Cataract. Part 30

tried to ride it, but it cracked on her cheekbone and she staggered, then fell slowly to her knees, one hand

on the tarmac before her. Her eyes swam. She barely felt Shjams's hands searching her pocket. Tsia pressed a fist against her cheekbone. She tasted blood on her lips. When her eyes cleared, she looked up. Shjams had the small, flat case in her hand. "Shjams-"

The woman moved away, examining the chips within. She made an inarticulate sound, then looked up to stare at Tsia with suddenly haunted eyes. "You idiot," she breathed. "You yaza-brained mere. These aren't the real chips. These are already programmed-the dummies-the bait chips the s.h.i.+eld was carrying." She snapped the case shut and didn't notice that she was clutching it so hard that her fingernails were slowly turning white. Her face set. "You've given up your life," she said, "not for me and not for your world, but for nothing more than bait."

Unsteadily, Tsia got to her feet. Her lips were curled against the pain, and her jaw was so tight that her teeth ached.

"Why did you come back?" the other woman whispered. "You got away. Why didn't you keep going?" Tsia felt dizzy, and she took advantage of her unbalance to move forward awkwardly. Shjams took a step back. The point of the zek weapon glowed. Tsia looked up at her, and first one, then another drop of blood fell away from her chin, between her fingers, in a long, slanting arc to the ground. "I could not leave the chips," she returned flatly. "And I could not let you go"

Shjams stared at her for a moment. "You know what I have to do now."

Slowly Tsia nodded. Her eyes did not leave Shjams's face.

Shjams stared at her. "I tell you I will kill you."

"You killed me six years ago when you cut yourself from my heart. You can hardly do worse than that now."

"I killed you? You're breathing. Your heart is beating."

"If that were all there was to life," Tsia said quietly, "then I'd leave you to blackjack as you wished. You're dead, Shjams. You've killed yourself, and torn your family with you. Please," she said softly, "come back to us."

"Don't move." Shjams's voice was harsh. Tsia ignored her and took a step forward. The laze flared like a bolt of lightning. The beam shot toward Tsia's heart and bent away as it hit the field of her s.h.i.+elding. The other woman cursed beneath her breath.

"I wonder," Tsia said quietly, watching her with a sad, remote expression, "if you would have fired as quickly, if you had not known I wore a bios.h.i.+eld in my blunter."

Shjams stepped forward and shoved the hot tip of the laser against Tsia's arm. Tsia refused to flinch. Beads of sweat formed on her neck and washed away in the rain.

"s.h.i.+elds only work at a distance," Shjams breathed. "Do you really want me to do this?"

"Is it something you need to do?"

They stared at each other, whipped by the rain, while the pointed tip melted through Tsia's blunter, then her s.h.i.+rt. It touched her skin, and Shjams knew the moment it did; the tightening of Tsia's eyes and the suddenly white cords of tendon were clearly visible in the gray-yellow light. Almost against her own volition, she withdrew the point a fraction. She gave a low laugh.

"All this time," Shjams said bitterly. "All these years, and you and I stand here like zombies. I tell you I have to kill you, and still you say nothing. No questions. Not a curse. No pleading or pathetic rationale. You haven't changed, Tsia. You'd never beg to save your life. You just challenge me to take it."

Absently, as if she did not notice the point of the laze that still smoldered against her blunter, Tsia brushed the rain from her brows. Her voice, when she answered, was quiet, but her words. .h.i.t Shjams like a slap. "I lived," she said softly, "for the day I could see you again. If you wish to destroy that kind of love, and me with it-the way you destroyed the ties from you to your family-that is your choice. I accept it."

Shjams's eyes narrowed. "You? Accepting certain death?"

"I worked and schemed to find you. Our brothers did the same. Our parents, our cousins, your friends...

You killed a part of all of us when you tore yourself from our lives." The anger flared up inside her, and she clenched her fists, ignoring the burn from Ruka's paw, which seeped to backwash through her gate. "You can rip yourself away from us, but there is nothing in this world-or any other-that can tear the ties which keep us held to you."

"There is one thing." Shjams reached into Tsia's blunter and yanked out Doetzier's flat bronze disk from her pocket. She turned it over in her hands, then threw it away to the side. The disk hit and skittered along the landing pad like a plate. She stepped back and pointed the laze again at Tsia's chest. "It's called death."

