Mainline (10 page)

There was a stupid speech about mending her ways. Oh, he was righteous. She tried not to respond: he was not, after all, her real father, not the understanding man of her childhood, just one of these ghost-people from a Mainline that wasn't really, truly, the one she should be living in.

But it was the one she was stuck in, more or less, and since her decision to never again skip wildly across the Lines, she knew that any nearby Timeline would hold virtually the same blackmailer with the same nasty sense of recrimination.

She was tired of being a Holdout anyway. She cleared her bank account, put it all in her credmeter, and sneaked aboard the next flight out of the starport.

When she hit Des'lin, she had no place to go, and didn't dare check into a resort—her father was too resourceful to dodge that way for long. She rode a local snowtransport as far as it would take her, then cadged a ride with an ice runner hauling supplies to Keshkaric at the edge of the Great Ice.

That is where she stayed, for three years. Three years that failed to heal what was wrong with Reva's life, although the harsh demands of frontier survival pushed that to the back of her mind. The Vudesh never welcomed her, nor did they drive her forth. They took pride in their simple existence, and with them Reva learned to value anew things she had forgotten were part of life.

Those were things inexplicable and grand, like the elemental power of nature in a scouring ice storm, and the joy of food when one is near-starving. They were things one had to experience to appreciate.

The Vudesh offered many such experiences. They tested Reva, and taught her, and finally asked her to leave when she slew a chieftain's son who insisted too forcefully that he would take her to wife.

She almost regretted leaving. She had a lot to thank them for. The Vudesh were fine hunters, and excellent killers, and their student never forgot a lesson that she learned.

Vask's
hope of
finding the women quickly soon vanished. There was no trail of disturbed snow knocked from tree branches to suggest where they had gone, and the convoluted terrain denied a viewpoint from which he might be able to spot them.

It didn't take long before the urban-bred Kastlin wasn't entirely sure of his own path, either. The ridge folds and stands of yes-kaya, the broken ground and clumps of red-claw protruding through the snow, conspired to force him off the line of march described by the tour guide's green map route. After he had trudged down another snowy ridge and found himself in another brushy valley bottom, he paused to catch his breath.

He looked at the holomap. The blinking red light that was himself was to the north of the green line of recommended travel. He looked to his right, toward that imaginary line, and saw wind-scoured limestone forming the face of an untraversible ridge. There was no way to rejoin the right line of march from here.

"Guide," he said, exasperated. "Show me the best way back to the lodge."

A yellow line appeared, marking a route from his present location back to the resort buildings. As he turned to survey the path he would have to follow, movement in the red-claw brush drew his startled attention. Vask unslung his dart rifle; before he could hold it ready, a large white and russet heap of fur lumbered out of the scrub before him. He sighed. This six-legged beast, taller than a man at the shoulder and twice as long, was fat and slow-moving and herbivorous. It was a deska, walking on in-turned toes made for gripping tree limbs. It snuffled the air as it caught the man's strange scent.

Vask was reslinging his rifle when the tour guide spoke up.

"Sir, I am required by law to inform you that you are now dangerously close to kria hunting grounds. If you recall the waiver that you signed upon check-in, Keshnavar Resort is not responsible for the safety of guests who move too closely to deska grazing areas. You have now done so, and I have so duly recorded."

Vask frowned at the shoulder pack. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"You have been moving through brushlands favored by deska.

Until I sensed this creature here, I could not be certain this pasturage was in use. It is, and you are duly notified."

Vask growled and considered turning the guide unit off. He had turned his back on the harmless grazer when a drawn-out high-pitched scream froze him in his tracks. He spun back around. It came from the southeast, from a hilly point overlooking the valley. "What was that?" he demanded of the guide. "That was the combat call of the kria, a challenge issued by one beast to another to fight over hunting territory." "Great."

Vask turned back toward the lodge and began to trot over the snowcover when a second kria answered the fighting call. He froze in his tracks, horripilation raising every hair on his body. The answering call came from the brush directly ahead.

