Cat Karina (16 page)

“So?” said Karina.

“You will obey the dictates of the Examples and not eat raw meat.”

“Are you sure that’s what the story means?”

“You will not question me, Karina!”

During the rest of the afternoon the tump browsed its way through the foothills and Karina walked beside it; first on the seaward side, then on the side of the mountains — and the tump always tended to shy away from her.

I’m not cut out to be a tumpier
, she thought in some satisfaction.

Evening came and Haleka slid down, allowing Karina time for a small cooked meal before the sun dropped below the mountains. Then the coolness of night enveloped the fields and Karina climbed onto the tump’s back to watch for jaguars. Looking around, she could see the dim shapes of other tumps, each topped by its attendant. The moon slid from behind a bank of clouds and the scene was suddenly washed with cold light. Karina, alert, stared about her, hearing faint sounds from a nearby grove of trees. A night-hunting owl swooped low overhead, snatching some squealing rodent from the grass and startling her. From somewhere else came the metallic roar of a big cat.

There was something wild and elemental about the night.

It’s a time for killing
. The words came unbidden into Karina’s mind, planted there countless generations ago by a forgotten technician at the institute of Mordecai N. Whirst.

A sudden scream cut through the night sounds.

Karina whirled round. The tump to her left gave a convulsive heave, and the attendant was missing from its back. Then there was a worrying sound; a grunting, and noises of a struggle.

Karina threw her head back and uttered an unearthly screech.

“Huh? Huh?” It seemed that all of nature had been shocked into silence — with the exception of Haleka, who was muttering his anger at being roused. “Is that you, Karina? What in the name of Whirst is —”

“Be quiet.” Karina pulled him unceremoniously to his feet. “Come with me.”

Karina dragged Haleka at a trot towards the riderless tump. When they got there, they found the apprentice lying unconscious on the ground. Blood seeped darkly from a wound at his temple. His tumpier was crawling from under a blanket, grumbling.

“What …?”

“There’s been an attack.” Karina looked around. “Where have they gone?”

“They? Jaguars hunt alone, Karina.”

“Felinas don’t.”

Others arrived; tumpiers and their apprentices, alerted by Karina’s screech. Then, sliding from the backs of nearby tumps, three girls.

Haleka stared at them in surprise and suspicion. “Who are these felinas?”

“My sisters. I thought we might need some help tonight, so I replaced three of the apprentices. It was bad luck we picked the wrong tumps, or we might have had them. Did you see anything, Teressa?”

“Not a thing.”

“I thought we’d catch them in the act. But it seems they’ve gone. Maybe I frightened them off,” said Karina unhappily.

The apprentice on the ground groaned, returning to consciousness.

“Weakling,” observed Teressa disgustedly. She pulled him to his feet, not very gently. “Who attacked you, huh?”

His eyes focussed and he saw her. Sudden fear showed. “A grupo! What’s a grupo doing here?”

“Trying to help you, idiot. Who attacked you?”

“I was pulled off the tump from behind. I didn’t see.”

“Jaguars often attack from behind,” said a tumpier wisely. “They run up the back of the tump and pick the apprentice off, clean as a mango.”

“They don’t club him across the head,” said Runa. “This is human work.”

“A goddamned felina grupo!” somebody shouted, staring in deep suspicion at Teressa.

“Shut up, all of you!” Runa shouted, as a babble of accusations arose. “Shut up! This may be a diversion! While we’re all arguing here, they could be stripping a tump to the bone somewhere else!”

Karina raised her head, sniffed the air, and cried, “I smell blood! Over there! Towards the mountains!”

“But —”

“Be quiet, Saba.” Karina allowed the main body of the hunt to move off westwards, then took Haleka by the arm and called to her sisters. “Come on — this way. The noise from that crowd is enough to scare a herd of crocodiles. We go east, and we have Haleka as our witness.”

The five of them walked quietly downhill, and before long they heard the sounds of feeding.

“They don’t know you’re here,” whispered Karina to her sisters. “They won’t be expecting a full-scale attack. If it’s Iolande’s grupo, there’ll be four of them. That’s one each. Haleka — you help Saba.”

