Cataract. Part 12

"We've got nose-breathers-"

"Does no good in mud or silted water. Move it! Now!"

Tsia glanced toward Nitpicker; Doetzier grabbed one more pack and jumped for the hatch. Bowdie jumped at the same time, and Doetzier hung for an instant as Wren and Kurvan grabbed the larger mere by his collar to help him up through the hatch. Water began to slide in over the edge. Clinging to the rim, Doetzier was blinded by the torrent, while the force of it twisted him violently. Wren had hold of his wrists, but the gray-brown cataract tore Doetzier down by his pack even as Wren yanked him up.

"Drop the pack-" shouted Wren. "Unbend your arm. Get rid of the pack-"

Tsia's biogate seemed to surge, and Doetzier seemed to shout his rejection in her head. Wren cursed. His muscles bulged. Then he dragged Doetzier over the edge like a log hauled up through a waterfall.

As if his body had been a plug, the cascade turned into a deluge. Tsia was pounded into the corner of the cabin. She couldn't see Nitpicker or anyone else. Even with her arm over her face, she could barely breathe in the bone-smas.h.i.+ng torrent. In her mind, Ruka snarled and seemed to grow closer. Something snapped taut between them. Some part of her mind melted. She tried to scream, but the sound was not human, and it did no good anyway-the water smashed the shriek against her teeth and jammed it down in her throat. Her claws stretched up. Ruka's hands stretched down. The biogate was torn in two. And in its place, a mental cable of solid will twisted out from the gate and whipped around both minds: the one, in the lake, with furred, pumping legs that pushed his body through the waves; and the other, with her teeth bared and pounded by the water that crushed her against the walls.

Frantically Tsia groped for the pouch that held her nose-breather, but the enbee was not there. Panicked, she tore at every seal in her harness. It took an eternity to realize that her clothes had twisted with the flow of the water; the pocket was not where she thought. With her hands clumsy as paws, her lungs began to burn long before she found the enbee in its pouch. A second later, she shoved its tapers up her nostrils, sealing her nose from the lake.

The water immersed her torso now, and the savage pounding lessened over her chest and legs till it felt like only a hundred rubber hammers banging at her flesh. Now only her head was still smashed with blinding brutality against the skimmer wall. She dragged the collar of her blunter up over the side of her face, then forced herself to wait, pinned against the wall of the cabin while her pack tangled more in the webbing and the enbee's chemflaps glued themselves to her cheeks on either side of her nose. Finally, she drew a breath of air. In her mind, Ruka's lungs expanded. Her skin ruffled like fur in the whirlpool current that circled the cabin area. An arm brushed her body, and she grabbed it; Nitpicker twisted with the flow and squeezed a message back against her hand. Wait.

Tsia acknowledged the finger-tapped message with pressure of her own. A moment later, she struggled free of the webbing and followed the pilot to an air pocket at the front end of the cabin. Her head broke the surface with an audible gasp. She looked around quickly, while Nitpicker peered down at the submerged conn. The skimmer lights were still on, but the water was so thick with sludge that neither woman could see her waist, let alone her feet.

Nitpicker groped in her blunter for her enbee. "We have a few seconds-" she managed as she caught her breath. But by the time she plugged her nose and sealed the chemflaps to her cheeks, the water had risen half a meter. The two women were floating with their toes barely brus.h.i.+ng the walls. Tsia made to move toward the hatch, but Nitpicker held her back. "Wait-"

Her voice was m.u.f.fled by the sound of water and the closeness of the flooded cabin. Tsia nodded, but in her mind, the sense of the cat was overwhelming.

Nitpicker caught sight of the feral glints in Tsia's eyes. She dug her fingers into the guide's shoulders. "Not now, Feather. Not yet."

Tsia nodded jerkily. She could feel Ruka swimming, his thick, furred legs like pistons in the water. The water closed up to the hatch; the air pocket shrank to a half-meter's height. Tsia's back arched automatically as the shape of her pack pushed her hips down. Nitpicker kicked her legs in a scissors kick and fought to hold her position. They washed in a tiny circle. Tsia tried to see through her gate-through Ruka's eyes-for the mud that must even now be sliding toward them, but all she could see was the motion from the waves of the lake.