Reva let the air-amplified blast from the fight squaller echo off the ridge sides, then dropped her hand back by her side. Lish's eyes were wide, and widened more when an answering challenge ripped through the frosty air.

"There's one down there, all right." Reva pointed. "If we can provoke it enough, it'll head straight for us instead of stalking. That's what we want." She held the squaller out to Lish. "You want to give it a try?"

"Sure." Lish reached gingerly for the palm-sized device, as if it, not the kria, could bite.

"Aim the speaker plate down the valley, like so, and press," Reva explained.

Lish did, and another fearsome squall rang out before them. Instead of the hair-raising yowl they expected in reply, they heard something else: a distinctive human outcry, and a crashing in the brush. Lish's smile faded as the pair watched the small figure of a man burst from the brush and run toward the edge of the wooded valley.

A kria pursued, its six-legged gait eating up the ground at an impossible rate of speed.

"Squall again!" Reva snapped the order and Lish unthinkingly obeyed. The assassin threw her gun up to her shoulder and fired off three rounds at the great white-furred predator.

The fighting squall rang out again, ear-piercingly loud. The explosive darts flew almost to the limit of their range, a good 100 meters away, and missed the cat—then exploded on impact with

the snowpack at its feet. The squall and the explosions were enough to distract the hunting beast, and it hesitated in its charge.

It swung its head, glancing about to see if there was an immediate danger. There was not.

As Reva pulled darts from her ammo pack and hastily reloaded her rifle, the snowcat was back on the trail of the man. Even so, the diversion had bought a little time. The strayed tourist reached a yeskaya tree, and began to climb as fast as he could.

"Sea Father!" Reva exclaimed. "Kria can climb, too!" She turned to Lish. "Don't use the squaller again, we don't want that eat coming after you. Lay down here on the snow and brace your shots. Shoot at the kria. If you can hit it, fine. If not, aim for the tree trunk over its head. Keep it out of that tree until I can get close enough to deal with it better."

There was no discussion. Lish threw herself down in a prone firing position. With nervous fingers she set up the ranging adjustment on her scope, and fired as the cat squatted at the base of the tree.

Her first shot went wild, leaving an impact explosion in the snow, as before, that caused the kria to start.

Reva went over the lip of the ridge and headed down into the valley in a long, controlled, snowy slide.

"Guide," Vask gasped, scrambling for the next-higher branch, "call for help."

"I can't, sir. We are out of my limited communications range with the resort lodge."

Kastlin yanked his rifle sling free from a grasping needle-clump, and pushed an arm's length higher up into the dense conifer. "What do you mean, can't?" he snarled. "Don't you have an emergency channel?"

The kria leapt into the air, and made a swipe at Vask's foot. Kastlin leapt up the tree trunk as well, pulling his feet clear, and snapping the projector bar off the guidepack. "Damage to this unit will be added to your bill, sir," the guide commented in its neutral-docent tone.

"Vent that! Do you have an emergency channel!?" he almost screamed at the tour robot.

"No, sir. If you would like your movements monitored, you need a transponder with an emergency call button on it, and an extra fee must—"

"Shut up!" If the kria didn't get him first, the guidepack would drive him crazy. Vask pulled himself a little higher, then saw he was reaching the limits of his escape. Branches grew too closely together, and the brown, pricking yeskaya needles grew into a dense, impenetrable mass higher up the tree trunk. He had come as far as he could.

Vask looked down, right into the amber, hungry eyes of the squatting predator. The kria hunched on four of its legs, and used the forward pair to grasp the tree trunk a mere four meters below Kastlin's feet. The beast gave the yeskaya a shake, and then a harder one. The tree swayed enough to be unsettling, though not enough to dislodge the agent's death grip. The kria withdrew its front paws, claws slicing effortlessly into the bark and leaving a trail of curled green pith where it had gripped.

