Part 9 (1/2)

now. You still want the cat?”

She breathed in and out, trying to calm the emotions churning in her throat and head. She nodded jerkily.

”Can you keep the jellies away from yourself?”

She nodded again.

His voice was cold as the ocean, and his gray eyes reflected the waves. ”Then do it if you're going to. I'll

keep you on the line.”

She did not move for a moment, then she turned her face into the wind and met the storm's blast head-on.

The weedis was nearly gone. The cougar cub was meters away and almost fully submerged as it washed

against the platform, caught in an eddy that sucked and pulled at its body. Tsia watched for a moment,

then pulled some slack on the safety line. ”It was the line itself that killed him,” she muttered. ”It was the safety line which dragged him down.” Blindly, she undid the knots on the rings of her harness. Wren, judging the distance between the lift and the island, did not notice. When he looked back, he cursed and made a futile grab for the wind-whipped end of the line.

”Are you crazy?” he yelled.

She looked at him as if she had never seen him before. Then, before he could move, she dove into the water.

Liquid ice closed over her head. It was water, frigid and sharp with salt. She could not see, yet there were shadows in her head. Sharp and clear as if she saw it on land, the cub clawed the sea before her. She struggled against the current. Weeds tangled in her legs, and seedpods wrapped on her arms. A jelly rose and pressed against her stomach before it rolled over and reached for her legs with its tendrils. She blasted it through her biogate as she had the ones before. In a second, its white, pumping body crumpled and sank back through the depths.

The water rose and fell with sickening suddenness. She fought to stay near the surface. Deafened by the cub's misery, her ears did not register the sounds of the waves striking the side of the platform. Instead, blindly, she groped for the cat. An instant later, the cub clawed its way onto her shoulder, driving her down below.

She submerged, and in a panic, the cat tried to let go of her blunter. Its claws caught, and it went down with her, beneath the tumbling crest of the wave. Tsia's lean legs kicked. Her head broke the surface in the trough of the swell that followed. The cub sucked air silently. It no longer struggled in her grasp.

”Easy,” she soothed. She had no breath for more.

She could see the platform looming overhead, but it was not until the next crest lifted them that she saw where they were. They had washed out of the eddy and pa.s.sed the middle leg completely. Wren was behind her now, cursing on the leg. He seemed to shoot the lift up, and Tsia almost cried out in despair. Even in the instant her head was above the water, she could see that there was no time for him to get to the southern leg; she and the cub would be long past the platform by then and smack in the midst of the bloom. A brutal wave dropped her, then sucked her under like a jelly. The cub cried out in her head. Easy, she choked through her gate. She tried to force her arm to strike out against the current, but the shape of her jacket was a water sail that pulled her farther away from the platform. Farther away from Wren.

Hang on, d.a.m.n you, she cursed herself. The wave lifted her. A jelly sc.r.a.ped her back. She blasted it through her gate, but it did not go away. Now it was around her neck, and its rough touch burned her skin and sparked her anger to a flame. ”Dammit,” she shouted. She submerged, choked on her curse, and rose again. Wirelike tendrils swept again against her neck, and she cursed and grabbed the ma.s.s with her free arm. And grasped them like death itself.

They were no part of a jelly. It was the safety line. She pulled on it, going under as her weight and the cub's drove it down. Wren. He had thrown the line to the wind, and the storm had pa.s.sed it on to her.

She twisted as the line was hauled taut against the current. Water beat her down, and her breath burned in her chest. She had no endurance in her lungs. The burn of the cub's lungs was like her own. When the next crest pa.s.sed and the surge lessened for an instant, she caught half a breath from the surface. She choked, coughed, and lost the air she had gained. Her body bent in a convulsive heave, but she didn't let go of the line.

Current streamed past her face. The cub was tugged from her body, and she clutched it hard, her hand digging into its scruff, her will ignoring the terror that filled its mind. Hang on, she told it in her head. One moment more. One second more...

Water in her nose, her eyes. Water in her ears. Deafness to match the blindness; and sickness rising in her throat. Salt tongue and sweet, weed teeth. She ate and breathed the sea, and the safety line burned in her fingers. She tightened her grip. The current smashed her face; the next giant crest crushed her body. She tried to twist her hand and wrist so that the safety line coiled around her arm and cut into her flesh through the blunter. She snapped her body like a flexor, and as she jackknifed up, her face was suddenly above the sea. She sucked the air desperately. Trapped against her chest, the cub made no sound except in her head. There it whimpered with shortened breaths and dug its claws in fiercely.

Jellies rose around her, but they no longer touched. Again she broke the surface, and again she caught a breath. Half a second. Barely more, before the water smashed her down again. She could no longer hold her breath at all. She could only clutch the line in her fingers and kick, for Daya's sake, kick to keep them near the top of the waves and keep the line from uncoiling off her arm.

She coughed and spit out the sea. Fur was crushed to her chest, and awkward joints jabbed her ribs. Still, the current grew faster, rus.h.i.+ng with more power past her face. It jammed itself in her ears and made her body lie straight out in the water till she flailed like a length of rope herself.

