Cataract. Part 18

"Pull us back," he shouted. "Hurry!"

Bowdie and Kurvan hauled. Doetzier didn't try to lift Wren's dead weight. He merely held Wren's head

and neck above the surface. Wren's body was dragged along it until they were on more solid brash. Tsia, trembling, scrambled off the platform; her mind, still caught up by the cougar, s.h.i.+vered with angry catspeak.

She stared across at Wren. Limp roots clung to his face like leeches. His sharp, birdlike chin hung open; his eyelids were closed, but she could feel a tiny light in her gate. She screamed at the cats in her mind to shut up. Ruka growled audibly to her side. She glared at the cat, and the cub was silent. With the wind, no one else even noticed.

"No pulse," reported Striker, reaching around Doetzier to feel the other mere's neck.

"It's there." Tsia did not recognize her own voice, it was so harsh.

Striker looked up. "I feel nothing."

"It's there."

"He was down for over four minutes, Tsia. Even if the medlines fed his body the codes for oh-two--"

"He's alive," she snarled. "I can feel him in my gate. No thumping," she snapped as Doetzier made to bare Wren's chest.

Striker did not bother to nod. She tilted back his head and, while Doetzier held him, scooped the water from his mouth. A moment later, she began to breathe for him as well as herself.

Tsia hung on that breathing. Ruka crouched in the gra.s.s, and unconsciously, Tsia reached back for the rea.s.surance of the cat. She connected with his body, and the cougar s.h.i.+fted closer. "d.a.m.n you, Wren," she whispered. "Breathe."

"I've got a pulse," Doetzier said sharply.

Striker automatically turned her face to feel if Wren breathed on his own, and didn't even realize how futile that gesture was in the roar of the wind. A second later, she jerked to the side just as Wren vomited. He coughed, convulsed, retched, and coughed again. The woman sat back on her knees. She looked up and nodded at Tsia. She did not need to speak.

Tsia's hands trembled as she clenched them to her temples. Abruptly Wren curled onto his knees and spat. His hand, when he reached for the water to clean his lips and mouth, held a tiny tremor: He looked up, and Doetzier steadied him against the wind.

He squinted. The strands of gra.s.s that clung to Tsia's weather cloth made her look like a beggar. Wren tried to grin. Doetzier helped him to his feet, and he grasped a clump of tallgra.s.s in his hands as if to steady himself.

Tsia stood slowly. The cub had not left her shadow, and she had to push him away to get him to move back in the gra.s.s. Her gate was still wide open. Her heart seemed to beat in two rhythms, and neither was slow. The cat, who flicked his tail, growled constantly in her mind, and his feet seemed to pad across her thoughts so that she could not concentrate.

Doetzier looked at the water. "The frame that Kurvan dropped," he asked Tsia. "Was it close enough to fish out?"

She shook her head.

"And Wren's pack?"

"It sank. It's far below the gra.s.s mat now."

She caught Kurvan's dark expression as he watched her from the side. Doetzier eyed her in silence. She could feel the hostility in his gaze, and it made her edge away. "It had antigravs," Doetzier said softly.

"Wren said they cut out just before he went down. I didn't think to try them."

He did not nod.

"I was more concerned with getting Wren," she snapped, "than checking on his gear."

He shrugged and turned away to collapse the makes.h.i.+ft raft.

Tsia stared at him and got to her feet. "d.a.m.n you," she breathed. "d.a.m.n you all to h.e.l.l." She did not even know who she cursed.

It took them twenty minutes to break down the gear and get back out of the brash. No one mentioned the scame that was lost with Wren's breaker and the pack. His gear... The enbees... Uneasiness grew with every step Tsia took down the muddy trail. The skimmer crash... The antigravs... Since the moment the meres landed on the platform at dawn, they had been pared down, she realized suddenly. Twelve meres -thirteen, counting Tsia-and now there were seven left. Jandon had taken five shooters; the ocean had taken Tucker. Nitpicker almost went down in the lake. Kurvan would have gone off on the bridge. Of the two packs that were left, one carried only configuration gear, the other Kurvan's scannet. No manual corns were left in the packs. No e-gear or wide-range weapons. Only one handscanner on Bowdie's belt, his parlas, and the flexors on the hips of the other meres. It was like surgery where, in a predefined pattern, the pieces were cut away, so that all that was left were the bones and the biofields.

