Star Hunters

by Clayton, Jo;

  He rubbed his nose. Which brings up a point. Why am I still alive?

  The cage door was a meter square and located in the far corner of the cage. He knelt beside the door and probed the smooth metal of the lock for the pattern. A nice job, he thought. He was still teasing out the pattern when Faiseh groaned and sat up. “Well.” He raised his eyebrows. “Took your time.”

  Faiseh probed at his skull with short blunt fingers. “Feels like I was kicked in the head. And the bastard’s still kicking.” He squinted at the cage, slowly taking in the sections of the great cavern. “What the hell?”

  “Haribu’s little home. I think that’s what’s making the hares attack.” He flicked a hand at the egg then swung it at the harewall. “Kiwanji’s not wearing too well.” He showed Faiseh the mosaic screen.

  Faiseh winced as he watched the Tembeat burning. “Meme Kalamah,” he whispered. “Everything going … ah.…” He edged around and pressed his face against the bars, staring fascinated and horrified at the scenes of disintegration in Kiwanji.

  Grey watched a moment then went back to work on the lock. He was unwilling to use his implants when outsiders were watching unless he had to. Sorry about Faiseh’s distress, he was satisfied to see him distracted.

  Several minutes later Grey grinned and moved away from the lock. Two minutes and he’d be out. His head was still throbbing, made it difficult to work. He wasted a minute cursing the thin man, then triggered his depth probe and began to work out the interior arrangement of Haribu’s base. It was like a blind man feeling his way through an unfamiliar house, slowly building up a tactile image. When he had the geography in place, he switched to a heat probe, looking for people. But the hares were a problem. Too close and too many of them. They confused his readings. After a minute he gave up, lounging against the bars.

  Faiseh had his face pressed against the bars staring at the scenes from Kiwanji. He hadn’t moved. Grey sighed. “Ranger.” There was no answer. “Faiseh!”

  “Huh?” Reluctantly the watuk swung around. “What?”

  “Why whip yourself? Nothing you can do about that. Right time comes, we’ll stop it here.”

  “Here!” The watuk jumped to his feet and started prowling about the cage. “Us!” He banged a fist against the bars. “How?”

  “Relax. Sit down!” Grey snapped out the order and Faiseh sat, surprising himself with his instant obedience. “Listen. We wait until Haribu brings Aleytys in. And Manoreh, of course. She’s the one to knock that out.” He pointed at the egg. “We’re backup. When the right time comes, I’ll get us out of here. Two minutes. If we jump too soon, we’ll get kicked in the head and lose the game.”

  Faiseh muttered, “Hard to wait.”

  The hours passed. Faiseh brooded, eventually slept, snoring a little. Grey began counting watuk. Not too many around. About fifteen made a point of walking past the cage and staring at him. All armed. Guards. He counted five different white-coated lab workers.

  A wizened little man—a tarnished green-silver hard as a dried pea—trotted from the lab, a taller dull-faced watuk behind him. The little man’s white coat was starchy, pristine, not a wrinkle marring it even when he moved. Grey leaned forward, watching intently. The strange pair stopped beside the platform.

  “Charar!” The little man’s voice was sharp and scratchy.

  The sitter stirred, slowly straightened his legs. After a minute he eased the cap off his head and set it carefully on a black box beside his cushion. Muscles trembling with fatigue, he rose clumsily and stumbled off the dais, nearly falling on his face. He shambled off saying nothing to the others and disappeared into the gray-floored corridor on the far end of the metacrete wall.

  The wizened man glanced at the screen, then urged his companion onto the dais. “Keep them at it,” he shrilled. His black-beetle eyes darted from the screen to the sitter and back. “More pressure. We need more pressure. It’s taking too long.” He watched impatiently as the watuk settled the cap on his shaved head. “Careful. Careful. Get it seated, fool, you mess up and I’ll see you hurt for it.” His beetle eyes took in the egg. “If I knew more about that or could get a look inside!” He reached out and almost touched the silver-gray surface but stopped his fingers a hair away from it. “Fa curse that Vryhh.” He stopped abruptly and looked anxiously around, then turned back to the silent watuk sitting on the cushion. He nodded, then walked briskly away.

