by L. A. Graf
The big cat angled into his line of sight at a stiff trot, growling breathily. Sikes stumbled to a stop and swore. He’d never make it to the building ahead of the beast. “Go on!” he shouted. “Get outta here!”
It paused, inspecting him. Somewhere inside the concrete building, a volley of muffled roars and grumbles boiled forth, the sounds of other lions, confined inside. Sikes backed toward the shallow watering hole nestled against one wall of the enclosure. “Oh, great—I get stuck with the only lion they’ve got to lock all the others away from.” If he had his water pistol, he’d just shoot himself now.
A skim of ice fractured under his feet as he retreated, stinging his legs with frigid water that lapped higher with each awkward step. Abruptly, the stone bottom swept away beneath him, and he sat down hard enough to clack his teeth together. The sudden movement seemed to summon the lion. It darted smoothly forward, ears pricked for Sikes’s splashing as he crabbed backwards into deeper water. It slowed as it approached the edge and roared at him.
. . . I’m a dead man I’m a dead man . . . ! The water came only as high as his waist, but it made his skin twitch with a chill that crawled all the way up his spine into his skull. Only his knee felt better for the icing, stretched out straight in front of him, straining against the confines of his blue jeans and pounding like a second heart. His hands, braced against the rock behind him, had lost their feeling as well as their heat. The lion settled into a crouch, rumbling.
Sikes stared into its wide, luminescent eyes, counting the snaps of its tail to left and right as they regarded each other. “We can’t sit here all night,” he whispered at last. Well, he couldn’t. Despite the weather and the ice water, he was sheened with chilly sweat, and he knew that meant he had another twenty minutes, max, before shock overcame him and took him down.
“Do something, dammit.” He was pretty sure he meant the lion. But when its only response was to flick an ear and blow a cloud of steam, Sikes shoved both hands through the water to shower an icy curtain all over the lion’s head. “Do something!”
It plunged in with a stuttering roar that turned his insides pure liquid. It seemed distasteful of the water, its eyes squeezed shut and head drawn back, so Sikes dove sideways beneath the cover of its spray and scrambled for the edge of the pool. He only made it far enough to clap both hands on solid ground before a weight like a falling body struck him between the shoulders and smashed him back into the water. He took in a mouthful but valiantly didn’t swallow. Then the lion bellowed from somewhere much farther away to his right, and Sikes was suddenly struggling to free himself, choking on shock and panic.
On top of him, the levpa gave a barking chatter and planted a hand on the back of his head to drive him under again. Sikes jammed his arms against the pool bottom and shoved back as hard as he could. His face crested barely long enough to drag in a choking breath, then the water all around him seemed to explode into froth and spray. The levpa howled in frustrated rage, and a power like the thundering of a mountain pounded ruthlessly on top of him, sweeping the levpa along with it.
Then was gone.
Sikes broke the surface with a horrible gasp. Coughing, shivering almost too hard to support himself, he looked around frantically for some sign of his alien attacker. It tumbled in a wailing ball with the lion, slamming the door of the outbuilding and inciting fresh sounds of savagery from within. Sikes dragged himself out of the water to huddle against the edge of the enclosure. Ten minutes, he thought. I’m now down to maybe ten minutes ’til I die. Out in the enclosure, the levpa tore away from the lion, only to be chased to the highest point in the landscape and dragged down again. Sikes silently rooted for the Earth creature while staggering unsteadily upright.
The outbuilding seemed ridiculously close now that both the lion and the levpa were occupied. Sikes stumbled into the door and nearly fell there, but caught the handle in an effort to stay standing. It was cold and rock steady—locked from the inside.
“Karrto!” It was a curse George had taught him, and felt somehow appropriate just now. Turning to press his back flat to the door, he clenched his teeth to still their chattering and scanned the dark enclosure. Lion and levpa had separated again, this time eyeing each other with much yowls and snarling while the levpa circled and the lion stared it down. The big cat seemed unhurt, but also disinclined to attack the alien again. Sikes felt his guts twist into knots thinking about what would certainly follow as soon as the levpa realized it was free.