Ruka, she shouted through her gate. Look toward the mud!

The cat obeyed, and Tsia's eyes flooded with shapes that flickered and s.h.i.+fted. The trees in her mind bent like berry pickers. There were the tiny figures of meres who crawled out of the water. Cold water slapped her nose, and her ears twitched with the fluid that filled them. And to the cougar's right, in his mind and in her own, she saw the hill s.h.i.+ft down toward the lake.

"The mud's coming now," she gasped. "We have to go-"

But neither woman was prepared for the brutal slos.h.i.+ng that slammed them up against the roof and dropped them again with ankle-jamming force against the backs of the seats. The reaction wave washed them away from the hatch and up into the front of the s.h.i.+p. They hit the roof hard before being sucked viciously back down.

Tsia could not fight the awkward shape of the pack. Her ears popped. Depth, she thought. They had dropped at least five meters. Submerged, she breathed completely through the enbee while her hands grabbed on to rough fabric. She pulled herself along the wall till she found the gear webbing. She could feel Nitpicker nearby.

Black, stirred-up silt blinded her. Lake grit bubbled into her mouth. The enbee stripped oxygen from the murky water, but its silt-plugged filters gave her limited breaths. She gathered her legs beneath her and thrust herself toward the hatch.

Something caught her at her waist. She ignored it and hit the edge of the opening with her shoulder. The pack caught. She twisted, freed it, and grabbed the slick metaplas edge to pull herself out. Nitpicker was right behind her-she could sense the other woman in the water. Sense another mere nearby. Silt swept into her face and urgently she shoved herself away. Behind her, Nitpicker followed suit. And then the mudslide slithered over and buried the skimmer like a fat snake on an egg.

Disoriented, Tsia stroked hard, her body rolling as the pack fought her for buoyancy. A second later, her hands. .h.i.t mud and struck deep into waterlogged sludge. An eel slid across her wrist; instantly, she recoiled. Beneath her, the mud gathered speed and slid on past. The slick mire caught at her feet like quicksand. With sudden panic, she whipped her body madly, but as she twisted, the pack caught in the slide. She panicked and jerked one arm free of the straps. Cat feet seemed to tear at the surface she stirred up. Then she tore herself away from the gear, leaving it behind, buried in mud, while she clawed her way through the water.

She moved into a long-armed stroke that was instinct as much as training. Her boots felt like bricks on her feet; her blunter trailed and rippled like drags along her sides, and her flexor snapped against her thigh with every kick of her legs. She didn't know if she swam up or sideways; only that she was no longer in mud and that the cub seemed close-too close. The sh.o.r.e-she tried to image the sh.o.r.e to the cub, but Ruka hissed in return.

At the sound in her head, she stopped swimming. For a long moment, while her heart pounded and her cheeks poured then-heat into the water, she floated without moving. The cold water began to chill; the silt ground between her teeth. She could not see, but when she put her hand over her face, the bubbles floated out through her fingers, and she knew finally that she was on her back.

She turned over and checked her bubbles, and this time, she followed the air to the surface. Pressure did not allow the enbee to give her full breaths, and her nose sucked in as she pulled only shallow breaths from its filters. She hit a warmer clime in the water, and a cold one as she followed her gate toward the sense of the cat. Then she hit the surface so abruptly that her arms were half out of the water before her eyes registered the lighter, flat-reflecting gray. Something b.u.mped her from behind.

She twisted like a fish. Ruka? She cried out in a sound that was more sob than laugh of relief. Golden eyes stared back. The cub had not swum to sh.o.r.e. He'd stayed behind like a beacon to guide her. She opened her mouth to say his name, and her mouth filled with the slap of the water. She choked, went under, kicked back to the surface, and motioned through her gate toward sh.o.r.e.

