Part 19 (2/2)

Tsia's lip curled. ”You're the one who doesn't see me clearly, if you see only the gate in my mind.”

”I see more than your gate, Tsia. I see a guide so lost she knows only the trail she treads, not the life she wishes for herself. I see a Feather so buffeted by the wind that she has no path of her own. I see you accepting your biogate as if it was your only view of the world.”

”I'm a guide. I can't help but see through the gate.”

”See through it or live through it?” Nitpicker studied Tsia for a long moment. ”If you were threatened- if you were told the gate would be taken away, what would you do to save it? How far would you go to protect yourself at the expense of those around you?”

Tsia's eyes narrowed. ”You think I'd betray you to save myself? That I'd trade your life for my gate?” She nodded slowly. ”That's what you think has gone on here, isn't it? You think I've been working against you.”

”Have you?”

Tsia's jaw tightened. ”There's something you're still not saying, Van'ei.”

”Look at you,” Nitpicker returned harshly. ”Your eyes are wild. Your fingers curl like claws. You look like a stormwitch, not a guide. I can see you dancing in this as if it were fire, not wind that whipped your hair. As if your blood burned the same way as your anger. I see death in your footsteps, Tsia-guide. I see it when you're threatened-when you're angry. And I see it when you connect with the cats.” She eyed Tsia with a cold look. ”You never left the cub behind, did you? You drew him here with us, and all along this trail, he's been clouding your mind so that you can't even remember that you're human.”

Tsia could not answer, but the expression in her eyes was enough for Nitpicker to tighten her lips in fury.

”So. I'm right.” She stared out into the valley blindly until she saw the points of light that marked the freepick stake. ”Zyas dammit,” she swore finally. ”No cats as scouts; no obligations; no calling by the humans: that's the Landing Pact that the cats themselves negotiated. But here you are, taking advantage of a cub who's been engineered to link with you if you want it. And you want that badly. Don't deny it, Feather. It's in your eyes.” She cursed again under her breath. ”You disobeyed my orders. The platform stunt was one thing; this is something else. Here, you're deliberately breaking the Landing Pact that you of all people should honor. Sleem take it,” she said in disgust. ”There's some kind of irony in the fact that we're protecting you from the guides, while the guides protect the cats from you. Neither you nor the cats obey the Pact that everyone else is keeping.”

”He wants this link as much as I do-maybe more,” Tsia returned harshly. ”I can taste it in his field. Every time I send him away, he just refuses to go.”

”Do you really expect him to withdraw from what is as strong to his nature as hunting? He's been engineered, Feather, to link with you as a scout. He has no choice in this. You do. And if you let this continue, he could bond with you for life. He could become as much a slave to your gate as you are to the ID dot that protects you from the guides.”

”Van'ei,” she said softly, ”I can't hate him enough to drive him away. He saved my life in the lake. And if he hadn't done so, I wouldn't have known to come back to help you. He-not I-is the reason that you're alive, too.”

”Perhaps.” Nitpicker turned back to the freepick's valley. ”When I was trapped in the mud, there was someone else nearby. Someone who ripped the enbee from my face. You were there. You bear the marks to prove it. You were with Tucker when he died-it was your idea that drowned him. You almost dropped Doetzier on that stretch of rock. You did drop Kurvan on the bridge-it was Bowdie, not you, who caught him and kept him from falling. You led Wren right into the water.”

”I didn't know it was a lake-”

Nitpicker cut her off coldly. ”I accepted Wren's word about Tucker. I gave you the benefit of the doubt about myself. But Kurvan-we saw it, Feather. It was deliberate-your letting go-as if you just threw him away to the rocks.”

”Daya, how can you say this? You know me-”

”Ay, I know you.”

Tsia stared at her. ”You provoke me, then defend me. You joke with me, then push me. We've never been close, but at least we could work together. Now there's something else in your mind. Something you're not saying.”

”I want truth, Feather-guide.” Her eyes flicked to the swollen ring of Tsia's neck. ”I want to know what you see in your gate-if you obey the cats of this world, or if you follow another voice. Something foreign perhaps? Or alien?” She watched Tsia closely.

”I don't understand.”

”I want to feel for myself the truth of what you tell me.”

”I don't know how to give you that.”

Nitpicker said softly, ”But you do know how to choose, don't you? Between an ethic and the desire that

floods you through your gate? Striker will fight to the death to defend a lifer's rights, even if she hates what the lifer stands for. What ethics in you are stronger than your desire for the cats?”

Tsia's eyes narrowed. The pilot's questions probed like a scalpel for the rotted tissue of a pressure bruise.

Nitpicker watched her carefully. ”How far are you controlled by your gate?” she demanded softly.

”How much are you directed by the guide guild you claim to have left? Or directed by something else?”

”I left the guides when the guides left me. I owe them nothing.”

”I've heard that a ten-year guide should be able to pinpoint the organic circuit of an antigrav in the clutter of a s.h.i.+ptech's lab.”

”You know my link,” Tsia returned with vehemence. ”And it's to the cats, not to a bacterium. I have no

such resolution.”

”You don't have to be so linked to feel such detail. All gates should have the potential of that sensitivity.

Linked to the felines or linked with the fish, you should be able to feel a biochip within a dozen meters.”

Tsia stared at her for a long moment. ”I thought you understood,” she said slowly. ”I thought you knew.”

”Knew what?”

She glanced at the other meres, but they were to the side, not downwind. ”I was taken from the guide

guild,” she said, ”before I was trained to my gate. I never learned how to use it.” Her hands clenched with growing frustration. She couldn't blame Nitpicker for her distrust, but she could not help her anger. ”Everything I know,” she said in a low, vehement voice, ”I've learned by myself or through Forrest, and I've got almost no resolution outside the link to the cats.”

Nitpicker regarded her strangely for a moment. ”When you detected the shapers, what did you feel?””I smelled them first-I didn't feel them.””And once you knew they were there?””I isolated them through the gate.”

The other woman nodded.

”It wasn't easy,” Tsia said flatly.

Nitpicker stared out over the black valley till she located the faint lights from the freepick stake in the

distance. ”Your sister works in customs, doesn't she?”

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