Chapter Four

"No, Father, wait!" Heyoka leaped to his feet, Ben’s beloved scent still thick in his nostrils.

"Sergeant!" Someone shook his shoulders. "Sergeant, wake up!"

Opening his eyes, Heyoka blinked into the concerned face of the station doctor. Alvarez clicked on the medscanner. "I was beginning to think I’d misread the drug compatibility records on your species last night."

Heyoka tried to sit up, but his muscles ached. His stomach was queasy, too, his mouth dry, and his head felt like it was going to explode. "If you had asked me, Dr. Alvarez . . ." Each word had to journey from far away. "I would have told you that my metabolism processes drugs of any sort poorly." He sat up, then doubled over as a wave of nausea gripped him. "If you had bothered to ask."

Her tan face paled. "I’m sorry. You’d lost a fair amount of blood last night and were slipping into shock. You were in no shape to make decisions." Her knuckles were white where she gripped the scanner. "Shall I give you something for the side effects?"

"No!" The word escaped him with a ferocity he rarely allowed humans to glimpse, then he cursed himself as she flinched. "Sorry." He braced his head between his hands. The savage other within him prowled perilously near the surface, waiting for its chance to explode. "Water would help. I’m probably dehydrated. I ran all the way back last night."

She let out a breath. "Sure." She filled a glass from the tap at the sink and handed it to him, retreating, he noticed, out of reach.

Tipping his head back, Heyoka managed to drink the whole glass without spilling a drop. How many hours of practice had that skill cost him? He tried to remember, but the pounding centered behind his eyes concealed the answer. He held the glass out for more.

Alvarez turned back to the sink and refilled it. How did his fellow hrinn manage water, he wondered. Did they lap it up from pans as he had done when Ben had first rescued him, or did they teach their young to drink in a civilized manner as Ben had taken the care and patience to do?

"Thanks." He accepted the glass from her trembling hand and drained it too. The pounding receded to a dull ache. Gods, he did feel a bit better. "What time is it?" He glanced at his wrist, then remembered leaving his chronometer with his uniform behind some scrubby excuse for a tree last night.

"Almost noon." Her brown eyes watched him uneasily.

"Noon!" The word burst out of him, loud enough to make his head pound again. "Then she’s been out there for hours, unless—"

"No." Alverez’s voice was low. "She hasn’t returned."

Heyoka slid off the examining table, fixing his eyes on the door until the dizziness eased. "I have to find her. You said the staff would help."

She nodded and turned to her screen. "I’ll punch in a request and see who’s available."

Watching her long tan fingers key in the information, Heyoka cursed himself for trusting these people. They were all noncoms, as well as strangers who saw him as less than human. They didn’t understand. He should have known better, should have relied only on himself, no matter what Ben had told him all those years ago.

The sacred pool chamber was as still as the deepest blue-black silences of the night. Moisture condensed on the limestone cavern walls and trickled down into a hot-spring pool as old as the world itself. Rakshal paused at the entrance, inhaling the redolence of heated rock, overlaid with the acridness of sulfur mingled with aging jit droppings. All was as it should be. There was no recent scent trace of any male, save himself. He wedged his torch into a sconce carved into the wall by unknown hands, then ran his fingers over markings etched around it, ancient sight-glyphs for which no one knew the meanings anymore.

"The tellers say doing this so often is dangerous." Buff-colored Bral edged inside, ears down, his long face distraught. His voice, oddly hollow, echoed from the damp walls as the torchlight danced over the pool’s surface. "They say you could die."

"Of course the Old Ways are dangerous, that’s the source of their power." Rakshal savored the sulfurous steam swirling above the mineral-rich thermal pool. He heard the soft pop of mud pots simmering further back in the cave system and smelled their fierce molten-earth odor. Already his fur reeked of it, and would, no doubt, for days to come. "The most vigorous patterns always begin with risk, but bring the greatest reward. If you lack the courage to enter, you will be left behind, always single and alone, forever outside events and acted upon, rather than in control." He shed his threadbare black robes onto the rocky cavern floor, then gazed down into the mysterious blue-green depths of the steaming sacred pool.

