Cat Karina

by Coney, Michael

  Then he pointed the thing at the wall.

  Wang-whack!

  The cross jerked, the rod quivered in the wall. Raoul stared. He hadn’t seen the rod move. One moment it had been sticking from the end of the cross, the next moment it was embedded in the wall. Tonio tried to pull it out, but he couldn’t.

  “My God,” he muttered.

  “No,” said Maquinista. “My God. Yours is a God of stupidity. My God is practical. I’d like to tell you a story, Tonio. It won’t take a moment. It might help explain a few things to you.”

  And Raoul, sitting in that dim hut in the delta clearing, was aware that there was metal all around him; on the floor, on the walls, even hanging from the ceiling — and that this place was alien and terrible. A short corridor led from the room to another place, probably the engineer’s workshop; and as the daylight began to fade it was replaced by an eerie glow from this other place.

  In that place, someone had kindled the Wrath of Agni.

  So he shivered a little as he sat back and listened, and he thought of his mother, who told stories with a point; stories he could understand.

  But the gaunt engineer with the ruined body told him a story which made no moral sense whatever.…

  “The jungle up beyond Palhoa is dense and I was a fool to leave the sailway track. But work was finished for the day and I was young and adventurous, and something in the forest seemed to call me. There was plenty of daylight left and talk during supper turned to witchcraft, and the bruja whom the Palhoa people had warned us about, who lived in those parts. I was young and I laughed. The mountain people are always nervous — they shy away from sudden noises like guanacos.

  “An older man dared me to go and look for the bruja.

  “‘She’s pretty,’ he said. ‘About your age too, so they tell me. Lives all alone. Go and find her, Maquinista. Ask her to grant you a wish.’” The engineer mimicked this voice in a bitter falsetto.

  “I climbed a ridge where the trees thinned out, and it was much lighter here. There was time to take a walk into the valley below. I started off, and suddenly things were different.…”

  “Different?” Tonio’s question was a sudden, startling bark. He was staring at the engineer. “I … I know those parts,” he said lamely.

  It had been a long time ago. The young girl had come up to him saying, “Here, take this child. I have brought it for you.”

  He’d held the baby. It was light and warm. Somehow it was not in his mind to question why; not at that moment. “What’s its name?” he asked.

  “You will give him a name. The name is unimportant, although it is written in the If along as Manuel, Joao, and Raoul. His son, however, will be called John in every happentrack in which he lives. John will be the most important human of his time.”

  Maquinista said, “It was very quiet. No birds sang — although birds were there, I knew. They seemed to be watching me. All different kinds, all together. Animals too — I knew they were there, even though I couldn’t see them. It was as though I was being escorted into the valley. They were on three sides of me, so that it seemed I could only go forwards. I walked on until the nature of the forest changed and the ground became spongy underfoot. I wanted to turn back, but I didn’t seem to be able to. I walked beside small lakes, and crossed streams. When I started to climb a path away from the water, a tapir stood before me, barring the way. It didn’t run. It just stood there, and I knew it wouldn’t let me pass. The other animals were all around me, waiting — and I could smell jaguar.

  “By Agni, I was scared!

  “I stood there, and after a while the birds and animals went. Then, at last, I heard a sound.

  “It was a woman singing.

  “She sang a song I’d never heard before — a song of old times, like the Pegman sings. But as I listened, the song became something different, and the words changed and became strange, and somehow I knew the things she sang of were not old happenings any more. She sang of the future, of all of Time and the Greataway, and the place of the world in all this vastness. It was a song about everything we ever knew and ever will know. A song of Earth.

  “Then she stopped singing, and spoke. She didn’t say much, but I’ll never forget those words. Her voice was queer and flat and dead, quite unlike the song. And all she said was,

  “‘Hungry, Bantus?’

  “And something sighed.

  “It was a huge sound, like stormwater blasting from a blowhole. And I was alone on the path. I took out my knife. It was a good knife with a keen blade chipped from the hardest stone. The handle was mahogany, bound to the blade with horsehair twine. It was a strong knife, and yet when I heard — felt — the creature moving down the path towards me, I knew it wasn’t enough.