She paused and stared at the slick, gray water that still sat like harmless puddles. When she looked back at the other meres, only Doetzier met her eyes. The tightness of her jaw made her shudder till she welcomed the chill of her skin. It was three hours before dawn.

Kurvan saw her pause, and pushed past the other mere to catch up with her on the trail. He motioned with his chin back at Wren. "I thought you said you couldn't sense a human through your gate."

She didn't answer for a moment. "I've known Wren for a long time," she said finally. "I'm familiar with his energy."

"So you knew he was alive."

"He was a shadow, like any other. Like you."

"And like me," the man retorted sharply, his voice gathering and projecting the fury that his biofield hid, "he almost died because of your inaction."

Tsia stared at him. "What?"

"You may not have meant to push him down when you grabbed for him, but it would have been a h.e.l.l of a lot better to let me finish bringing him up with the pole." He nodded at her expression. "I had him," he repeated coldly. "You pushed him down. I could have brought him up long before he lost consciousness -if you hadn't made me lose my grip with the pole."

She stared at him in disbelief. "It was you-not I-who pushed him down. I had him. I dug my fingers into his hand as if he was my own brother."

"And you also almost drowned him in place. Just like Tucker. And"-Kurvan's voice was harsh now -"perhaps, Nitpicker, too, before Bowdie swam down to help you-back in the lake?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. A snarl grew in her throat. Ahead, in the forest, Ruka paused and turned back.

Kurvan eyed her as if she were a parasite that had crawled out from a pore in- his skin. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at her with such revulsion, and she took an involuntary step back at the vehemence of his expression. "Makes me wonder," he said with a cold, deliberate tone, "why these things occur only when you are there to... help. Do you really lead us to the freepick stake? Or do you work to keep us here? Away from the biochips, and away from the manual corns?"

He eyed her for another moment, then brushed past along the trail. She stared after him without moving. There was a snarling in her ears, and she could hear it resonating in her bones: It was her own throat that made those sounds. She shut her lips abruptly, but she could not move from her stance. It was not until Doetzier reached her frozen form that she realized the wind had carried Kurvan's words to the other mere as clearly as if they'd been spoken in his ears. Doetzier shot her a single look, then spat deliberately to the side. She could only glare at him till he pa.s.sed.

"G.o.ddam digger-sp.a.w.ned worm of a dith carca.s.s," she cursed. At that moment, she didn't know which she hated more: Kurvan for thinking it of her, Doetzier for believing, or herself, for blaming neither one.

She shoved her way up to a thin stand of topoff cedar, while Nitpicker and the others slogged past. She could feel the cub slinking through the brush to meet her, and she welcomed him with a hedonistic rage. The odors of the meres filled her nose and made her fingers clench. She almost writhed with the focus that Ruka sent to her brain. Then she realized what she was doing.

"Daya," she breathed. The violence of her anger shocked her, and she pressed her hands against the tree and stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. These were the fingers that held such instinct for self-preservation-such desperation when the fear hit her hard. Yet these were the same limbs that carried death inside their bones. And with Ruka there... She shook her head against the bark of the tree until the wood ground against her skin. She knew, if she pushed, the cub would track Kurvan down and kill him.

"Ah, Daya," she whispered. "What have I become?"

A thick hand touched her shoulder, and she whirled, spinning into a crouch. One hand stretched before her, and the other hand drew her flexor before her eyes focused and she recognized the stocky shape of Wren.

The other mere held his ground. He met her feral gaze with a look that seemed to bore its way into her center like a screw turning, chewing its way through the walls and layers of s.h.i.+elding she had built around her heart. The shadows of the whipping trees moved over his face like demons.

