Cataract. Part 31

"No-no they won't."

Wren pulled at Nitpicker's sleeve. "They're coming around. We've got to go. If they loose a parbeam

cannon on this landing pad, we'll be flash-fried like oil on the sun."

"Wait!" Tsia clutched Doetzier's arms. "What did you mean, they won't stand trial?"

"We sabotaged the life support," Nitpicker snapped. "They can't go skyside. They won't have cabin

pressure. They won't have air. They won't have enough temperature to keep from turning to instant ice. They won't even be able to regulate the pressure flows for their internal systems. If they go up, they'll blow apart like thin gla.s.s."

Tsia stared at her in horror.

"It's done! It's done. You can't change it. Now move!"

Wren thrust her toward the far side of the landing pad. The other meres were already running. Away

from the huts; away from the freepick structures. Toward the gray-green forest, where the trees danced

like demons in the wind, and the shadows looked like shrouds.

Like a slow-moving hand, the skimmer turned in the air. A rounded snout protruded from its nose.

Seeking, it turned and tilted till it pointed along the landing pad, following the steps of the meres. Tsia

could almost feel Shjams's hand on the conn. And when it fired, the crack of the beam was like thunder. The air seemed to split. The metaplas surface of the landing pad melted instantly into a soft, black, bubbling pool. Fire leaped up. The metaplas burned. Acrid smoke warred with rain. As if the beam lifted their feet, Striker, then Bowdie dove into the trees. Doetzier was a second behind.

The parbeam flashed out again. The forest crackled, bursting into a column of brown-black smoke. Nitpicker and Wren dove away into the brush. Tsia took a running step, and half turned to look back. The third blast caught her like that, on the edge of the tarmac, between the fire in the air and the flash of the forest, in a rush of heat and ash.

Her body flew through leaves and twigs, then crashed like a log through the shrubs. Her arms were crossed over her head, and they were the only thing that protected her from smas.h.i.+ng her face against the boulder on which she finally landed. She lay for an instant, stunned, her body one ma.s.sive scream, with the air blasted out of her lungs. She didn't feel the bruised ribs. She didn't notice the blood that ran down her arm and dripped from her hand like syrup. There was only the growing heat that clogged her nose with breathlessness. The fire-she could feel it, growing and sucking her air. Her throat tightened; her smoke membranes closed.

Slowly, as if in a dream, she pulled herself to her feet. The world was a turning image, and her ears did not seem to hear the shout that came from away to her left.

The skimmer still shuddered over the landing pad-she could feel its subsonic whine in her bones. But it was beginning to rise even as she staggered away from the fire that had followed her to the trees. She stepped in flame and barely noticed. The creeping blaze was slow and it sputtered in the rain. Like a zombie, she stumbled back toward the landing pad. She didn't have to call the sweat to her skin. It ran down her face and neck, soaking her body further and burning into her blood. She fell to her knees and nearly choked on the branch that cut across her neck. She snarled like the cats who fled the crisping forest, but she crawled on to the landing pad.

She fell on the smooth, hard edge, and stared blindly up at the sky. The catspeak that snarled in her head made her roll over finally and stagger to her feet. To her knees. To her feet again. A furred shoulder shoved its way under her hand. Her fingers clenched. Ruka hissed.

Above, the skimmer faded in the sky, its sonic hum rising in her bones. She could not control the s.h.i.+vers that shook her. She could not open her gate wider past Ruka, past the cats, to feel a thread of her sister. There was no echo in her gate of Shjams's presence; no final touch through the node.

"It's the way of family, is it not?" Nitpicker's voice was quiet as a grave beside her, and somehow cut through her deafness like a metal scream that shatters a silent night. Nitpicker did not look at Tsia's face; her shuttered eyes were glued to the sky. "When she tried to kill you," she said softly, "she destroyed herself instead."

Tsia stared at the sky. She felt nothing. It was as if her disbelief had warred with her grief until all that was left was a void in which she could no longer think. Her breath seemed to catch in her lungs and freeze so that her chill spread from the inside out.

When the spark came, it was tiny. It flashed in the clouds like a pinpoint strike of lightning. Tiny, and growing orange-red against the gray, rus.h.i.+ng sky, the spark became a flame. The flame became a fire. And a tiny sun fell from the sky.

