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Tara K Harper - Cataract
Her teeth, when she looked up, were clenched. "The cub."
Wren regarded her for a long moment, his flat, gray eyes un-readable. "Following?"
She jerked a nod.
He watched her for a moment. Then he turned and contin-ued 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 phys-ical power, but her biogate seethed with the force of life around her. Ruka blinded her;
Wren's voice echoed. The Land-ing 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 Rushing
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 fol-lowed
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 shivered 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 shirt 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
ships whipped by the Nitpicker's fibergun had been discharged so she couldn't fire back& When the
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
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 an-swered 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
prickled. "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 attach-ments 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 be-gan 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 prickled again. She fingered the tube absently, then tossed it back to
Kurvan.
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