Tsia's dark eyes bored into Shjams's. She felt as if a stranger looked back. Even Shjams's energy was different than it had been before. She could feel it through her biogate, even though she traced nothing through the node. "You don't know me anymore," Shjams said flatly-almost politely. "Remember that."

Behind Tsia, Ruka slunk through the rain like a shadow. Closer... Now under the s.h.i.+p... Now meters away from her feet... And from behind Shjams, from the corner of a free-pick hut, a long, lean figure appeared. Tsia could feel it in her gate. A cat that was not a cat. An intelligence that cut through her gate like a laze. It was blackjack, but not a pirate; it was something else-something more. And its energy was not human. Ruka's hair bristled. The chill spread down Tsia's neck.

"I had a dream," she whispered. "I saw you looking in the mirror."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Your hands pulied at the sides of your face-pulled back at your skin so that it stretched to your temples, your cheeks. Your face became a mask. The mask a caricature-"

"Shut up." Shjams shoved her against the s.h.i.+p.

Tsia's shoulders. .h.i.t the side of the skimmer, but she didn't take her eyes from her sister's face. "I heard the voice of your G.o.d," she went on. "Your demon." Her voice was steady, as if the wind did not tear at its sound. "But the voice was yourself, and all you had to do was stop talking and listen to the silence to find yourself again."

"d.a.m.n you. I-"

"You don't want to see love," Tsia cut in, "when you can hide forever in fear. It's easier, you think, to wallow in that, and to make someone else responsible for your life. You're like a lifer who hides behind the preaching of your leader, sucking up to the power you build in his wake. You don't have to justify what you do; he does that for you. You don't have to take responsibility; you just blame your acts on him."

Her lips curled, and the feline figure moved closer. Tsia opened her senses and felt a frigid tang. Nitpicker's voice echoed in her head: Something foreign... Something alien... And Wren: Be interesting to see the two of you react... She forced her eyes back to Shjams. "Look what you're doing in your fear -to yourself. To your family."

Shjams tightened her grip on the laze. "Sometimes, you just find yourself drawn further and further into something until you're smothered by its power."

"Its or his?" Tsia bit out. "Kurvan is not your demon, Shjams. Your demon is your fear."

"You -had your own demons, once. I thought you at least would understand."

"I do." Tsia's voice was quiet. She could feel the beast in her gate: intent as the cub on a rat. Its eyes seemed like pools of fractured gold. Its head swayed like a cat. "I was a... victim once, like you. But I refused to remain that way. And now I'm fighting to regain my life. What are you doing with yours?"

"I'm trying to survive."

"For G.o.d's sake, Shjams, you're simply killing yourself."

Shjams's face tightened. She raised the laze a fraction. "Myself or you?"

"Go ahead," Tsia said softly. The foreign energy that swept through her gate sharpened like a knife. The seared hole in the blunter was like a target waiting for the beam. Her guts, tight as her fists, coiled further. She forced her gaze to Shjams's. "What harm will there be in the cessation of pain? What possible further torture is death that I haven't already felt since you left? Do you know what I have lived through? You can't do more than bless me with that laze."

"You have no idea what you're saying."

"And you don't know what you do," Tsia returned harshly. "You rejected the ones who love you to become the ultimate victim: someone else's toy. And now you betray not only yourself, but your family with what you do." Her eyes flickered toward the figure that moved closer through the rain. "Or is it more than that now? Do you betray your world?"

"You don't understand what I do, what I am."

"You think not? I know you. I understand you like myself. Something happened to you, Shjams. It shows in every flinch of your body, in the haunted look in your eyes. No, we could never have taken away your demons, but we could have helped you face them. Helped you build yourself back to a strength that could stand alone."

Shjams cursed and started to turn away, then whipped back, the laze sighting in on Tsia's heart. "I didn't want to face them. I don't want to now. Don't you understand that?" Her chest heaved with the effort of breathing, and her face was stretched taut in a mask. "I don't care whether I live," she whispered harshly, "but I don't seem to be able to die."

Tsia did not move. She stared at Shjams as if she could somehow insert herself in the other woman's mind. "But it's more than blackjack now, isn't it? It's gone beyond this planet."

"d.a.m.n you, Tsia-"

Tsia couldn't help glancing toward her broken flexor on the deck. "Give me back the bait chips," she said softly, forcing the tension out of her voice. "Even they have a high value. If we return them, we can make a deal with the s.h.i.+elds for you. And if you still love this world and your family-if you still love yourself-get me the real chips," she said deliberately, "from wherever they are in the s.h.i.+p."

