Part 14 (1/2)
Over the next several days, however, Tarlac was too busy to teach; he was studying instead, fourteen hours a day, which left him time for little except food and sleep. He didn't mind the hard work; it was interesting, and it would very probably keep him alive--if anything would.
Hovan did leave him time to study the first-contact tape and read the daily news summaries the Supreme had delivered as promised. Neither brought any surprises, though he paid close attention to the tape, trying to find some way the war could have been avoided. Doing so wouldn't solve this situation, but it might help prevent another first-contact disaster.
He didn't find anything. The tape simply confirmed Hovan's account of the first human/Traiti meeting, adding little to Tarlac's knowledge except a sight of the guards.h.i.+p crew's intense horror when they saw women aboard an armed scout, being taken into danger only males should face. The human scouts had followed first-contact procedure, Tarlac found; the problem was the mixed crew, and there was no point in changing that. Anything the Empire did there--except perhaps for crewing all scouts with Irschchans, whose s.e.x was difficult for non-felinoids to distinguish--could be just as bad, depending on the culture being contacted. And that had other practical difficulties.
No, the Ranger decided, it was what he'd originally called it: a mutual misunderstanding. What he'd called the Empire's fault, to Daria, had been unavoidable. Neither side could be blamed.
The news summaries reported that the Empire was winning as steadily as ever. It was the casualty reports that bothered Tarlac. The Imperial losses were lighter than predicted, and he knew few individuals in the Empire well enough to feel more than mild regret at their deaths; but the increasingly heavy Traiti casualties upset him with their sheer numbers.
More, some of them hit him very personally. The loss of people from Ch'kara, even people he'd never met, left a void. They were a loss to the entire clan, and it wasn't balanced by the birth of a son to one of the n'ka'ruhar on Norvis--though Tarlac did share the clan's joy at that event.
The losses couldn't intensify his need to end the war, though. Nothing could; it was already the central fact of his existence. So, aside from paying attention to the news summaries and the necessities of life, Tarlac spent all his time on the concentrated study that might keep him alive through the Ordeal.
All the same, it was a welcome break when, just before dinner the evening of his tenth day on Homeworld, Hovan informed him that school was over and invited him to join one of the fighters' discussion groups after eating.
Tarlac pushed himself away from the study unit and stood, stretching luxuriously. ”That sounds good, and I could sure use the change. Have you decided when I'm supposed to go out?”
”Tomorrow, or if you prefer, the next day.”
”Okay. Tomorrow, then. I still don't care to waste time.”
”I thought you would not. I arranged for a null-grav car for midmorning; I will take you to the test area myself.” He smiled a little. ”Before we leave, you will have to make a decision. Now that you know all the dangers, you must choose whether to remain in the test area for the full two ten-days, or attempt to walk out. The Ordeal requires that you survive, nothing more.”
”Mmm.” Tarlac frowned. ”Staying put's safer, but if I'm lucky, walking out should only take five or ten days. That's ten, maybe fifteen days saved--I'll take the chance. And I'll bet you expected that, too.”
Hovan's smile widened. ”I did. It means you will carry a locator beacon as well as your knife, timed to go off in twenty days. If you are not back here by then, we will come for you.”
”Yeah, okay. You know me pretty well, don't you? Let's eat.”
He slept that night as if he had nothing hanging over him, and when he went to first-meal, barefoot and wearing only shorts and a knife, he was greeted with enthusiasm and urged, almost forced, to eat heartily.
It was the last meal in quite a few days, he was concernedly told, that he could be sure of.
”Hey, don't worry about that!” he rea.s.sured them, chuckling. ”Being small does give me some advantages--I can go for two or three days without eating and without getting really hungry.”
That drew some exclamations of disbelief. A Traiti who fasted for even a single day would feel severe hunger pains, and three days would leave one seriously weakened.
”An advantage that may balance his lack of claws and his thin skin,”
Hovan pointed out. ”It seems a fair exchange; otherwise he faces the same hazards we do.”
”Yeah,” Tarlac said. ”It's a little hard to convince an overgrown bobcat to pull its punches.”
”N'derybach are not known for their peaceful dispositions,” Hovan agreed. ”But if you are done eating, we should leave. You will want as much daylight as you can get.”
”Okay, let's go. I'm as ready as I'll ever be.”
Moments later, Tarlac and Hovan were climbing into one of the clan's null-grav cars. Hovan was confident that Steve was, as he'd said, truly as ready as possible; there was no point in a last-minute briefing, so they made the trip to the test area in companionable silence.
Twenty n'liu from the clanhome, slightly over fifty kilometers, Hovan set the null-grav car down in a clearing, reached into a storage compartment in the control panel, and handed Steve the locator beacon.