Image of black, ravenous lengths of fur and muscle and sharp little teeth gnawing away at The Pride’s vitals, fatal, voracious stupidity destroying the vessel which kept them from the cold of space.
Like the han and the stsho.
We learned the lesson: the kif must have learned it. The law of controlled predation: neither predator nor prey can survive alone. Intelligent predators manage their resources.
Do you recall that lesson, Sikkukkut?
Burn the land? Lay waste whole ecosystems?
Suicide, na kif. Kill the stsho and you will die. Take out hani and mahendo’sat and the economy the stsho live on collapses, same result.
A predator needs his rivals as much as he needs his prey. Ecosystems interlock. One predator, one prey, can never sustain itself.
Her eyes hazed out. She knew the signs. Forced herself back again, arched her shoulders. Withdrew her arm from the brace and hissed at the pain.
“You all right?” Haral asked.
“Gods,” she said, short of breath from the hurt. Old age, cousin. It’s old age for sure. You and me. It’s not fair this should happen to us. We were immortal. Weren’t we? “We got one more jump to make. One more.” That reassurance was for herself. Not that much more to go, Pyanfar, not that far. Done it time after time, haven’t you, lived days while Anuurn lives a month. Two months out and back.
But the gods of the Wide Dark gave time with one hand and took it with the other. Wore a spacer out from the inside, strained the heart, took the steadiness from the hands. Kohan was graying, last she saw him. Graying in earnest. But he sat on his cushions in the stability his wives provided him in Chanur’s lands, and hunted his preserves and had the best of care. He never knew hunger, only a lunch delayed in the field, his wives and daughters and nieces and cousins and juvenile sons all slogging along with the makings of a small feast. Rough living, the groundlings thought. A hunt burned off the fat and quickened the blood and a little hunger put an edge on a body.
O gods, Kohan. Late lunch. A tragedy. Never been jump-stretched, never had your fur falling out so thick it left a shimmer of bare skin beneath it, never had your backside hurt because the bones hit the seat, never wake up from jump and find the bones and tendons all prominent, your hand like a stranger’s at the end of your arm, your teeth sore and your joints aching like the stab of a knife between the bones.
Another food packet. Something on the stomach. “What in a mahen hell’s keeping Tauran?”
“They’re in the lift,” Hilfy said. About the time the lift door opened, bright and spreading reflection in the right-hand monitor, and dark figures came down the hall, resolving themselves into hani silhouettes and hani presence.
She turned the chair around and saw Sirany Tauran, saw her face change and her ears flatten in dismay at what she saw. Like looking in a mirror. Am I that bad? She reckoned that she was.
“We’re stable, everything clear,” she said to Sirany. And levered herself up from the chair, caught herself on the arm and on Sirany’s suddenly offered hand. She had a close view of Sirany’s face then, wide, shocked eyes. She shoved herself upright and tried to find equilibrium. “Ker Pyanfar-”
“Want to rest,” she said.
“Go to it,” Sirany said. “We’ll bring you something. You, your whole crew. Get to bed.” Pity, Tauran?
She resented that. Resented it with an irrational touchiness and knew that it was irrational. It was concern the Tauran offered her. Was belief in them. Was what she had been trying to rouse in Tauran in this long alternate life-death they were locked in.
How long? Months on months now. How long have the kif had to do harm at Anuurn? Gods, were they gone from Urtur long before us? Was the
force at Meetpoint only a part of what they have? Were they already weeks ahead of us?
Are we running into a trap meant for Sikkukkut?
Chur seeing visions.
Black vermin in the ducts.