Cat Karina

by Coney, Michael

  That night Astrud relived the strangeness of her day; the hours in and around the tower, the terror of the Wrath of Agni in the glade, the queer threatening noises from the forest, the sudden scuttlings nearby. She’d cleaned out the cabin and fixed part of the roof with branches and overlapping leaves. Raoul had helped her, saying little. In the forest close by Raoul had found a relic of the past: an old sailcar, overgrown but still intact, lying on rotting rails. He’d gone inside, disturbing a sounder of peccaries which scampered off into the jungle, scaring her — she must remember to tell Tonio about it in the morning, take his mind off that girl — and she and Raoul had sat in the tiny forecabin, remembering the past, imagining phantom rails flying by, the tramping of the crew on the deck above, Tonio’s quick warm smile when something pleased him.…

  Tonio was different, now. Astrud had noticed a big change, too.

  Whimpering, she awakened and looked around with wide eyes.

  By morning Tonio’s determination had increased. “Tonight we eat fresh fish,” he said, slipping crossbow bolts into his pack. “You’ll see.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t go. Oh, Tonio — there are some peccaries near! Raoul came across a whole herd of them in an old sailcar, in the bush over there!”

  “I’ll shoot one tomorrow.” Shouldering the crossbow, he strode off into the forest.

  “Oh!” Unwittingly, Astrud had sentenced a peccary to death.…

  It was raining, but the ridge was already warming up as the sun tried to burn away the clouds. Tonio descended the other side — and now, as he re-entered the rain forest, the place seemed to hold a different atmosphere. The air was fresh instead of fetid. The cries of the parrots were musical rather than harsh. The rain dripped softly through the leafy canopy and the other sounds — the animals and reptiles moving through the bush — were no longer menacing.

  He was welcome.

  He reached the nexus of pools and began to search the interconnecting streams. The water was clear despite the rain and Tonio became aware of an unusual sensation. It was a feeling of total certainty: he was going to catch that big fish, Torpad. The feeling was so definite that it was almost as though the event had already occurred.

  And on many happentracks it had. A few Tonios had failed, a few had even drowned, and one had received a slashing bite from the fish which would turn septic and ultimately cause his death. But in general the fish had been caught.

  Tonio saw Torpad. The great fish hovered in his accustomed position, facing the flow of water, keeping station with minimal fin movement. Tonio loaded his crossbow and knelt on the bank directly above the fish, which gave no indication of fear.

  Tonio shot.

  Torpad thrashed on the bright pebbles of the stream bed, while a mist of scarlet flowed away. His tail came clear of the surface and water sprayed about. Tonio made ineffectual grabbing motions, nearly overbalanced, nearly received a bite; then, satisfied the fish was securely pinned by the bolt, sat back to wait for him to tire.

  “So you killed Torpad.”

  The flat tones of the girl came just as Tonio was wading into the stream to claim his prize.

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “And you did.”

  “Well.… He didn’t even try to get away. “Tonio laid the fish on the bank; it was well over a meter long. “He just stayed there as though he wanted to be caught.”

  She said seriously, with no trace of anger or recrimination, “Perhaps he did. Perhaps he knew his time had come, and he wanted to get it over with. But those little fish you were after yesterday — perhaps their time hadn’t come.”

  “I knew I’d get him.”

  “You didn’t know yesterday. It was only this morning that you knew — when the number of possible happentracks had diminished enough to make the Ifalong easy to foretell.”

  He stared at her. The words were strange, yet they made a kind of sense. “Are you saying its possible to forecast the future?”

  Her face was like a stone. “Nothing so precise. But it is possible to foretell the Ifalong.” Now she smiled, but there was no humor in it at all. “Come with me. You must be tired and hungry after your walk. My cottage is near.”

  “You mean you could foretell my future?” he asked, trotting behind her like a pet animal, the fish forgotten beside the stream. She was young and very attractive, this girl, and she couldn’t possibly be the same one who had given him the infant Raoul, all those years ago. But the resemblance was uncanny.…

  The pursuit.