The wind slapped water up against their two heads; the rest of the lake was flat. The storm had whipped off the crests that would have formed in calmer air; the spray from the missing crests was a vicious, horizontal rain. Tsia squinted to keep her eyes clear and began to swim toward sh.o.r.e, but her body did not lie flat in the water. Her legs dragged down with the weight of her boots, and like a sail, the blunter billowed around her.

A wave struck her in the head, and she didn't have a chance to struggle before she went under. In her mind, the cougar yowled, but she rea.s.sured it instantly. She had her enbee-she could breathe; air was not a problem. And swimming a meter underwater, she realized suddenly, was easier than fighting to stay on top. Even blurred, Ruka's sight through the gate told her where the meres were on the sh.o.r.e. There were two on the bank already, a third climbing out from the water with the aid of a fourth, and one more in the water ahead.

Tsia paused and kicked and recounted.

Five.

Not six. One of the meres was missing. With the wind and water blinding her, she could not tell which one. She opened her biogate to feel for the sense of a human, but she had to close herself to the cub; the sense of him swamped her so that she could not feel the other species. The void that she created ached with the faint sense of marine life that was left.

Floating, carried by the wind current on the surface, she forced herself to concentrate. She began to identify distances and the mental shapes of light. Below, there was a growing sense of eels, and a school of slim, blue-green tealers surged to her left. Wedge growths of weeds waved on the bottom. And each second that pa.s.sed, she felt the meres more clearly.

Wren was first and easiest-she almost smelled him as much as saw his cold, hard energy. Doetzier and Striker-a cool, wary tension; and a closed, shallow light. Kurvan up ahead, wading out of the water, his field as wary as Doetzier's, but his energy strong and hot. Bowdie with the heat of fear and irritation clear even at that distance, as though he forced himself to do something of which he was afraid. And Nitpicker...

She could not quite feel the pilot... She opened her biogate wide, and the weight of life in the lake swept in like a shadow that darkened her mind. It took a moment to separate her senses from the one that she sought. And she realized that what she felt was behind her with the eels. Behind, she thought, and down. As if Nitpicker was still with the s.h.i.+p. As if the woman was...

Trapped. Abruptly, Tsia kicked hard for the sh.o.r.e, moving partly against the wind current to reach Wren where he waded out to help her. "Your enbee!" She shouted. She'staggered on the bottom and sat abruptly down, her neck deep in the lake. "Your enbee--did you replace it on the station?" She yanked her blunter from her arms; it sank just below the surface, but she didn't care. Wren would pick it up. "I need the breather." Quickly, Wren dug his new enbee from his pocket as she ducked under again and struggled to wrench off her boots. A moment later, she surfaced, grabbed the enbee with one hand, shoved the boots and flexor into his arms, and threw herself in a long, twisting dive back into the lake. Wren was left, waist-deep in the water, staring at the flat-calm surface. His eyes narrowed, he stooped, groped in the water for the blunter Tsia had left behind, and hauled it up. He looked back twice. Tsia came up and stroked strongly along the surface, then went down and did not come up again.

Barefoot and free of her blunter, she moved smoothly down through the climes. The fabric of her clothing rippled against her skin. She could feel Nitpicker more closely now, but the biofield was weak.

With each meter that she dropped, Tsia found her heart pounding in her temples and her lungs beginning to ache more than her arms. She struggled for her breaths before she realized that she had closed off her own throat. Breathe, she snapped at herself. She had an enbee. She had air to take in. It was Nitpicker she was feeling-Nitpicker who had no air.

Air... The strength of the biogate brought her memories too close to the surface of her mind, and a vision of white hands seemed to stretch out in the water. She gasped and choked as water came in her mouth. The sense of children drowning... Tucker at the platform; Monument Rock in the past... Urgency clutched at her skin. The cougar growled, and the sound amplified the memories until it seemed as if a thousand voices flooded into her mind and deafened her.

