Besides which, they wanted desperately to examine a Fssa. The idea that a very old, technologically sophisticated species existed before primates descended from their trees was a painful thorn in their sides. Their theory that only primates possessed truly creative and inventive abilities was fragile, at best, and this threatened it drastically.
The fact that they had no spacefaring abilities native to their own world and must lease ships and crews from other species had to rankle, she knew. And the other embarrassing fact that the Fssa designed the most intricate and effective computers in existence had to drive them into foaming fits. That must be the reason behind their determination to capture one of her kind for extensive dissection and assessment.
Fssa, however, were very hard to snare.
Hsela was certain that those who were members of the Confederation did not know of the Ginli depredations against other non-primate species, though there was universal disapproval of Ginli teachings in the areas of biology and philosophy. Groups of the gray-faced people had been caught trespassing illegally upon other worlds, from time to time, But their excuse of being insatiably curious explorers had been accepted, except upon her home world, Sselo.
The group assigned to Sselo had been detected setting concealed snares, and for that reason they were imprisoned in one of the Fssa's unique facilities, which resembled a zoo more than the offworld notion of a prison. Those inside it had complete freedom among themselves, and they were allowed space and equipment to pursue any task or hobby they chose. The surrounding walls were one-way permoplast. The exhibit was open to the public twice a week.
The plottings and maneuverings, the subterfuges and attacks that could be seen behind the walls were highly instructive and edifying to both young and old. Even their fellow primates, visiting the zoo, were hard put not to laugh, though they did lodge a perfunctory protest with the Fssa Council on behalf of the imprisoned Ginli.
For even fellow primates distrusted the Ginli, and with good reason. They held that it was not enough merely to be of that kind; one must be Ginli. So intent had they been on proving their premise that there had been talk of refusing them Transit rights and lease of ships that traveled between systems and galaxies. That, for the Ginli, would have been a sort of quarantine.
Hsela chuckled, as she sped through the forest, though she knew that Ssu, her mate, would be angry because of her capture. He would be in just the proper mood to play the Game with those fuming Ginli, back in that old farm-fort behind her.
She moved fast, yet she was cautious with the innate caution of her feline forebears. The thin wood was drifted with snow, but the fierce winds of Domula, which was called the Winter World for good reason, had scoured away cleared corridors among the trees. The frozen ground took no footprint, though she set her clawed feet carefully, leaped over patches of snow, and used exposed rocks or fallen logs to avoid leaving any trail.
Suddenly her pointed ears pricked backward. Hounds bayed, far behind her. Her lip twitched again. Even with her head in a bag that smelled of earth and rotted roots, she had known, as she was carried away, in which direction her captors were headed. Now she had almost reached the village, where her mate waited in the Traveler's Hostel.
He had spent his day examining native arts and crafts, while she explored the forest and noted things botanical. Now he would be there, and she saw the pinkish glow of lamps ahead, as the street opened before her path, curving into the main road. She paused, now, and carefully smoothed her fur. Then, composed and smug, she went in to meet Ssu.
He was sitting in the public room of the inn, as he had promised. His green eyes grew bright, as she stepped inside and nodded over the heads of the seated crowd, which consisted of many kinds of beings enjoying an evening meal. She gestured toward the stair; eyes narrowing, he joined her there.
Neither spoke until they reached their tiny room, where they flowed together for a long embrace. Their combined purrs made the draperies quiver with their subsonic tremors. Then Ssu stepped back. "Something has happened. I smell strange scents on your fur. I see wickedness in your eyes. Tell me!"
She went to the casement and opened one side a crack. "Listen. Can you hear them?" she asked.
The voices of the dogs were audible in the forest.
"Tell me!" he repeated, and she settled onto the bed.
"The Ginli here on Domula, ssupposedly for the winter ssport, are catching specimens. And not only of the animals here. They are trapping intelligent beings, using the freedom of this holiday world to catch unsusspecting people who are here for amusement. It iss logical, in their usual nasty way. Who is less cautious than ssomeone in his playtime?"