Like Lucifer, whose wings burned as he plummeted, the skimmer twisted and turned, falling to the east. A meteor, whose heart was human, and whose skin as alien as the stars... A comet that struck the plain on the other side of the forest like a spear that sinks into mud. A fall of char and ash like snow. Red rain. Ash rain. A black cataract above the gray, flooded Plain of Tears.

Epilogue.

Tsia sank to her knees. Not in my death, she had shouted to Shjams. But it was her sister who had died. And now there was nothing but gray storm winds clouding the sky. Nothing but gray-washed tarmac, and streaks of black slagged metaplas where the landing pad had been. And nothing in her heart but a numbness, which spread like shock through her limbs. She pressed her hands to her chest. She could barely breathe for the weight of her own body. The b.u.m in Ruka's paw-it seared her thoughts. Her throat, with its swollen ring of bruises, felt like a collar that tightened and choked off her air. She cried out inarticulately, and it was Striker, not Wren, who touched her. She clung to the woman's arm for a moment, lost in the smoke, while the forest burned in the rain.

Doetzier stared to the east, where the sparks fell in a silent, burning rainbow. "Gone. All of it-gone."

Bowdie followed his gaze. "At least the chips burned with the s.h.i.+p," he said flatly. "No one will be able to use them."

"Billions of credit destroyed," Doetzier said to himself, as if he did not hear the other man. "Thousands of man-hours in tracking blackjack from Denes to Interference to Risthmus. And it's wasted. Just like that. Not a shred of evidence. Not a single zek to stand trial. Not a single hard link to the Ixia. An operation eight years in the making, and all of it for nothing. No biochips. No blackjack."

Tsia opened her eyes and stared at his face. His cheeks were taut, and the hollows under his eyes seemed suddenly p.r.o.nounced. His biofield was steady now, without the sparks of light, and his expression flatter than she had seen before, as if exhaustion had somehow stolen the definition from his features. She tried to speak, then looked away. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e with the snarl of Ruka's mind.

Over her shoulder, two silver shapes dropped out ,of the sky and seemed to hang for a moment over the tarmac. A third s.h.i.+p appeared in the east, over the Plain of Tears. The subsonic hum of the s.h.i.+eld s.h.i.+ps vibrated in Tsia's bones. Ruka hissed from the forest, and she called him to her. The meres parted.

Bowdie's eyes looked from Tsia to the cub, then back to Tsia's taut face. Before them, the skimmers began to settle down on the flight deck.

Doetzier cursed again. Tsia followed the snips with her eyes. "There is one zek," she said. "Decker."

Watching his backup s.h.i.+ps arrive, Doetzier turned his head. He eyed her for a moment. "Alive?" he demanded, his voice suddenly sharp.

"Was. On the other side of the landing pad. He needs a scame if you want him to live long enough to testify. He had a shaper stuck to his face."

He glanced sharply at her face. "And Kurvan?"

Her face was blank of expression, but her eyes burned like fire in the rain. Her fingers dug into Ruka's fur.

"Dead," he answered for her. "What did you use?" he said, his voice suddenly harsh. "Your bare hands or your flexor?"

"Cougar took him out. Not me."

Doetzier stared at her for a moment. She could smell his disbelief. One of the skimmer hatches opened. s.h.i.+elds began to drop out and sprint across the tarmac in twos, and a large group ran toward the meres. "And the alien?" Doetzier said. ''The Ixia at the s.h.i.+p? Why didn't you stop it from going aboard?"

"Flexor didn't work anymore."

Nitpicker looked at her suddenly. "A flexor only breaks if its biochips are fried," she said slowly. "It was your weapon, not mine which didn't work, and we traded before we reached the stake-you had mine on the tarmac."

Bowdie shook his head. "I saw her give the biochip case back to the blackjack on the landing pad. Her weapon didn't work-they threw her flexor away. I didn't mistake that."

Tsia looked at him for a moment, then turned and gently lifted Ruka's lips away from the cougar's fangs. She ran her finger along his gums, scooping out the small objects. Ruka hissed and shook his head as she let his gums slide back down. In her open palms, the tiny objects glistened with saliva and rain. The biochips.

Bowdie leaned forward. "I'll be d.a.m.ned..."

Striker looked at her with wondering eyes. "You swapped them out with the dummies-"

"It was the bait chips which were burned with the s.h.i.+p." Wren touched her on the shoulder, his narrow face stretched in a faint grin as he ignored the hiss of the cat.

