by Paul Chafe
Wordlessly his sister complied, while Cherenkova hung on to his back and wished for a weapon. I am worse than useless here, a mouth to feed who cannot hunt, the source of the fire that gave away our position, a burden to be carried. She amounted to a clever pet to the kzinti, nothing more. It was not a comfortable reality for a woman used to starship command, but there was no changing it. If I'm ever going to get off this world I need to develop my own capabilities.
The jungle thickened and they slowed again. There were no sounds of pursuit, and she doubted any scanner at any wavelength could effectively penetrate the heavy foliage overhead. They entered the canopy of another grove tree. The trees were well named; the thick central trunk soared to a bushy crown that spread wide and sent runner vines back down to the ground, where they took root to form secondary trunks. Those close to the center were heavy and solid, those on the edges no thicker than her thumb. The tree covered nearly a hectare and the central trunk was better than two meters thick, shaggy with heavy loops of shed bark. The going was easier there, though it was almost completely dark beneath its cover.
A few minutes more brought them to a wide, sluggish stream. T'suuz stopped and regarded it, judging distance. “We can break our trail here.”
Pouncer held up a paw. “No. Still water means ctervs. We must cross where there is a current, or it is very shallow. We'll go downstream.”
They moved on in silence, broken only by the weird calls of jungle animals, some distant, others seeming right on top of them. Twice they disturbed something really big, or so she surmised from the deep, barking alarm call it gave, and the tremendous crashing as whatever it was lumbered away, knocking over small trees. She never actually saw one, and Pouncer seemed undisturbed, so she surmised the animals were herbivores. The largest herbivores were always bigger than the largest predators. She'd learned that somewhere, and it was a calming thought. Yea though I walk in the shadow of the valley of death I shall fear no evil, because I'm with the two toughest wildcats in the whole tanjed jungle. Occasionally a gravcar whined overhead. They couldn't hear the trackers behind them, but the Tzaatz had not given up the search. About five hundred meters downstream the river narrowed and quickened into a small rapid, burbling over rocks.
“Here, brother?”
Pouncer sniffed the water carefully. “Here. You take the kz'eerkti across, and give me the haunches. I'll lay a false trail. This burned meat stinks enough they won't notice the monkey scent gone. Keep heading downstream but angle away from the bank. The ground will be easier away from the river.”
“Agreed.” Cherenkova dismounted from Pouncer's back and declined to get on T'suuz's. There was no need for her to be carried across the river, and she had her pride. A moment later she was debating whether she should have chosen differently as they waded through the murky, knee-deep water with the mud sucking at her boots. She didn't know what a cterv was, and she didn't want to find out. The other side of the river was mossy, soft ground, slow going and impossible to avoid leaving tracks on. If the ruse didn't fool the pursuers the Tzaatz would have no trouble at all catching them. T'suuz again offered her back but Cherenkova declined. T'suuz could move no faster than Ayla could on this ground, and the kzinrette's strength was a resource that needed conserving.
They were some distance from the river, moving uphill and onto more solid ground when Pouncer caught up again. Before they could greet him, a kzin screamed in rage and agony behind them. The first was joined by another, and then by a piercing, unearthly cry that could only have been a rapsar. The cacophony drowned out the jungle sounds and Cherenkova imagined she could hear splashing water. As quickly as it began the din ended.
Pouncer growled in satisfaction. “They tried to cross still water.”
Cherenkova nodded. “The jungle doesn't forgive mistakes.”
Pouncer let his fangs show. “They will be out in force at daybreak, and the Tzaatz learn jungle tracking on Jotok. They are unlikely to repeat that error. We must break our trail permanently. We need to find a myewl shrub, it will cover our scent.”
They listened while he described it, low, with small, smooth leaves, growing in clearings on higher, dryer ground. They found it just as the dim light that filtered through the canopy had faded to the point where Cherenkova could no longer see colors, though perhaps the kzinti still could. They ate the half-cooked zianya haunches there, so their powerful odor wouldn't give the sniffers something to work on. The meat was somewhat bedraggled for being dragged through the bush. Cherenkova gagged because it was half raw; the kzinti gagged because it wasn't all raw.