Ssu hissed, his incisors gleaming in the lamplight.
She grinned at him, feeling the wicked glee of the Game building inside her. "They esspecially want Fssa. They have been watching us, I think, and they knew that I was exploring the forest. They caught a ssmall animal and entangled it in a net in the brush. It cried, and I went to free it.
"At that point, a larger net fell from above and caught me. Before I could sslash the cord with my killing-claws, they shot me with a drug-needle. I woke as they carried me away, my head in a foul-ssmelling bag. One of those ssilirrissti was amusing himself by fondling my body as he carried me."
Ssu's eyes glowed with green fires. His tail switched in long, controlled lashes.
"I pretended unconsciousness, until they unwrapped me. We were in the farmhouse where they have their laboratories and dissecting-rooms. Three were in the room, arguing as to which should use me first, before they took my brain apart for analysis. I killed the nearest as he finished unswathing me. Before they knew I had moved, I passed through them to the window, marking each as I went, you may be sure.
"We will know them again, no matter how large a group of Ginli they join. And now they are in the wood, with their idiot canines, trying to run me to earth. Expecting me to be lost and helpless!"
Ssu rippled across the room and back. "We of the thinking kind have been too patient. I cautioned forbearance before, when the Confederation queried its members, but now I see that I have been too patient. The Ginli are compelled, by their own feeling of inferiority, to find others below them. They have to find proofs, where none exist, no matter what suffering they impose on others. We will find a suitable punishment ... "
"I promised them a Game," she purred.
"They will hunt, for a time, through the wood," he mused. "They will not dare come into the village – one hint of what they do and the Domu will banish them offworld, invoking the Compact of Confederation. We will have the time needed to get into place." Ssu opened his arms, and she hugged him closely, as their purring filled the room.
They reached the old farmstead/fortress long before the dispirited Ginli, of course. They had time to explore the large structure, and they found to their horror that there were many living specimens in cages, both native animals and alien sapients. They broke the locks and freed all the captives, concealing those who could not walk away for themselves in the edge of the wood.
The antiquated system of heating ducts was ideal for their purposes, providing contact with the chamber to which the Ginli had taken Hsela. She knew its smell at once, when they opened the heavy door. After testing the acoustics, the two waited patiently in the utility cellar.
The three Ginli remaining after Hsela's escape returned, worn and weary, after a short time. They made their way up to their chamber and the waiting Fssa could hear a long sigh.
"This is a dreadful loss, Number Seventy-six," said one of the cold voices. "Our reason for this expedition was to capture a Fssa. Our funding will be discontinued, if we fail completely, and there will be no further opportunity. They are cautious animals. Not intelligent, but very very cautious."
"That is the leader," whispered Hsela. "Number Forty. They do not believe in names, I have read. Useless frivolity, I believe they claim it to be."
Another voice said, ""We must find another. There are many
of them here on Domula for the sport, and it will require time for this one to warn her fellows. But we are short-handed. Number Ninety-two will be impossible to replace. This limiting the number of our kind to six was an insult. Seventy-three and Eighty-nine will be in the north for weeks, yet, and we cannot send out an emergency call without alerting the Domu to our activities."
Still a third voice said, "Forty, it makes my blood burn in my veins when I think that these people will allow the rag-tag scum of the galaxies to come here in any numbers they please, from cat people even to reptilians. Yet they have the gall to limit us to a mere handful." The scritch-scratch sound of absent-minded scratching carried clearly to the listening Fssa, who delighted in calling the Ginli flea-scratchers.
Hsela subdued a chuckle. Then she leaned forward and yowled into the duct, so ferociously that even Ssu shuddered, his fur rising along his spine. Stunned silence followed the outburst, followed by the sounds of hurried footsteps on the stair.
Hsela froze beside Ssu in the plenum. She doubted that any of the Ginli had examined the old heating system enough to understand how it worked. That was evidently the case, for soon the steps returned to that upper room.