"No." Tsia let Ruka slink away to crouch at the edge of the tarmac where the smoke still curled like genies from the hot ground. "The dummies," she said slowly, "are in my flexor. Like Bowdie said, Shjams threw that away on the landing pad. You should find it somewhere near Decker's body."

Doetzier said softly. "Then these... these really are the biochips?"

"Yes."

"But the bait biochips... If you swapped the biochips in your flexor"-he guessed-"for the dummies I carried in my case, what did you put in that case to give back to blackjack?"

"The biochips from the emergency scanners they had in their skimmer's cabin."

He stared at the chips in her hand as if he could not quite believe she held them. "You actually did it," he said slowly. "You got them back-even the bait chips." He touched the ragged hole in her blunter and fingered the laze-fried edges. He glanced at her skin, unmarked by scars where the bios.h.i.+eld had taken the brunt of the breaker, and the laze had crisped only cloth. "And not a scratch," he murmured. "Not a single burn on you to boot."

She stared at him. Numbness crawled over her heart. The ash trail of the s.h.i.+p in the sky seemed scored into her mind. The fire that drizzled out in the forest seemed to cry out with human screams. Over and over, her memory triggered the hisser tube to stain the landing pad with the blackness of Kurvan's skin. Again and again, Shjams's'shoulders flinched against being touched when Tsia tried to reach her... Shjams in the hatch, firing down with her laze. The flat, hard eyes, without expression-blank, as if the person inside had been somehow sucked away.

Tsia looked down at the hole over her heart, where the blunter was burned away. "Yes," she said slowly. She looked up, toward the Plain of Tears. "I was... lucky."

He held out his hand, but she closed her fist over the chips.

Tsia let the wet smoke from the forest curl into her lungs. Ruka growled, and she looked down at the cougar with eyes that burned. "A link, Doetzier. That was our contract."

He eyed her speculatively. "I know you, T&ia-nyeka, and what you want-an open node link will change nothing for you. You're a rogue gate. That's your heart-your self. No matter what kind of link you have with the node, you'll always be hunted by the guild, and you'll always be running from demons." He motioned toward the eight s.h.i.+elds who ran toward the group of meres. He touched her closed fist lightly. "The guide guild knows you exist again. The meres can no longer protect you. Come back with me. To the s.h.i.+elds. An open link is only one of the things we can offer."

She clenched her hands into fists so that the biochips cut into her skin. She did not see the trickle of blood that squeezed out onto the tarmac. "I feel the wind against my skin, Doetzier. I taste blood on my lips. I burn with eagerness in muscles that bunch and stretch in my legs." She opened her hands, exposing the chips, then curled them again so that her knuckles were white with tautness. Her mind snarled at the cub, and the growl in Ruka's throat made her throw her head back and scream like a cougar.

Bowdie jerked; Striker s.h.i.+vered. Doetzier shook his head.

"You're nothing but your fear, Tsia-guide. No open link will change that."

Nitpicker glanced at Tsia's rigid neck. "That isn't fear, Doetzier," she answered flatly. "That is Feather's answer."

Tsia stared at them, her head shaking as she cleared her sight of the blurred vision from Ruka. "You don't know me, Doetzier. You never did." She got to her feet. "An open link. We have a contract."

Slowly, studying her with his cold, blackened eyes, he motioned to Bowdie. The other mere pulled out the manual com and handed it over to the s.h.i.+eld. A moment, maybe two, and Doetzier snapped it off. "The node is still jammed from the Ixia s.h.i.+p in orbit, but your ID is set in the traces. When we clear the jam, your link will be s.h.i.+fted. You're clear. And free."

"Free..." Her eyes were blank for a moment. Free to take contract with whomever she wanted, wherever she wanted on Risthmus... Free to work outside the guide guild-even away from the meres. Her fist pressed to her, and her knuckles brushed the hole in the jacket where her sister had burned it through. Tiny flames licked her thoughts with the image of Shjams. She stared down at her fist. Then dropped the chips in Doetzier's palm as if they burned her skin.

The running s.h.i.+elds stopped short of the group and pointed their weapons with sharp motions at the meres. One figure separated herself from the other s.h.i.+elds and strode forward to meet Doetzier. The man, still watching Tsia, did not turn at first. Then, from the edge of the slagged deck, Ruka snarled. Doetzier's eyes flickered. Tsia stepped back from his reach.

