by Timothy Zahn
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 gasped 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.
"I know," Klnn-dawan-a said, a shiver running through her as she took stock of herself. Her face and torso were sticky with warm drudokyi blood, a stickiness that was rapidly turning to ice in the cutting wind. Her head still throbbed with the aftereffects of those blinding laser flashes, her whole body ached from that fall to the ground, and her tongue tingled with fatigue and the acrid tastes of the drudokyi's hide and blood and her own poison.
But she hadn't been raised to Eldership, and her body was still whole. She had indeed had immensely good luck.
"I'm glad you agree," Prr-eddsi growled. "I trust the lesson will find a permanent home with you. You should never, ever, go out into a dangerous situation alone. If Rka't-msotsi-a hadn't alerted us when she had, that other drudokyi would most likely have gotten to you before we did."
So that was where Rka't-msotsi-a had disappeared to just before the attack. "Believe me, I won't do it again," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I was just worried about the missing whelps."
"The whelps would have stood a considerably better chance against a pair of drudokyis than you did," Prr-eddsi countered, a shade less gruffly. "
Anyway, they're fine. They're down by the creek. We've alerted the Ca Chagba family - some of them have gone down to herd them back."
"Good." Klnn-dawan-a pushed herself up and onto her left side. Her tail, freed from where it had been pinned beneath her leg, decided it was going to hurt, too. "Then I presume the sampling is still on for this latearc."
"You can't be serious," Bkar-otpo objected, clutching at her arm again. "After what you've just been through - ?"
"Do be quiet, Bkar-otpo," Prr-eddsi said, running a critical eye over Klnn-dawan-a. "Are you really going to feel up to that, Searcher?"
"I'm fine," Klnn-dawan-a said, getting all the way to her feet and peering up at the sky. The wind was still pretty fierce, but the edge of the storm was markedly closer than the last time she'd looked. "Besides, we're at a critical point in the ring transmutation. We can't afford to miss even a single sampling right now."
"All right," Prr-eddsi said. "If you're sure you can handle it. But you take the time first to get cleaned up. And I mean really cleaned up. You walk into a whelp enclosure smelling of drudokyi, and you won't get a chance to put this latearc's lesson into practice. Bkar-otpo, escort her back to the encampment. And then start getting the sampling equipment together."
The wind had died down to a bare whisper by the time Klnn-dawan-a eased open the gate of the enclosure surrounding the Za Mingchma farm. "Hello?" she called gently in the Chigin language as she and Bkar-otpo slipped inside. "Anyone home?"
"I don't see them," Bkar-otpo muttered nervously. "You suppose something's wrong?"
"I doubt it," Klnn-dawan-a said, looking around as her tail sped up with uncomfortable anticipation. She certainly hoped nothing was wrong, anyway. The drudokyi attack had taken more out of her than she'd realized, and all she really wanted to do right now was go back to her shelter and curl up in bed where she could ache in peace. The last thing she needed was a confrontation - any kind of confrontation - with a Chig.
"Then where are they?" Bkar-otpo demanded.
"They're probably just - there they are." Klnn-dawan-a pointed as the group of whelps came silently toward them around the side of the house. "They were just staying out of the wind," she added, bracing herself as she stepped forward and offered the back of her hand. Certainly the whelps had seen the two of them often enough; but as Bkar-otpo had pointed out earlier, the storm wouldn't have done their moods any good. If they got it into their limited minds that the family's grant of safe passage no longer applied to these particular intruders...
The lead whelp trotted up to Klnn-dawan-a and sniffed delicately at her outstretched hand, and for a beat he rumbled deep in his throat. Then, flattening his ears and nostrils back again, he trotted away.
Carefully, Klnn-dawan-a let out her breath. "See?" she said. "No problem. Come on."
The three chrysalises were fastened to the south side of the farmhouse, huge tangled masses of silky threads spun by the whelps that were now secreted within them - whelps in the process of metamorphosing from mindless animals that guarded the farm into the full sentience of adult Chig.
"Gives me the creeps every time I think about it," Bkar-otpo muttered as Klnn-dawan-a knelt down beside the first chrysalis and opened her sampling kit.
"I don't see why it should," Klnn-dawan-a replied, selecting a probe and a tissue sampler. Using the probe to pull away some of the silk, she eased the slender needle of the sampler into the chrysalis mass. "In some ways it's parallel to our own transition from physical to Elder."
"Maybe that's what bothers me about it," Bkar-otpo said, producing a probe of his own and pulling some of the chrysalis silk back out of Klnn-dawan-a's way. "The parallels with the way the Chig treat their whelps."
Klnn-dawan-a flicked her tongue in a negative. "Now you've lost me."
"Well, just think about it a hunbeat," Bkar-otpo said. "The Chig treat their whelps like animals - "
"They are animals."
"You know what I mean. They could at least keep them in a storage outbuilding or something instead of leaving them unprotected in the open like this. You know how many of them die from exposure and predator attack before they even reach metamorphosis stage?"
"A fair number," Klnn-dawan-a conceded.
"A fair number? You call seventy percent a fair-number? And that's up here. I hear the death rate's even higher in the cities, where the whelps from different families are always fighting with each other."
