Part 15 (2/2)
”I meant no insult. You work this area often. Saw it in your files.” He got to his feet. ”I just wondered, that was all.” He glanced back up the ravine. ”Even if you didn't have family here, I can understand why you stay.”
”Oh?”
He motioned broadly. ”This.”
She followed his gesture. At their feet, whipping treetops bent away; and beside them, trunks rose up so steeply that there were almost no branches to slap their faces. The cut behind them was deep and dark and led to a ridge that was topped with jagged spires. There, the rain seemed to catch and dim the black rock till it was gray as a dream. Tsia nodded slowly. Perhaps he felt it too-the power in the land, in the wind and rain.
The wind shoved her off balance, and Doetzier caught her, but not before a flicker of some dark emotion flashed through his eyes. Warning? Violence? Tsia stiffened and drew back. The man schooled his face to blankness.
He motioned for her to continue. 'Tabletop, the Plain of Tears... What does Derzat mean?”
She stepped back to the trail. ”Dare. Challenge.” Her voice was curt.
”Apt-for you.”
”The wind gets stronger up top,” she said, walking stiffly on. ”Check your stabilizers.”
Noon approached like a slow thought. One kay pa.s.sed and then three more. The brush thickened to an impenetrable ma.s.s along the side of the trail so that Tsia's blunter caught on tangling boughs. Once, when she slipped and hit her knees on the rock, the sharp pain of the bruise shafted through her biogate automatically, and Ruka's answering snarl forced her lips to curl. She cursed the gate beneath her breath, and tried to draw back from its link, but he was growing stronger. With every hour that pa.s.sed, he clawed his way more insidiously into her mind. It snowed in her face-she knew it did. This gate with the cats-the snarling of her lips, the feral gleam in her eyes. How could any of them not see it? Did they think all guides were so wild?
She had not noticed that she'd stopped moving forward, and she jumped when Wren caught up to her on the trail. ”Van'ei wants a break,” he said, raising his voice to repeat his words.
Tsia nodded and didn't even notice that she was looking through Ruka's eyes to find an overhang deep enough for shelter. She pointed to a high cave, its entrance half-hidden by a fallen tree. She climbed up to its ledge and examined it carefully, but there were no scents of larger predators. She stepped out and gestured sharply. One by one, the meres filtered in.
”... would not even have temple links,” Bowdie's voice went on as he nodded at Tsia, ”if it weren't for my family.”
Wren shrugged off his pack with a graceless thud. ”Your family has about as much claim to fame as Doetzier's. And as for Doetzier, a man who carries only one name doesn't have much of a past. I should know.”
” 'A man without a name, is a man who hides from fame,' ” quoted Bowdie. He looked over his shoulder at Doetzier. ”Someday, you're going to tell us your full name, and we'll have one heck of a laugh, because it'll be something like Cecil Fudmandon Brash.”
The tension that surged through Tsia's biogate at Bowdie's words made her stiffen. Quickly, her eyes flicked from mere to mere. Doetzier's gaze seemed open and casual, but Striker had closed up, as if the words had been aimed at her. She studied the two she stared at. Blackjack... Doetzier's questions were far too careful, but what would a wipe have left to lose?
”Names are power,” Doetzier returned calmly. ”And power is not traded away for nothing.”
Bowdie snorted. ”He probably has a dozen names and needs two temple links just to transfer them from line to line.”
”As if you knew enough about temple links to use them if you had more than one.” Kurvan dumped his pack on the floor and rolled his shoulders to ease them.
”My family's responsible for the development of the links,” Bowdie drawled. ”I know more about them than you do.”
”The temple links came out of the cyberdad generation,” Striker said, ”not out of a single family line, no matter what the contribution by the techs in your past.”
”I can't believe you know any history but the Fetal Wars,” Bowdie teased ungently. ”Try this: Yahtra Kalakar Kuhrto.”
Striker's black eyebrows raised. Even Doetzier did not bother to hide his flicker of surprise.