  The battle for Rangua was virtually over by daybreak. Under cover of darkness the grupos had infiltrated the True Human lines and attacked from behind with terrifying ferocity. Although outnumbered by five to one the felinas had the advantage of superior night vision and, in the confusion, many True Human casualties had been inflicted by their own people hacking with swords at anything that moved.

  Barricade after barricade surrendered and the prisoners were herded into the inn and other buildings on the main street. The felinas were not compassionate jailers. Their fighting instincts were still aroused and they were quick to punish anything which remotely resembled an attempt to escape. In point of fact no True Humans wanted to escape. The dark interior of the inn was a blessed sanctuary after the streets with their murderous, half-seen predators.

  Shortly before dawn, Iolande reported to El Tigre.

  “The northern half of the town is ours. Should we move south, or wait for Tamaril to work her way up to us?” She was panting with excitement and drenched with blood; an unnerving sight in the early half-light.

  It was probably at this moment that the first intimations of disaster came to El Tigre.…

  “Wait,” he said.

  “We could fan out north, mop up the farms and link up with Manoso in the delta.” Iolande was unwilling to stop fighting. Only her affection for El Tigre — and a certain fear of him — had prompted her to report back at all. Now she wanted to return to the battle.

  “No. Hold your positions. Have there been …? How many died?”

  “No more than necessary,” she answered. She gave him a quick hug which left a dark stain on him, then ran swiftly back to her forces.

  As the sun rose out of the ocean El Tigre was watching from the top of the signal tower. The town was quiet; all fighting seemed to have ceased. Nearby, a great crowd of silent True Humans spilled out of the door of the inn and nearby houses, guarded by felinas. El Tigre wondered at their silence. It was though they were in the grip of a kind of mass shock. Even the children made little sound.

  There was no joy in El Tigre as he descended the ladder, having seen Iolande and Tamaril heading towards the tower. They had obviously linked up, the battle was over, Rangua was theirs. A single cry of desolation rose from somewhere in the town like the crowing of a lonely cockerel. What about Manoso? Why was he silent? And in the foothills, the Palace. How should he approach that problem?

  By the time he reached the foot of the ladder Karina, Teressa and Runa were there. His girls.… He put his huge arms around them, feeling better, for a moment.

  Karina said, “I think we’ve won, father.”

  “That may be.”

  Now Torch, Iolande and Tamaril arrived, looking alert and ferocious despite having been busy all night.

  “You must come and address the prisoners, El Tigre,” said Torch. “We must make our position clear — this is no temporary occupation. We must get certain guarantees out of them before we allow them to go home. We must assign responsibilities —”

  “Yes, yes. First I’d like to inspect the town.”

  “Of course.” Torch understood. It was natural that El Tigre should wish to gloat over the scene of conquest.

  “Father,” said Karina, “we’ve captured the captain and crew of the Palhoa car. Can we get them to take us to Palhoa now? We must get after Tonio while the scent’s still warm.”

  El Tigre looked at her, shaking his head slightly like a baffled bull. “No — come
with me first. There’s plenty of time for Tonio.” And he thought: I need you with me for a while, children.…

  So they paced down a nearby street; El Tigre with his head thrust forward, his grupo glancing at him and each other nervously; Torch, Iolande and Tamaril with light step and an air of pride and excitement. The barricade in this street consisted of a row of ox- and mule-carts, with pieces of furniture pushed into the gaps: chairs, cupboards, a baby’s crib with the blanket still in it, tables, beds, anything which had come readily to hand. There was something pathetic about the futility of this barricade. It might have stopped a runaway tapir, but felinas …?

  El Tigre sprang lightly to the top, standing on an oxcart.

  A score of twisted bodies lay on the ground beyond.

  They lay as they had died, hunched around terrible lacerations, in puddles of blood now turned to jelly and glistening in the new sun, surrounded by trampled entrails. They were both sexes and all ages. They hadn’t stood a chance.