  Vryhh,” Grey whispered. He glanced from the egg to the hares lying in the glass cubes. The redhead. A Vryhh. Interesting. No wonder he handled me like a baby. Aleytys can’t know. This changes things. She’s half-Vryhh. Can she handle him? Should be a damn good fight. That answers Head’s question. Don’t have to wonder how he got to her.

  He pushed his still sore body erect and moved back to where he could see the depressing scenes of Kiwanji as it disintegrated under the pressure of the hares, then faced the harewall. Crude now, he thought. He began to think about his own presence here, began to see possibilities that spread and branched until he was near the limits of his imagination. He thought of the hareweapon, refined and increased a thousandfold in power, focused on Wolff. In winter. People pouring out of houses onto the ice. God! And if … no, when they turned that monster on me, everything about Wolff and the Hunters. Too many people, worlds, Companies with reasons for hitting Wolff.

  He felt the Vryhh before he saw him. He looked up. The man stood outside the cage watching him, green-stone eyes amused and contemptuous. Grey stared back, silently defiant. Legends, these Vrya. Near omniscience. Omnipotence. He glared into the handsome, masklike face, then at the withered hands and their metal inlays. After a minute he smiled. Not a legend. Diseased. Dying. His smile broadened and he lifted his gaze back to the Vryhh’s face. The green eyes narrowed and the mask slipped a little as he gave way to irritation. He turned abruptly and stalked off, vanishing into a small lift beside the harewall.

  Grey settled back against the bars and stared at the egg. Seeing the Vryhh reminded him of Aleytys. He remembered the first time he’d seen her. He’d been lying in the third-floor corridor of a cheap hotel on Maeve bleeding his life out on the worn carpet, a knife hole big as his fist in his stomach. He could use that healing now. He rubbed at his sore diaphragm. He looked across at the snoring Ranger then settled down and drifted to sleep.

  They rode all night, stopped briefly for a cold meal, then went on, following the course of the Chumquivir up into the mountains. Hare traces were abundantly present. Droppings, mangled vegetation. During the night the link pulled them closer and closer until each lived partly in two bodies, sensing what the other sensed. They rode silently, saying nothing, both growing more resentful of this enforced intimacy.

  A faras stumbled. Aleytys reacted immediately, shifting her weight to lift the faras, then gasped as pain stabbed through her groin. Her hands opened, the reins fell, her mount reared then started to run. She was falling, no she was sitting clutching the saddle horn jolting helplessly as the faras ran. She set herself to controlling the animal. When she rode back, Manoreh was standing beside a dead faras. One of his legs was braced, the other bent with only the toe touching the ground. She fought against the pain that pierced her own leg and side. “What happened?”

  “Leg broke. Cut its throat,” he grunted. Aleytys winced again as the pain in his side was a pain in hers.

  “Stupid.” She pressed her hand against her forehead. “You should have waited.”

  He ignored her and removed the gear from the dead animal.

  Aleytys slid from the saddle. “Let that go a minute. Sit down.”

  Breathing with difficulty, he tugged a strap loose, then started on another.

  “Sulking like a baby.” She sneered, “Won’t listen to a woman, will you, big man.”

  He swung around, arm raised for a quick slap, stung to rage by her words.

  “Go on, hit me. Prove what a man you are.”

  He dropped the hand and turned away, sick with self-disgust.

&
nbsp; “All right, now that’s over.…” She touched his arm. The shock of joining staggered both, then Aleytys fought loose. “Sit down,” she said hoarsely. She went with him to one of the rock piles that broke the thatching of brush and grass.

  He sat and looked up at her. “What’s the point?” he said wearily.

  She knelt beside him, “I’m a healer, Manoreh. Just sit still and let me work.” She closed her eyes and reached for her power river. The black water came cool and powerful into her. She slid the tips of her fingers lightly down his ribs, past the pelvis, then down the injured leg. The strains and bruises located, she flattened her hands against him and sent the water flowing to heal.

