I Was An Alien Cat Toy (31 page)

Temin patted the pulse pistol in his holster. “I’ll be fine. Good hunting.”

And then they’d sped off, eating up the distance with those amazingly long legs. They would

probably travel forty or fifty klicks before lunch, and not even be out of breath.

It was a much warmer day—cloud cover promising rain in the next day or so, Gredar had told him

that morning—and the flight suit was just too damn hot. He really would have to get on with the clothes

making. Jaijair had helped him make a passable shirt out of soft suede-like leather, and Martek was convinced that modifying some of their paper recipes would yield wearable cloth, but it was going to be

tough finding material he could use for underwear. Leather without something between it and his personal

and private places sounded like a recipe for a fungal attack from hell. The day-neh farmed a cattle-like

animal which produced a coarse wool, and he’d taught himself the rudiments of knitting from the handheld,

but the wool was prickly and a bit on the stinky side. He could make a coat out of it, but the search for

underwear went on.

So he always took a lot of care washing what he had, as he did now in the crystal clear waters of this

enormous lake. His chore done and the wet clothes laid out on the sun-warmed stones to dry, he stopped for a

minute just to take in the beauty around him. He’d been a city kid, and a spacer afterwards, so the great

outdoors always meant vacation to him. And here he was again, having a holiday. No Jeng, which was never

going to stop hurting, but it was still special here, the white-topped mountains in the distance, dense forests

below them, and this blue, endless lake, fed by a river on the other side which ran down from the mountains,

carrying snowmelt. The water was pure, but so very cold.

But the day was warm enough that the cold wasn’t too unbearable, and he’d spent almost a year doing

very little but sitting on his arse and being looked after. Now he could get fit again. He did his exercises, and,

still naked except for his boots, ran along the shore until he was sweating and heaving in breaths. Then he

stripped off his boots and flung himself into the lake, gasping as the chill tore away the little air left in his

lungs. He began to strike out, maintaining a steady, even stroke, enough to keep himself warm and moving,

without exhausting himself. Enough to distract himself from the slightly creepy sensation of being entirely

alone on the planet, an illusion all too easy to believe in this empty, perfect world.

He swam for about half an hour before recognising that he was getting close to the dangerous point of

hypothermic fatigue. He made his way back to shore, and cursed that he only had these shefting leathers to

wipe himself down with—one of his mother’s big fluffy towels, warm from the drier, was what he really

wanted. Sitting on hot rocks under the sun to warm up wasn’t the same...though it wasn’t actually too bad.

He lay on the pebbles, which weren’t as uncomfortable as he though they might be, eyes closed, enjoying the

sun’s rays, feeling them doing him good, warming his bones. If only life was always this easy.

He must have dozed off, because the sun was a lot higher in the sky when he looked up again. It had

to be close to mid-day. He wondered how the hunt was going, and if they would bring the whole carcass

back....

There was a scrabble and crunch, pebbles clinking as if being pushed away by large feet. He tensed—

had the kerivs got loose? Karwa had tied them up under the trees so they could forage without needing to be

tended to. Temin sat up to look—and froze. About a hundred metres from him was a dark brown bird of prey

the size of a speeder. The bird, using a beak about the length of Temin’s shefting
arm
, was absorbed in

digging under the pebbles—for what, Temin didn’t know. It started to really get into whatever it was doing,

tearing up the ground, tossing dirt and stones around, making a shefting mess.

His clothes. His knife and pistol. All between him and the creature, who hadn’t noticed him yet but if

he did, was sure to find Temin a lot more exciting than whatever crap he was trying to excavate.

He crept, centimetre by agonising centimetre, across the shore, freezing every time one of the pebbles

clinked. The bird seemed to be absorbed in its hunt—it had found whatever it was looking for and was

tearing at it, tossing back its massive head to gulp down long strings of...guts. Animal guts. The shefting

jujor!
Gredar, I am going to get you for this.