"But what if this traveler is hrinnti?" Bral’s words spilled out, reckless as a thief. "If he was stolen as a cubling, it was not his fault. Should we not make a place for him?"

Rakshal’s hackles rose. "If he were truly hrinn, he would make a place for himself! Since when do we welcome the weak, or the foolish? Is every cubling who applies accepted into the males’ house?" The newcomer’s face floated before his inner vision. Black/on/black, Nisk had said. Rakshal’s lips curled back from his teeth. "No Black/on/black has been born for generations. And if one of the sacred color pattern had been given to us, it would not have been through traitorous Levv!"

With a snarl, he splashed into the steaming water and anchored his handclaws on the rock. If he slipped into the dark-blue hole at the bottom of the pool, said to end at the sacred wild fire of the earth’s core, he would be lost forever in fiery torment. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bral retreat to stand the traditional watch at the chamber’s entrance so the power-drawing ritual would not be disturbed.

Rakshal lay back in the sweltering water’s embrace to draw power in the oldest of ways, the sacred ritual which few practiced in this age of Dead-smelling creatures who fell out of the sky and wrought unasked-for miracles. The long muscles in his arms and legs tingled, then burned as the torrid heat triggered the special receptors.

He closed his eyes. It was bad enough the Council permitted these creatures to build on worthless land at the edge of the Mish River Males’ House territory, where they attempted to converse and trade with the more reckless of the Lines. Outsiders were random, their actions fitting no pattern ever named, clearly without honor or purpose of any sort, and now they had presented this fake hrinn in an effort to disrupt ongoing patterns! There had to be an end to such affront, or the world would dissolve once again into chaos.

His lips drew back in a fierce baring of teeth. This must be a test by the Voice, perhaps even the trial of courage known as undue/transformations in which monsters walked the world in the guise of everyday creatures. He could smell it, if no one else could. He would hunt this blasphemous creature, so cunningly transformed by Outsiders into a false likeness, and tear it hide from bone. Then all would join him in scouring the Dead-smelling Outsiders from the face of this world so that events could once again flow in their time-honored fashion and blessed order would reign.

When he thought he could take no more of the water’s power, he forced himself to remain, knowing full well he was skirting death with each breath. He had never taken in half so much before, and yet he remained in the steaming water until his ears sagged like wet cloth and he thought he would burst. Only then did he heave out of the pool’s basin and sprawl across the rocks, limp and breathless, barely able to pant the killing excess heat from his body. When he finally recovered enough to sit up, the fierce strength of the earth’s core hummed through him in such measure as it had never before. Stretching one gray-furred forefinger toward the other, he watched a sacred blue spark arch from claw to claw.

Heyoka limped through Eldrich’s open door into the spacious office furnished with leather chairs and antique bound books, the nest of a civilian comfortable with luxuries. Conditioned air whispered through a ceiling vent, cool and carefully neutral.

"Sergeant Blackeagle?" Eldrich glanced up from his monitor. "I didn’t know you had been released from Sickbay."

In a flek’s eye, Heyoka thought. Eldrich’s strong cologne made his nose twitch and he fought the urge to sneeze. Violets again, laced with something spicy, and beneath that, an acrid base note. Heyoka stood at parade-rest, arms clasped behind his back, his weight subtly shifted off his aching right leg. The hike last night out to the males’ house and then his subsequent run back across the desert had strained the damaged muscles. Not only was he limping again, but the blasted leg threatened to give way altogether.

"Please take a seat." Eldrich indicated a chair before his desk. "You don’t look at all well."

"My partner is missing." Heyoka limped to the chair and sat down heavily. "The doctor said the staff would help me search."