  When the healing was done, she tried to pull her hands away. Her flesh stuck to his even through the leather of his jerkin and shorts. She took a deep breath, concentrated on the hands flattened over his ribs and over the big muscle of his thigh. She called up her ability to shield and slid a barrier between them. Tried again to lift her hands. This time they slid easily off him.

  She met his startled look. “For a moment I couldn’t move. Stuck.” She looked down at her hands, rubbed them together. “Started to panic.”

  He stared past her at the horizon. Both could sense Haribu hovering here, chuckling maliciously. Aleytys shuddered. Manoreh shuddered. Both sat silent until the echoes of that laughter passed away and the presence retreated. Then Manoreh straightened. He slid his hand down over his body. “Useful gift.”

  Aleytys smiled and reached out, then jerked her hand away. “I’ll have to change my habits.” Her hand dropped onto her thigh. “Well? What now?”

  He glanced at the dead faras. “Looks like I walk. My own fault. I didn’t know.” He turned back to her. “We can’t ride double.”

  “Very bad idea.” She suppressed an urge to laugh, saw him puzzled as he felt her amusement. “We take turns walking,” she said firmly.

  He started to protest. Then he shrugged. “We’re just going through the motions anyway. Haribu can pick us up any time he wants.” He looked over the line where the mountain ridge met the sky. “No point in wearing ourselves out.”

  She did laugh then shook her head. “The best bait wiggles vigorously to attract the prey.”

  Manoreh snorted. He stood up, looking down at her. “Let’s go.”

  They moved up into the mountains following the river and the scattered piles of hare pellets. Higher and higher into the mountains, with breath coming in short pants and sweat streaming down their faces. Behind them clouds gathered over the Sawasawa but here the sun shone through the thin air and sucked the moisture from their bodies. Lips cracked, noses began to bleed as the membranes dried out.

  About midafternoon Aleytys stopped, scowled at the sun, then left the scratch trail and scrambled down the unsteady scree to the narrowing river below. She ducked her head under the water and splashed happily about. After a while she looked up and saw Manoreh squatting beside the water.

  “Take a break. Try this.” She splashed at him and laughed as he pulled back fastidiously. Even though she was fully clothed, he radiated embarrassment. She lay back and shook her head at him. “I was about to dry up and blow away. You’re not much better off, friend.” He stood and walked around a bend in the stream. After a few minutes she could hear water splashing. Once again she shook her head. “Dumb,” she muttered. Reluctantly she crawled out of the river and climbed cautiously up the rock pile to the patient faras.

  Manoreh joined her, water beading on his silver-green scales. Aleytys kicked at a pile of hare pellets. “Hundreds of hares have come along here. Think Haribu’s breeding them?”

  “Must be.” He scanned the mountains tilting up before them. “Why is he waiting?”

  “Lazy maybe. Why bother when we’re coming on our own? Maybe he just likes tormenting us. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s your turn to ride.”

  The shadows were heavy and long when Manoreh put a hand on the faras’s shoulder, stopping it. The sky was darkening, a few glowing clouds drifting toward the plain. “He sits there laughing at us.” He turned his head to stare toward faraway Kiwanji. After a moment’s silence, he muttered, “It must be hell there now. Meme Kalamah! We have to finish this. Haribu! Where the hell are you?”

  Aleytys looked around. They were close to water. There was dirt underfoot, a sparse covering of grass, some trees and down wood, and a patch of brush to cut the force of the wind. She slid off the faras. “I’m tired and hungry. Let’s stop for the night. This is a good enough place to camp.”

  Later she sat staring into the coals of their meager fire, sipping at a cup of cha and listening to Manoreh as he splashed about downstream, carefully out of sight. She smiled with amusement and a little affection. He irritated her but he was a good man to have on one’s side in a fight. She turned her smile on the fire. It was a game they were playing. A deadly game. Their fire was a shout of defiance to Haribu, a sign telling him they knew he watched.

  Manoreh came back holding his jerkin. The faint light from the coals gleamed on his hard, flat chest. Aleytys watched with tired pleasure as he knelt and reached for the hot cha-pot, folding a bit of leather jerkin around the metal handle. He poured a cup then sat down across the fire from her. “Why?”