"The cages are empty!" panted a voice. "Every living specimen is gone, and someone has meddled with those ready for cellular examination. There is someone here, Number Forty!"
Number Forty said, "We must find him! Sixty-five, you take the lowest floor, Seventy-six, you the second. I will search this level. No lesser species must be allowed to terrorize Ginli!"
Hsela and Ssu fled up the stair with all their catlike speed. Ssu shaped a window with his hands, and Hsela flowed silently away. The door opened a crack, and a pale Ginli face peered out. Ssu raked it lengthwise and was gone before the Ginli could move.
"The Fssa!" grunted Number Forty, as the wounded Seventy-six whilrled back into the room. "No female can think to hunt us in our own place."
Hsela grinned at the words, sliding into the window behind him, her forearm moving beneath his chin, as she bent him until his knees buckled. Then she hissed into the outraged gray face, "Indeed, little Ginli, there will be retribution." With one motion, she released him, spinning him around and ripping away his overtunic, together with much of the skin from his torso.
"This is the Game!" she cried. And she leaped to the window, clinging with her claws to the rough stone. In a moment, she had sidled to an adjacent window and was again inside the building.
She joined Ssu in the hall, and they listened as the Ginli shouted orders. As she peered into the room through the ill-secured door, she saw Number Seventy-six come from a side chamber with three clumsy bell-shaped weapons.
Ssu sent a hiss into the room, and the Ginli pushed the stud on his weapon. A flare of light and the smell of burning wood marked the disappearance of most of the door and some of the wall beside it.
But Ssu and Hsela were gone.
Their kind had been civilized for aeons, and they had never been a particularly cruel people. If they were not always quite kind, that was a trait shared among many species. However, their ancestors were hunters for millennia, evolved upon a world holding ferocious beasts that had hunted them. Their Game was a remnant of the training that had allowed them to survive, and danger brought the Fssa to a full flowering of their abilities. When fully aroused, they played with their prey.
That was the Game they played, up and down the hallways and the stairs of the old stronghold. The Ginli, relying on their weapons (made on-planet, to avoid the ban on bringing in lethal weapons), were bold at first. They soon learned caution, for one must see an enemy in order to shoot him.
Scratches sprouted upon their bodies, as they moved, yet seldom did they see the hurtling form until the damage was done and the doer leaping away through door or window. They fired, scorching stretches of wall, but the Fssa were only singed, too little to slow their mad rushes.
Number Seventy-six went first, caught in a crossfire between his companions. Hisses of quiet laughter followed the streaking Fssa out of sight. The Ginli, stunned, set back to back and tried to see in all directions at once.
Hsela hissed again, and a tense hush fell over the pair of gray-faced beings. "There!" cried Number Sixty-five, pointing up the stair. He dashed to the landing, where a shadow had appeared. A clean swipe of a killing claw sent him out of the Game forever.
Number Forty stood alone at the foot of the stair, his pewter eyes focused on the Fssa on the landing. Their fur was ragged, scorched, slashed with blood in many places. Hsela held a useless hand to her chest and with the other guided a half blinded Ssu down the steps. Hsela paused and looked down. "You have sseen what we can do. Those who are unintelligent could not have done that, could they?" she asked.
Number Forty stepped forward, and unwillingly he shook his head.
"Sso if you kill us now, it will be in the full knowledge that you are sslaying those who are ssapient?" She moved slowly downward, steadying Ssu at every step.
The long pale head nodded. Forty stared down at his weapon, up again at the Fssa. That still green gaze met his, inexorably. The bell of the weapon dropped toward the floor.
Hsela reached the corridor. "All kinds, ursinoid, reptilian, feline, have developed sapience, on one world or another. We are many and multi-talented. Why should one ssmall race from a ssingle tiny world presume to deny that?"
Mumber Forty's hand loosed the weapon, letting it clatter to the floor. "Do you say we are inferior?" he asked, his tone hoarse.
