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Chapter Twenty-Five

The laka piled a rainbow assortment of fruit at the edge of the village, then retreated, edgy and uncertain. Most of the fires had been extinguished, but smoke still curled through the outer ring of huts. Heyoka picked through the choices, trying not to think of what his starving cells really craved at this point—fresh meat. The laka, no doubt, would be horrified if he snatched an avian out of the bushes and tore it into pieces before their fastidious eyes.

He was intensely hollow in a way he doubted any human could ever imagine. It was a fiery, yet glacial hunger that ate all the way down into the core of his cells and he knew only too well what spending oneself this way without renewal could do. For months after that last battle on Anktan, his vision had been stained blue and every mouthful of food and water had tasted like ashes.

Nisk, the hrinnti male who had administered his delayed education, had advised him of the dangers repeatedly. Though Heyoka thought he was exaggerating at the time, he knew now Nisk had been using typical hrinnti reserve when stating the potential effects. Hrinn never said things they did not mean. He should have paid more attention.

It still amazed him that he had managed blueshift—twice—in the last twenty-four hours. He'd tried numerous times since his recovery back on Anktan, always after hours of soaking in a torrid thermal pool to absorb excess energy, and never managed it for a second. It just brought home to him that he still thought too much like a human.

Kei dumped an armload of thick green sticks on the supply pile, sniffed one with disdain, then threw it down. His manner was subdued, but Heyoka noted how Skal, skulking nearby, avoided meeting the big black's eyes. "What happened up there on the mountain, after I—left?" he asked, skirting the painful issue of his failure to thrash Skal himself.

"We sat vigil for Bey until the sun rose," Kei said. "Skal Challenged me and then we came back down to find the others."

So. Heyoka's ears pricked. Typical hrinnti brevity, leaving out everything of interest and trusting context to tell most of the tale. "And you won?"

Kei bristled. "Of course, I won!"

"Of course," Heyoka agreed. "So now you are Leader?"

"No," Kei said stiffly. "Montrose is Squad Leader." His black eyes drilled Heyoka. "You designated him such."

"But you haven't fought Montrose."

"Rangers do not fight one another," Kei said. "They fight flek." His black eyes narrowed. "You are the one who said that!"

"True," Heyoka said. "I'm just not accustomed to you paying attention. But Skal is a Ranger. Why did you fight him?"

"That is different. He is also hrinnti. We had to settle dominance." Kei's tone was one of an adult lecturing a backward child. "Even you should see that."

He would, Heyoka thought gloomily, never understand hrinn.

Mitsu emerged from the crowd with five variously colored laka, including mauve Fourth Translator. "They are ready," she said.

"Then let's hit the trail," Heyoka said, still doggedly chewing a grainy mouthful of fruit. It tasted like faintly sweet grit. He picked up another ribbed fruit to eat on the march. Three laser-sticks were tucked into the waistband of his uniform and he wished he hadn't been so quick to discard his shirt somewhere in the course of the last day.

Skal hovered until they all passed, then fell in at the rear of the procession, straggling behind even the laka. Heyoka smelled trouble there.

The leafy shade closed around them as though they'd plunged back into a lake of silver and green, and Heyoka still felt unutterably weary. But if Mitsu was right and they could stop the flek from returning home, they might yet find a way to destroy that grid and seal off Oleaaka.

 

"We breeders do know a few songs," Second Breeder said to the gleaming white Maker, "but most of them are very dull. I have just remembered a wonderful new one, though, bold and exciting, but I won't sing if you do not wish it."

The Maker leaned forward and snatched the alien weapon he'd been carrying out of his hand, smashed it against a tree and threw the shattered pieces to the ground. "You were whelped from the perverted ones," he said stiffly. "We are forbidden to listen to such."

All of these tall white Makers bore packs full of equipment and carried weapons. One seized the translator's arm and Second regretfully released her. Well, perhaps they needed a translator too, he thought. They seemed to have brought none of their own, and he could always steal another. That would be amusing anyway.

"Will you attack the compound again?" he asked. "My fellow breeders are supposed to meet me here and we could all help! When I was at the compound earlier, the attack was going splendidly. I wanted to stay and watch, but I needed to capture this translator."

"You made contact with our other detachment?" The Maker glanced sharply at his fellows. They moved in and encircled Second with their gleaming white bodies.