  “I turned and ran. I ran so fast my legs couldn’t keep up with my body, and I fell. I fell into soft wet ground and I lay there, too frightened to rise, screaming into the grass. The creature came for me. I felt the earth shake to its footsteps, then I felt its breath on my neck. I couldn’t turn. I couldn’t look at it. It touched my hip. Hard, sharp claws; I felt them. My eyes were shut. It rolled me over and began a huge sniffing, and at last I dared to look at it.

  “I could only see its muzzle, a handsbreadth from my face. Warm fluid dripped on me. I’ve never seen jaws that size before or since — far bigger than the greatest crocodile. Then the muzzle tilted and I saw the eyes of the beast. They were quite small, and all the more frightening because they were not savage. They were curious, inquisitive like a bear looking at a hole in a tree. The face of this beast was hairy, but it wasn’t warm. Wherever it touched me, I felt coolness. It looked at me as though I was a plate of food, not a living man. And I found the knife was still in my hand.

  “I drove it upwards into the brute’s throat.

  “And I felt the blade snap like a stick.

  “The animal didn’t even blink. It sniffed its way down my chest, straddling me, seeking out the softest parts.

  “Then it began to eat me.”

  There was a moment’s silence in the hut. The air was keen and cool, blowing through the open doorway, and bore with it the sad singing of the little Specialists who were mourning the loss of their comrade. Maquinista regarded Tonio and Raoul, then turned away and disappeared into the dark recesses of the hut.

  When he returned, he brought light.

  It flashed from his hand, brightening the hut and glittering from the metal things on the walls. It dazzled Raoul and filled him with fear. He heard his father groan, saw him cover his eyes so that a black shadow fell over his face. But Raoul couldn’t shut out the terrible sight. He had to look. The light held a dreadful fascination as it swung and flickered from Maquinista’s hand. It was hot and fierce, like the eye of a cyclops. It stared at him, burning away his will to resist.

  It was the Wrath of Agni.

  “You’ll kill us all,” Tonio groaned.

  And the engineer laughed. He set the little fire on a shelf, and it showed no sign of consuming the hut. It blazed alone there like the evening star. Unbelievably, the engineer seemed to have controlled it.

  “That’s your answer to the felinos,” said Maquinista. “Fire. They’re scared of it, even more than you are. It’s the animal blood in them — a race memory of forest fires. If it wasn’t for the damned Examples, the True Humans would rule the world, instead of going in fear of every Species they live with.”

  Raoul spoke. “But it’s wrong to rule the world. We must live in accord with the world and the creatures in it.”

  “Tell that to the creatures.… No. Just forget about the Examples and take a fresh look at things as they really are. Explain it to me, Raoul. Explain to me why I was better off with a stone knife which broke, when I could have had a metal knife like this!”

  And he snatched something from the wall and threw it. It struck the floor beside Raoul and stuck there, quivering.

  Raoul flinched, pressing himself against the wall and shivering.

  Maqu
inista turned, and the light fell across his stomach, and the scars were like rose petals, and Raoul thought he could see the outline of the spine in there.

  As if from a long way off, he heard his father saying, “Maybe.… Maybe it isn’t my business to judge, Maquinista. Maybe my business is to pilot sailcars the best way I can. Maybe the exact nature of those sailcars is none of my business. Wouldn’t you say that’s the case?”

  “I can have Rayo repaired and ready for trials in two weeks,” said the engineer.

  Raoul saw the Wrath of Agni kindling a light of greed in his father’s eyes, and felt some of his childhood crumbling away from the core of his belief, leaving him exposed and naked in this adult world, while outside the hut the monkey-men sang a slow lament.

  And as he mourned, the sounds of the Specialists changed. There were little squeals and shufflings, and a deadly barking. Suddenly things were different, Maquinista was cocking his head, and the dream of glory faded from his father’s face to be replaced by a questioning look.

  Then came the trampling of heavy footsteps.

