Mariq grew fatter until her shell was almost spherical and her head was barely able to emerge from the narrowing orifice. One morning Siervo awoke to find her balanced on the curve of her undershell, legs paddling at the air, unable to reach the floor. He untied the thong, satisfied that she could not leave him. He talked to her a lot, while she watched him gravely until her shell grew over the neck orifice and the transformation was complete.
In the late fall there was a brief Indian summer and the sky cleared.
And Siervo heard the first of the explosions.
He carried Mariq out of the hut; by now the tortuga was almost perfectly spherical and about the size of a human head. He took her to a special place, chosen because of the wind direction and the thickness of the silken fence, and he set her on the ground. She was an almost featureless globe, dark golden in color, with slight fissures in her surface tracing the lines of the original shell plates.
And the words of an ancient philosopher came into his mind. Without realizing it, he was speaking them aloud. “To seek purpose in the millennia of human existence is as futile as asking God the reason for the tortuga.”
Mariq exploded.
Siervo staggered back, temporarily deafened.
The air was filled with tiny gossamer-borne eggs. Caught by the wind, they drifted towards the fence and hung there for a while until the gossamer deliquesced. Then they fell to the wet ground, winking like little eyes in the unseasonable sunlight. Siervo kicked water, washing them into deeper puddles.
The shell of Mariq lay shattered.
He picked up the pieces and slung them over the fence.
He walked quickly back to his hut, fetched the shovel and began to dig his trench with uncontrolled vigor. When Cocodrilo next came he teased Siervo:
“Only a fool would want to befriend a dumb thing which can’t decide whether it’s a reptile or a plant, and which dies just when a man would be starting to live. Fix your hut — it’s a disgrace! Live for the day, Siervo. The future is no better than the present, you can take my word for that. Look at that drainage trench of yours. You’ve almost finished it, so now you have nothing left to live for! Can’t you see what’s wrong with your philosophy?” Cocodrilo had yawned hugely, showing rows of sharp teeth.
Death and freedom.
And so another year, another crop. Goldenback chosen from Mariq’s offspring. Sometimes Siervo wondered, in those moments when his thoughts made sense, what he was trying to breed. Did he have some crazy idea that it was possible to produce a real, empathetic companion?
The rain hammered the mud around him and the trench began to fill, flowing out under the east fence. He hurried back to his shack, avoiding the carcasses of the males, anxious to see Goldenback again. He was shivering, and it wasn’t simply the cold and the wet. He was running a slight fever. He was seized with a spasm of coughing as he entered the hut, so it was a moment before his mind registered what his eyes told him.
Goldenback was not alone.
A male tortuga crawled away from her, his slow movements telling the story.…
When Siervo awakened he felt refreshed, as though he had slept a sickness away. The rain still slashed at the roof but the sky was brightening outside; a new morning was beginning. In the first waking moments he forgot what had happened to his tortuga, and rolled over to speak to her.
He gulped, a sudden shock hit his stomach, and a shaft of pure madness lit his dim brain.
Goldenback had turned into a girl.
She lay on the floor with her knees drawn up under her and her head pillowed on her hands, asleep. Her hair spread across the dirt like a tawny fan. Her clothes were in rags, so that one breast rested across her forearm, the nipple pink and bruised. Her legs were encrusted with gray mud streaked with blood.
Somebody had mistreated Goldenback.
The remnants of reason were ebbing away from him as he rolled to the floor and knelt beside the girl, stroking her hair and mumbling, “Everything will be all right, my pet. You’ll see.”
She opened her eyes.
Her eyes, so hurt.…
“Everything will be all right,” he said numbly. She was on her feet in one movement. She stood panting, staring down at him. Her eyes were pools in which hatred swam. Her belly contracted, muscles bunching above the matted triangle of hair. Dry mud fell away from her toes and he saw the nails, tough and pointed. The toes curled and flexed. There was a sudden animal stink, and when he looked up at her face he saw murder there, and her lips drawn back over sharp teeth.
Sanity returned to him in a flash.