The furred figure hissed behind her, and Shjams stiffened.

"A chance, Shjams," she breathed. "I'm giving you a chance. Just show me you want to stay-"

Deliberately, Shjams fired the laze. Tsia's sight seemed to burn. She froze with a strangled breath.

The beam hit the tarmac at her feet, not her chest, and the wet landing pad sizzled and popped. Water and crisped earth spattered onto her boots. The smoke scent rose and clogged her nose so that her throat tightened in reflex.

Tsia forced herself to stay still. The tawny figure behind Shjams turned his face toward the woman. His flattened nostrils flared. He looked at Tsia then, and white fangs gleamed in his spadelike face. He had brows of darker, coa.r.s.er fur, and his eyes were mere slits of color. His voice touched Tsia's skin with a timbre that s.h.i.+vered all the way to the bones of her heels.

"Human," the alien said softly, "yet not human." Retractable claws flared along his wrists and knuckles. "Feline," he breathed, "yet not a cat. What are you?"

Shjams did not take her eyes from her sister. Slowly, as if mesmerized by his presence, Tsia tilted her head to regard the alien through narrowed eyes. He rolled his own head back as slowly, and she realized she swayed in the instinctive pattern of a cougar who was threatened. She stilled the motion and licked her lips to taste the musk on the rain. The cat scent from the platform... The odor on Kurvan and Decker... Wren's grin when he hinted about the Ixia specs... She had been blinded by her biogate.

Blinded to the realization that the Ixia were here, on Risthmus, not orbiting above. And if she had understood what she felt before, Doetzier could have called in his s.h.i.+elds; and Shjams would not now be standing before her with a laze aimed right at her heart. The alien hissed. Water drops formed on his fur. He moved forward till they were half a meter apart.

Tsia didn't flinch. "Cousin-"

The Ixia s.h.i.+fted, and she watched a claw extend and retract from his elbow with the movement. "Come closer," he breathed. "Let me touch you."

She stretched her lips, and it wasn't a grin, and the Ixia's eyes riveted on that movement. "Come closer to me," she returned in a low voice.

"Tsia," Shjams warned.

The alien laughed. The sound was a mockery of humor, and Tsia could not control the shudder that shook her. The focus- the intent. The wariness-the hunger. The poise and the wide-open senses... Her hands clenched unconsciously into curled claws; her jaw swung back into a menacing, side-to-side movement.

Ruka, crouched beneath the s.h.i.+p, began to keen in a haunting, rising yowl. The alien's slits of eyes flicked to the cougar. "Look you, at the three of us," he said. "So alike, and yet dissimilar. So much the same at heart. Yet in some subtle way, you smell like this one here." He inclined his head almost imperceptibly at Shjams.

Tsia forced her words out. "We share the blood of family."

"Ah. But we"-he gestured at Ruka, himself, and her- "share our very souls."

His voice was a low, snarling hiss, but Tsia no longer s.h.i.+vered at the tone. It had insinuated itself through her ears to her mind till it sounded as natural to her as Ruka's voice. She glanced at her sister, and the Ixia stretched out a hand with his wrist and knuckle claws protracted. They stroked across Tsia's cheek, following the scars that ran from temple line to jaw. Unconsciously, she rubbed her face on his hand. She felt his fur along her nose, then her cheeks and chin before she froze with the realization of what she did. With a whuff of breath, the alien leaned down to press his forehead against her face. She jerked back. The slitted eyes narrowed. "I see in you my-self," he hissed. He gestured at Shjams without taking his eyes from the guide. "What is her name?" he asked her sister.

"Tsia," Shjams whispered.

The alien's lips parted, and he seemed to smile. "Lan-Lu," he said with that strangely mesmerizing tone. "I am called Lan-Lu Orahn J'Avatzan."

Tsia took a step away from the skimmer, and the alien put his clawed hand upon her chest "No. You stay, I think. And that one too," he added, indicating the cougar.

The touch of his fur against her skin made her want to writhe. She licked her lips again, and the alien's eyes flickered with the movement. She reached up and touched his hand. The knuckle claws seemed to stick farther out. Gently, deliberately, she slid her fingers around his and pushed his paw away. "Let Ruka go," she said quietly.

Golden pools of light gleamed in the drowning rain. "Why?"

"Because he isn't part of this. Because he doesn't understand your presence, and his mind is filled with pain from your actions. He belongs with this world, not with you."

"And you, Tsia-human?"