"No!" She shouted the word underwater. This was not then-it was an hour since Tucker had died. Twenty years since the children had drowned: tiny hands, cold hands, little mouths begging her to get them out of the mud, out of the cold, out of the slough that choked them with every surge of tide. She tried to close the memories out of her mind and focus only through Ruka, but ghosts from the node flickered in her head and overlaid themselves on the hands. She shoved them away harshly. She stretched -she reached-she tried to feel only Nitpicker, but something interfered It was the beginning of unconsciousness.

An iciness struck for the first time through the waters of the lake. Desperate for speed, Tsia reached out to the cub and sucked up the strength he projected, but that was a mistake. In her haste, she shot past the woman below before she felt the change in the biofield's intensity. She twisted, sculled, and flipped around, stroking back along the bottom. This time, she went more slowly, her hands outstretched and searching above the sludge.

She could feel Nitpicker's panic grow as the first drowning blackness faded and the colors began to burst behind her eyes. Exhaustion clung to Tsia's legs, but as the mud churned before her, Tsia realized that she sensed not her own ache but the other woman's body. The weight-the fear... Nitpicker was pinned in the mud.

Tsia struck out widely, sweeping to reach as far as she could. Weeds, silt, a submerged snag... Then a hand that hit, then latched on to her arm like a talon, cutting deep in her flesh. She let herself be drawn in, needing to be closer to get Wren's enbee in place.

But Nitpicker's hand tangled in Tsia's s.h.i.+rt, and savagely, with all her desperate strength, she jerked Tsia close and struck unerring at her throat. Cold, steel-like fingers squeezed. Instinctively, Tsia jerked her chin down. The bone of her jaw jammed against the fingers that tried to crush her larynx. Her hands pried frantically at Nitpicker's fingers, palms, thumbs. Her flesh tore. Cat feet clawed with hers against the other woman's arms. Something snarled in her ears, and she could not tell if it was herself or the din in her biogate that deafened her to her pain. Frantically, she groped for the other woman's face. She punched, then clawed to loosen the pilot's grip. Clumsily, again and again she struck out, the extra enbee closed heedlessly in one fist. She twisted and wrenched until, in a panic, she jammed the enbee in Nitpicker's nostrils.

It was not a clean shot; only one of the tapers was up Nitpicker's nose. But the woman's hold froze instantly, then released. Tsia wrenched away, kicking up more silt and mud. Her mouth seemed filled with the grit. She gasped and took in water, gagged and coughed and doubled over, convulsing with the effort of breathing when her throat felt torn and collapsed.

The heightened tension radiated up like steam. The panic in the other woman's field was hot. But now, Tsia's own heartbeat pounded heavily in the water, and her breathing was harsh through nostrils that tried to gasp through the thin breaths of her enbee. The ghosts of the node weren't solid, but the medlines -the only part of the node still active-automatically took over. Electrochemical signals poured into her brain. Proteins that coded for clotting genes. Tissue regeneration... Nerves. The subconscious part of her brain whirled while Tsia tried to breathe.

Then, cautiously, she swam back down to the bottom. Warily, she reached out among the mud-buried weeds. She touched a shoulder, and the body beneath her jerked. She could feel the sudden spurt of fear, of panic. She was cornered- Immediately, Tsia withdrew. Then, kicking slowly to keep her position, she forced herself to extend. Mud s.h.i.+fted on the bottom; Nitpicker's biofield surged with controlled terror. Tsia touched the woman's arm and left her hand there so the pilot could feel who it was. The other woman's hand closed over hers and gripped it tightly, then moved up her arm to her face. Tsia allowed her hand to feel. She squeezed the pilot's bicep in pattern, finning quickly.

Her hands found the mudslide that had engulfed the woman's legs, and as Tsia dug her hands into it to see how solidly the pilot was trapped, it s.h.i.+fted like sand, surging forward another quarter meter and flooding up to the woman's waist. Nitpicker's hands dug into Tsia's arms. Tsia felt her heart begin to pound again in her throat. A white line of rock twisted in her sight. A line that sank in the slough in permanent memorial. And Tucker, with that safety one cutting through the surging sea... Daya, she whispered in her mind. Not another one, she begged.

