Part 9 (2/2)

She reached out and put her hand below the kitten's face, and the cub's upper lip curled back, baring perfect white teeth. Behind her, Tsia could feel Wren tense. For a long moment, the cub took her scent into its nose. Then Tsia extended her hand and touched it on the shoulder. The young body trembled.

She built a picture in her head of the location of the construction hut, then projected it through her biogate as if she imaged the node. ”I won't pick you up again. You can walk beside me.” She did not take her eyes from the cub till it moved, tail down, beside her, while Wren brought up the rear. Half the cougar's steps were sideways so that he could see the man behind him; Tsia could only soothe the feline creature in her mind.

At the edge of the hut, the cat paused to lick the mucus off; the taste of the acidic mixture made the cougar gag. Tsia's own stomach rebelled at the flavor he projected, and she closed her gate abruptly.

The moment her mind receded, the cub backed against the wall of the nearest hut and hissed with instinctive fear.

”It's all right...” Tsia flooded the biolink again with her voice. ”I didn't leave you. This is me. Right here.”

The cub growled low, and Wren moved as gently as he could past the cougar to open the door to the hut. Warily, he glanced back. The wind howled with the cougar's voice, and he grinned for the first time with humor. He wanted to see Nitpicker's face when she caught sight of the cub. Six months old and as big as the guide... He shook his head. He barely kept hold of the door as the wind grabbed it. To the side, the cub leaped away at the movement. Tsia was there in an instant.

Nitpicker yelled from inside. ”Get in or stay out, but get that door shut.”

”Quiet,” Tsia snapped back. ”And don't move.”

She turned to the cub and projected as strongly as she could the sense of safety. With his shoulders hunched, his tail crooked at the tip, and his head low and swaying, Ruka eased through the door. Tsia's voice barely held him from bolting. The scent of the humans filled his nose. The light in the hut shone in his salt-stung eyes. His pupils retracted to small circles, and Tsia felt a dull ache in her own eyes become relieved. She tried to ignore the urge to kick her own legs free of the mucus that stuck to the cat; it was all she could do to hold the cub's mind in place.

Nitpicker, Doetzier, Kurvan, and Striker held their silence. Nitpicker's hands still gripped her dart gun; Kurvan's were full of scanners. The cargo sled obscured Doetzier's lower body, and Striker, beside him, held her tools at awkward angles as she obeyed Tsia's order.

All four stared at the creature that crept through the door. Abruptly, Kurvan set his scanner down. The motion inflamed the stiff-legged cub. He arched till his hair stood straight out from his scruff and hissed at the mere with the scanners. Tsia snarled at him through the gate. For a moment, no one moved. Then, inch by inch, as Tsia's voice coaxed him farther in, the cub stalked to a crate, eyed the room balefully, and sprang on top of the box.

Tsia's mind control was rigid, but she could not help the images that spilled to her own brain from the cub. Each movement seemed sharper to her eyes; every scent was thick in her nose. Something there smelted faintly feline, confusing both cub and guide together, and their two sets of eyes flickered from mere to mere. Wren shut the door, the wind roar whistled and died, and Ruka's ears snapped to point at Kurvan, then Doetzier. His nose swung in a low, slow, continuous movement.

'Tsia,” Nitpicker said softly. The cat's eyes swung back to the woman, and his tail tip whipped. ”We need to discuss your little project.”

Nitpicker's face seemed strangely blurred, and it took a moment for Tsia to realize that she was seeing the mere leader through the cat's eyes at the same time as through her own. She had to blink to clear her vision. ”Ruka's nervous,” she said in a low voice. She moved toward the crate slowly, the skin around her mouth tight as she refused to favor her clawed left leg. The weather cloth shed blood as if it were water, and the fluid that welled from the wounds made sticky runnels down her calves. Along the top of her boots, where her trousers were tucked in, the thick, drying fluid pulled at her skin. ”If I clean the mucus from his fur, he should be less agitated,” she added. ”He'll be better prepared for the flight.”

Nitpicker did not nod, but her eyes flicked to Tsia's legs. ”Shallow or deep?”

”Shallow,” she said shortly. ”I'll get a skin graft on it as soon as the cub calms down.”

The other woman turned deliberately back to her work. Beside her, Kurvan picked up his scanner again and reset the fields he had checked. Ruka growled at their slow movements, but Tsia stroked him along his back, soothing the stiff hair that stood up. Wren, his back to the door, regarded Tsia for a moment before clearing his throat. Nitpicker looked back up.

”There's one other thing,” he said flatly into the quiet, ”Tucker is dead.”

Doetzier turned his head too quickly, and Ruka's legs, tucked beneath his tawny body, launched him at the mere. Like lightning, Tsia's hand buried itself in his scruff and pinned him to the crate. His cat feet scrabbled. He bit air, but she ignored his teeth. Stay down, she snapped through her gate. Down!