He rolled away.
Her foot lashed out, toenails grazing his shoulder with sharp pain. She recovered her balance instantly and dropped into a crouch.
He rolled under the bunk, whimpering with terror, pressing himself into the angle of wall and floor. He heard her cough with rage and fling herself on the bunk. He saw her fingers hook under the rough wood, clawing for him. He shrank away. The fingers grasped the wood, seeking to wrench the bunk from the wall. The retaining pegs creaked, and one snapped.
“Get away!” he was screaming. “Get away, you bastard!”
Beside him, the rotting timber of the wall sagged. The bunk began to shift. A sudden cool breeze blew in through the new gap. With a final rending the bunk came free, and a portion of the wall with it.
He dived through the hole and rolled in the mud. He heard a crash inside the hut. He stood, his breath sobbing in his throat. The flat mud of the farm stretched in all directions, giving no cover, no refuge. Scarcely pausing to think, he jumped, got a grip on the eave, and pulled himself onto the roof.
He lay on the wet mat of leaves, his heart pounding. Below him, all was quiet.
Later, Karina walked out of the hut.
She gazed at the mud, and sniffed the air. It smelled of decay. Spherical things lay around. They almost looked like tortugas, except that they had tiny legs which waved aimlessly. In the distance a tall fence separated the muddy compound from the jungle. Ignoring the pain in her body, she ran towards it.
Hideous spiders hissed at her. Through the thick, translucent screen she could make out guards, lying in the mud like driftwood.
She walked back to the hut, and saw a sallow little man lying on the roof, watching her with scared eyes.
She felt herself flush with embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply. His lips moved, but he seemed temporarily bereft of speech.
“I won’t hurt you. You can come down now.”
He uttered a faint moan, clinging to the ridge,
“Listen, if you don’t come down right away, by Agni I’ll come up and get you!”
Now he slid to the edge, hung for a moment watching her imploringly, then dropped to the ground. His legs slipped from under him and he felt on his back, flinching as though he expected her to pounce on him.
“That’s better,” she said. He was a True Human, but a very puny one. She couldn’t think why she’d been scared of him before.
“Who are you?” he asked, getting up.
She told him the story. As she talked, his eyes grew wide; and when she spoke of Cocodrilo and the journey through the jungle he made little noises of sympathy, and bobbed his head. They sat together on the step while the rain washed the mud from them.
“He hurt you, this terrible man-thing? I’m not surprised — I know him well. What did he do?”
She pulled aside the remains of her tunic, showing him her scratched and bitten body.
Siervo said slowly, “He is the cruellest creature I’ve ever known. And yet.…”
“What?” Karina was suddenly discomfited. Siervo’s eyes had filled with tears.
“I look forward to him coming,” he said in a low voice. “There’s nobody else, you see.”
“Well, why don’t you go into Rangua sometimes? You don’t have to stay here. You’re a True Human, aren’t you?” There was some impatience in Karina’s tone. The man was more feeble than Raoul
, even.
So Siervo told her his history.
They talked all day as the rain fell and the waters rose. It was one of the days Karina would remember best from that year; the rain, more gentle now, and the gentle voice of this strange True Human who’d known more unhappiness than she’d have thought a person could bear. It was the lack of freedom which affected her most, of course. The thought of spending twenty years penned in the same place was unthinkable to a free-ranging felina.
And now she was caged, too.
The fences seemed to march towards her as evening came, imprisoning her with walls of claustrophobia.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” she cried suddenly.
Siervo watched her pacing to and fro. “We can leave in the morning, if you like,” he said diffidently.
“How? We can’t get through the fence for the spiders, and you say Cocodrilo’s men are guarding the outside anyway!”
“I’ve had a long time to think,” said Siervo. “I have it all planned. I hadn’t intended to leave until after the Festival, but since the rains have come early, well.…” He shrugged rapidly and glanced around with a sudden, sly grin which was so close to madness that Karina doubted him.
“Maybe we should talk about it in the morning,” she said.