The myewl bush was an unremarkable plant, perhaps waist high, and not enough different from any other jungle plant that Cherenkova would have found it on her own. The leaves gave off a faint citrus odor when they were broken. The three rubbed them copiously over their bodies. The juices were slightly astringent and left Cherenkova's skin feeling cleaner than it had since they'd crashed, a welcome side effect. Taking a few steps to pick some more leaves she found a place where the foliage was crushed down. Freshly imprinted in the soft dirt was a four-taloned footprint a meter across. She motioned for Pouncer to come and look.
“Grlor predators.” He twitched his tail as he said it. “They hunt in packs, usually much deeper in the jungle. These tracks are fresh. We'll stay in the trees.”
Cherenkova nodded and swallowed hard. What do they hunt that's so big they need to cooperate to bring it down? She didn't want to find out. They took more myewl branches in case they needed them again and trudged on in the darkness, Pouncer leading, Cherenkova in the middle, and T'suuz taking up the rear. The night was alive with sound and movement, and Cherenkova found it frightening. At least the myewl seemed to stop the tiny gnat-fliers from biting, although they still swarmed densely enough that it was impossible to avoid inhaling them. From time to time gravcars whined overhead but they seemed impotent to spot the fugitives. It didn't surprise Cherenkova. There was so much life and motion in the jungle that whatever sensor readings they got through the triple canopy would be swamped.
Pouncer found another grove tree and they spent the night in its central trunk. Its rough bark hung in shaggy loops and made for easy climbing. Five meters up it branched six ways at once. The branching left a platform just large enough for all three of them, Cherenkova sandwiched between the two kzinti. I can no longer see them as enemies. The absence of anger was a strange feeling. She remembered her shock at the bloody wreckage of Midling Station, how she had sworn to avenge the hapless victims of the kzinti. Shock had become rage, and her career had changed from an adventure to a crusade: to save humanity from a voracious alien menace. The rage had muted over the years, hardened into an implacable hatred, not hot but cold. She had made it her life's work to keep the enemy at bay. More years had given her the wisdom to understand that the situation was not so clearcut, and that humans too were capable of atrocity. She had made the decision to keep her mind open when she'd taken the mission to Kzinhome, though her instincts had screamed against it. Even with that, if someone had told her she'd be spending the night in an alien jungle between two man-eating predators she would have laughed. Now she was glad of it. Despite the heat of the day she cooled down quickly once they stopped moving, and their fur and body heat were welcome.
Light didn't filter through the thick canopy until the sun was well up. Cherenkova awoke to find herself looking at a bright red and green lizard-thing. It was about the size of her hand and was perched on the bark by her head, regarding her curiously on extended eye stalks. Closer inspection revealed an almost invisible coat of fine fur — not a lizard then, but something else. Everything here is something else. She sat up on one elbow and it vanished in a scurry. Pouncer was gone, but she found T'suuz at the base of the tree. The day was again moving toward sticky hot, and hunger gnawed at her belly as she climbed down. T'suuz had caught a kz'eerkti, the species whose roughly simian appearance led the kzinti to give its name to humanity. She helped T'suuz butcher it into strip
s, not because she needed the help but because Cherenkova felt she should be doing something to contribute to their collective survival. On closer inspection there were obvious anatomical differences: four digits rather than five, a cross-braced rib cage, ears set too high on its skull for a primate. Still, it had large, lemurlike eyes set in a wrinkled face that looked at once like a baby and a very old man. It had a prehensile tail too, an efficient adaptation to life in the jungle canopy on any planet. The monkey ecological niche and the monkey body plan went hand in hand. Just as the kzinti approximate the big cats despite a completely different evolutionary track.
Cooking it was out of the question; even a small fire might alert the searchers overhead. She contemplated it for a while, trying to control an automatic revulsion fortified by a fear of monkey-borne diseases. But it isn't a monkey, and no disease on this planet has evolved to deal with the human immune system. Of course neither was her immune system able to recognize Kzinhome's pathogens, but that state of mutual disinterest was good enough for her. In that at least she was lucky. What she ate might be deficient in nutrients or simply poisonous, but she didn't have to fear some devastating jungle illness. She closed her eyes and chewed, gagging down what she could because she needed to keep her strength up. They covered the rest of the meat with crushed myewl leaves, to minimize its scent, and then wrapped the resulting bundles in tough grove tree leaves.