The trees no longer bowed, but just whipped and thrust their branches at each other, so that waves of half-burned needles sprayed out across the deck. The fire was almost out, and only smoke curled up now, not flame. In the sky, the clouds lightened and lowered themselves so that they hugged the hills, while the rain filled the air with sharp rhythm. Gray light seeped into the trees from the hidden sun. Gray shadows beckoned in the forest. Striker's eyes met Tsia's, and the expressionless depth of the woman's gaze burned into her mind.

Tsia's voice was low and quiet. "It is a dawn as black as night," she said. "And it tastes like ash on my tongue."

She turned and walked away toward the forest, where the smoke curled up at her feet. Beside her, a shadow flickered. A glint of gray light caught on tawny fur; a flash reflected in golden eyes. Rain slashed across the brash. Then the wind seemed to lift her feet so that she stalked, then ran in sprinting leaps before she was swallowed by leaves.

Author's Note

Wolves, wolf-dog hybrids, and exotic and wild cats might seem like romantic pets. The sleekness of the musculature, the mystique and excitement of keeping a wild animal as a companion... For many owners, wild and exotic animals symbolize freedom and wilderness. For other owners, wild animals from wolves to bobcats to snakes provide a status symbol- something that makes the owner interesting. Many owners claim they are helping keep an animal species from becoming extinct, that they care adequately for their pet's needs, and they love wild creatures.

However, most predator and wild or exotic animals need to range over wide areas. They need to be socialized with their own species. They need to know how to survive, hunt, breed, and raise their young in their own habitat. And each species' needs are different. A solitary wolf, without the companions.h.i.+p of other wolves with whom it forms sophisticated relations.h.i.+ps, can become neurotic and unpredictable. A cougar, however, stakes out its own territory and, unless it is mating or is a female raising its young, lives and hunts as a solitary predator. Both wolves and cougars can range fifty to four hundred square miles over the course of a year. Keeping a wolf or cougar as a pet is like raising a child in a closet.

Wild animals are not easily domesticated. Even when raised from birth by humans, these animals are dramatically different from domestic animals. Wild animals are dangerous and unpre-dictable, even though they might appear calm or trained, or seem too cute to grow dangerous with age. Wolves and exotic cats make charming, playful pups and kittens, but the adult creatures are still predators. For example, lion kittens are cute, ticklish animals that like to be handled (all kittens are). They mouth things with tiny, kitten teeth. But adult cats become solitary, territorial, and possessive predators. Some will rebel against authority, including that of the handlers they have known since birth. They can show unexpected aggression. Virtually all wild and exotic cats, including ocelots, margay, serval, cougar, and bobcat, can turn vicious as they age.

Monkeys and other nonhuman primates also develop frustrating behavior as they age. Monkeys keep themselves clean and give each other much-needed, day-to-day social interaction and rea.s.surance by grooming each other. A monkey kept by itself can become filthy and depressed, and can begin mutilating itself (pulling out its hair and so on). When a monkey grows up, it climbs on everything, vocalizes loudly, bites, scratches, exhibits s.e.xual behavior toward you and your guests, and, like a wolf, marks everything in its territory with urine. It is almost impossible to housebreak or control a monkey.

Many people think they can train wolves in the same manner that they train dogs. They cannot. Even if well cared for, wolves do not act as dogs do. Wolves howl. They chew through almost anything, including tables, couches, walls, and fences. They excavate ten-foot pits in your backyard. They mark everything with urine and cannot be housetrained. (Domestic canid breeds that still have a bit of wolf in them can also have these traits.) Punis.h.i.+ng a wolf for tearing up your re-cliner or urinating on the living room wall is punis.h.i.+ng the animal for instinctive and natural behavior.

Wolf-dog hybrids have different needs from both wolves and dogs, although they are closer in behavior and needs to wolves than dogs. These hybrids are often misunderstood, missocial-ized, and mistreated until they become vicious or unpredictable fear-biters. Dissatisfied or frustrated owners cannot simply give their hybrids to new owners; it is almost impossible for a wolf-dog to transfer its attachment to another person. When aban-doned or released into the wild by owners, hybrids may also help dilute wolf and coyote strains, creating more hybrids caught between the two disparate worlds of domestic dogs and wild canids. For wolf-dog hybrids, the signs of neurosis and aggression that arise from being isolated, mistreated, or misunderstood most often result in the wolf-dogs being euthanized.