Doetzier stood still and stared at her, but she didn't think he saw her. His mind seemed to churn and his biogate-with those tiny points of light-seemed to spark to greater brightness. An anger burst within him into a frigid flame, but all Tsia could see with her eyes was the wariness of his withdrawal.

Wren shook out his blunter, spraying the floor with water. The cub bristled. Nitpicker eyed the cat for a moment, then turned an icy gaze to Tsia. ”Drowned?”

Tsia's gaze shuttered. ”His safety line-there was too much slack. The line blew into the water and was dragged down by the jellies. If he hadn't tied it to the stationary lift-” ”If he hadn't tried to catch a wild cat,” Nitpicker cut in viciously. ”Ifs have never brought a man back, Feather.” Her glare was cold. ”G.o.ddam Landing Pact,” she muttered. ”He had an enbee. What happened to that?”

Ruka snarled into the silence. It was almost instinctual to soothe the cub, and some back part of Tsia's brain noted that the voice of the mother cat was less obvious in her mind-or the cub's voice more clear and overwhelming-each time she opened herself to the cougar. It was not as it had been with Tucker, she thought with sudden guilt. Even when he drowned beneath her, he had not been as clear in her gate as the cub was now. She stared blankly at the pilot.

It was Wren, not Tsia, who answered Nitpicker. ”Tucker lost his enbee in the brash. Feather dove in to get him. Stayed under long enough to half drown herself. It was his stupidity, not hers, that got him killed. She shouted at him three times to get his line out of the surge.”

Doetzier looked from one to the other. ”Why dive in?” he asked quietly. ”How did you think to help him, if he was already dragged down by the bloom?”

Tsia's eyes blazed oddly. Doetzier's gaze sharpened. She felt tension creep into her lean body, and beside her, the cougar cub stiffened. His menace through the biogate was almost palpable. ”I tried to loosen the knots with my flat knife,” she answered slowly. ”I didn't have a flexor to cut the line.” Her eyes flicked to Kurvan. ”But the knots were too snugged up. He was pulled right out of my hands.”

”I hauled her up still screaming,” Wren added in the quiet. ”Practically hit her to make her stop.”

Nitpicker eyed Tsia and the cub. ”Doetzier, are you done with that sled?” At his nod, she said, ”All right, let's get the rest of the gear to the skimmer and give her some s.p.a.ce to clean that thing up.” She glanced at Tsia again. ”Wren will let you know when we're ready to take off.”

Deliberately, Tsia looked at each mere, but their sight seemed to pa.s.s right through her. With her jaw set like concrete, she watched them file out to the storm. Her link to the cat had killed a man, and she could not blame their silence.

The air they left behind seemed clogged with distrust. She stared at the cub. ”So.” Her voice was tight, and she had to force her throat to open. 'Tucker's dead.” The cub growled low in his throat. ”Did you hear me?” she demanded. ”He's drowned and dead, and you watch me with those eyes, and I can feel nothing of him in your mind. He doesn't exist to you.” Her voice tightened. ”To me, he's gone, but that's all I see when I look at you. His absence. Not what he was. Not what he did to save you. Just the fact that you're alive.” She clenched her hands. ”Oh, Daya,” she cried out in a whisper. ”What biogate have I got, which brings my demons to me?”

She looked into the golden eyes and saw herself reflected. Saw her jaw tighten to a white line, while her breathing was harsh in her ears. The cub watched with a growl. Tsia hesitated, then opened her biogate wide.

The senses of the cat swept into her mind. Immediately, her nostrils flared, and her ears seemed to twitch. Her heart pounded far too fast in her chest. The hair on her neck rose up like a brash, and as she stared, her eyes saw every tiny s.h.i.+ft of Ruka's body-every flick of whisker, every rise and fall of the fur on his chest. When she finally s.h.i.+fted, Ruka did the same. His fur smoothed down across his back, and Tsia's shoulders relaxed. Tension flowed out from their bodies like water from a collapsed balloon.

”Ruka,” she whispered brokenly. The cougar growled in return. It was not a threat; she could feel his acceptance.

She got a medkit and pulled out a medwipe, which she stroked across his fur. Little by little, the sponge mucus came off, but its proteins had bonded with his hair and skin, and the scent and slightly tacky feel seemed stuck in the kitten's coat. Following the path of the wipe, his tongue licked him dry. But his lips were curled back at the taste of the mucus, and Tsia's own lips twisted against the flavor he projected.

She paused in her cleaning. Slowly, she reached up to touch his gold-brown head. His fur raised up along his scruff, but beyond that, he moved nothing but his eyes. Tsia touched the hair behind one ear, and the ear twitched irritably. His tail tip flicked. ”Easy.” He growled low in his throat, but he did not snap at her fingers. She stroked the fur again, this time rubbing it with more pressure. The cub still growled, but now he pushed back against her touch. Never letting his eyes move from Tsia's gaze, he accepted her with a wary watchfulness.

