Cat Karina (7 page)

“All the same,” said Torch slowly as though the words were forced out of him by the pressure of his own pride, “If I hear you refer to me as an animal again, Captain Tonio, I will kill you.”

With a final venomous glance at Raoul he vaulted over the rail and was gone.

“He’s such a big boy,” said Astrud. “It’s difficult to discipline him. This felina — how friendly was she? What was she like?”

“Like any other felina,” said Tonio. “Pretty and aggressive, and she fought like a tiger. Red-haired, though. That’s unusual. Her father’s El Tigre.”

“
The
El Tigre?” Astrud regarded her husband in some alarm. “He’s the revolutionary, isn’t he?”

“He’d like to be a revolutionary, but there simply isn’t going to be a revolution.” Tonio felt the need to explain. “Right now, True Humans and felinos are dependent on each other — we have this mutual interest, the sailways. From Portina right down the coast to Rio de la Plata we and the felinos operate the sailways together — that’s nearly a thousand kilometers of track covering eight Cantons. If it wasn’t for the sailways, we’d be a string of warring coastal tribes, the way we were centuries ago. But the sailways have joined us together so now we have trade instead of wars, and everyone’s better for it.

“And now, a few of the felinos are saying they want their share of the trade. They say they’re not satisfied with the fees they earn from towing. They want their own sailcars. And we can’t let that happen.”

“Why not?” Up here in Rangua hill country she was sheltered from politics — and Tonio rarely discussed his work.

Tonio walked to the window. He could see the Atlantic bright in the sun, with the grassy downs rolling to the beach, and the guanacos grazing. The sailway ran across the downs and a car was passing, sail brilliant with sunshine and bearing the emblem of its owner: the whale of Rio Pele. Squat, powerful crewmen were hauling on ropes and Tonio cocked a practiced eye at the wind indicators relative to the sails; and he decided the captain knew his business. To the south he could see the lower boundaries of the tumpfields, and one of the gigantic tumps was in view, like a great gray slug with the tiny figure of the tumpier perched on its back. This was his life; this was his place in the hill country and he wouldn’t want anything to change.

He said, “The felinos control the hills. There are over thirty hills on the coast which are too steep for the cars to climb unassisted, so we have to use shrugleggers. Only felinos can make shrugleggers work. Why? Because the shrugleggers are scared of the felinos.” He checked off the points on his fingers. “Because the felinos have jaguar genes in their make-up and by Agni the shrugleggers can sense it!

“Now, just imagine if the felinos could operate their own cars. For a start, they wouldn’t have to pay towing fees, which is one of the biggest items in any voyage, believe me. So they’d be able to undercut the Canton and Company rates, and get a big share of the trade. Not only that, but there are certain prestige runs where they could block our craft.”

“Like the Tortuga Races?”

“Exactly. They’d make a killing on the tortugas. Our craft would never get past Rangua North Stage. They’d hold them up while they let their own cars through, and they’d get all the best prices while our own cargoes went rotten and started exploding. No. The one thing we can’t let happen, is for the felinos to get their own sailcars.” He sighed. “The felinos think we don’t like them — and God forgive me I called them animals today. But it’s not that. It’s simply a matter of survival. We can both survive if we stay apart and stick to our separate jobs. But if we let the felinos in on our job when we don’t have the physical characteristics to do theirs, then we cut our own throats.”

Astrud made her way slowly up the stairs towards the bedroom of Raoul, her son the stranger. Her mind was in the past, remembering that bewildering, hurtful day when Tonio had mocked her barrenness by bringing a baby into the house and assuming, without question or explanation, that she would bring it up as if it were her own.

She’d tried, as a devout follower of the Examples must try, and as the years went by she’d learned to love Raoul because, after all, the situation was no fault of his. But she could never understand Tonio’s attitude, or give any credence to his ridiculous story that some woman had
given
him the child one day. It was like a legend told by an old man at the inn, or one of those odd songs the Pegman sang. No — she was morally certain the baby was Tonio’s, and she felt he ought to have the decency to tell him who the mother was.