And then they were clear, and a clublike hand hauled them off the sea. Wren clung, one hand on the lift and one hand on Tsia's blunter. He submerged with them, then fought his way free. As the water swept down, he clawed his way up toward the controls. Savagely, he jerked them with him. The surge chased them up. A second later, he hit the controls and sent the lift shooting from the surge while Tsia and cub hung from his hand like a limp and bodiless cargo.

s Tsia could not see at first. She clutched the cub like the lifeline, and could not make her fingers uncurl. Her eyes were slit-ted like a cat's. Looking at her bared expression, Wren did not doubt the cub had called her to help it. She breathed so harshly he could hear it over the wind.

As the lift reached the platform deck, he slid one hand around her waist and half propelled her forward while she coughed until she retched. Her arms were still curled around the cub as she went to her knees on the catwalk.

”Daya,” she croaked. She could see things other than the purple-white deck now: Wren's hooked nose, his pale gray eyes. His gaze darting from her to the cub as he watched and judged her movements. The dark shades of his blunter, the sea spray beading and running off, while more fell like rain from his eyebrows.

With one hand on her back to balance her in the wind, Wren stripped a seedpod from her blunter and a clump of weeds from her boot. She reached up to him, and through her biogate, she could feel his sudden tension, the wariness that was reflected in his eyes. For a moment, she froze. Then she realized that her hand was stretched out like a cat's paw. She blinked, and the feral light seemed to fade from her eyes.

”Okay?” he shouted over the wind.

She did not try to speak again; she just nodded. Her stomach churned, and she felt disoriented by the smell of the wind. It took a moment to realize that the confusion was not all her own, but half from the cub in her grip. She soothed the creature with her hands, but it did not relax. Its nostrils were filled with her scent and the odor of the man. Even through the weather cloth of her s.h.i.+rt, she could feel the light, quick hammer of its heart. As if the death blow would fall any instant, it trembled against her body.

She sat back on her heels and stared into the cougar's eyes. Like a shock wave through her body, her biogate seemed to expand. The snarling in her head deafened her ears. Startled, she turned her head and broke the link. Then, slowly, she reached up to her neck and grasped the claw that was hooked in her neck to s.h.i.+ft it onto her blunter. A second later, the cougar dug it back in. She s.h.i.+fted it again, holding the paw until its claws pierced the fabric of her jacket instead of her skin. The cougar growled.

”Stop it,” she said softly.

Clumsy cat feet seemed to tumble through her brain.

”Ruka,” she soothed, ”take it easy. It's all right now.” She halted.

Ruka. The cat had a name.

Startled, she looked up at Wren. ”It is Ruka.”

His eyes shuttered. ”You named it?”

”I did not. It had a name that it spoke.”

”Through your gate?”

She nodded. The cub still growled, but fear was no longer the dominant sense in its mind. As if the biogate had changed its view of her from human being to cat, it clung to her like a child to its mother. Tsia could barely hold it in her arms. It had been small compared to the older cat, but it weighed almost as much as herself.

Wren reached down and started to haul her to her feet, but at his movement, the cub twisted and hissed. Tsia wrenched it away and staggered up to her feet.

Wren stepped back and said nothing, but his eyes were flat and hard. He motioned toward the bulk of the construction hut. Tsia nodded. She made to follow Wren, but the cub kicked and raked with his back legs so that his claws tore raggedly across her thighs. Staggering, Tsia cursed. The cub vaulted from her arms. He landed half-on, half-off the catwalk and yowled as his rear legs sc.r.a.ped across the sponge. Mucus spread like a film of saliva on his spiky wet fur. In her head, Tsia felt the mother cougar yowl. Abruptly, she poured her strength through the gate to drown out the mother cat's voice. Stop. Danger, she sent urgently.

Startled, the cub froze. Wren stayed motionless, his eyes darting from one figure to the other. Ignoring the ragged throb in her thighs, Tsia edged toward the cougar slowly. The blood smell rising through her clothes mingled with that of the sea-water, and the two rotting-sweet odors made her want to gag. Downwind, the kitten's nostrils flared.

”You're safe here, Ruka,” she told the cub softly. ”It's all right. No one's going to hurt you.”

His tail flicked and his shoulders crouched, and belatedly she realized that, between the strange smells and the human sound of her voice, the cougar could not help his reaction. She spread her hands and became still as the cub paced with odd jumps back and forth on the catwalk. The sponge mucus frightened him as much as Tsia did, and his mind was a jumble of terror and immature fury. ”All right,” she said softly, projecting her voice through her link to the cat, not just through her throat. ”You're all right now.” As the wind rose and fell, the cub began to hear her voice more as a soothing purr.

She kept her gaze locked on the glowing eyes of the cougar, and the cub's scruff and tail fluffed with his warning. ”Easy,” she said again. ”I won't harm you. I'm no predator to you.”