They slept together on the narrow bunk but Siervo was restless, twisting and turning for a long time before he relaxed and his breathing became regular and even. Karina was a light sleeper like most of her species, and she was awakened in the middle of the night by Siervo’s hand sliding over her body and cupping her injured breast. She pushed it away gently, but Siervo awakened with a start, realized what he was doing, and crawled out of bed, mumbling with shame. He spent the rest of the night on the floor, muttering to himself, mortified by the involuntary actions of his own body. Karina was sorry he’d gone, because the warm proximity reminded her of the grupo.
When morning came the rain had ceased and the sun was filtering through the roof. Siervo was up and about, arranging a row of breeding tortugas outside the door, clucking over them. Karina awakened, stretched, and sat up in bed watching him.
“Tell me about getting out of here,” she said.
He didn’t meet her eyes. He’d been peeping at her waking up, and her wild beauty scared him. It was many years since he’d seen a pretty girl, and he’d never known how they could affect a man. He’d been very young when they’d brought him here. And Karina was a Specialist, apparently. He shouldn’t even think of her as beautiful.
But she was.
Suddenly he didn’t want to leave. He was scared of the world outside, and he was scared of losing Karina out there.
“Maybe the time isn’t right yet.”
“Oh.… I don’t think I could face Cocodrilo again,” she said quietly. “He told me he would be coming, today. To see how I was settling in. He’ll probably bring other guards.”
After a pause, Siervo said, “We’ll go. First, we’ll eat.” He cracked open a tortuga by banging it against the doorstep so the shell split, then handed it to her. It was not quite ripe, and there were clear indications of flesh and blood inside.
The ripe tortuga is filled with delectable tiny eggs, like caviar.
Karina regarded it with distaste. “This isn’t a tortuga. This is some kind of animal.”
“Of course it is. Tortugas are animals.”
“But.… What about the Examples? True Humans don’t eat meat.”
“Most people think tortugas are plants.”
“But what if they found out? If True Humans eat meat, why are felinos forbidden to hunt and fish? Why do they say it’s the animal in us, that makes us need tumpmeat?”
Siervo said, “Why do you think the tortuga farms are kept secret? Why am I a prisoner here?”
“Well.… Why?”
And the True Human, with no loyalty to his race — how could he have, after a lifetime’s imprisonment? — said, “Only by regulating the food supply can True Humans keep Specialists under control.”
“But why do True Humans grow tortugas? Why take the risk?”
“It’s a profitable crop. I don’t suppose the True Humans down south know the tortuga is an animal. It can only breed here in the delta. The eggs would never hatch in the drier lands — in fact the shell would get too hard to explode. The Rangua Canton Lord, the sailway captains and the other True Humans have gotten rich on tortugas. They’ll make sure nobody finds out what tortugas really are.”
Karina looked at him, her eyes widening. “But I’ve found out.”
“So they can never let you go.”
She gulped. “I don’t want any of this tortuga. I don’t like the look of it. Let’s hurry up and get out of here.”
“All right.”
Now this mild, timid True Human did a series of things which surprised Karina.
He took a strong hardwood staff and jammed it into a crack in the outside corner of the hut. Feet planted firmly in the mud, he threw himself against the end. The hut groaned, swayed and finally collapsed; one long wall falling outwards and the other walls piling on top of one another.
“Help me with this,” said Siervo, and together they carried a long wall across the mud, laying it beside the fast-flowing trench. Then they took the two short walls, leaving only the wall with the door in it, and Siervo placed these upright on the long wall, then leaned the two top edges together and formed a triangular shelter. Pegs slid smoothly into place.
“As I said, I’ve had a long time to think,” said Siervo drily, noticing Karina’s astonishment.
Now they had a raft with a small chalet-shaped cabin. Siervo brought tortugas and other food which he placed in the cabin. He ran back to the wreckage of the hut and collected the hardwood staff, jammed it under the raft and levered.
“Push,” he said.
“Wait a moment.” Karina was bewildered by the swift events, the imminent plunge into unknown dangers. “Where are you taking me?”