How long had they been under? How long would the enbees last? She forced herself to think, then tapped her fingers against the pilot's hand. She repeated the finning, as the other woman did not immediately respond. She could feel the tension rising in the pilot's body with the message. Finally, Nitpicker finned back in agreement, and Tsia opened her gate.

Shadow forms of fish and snails played at the edges of her mind. Freshwater celphs floated past. She could sense the mud worms, benign and hungry, tunneling toward the looser silt. There was a pressure against the inside of her skull--a cacophonous resonance built out of energy itself. And within that din was one she knew well-and hated.

She called it. Found its resonance through her gate and matched it with a projection of her own. Food, she sent. Flesh cold and ripe for eating. Within seconds, a shadow grew around her. Something brushed her arm. Nitpicker's hand clenched suddenly on her own, and she knew the woman had been touched by an eel.

Tsia fed the force of her welcome into her biogate. With all her focus, she called out a cold, dead image and spread it in the water. Spread the sense of it down in the mud. The water stirred around her, and she tried to hold her position as the currents began to swirl. The pilot's grasp hauled her back and tapped out an urgent message. Tsia finned back a steady re-sponse, but as she did, a slick body slid along her side. Nitpicker's fingers threatened to dig all the way through Tsia's hand. The eels swirled around Nitpicker's head, and Tsia forced the woman to bend her arms to protect her face and neck.

One eel made a dive for the mud. It could sense the warmth of the woman's legs, and it hesitated. But it was hungry, and Tsia projected food and chilled fish flesh. It made one pa.s.s, ignoring the woman's exposed torso and arms; its prey was a bottom fish, flat and streaked with tapered gray-green stripes. It wanted buried meat-cold meat-not the warmth of a human body.

As Nitpicker's grip grew tighter and tighter, Tsia realized that the other woman did not know the eels could sense the movement of her legs in the mud. She finned another message to the pilot, and the woman forced herself to hold still. Like pigment, the shadow of the eels thickened. The pilot's arms, twined around her head to protect her face and neck from the eels, left her only her hands to clutch at Tsia. Each time the eels stroked along the woman's skin, she whimpered into the water. Each time they wrapped around her head, she jerked. Their flickering shadows darted in Tsia's head, back and forth, like faint, malevolent lights. She tightened her grip on the woman. Any minute now, they would begin to tear at the mud. Any second now...

Something barreled clumsily into Tsia, and she slammed forward over the pilot. A rough hand grabbed at her arm and yanked her hard away. She struck out wildly to reject the man who dragged her up, then realized that it was Bowdie who had hold of her. Instantly, she dug her fingers into his bicep, finning to stop him with her message. He froze, then pressed close beside her. A quick return fin-he acknowledged her response-and together, their hips brus.h.i.+ng as they stroked, and her shoulders clumsily sc.r.a.ping along his ribs, Tsia jack-knifed them back through the blackness.

The mud had s.h.i.+fted up another handspan, and Nitpicker was bent and buried to her waist. Her arms were clear, but her shoulders rigid; her gray hair floated from between the flesh of her arms. Tsia projected the image of fish in the mud, and suddenly, as if they understood at last, the eels responded with shocking intensity. A single eel struck down. Like a shot, the second, and then the others drove down. Mud slid and flowed. Nitpicker seemed to cry out in the water. Sludge flowed up into the lake as if huge spoons dug into the slide and cast the mud away. Tsia and Bowdie grabbed Nitpicker by her arms. Bowdie started to kick hard, pulling up with brute strength, but Tsia waited. The eels were striking now like lances. Nitpicker's body jerked with each hit. But she loosened. Tsia felt the give and shouted. Water and silt rushed into her mouth. Hard-she kicked as hard as she could. She split the water with the force of her legs.