Pouncer returned as they finished. Tzaatz tracking teams mounted on rapsar raiders were moving down the river, he told them, quartering the area with rapsar sniffers. They reapplied myewl leaf and pushed on, not on the ground but above it, clambering through the upper reaches of the grove tree to its edge. She had started out with trepidation, sure she couldn't match kzinti climbing ability, but surprisingly she had an advantage in the treetops. T'suuz was well over twice her sixty kilos, Pouncer nearly four times more, and she could climb easily on branches that simply wouldn't hold them. The grove tree was a complex three-dimensional tangle and she found herself climbing higher and ahead, spotting more substantial routes and directing the kzinti to them. So I have something to offer after all. It felt good to be useful again. The grove tree went on for half a kilometer or more, and for that distance they would leave no ground spoor at all. The ploy was a calculated risk, trading speed for stealth. It was clever. Whether it was clever enough to fool the jungle-experienced Tzaatz was another question.
There was a clearing at the edge of the grove tree, with another one beyond it. The clearing was coincidentally full of myewl shrub. They were on high ground, traveling on a spur that led deeper into the river valley, and both species enjoyed the same soil conditions. They climbed down and took the opportunity to reapply the shrub's leaves. Once up in the next grove tree she felt better leading the way again and rapidly gained confidence in her climbing ability in the web of branches fifteen meters up. She had time now to appreciate the tremendous system of life the tree supported. It was virtually its own ecosystem, supported by the hard green fruits that grew everywhere on the smaller branches. There were several varieties of the lizardish creature she'd woken up to, and dozens of different types of what she labeled birds for their bright colors, although their motions seemed closer to bats. Once she saw a long, furry creature with six legs that she dubbed a weasel-snake, and several times she saw groups of kz'eerkti on branches much higher up. The dense web of branches made the grove tree a monkey's paradise.
They had almost come to the tree's central trunk when Pouncer froze, tail erect with the tip cocked forward. She had learned that signal meant freeze and she did. T'suuz, some ten meters behind him, froze as well. Very slowly Pouncer pointed down. For a long moment Cherenkova saw nothing, and then movement on the jungle floor caught her eye.
It was a rapsari sniffer, small and round bodied, proboscis swinging back and forth as it searched for familiar scents. It had sensed something, but it was confused. It advanced slowly, circling first left, then right. Its handler came behind it, riding one of the reptilian raiders and wearing full mag armor. He snarled something quietly into his comlink. Cherenkova held her breath. A second raider-mounted Tzaatz came up beside the handler. The two conferred momentarily in muted snarls. A gravcar whined overhead. The handler sniffed suspiciously and Cherenkova held her breath. The second Tzaatz looked up, searching the branches. He seemed to be looking right at her and she wanted to scream, her pulse pounding in her ears. It seemed impossible that he didn't see her. Slowly he raised his binoptics to his eyes and started methodically scanning overhead. He hadn't seen her, but he would any second. The rapsar sniffer had circled back. Two more Tzaatz moved through her field of view, one of the reptillian raiders grunting. How many were there?
Suddenly she found herself eye to eye with kzinti binoptics. The Tzaatz snarled and pointed right at her and cold fear shot through her system. They were caught, and she was acutely aware that the Tzaatz were under no obligation not to eat her. The sniffer handler looked up and snarled as well. She started to climb away. They hadn't spotted Pouncer or T'suuz. If she could lead the hunters away they might be able to ambush the Tzaatz. At least they wouldn't all be taken together. She looked down to see the warrior raising a crossbow.