"At the compound." Second crept even closer, letting their distinctive odor stimulate the chemical receptors in his brain. The scent seemed to linger here, there, unlocking even more previously inaccessible information recorded deep in his cells. He could feel new body-memories hovering just on the edge of consciousness, more fierce new words. "They were fighting the aliens." The wild, forbidden word lingered in his mouth and conjured up enticing images. Inside his head, he saw buildings burst apart in a fiery rain of debris; explosions, they were called.

"Wherever you're going, take us with you," he said. "The keepers forbid everything that is pleasurable, most of all weapons and fighting. And soon it will be time for the Feast of Leavetaking. Then we will have nothing at all."

"Be quiet!" The Maker's intense red eyes glared at him. "You talk too much! Obviously your early conditioning was sorely lacking."

Even this rebuke stimulated him so that he longed to chastise someone himself in turn. So many new concepts, so many new skills! Why were breeders never permitted these things on Oleaaka?

Another Maker emerged from the ruins, but this one was smaller, less sturdily made, though male like the rest. He carried a complicated machine of some type and referred to it from time to time.

The largest Maker strode forward. "According to this prisoner, the other detachment took the compound, therefore they will have encountered the perverted ones. We should return to the grid at once. They may well have been contaminated by the contact."

"Indeed?" The smaller Maker looked curiously at Second Breeder. "And is this one of the infamous perverted ones?"

"Yes. It has not tried to sing, so we have spared it for the moment in anticipation of gaining further information."

The smaller Maker sat back on his hindquarters with an air of fastidious disdain. "It is a very unsettling color."

"We are hatched white, just as you," Second said, "but then a tint is chosen for each. I requested red and Fourth Breeder wanted a deep dark green, but the guardians permit only pallid, washed-out colors."

The largest Maker swung its weapon in a backhanded arc and knocked Second to the forest floor. "Be silent unless you are questioned directly!"

Second lay blinking up at the sunlight seeping down through the leaves. His head spun and the hide was split across his brow so that hot ivory blood trickled down into his eye. It hurt more than any casual scrape or scratch he'd ever acquired. Wound, this was called. Injury. The Maker had struck him and this distress in his body was pain. He struggled back onto his feet, head and neck throbbing, vision distorted. "That was wonderful!" he said. "Teach me how to do it!"

In answer, the Maker raised his weapon and took aim at Second's head, but the smaller one stepped forward. "Not yet," he said. "Does it not strike you that this one is curiously unperverted? Not only has it not attempted to sing, but seems eager to cooperate. We might well learn about the more dangerous ones from it."

"Architect, what about the other one, the female?" the largest Maker said.

"Oh, she's not dangerous now," said Second, forgetting the painful admonishment of a moment before. The tall Maker moved its weapon menacingly and his blood sang through his veins in anticipation of yet another blow. "It takes at least five females to sing properly so that we breeders are forced to listen."

"Five?" the smaller Maker said. He turned to the largest male. "See? Our young prisoner has already made himself useful. As long as you kill sufficient numbers of females so that they can never gather as many as five in one place, we could perhaps take back this promising world." He held out his machine which consisted of a dark-gray exterior with colors that flowed across its flat surface like water in a river. "By these readings, I calculate it would not take more than fifteen orbital periods to set this ecology to rights and establish optimum breeding conditions. There is still a chance to craft this world into a classic example of my hatching's best work."

Something rustled in the undergrowth, then a clump of bedraggled breeders appeared, herded by three more of the proud white Makers. Second Breeder recognized Eighth and Twenty-seventh Breeders in the lead, Tenth in the back, along with the cowering gleaner.

"They will help too!" he said quickly, hoping to divert any more talk of killing from being applied to their own potentially useful selves.

"This one is neuter," said another Maker, indicating the gleaner. "A worker caste of some sort."

"It's a gleaner," Second said. "We stole it so we could form our own colony out here in the forest, but we would much rather go to yours."

"Yes," said the delicately built Maker with the machine, the one they called Architect, "bring them along. Let the Deciders examine this lot with their own thorough methods." He turned to Second, who was standing now with his fellow breeders. "But if there is a single note of song, if you even think they are going to sing, kill them all."

 

The three human members of the squad ranged up ahead at the front of the column with the Black/on/black, Kei, and the laka. Visht and Kika took up the middle, while Skal relegated himself to the rear. The miserable forest was so choked with underbrush, he had to fight for every step and find his way by scent, rather than follow the squad by sight. Tiny scarlet insects buzzed around his eyes. It was hot and close and wretched in every way.