A slow release; a sloppy, spucking sound... The woman's body slid free while the eels attacked violently the soft hole she left behind. The pilot kept her hands over her head. Her entire body shuddered. Kicking and struggling, the trio rose like gas bubbles toward the surface, and as they hit the first cold clime, Nitpicker began to kick with them. Tsia did not let go of the woman's jacket. The pilot's legs were weak, and the chill in Tsia's bones did not seem to be from herself, but from Van'ei.

Up, up and toward the wind. Up through blackness, through the grime of the storm-torn lake. They hit the surface as suddenly as Tsia had reached it before, and Nitpicker struck free of them, gasping as the air stung and whipped her face. And then they bobbed in the flattened waves and sucked the air that was shoved down their throats with the wind.

For a moment, Tsia hung on the surface, ignoring the slap of the lake. Beside her, Bowdie trod water with difficulty. His pocked face was red, and his breathing rough. She could feel an odd tension in his body, and took a moment to realize that it was fear-his discomfort in the water. He hated it, she realized. His brown eyes peered down as if he expected the eels to follow them up, and the emotion that flooded their depths was countered only by his hatred of the lake.

"All right?" she managed, looking at Nitpicker. Her voice was harsh-more like a croak. Her throat still felt crushed.

The pilot nodded. She did not try to speak. Sluggishly, she hauled her arms through the water. She still wore her blunter, and the sleeves slapped heavily with the two strokes she managed before the water pushed her under. Bowdie hauled her up and dunked himself in the doing; the two meres kicked for a moment to catch their breath.

"Give me your jacket," Tsia said to the pilot. She caught at the collar and held Nitpicker up as the woman struggled out of it. Tsia took a second to roll the fabric up; she sank before she got it in a tight bundle. Then she tucked it in the crook of her arm and followed the other meres in a stilted sidestroke. She quit almost immediately; as soon as she turned her face to the lake, the water slammed down her throat without stopping. The low growl of the wind was almost as loud as the sounds of the cougars in Tsia's head. "Daya-d.a.m.ned yaza wind," she muttered. She choked on water, and closed her mouth with a snap.

She shoved the blunter bundle ahead of her with her chin, while her arms kept her body afloat. The water's chill seemed to intensify as her adrenaline subsided. The lake tasted flat after the salt of the sea, and the green scent of algae deadened its flavor. She stared doggedly in the direction of the sh.o.r.e. How could it take so long to swim so short a distance? She could barely see Nitpicker and Bowdie; the clouds cut so much light from the sky that the pilot's gray-streaked hair was almost invisible against the surface.

The brown hair of the other mere was no more than a glistening shadow. It took Tsia a moment to realize that the wind was circling at the end of the lake, pus.h.i.+ng her along the sh.o.r.e instead of directly toward it. She had fought it before; this time she was too tired.

Even though her muscles were moving, and she was sweating as she swam, she seemed to have no warmth in her bones. There was no semblance of color left in her face; the wind that whipped the water over her head stripped even that from her skin. In her head, Ruka growled and curled against her skull. The cat seemed closer than he had a moment before, and Tsia opened her biogate further and searched for the sense of the cat. Wet fur seemed to sc.r.a.pe and catch on her skin; her ears twitched in the water. And then Tsia felt buoyed up by a warmth that spread from her belly along the inside of her arms.

It was energy. Heat through her biogate-sent by the cougar to ease her chill. She almost stopped swimming. Ruka? she asked in her mind. The cub's only answer was a growl.

Ahead in the water, Bowdie stopped, and Tsia caught up with difficulty. "Okay?" she asked.

Bowdie tried to nod, opened his mouth to answer, but choked on the lake instead. Tsia nodded toward the bedraggled woods where Ruka hid in the brush. It was a hundred meters past the point where the other meres waited. "We've been fighting a surface current. Just stay afloat and kick in that direction." She pointed. "Wind will push us ash.o.r.e."

He didn't bother to nod. Instead, he turned and kicked clumsily with the wind. Nitpicker followed him doggedly in, the thin line of her dart gun waving along the surface like a tiny black scanpole. Tsia trailed behind.