  A solid body of cai-men burst into the hut. They were bunched about something, corralling it with their scaly bodies. They flung short-arm punches at it, barking and grunting in excitement. The air was fetid with their fishy stench and as they milled around one of them knocked over the lamp. A trickle of fire ran across the floor. Maquinista threw a sack down, snuffing the flames.

  “Get the hell out of here, you bastards!” he shouted, “How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from my camp!”

  Cocodrilo detached himself from the others and stared coldly at the engineer. “If you had the sense to take proper security measures I wouldn’t have to waste my time on your part of the delta, Maquinista! Just take a look at what we found out there!”

  He reached among his men, seized a pale arm and dragged out a struggling figure which he flung to the floor.

  “A felino spy, Maquinista,” he said softly. “Now, what do you think of that?”

  Karina looked up at them, bleeding, her tunic hanging in rags.

  “What were you doing out there, girl?” asked Maquinista quietly.

  “Spying, that’s what!” snapped Cocodrilo. “Now you’ve seen what can happen around here, Maquinista, I’ll take her away for disposal. I’ll report this to the Lord, of course. I don’t suppose he’ll be very pleased.”

  “You tell me, girl,” said Maquinista.

  Karina was silent, staring at them with blazing eyes.

  “Disposal?” echoed Tonio uncertainly.

  “Well, she can’t go back to the felino camp now, can she?”

  Tonio regarded Karina. “Who is she, anyway? She looks familiar.”

  Raoul said, “She’s Karina. You remember, father — El Tigre’s daughter. She came up on deck the other day.” There was a bitterness in him. He’d liked Karina, but now he suspected that her apparent friendship on that occasion had been a ruse to pump him for information. So here she was, caught. A dirty spy. She deserved everything she got — except disposal. That was taking things too far.

  “El Tigre’s daughter?” Tonio’s expression was worried. This presented a political problem.

  “There’s no way we can let her talk to El Tigre now,” said Cocodrilo, jerking Karina to her feet. She lashed out at him but her fingernails had no effect on his horny skin. He laughed coldly. “You’ve met your match, girl.”

  “And there’s no way you’re going to dispose of her, either,” said Maquinista.

  “Talk!” Cocodrilo suddenly shouted, wrenching at Karina’s arm. She winced, blinked back tears of pain, tossed her head so that her hair flew like spun copper, then slammed her elbow into Cocodrilo’s stomachs The man-creature grinned toothily, tightening his grip so that Karina gave a little mew of pain.

  “Easy, Cocodrilo,” said Maquinista. “We’ll keep her out of sight for a while.”

  “Won’t her people come looking?” said Tonio.

  “I doubt it. They’ll probably assume she’s gone brute. They often do, around her age. Then after a while they snap out of it and go back to camp.”

  “They’ll follow her trail,” objected Cocodrilo.

  “I don’t think so. There were guanaco clouds blowing in from the sea today. The rain will wash away her scent.” In fact they heard a light patter on the roof at that moment, and the wind gusted cooler.

  Cocodrilo’s jaw was set stubbornly, tips of the teeth showing against his lips. “I still say dispose of her.”

  “Maybe.… Oh, I don’t know.” Tonio looked from Cocodrilo to Maquinista helplessly. It was a complex situation. “Where can we keep her? How can we be sure she won’t escape?”

  “She wouldn’t escape from the tortuga pens,” said Maquinista.”

  Cocodrilo’s mouth opened in a slow grin. “I’ll say she wouldn’t.”

  “Now, I’m going to report this to the Lord,” said Maquinista, eyeing Cocodrilo closely. “And if any harm comes to her, he’ll have your hide, Cocodrilo. He wants no part of murder.”

  Tonio said, “But what happens when we release her in the end? She’ll still tell them everything.”

  “Ah, but it’ll be too late,” said Maquinista. “Can’t you sense it, Tonio? Don’t you feel the gathering unrest in the camps, in the jungle and the foothills and on the plains, everywhere? Can’t you feel that the climax will come this Tortuga Festival? After that, I think we’re going to see a different situation on the coast. A different relationship, one way or the other.…”

  And Raoul shivered, only half understanding the deliberations of his elders but knowing, somehow, that the existence he’d always known was threatened.