  “Appreciation of male beauty.” She chuckled. “I know. Very unfeminine of me.”

  Then the cha pot was empty and the coals black. Overhead the moonring was a thin scattering of sparks. Manoreh was tidily packing the pots away. He was a careful man on the trail, would be ready to move with a minimum of delay if the need arose. Aleytys lay back and watched him stir about. When he finished spreading his blanket and was preparing to wrap himself for the night, she said, “Do we set watch?”

  “Why?” He looked over his shoulder at her. “I’m a fool. Must sleep farther apart. Might help.” He watched her a minute then laughed. “Do I move or you?”

  Aleytys echoed his amusement. “Since you’re already settled.…” She jumped to her feet, carrying her blanket up with her. Still laughing, she started off around the bend then stopped and looked up as a dark shadow cut across the moonring and a whine smothered the night noises. She glanced back at Manoreh.

  He was on his knees, struggling for calm, teetering on the edge of the watuk blindrage. Then he stood with a stubborn pride, projecting DEFIANCE at the circling skimmer.

  Aleytys reached out with her talent, stroked mind fingers over the engine. She knew it now, knew its vulnerable places. She could wreck it in seconds with no more effort than it took to snap fingers. She glanced at Manoreh. Not the time for that now. The little fish was nibbling and would take them to the shark. Then the stun beam hit and there was nothing.

  The Fa-kichwa Gakpeh stood on the rounded top of the great rock and gazed down on the Sawasawa. The morning’s storm was passing slowly off, uncovering the isolated patches of green that marked the locations of the Holdings. Behind him the clouds were beginning to remake and slide down from the peaks for another storm that would break over the valley early the next morning. He pulled his chul-fur cloak about him. The air dropping down over the cliff was damp and chill. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the land below. There were wildings down there, he knew it, running in and out of the abandoned houses. They always came once the hares had cleared the way. The hares. He leaned forward, peering intently at the gray-green juapepo scum. No white down there. Hares must all be at Kiwanji. He smiled fiercely. Let them purge that cursed place. Let it burn and be left empty. He brooded a while over the land, sick and angry at the thought of defiling wildings running free over Vodufa Holdings.

  An hour later he was riding down the mountainside with his company—Sniffer, Second, Fireman and hounds. Riding toward the nearest Holding.

  In Kiwanji the blindrage was stirring again among the watuk males. More and more of them were pacing the rutted streets around the sides of Chwereva complex, their booted feet abrading the hard-packed earth, stirring heavy clouds of red dust as the
y walked. But even the blindrage wasn’t enough to drive them against those massive walls of machine-cut stone with the energy guns mounted like dark, ugly demons at the four corners of the compound.

  The blindrage turned inward, driving watuk against watuk until the street stank with the putrefying bodies of men knifed or beaten to death.

  In the shelters the women huddled together trying to endure terror and tension. Some couldn’t stand it any longer and went silently to the low stone wall at the psi-screen. They stood staring out at the bulging brown eyes staring relentlessly back at them. For hours they stood. Then slowly, one by one, or in groups of two or three, sometimes holding hands for comfort, they knelt, Bighouse woman and Bound together, caste distinctions buried in their common terror. They touched foreheads to the ground, then stepped silently over the wall, giving themselves to the hares as in other places and other times women driven beyond endurance had danced off cliffs or into the sea.

  Inside Chwereva the boys lay hidden still, waiting, eating the trail rations Agoteh had given them and drinking water stolen from the stable taps late at night. Umeme had climbed the wall and looked down into the Tembeat. With a friend waiting at the top of the wall to give warning if any Chwerevaman came around, he went down into the ashes of the stable and flitted through broken shadows into the Tembeat.

  He came back filled with a bitter anger and overwhelming grief. At first he couldn’t tell them what he’d found, but later that night he did—needing to purge his memories of the horror.

  Kitosime dipped the gourd into the dark water and lifted it, holding it above the stone basin, drops falling back in a slowing patter to pock with silver the mirror surface. Overhead the two stone lamps flickered red and gold, breathing a fragrant black mist at the low ceiling already blackened from two centuries of ceremony.