But the tumpier was accelerating down the slope, skinny legs pumping. “That’s my
tump!
For the love of Mordecai — it’s
my
tump they’re eating!” His voice was shrill with outrage, and the sounds in front of them ceased suddenly.

There was a low chuckle.

“Poor old tumpier. What a shame.”

Dark figures moved against the moonlit bulk of the tump. A jagged gash wept black blood. No knives had been used; the felinas had simply slashed at the tump with their tough fingernails and chewed their way in.

“
Now
,” said Karina.

She’d already picked out Iolande, the tallest of the grupo — the mother, skilled in battle. Iolande stood a little apart from the others, frozen in the act of cramming a chunk of meat into her mouth, her fingers dripping while she watched the oncoming grupo with narrowed eyes.

“So.… It’s El Tigre’s little girls. Go home, kids. Find someone your own age to play with.”

“Take the others!” shouted Karina. “I’ll look after this old cow!”

“You’ll regret your choice,” said Iolande calmly, and jammed the wad of flesh into Karina’s eyes as she came in, blinding her for one vital moment.

Karina felt a knee crash into her groin and she doubled up, pawing at her eyes. Instinctively she swayed aside as she fell, and felt the wind of Iolande’s other knee as it swept past her head. This was for real. Iolande was fighting, if not to kill, at least to maim. On the ground, Karina grabbed for the other woman’s knees. She caught one of them. The other foot slashed into her flank, cutting flesh. She let go and rolled away. The wind had been knocked out of her.

Little Friends
.…

Her vision cleared and she looked up. Iolande was standing nearby, breathing normally, unmarked, a faint smile on her face. Behind Karina, a little way off, the baffle rolled on.

“Had enough, pretty Karina?”

Karina hurled herself forward, the Little Friends driven from her consciousness by the sheer violence of her rage. Iolande jumped as she came in, pulling herself up by the trappings and hanging from the tump’s back, and slashed at Karina with her feet — but she didn’t quite allow for the strength and speed of the girl. Karina turned in mid-leap, caught Iolande’s foot and, still turning, dragged the woman to the ground.

Iolande yelled as the ligaments other knee tore, sending hot needles of pain through her leg.

Karina maintained her grip, twisting the foot back until Iolande screamed again. Then Iolande’s other foot caught her in the stomach with devastating force, hurling her against the tump. She fell aside in the nick of time, barely avoiding Iolande’s rush.

For a moment they stood face to face, recovering their breath. They hardly noticed the shouts and thump of flesh on flesh from nearby. They watched each other, and then they heard a male voice shout with pain.

And Iolande smiled.

There was a perfect confidence in her smile, a knowledge that her grupo was mother-taught in fighting, a certainty that they would win.

Karina watched her eyes. Karina’s face was streaming sweat and her hair hung like wet kelp. The skirt of her tunic was missing and blood seeped from a deep wound in her side. Her eyes were wide and steady, and they watched, watched.

Iolande thought,
Mordecai, she’s beautiful
.…

Her head spun.

And her smile became fixed; a grimace of twisted lips.

Karina said, “
Scream, Iolande
.”

She reached out with hooked fingers and drew her nails deeply down that smiling face, gouging the flesh. She took her hand away, still watching the eyes, while parallel rivulets of blood trickled down Iolande’s face, two on either side of the nose, flowing aside at the bow of the upper lip then entering the mouth at the corner, dribbling into the smile and forming a little lake in front of the teeth before flowing again, down the chin.

“Scream, Iolande.”

Now Karina’s hand fastened on the neck of Iolande’s tunic and jerked downwards, exposing the breasts. The sounds of battle had ceased but Karina didn’t notice. Iolande had suckled eleven children and her breasts were just slightly pendulous, in contrast to the trim muscularity of the rest of her body. Karina’s fingers, hooked into claws, reached towards those vulnerable breasts. Iolande smiled her bloody smile, her mind emptied of thought.

“No, Karina!”

Saba had her by the wrist, tugging at her, pleading. “That’s enough! Leave her alone! They’re beaten — beaten, all of them!”