  Iolande jumped to the ground. “See, El Tigre?” She held up a metal knife, “You see the kind of two-faced bastards we’re dealing with?”

  The others joined her, stepping carefully through the carnage.

  El Tigre said nothing.

  Karina gulped, and walked away. She looked at the sky, clean and bright and blue, the clouds of yesterday gone. What’s the matter with me? she wondered.

  “Let’s take a look in there,” said El Tigre suddenly, pointing to a house where the door leaned open.…

  They found the bodies in the bedroom; an elderly man and his wife. It seemed the old couple had locked themselves in and pushed a heavy dresser against the door; it lay on its side nearby. The man lay beside it with his throat slashed open; the door lay across his legs, torn away from its lintels. The woman had tried to get out of the window; the shutter was ajar. She lay in a huddle with her neck twisted back and her eyes open, staring at El Tigre as though in surprised recognition.

  He said, “Why?”

  “Well, hell, what do you expect?” Iolande answered briskly. “Have you ever tried to control a dozen grupos with the smell of blood in their nostrils? Have you ever tried to control one? All right, so a felina got a little out of hand in here. It’s a small price to pay.”

  They left the house and walked on, but now El Tigre insisted they examine the whole town, house by house. He wanted to see the results of the battle personally, before anything was removed.

  He saw enough to sicken him of revolution forever.

  The barricades were bad enough, with their heaps of corpses and pools of blood; but at least the people there had died fighting. It was in the houses where the pathos lay; where the elderly and the children had barred the doors only to have them broken down by the powerful felinas; and where, in all too many cases, the felinas — already crazed with blood lust — had gone berserk.

  El Tigre was relentless, and saw it all.

  Some time in the afternoon Iolande said, “All right, all right!” and she began to cry. She collapsed on a doorstep, her head in her hands.

  Tamaril, who had been silent for a long time, said, “Perhaps we shouldn’t reproach ourselves for the way we’re made. After all, the great Mordecai Whirst was a True Human.”

  El Tigre said slowly, “No — the blame lies with us. We didn’t understand one another well enough, felinos and felinas. We didn’t understand what war meant, because we’ve never known one. The bachelors wouldn’t have done all this, if I’d sent them in instead. But then, the bachelors may not have won the war. Our men are clever and strong, but they are lazy and easy-going. I am such a man, although I drive myself to lead because somebody must. Our women hunt in packs and they’re cruel and violent when aroused — and I knew that — yet I sent them into Rangua. I must take the blame. I didn’t realize what I was doing, because we’ve never fought a real war before, and we didn’t know our own strength. But I should have known. I should have seen what I was committing the Canton to, once the revolution became more than just my talk.

  “Iolande — stop snivelling and get up. Last night you did what you were born to do — only daylight has changed the picture. Now we must face our prisoners. This should be our moment of triumph. This is my moment of vengeance for what they did to Serena.” His bitter smile did nothing to hide his sorrow. “But instead I only feel guilt.”

  Karina said quietly to Teressa, “You and Runa stay with father. I’ll go after Tonio alone.”

  El Tigre, overhearing, said, “More killing?”

  “This is a special case.” Confused and desperately unhappy, she hurried away. Time was getting on. She’d be lucky if she reached Palhoa by nightfall.

  She went to the house where Captain Guantelete and his wife and crew were being held, obtained their release and assured the uncertain grupo guard that she could handle them.

  Later, as the great square sails were spread and the car crept into the foothills on the last of the wind, she sat on deck and watched Rangua recede. The True Humans had left their temporary jails now, and were assembled before the signal tower, where her father was addressing them from half-way up the ladder. She hoped her sisters would look after him; right now, he needed their support and affection.

  She felt she needed support too; and she was relieved when an ungainly figure came bounding out of the bush and swung itself aboard. It was the Pegman, who had left town in time to avoid the night’s killing.