His ears flattened. He hated this claustrophobic place; it reeked of stagnant pools and decay and was filled with ankle-deep mud that sucked at the boots, entirely the wrong environment for a hrinn who was used to large, arid spaces.

Anger smoldered within him, a banked fire ready to burst into open flames. His chest still ached where the flek weapon had caught him, which made him even more irritable. The leaves rustled, then he glimpsed Kika's graceful pale-gray form momentarily before she disappeared in the curtain of foliage again. A snarl escaped him. He should have been standing beyond the Gates of Death right now, safely, and honorably, dead. What right had she to deny him?

All his life, he had sought to matter. He was of average size for a male and well enough marked, but there was always someone bigger at the time of Gathering who paired off with the female he had been tracking. He had stalked and killed several of these later outside of Challenge, something Visht had referred to back on the mountain. That fed his anger too. He had known it was wrong, even as he committed the crimes, and hoped to leave such dishonor behind on Anktan. A clean death in battle would have given him that.

As though she could hear his thoughts, Kika hung back, then gave him an appraising stare when he caught up. "You're still lagging," she said, her voice pitched low so as not to carry. "That was a very serious wound, even though it closed well, but I am not experienced in restorations. Why not save your strength and return to the village to wait with Naxk?"

With a roar, he sprang and carried her down to the forest floor. Her head struck a knobby root, but she was already fighting back as she fell, employing the Ranger tricks she'd learned in base camp, sliding out from under his claws and turning his momentum against him.

He was not weak, he was not, and no one would ever suggest such a shameful thing to him again! He struggled for a killing grip, but could not pin her writhing form. She caught him with her handclaws and opened a gash across his shoulder. The pain enraged him even further until he was white-hot with anger. All around him, the forest seemed stained white, and he realized it wasn't white at all, but a chill, heart-stopping blue. Kika lay motionless before him, her black eyes wide, her arms bent at unnatural angles. He had entered blueshift. Her unprotected throat lay exposed before him. She would not humiliate him again. He raised his claws for a killing stroke.

A hand caught his arm and he looked up into the scintillating onyx eyes of the Black/on/black himself. "She is your huntmate!"

Skal tried to free himself, but could not break his grip. "She shamed me," he said in hrinnti, "denied me an honorable death! She shames me still with all this talk of weakness and injury!"

"You do not need an honorable death," the Black/on/black said, and then he disappeared while the world turned green and brown and silver again. He had lost blueshift.

Kika scrambled up to face him, ears pinned back, loosened mane like a cloud around her face. "Come at me again!" she spat. "I will stuff your ears down your throat, one tiny piece at a time!"

The Black/on/black appeared between one breath and the next as he too left blueshift. "Stand down, Private!" he told Kika over his shoulder as he faced Skal. "I'll handle this."

She was breathing hard, bristling from nose to feet. "I will finish what lies between us!"

The Black/on/black put a hand on her shoulder and pricked through her uniform with his claws. She flinched. "I said `stand down'!" He met her eyes until she dropped her gaze and gave way.

He turned back to Skal. "You don't need an honorable death," he said more evenly. "What you need is an honorable life. No matter what you did, or did not do, back on Anktan, this is another place, a chance to be part of an entirely new pattern. Fall in and guard our backs, as ordered, or I promise we will leave your bleeding corpse to feed the nits."

Skal stared. "I cannot be first again," he said. "Kei is the strongest and I will never be Leader."

"No one knows that for certain," the Black/on/black said. "We only know the shape of this moment, today, now. In the meantime, our enemy increases his lead with every breath, and you are holding us back. Choose now whether to hunt with us or stay here and eat death."

Death at such noted hands could be considered honorable, Skal thought. He could make the Black/on/black take his life, yet if there were a chance for something larger, something he'd never been able to find anywhere else . . .

"We don't have time for this," the Black/on/black said. "Choose!"

Skal dropped his own eyes and took up his place at the rear of the pack. "No one will get by me," he said solemnly.

 

The four young drones bore the distinct markings of their castes, although, World-Architect 549 reflected, they seemed to know almost nothing about themselves or their intended function, stamped into their genes by thousands of generations of careful breeding. One bore the distinct mark of an outdated tech caste, rarely bred these days, except on worlds where antique technology required appropriate maintenance. The other three had been bred out of decent, though not outstanding, warrior-drone stock.

