smashed her against the lift for her stupidity.

Instantly, foaming grit splashed her face; the blunter became a balloon of water. She was dragged off the lift bar until only one stubbornly hooked elbow kept her near the platform leg. Something cut into her thighs, and something else pressed across her shoulders, and she realized that the safety line held her in place.

Wren...

The water changed direction. A jelly sent its stinging tendrils right across her neck. She jerked, and her body twisted as it was swung round the opposite way. The wave subsided; the jelly disappeared. The trough dropped away below her legs. Hanging now in midair by the safety line and her one grip on the pipe, she twisted in the wind Cursing, breathing hard, she pulled her feet back to the bar just as a thick hand hauled her up.

”I'm okay,” she yelled. ”Go again.”

Wren gave her some slack, and she dropped the lift again, but the end of the weedis swept past like a memory too fleeting to grasp. Only the thinnest trail of debris followed after.

'Tucker,” she screamed across the wind. The other mere had been watching, and he signaled as she pointed. ”Do it,” she shouted. ”It's yours.”