  “Take her away, Cocodrilo,” said Maquinista.

  The heavy bodies clustered around Karina again, pawing her, pinioning her. She was dragged struggling from the hut. As she passed Raoul her eyes met his and she said viciously, “Don’t you have anything to say, brat? Don’t you have any say in what goes on around you?”

  Then she was gone, out into the curtain of rain.

  Nobody spoke for a long time. Nobody looked at anyone. The rain grew heavier, and big drops began to force their way through the roof and splatter to the earthen floor.

  The maturing of Mariq

  It was unseasonable, the rain. Usually heavy rains came a month later, after the Festival, washing away the debris and cleaning the coast ready for the winter. But that year, the Year of Nodal Conception, freak depressions in the South Atlantic brought early storms.

  It was a year of changes in many ways. Locally, the relationship between Specialists and True Humans would never be the same again. Climatically, it marked the onset of a new Ice Age. Historically it was marked by a new calendar: the Johnathan Years. In some remote parts this calendar is still used; but elsewhere it is just a memory in the Rainbow, along with various other ancient calendars.

  So they dragged Karina into the new Ice Age, through swamp and jungle which would be cool dry pampas twenty thousand years later, when the Triad would come together and free Starquin. They dragged her brutally, because they were little more than brutes, and they tripped her often because they enjoyed seeing her fall; and they enjoyed seeing her get up again, with her mud-soaked tunic clinging to her body. The rain fell ceaselessly and the cold wind blew, and Karina fell again.

  Cocodrilo bent to pick her up this time, his sharp fingers probing at breast and groin.

  “She’s weak as a kitten, this cat-girl,” he grunted, setting her on her feet. “Soft and weak, like a fungus.”

  His companions muttered agreement as they ploughed through mud and water, their bodies well adapted to this kind of travel.

  Siervo had watched the first clouds sweep low over the treetops but he’d anticipated rain long before that, with the first cool breath of wind and rustle of leaves. Maybe even before that, during the steamy summer, he’d known this year was going to be different — the year which, to him, was the Year of Goldenback.

  Last
year had been the Year of Mariq. He’d named the creature Mariq after a child he’d once known, in Rangua. As the years passed he’d found, to his dismay, that he’d stopped thinking about Mariq. So perhaps the tortuga had been an attempt to perpetuate her memory.

  It had failed.

  The mating of tortugas is as inevitable as the branching of happentracks.

  Although he’d taken every precaution to keep the males from Mariq he’d reckoned without the female’s own persistence. The mass mating had taken place and the males had wandered off to die, and he’d untied Mariq so that she could forage in the mud. She had a particular fondness for the tiny water-snails which abounded in the stagnant waters of the dike.

  She found a male there, stuck, unable to climb out and take part in the mass coupling. So they mated down there in the green water; slowly and, presumably, enjoyably.

  “You bastard! Son of Agni, you bastard! Where in hell did you come from?”

  Siervo scrambled down into the ditch and kicked the male tortuga away. The creature skittered across the mud, spun on its back, and was still.

  Siervo picked up Mariq gently, cradling her in his arms. “Oh, my pet.… What did he do to you?” She regarded him with bright button eyes, passive, fertilized, replete. He didn’t release her. He kept her in his hut, talking to her, telling her his plans for the trench he was digging. Autumn closed in and the leaves blew about the farm and whirled into the gray sky.

  And the carts came, drawn by llamas and led by dumb mountain people with their prancing walk and timid eyes — the first humans Siervo had seen for a year, apart from Cocodrilo. They loaded the female tortugas into the carts, never speaking to him, tossing their heads if he attempted to strike up a conversation. They despised him — him, a True Human of the Second Species!

  They left the breeding stock behind — like the marketable females, these were becoming plump and their legs short. The carts trundled away down to the yards where the tall-masted sailcars would carry the cargo down the coast. They left Siervo with his mad plans and his tame tortuga.