He was still a good ten metres from the pile of his clothes and the precious weapon belt when the bird

lifted its head, turned and fixed him with a golden eye the size of a dinner plate. It let forth a scream like the

crack of doom, and spread its wings.

Sheft!
He dove for his clothes just as the bird dove for him—he managed to grab his pistol, still in its

holster, and snap off a shot as a pair of huge yellow feet came within microns of his hand. The bird screamed

again and wheeled off—with Temin’s clothes in its talons. And the shefting weapon belt with the pistol still

attached. “No! Bring those back you son of a...! Hey!”

~~~~~~~~

Karwa’s tail shivered with excitement as he bounced along, the heavy burden of dead kizaz around

his shoulders not impeding him at all. “Aunty Jilen will be
really
happy, won’t she?”

“Yes, she will,” Gredar agreed for the fifth time, smiling to himself. “Mind you, she’ll probably get

you to render the glands down, and that’s a smelly job.”

“Don’t care! I got one!”

Gredar refrained from reminding him it had been a joint effort, because the lad had done very well. It

was only a small kill, the kizaz not fully grown, but it was just coming into sexual maturity and that made its

venom extremely valuable for medicinal purposes. Jilen had hoped they might collect a specimen with full

glands, but had also sternly told both of them they weren’t to put themselves in harm’s way just to get one.

But now Jilen and Karwa were both satisfied, and they would dine on fat kizaz back meat tonight—a

delicacy, and supposedly good for joints and stiff backs. Gredar, getting to an age where this was a problem,

was happy to try the treatment.

They both smelled though—the kizaz had vented urine and its own nasty excretions all over them as

Karwa had wrestled it down for the kill and carrying the parts of the creature around their shoulders was only

adding to the stink. A swim would be perfect.

He should have smelled it before he saw it, but the kizaz was drowning everything out. The first

warning he got that things back at the camp had become a little more exciting that he’d planned was when he

spotted the huge body of a boril uncomfortably close to their tent. He threw the kizaz corpse off his shoulders

and started to run. “T’meen! T’meen!” No! What if the boril had...?

He skidded to a halt on the pebbles as T’meen—wonderfully and apparently whole—appeared from

behind a tree. “Sorry, I take a piss...yuck! You smell!” He waved under his nose elaborately, then held it.

“Never mind that, what happened! Why is there a dead boril in our camp?”

“Huh? Slow down, big guy. I don’t understand.”

Gredar drew a breath and clenched his fists. “Why. Is. There. A. Dead. Boril. Here?”

“Boril? Bird? Oh, I kill it.”

“You....” Gredar examined his friend—his cloze were ripped, and he had some nasty grazes. What he

was hiding under the cloze, Gredar couldn’t tell. But he didn’t
seem
badly hurt, and if anything, was unusually cheerful.

“Uncle Gredar! Why is there a—?” Karwa ran up beside him. “T’meen! There’s a dead—”

“Boril. Yes. I know. Poo.” T’meen held his nose again. “Catch a kizaz?”

Gredar threw up his hands. “Karwa, let’s get the kizaz and clean up.
You
,” he said, pointing at his

huu-man friend, “will tell about this thing.”

T’meen grinned. “Yes. Sure.”

He wandered down to the lakeshore to watch as Gredar and Karwa, having hauled the dead kizaz

back to camp, hastily washed themselves down. Gredar kept looking over at the boril, unable to believe his

eyes. He’d only ever seen the huge birds twice, never up close—and never dead. He knew no one who even

attempted to hunt them, but rumours and stories about them preying on daiyne were not uncommon. They

were big enough to carry off an adult, so how had T’meen dealt with it? With that strange weapon of his?

He got his answer once he’d left the water and shaken himself off. T’meen took him over to see the

boril’s body—and there, buried deep in its left eye, was the tip of a knife handle. T’meen’s knife. “You did

this?”

T’meen nodded. “It come here to look for food.” He folded his arms and gave Gredar a dirty look.

“Find jujor....” He waved at his own stomach.

“Guts? But I buried them....” Deep enough for everything but a hungry boril.
Paznitl.
“Is sorry. You

hurt?”

“No. Not much.
Cloze
hurt. Paznit thing take my cloze! Fly away!” He mimed something taking his

stuff and running off with them. “I chase. Boril drop knife, is good thing. I climb tree. Boril come, I throw

knife, run away. Boril chase, fall down. Dead. Here.”

He grinned, but under the smirk was...his scent. Fear and sweat mixed together. The cockiness was

partly because he’d been terrified out of his mind, and was now relieved to have survived. It was incredible

that he had. “Why did you not use your peestoll? Peestoll better than knife.”

“Yes. Boril take it with my cloze. So I have to chase, get cloze, peestoll back. Take long time to find

things. Paznit bird.”

Gredar shook his head. “You were lucky. Also very brave.”

“And tall and clever and good lover.”

Gredar laughed and pulled T’meen in for a hug. “Yes. All these things. Come. I’ll build the fire.

Karwa can hear story.”

But T’meen was more interested in hearing Karwa’s excited retelling of the mighty kizaz hunt than in

repeating the somewhat more fascinating tale he had told Gredar. As Karwa talked, Gredar made T’meen

strip down to the waist so he could assure himself that his friend was really not harmed. He didn’t get quite

as much reassurance as he hoped, because T’meen was badly scratched up, and when Gredar insisted he

shuck the rest of his covering, he discovered a deep graze on one thigh. T’meen didn’t say anything, but his

non-reaction made it clear that he didn’t want Gredar to fuss, at least not in front of Karwa. So while Karwa

described in excruciating detail how they had tracked down and beaten the kizaz, then persuaded T’meen to

tell a little about the hunt for his cloze and the boril who’d stolen then, Gredar silently cleaned and rebandaged the injuries. None of them were dangerous unless they became infected, but they had to be

painful, even if T’meen pretended he was more annoyed about the damage to his as yet irreplaceable cloze,

on which subject he talked for much of the evening.

He was still grumbling about how impossible it would be to mend the rips the boril’s talons and beak

had caused as he climbed on top of Gredar in the tent. Karwa was already asleep, his youthful body not quite

up to the strain of a serious big game hunt.

“Someone make me a small needle, will be good.”

Gredar licked his face and kept licking until his friend finally shut up. Then he dragged him up close

so he could look into T’meen’s eyes, even though his huu-man couldn’t see in the dark. “Is easy to replace

cloze. Not easy to replace T’meen. Is very, very haapy you are not dead. Do not do again. Understand?”

T’meen rubbed his head against Gredar’s jaw. “Understand. One time is enough. Paznit bird.”

Gredar grinned as T’meen got comfortable, still muttering to himself.
You are very, very tall, my

friend. Very tall.