She refused to s.h.i.+ver at the tone. "My mind is clear," she said softly. "Kill me if you must."

"No," Lan-Lu said slowly. "I think... not."

Not... yet. The words hung between them in the biogate. Tsia felt like a rat caught against a wall. There were other shadows in her gate. Her expression must have tightened. Shjams took Tsia's arm in a hard grip. For a moment, the alien regarded Tsia in silence. She could not read his face, but in her gate, she felt the false acquiescence that hid behind his eyes. The slits of color gleamed like yellow light in the grayness of the landing pad. From the side, a group of blackjack sprinted raggedly around the corner. Beams of light flashed from their weapons. The alien's head snapped around.

Too late, Shjams felt Tsia's tension. Tsia slid like water from her grasp. The alien lunged after her, but Tsia was already running across the deck. Shjams's laze fired like an animal that had its own control, and Ruka, from under the s.h.i.+p, leaped like a grav dancer in zero gee. His paws caught Shjams on the shoulder, and her beam jerked into the side of the s.h.i.+p. Instantly, a long, curving line of black bored along its hull. Shjams screamed a curse. She jerked the laze back around, but the alien stopped her. Ruka streaked away.

Tsia staggered with her own speed. Go, Ruka, she snarled. Take yourself to Van'ei. The image she sent of Nitpicker's body smell was clear, and the cougar disappeared between two of the squat structures. One of the zeks cursed her fleeing figure, and fired blindly in her direction. The beam sizzled harmlessly away.

She sprinted, then turned and shook her fist at the s.h.i.+p. "I will never give you up," she shouted. "Not in this life. Not in my death."

The wind lifted her voice and struck her sister like a fist. Shjams fired again, but the beams flashed uselessly short. The alien leaped aboard. Shjams followed. Like reavers disappearing down their dike holes, the sprinting zeks dove through the hatch of the transport. Inside, the power packs of the s.h.i.+p fired up even before the hatch was cleared. The sail slats s.h.i.+fted along the skimmer's skin so that it rippled with movement.

On the ground, the meres spread out across the landing pad like a smooth flood of darkness. Bowdie had a manual com in one hand, his parlas in the other. Striker was far in the rear, her limping run stubborn and steady. Doetzier ran to one side of Nitpicker with his long legs pounding in unconsciously perfect three-to-four sync to the pilot's stride. Doetzier shouted something at Wren who shook his head. The s.h.i.+eld, then Nitpicker caught up with Tsia. The pilot skidded to a stop, and stood for a moment to catch her breath, her eyes locked on that silver form. She did not try to fire; her fibergun was useless against the side of the s.h.i.+p.

The skimmer rose without a sound, but the hatch did not close, and Shjams stood in the doorway staring down at the guide. Tsia struck the air, leaving her hand outstretched, her fingers white with the tension of her reach.

Shjams screamed soundlessly into the rain, and Tsia seemed to feel it through her gate. She cried out and fell to her knees.

The skimmer shuddered in the air. The skin rippled again as the sail slats adjusted. The whine of the motors rose higher.

Nitpicker shaded her eyes, then pulled Tsia by her sleeve. "We have to go. Now."

"I can't-"

"Now!" Nitpicker snarled.

Tsia fought her grip. "They're gone. I couldn't stop them, and you didn't ground the transport-"

"We did. Come on!" she yelled at the other meres. "Away from the deck. Hurry. Their parbeams-"

Tsia refused to move, her eyes still on the transport. "They can't use them."

Doetzier whipped around. "What do you mean?"

Her gaze finally turned to him. "Those safety cubes from our s.h.i.+p-I had some of them in my pocket. I slipped them into the configuration honeycomb for their weapons."

Nitpicker's own hand tightened on Tsia's arm. "You did what?" "I put them in the weapons slots. If they try to fire, the weapons honeycomb will activate. The safeties will trigger and take over, and the s.h.i.+p will head straight up-skyside orbit, where they'll stay till you send someone to get them." Her voice slowed at Doetzier's expression. "They might have disabled their own safeties, but it would take them hours to figure out where mine were activating from. And until then, they'll be stuck skyside, waiting for a pickup."

"My G.o.d..." Nitpicker stared at the s.h.i.+p that whined into its full flight status.

"What do you mean? What have I done?"

Doetzier cursed under his breath. "Dammit, Feather, we wanted them to stand trial."

"I know that. The safeties won't kill them-they'll merely set the s.h.i.+p in orbit."