Startled, he looked again through the near-invisible shimmer of the shockfield. The long green-gold grass was rippling under a late-afternoon sun, starred with flowers like living jewel-flecks; a line of flamingos skimmed by, down to the little pond at the base of the hill. Beyond was forest, flowering dogwood in a fountain of white against the flickering-shiny olive drab of native kampfwald trees. The shockfield let slow-moving air through, carrying scents of leaf mold, green, purity.
“You’re right,” he said. They clasped hands, embraced, stepped back and saluted each other formally. “It’s been . . . good knowing you, Lieutenant Ingrid.”
“Likewise, Captain Jonah.” A gamin smile. “Finagle’s arse, we’re not dead yet, are we?”
“Huh. Hun-huh.” Lights spun before Jonah’s eyes, wrenching his stomach with more nausea. Gummy saliva blocked his mouth as he tumbled over the lip of the gully, crashing through brush that ripped and tore with living fingers of thorn and bramble. Tumble, roll, down through the brush-covered sixty-degree slope, out into the patch of gravel and sparse spaghetti-like grass analog at the bottom. To lie and rest, Murphy, to rest . . .
Memories were returning. Evidently his subconscious believed there wouldn’t be another interrogation. Believed they were dead already. My fingernail. I have to escape. And there’s a laugh . . . but I have to try.
He turned the final roll into a flip and came erect, facing in the direction of his flight; forced his diaphragm to breathe, stomach out to suck air into the bottom of the lungs. His chest felt tight and hot, as if the air pumping through it was nothing, vacuum, inert gas. Will kept him steady, blinked his eyes into focus. He was in a patch of bright sunlight, the forest above deep green-gold shade that flickered; the soil under his feet was damp, impossibly cool on his skin. The wind was blowing toward him, which meant that the kzin would be following ground-scent rather than what floated on the breeze. Kzin noses were not nearly as sensitive as a hound’s, but several thousand times more acute than a human’s.
And I must stink to high heaven, he thought. Even then he could smell himself; he hawked and spat, taking a firmer grip on his improvised weapon. That was a length of branch and a rock half the size of his head, dangling from the end by thin strong vines; thank Murphy that Wunderland flora ran to creepers . . .
“One,” he muttered to himself. “There ain’t no justice, I know, but please, just let me get one.” His breathing was slowing, and he became conscious of thirst, then the gnawing emptiness under his ribs. The sun was high overhead; nearly a day already? How many of the others were still alive?
A flicker of movement at the lip of the ravine, ten meters above him and twenty away. Jonah swung the stone-age morningstar around his head and roared. And the kzin halted its headlong four-footed rush, rose like an unfolding wall of brown-red dappled in the light at the edge of the tall trees, and slashed across with the white of teeth. Great round eyes, and he could imagine the pupils going pinpoint; the kzin homeworld was not only colder than Wunderland, it was dimmer. Batwing ears unfolding, straining for sound. He would have to stop that, their hearing was keen enough to pick a human heartbeat out of the background noise. This was a young male, he would be hot, hot for the kill and salt blood to quench his thirst and let him rest . . .
“Come on, you kshat, you sthondat-eater,” Jonah yelled in the snarling tones of the Hero’s Tongue. “Come and get your Name, kinless offspring of cowards, come and eat turnips out of my shit, grass-grazer! Ch’rowl you!”
The kzin screamed, a raw wailing shriek that echoed down the ravine; screamed again and leaped in an impossible soaring curve that took it halfway down the steep slope.
“Now, Ingrid. Now!” Jonah shouted, and ran forward.
The woman rose from the last, thicker scrub at the edge of the slope, where water nourished taller bushes. Rose just as the second bounding leap passed its arc, the kzin spread-eagled against the sky, taloned hands outstretched to grasp and tear. The three-meter pole rose with her, butt against the earth, sharpened tip reaching for the alien’s belly. It struck, and the wet ripping sound was audible even over the berserk siren shriek of the young kzin’s pain.
