by Timothy Zahn
"Please," Thrr-gilag said, holding out his identification card and, for good measure, his Overclan-complex pass.
"Um," the Elder said, peering at the cards. "The reservation will be made in your name. Payment is due one tentharc before departure."
"I understand," Thrr-gilag said. A hundred cyclics ago, right after the first credit/debit system had been set up, Elders had carried value numbers directly between buyers and sellers. But as the system had expanded, someone had belatedly realized that Elders who could handle whole sections of a conversation should have no trouble at all memorizing a few strings of numbers. A handful of dishonest Elders had been caught proving it-to the tune of nearly half a million in fraudulent purchases and fund transfers-and that had been that. "Thank you."
The Elder sniffed one last time and was gone. "You're welcome," Thrr-gilag murmured, settling tiredly back against the railcar couch. Seven tentharcs before lift. Plenty of time to get to Reeds Village first and see his mother.
And to find out what was going on out there that neither his father nor his brother would tell him about.
He sighed. It was unfair. It really was. This looming war against the Humans was enough trouble for anyone to have to handle. To throw in family and personal crises on top of it was asking far too much.
But the crises were there, and they were on his shoulders, and he would just have to deal with them as best he could. Settling back on his couch, he closed his eyes against the light filtering through the postmidarc clouds and tried to get some sleep.
7
The tissue analyzer beeped notice that it had finished its work, the gentle tone almost lost amid the continual snap-flapping of the shelter walls. Laying down her stylus, Klnn-dawan-a got up from her couch and headed over to the analyzer, eying the shaking walls warily as she walked. The wind outside had been increasing steadily for nearly half a tentharc now, with no sign that it was planning to modulate anytime soon. If the storm didn't pass in another tentharc or two, they could say farewell to the latearc's sampling run.
"Getting pretty noisy out there," her assistant Bkar-otpo commented from across the shelter, his tone sounding a little uneasy. "How strong do these winds get, anyway?"
"Don't worry, we'll be all right," Klnn-dawan-a told him, shutting the analyzer back to standby and keying for a datalist. "These shelters can handle anything Gree's likely to throw at us. At least this time of cyclic."
"Yes, I've heard stories about those equinox storms," Bkar-otpo said. "You ever been in one of those?"
"A couple of times," Klnn-dawan-a said. The datalist came up, and she ran a quick eye over the numbers. Promising; definitely promising. Maybe this time they'd finally hit the proper window for the genetic-ring transmutation. "I wouldn't want to be in a field shelter during one, but a perm building stands up to them just fine."
"It must still be pretty impressive-"
"It's wonderful and exhilarating both," she interrupted gently, stepping over to him and holding out the datalist. "File this into the recorder, would you? And then run up a comparison between it and the other samplings."
"I obey, Searcher," he said briskly, all business now as he took the datalist and pulled his couch up to the recorder. "Will we be taking another set of samplings this latearc?"
"Assuming the wind dies down, yes."
"I've been wondering about that," Bkar-otpo said doubtfully. "Even at the best of times, Chigin whelps can be pretty unpredictable. No telling what this storm will do to their dispositions."
"We'll be fine," Klnn-dawan-a assured him, focusing her attention again on the wind. Was it marginally less violent than it had been a few hunbeats ago? Possibly. "I'm going to take a quick look outside, see if I can spot the edge of the storm."
"You want me to go with you?" Bkar-otpo asked, half standing up.
"No, I'll be fine," she said. "I won't be going very far."
"I could call an Elder to go with you," he persisted, his hand hovering near the signaler control.
"I'll be fine," she said firmly. "You just get busy with that comparison, all right?"
He seemed to sigh. "I obey, Searcher," he said again, and turned reluctantly back to the recorder.
Klnn-dawan-a stepped to the shelter door and began unfastening the catches, mentally shaking her head and wondering yet again what exactly she was going to do about Bkar-otpo. Fresh out of school, studious and earnest as all get out, he was the totally stereotypical searcher assistant.