~~~~~~~~

Apparently bagging a boril was up there with dragon slaying and giant killing, and the event would

become the stuff of myths and legend. Or so Gredar assured him. Temin had just wanted his shefting clothes

back, although afterwards he thought he probably been insane to go after a gigantic eagle in just his underwear and armed with Jeng’s knife. He hadn’t wanted to kill the enormous bird for all that, and felt bad

when Gredar explained how rare the creatures were. At the time, he’d felt it was him or the boril, and he’d

only been trying to get the bird to leave him alone when he threw the knife. No one could have been more

surprised when it hit the beast dead centre in its eye, like one of the street performers in Nixal throwing at

balloons on targets. Pure luck—luck that had saved his life.

It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat, but he had to admit that Karwa’s hero worship was a

little flattering. The lad was determined to bring as much of the boril back as they could—he’d have dragged

the entire bird back if Gredar would have let him. But they had the kizaz head and skin to manage, and

Gredar pointed out the boril would be a very sad and ragged thing once it was dragged two hundred clicks

behind a keriv, so reluctantly Karwa agreed to settle for the head, the feet, tail feathers, and the spurs that

grew from the elbow of the wings. It was the spurs which had clipped Temin and sent him tumbling out of

the tree and onto a lower branch—which had shefting
hurt
at the time, and he was lucky to have survived.