Cat Karina (11 page)

“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.

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.

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.

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.