With, unfortunately, what looked like the beginnings of a strong crush on her.
She was holding on to the grips tightly as the door came open, but even so, the wind nearly ripped it out of her hands. Maneuvering out into the blast, she sealed the door behind her. Gree's sun was long gone below the horizon, and for a beat she stayed where she was beside the shelter as her lowlight pupils widened to compensate for the darkness. A few beats later, with the rocky ground now adequately visible, she headed off between the cluster of wind-buffeted shelters toward the edge of the shallow hollow the group had set up in.
The simplest thing to do, of course, would be to arrange for Bkar-otpo to be transferred to one of the other three Dhaa'rr study groups on Gree. It would give him time to forget her and maybe latch on to someone who wasn't ten cyclics older than he was and already bond-engaged. If she did it properly, chances were good that he'd never even guess that she'd been behind the transfer.
The problem was, he might. And if her own experiences when she was nineteen were anything to go by, that would be devastating to him. Klnn-dawan-a had always considered herself a rather plain sort of person when she was growing up: average in appearance and personality, considerably less than average in conversational ability and family status. Her intellect had been sharp enough, certainly, but she'd never found that to have much in the way of appeal to the people around her. It wasn't until she'd discovered her love of alien studies and the close-knit group of people who felt likewise that she'd really begun to feel at home. By the time her friendship with Thrr-gilag had begun to grow into something stronger, she'd been strong enough herself to take the chance of getting hurt.
Bkar-otpo, unfortunately, wasn't anywhere near that stage yet. Nevertheless, it was clear that she was going to have to do something, and soon. The bond-engagement threads she always wore weren't deterring him in the slightest; neither were her attempts to work Thrr-gilag's name into the conversation every chance she got. Apparently, she was just going to have to come out point-blank with it.
And then, maybe, she'd get him transferred.
She'd reached the edge of the hollow now and the predator fence that protected the encampment. The wind was stronger here, with a tangle of eddies and crosscurrents that seemed determined to knock her off her feet. Bracing herself against a shoulder-high rock, she put her hands up to protect her eyes and peered out across the sky.
Good luck was with them. The cloud formations that indicated the edge of the windstorm were clearly visible between the rolling foothills directly ahead and the taller mountains rising beyond them. Ten hunbeats-twenty at the most-and the winds should begin settling down. Should be no problem for her and Bkar-otpo to get out to the Za Mingchma farm and take their tissue samples on schedule.
She shifted her position against the rock, letting her gaze drop to the foothills themselves. The lights of perhaps fifty Chigin houses were visible through the tight mesh of the predator fence, the homes scattered unevenly up and down the slopes of the hills and even part of the way up the sheer face of the mountain behind. Farm families, most of them, working hard to coerce a living from the thin soil and thin air up here. Aloof to the Zhirrzh study group for the most part, but at least not openly hostile the way the valley and city residents always seemed to be.
Klnn-dawan-a frowned, her gaze pausing on one of the plots of land. The fence surrounding the whelp enclosure looked wrong, somehow. She stared hard at it, feeling her lowlight pupils widening to full enlargement. The landscape brightened slightly....
There it was: a thick tree branch, apparently blown there by the wind, leaning against the middle of the enclosure fence on one side and holding it partially pinned to the ground.
She fumbled out her caller from the survival pack fastened around her waist, her view of the landscape ahead changing again as her darklight pupils expanded to pull in the heat radiance that surrounded all homoiothermal creatures. The tips of the houses' chimneys and the smoke pouring from them took on a gentle glow; larger, more diffuse images appeared inside the enclosures of the nearest yards: whelps, huddled together against the wind or else prowling their circuits in mindless defiance of the elements.
In the enclosure with the downed fence there was nothing.