Karina blinked.

The spell was broken. Iolande crumpled to the ground.

“We’ve got them all.” Teressa appeared, dragging another felina, and flung her down beside Iolande.

The tump was wriggling now, moving away as though the pain of its wound and the savagery of the fighting was too much. Runa pulled two more girls forward. They were crying; little mews of mortification. Karina said shakily, “I didn’t think you could do it. I thought I’d have to get Iolande to surrender.”

The tumpiers began to gather, coming from all directions to view the prisoners.

“Bastards!”

“Always knew it was a grupo. Jaguars don’t do that kind of damage to the tump. Look at the poor brute — the pain’s beginning to get through to him!”

“Well done, Karina.”

Karina said, “How’s Haleka?”

The elderly tumpier limped forward, assisted by Saba. “Pain is of little consequence,” he said. “It comes, it goes. More important the effect upon the tump. I would like to express my gratitude to you and your grupo, Karina, but.…” His face was like parchment in the moonlight and suddenly he coughed, clutching his chest. “Would you … mind controlling the tump for a while? I am not quite capable at this moment.”

So saying, he sagged against Saba. She laid him carefully on the ground. “He went to help me,” she explained, “and he took a hell of a kick in the ribs. Maybe something’s broken.”

Leaving him there, Karina went after the tump. She wanted to get away from them for a moment, to sort herself out. Events of the past few minutes had left her very frightened.
For the first time in my life
, she thought,
I completely lost control of myself
.…

And the words sounded in her head.
Lost control of myself
.

It was a horribly apt phrase. She had lost control, and something else had gained control, pushing her aside.

Just for a moment, the Little Friends had stopped being mere assistants, and had
taken over
.…

A fit of shivering took hold of her, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. She gulped, breathing deeply at the cold night air, and the pain of her wounds swam back. To divert herself, she turned her attention to the errant tump.

“
Basta!
” she shouted; the traditional cry.

The tump ignored her.

Suddenly concerned, she ran around to the front of the beast and laid her hand on its nose, leaning against it.

“Basta! Basta!”

The tump moved on, thrusting her aside. She peered into its eye as it moved past. “
Basta
, you brute!”

Still the tump undulated forward, an irresistible mountain of meat, moving relentlessly downhill, towards the coastal plain. Karina punched it, shouted at it, kicked it, climbed on its back and tried to guide it — but it was no use.

Haleka’s tump had gone
loco
.

“It is done,” said the handmaiden. “She is in the tumpfields.”

The walls of the Dedo’s cottage were hung with animal remains; furs and skulls and skeletons of creatures which the handmaiden had never seen living. A giant pelt almost covered one wall; russet with the hairs running in an unusual direction. Behind it hung a big skull of a carnivore with two upper canines lengthened like tusks and fitted into curious sheaths which extended downward from the lower jaw. Next was a batlike creature with a considerable wingspan, a leathery skin, a long jaw with sharp teeth and an odd lump which extended back from the head and seemed to counterbalance the jaw. There were all manner of creatures, big and small, all carefully preserved and displayed, occupying two of the four walls and hanging from the rafters.

The Dedo said, “From there she will go to Torres. There are two possible deviations from our happentrack. Make sure they don’t occur.” She went on to give exact details.

The handmaiden said, “Who
is
she?”

“You sense nothing remarkable about her?”

“Well.… She seems to have a resistance to pain.”

“That is caused by
bor
, the alien parasite consumed by the legendary Captain Spring. It was
bor
which assisted Captain Spring to achieve many of her exploits; otherwise she was an ordinary tiger-woman in charge of a clumsy three-dimensional spaceship.”

“But how would a parasite help?”

“
Bor
has a remarkable sense of self-preservation. It permeates the cells and achieves a complete empathy with the host. At first it was thought to be a hallucinogenic drug, because it made the host feel good — and incidentally made him live longer. A technique known as the Inner Think was later developed to harness this property of
bor
and extend Man’s lifespan to several hundred years. Even now, a few people with traces of
bor
in their genes are able to practice the Inner Think.”