And yet Raoul bore no resemblance to Tonio and sometimes, when some trick of the light threw his cheekbones into relief and shaded in the hollows of his eyes, he didn’t look like a True Human at all. Even his hair was a strange color, and she regularly anointed it with a dark resinous oil to tone it down.

Thrusting the disturbing image aside, she knocked on Raoul’s door.

He opened it and smiled at her. He looked the way he always did, and she reprimanded herself for her fancies.

“How’s father?” he asked. “Has he come down from the trees yet?”

“Your father is understandably upset by your behaviour, Raoul,” she heard herself say woodenly. “And there’s no call to compare him to some monkeyish Specialist. Sit down. We have to talk, you and I.”

“Oh?” He put aside a model he was carving with a shell knife; a fine replica of a sailcar of the historic
Cavaquinho
type. He was clever with his hands, she had to allow him that. Like a monkey.… He smiled again, divining her hesitation. “What do you want to talk about, mother?”

“Oh …!” She uttered a small noise of exasperation and sat down on the bed. “You know very well what, Raoul. That Specialist girl. El Tigre’s daughter. You were talking to her.”

“Nobody said there was anything wrong with talking to Specialists. The Examples say we share the same world. They say we’re all humans.”

She watched this boy, knowing that he was playing with her, wondering how she could beat him at his own game. In the end he could always shock her, she knew; because she was a devout Believer. She decided to get her shock in first.

“Karina was showing her body to you, Raoul — inviting you to have sex when she knew perfectly well you wouldn’t be able to do that on the deck of a sailcar in broad daylight. So she wasn’t being fair to you.”

He looked away. She’d got through to him. She thought he even flushed at hearing those words come from his saintly mother. “It’s just her way,” he said. “The Kikihuahua Examples say —”

“Raoul, don’t keep throwing the Examples in my face just because I’m a better Believer than you. The Examples say that people shouldn’t eat meat, but the felinos eat meat. They’ve built up a whole bartering system with the tumpiers over the centuries, just to satisfy their craving.”

“Only because it’s been proved they get sick if they don’t have meat. They’re naturally carnivorous, mother — like the jaguar.”

“Raoul! I will not have you calling human beings naturally carnivorous!” And now she was shocked, as he’d known she would be, and he was winning again.

He said quickly, not wanting to hurt, “But it’s not the same thing as eating meat which has been hunted and killed. The tumps feel no pain. The meat’s taken from the parts of their body which can spare it, by skilled flensers. I’ve seen it. They’re really big walking vegetables, mother. They were bred that way, thousands of years ago.”

“They’re unnatural creatures, Raoul. They can’t breed.”

“But they don’t get old and die.”

She was sidetracked onto a subject which had given her much cause for thought during her lifetime; an ethical problem to which she could see no answer. “But they get sick and die occasionally. And they commit suicide. There are only fifty-four tumps left in Rangua, Raoul. The stories say there were hundreds of them at one time. In the future there will be none. What will the felinos do then, if they’re truly carnivorous? What will they eat, Raoul?”

Astrud
believed
in the kikihuahuas and their Examples although, by now, they were only a legend. They dated back to an encounter in Space in the days of the three-dimensional spaceships — which is to say forty thousand years before Astrud was born, before the Age of Regression began and Mankind retreated into himself. The true story of the first encounter is in the Rainbow.

The
real
story is known as the First Kikihuahua Allegory, and it is a legend, and it runs like this:

It seems there was once a space captain named Watt, and he was a True Human because this was nine thousand years before the Specialists were created by Mordecai N. Whirst. So Watt had no tiger genes, no extraordinary reactions like the legendary Captain Spring who drank from the river of
bor
. He was just an ordinary man who made an ordinary error of judgement, and he crashed on an uncharted planet.

He got clear from his ship just before it exploded into flames. The fire spread, and consumed a large tract of virgin forest.

