Part 13 (1/2)

She shrugged.

Striker barely opened her eyes. ”No microbe would dare dig into a guide's flesh or bone. You know what they say: You can't kill a guide 'less you get one through his gate.”

” 'Sightless without the biogate, and blinded when they use it,' ” murmured Doetzier. He pulled his darkeye case from a slot in his weapons harness, gave Tsia a glance, then neatly slid the darkeyes into first one, then the other brown eye. The contacts turned his irises completely black, and he blinked twice to center them. Expressionlessly, he returned Tsia's gaze.

Tsia hid a s.h.i.+ver. The darkeyes the other meres used, which made motion and contrast so clear, made a guide claustrophobic. Without her link to the cats, which sharpened her vision of movement, she could never have worked as well as she did with the meres. Her night sight was only half as good as vision through the darkeyes. She eyed the other two packs in the cave. ”Did we lose the rest of the gear?” she asked.

Striker grunted affirmation.

Doetzier eyed Nitpicker as she pulled the skin grafts from the medkit beside her. ”What happened down there?” he asked quietly. ”Wren said Feather came back for his enbee, then he sent Bowdie to help.” Nitpicker shrugged. ”I got tangled in the slide. Lost my enbee. Mud kept coming. Feather called the eels to dig me out.” Gingerly she unsealed her trousers from her boots.

Doetzier eyed Tsia speculatively. ”I thought eels were carnivorous.”

Nitpicker rolled her trousers above the first bite mark. ”They are.” She glanced over at the other mere.

”Toss me that scame, would you? And get me some seam-sealer.”

Doetzier complied. Tsia, unable to meet Nitpicker's eyes, got to her feet and pulled her blunter close

around her body. When she stepped out from under the overhang, Wren and Bowdie made room for her beneath their rock. Behind her, Doetzier watched her retreat with thoughtful eyes.

”Nice job, getting 'Picker out,” Bowdie murmured.

”Thanks.”

”Thought she was a goner when I first came down. Those eels were so thick on the scanner that I could

hardly tell you were in the midst of them all.”

”Thought you were an eel yourself, the way you latched on to my arm.”

He shrugged. ” 'Picker was in trouble, and I didn't know what you were doing. Good thing you're a fast

firmer.”

”Good thing you read it as fast as I send.”

They fell silent, but Tsia regarded Bowdie warily. There was still a tension in his biofield, and it grew

when she was near him. Did he think she had shoved the pilot in the mud herself? There had been

someone else there-before she went back for the pilot. A presence she had not read in her panic with the mud. And Nitpicker was now as tense as the man...

To the north, Ruka picked up her restlessness and reflected it back through the gate. The tautness of the bond between them stretched like the muscles of Nitpicker's shoulders, and Tsia s.h.i.+vered. Then the wind ruffled Ruka's wet fur, and she realized that the knot in her stomach was partly from the ache in the belly of the cougar.

”Go away,” she breathed to the cub. ”Go hunt if you're hungry. Don't knot up my guts with your need.”

Yet he crouched and waited, as if she would bring him his meat. ”East,” she said impatiently. ”Go toward the coast. The beach. The smell of salt. Your family waits for you there.”

Wren glanced up as her lips moved, and she caught his look. Without speaking further, she stepped out from under the rock and tilted her face to the sky. Overhead, the purple-gray clouds streaked across in a boiling, seething ma.s.s. Like horses that churned up the sky, they raced from behind the trees to the rain-smashed tops of the hills. With mindless speed, they tore each other apart.

Bowdie gazed out at the lake, his brown eyes shuttered. His thick brown hair dripped onto his eyebrows with rain, and he raised his hand to wipe it across his forehead. ”Lot of rain for a single storm.” He spat his last seed and glanced again at Tsia. ”Thought it was going to get tough down there. Thought Van'ei was a goner.” He turned and moved back in the cave.

Tsia glanced at Wren. The rus.h.i.+ng sound in the wet leaves made a roar like the cats in the back of her mind. Tiny hot points that rumbled in her head... That was what Bowdie felt like-tiny sparks of light that sharpened when she used her biogate like a scan. Tsia drew in a breath and let it out so that the biofields were subdued, and only the sense of Ruka remained strongly in her thoughts.

She hesitated, then said quietly, ”The cub isn't leaving me.”

Wren chewed for a moment without speaking. Finally, he said, ”Saw it in the lake. He swam in, then went right back out again.” He spat a seed to the side. ”You called him?”

”He came back for me. He's there now, to the right.”

”Does he know he's pus.h.i.+ng you to work against the Landing Pact?”

She shook her head. ”I think he's too young to read that from the minds of the other felines.”

”Thought the knowledge was coded into his genes-into his memories.”

”It is, but he's also probably too young to trigger that part of his brain. When he goes back, his mother will teach him before they grow apart.”

”Even if he doesn't know the Pact yet, seems like he ought to want to get back to his mother, rather than hang around on your human heels, squatting in the mud.” He popped another seed in his mouth. ”He ought to at least want out of the rain.”

She stared back at the trees where Ruka's tawny form flickered briefly between the trunks. ”Cougars don't care much about weather,” she said slowly. ”They'll hunt in rain or sleet-they'll track an elk through a snowstorm. Not much seems to bother them. That's why they made such good scouts for the First Droppers. They can live almost anywhere, eat almost anything. They aren't so small that they become a prey species, and they aren't so big that they can't hunt enough food from among the rats and reavers.”

”And he's not hungry now?”

”He's hungry, but he's... linked with me. He doesn't want to leave.”

”Linked?” Wren's voice was suddenly sharp.

Stiffly, she nodded. ”They're more open to it when they're young. It's part of their socialization.”

Wren gave her a sober look. ”You're playing a dangerous game, Feather.”

”It's not as if I have a choice. The Landing Pact-”

”The Landing Pact may be law, but even it has limits. And the guide guild has as long an arm as the lifers, when they were in power. The guides watch the felines as if they themselves were hunters. You're not truly safe, even here with the meres. Remember that.”