"Jit paka'ka chi," he said deliberately, in the old tongue of the meres. "You gave me my tomorrow. My life."

She stared at him for a moment. Then threw her head back and laughed. The sound was harsh; and Ruka, crouched on a spur of rock to the left, snarled in response. Wren's eyes flickered. If he saw the faint outline of the cougar pressed against the stone, he said nothing.

"That's rich, Wren," she said finally, choking on her bitterness as the rain drove itself into her mouth. "Jit paka 'ka chi."

"Tsia-"

"Tsia?" she cut in. "Feather?" She spat. "You can't say it, can you? You can obligate me with your life, but you can't say you trust me. All these years, and you can't even call me 'avya.' Not friend, not trusted one. Nothing."

He regarded her coldly from his sharp-chinned mask. "Are those the words you need to hear?"

"Everyone needs words, Wren."

"Those words?"

"Words of importance. Words of..."

"Love?" His voice was rich with derision.

Tsia clenched her hands at her sides.

Wren was silent for a moment, but the sense of his biofield was cold and hard. "Do you look for love in

me or seek it in yourself?"

Tsia stared at him. "Did you hear Kurvan? He thinks I deliberately pushed you down in the swamp. He thinks I tried to drown you."

"Something pushed me down," he returned. "It wasn't the hand that held me."

Tsia cursed violently. "If it wasn't, you didn't say anything to them to defend me. Doetzier and Kurvan- even Bowdie thinks I'm responsible for the whole thing."

He shrugged.

"The antigrav-is that it? I checked it just before it went out, so you don't trust that I didn't push you

down. Jit paka'ka chi," she said bitterly, as if it was a curse."Do your actions change what you are?" he asked softly."Dammit, Wren-""You're a guide, Tsia.""That doesn't mean I'm not human.""Doesn't it? You're as alien as an Ixia, and that will always be between us.""Why?" she cried out.He studied her for a moment. "You don't even know who you are-what you'll do for yourself-let alone what you can do for others."

She stared at him. "So I can expect no trust. No love or loyalty. Is that what you have to say?"

"Trust, love, loyalty-what are they?" he snapped back harshly. "There's never been any love in this life,

Feather. You lose too much to love anything but yourself. Or you love too much to give any one thing meaning. Do you need the words? Then here, I name you avya. Friends.h.i.+p, loyalty-you have whatever I can give."

"Avya," she snarled. "How many bonds do you mock with that term?"

"I mock nothing but the thing between us which you force me to name."

She shook her head mutely.

"There is no trust, Tsia-guide. No such thing at all. There's only knowledge in this life. And that knowledge is that you'll lose something important when the one you trust has failed. Perhaps it will be your hand or leg. Maybe your credit or control. And maybe it's your life. Knowing that is fatalism, not trust." He stepped forward and gripped her arm, jerking her wrist up to the rain. His scarred, brutal hand looked like a club next to her bruised, slender fingers.

She twisted against his strength, but he gripped her more tightly. His thin lips looked cruel. "Look at me. Look at you. You know this hand-it's yours. Look at it," he snapped as she glared up at him. "Do / know how much strength is in your flesh? No," he answered his own question.

Violently, she wrenched her hand away, but he yanked her back and forced it up so that she had to stare at her own clawlike fingers. On the stone behind her, Ruka leaped to the rain-flattened gra.s.s and slunk closer, behind a shrub.

"Do I know at which point the hand or will in you will break?" he demanded. "I can't know that. Striker can't. Kur-van can't-not until you do break. And the breakpoint is something only you can know. If you find out where that breakpoint is, it means you've gone to the limit of yourself and found the edge of your fear and determination. You've found the edge of your will. It means you've shattered your illusions and ideals and all your rigid walls, and shot out into the void of Truth. That you've pulled yourself back for the first time in your life to see yourself clearly. And it means that, for that truth, someone else has probably paid the price."