Agni, the God of Fire, saw this and was offended. He appeared as a small devil, red and immensely strong, and he strapped Watt to a rock and left him to die in the burning sun.

No matter how Watt struggled and twisted, he could not free himself because the bonds were tight, and worse, there were no knots. Agni had fashioned the entire length from a continuous thong, so that they could not be loosened although Watt’s hands were free.

The days were hot and the nights cold, and soon Watt was weak with hunger and thirst. He could not struggle any more, but lay back and waited to die. His senses began to slip away.

Then he heard a sound.

He opened his eyes. A small cavy sat nearby, eating a leaf. Carefully, slowly, Watt slid his hand across the ground until it lay beside the animal. The cavy didn’t stir. It watched him with bright beady eyes, and it never stopped munching.

Watt grabbed it.

He killed it, and he drank the blood and ate the flesh. The food nourished him, and for a few hours he felt better. He fought his bonds again, but couldn’t loosen them. He shouted aloud, and prayed to Agni to release him. But Agni cannot undo what he does — such is the way of the demon of fire.

The next morning another cavy came by.

Watt killed it and ate it.

The next morning the same thing happened again.

And so it went on for twenty days. A cavy would appear and Watt would eat it, and thereby gain just sufficient strength to lament his predicament, struggle with his bonds and pray to Agni.

On the twenty-first day a small furry alien came by.

“Release me!” shouted Watt.

“I cannot,” said the kikihuahua. “There are no knots in your bonds for me to untie.”

“Then cut them!”

The kikihuahua said, “We do not have knives, nor chisels, nor saws, nor any other thing which is
bent
.”

“But I’ll die if you don’t help me!”

“I cannot help you. Help weakens the species. If you cannot help yourself, you deserve to die. I will give you advice, however. The next time a cavy approaches, remember that you both have the same enemy — Death — and that you should perhaps respect his fears as well as your own.” And with this, the kikihuahua went away.

Watt sat against the rock and thought. The day went by and no cavy came, and his hunger seemed to consume his very soul, but he remembered what the kikihuahua had said. And when in the morning a cavy came, Watt had gathered nearby leaves and set them in a pile for the cavy to nibble.

So the cavy ate and Watt watched it and his mouth watered at the sight of the plump flesh, but he kept his hands to himself. By the time the cavy had eaten, its fear had gone and it stayed with him for much of the day. The next day it came closer, and on the third morning it sat right beside him, eating leaves from his hand, unafraid.

During the night Watt wrapped the last remaining leaves around his bonds.

And the cavy came in the morning, and nibbled with strong teeth.

The bonds parted, and Watt was free.

He stood, very weak with hunger, and looked down at the cavy.

Suddenly the cavy trembled, and was afraid.

“Don’t be frightened,” said Watt. “I’ll go and find food elsewhere. You don’t want to die any more than I do, but there are other things around which don’t have the sense to fear death, so I’ll seek them out and eat them instead.”

So he ate fruit and yams and milk, and even the eggs of birds which had laid too many to raise. But he never again ate flesh.

The kikihuahua, watching from afar, was pleased. It seemed that humans were beginning to understand.

Raoul had smiled at her when she finished the story, but it was a smile of love and tolerance; there was no belief in it.

“You tell the story better than a priest,” he said.

“The kikihuahuas are
real
. They were here on Earth once, and they’ll come again.”

Above Raoul’s bed hung a small hardwood board, and into the wood someone had laboriously scratched characters with a sharp stone. The writing was in the imprecise, abbreviated hieroglyphics of those times, and roughly translated it said:

THE EXAMPLES OF THE KIKIHUAHUAS

“The kikihuahuas do not command or even instruct, for that is not their way. Rather, they set an example and leave others to follow or not follow as they think fit. The Kikihuahua Examples are great and complex and involve many creatures throughout the Greataway. They are a way of life and death, and it is the Will of God that human beings of all Species and Varieties work towards achieving their state; in particular the Prime Examples:

I will not kill any mortal creature
I will not work any malleable substance
I will not kindle the Wrath of Agni.