"Neither inferior nor ssuperior," she replied. "Ssimply unique, as we all are. We are important, each in itss own way, and both of our kinds have much to contribute to the ssum total of thought. Why should we kill each other?"
Forty frowned. "What contribution? What is there that only the Ginli can provide?"
Hsela touched the call button on her belt, signalling for the Domu authorities to come to her aid. She sighed, swaying against Ssu.
He lowered his hand from shading his burned eyes to stare at the Ginli. "Look for that ability, Ginli, as others have done. Go back and find it. Only what is hard to find is worth the effort." He leaned against the wall, slid to sit, and cradled Hsela against his side.
Forty waited, but neither of them spoke. They only endured, now. When he moved toward the door, neither seemed to notice, for they knew that he, too, must wait for the Domu's judgment. After that, the Confederation must decide a punishment, and that would be the hardest thing of all for the stiff-necked Ginli to face.
Hsela, eyes half closed, saw him crouch on the stair, his gray face gone almost green. She almost found it in her heart to pity the pale primate.
But not quite.
SOMETHING TO BEAR IN MIND
My beep-alarm went off 0300 hours, a nasty time to be startled awake, even for one in my business. It's not only real live bears made of flesh and blood that hibernate, you know. We Teddies do it, too, though our periods of sleep are determined by our duties, not by mere whims of the flesh and the weather.
When I had my eyes open well enough to see (and with shoe-buttons that isn't always easy to do) I could tell by my timer that it was November 11th. Weather clear but cold, with headwind in the direction in which I had to go. Always. That's a rule of nature they haven't yet put into the books.
I struggled into my tartan cap and kilt–a whimsy I have found it in my heart to question several times – and took a quick check of all my moving parts. Head swiveled easily. Eyes were now at optimum effectiveness. Night-vision fine. Stuffing flexible, yet firm, arms and legs fully movable. Weapon in its concealed position. Telepathy... I closed my eyes and sent a ripple of perception in a wide circle. The resulting tumult of dreams from my slumbering peers made me shut down fast. Telepathy in full working order.
They supply us with transportation that would be the envy of spies or soldiers anywhere. Little air-sleds, silent as snow, powered by the Earth's gravitational field. Mine was a beauty, and I kept her polished to a high gloss, between jobs.
She came out of the storage area just as shiny as she went into it. I pulled the plexiglas shield over myself and activated the motor. Just like that I was air-borne.
It took longer than the standard one hour, beep-to-arrival. That headwind, you know. But it wasn't much longer than that, and I pulled up on the garage roof of a respectable though not posh suburban home at a quarter past four. There was a dog in the back yard that hadn't been mentioned on my read-out back at the dorm. I made a mental note to put that into my report. Dogs have been known to ruin entire rescue missions.
I went down a frost-killed rose vine on the other side of the garage and made my way cautiously to the front door. I hate doing that ... it makes the chance of discovery much higher... but this time it was that or risk rousing the whole neighborhood. I could still him rowfing away as I used my Insta-Key and slipped into the door.
The house was silent... almost. I could hear, with the special hearing they give us Teddies, a quiet hiccupping, like that of a young child who has cried herself to sleep. I used that for my guide as I went up the stairs and down a short hall.
The read-out had said her name was Rosalind. She was four and a half. Things were going sour with her family, according to the Watcher who assigns us to our jobs and programs the read-outs. When I got into the room through the half-open door, I realized he had understated the case. My night-vision was at full capacity, and I could see bruises on the child's face and arms, even as I stood in the doorway. My fur bristled, and I started a slow burn.
That's the way they pick us, you know. Of every thousand Teddies that come off the lines, maybe two have the spark that makes us ready to stand up and fight for any child we are given to. We are whisked off the line and into the Training Program so fast that nobody in the Teddy-Bear Factory ever knows we are gone, though it throws the computers into a tizzy from time to time. They told me I have the highest child-involvement-quotient they've ever measured, so you can imagine how angry I became, before I'd ever seen the color of Rosalind's eyes.
THE TWILIGHT DANCER Page 5