It coiled as if to spring up the trunk. Vask felt something twist tighter in his guts. "Guide," he panted, "can kria climb trees?"

"Yes, they can, sir."

Vask dropped his forehead against the rough bark of the trunk. Can I sideslip out of this? He assessed himself quickly, and knew the answer in an instant. No. There was too much adrenaline bracing his system; he was too uncentered. A body's survival imperative almost always shut off the higher mental faculties needed for psionics. If he had time, he could do it, and time was what he didn't have.

Vask had to get his rifle in hand. It would take some maneuvering and it would be hard to aim amid the close-grown branches, but it was his only hope.

First, he needed a distraction. Kastlin reached for the tour guide and pulled it from his shoulder. Aware that something unusual was going on, the unit asked, "May I be of assistance, sir?"

Vask looked down. The kria was hunched and staring intently, poised in that peculiar stillness of a predator right before it grabs its prey. "Guide," he said to the silvered device in his hand, "tell me about the kria."

"Certainly, sir. The kria are warm-blooded, six-legged predators native to Des'lin...."

He held his hand out. The droning guide was right over the kria's face. Maybe this would work.

Before he could release the guidepack, something impacted the trunk beneath his legs, shuddering the tree and causing wood and bark slivers to burst through the air. Startled, Vask's arm jerked forward to brace his grip.

The next impact took him squarely in the ankle. The breath went from him in a shocked hiss, and the guidepack dropped from deadened fingers. Vask felt only numbness in his lower leg, where his foot was nearly blown off by the hunting dart. Close to fainting, he clung in blackness to the tree trunk.

The kria had ducked away from the spray of splinters, and paused to blink at the silvery object on the ground. Sound came from it, and that made it of curious interest. Then the snowcat looked back up the tree, where the strong scent of blood was more compelling. This quarry had become wounded, and was weakened. Now was time for the kill.

Lish cursed her nerves. She didn't have this problem handling a ship's guns. She took an extra breath, aimed at the cat that was stretching full-length up into the tree. She squeezed off a round, and the dart flew true, right between the shoulder blades of the hunting beast.

The kria did not drop dead. It spun about in an explosion of blood and fur, its quarry forgotten, as it sought its attacker. It was wounded, and it was angry. It fixed its sight on Reva, loosed a hair-raising squall, then charged.

The assassin was thirty meters away when the wounded snow-cat turned on her. She stopped in her tracks, rifle at the ready, and faced the furious hunter that bore down upon her. At twenty-five meters her first round flew, and caught the snowcat in the chest. The kria kept on, hardly slowed, its organs so well protected and its anger so great that a critical wound was difficult to score. These were the feared prowlers that kept fighting for minutes after they were dead. They had to be killed several times over before they realized it and lay still.

This kria was not that dead, yet.

Lish drew a bead on the snowcat as Reva aimed her second shot. The assassin fired at fifteen meters, and the explosive dart struck the kria's sloping brow right above the eyes. Silky fur and the curve of the skull deflected the round enough that its explosion caused only an irritating flesh wound. The beast came on, enraged; if anything, faster than before.

A blip from the motion sensor distracted Lish. She glanced over toward the tree and saw the man, lying senseless in the snow at its base. Blood stained the snow by one leg. She bit her lip. Through the thick needle-cover she had not realized she had wounded him.

She looked back, and shot to her feet. "Reva!" she cried out, to no avail. The cat was on the other woman, and there was no way to shoot. Her kria-fur coat blended into the tussling blur of motion that kicked up snow and obscured the action. Lish dropped back down to the ground and trained her scope on the scene, trying to make out what was happening.

Reva had a far better view. Shot twice and flesh-wounded once, the kria had plenty of fight left and leapt upon the assassin as she fired a third shot. The round went wild. With no time to think, Reva did what every Vudesh tribesman is trained to do. She leapt over her attacker and let the snowcat pass beneath her. She twisted, cat-like herself, and came down atop the charging monster.