Zoos cannot usually accept exotic or wild animals that have been kept as pets. In general, pet animals are not socialized and do not breed well or coexist with other members of their own species. Because such pets do not learn the social skills to reproduce, they are unable to contribute to the preservation of their species. They seem to be miserable in the company of their own kind, yet have become too dangerous to remain with their human owners. Especially with wolves and wolf-dog hybrids, the claim that many owners make about their pets being one-person animals usually means that those animals have been dangerously unsocialized.

Zoo workers may wish they could rescue every mistreated animal from every inappropriate owner, but the zoos simply do not have the resources to take in pets. Zoos and wildlife rehabilitation centers receive thousands of requests each year to accept animals that can no longer be handled or afforded by owners. State agencies confiscate hundreds more that are abandoned, mistreated, or malnourished.

The dietary requirements of exotic or wild animals are very different from those of domesticated pets. For example, exotic and wild .cats require almost twice as much protein as canids and cannot convert carotene to Vitamin A-an essential nutrient in a felid's diet. A single adult cougar requires two to three pounds of prepared meat each day, plus vitamins and bones. A cougar improperly fed on a diet of chicken or turkey parts or red muscle meat can develop rickets and blindness.

The veterinary bills for exotic and wild animals are outrageously expensive-if an owner can find a vet who knows enough about exotic animals to treat the pet. And it is difficult to take out additional insurance in order to keep such an animal as a pet. Standard homeowner's policies do not cover damages or injuries caused by wild or exotic animals. Some insurance companies will drop clients who keep wild animals as pets.

Wild and exotic animals do not damage property or cause injuries because they are inherently vicious. What humans call property damage is to the animal natural territorial behavior, play, den-making or child-rearing behavior. Traumatic injuries (including amputations and death) to humans most often occur because the animal is protecting its food, territory, or young; because it does not know its own strength compared to humans; or because it is being mistreated. A high proportion of wild- and exotic-animal attacks are directed at human children.

Although traumatic injuries are common, humans are also at risk from the diseases and organisms that undomesticated or exotic animals can carry. Rabies is just one threat in the list of over 150 infectious diseases and conditions that can be transmitted between animals and humans. These diseases and conditions include intestinal parasites, Psittacosis (a species of chlamydaia), cat-scratch fever, measles, and tuberculosis. Hepat.i.tis A (infectious hepat.i.tis), which humans can catch through contact with minute particles in the air (aerosol transmission) or with blood (bites, scratches, etc.), has been found in its subclinical state in over ninety percent of wild chimps, and chimps are infectious for up to sixty days at a time. The Herpes virus simiae, which has a seventy percent or greater mortality rate in humans, can be contracted from macaques. Pen-breeding only increases an animal's risk of disease.

Taking an exotic or wild animal from its natural habitat does not help keep the species from becoming extinct. All wolf species and all feline species (except for the domestic cat) are listed by national or international legislation as either threatened, endangered, or protected. All nonhuman primates are in danger of extinction; and federal law prohibits the importation of nonhuman primates to be kept as pets. In some states, such as Arizona, it is illegal to own almost any kind of wild animal. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service advises that you conserve and protect endangered species. Do not buy wild or exotic animals as pets.

If you would like to become involved with endangered spe-cies or other wildlife, consider supporting a wolf, exotic cat, whale, or other wild animal in its own habitat or in a reputable zoo. You can contact your local reputable zoo, conservation organization, or state department of fish and wildlife for information about supporting exotic or wild animals. National and local conservation groups can also give you an opportunity to help sponsor an acre of rain forest, wetlands, temperate forest, or other parcel of land.

There are many legitimate organizations that will use your money to establish preserves in which endangered species can live in their natural habitat. The internationally recognized Nature Conservancy is such an organization. For information about programs sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, please write to: The Nature Conservancy 1815 N. Lynn Street Arlington, Virginia 22209 Special thanks to Janice Hixson, Dr. Jill Mellen, Ph.D., Dr. Mitch Finnegan, D.V.M., Metro Was.h.i.+ngton Park Zoo; Karen Fis.h.i.+er, The Nature Conservancy; Harley Shaw, General Wildlife Services; Dr. Mary-Beth Nichols, D.V.M.; Brooks Fahy, Cascade Wildlife Rescue; and the many others who provided information, sources, and references for this project.