He released her hand. She refused to rub the circulation back in. Instead, with hatred in her eyes, she reveled in the ache that flooded back with her blood. His cold gaze narrowed. The wind whipped her face to a white blur, and the rain dripped from the claw marks on her cheek.

"Is that what you would call trust, Feather? Avya?" he said deliberately. "Blind belief in a will you cannot judge? Dumb acceptance of a strength you cannot test?" He snorted. "You can't build trust. You can't earn it, and you can't force it to occur. It doesn't exist where you seek it. Do you understand? Why did you help me? Do you know? What you search for in us, what you sought with the risk you took for me, is something that doesn't even exist outside yourself."

Her fingernails curled into her palms. "I didn't do it for trust, Wren. I didn't dive in just to gain your respect. Nor to fulfill a contract, or because it was expected." Her voice was low, shaking with anger, shaking with emotions that filled her body and trembled against the walls of bone and flesh that held them in.

He raised his thick, scarred hand to her face and touched the claw marks that ran from temple to jaw. "Avya, I know."

Hands clenched at her sides, she said harshly, "There was no choice in it for me. I could not let you die."

He looked at her for a long moment, then, deliberately, slapped her so hard that she spun half around and staggered against the tree. Ruka leaped from the brush. Wren threw out his hand and roared. Tsia's gate seemed frozen. It was not her, she thought blindly. It was not her who turned to stone in fear. It was the cat, caught in a moment in which the prey turned and the predator became the game. She could feel Ruka's heartbeat. Hard, fast against her ribs. She could feel the thick fingers of Wren's hand against her cheek-the marks glowed red, then faded to a white more pale than the scars on her chilled skin.

A sound half snarl, half cry escaped her throat. She was still caught like the cat, crouched against the bole of the tree. Wren glared at her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, some odd, objective part of her brain noted that it was the first time she had ever seen him angry.

"You gave me my life," he snarled coldly, "and you expect grat.i.tude-and a trust that does not exist. A loyalty that you mistake. You pxpect me to be other than I am. Are you blind? Can't you see clearly- feel the violence in my hands? Can't you smell the blood on my skin? You ask me to trust you- when I know your past? I look at you and see myself instead-like mirrors lined up in my skull. In that violence, we are bound, Feather-guide; in that blood, we are lovers. Look at you. Look at your crouch. Your eyes. The way your hands curl like the claws of the cat that even now is afraid to face me. Your mind is filled with the edge of life. With the blood that pounds in your head and clouds your thoughts so that my words are like birds beating against your face. Trust? Bah. It's a heart that you seek. Perhaps the one that you lost." He made a savage gesture. "Don't look for love here, Feather. I bring you no such gifts."

She stared at him. Her throat seemed torn open all the way down to her gut. Her stomach clenched. Her voice, when she spoke, was as harsh as his. "I hear you, Wren." She shoved herself away from the tree. "I believe you." She focused on her gate and forced Ruka to slink back through the shrubs. The unblinking gaze of the cat never wavered, and she had to shake her head to see Wren through her own cold eyes.

He smiled without humor, and the expression pulled his face into lines as sharp as a knife. "Illusions are far more dangerous than hate," he said softly. "The one can be mistaken; the other can only be seen for what it is."

"You trust no one, not even me."

"No"

"You need it, Wren-the love, the trust. Hide it behind whatever words you want; but you need it just as much as me."

"The need to trust is not important to me," he said flatly.

"It is to me." Her voice broke on the last words.

Wren's eyes seemed to flatten-to lose the last vestiges of expression they had held before. It was as if a mask of gla.s.s slid down over his gaze. His anger was gone. His rage might never have existed. She stared at him and reached out through her gate. His bioenergy was almost nonexistent; his voice was distant as the gray-black tops of the mountains. "I know you, Feather-Tsia-of Ciordan. Guide of the mere guild. Dance-fighter from the desert where I first saw you walk the flames of your trade. I know you," he repeated. "I don't have to trust you."