"These are Chig, Bkar-otpo," Klnn-dawan-a reminded him. The tip of the sampler needle touched something solid: the whelp body sleeping within. Carefully, trying not to move the tip, she touched the button on the end, feeling the slight vibration as the tiny suction driver inside the device began the task of drawing fluids and soft tissue into the sampler's collection tube. "You can't judge aliens by Zhirrzh ethical standards."
"Maybe not," Bkar-otpo growled. "But we can certainly judge Zhirrzh by Zhirrzh standards. And I sometimes think the Elders use us physicals the same way the Chig adults use their whelps."
Klnn-dawan-a threw him a frown. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Bkar-otpo sighed. "I don't know," he said. "All I know is that we seem always to be giving up stuff for the Elders. I guess I shouldn't have said anything."
"No, I don't think you should have," Klnn-dawan-a agreed shortly. "And before you start talking such nonsense again, I suggest you think about all the ways the Elders contribute to Zhirrzh society. From interstellar communications all the way down to saving me from those drudokyis a tentharc ago."
"Yes, Searcher," Bkar-otpo muttered. "I will." The sampler stopped vibrating, indicating that the tube had been filled to its designated level. Carefully, Klnn-dawan-a eased it out of the chrysalis, wondering what all that had been about. But it was probably nothing. Bkar-otpo was only nineteen, after all, and youth was always rebelling against something. This was probably nothing more than that.
At any rate, Zhirrzh youth psychology wasn't her concern. Chigin metamorphosis was; and there were still eleven tissue samplings yet to be done this latearc. Snugging the first sampler back into its niche in her kit, she pulled out the second and got back to work.
8
Thrr-gilag's railcar switched direction at the main Cliffside Dales station, shifting onto a northward line that led all the way across the flat Kee'miss'lo River valley and ultimately into the Ghuu'rr-clan territory in the hills beyond. Once, while still back in school, Thrr-gilag had ridden this line all the way to its end, just to be able to say he'd done it. For this trip, though, he would be going less than a tenth of that distance. Just ninety-five thoustrides, as the halkling flew, to the small Frr town of Reeds Village.
The sun was glinting through the clouds near the horizon by the time the railcar pulled onto the siding and let him out. According to his father, his mother was living out in the farmland two thoustrides south of town in a small reddish house with white edging and a large vymis tree growing beside the roadway.
A house that Thrr't-rokik himself had of course never seen. Reeds Village was 115 thoustrides from the Thrr family shrine, fifteen thoustrides out of Thrr't-rokik's anchor range. The more Thrr-gilag had thought about that fact, the more ominous it had loomed in his mind. Something had caused his mother to move such a deliberate distance away, and he wasn't at all sure he was going to like the reason.
The darkness of latearc was filling the sky by the time he reached the house, which stood alone at the edge of the farmland, looking just the way his father had described it. Stepping up to the door, he knocked.
"Why, hello, my son."
Thrr-gilag jumped, turning to his left toward the voice. His mother Thrr-pifix-a was kneeling in a small garden beside the house, almost invisible in the gloom. "Hello, Mother," he said, starting toward her and letting his lowlight pupils dilate. She looked reasonably good: a couple of cyclics older than he remembered her, but strong and alert and capable. "Sorry I didn't notice you there."
"That makes us even, then," Thrr-pifix-a said, easi
ng to her feet. "No, that's all right." She waved Thrr-gilag's hand away as he moved forward to help her. "I can manage. Sorry if I startled you; I didn't notice you myself until you knocked. I was trying to get the last of my seeds planted before it got too dark to see. I'm afraid my lowlight vision isn't all it used to be. Not to mention my hearing."
"Next time I come by so late, I'll be sure to whistle," Thrr-gilag promised lightly, touching his tongue gently to her cheek. "So what are you planting this cyclic?"
"Flowers, mostly," she said, taking his arm and returning the kiss. "Plus a few vegetables. The home-grown ones always taste so much better than mass-cultivated, don't they? Goodness, I must look terrible. Please excuse me - I didn't know you were coming."
"I tried sending you a message," Thrr-gilag said, eying his mother closely. "The communicator said you wouldn't accept it."
"Oh, I don't talk to Elders much anymore," Thrr-pifix-a said equably. "Have you eaten?"
"Ah - no, not recently," Thrr-gilag said, frowning down at her. "Is there some reason you don't talk to Elders?"
"Well, as long as your timing has worked out so well, we might as well put you to work," Thrr-pifix-a said. "I'll get you started on dinner while I go clean up. Come, I'll show you to the kitchen."
The meal was, for Thrr-gilag, a strange and rather discomfiting experience. On the one side, it was a warm, comfortable reunion with his mother, a time for food and conversation after too many cyclics of hurried neglect as he flew back and forth across Zhirrzh space studying alien races and artifacts. But even as he tried to relax in the warmth of family love, he couldn't ignore the taste of apprehension at the back of his tongue. Thrr-pifix-a was his mother; and yet, somehow, she wasn't. She had changed, in a way Thrr-gilag couldn't seem to get a grip on.
And she wouldn't talk about it. That was the most disturbing part of it. Every attempt he made during dinner to reintroduce her comment about Elders - every delicate probe he floated as to why she'd left home and come out here to the edge of a tiny Frr village - all were deftly deflected and instantly buried under a new flurry of news about distant cousins or friends.