Then his eyes caught on a soft reflection where only grass should have thrown back the light. The squirt gun, downhill from the levpa and half an enclosure away. Well, Sikes told himself, you can die backed up against a door like a baby, or you can die trying to outrun a monster for a gun. What’ll it be?
Taking a lungful of air almost as cold as his fear, Sikes pushed away from the outbuilding and started to run.
C H A P T E R 2 6
THE SHRIEKS AND roars and frantic splashes inside the lion enclosure twisted into a maelstrom. George struggled to his feet and hauled Vegas after him, one arm locked around the Overseer’s heaving chest. The only way he could think of to save Sikes now was to thrust the kleezantsun between the levpa and its prey. George eyed the man-made ravine between the enclosures and knew he couldn’t jump it with the heavy gannaum in his arms. He had just decided to throw the Overseer in first and hope Vegas landed hard enough to knock the wind out of him when a sweep of brilliant light dazzled in his face.
“Stop!” yelled an amplified female voice from the asphalt viewing area below. “This is the police!”
George squinted into the incandescent glare, trying to spot figures in its blurred edges. He thought he recognized Jordan and Golitko in dark raincoats, flanked by a scatter of uniformed Pittsburgh police. Protzberg seemed to be the one holding the spotlight, judging by its distance from the ground, but there were two other dimly familiar figures in street clothes beside her. With any luck, George thought, they were zookeepers.
“Don’t worry about us! Help Sikes!” George waved at the blurred tangle of violence in the enclosure behind him. “He’s in with the lion!”
The wave was a mistake. Restrained only by the grip on his cracked chest, Ross Vegas grunted and shoved George off balance, tearing free when he fell. The Overseer leaped across the ravine to the top of the lion’s enclosure wall and disappeared inside it while George skidded across frost-slick stone and cursed his shoes.
“Don’t shoot!” That female voice, anxious as a class mother on a field trip, certainly didn’t belong to Protzberg. “That’s my husband!”
George blinked into the darkness after he caught his balance, finally seeing the two Tenctonese linnaums behind their bulky parkas. “Susan, what are you doing here?” he demanded, scrambling to his feet in shock.
A gaunt face lifted inside a fur-trimmed hood. “She came with me,” called Lydia Vegas. Susan had her arm around the older linnaum, who looked oddly determined despite fear-silvered eyes. “I wanted to see—”
George didn’t listen to the rest of it. A quick scan of the group showed him no one else who looked like they worked for the zoo, and he cursed. He kicked his shoes off and started shouting orders down at Protzberg.
“Get a guard—someone who works for the zoo!” He saw Golitko set off down the path at a run. “Break into the lion’s shelter while you’re waiting and see if you can get Matthew out.” George backed across the rock to get a running start, feeling the bitter cold strike up through his sodden socks. “I’ll take care of Vegas.”
Wet socks were only marginally better than wet shoes at holding traction on sprayed concrete, George discovered. He was off balance and flailing when he took off and even more off balance when he landed. Fortunately, the far side of the lion’s wall wasn’t nearly as steep or as high as the side facing the ravine. George let his feet slide out from under him and skidded down it. He landed face first in the dirt, hard enough to lose most of his breath. He struggled to his feet, bruised an
d wheezing, then cursed when he saw the disheveled figure headed toward him.
“Matthew!” George took in his partner’s wet clothes and the way Sikes hunched over one stiff leg when he hobbled, then hurried to catch him. Sikes shook him off impatiently.
“Squirt gun, George.” The human’s voice was hoarse with pain and the beginnings of shock, but his lurching progress toward the edge of the enclosure never wavered. “Levpa’s here. Gotta get it.”
George looked around and spotted the anomalous gleam of green and orange under a winter-bare tree. He pulled Sikes’s arm over his shoulder, taking the brunt of the human’s weight, and hauled him toward the gun. Frost-sharp grass prickled and clung to his wet socks, its crunching broken only by the occasional stab of a rock. Sikes shivered convulsively beside him, and George glanced at him in concern. “Matthew, did that lion attack you?”