  He sat beside her. “So Rangua belongs to the felinos now.”

  A bluff hid the town from view and the setting sun illuminated the wetness of the delta region. For a moment she wondered how Manoso had fared. His silence had alarmed El Tigre, who had a vision of Manoso’s entire force being wiped out by the ferocious cai-men. Thinking unhappy thoughts, Karina was carried towards Palhoa and her historic meeting with the Dedo.

  Years afterwards, they were still telling the story in Palhoa of how the cat-girl had awakened and stood, head high and nostrils flaring as she sniffed the morning air. Her beauty was unearthly, they said, but no man would have gone near her that day — except for the Pegman, a one-armed True Human freak from somewhere down the coast. The cat-girl awakened from where she’d been lying and the vicuna people edged away, tossing their heads. After sniffing she uttered a wordless sound — some said she roared — and she plunged into the jungle, followed by the freak.…

  The Pegman had prevailed upon Karina to spend the night in Palhoa. “I’m beat,” he said. “And you must be tired, too. The jungle around Palhoa is dangerous. I know. I’ve been there. We’re going to need our wits about us.” So they’d slept on the deck of the car.

  In the morning they were climbing, following the overgrown sailway. The scent was cold, but the Pegman assured Karina this was the route Tonio would have taken.

  “He may be headed for Buique or even further. He’ll be expecting to be followed, for a while at least. He’s almost two days ahead of us, but he doesn’t know that. Maybe he’ll get careless.… There are other things besides jaguars here, so they say.…”

  Karina had been casting around. “Somebody’s been this way — look!”

  “Do you really want to go through with this, Karina?” asked the Pegman later, as they sat gnawing at a fungus.

  “Is that why you’ve come? To try to talk me out of it?” Her voice was high. She was much affected by the happenings in Rangua.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” He sat regarding her somberly. He was behaving with unusual normality, and hadn’t uttered a single insane yell since entering the jungle. He, like others, had a sense of converging events, of an inevitability in recent happenings which even his mad clowning could not disturb. “You have to make up your own mind, Karina.”

  “I’ve made it up. I made it up when I found Saba dead.”

  “So you will kill Tonio. Will you kill his wife and son, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did they ever do to you?”

  “If you want to stay with me,” Karina
cried suddenly, “You’d better keep your damned mouth shut, Pegman!” Her eyes were bright with tears.

  Picking up the scent.

  After a while Tonio found he was talking about himself, telling this girl the story of the disaster. When he’d finished, she said,

  “If it’s any consolation to you, Tonio, consider that on many happentracks the guiderail didn’t give way, and the people of Torres lived. Consider also, that on a few happentracks you rose to become a Company man, even in a couple of instances rising to the position of second-in-command to Silva. Consider again,” she added quietly, “that none of this matters, because the Fifty Thousand Years’ Incarceration has run more than half its course, and within twenty millennia the Triad will free Starquin to roam the Greataway once more.”

  He glimpsed a vastness. “In the Ifalong,” he said.

  “We work towards that day.”

  “And what about me?” His chest was tight. “What happens to me?”

  “Many things.”

  “Yes, but what’s the norm? What might I expect?”

  It was late afternoon already; where had the day gone? The rain had stopped and a fresh breeze stirred the trees outside the cottage. The birds were screeching in anticipation of night and the jaguars stretched and unsheathed their claws, limbering up for the evening hunt. And another creature stirred too; a huge beast, the only one of his kind.

  Leitha said, “You will take your place in the scheme of things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tonio, you’ve been at odds with your surroundings for some time now. You must have known it yourself — you’ve been fighting things instead of going with the flow. Soon, things will be different.”

  As he left, he said, “You didn’t mind me shooting the fish, then?”

  “Mind? No, I don’t mind. Today you shot the fish. It is a fact, and it was going to be a fact before it happened. It makes no difference to the overall scheme — in fact, it’s part of the scheme.”