He paused, leaning against the staff. “I’ve no idea. But I know that if we don’t go now, we’ll never get out of this place. We’ll die here.”
“Yes, but.…”
“HAH!”
Cocodrilo was running towards them, followed by a number of his men.
“Push, Karina!” Siervo leaned on the pole. Karina got her fingers under the raft and heaved. It slid a few centimeters, then stuck. “Push!” Siervo jerked at the staff.
It snapped.
Cocodrilo had pulled ahead of his men, skittering across the wet ground in a low-slung run, using his hands from time to time so that, horribly, it looked as though he was scuttling on all fours. As he came he uttered harsh cries.
Karina and Siervo stood shoulder to shoulder, lifting and pushing, feeling the raft move, but too slowly. Siervo was sobbing. After twenty years of subservience the enormity of his actions was almost too much for him.
“Stop!” shouted Cocodrilo.
And Siervo stopped, his body sagging, the raft falling back into the mud.
Karina said, “He’s going to kill us if we don’t get away.” She siezed Siervo’s arm, swinging him round to face her so that he couldn’t see the monstrosity bounding towards them. “Do you really want me to die?” she asked, trying to get him to meet her eyes.
Her eyes were like mountain lakes. Siervo stared.
Her beauty was more important than life itself. It was a gift placed in his care. It was.…
He hurled himself at the raft.
It slid forward into the trench. The current seized it. They jumped aboard. Cocodrilo, arriving seconds too late, trotted alongside, gauging his leap. The raft moved faster, the mud flats slipping by. Cocodrilo, yelling to his men, plunged into the channel and took hold of a corner of the raft. The vessel tilted and swivelled, touching the bank and slowing. The cai-men were yelping like hounds, closing in.
Cocodrilo, his head protruding from the water, snapped, “Stop. Get off this raft.”
Karina could see Siervo shaking as
he dropped to his knees and, with trembling hands, tried to pry Cocodrilo’s fingers away. The raft tilted further, water swilling over the deck.
“We daren’t stop.” Siervo’s tone was pleading. “Your men are out of control. Coco. They’ll kill us. Look at them!”
There were six of them. They scurried along the bank, level with the raft, uttering fearsome coughing sounds, their mouths snapping at air, their coarse lips dripping fluid. They were crazed with the ecstasy of the hunt. They began to roar with anticipation, seeing a shallow place ahead where they could easily drag the raft to a halt. They scuttled on, arms pumping, overtaking the raft and getting ready to jump into the trench.
“You … asked for it,” gasped Cocodrilo, water washing over his face.
Karina found she was holding the shattered end of the staff. She stepped forward. The raft heeled and Cocodrilo disappeared underwater.
“Go to the other end,” she told Siervo.
He glanced at her, uttered a little moan of despair, climbed to his feet and scrambled away. The fence loomed less than fifty meters ahead — but Cocodrilo’s men were waiting for them in the shallows. As Siervo reached the other end, the raft balanced itself.
Karina crouched.
Cocodrilo emerged from the water, gulping air.
Karina rammed the jagged end of the staff down his throat. As he screamed, blood sprayed over her legs. Karina laughed, a harsh yell of pure delight. He let go and drifted away, twisting and turning in the water like a gaffed fish, seaming the surface with pink threads.
Karina ran to the other end where Siervo was struggling with a cai-man who had got a grip on his ankle. She kicked, and ripped the man’s throat open with her toenails. Blood welled out, bubbling as he fought for breath, then he was gone somewhere under the raft.
Then someone grabbed her leg, scaly fingers digging deep. She kicked out, slipped and fell, sliding towards the edge of the raft. Another hand gripped her thigh just as she caught hold of the cabin front and checked her slide. The fingers were like steel, inhumanly strong, and although she kicked with all her strength she couldn’t shake them free. She caught sight of Siervo in a similar predicament, being dragged off the raft; then two of the men began to climb aboard, grinning, crawling towards her.
Cat Karina Page 9