On the bank, three of the meres began jogging to meet them around the eddy. By the time Bowdie swam in to the shallows, all three were back in the water, wading out waist-deep on the rock ledges that ran beneath the surface. Bowdie stood up before Kurvan could help him, and the lake water ran off his bowed legs like waterfalls. He took a step, slipped, and went under. A second later, he broke the surface again. Painfully, he got to his feet, pulling Nitpicker up onto the rock with him. With Striker supporting Nitpicker on the other side, the four waded out of the water.

Wren waited for Tsia while the others staggered to the shelter of the trees. She swam in until her knee stubbed painfully against rock almost the same moment her fingernails jammed into the rough stone. Wren offered her a clublike hand, and she took it gratefully. "I'm all right," she said hoa.r.s.ely. She hauled Nitpicker's blunter from the water and gave it to Wren in trade for her own. Quickly, she shrugged into the sleeves and wrapped her arms around her waist. The wind had slapped the cold back into her bones the minute she rose from the surface.

Wren gripped her arm. "Doetzier found an overhang between two lava bombs. We can shelter there till we figure out what we're going to do."

She nodded without speaking and staggered clumsily after him. Her numb feet seemed to hit every ragged b.u.mp and crack beneath the water, and she wondered that Wren didn't feel them through his boots. Lake grit dried across her cheek, and she peeled the enbee from her face to seal it in her harness. A few moments later, her feet hit the lake bank, and she trudged, then forced herself to jog behind Wren. As she reached the trees, she stepped on a sharp, hidden stick. She swore quietly, and put her foot down directly on another. "Daya-d.a.m.ned digger dung," she cursed.

Wren glanced back at her mincing run, then pointed toward the bank where he had originally waited. "Your boots are back there. I only brought the blunter."

She nodded and limped after him until the sharpness of the bruise subsided. The cold mud squelched beneath her toes, but she seemed oddly immune to the storm. Was she so numb she could no longer feel the chill? The wind gusted and drove a thin sheet of rain across the lake, and she felt it ruffle her fur. She stopped midstep. Her lips raised in a silent snarl.

She was still taking her body heat from the cub. Through the gate.

This time, the chill that crawled through her bones was real. When Ruka first gave her heat, she had not thought beyond the grat.i.tude that the chill was no longer a danger. But now-she accepted the heat as if it was instinctual. As if it was all right to take this from the cub.

She stared toward the brush where the cougar crouched. This was not the same as touching an adult cat's mind. No full-grown tam had ever given her an energy that she took in as her own. No watercat had ever quenched her thirst by mental thought. What Ruka was doing-was it normal? Or was it a sign that Tsia had stepped beyond the law of the Landing Pact? Contact when the cats requested it-that was accepted by any guide. But to take from the cats automatically-and to take heat, to take energy itself... If the cub responded like this to her unspoken needs, what would he do if she accidentally projected a need for action?

She had to force herself to move forward when Wren glanced back with a frown. But a flash of tawny skin melted into the shrubs beside her. "Go back to the beach," she whispered. "East. Go east. You can find your family if you hurry." Deliberately, she turned her back. You can't stay with me. She sent the message through her gate as strongly as she could create the images. / don't want you here.

The scent of mud seemed suddenly sharp, and she closed her gate abruptly. "No," she snapped. She was not aware she had spoken out loud until Wren turned back.

"What is it?" he shouted over the wind.

She shrugged, unable to answer.

He came closer and studied her expression with narrowed eyes. "What do you feel?" he repeated.

Her teeth, when she looked up, were clenched. "The cub."

Wren regarded her for a long moment, his flat, gray eyes unreadable. "Following?"

She jerked a nod.

He watched her for a moment. Then he turned and continued thoughtfully toward the shelter.

Ruka slunk through the forest to her right The cord between them almost choked her when she tried to snap it off at the biogate. Blankly, she stumbled after Wren. How could she have let her gate grow so strong? Only once before had she felt this kind of immersion in the senses of the cats, and that was when she had first become a guide-when she hadn't even known control. What was her excuse this time?