"Terrific," Klnn-dawan-a muttered under her breath, half turning to aim the caller at the top of the white cutting pyramid in the center of the Zhirrzh encampment. The brilliant darklight beam lanced out, and over the wind she faintly heard the clang as the alarm mounted to the pyramid's top went off in response. She turned back around again, peering out into the darkness-
An Elder appeared in front of her. "Yes, Searcher?"
"The fence at the Ca Chagba farm has been breached," she shouted over the wind. "The whelps have gotten out. I'm going to go look for them. Tell Director Prr-eddsi, and ask him to send someone to help me."
"Not a good idea, Searcher," the Elder shouted back. "Especially not in a storm like this. They could get vicious."
"I'll be all right," Klnn-dawan-a assured him. "I've been to the Ca Chagba farm several times-the whelps know me as well as they know any Zhirrzh. I don't think they'll bother me."
"They're not going to be able to smell you in this wind," the Elder objected. "It's too big a risk."
"It's not that big a risk," Klnn-dawan-a said firmly. "Regardless, I'm taking it. Oh, and tell Prr-eddsi he should send someone to alert the Ca Chagba family, too. There's a good chance they don't even know their whelps are missing. Go on, get going."
"I obey, Searcher," the Elder said reluctantly. "Don't go far; I'll have an escort for you in a beat."
He vanished. Moving out of the limited shelter of the hollow, Klnn-dawan-a slid the caller back into its survival-pack pouch and pulled out her stinger. The whelps might or might not bother her, but there were other dangers roaming the mountains out there. Keying the weapon on, feeling the reassuring vibration against her palm as its energy capacitor filled, she opened the gate in the predator fence and stepped outside.
"Searcher?" an Elder's voice called faintly in her ear. "We were told to come help you."
"All right," Klnn-dawan-a said, glancing around at the pale shapes. Good; Prr-eddsi had assigned three of them to her. That would help. "We're searching for missing Chigin whelps," she told them. "I want two of you to start quartering the area. Pay particular attention to gullies, the lee sides of rock formations, and other wind-protected areas. You"-she gestured to the third, a fairly recently raised Elder named Rka't-msotsi-a-"stay with me. Keep an eye out for predators."
The other two Elders acknowledged and vanished. "Where are we going?" Rka't-msotsi-a asked.
"We'll start at the creek," Klnn-dawan-a told her, taking a bearing on one of the houses and pointing ahead and to the left. "That section where the cut's particularly deep. Stay close."
She headed off, struggling to keep her balance in the wind, hoping that Prr-eddsi would be willing to send some of the other Zhirrzh to help in the search. Elders were fine as communicators, but as hunters or trackers-particularly at latearc-they left a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, chances were good that Prr-eddsi would do nothing but stay where he was. For all his genius with alien languages, the director was about as timid a Zhirrzh as Klnn-dawan-a had ever seen.
"Searcher?" Rka't-msotsi-a's voice called faintly in her ear. "I checked ahead, and I think I may have spotted them. There's something, anyway, in that cut you mentioned down by the creek."
"Good," Klnn-dawan-a said, passing over the fact that she'd given Rka't-msotsi-a explicit instructions to stay with her. "How many were there?"
"I'm sorry," Rka't-msotsi-a said, a tinge of bitterness and self-reproach in her voice. "I couldn't tell."
"That's all right," Klnn-dawan-a hastened to assure her. Rka't-msotsi-a had been raised to Eldership only a cyclic ago, the result of a drudokyi attack elsewhere on Gree, and she was still coming to grips with these new limitations that had been imposed on her. And of course she'd been only thirty-four cyclics old when it had happened, barely five cyclics older than Klnn-dawan-a. That had to make it even more difficult. "Let's go take a look."