They were so eager, as though they'd just been hatched. They wanted to know everything, go everywhere. The warrior-drones had to be quite severe to keep them from wandering off to explore the ruins, and each time they struck one, the young drone actually seemed to enjoy it. He supposed that was understandable after being reared by this tainted colony. They had been crafted for only one thing in this life, which had been consistently denied them. How could they be expected to have any pride of function, when they had apparently been reared only to breed and die?

The other two, the so-called translator and gleaner, refused to move unless beaten, but they, unlike the drones, did not appear to enjoy it.

The architect decided it was time to return to the transfer grid. He wished to present this valuable information to the Deciders as soon as possible. They would know if conditions were optimum for retaking this world and carving it into something both strategically useful and appealing to the senses. It had the virtue of being located in a quadrant of space where the Makers had once held sway before their terrible Enemy had driven them out.

"I have completed my readings," he told Warrior-Drone 21487. "Escort us back now."

The efficient warriors fell into a standard combat pattern. "Take the middle," the warrior replied. "We may meet more resistance on the way back."

This pronouncement brought on wriggles of joy by the young drones, but the seasoned warriors took it in stride, readying laser-sticks, checking charges. They were experienced troops, rotated out from the front lines of several hot engagements. They had met the Enemy before on many occasions and prevailed. The set of their jaws, the line of their shoulders said they would do so once again.

They set off into the forest.

 

Mitsu didn't like having Skal at her back. She'd been around hrinn long enough to know a bad apple when she saw one. They should have left the black-and-white hrinn behind, even if they had to tie him to a tree.

She didn't say anything, though. Heyoka kept checking her as though he expected her to explode, and she could tell the rest of the squad didn't yet trust her either. They all thought her story was suspicious, that in her heart she'd gone flek again.

The rain forest thinned, then gave way to grass and sweet-smelling moss. A cloud of minute orange insects rose as they stopped at the mountain stream and she had to fan them away. She knelt beside the rushing water and bathed her perspiring face. Water trickled down her hot neck and under her uniform shirt. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, dizzy with fatigue and hunger. She had eaten only a couple of bites of a sour red fruit back at the laka village, not knowing if it would agree with her. It would be stupid to incapacitate herself just before a battle.

Heyoka motioned to Kei and continued on toward the cave, ordering the rest to wait until they returned.

A lump of resentment rose in Mitsu's throat. He should have taken her. She watched as he disappeared over the rise. Then the laka knelt beside her, surprisingly graceful, despite their four-legged anatomy. They were all about the same size, though tinted different colors, smaller than flek, or at least flek warrior-drones. "Why did you come with us?" she asked in High-Flek.

Fourth Translator bent her mauve-colored head. "Because you cannot sing for yourselves," she said.

"I did sing, long ago, in a faraway place," Mitsu said. Unbidden, her fingers beat out a little flek working song of which she had once been fond.

Fourth Translator's high-pitched voice took up the cadence, and for a moment, it was as though she were back on Anktan, taking instruction from a surly egg-matron. She had a strong flashback of being surrounded by a thousand flek, each of whom was born knowing its purpose and skills. She could almost hear the shrill caterwauling of the huge grid being tuned, smell the flek's distinctive odor. The white room. Pain. Disorientation. Loss of all sense of self. It was as though they had extinguished her in that room and installed someone else in her place. In a way, Mitsu Jensen had been dead until Heyoka had brought her back. Cold sweat broke out on her brow and her hands shook so that she could not go on.

The laka broke off and regarded her with shimmering pink eyes. "You are distressed."

"The—Makers—took me prisoner, made me believe I was one of them," she said. "When they were done, I didn't know my companions anymore, or even myself."

"Did they sing?"

"Yes." Mitsu closed her eyes, fighting to hold on to the here-and-now. For a heartbeat, she was back at the Anktan grid. Garish rainbow lights played over the white walls, pinks, blues, purples, greens. The traditional colors of the flek—and of the laka too. Why hadn't anyone noticed that before?

Heyoka reappeared on the opposite bank, and she lurched to her feet, face still wet. Sometimes, like now, when she was caught by surprise, she could almost see him as a stranger might, tall and savage, black eyes inscrutable.

"They aren't here yet. There was only a single tech-drone down in the cave," Heyoka said, out of breath. His ears were drooping and his jaws gaped between words. "It scuttled into the back passage, so I left Kei to keep watch."

He was pushing himself too hard, she thought. He'd never been the same since Anktan.

The black-furred Ranger gestured for his odd force to cross the stream. "Fall in! This is our chance to take them out!"

 

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