It toppled forward and sideways, thrashing and ululating with the long pole transfixing it. Down onto Ingrid’s position, and he forced rubbery leg muscles into a final sprint, a leap and scream of his own. Then he was there, in among the clinging brush and it was there too, convulsing. He darted in, swung, and the rock smashed into a hand that was lashing for his throat; the kzin wailed again, put its free hand to the spear, pulled while it kept him at bay with lunging snaps. Ingrid was on the other side with a second spear, jabbing; he danced in, heedless of the fangs, and swung two-handed. The rock landed at the juncture of thick neck and sloping shoulder, and something snapped. The shock of it ran back up his arms.
The pair moved in, stabbing, smashing, block and wriggle and jump and strike, and the broken alien crawled toward them with inhuman vitality, growling and whimpering and moving even with the dull-pink bulge of intestine showing where it had ripped the jagged wood out of its flesh. Fur, flesh, scraps of leaf, dust scattering about . . . Until at last too many bones were broken and too much of the dark-red blood spilled, and it lay twitching. The humans lay just out of reach, sobbing back their breaths; Jonah could hear the kzin’s cries over the thunder in his ears, hear them turn to high-pitched words in the Hero’s Tongue:
“It hurts . . .” The Sol-Belter rolled to his knees. His shadow fell across the battered, swollen eyes of his enemy. “It hurts . . . Mother, you’ve come back, Mother—” The shattered paw-hands made kneading motions. “Help me, take away the noise in my head, Mother . . .” Presently it died.
“That’s one for a pallbearer.” The end of his finger throbbed. “Goddamn it, I can’t escape!”
Ingrid tried to rise, fell back with a faint cry. Jonah was at her side, hands moving on the ruffled tatters that streaked down one thigh.
“How bad . . . ?” He pushed back the ruined cloth. Blood was runneling down the slim length of the woman’s leg, not pumping but in a steady flow. “Damn, tanj, tanj, tanj!” He ripped at his shirt for a pressure-bandage, tied it on with the thin vines scattered everywhere about. “Here, here’s your spear, lean on it, come on.” He darted back to the body; there was a knife at its belt, a long heavy-bladed wtsai. Jonah ripped it free, looped the belt over one shoulder like a baldric.
“Let’s move,” he said, staggering slightly. She leaned on the spear hard enough to drive the blunt end inches deep into the sandy gravel, and shook her head.
“No, I’d slow you down. You’re the one who has to get away. Get going.”
His finger throbbed anew to remind him. And she’s Hari’s girl, not mine. But— Another memory returned, and he laughed.
“Something’s funny?”
“Yeah, maybe it is! Maybe—hell, I bet it worked!”
“What worked?”
“Tell you on the way.”
“No, you won’t. I’m not coming with you. Now get going!”
“Murphy bugger that with a diode, Lieutenant, get moving, that’s an order.”
She put an arm around his shoulder and they hobbled down the shifting footing of the ravine’s bed. There was a crooked smile on her face as she spoke.
“Well, it’s not as if we had anywhere to go, is it?”
* * *
The kzin governor of Wunderland paced tiredly toward the gate of his children’s quarters, grooming absently. The hunt had gone well; the intruder-humans were undoubtedly beginning a short passage through some lucky Hero’s digestive system, and it was time to relax.
“Hrrrr,” Traat-Admiral said beside him. “I still feel uneasy leaving the planetary surface while ambushers may lurk, Dominant One,” he said.
Chuut-Riit stopped, and turned to face the other kzin. Traat-Admiral was a decade older than him, and several hands higher, but there was nothing but real worry and concern in his stance. The viceroy put both hands on Traat-Admiral’s shoulders.
“No need for formalities between us,” he said, and then added deliberately: “My brother.”
Traat-Admiral froze, and there were gasps from some of the others within hearing. That was a rare honor for a kzin not blood-related, overwhelmingly so considering the difference in hereditary rank. And a public avowal at that; Traat-Admiral licked his whiskers convulsively, deeply moved.
“You are my most trusted one,” Chuut-Riit said. “Now that we know some human infiltrators were dropped off during the raid, that . . . thing of which we speculated becomes more than a theoretical possibility. Affairs are still in chaos here—the Fifth Fleet has been delayed half a decade or more—and I need someone fully in my trust to order the space-search.”