”My great-great-et-cetera-grandfather,” Bowdie added with satisfaction. ”And the Kuhrto Conduit-the biochemical trans-fer of charge. A molecule shaped like a hollow helix. Ions pa.s.s through its middle, like peas through a boost chute. The node sends a signal to your temple link. Your temple link sends a charge through the conduit. The charge triggers your brain. Every image you build and project is translated into an electrical pattern, which can then be pa.s.sed on to the node.”
”Gawd,” drawled Wren in an imitation of Bowdie's speech, ”you're either practicing to be like Striker, or you've inherited the old man's mouth to patter on like that.”
”They say I have his eyes...”
Tsia watched him sharply. Bowdie slouched and drawled as if he belonged more on a trail than a stars.h.i.+p, but his tech rating was as high as Doetzier's. She had seen his ED a few years back, when he'd first come down to Risthmus. He wasn't a line-runner, but he was as hot on a tech job as Kurvan was on a ghost. She tried to focus on Bowdie's biofield, but his eagerness was a blurring heat that almost completely hid the other tiny lights of his emotions.
Silently, she moved to the mouth of the overhang. She closed her eyes, and the sense of her gate swept in. Slick, cold rock seemed to grip her fingers. Her eyes opened and her pupils shrank with the light. Her lips stretched as if she had fangs, and her nostrils flared. Striker touched her arm, and she twisted with a snarl. The other woman backed off, and Tsia, with a shudder, turned her back on the shallow cave and stalked out, climbing quickly off the trail.
She tried to unclench her hands from their clawlike posture, but her fingers did not want to obey. It was not the cold. She licked her lips with the same movement the cougar made, two meters away...
Two meters. She looked up and met the golden, glowing eyes in the figure that crouched on the rock, out of sight of the meres. Tsia's lips stretched in a humorless grin. Let the node keep its ghosts, she thought with sudden violence. And to h.e.l.l with the guilds-let them keep the Landing Pact for those who needed its fences. Wren was right; the cats did not reject her. She broke no law to speak with them-not when it was they who pressed their voices onto her. It was not she, she thought, who created this contact; it was the virus in her body, and the cats themselves who forced their way in. Like a mold, they crawled into her skull. Bound themselves to her memories. And with the node near silent, she could taste the cats like sour fruit-strong and sharp and harsh on her lips. She licked her lips again, and then became still.
”Daya,” she whispered to the cub. ”Six hours with you, and I now justify my crimes as if I did not commit them. No wonder the meres don't trust the guides-I hardly trust myself.” She stared at the golden eyes. ”You follow me like a dog, and I don't know if it is you or I on the leash.”
Ruka's nose touched her hand. She caught her breath to close off the sense of his mind, so focused on her movements. He fought her withdrawal, keeping the gate open by himself. Tsia struggled for a long moment, then shuddered. Whatever cloth was woven between them by her biogate, it was not something
she could tear.
Nitpicker moved to the mouth of the overhang to catch Tsia's eye, and Tsia regarded the woman blankly before shaking herself to respond. The node-those threads of ghost lines... She gave Nitpicker a meaningful look, then glanced deliberately downtrail. The other woman nodded.
A moment later, they met under a tree, while Kurvan and Striker watched from the cave. Tsia didn't
mind; it would have been strange had not someone kept watch on the trail.
She studied Nitpicker's face carefully, but the woman's irises were hidden by the black contacts of the darkeyes, and her expression was blank and waiting. ”There's something wrong with this setup,” Tsia said after a moment. ”I've got access to the node. It's not full access,” she said quickly, ”nor is it through anything but a ghost web, but I'm imaging the node right now and have been for almost ten minutes.”
The other woman stared out from the trail and let her gaze roam across the steep hill to the lake far
below. ”Go on,” she said softly.
”I've got an entire web that's active. Very tight. Seems normal. Except for one thing.” She paused. ”It isn't through any trace on my current ID dot.”
Nitpicker did not s.h.i.+ft her gaze. ”I see,” she said slowly.
”You understand what that means?”
”I do.”
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