Wren waited while she stopped to pull on her boots in a heavy wash of rain. The rain was not alive except with physical power, but her biogate seethed with the force of life around her. Ruka blinded her; Wren's voice echoed. The Landing Pact... The past... The law. But she had called the cub for help here -now-and that in itself was a crime. She stared up at the black and waving arms of the Rus.h.i.+ng Forest. The trees that had taught her sister how to dance over twenty years ago now reached for the sky like abandoned dreams. Like lives left behind. Like hands. She choked on her guilt and stiffly followed Wren to the cave.

Bowdie waited for them at the edge of an overhang where two lava bombs crushed together and formed a rough cave. Tsia started to duck under the boulder, but Bowdie eyed her strangely. He seemed to see right through her-to the ghosts that lay in her past. For a moment, all she could do was stare back. Then she s.h.i.+vered and pushed her way by him.

Wren paused outside and dug in his pocket for a sealed packet of seeds. He spilled some into Bowdie's large hands and popped a few in his own thin-lipped mouth. He spoke to the other mere in a low voice, and Tsia could not hear him. She wrinkled her nose and wrapped her arms more tightly around her body. Wren knew she hated that odor; he could have stood downwind.

The inside of the hollowed area was wider than it appeared. Striker, who was seated on a crumbled protrusion, moved over to make room for Tsia, but neither woman stretched out her legs. Instead, they huddled for warmth. Striker's thick braid still dripped water, which ran down her back in a skinny, twisted stream. On the far side of the cave, Nitpicker leaned against the rough wall with Doetzier and Kurvan beside her. Her trousers and the lower end of her s.h.i.+rt were torn with a dozen small holes. Her shoulders were bowed, as if she were in pain, but Tsia could almost smell something stronger through the heightened senses of her biogate; and what she smelled was fear.

Tsia watched Nitpicker closely. Wariness she had felt before, and even fear in the pilot-when the dart s.h.i.+ps whipped by the Nitpicker's fibergun had been discharged so she couldn't fire back... When the nessies had almost crushed the pilot the time she fell in the pod... When the woman had faced down that laze, and the weapon misfired instead of burning out her heart... But fear-now? In the safety of the cave? In her head, the cougar padded closer, and she felt her hands clench tightly.

East, she muttered in her head, to the cat paws that answered her thought. Go east.

Striker glanced at her face. "You okay?" she murmured.

She jerked her head up. "Of course," she returned sharply.

Kurvan caught Striker's expression. "Your neck," he said to Tsia. "What happened?"

Something in Nitpicker's eyes flickered. Tsia stilled. There was no tightening of muscles-nothing she could discern with her eyes... No one else reacted; but in her head, the cub snarled, and Tsia's scalp hair p.r.i.c.kled. "Got jammed in the cabin," she said slowly. She didn't look at the pilot. "In a torn piece of webbing. Just about jerked my own neck off to get free."

Kurvan studied her for a moment, then dug in Wren's pack for the med gear. Automated for almost any kind of injury, the scame took only a moment to set up. He held up its attachments with a question in his eyes. She nodded slowly.

Tilting back her head, she gave him room to work on her neck. As the scame fields swept over her flesh, the medlines automatically dulled the sensation. When Kurvan sat back, he looked satisfied. "There'll still be some swelling, but that should do it except for a salve." He pulled out a tube and tossed it to Tsia; he left her to rub that on herself while he began to repack the scame.

Tsia unsealed the tube and wrinkled her nose. From the damp dirt beneath the rocks she sat on, from Nitpicker's open wounds, from the alve itself-scents seemed to grow in strength. Ruka padded closer; Tsia's nostrils flared. There was an almost acrid odor that reminded her of something like Wren's nolo seeds. The hairs on her neck p.r.i.c.kled again. She fingered the tube absently, then tossed it back to Kurvan.

He caught it with a slap. "Could get infected later," he said mildly.