Cataract. Part 15

There was urgency in her voice, and Tsia hesitated. Was this part of the tension she had felt from the group of meres? Did Striker's lack of past haunt the woman as much as Tsia's demons haunted her?

"I feel a thinness," she said after a pause. "A lack of depth. As if you were a child-without history-or an adult without direction."

Striker's face flushed, and she stared out across the hills. Her narrow chin was sharp and taut. "I don't know what I believe in. I don't know now who I am."

Tsia hesitated again. Finally, she motioned at Striker's side where the flexor hung from her belt. "You used to carry a laze," she offered.

The other woman looked back sharply.

"It's the way you hang your right hand," Tsia said quietly. "You stand as if you had a flexor on your back which you wanted to be able to reach, but you carry your weapon at your side. Only thing short enough to ride on your back and require a down position is a laze. You swear like a s.p.a.cer. And when you're in a skimmer, you move like a s.p.a.cer. A laze is a better weapon skyside than dirtside-known gas ratios to carry the beam. If you had worked more landside, you'd be more used to carrying a flexor."

Striker stared at her. "Would not have guessed a guide would know so much about s.p.a.cers."

Tsia shrugged. "I've done as many firedances as any other guide. s.p.a.cers always came to watch, even at the trainings."

"How'd you get to be a line-runner anyway? Guides don't usually learn how to set a web. You're supposed to be too wrapped up in that training to care about anything else."

Below them, Doetzier, then Bowdie negotiated the switchback, and Tsia watched him as he climbed. "Learned in the trading cla.s.ses," she returned.

Striker followed her gaze. "You wanted to be a trader? And ended up a mere?"

"I wanted to be a guide. Only that."

"Guides don't waste their time on the trader's guild-not when they can never go skyside. Why did you bother?"

"Had a friend who needed a study partner."

"The same one with whom you scanned these trails before?"

Reluctantly, she nodded.

To her surprise, Striker gave her a sly look. "Good friends are hard to find. Especially that kind." A slanting sheet of rain hit them both at the same time, and Striker pulled up her hood. Her eyes were shuttered again; her voice completely casual. The moment of connection was over. "If you had to learn," she said, turning back to the trail, "the trade guild was the best place outside the meres from which to take your training. They've a reputation for detail."

Tsia stared after the other woman. Detail, she thought bitterly, was the one thing she was good at. The ghosts she sensed-they were made with details that had stayed solid for three decades. If she could build webs that tight, she could build anything for the meres. No longer did they need metric tons of stealth cloth to hide a camp from the scannet. They needed only an artist to "paint" the virtual images of shrubs and shadows that disguised a mere's location. Just one guide who could create ghosts as detailed and solid as if they were real people and plants, real creatures in real canyons. And Tsia could lay a ghost line so tight that a pack of meres would look like a patch of sand or a cloud that crossed a hill... She could make a tree seem like a shrub and a shrub seem like a blade of gra.s.s, and hide a mere behind all three. Yet for all the details she could s.h.i.+ft, for all the ghosts she could create, she could not find the one ghost she sought more than any other: the traceline of her sister. Her eyes followed Striker as she turned and waited for Tsia to lead on. Lost-like Shjams, she thought with a chill. Lost without family forever.

The thin imaging line to the node began to shred as she climbed past the other woman. Instantly, she tightened her focus. Ruka growled as she drew away, and Tsia stumbled with the sudden sense of double image he forced into her brain. She barely stayed on the traces. There was a moment of mental pus.h.i.+ng- the one challenging the other; then the cougar seemed to meld again with her mind. Without thinking, Tsia added a cat to the street on which her ghost man walked, then cursed herself silently as she had to maintain its ghost image as clearly as the man's. The wrinkling of the man's trousers as he walked; the light lift of his hair in the wind-she called up a library of imagery and from it painted with careful strokes the movements of the ghosts.

Ghosts: her mind traced the webs. Wipes: the image of Striker... Blackjack was here, she thought with a chill as the rain slid down her back. For what-for the breaker? It was maybe worth enough on the grayscale to justify an attack... If they wanted the biochips, they were too early by weeks- Kurvan had pointed that out clearly on the marine platform. She tried to pull back from the biogate to think more clearly, but Ruka growled and tore at her mind. "Go home," she snarled back under her breath. "Go back to the coast. To your family. You don't belong here. You don't belong with me."

Ruka only snarled in return, and Tsia cursed. "I can't do both," she snapped at the cub. "I can't image through the node and stay open to your mind."

The cougar lowered its hips even more, and its head seemed to sway back and forth. Tsia found herself dropping down in a crouch, and she had to shake herself to regain her feet. "Stop it," she snarled. "Either help me or stop hindering me. But don't keep interrupting."

Her biogate went silent. For a moment, she thought Ruka had completely withdrawn, and she could not help the silent cry she projected through the gate. Instantly, the sense of the cat swept back. She found herself crouched again on the rock, her hands clenched to her temples.

A boot sc.r.a.ped stone. Doetzier reached up, and automatically she stretched back her hand, then, as she realized it was a man, not a cat-and maybe blackjack-that she touched, jerked it away just before the other mere grabbed on. He overbalanced and staggered back. The wind whipped his blunter, billowing it out, and his ID disk glinted before he caught his balance and yanked his jacket closed.

"What the h.e.l.l was that for?" he snapped.

Tsia stared at him. The technical rating on the disk surprised her; the intensity of his biofield was almost a burn through her gate. She forced her hand out again. "Something in my biogate," she said tersely. "It startled me. Like... someone walking over my grave."

" 'The chill hand of the killer,' " he retorted, " 'who touches like ice in the night'?" He swung up beside

her. "You're getting spooky, Feather."

"Do you blame me?" she asked sourly. "It's noon, and the sky is as dark as night." She looked up. " 'It is a storm for ghosts,' " she quoted, more to herself than him.

" 'Who roam the Plain of Tears.' " He shrugged at her expression. "Just because I come from Alile doesn't mean I know nothing of Risthmus." He gestured to the other side of the ravine. "We're close to it? The Plain?"

"The other side of the peak," she answered shortly.

"You've been there?"

"Yes." Her voice was a rebuff.

"History grips you, doesn't it?" His voice was so soft, she thought it was her own mind that supplied the

question. "The fire in the sapgra.s.s that killed your aunts and uncles?"

"Sometimes, I can almost feel the heat-"

She stopped short. Doetzier was gazing at the rain-grayed mountain, as if he didn't notice that she halted,

but his eagerness was a hot brand inside her biogate.

"How did you know?" She managed to keep her voice steady.

"Everyone in this area lost family to the fire. If you lived here long enough to memorize the trails-"

"I only know them somewhat."

"-you must have lost someone to the flames." He watched her for a moment.

She studied the ravine as if it was of more interest than his words.

"Where's your family now? Did they stay in this area?" he asked.

She gave him a cold look. "Does it concern you?"

"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."