She reveled in the coa.r.s.e feel of his fur. The stiffer, waterproof pelt was smooth along his back and legs. A black line like dripped mascara circled his eyes and curled down around his nose, delineating the small areas of softer, whiter fur. She looked down with a humorless smile as he pushed against her hand. ”Don't think to get me too attached to you.” She built an image of the coast in her head. ”That's where we are going- where we'll leave you. From there, you can go back to your family.”

The cub growled again, but rubbed his cheeks on her hands to mark her. For solitary predators, cougars were affectionate, and Ruka was no exception. In the wild, he might not have left his mother till he was two years old, and still the female would not have rejected him. He would simply have drifted off when the new cubs came along. Tsia tried to feel the mother cat, but she could no longer distinguish the rest of Ruka's family from the background din of catspeak. ”Don't worry,” she told him softly. ”She'll accept you back. Cat mothers do, you know.”

Moving slowly, she pulled a generic skin graft from the medkit, then unsealed her boots. The sodden, sea-sweat smell of the liners made the cougar's whiskers twitch. He bared his teeth, and Tsia's lips curled back in response. She stared at him for a moment. A faint scent of Tucker... A memory of his pack beside the wall... Ruka was here, alive and vibrant, and Tucker was dead. And she could not feel anything about his death. Was it too close for her to acknowledge? Or was she so lost in her gate that she had forgotten how to grieve for a death she herself had caused? Abruptly she put the medkit away and stood with savage swiftness.

Barefoot, she stalked to the molecular scrub in the back room. Ruka leapt down and followed like a dog. Tsia's skin p.r.i.c.kled with his proximity. She dropped her blunter over a crate, pulled her s.h.i.+rt over her head without unsealing it, and peeled off her trousers. The blood that welled from the ragged wounds still dribbled down her leg. Her sea-chilled flesh looked much paler beneath her tan than it should; the smeared and crusting blood was stark across the leanness of her limbs.

She examined herself without expression, as if her mind were separate from her body. When she pressed against the flesh, the forming scabs split and forced fresh blood from their edges, and she studied the wound for the depth of its tearing. The sharp throbs that shot across her leg and up her back did not make her flinch. Small pains, she told herself absently. They meant nothing. She had felt much worse in the past.

Quickly, efficiently, she shook her trousers over the scrub block so hard that the safety cubes rattled in their sealed pocket. The caked blood flaked off like dried mud, and the garment shook out almtst as clean as if it were new. Still, she held it in the scrub and waited while the full cleansing cloud formed. The molecules bound to the grit that still clung to the fabric, and the heat stole the chill from her arms.

It took only a minute to scrub her boots, her clothes, then herself. When the salt crystals were gone, her skin no longer scratched itself each time she changed expressions. The weather cloth of her trousers and s.h.i.+rt shed water like gla.s.s, and the blunter dried in seconds in the hydrophilic blasts. In less than two minutes, Tsia was dried and dressed again in all but her trousers, socks, and boots. She ran her hands over her pockets, checking their contents. She hesitated for a moment at the sharp edges of the safety cubes. She bit her lip, then left them alone. There was plenty of time to return them.

Ruka's eyes were large and curious as they followed Tsia back to the other room. When she dropped to the floor by her pack, he padded over beside her and sniffed the tears on her leg. She shoved him gently away. Ruka growled and settled down beside her, and she murmured her approval.

She unrolled the first skin graft and stretched it out over the scratches. The blood still welled out, but she ignored the flow and pressed the thin, transparent sheet over her flesh. She could feel the instant response. As soon as it was exposed to oxygen, the dormant layer of cells activated. Her biogate seemed tickled with molecules that moved and s.h.i.+fted and touched each other, binding and releasing their chemical signals throughout the graft.

Amino acids coiled back upon themselves. They bent and flattened and screwed themselves into helixes. They collapsed into rough spheres with pits and clefts on their surfaces. They became proteins, and Tsia's body reacted. Her skin and blood and muscle cells sent out cyclins to the graft. Kinases filled the protein pits with tiny ball-like shapes. AH across the area, phosphate molecules broke off from or attached themselves to enzymes. She could actually sense the neocell membranes open and close to the chemicals. Goose b.u.mps spread out across her thigh. To feel life at such a tiny level...

She found her lips pulled back in a feral snarl. Ruka stared at her with fear in his mind, and she could smell the sweet scent of herself in the cougar's nose. She murmured to the cub, soothing him with her voice until she felt the graft cells differentiate. One moment, the graft seemed to crawl with tiny, chaotic movement-as if it were coated with billions of excited molecules that had no pattern to their dance -and the next, it actually was alive.

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