Sikes grunted, a sound that might have been a laugh if his teeth hadn’t been clenched so tightly. “Nope—it attacked the levpa.”
“It’s not doing that now.” The near silence in the enclosure had caught George’s attention at last. He turned his head to track the smell of Tenctonese blood. On the upper part of the slope, a tawny shape had retreated, snarling, onto its rock ledge, while two spotted heads bent together on the grassy slope above it.
The levpa was striped with its own blood now, gashes raked across its side and belly. Ripped flesh exposed one entire side of its jaw, and its left arm dangled helplessly against its hairless chest. Unconscious of its own thin whimpers, the creature butted its head affectionately against Ross Vegas’s arm, then buried its eyeless face in the scrap of blue silk the Overseer held. George recognized yesterday’s tie and felt both his hearts begin to hammer.
“Protzberg!” He picked Sikes up by the arms and heaved him the rest of way to the water gun, dropping him there hard enough to wring a yelp from him. “Where the hell are you?”
“Inside the fence,” came back the faint reply. Sikes had stooped to retrieve the water pistol and was shaking it now to see how full the reservoir was. “We’re working on the shelter door.”
The levpa lifted its head, nostrils fluttering in the wind as it tasted the air. It caught George’s scent almost at once, and its blind face swung eagerly toward him despite the pain it must be in. Hindquarters quivering like a terrier’s, it waited for the command to strike.
George sucked in a quick, cold breath, resisting the urge to vault back over the high rock wall. It wouldn’t stop the levpa from coming after him, even wounded as it was, and it would leave Sikes to the mercy of Vegas in the meantime. George hoped like hell that his partner hadn’t exhausted all his water shooting at the lion.
“Protzberg!” he roared again. “Break in that damned door!”
“We’re trying!” The police officer sounded disgusted. “It was designed to keep lions in, for Chrissake!”
“Then let Susan do it!”
The kleezantsun laughed, brief and bitter, from atop the hill. “Too late.” He dropped a hand onto the levpa’s bare-skinned skull. “Roos sansol!” Vegas ordered, voice dropping to a bone-deep growl. “Roos cha’dikav!”
And the levpa sprang.
C H A P T E R 2 7
SIKES SHOULDERED IN front of George, water gun straight-armed, his hand clutched in the Newcomer’s coat to keep from falling. The stench of Tenctonese blood swarmed them, and a flash of mottled pink tore across the enclosure at a fearfully silent speed.
“Matthew, no!”
He squeezed off shots as fast as his hand could pump. No muzzle flash, no report, no dust kick to tell him where his shots were landing or how far they could go. He had just released George’s lapel to steady the gun in both hands when the Newcomer snagged an arm around his waist and yanked them both roughly to the ground.
Sikes fought to keep his eyes on the levpa, struggling to sit up in George’s embrace despite the alien’s volatile curses. It flanked them silently, and Sikes twisted to fire just ahead of its dim outline and catch it in the spray.
“Stop it!” George hissed, tightening his grip. “Lie still!”
The levpa jerked suddenly sideways, squawking, and Sikes felt a throb of relief at the bitter smell of searing flesh. It scrambled back, its head shaking, and Sikes basted it with a few more scattered shots to hold it at bay. Beneath him, George extricated himself and crawled to kneel at Sikes’s side.
Struggling up to one knee and one elbow, Sikes kept the gun trained grimly on the monster. His whole body shook too badly to keep the aim true, but the levpa seemed to understand his intent—it paced unhappily just outside the squirt gun’s range, whistling with distress.
“Told you it would work,” Sikes panted, tossing a sidelong grin at his partner.
The look George gave him in return didn’t include a smile. “That won’t hold it back for long.” His own eyes tracked the levpa’s nervous movements, attentive silver coins beneath the slope of his bare brow.
Behind them, Vegas barked a string of fluid Tenctonese. “Roos, karr vot! Roos sansol! Roos nema!”