They headed off, Klnn-dawan-a straining to keep both her lowlight and darklight pupils as wide-open as possible and to keep watch in all directions. Rka't-msotsi-a, she knew, had been mauled badly by the drudokyi before her injuries had raised her to Eldership, and Klnn-dawan-a had no desire to suffer through something like that herself. Perhaps the whole unpleasantness surrounding that event explained some of Director Prr-eddsi's timidness, too, especially regarding Gree's animal life. He'd been right there with Rka't-msotsi-a when it had happened....
Off to their right, something moved behind a rock formation. "Searcher!" Rka't-msotsi-a snapped. "There!"
"I've got it," Klnn-dawan-a said, her stinger tracking that direction. Something alive, all right, and certainly big enough to be a Chigin whelp. Trouble was, it could be any of a number of other things, too. Including a drudokyi. "Go get a closer look. See if you can tell what it is."
"I'll try," Rka't-msotsi-a said tightly. She flicked toward the rock, vanishing as she passed through it toward the creature behind. Klnn-dawan-a waited, holding her breath....
And then Rka't-msotsi-a was back. "It's a drudokyi," she hissed.
Klnn-dawan-a's tail twitched violently. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Rka't-msotsi-a said, her voice trembling. "I'm sure. It's a big one, too."
"All right, don't panic," Klnn-dawan-a said, glancing quickly around her. "At this time of latearc there's a fair chance it's already fed. Let's just ease away and head for the creek."
There was no answer. "Rka't-msotsi-a?"
But the Elder was gone. "Terrific," Klnn-dawan-a muttered, looking around again as she began carefully backing away. She could dispose of the animal over there, certainly; on full power the laser beam from her stinger would vaporize a slender line through hide and muscle and bone, the explosive expansion of the resulting gas creating a hydrostatic shock wave that would instantly incapacitate and then kill the creature. The problem was that, despite Rka't-msotsi-a's identification, Klnn-dawan-a herself wasn't totally convinced the skulking creature was indeed a drudokyi. If not-if it was instead one of the missing whelps-then killing it without provocation could easily wipe out the vanishingly small amount of goodwill the Zhirrzh study group had so painstakingly built up with the Chigin community here. Best if possible just to get out of its way.
She took another step back; and as she did so, the mass behind the rock shifted position a little. Klnn-dawan-a raised the stinger warningly....
"Left!" Rka't-msotsi-a's voice shrieked in her ear.
Klnn-dawan-a spun around. From out of nowhere a second darklight-glowing image had appeared, bearing down on her with the speed and power of a double-wide railcar.
Her thumbs jerked spasmodically against the stinger's triggers, sending a brilliant slash of laser fire cutting through the air as she tried desperately to swing the weapon around to bear on this new threat. The light blazed into her dilated lowlight and darklight pupils, stabbing agony into her eyes and head and plunging everything else around it into terrifying darkness. Desperately, she swung the stinger back and forth, not sure she was even aiming in the right direction, hearing the roar of the drudokyi over the wind, feeling the click as the stinger shifted to autokill mode, smelling the drudokyi and the exotic Gree air and her own fear-
The drudokyi slammed into her, knocking the stinger from her grip and driving her backward to the ground. She gasp
ed in pain, the predator's weight and heat settling on top of her, crushing her against the cold rocks. Dimly, she felt herself slashing again and again into the thick hide with the edges of her tongue....
And then, quite suddenly, the weight was gone. Klnn-dawan-a opened her eyes-she hadn't realized until then that she'd closed them-to find a group of Zhirrzh crouching over her. "Are you all right?" Bkar-otpo asked anxiously, dropping to the ground beside her and taking her arm. "You're-Director Prr-eddsi, she's covered in blood!"
"It's all right," Klnn-dawan-a gasped, patting his hand reassuringly as she struggled to get air back into her body. "I'm all right. It's the drudokyi's blood, not mine."
"Are you sure?" Prr-eddsi asked from her other side.
"I'm sure," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I think it must have been dead before it even reached me."
"That may well be," Prr-eddsi rumbled. "It's still only by immensely good luck that you're not an Elder by now.