There was a scream, suddenly cut off, and the warrior looked away from her. She saw him startle and fire at something she couldn't see, and then a rapsar raider ran past without its rider, and both Tzaatz spun their mounts to run. The ground shook under heavy impacts and then something appeared out of nowhere and bit the closer Tzaatz in half. It was easily twenty meters long, and amazingly fast for that bulk, long necked and sinuous, like a wingless dragon. The other Tzaatz turned to face it, drawing his variable sword in an act of undeniable courage. Before he could swing at it another of the beasts thundered in and snapped him up, impaling him on half-meter fangs and shaking him like a wolf with a rabbit, decapitating his raider rapsar almost accidentally in the process. The other Tzaatz had fled, but distant, heavy footfalls shook the jungle floor, followed by a deep, rumbling call. The grlor hunted in packs, Pouncer had said.
She watched in fascination as the beasts devoured their victims. Even a tyrannosaur would have turned tail in front of a grlor. The Tzaatz armor and equipment gave them only slight trouble as they tore at the bodies with talonlike foreclaws, digging kzinti meat from its artificial carapace and gulping it down in chunks. The grisly spectacle was over in under a minute. The second beast began to devour the dead rapsar raider. The first sniffed, searching back and forth for more prey. It spotted the sniffer, still ambling in circles, and reared back, then struck with speed that would have done credit to a cobra. One second the creature was there, whiffling its proboscis for scent, the next it was gone, and the grlor was swallowing. The sniffer hadn't even made a mouthful.
It was smaller game than Cherenkova. How high could that sinuous neck reach? She suddenly realized that her hands hurt from clenching the branches so hard. It took a conscious effort to relax the muscles, and when she did she discovered she was shaking. Fair enough; this wasn't covered in command school. She started to climb higher to get out of reach. That was a mistake.
Alerted by the noise of her movement, the first grlor looked up, and she found herself staring down into eyes as big as cannonballs and a maw large enough to stand in. Then it struck, its two-meter head smashing through branches as thick as her arm without slowing down. She felt the rush of air as the jaws missed her, but the impact of its attack threw her off the branch she was standing on. Frantically she grabbed out, managed to connect with a higher branch and hang on. For a moment she hung there dangling while the predator contemplated her from below, then, arms trembling, she managed to pull herself up and over the next branch. It wasn't a particularly thick one, and it swayed dangerously under her weight, but she couldn't make herself let go to reach for the next higher one.
The beast seemed to understand she was too high to take, but it hadn't lost interest in her. It stretched its neck up and leaned back, lifting its front legs off th
e ground and counterbalancing itself with its heavy tail. Its huge head came up, but even at its full height it was a couple of meters too short. That distance gave Cherenkova no confidence at all on her precarious perch. It could easily shake her off it if it tried, and she wondered if it were that smart. At that close range she noticed it was covered in the same fine fur that the tree-scampering lizard-things were, and there were other anatomical similarities as well. Evidently they came in all sizes. She noticed that the jungle noises had stopped, replaced by dead silence. Nothing cared to advertise itself to the grlor.
The grlor sniffed at her, nosed at branches with its snout, then lowered its forward body but kept its neck stretched up into the grove tree canopy, its curiosity seemingly diverted from Cherenkova. She allowed herself a sigh of relief, then sucked her breath in again. Pouncer! He was still on one of the thicker, lower branches, frozen in place, well within range of the grlor's teeth, and unlike her he could climb no higher. As she watched he slowly reached down for his variable sword. In the distance some creature called, and another answered it. The beast sniffed again, sensing prey close by but confused by the myewl scent. Pouncer extended the weapon's slicewire. The hum of the mag-stiffened filament was normally inaudible, but in the total stillness it sounded loud. If Pouncer leapt and struck hard enough he could decapitate it, but his footing was poor, and if he fell the other grlor would take him. He was going to try…
She couldn't let that happen. Desperately she grabbed one of the grove tree's dense green fruits and threw it at the monster. The fruit bounced off its head, and the grlor looked up, its annoyed attention refocused on her. She clambered farther into the grove tree, hoping to draw it away from Pouncer. The huge head snaked after her, smashing through branches and nearly throwing her off again. She grabbed a branch and stopped climbing. The grlor seemed to learn from that and bashed against the branches again, shaking her insecure perch wildly. It snapped at her unsuccessfully, then reached up again to the branches. Cherenkova hung on white-knuckled as the beast started tearing away branches with its teeth, a new trick that shook the tree violently.