The levpa lifted its head as though begging for strokes of affection, and its abortive lunge made George jerk closer to Sikes in a defenseless way Sikes had never seen in the alien before. Sikes aimed a quick squirt into the levpa’s face. The stream went wide over one shoulder, but the creature halted.
“It’s bred to hunt, Matthew.” George’s voice sounded breathless, his expression numb. “It won’t break off until it’s caught us.”
Sikes didn’t like his partner’s hopeless tone. “I guess that depends.” He split his attention from the levpa long enough to shout up toward Jordan and Protzberg, “Will one of you please shoot this damn thing?”
“No! Nos eeb!” The linnaum’s voice rang off the surrounding stone in utter torment. “Nos cate’un! Don’t hurt him!”
Half sliding, half leaping down the poured concrete boulder, Lydia jumped the moat and crashed to her knees in the lion’s den, never taking her eyes off the wounded levpa. Even from halfway across the enclosure, Sikes could hear the pitiful hitching of her tearful cries. “Nem zoo, nos odrey—toe’e therma!”
Freezing at the sound of her voice, the levpa stroked the air with its nostrils, every line of its body quivering as though it felt the cold as keenly as the bone-wet Sikes. Lydia crept toward it like a child toward a butterfly. Her hands framed her face in gentle wonder, her eyes dilated so fully that Sikes could see the reflections of the lion’s pool inside them. Murmuring senseless sounds of comfort, she stretched out one hand to stroke the monster’s skewed lips. The levpa reared back and snapped at her fingers.
Sikes tried to leap up, but George grabbed him by the back of his jacket and climbed atop him. “Don’t!” He pinned Sikes’s hand so that the water pistol pointed at the ground. “Leave them,” he insisted in the human’s ear.
Sikes, head spinning in shock and pain, dragged himself forward half an inch on his hands. “It’s gonna kill her!”
“It’s not.” Apparently sensing his friend’s discomfort, George rolled to one side but didn’t unlock his arms from around Sikes’s shoulders. Revitalized by violent movement, the pain in his knee refused to abate. “It’s her child,” George said gently. “That might save us . . . Let her speak to it.”
Speak to it, hell. “George, if you guys could do anything about these things attacking slaves, you would have done it years ago.” He didn’t like the way he was trembling or the fact that George’s fierce hold didn’t feel any warmer than the ground beneath him did.
“There’s nothing slaves can do to save themselves,” Vegas said in tones so deep and guttural, Sikes almost didn’t recognize the words as English. The Overseer had come up close behind them, and Sikes expected him to add his strength to the attack started by his brutal construct. He saw that same belief in George’s eyes when George rolled over to glare up at the standing kleezantsun. Vegas seemed content to ignore them, though, swaying slightly with weakness as he stared at Lydia and her mo
nstrous child.
“It hates you,” Vegas slurred harshly.
Lydia flinched as if under a lash, her hand withdrawing to her side.
“It was designed to hate you and everything about you. You are sansol, Jery’zan. Inferior.”
“. . . He’s my baby . . .” She whispered the words almost in rhythm with the levpa’s sighs.
Vegas laughed cruelly. “He is not. Your baby is dead, taken and killed to make room for this one’s birth.” He stepped wide to Sikes’s right, and Sikes made a grab for his ankle as he went by. George was suddenly on top of him again, pinning his arm with one knee.
“Would you be happier if I just let you get yourself killed?” George growled in vexation.
Sikes scowled at him, burning with annoyance. “Yes!”
“Then I ought to let you do it.”
Vegas spun with a vicious snarl. “Shut up, both of you! A slave and the cur of a slave! Your love of sentimental weakness is what makes you less valuable than my levpa.” He stooped to rip the pistol out of Sikes’s grasp, heedless of whatever moisture still clung to its surface. “With this thing you would destroy more generations of work and training than you can even imagine—work that now can never be replaced.”
Sikes felt his partner’s weight lift abruptly as George scuttled backwards, out of the pistol’s range of fire. “Just as you destroyed generations of Newcomers?” Sikes challenged, pulling his good knee up under him and trying to rock back onto that foot for balance. “Just like you’d destroy anything you can’t make or control?”