Eldrich made a triangle with his forefingers and thumbs. "A search party, Sergeant?" A puzzled look crossed his face. "But surely you remember the release you and Corporal Jensen signed. Danzig Station can provide no help."

Heyoka’s ear twitched. "Not officially, of course. I’m only asking for volunteers."

"Under normal conditions, yes, I would permit volunteers." Eldrich leaned back and folded his arms. "However, I’m afraid your unusual—appearance—has excited the natives. They are especially active right now, therefore I can’t, in good conscience, allow my personnel to risk themselves in nonstation-approved excursions at this time."

Heyoka rose to his full height to glare down at the soft-skinned human. The savage other within him clamored to be heard, claws extended, hair bristling. His voice roughened as he fought to contain its thirst for violence. "You are going to let her just die?"

Eldrich gestured with empty hands. "The young woman is most likely already dead. I read the doctor’s report on your condition last night. With your hrinnti physiology, you had at least some chance of surviving an attack, and yet here you are, after only a few hours among them, badly slashed, weak from loss of blood, barely on your feet again after spending a night in Sickbay. A human could hardly have survived similar abuse."

Heyoka had a sudden vision of Eldrich sprawled across the floor, his throat torn out. He could smell the hot blood, taste the coppery richness in the back of his throat. With an effort, he sheathed his claws. "She is not dead."

"Why don’t you return to your unit, Sergeant?" Eldrich picked up a pile of reports and squared their edges against the desk. "We’ll work with our hrinnti contacts and try to recover the body. We’ll send word as soon as we know anything."

Heyoka repressed an unhumanlike snarl. "I have no intention of leaving without Corporal Jensen."

Eldrich smiled thinly. "Well, check back with me in a few days then, and let me know how your search is progressing."

Heyoka turned to go, cold fury pumping through his veins. They both knew Mitsu did not have "a few days."

Whisperings, like the rustle of dried flowers . . . darkness . . . a familiar musky scent. Mitsu shifted, then gasped as pain stabbed through her right arm and side. Had she screwed up and landed in the sodding treatment tank again? No, there was never any pain in the tank. The pain came after the Meds broke you out and you saw what you were left with.

Confused, she tried to remember what planet they were on . . . Beckman Seven? . . . Giriz? . . . Enjas Two? So many planets, so many actions, dead and dying at her feet, weapons shrilling.

A faint light worked toward her. She lay on a pile of cushions, limp as a boiled noodle, until it finally resolved itself into a torch carried by a—

Memory flooded back . . . Outside the males’ house, a hrinn dressed in red had motioned to her as though it wanted her to join it, but she’d scrambled back the other way. It had leaped after her then, across the sandy soil, faster than she would have thought a bloody fur-face could run. The stronger Anktan gravity had made lead weights of her feet and she’d fallen under its claws, cursing.

A small gray-and-white hrinn wedged its torch into a wall socket, then squatted gracefully on the earthen floor beside her, cradling a small pottery basin in the crook of one arm. It was dressed in red too, like the one who had attacked her, but seemed younger. She thought of Blackeagle’s savage teeth. Did these creatures eat human flesh? With an odd tenderness, it lifted her mangled arm, and the resulting agony cast her into a soundless dark well . . .

When she came to herself again, the creature was laving her clawed arm and side in herb-scented water, its touch amazingly gentle. When it saw her looking up at it, the half-gray, half-white nose wrinkled, baring double rows of wickedly sharp white teeth. "Lie quiet," it said in Hrinnti accented very differently from the deepsleep tape she had studied. "You —— bleeding ——"

Mitsu tried to shape a question in Hrinnti, but could not remember even how to begin. She sagged back, aching and exhausted.

The hrinn finished bathing her wounds, then wrapped her arm in clean undyed cloth and laid it back across her chest. Supporting her head with one hand, it held a wide-mouthed flagon of water to her lips so she could drink. Its mismatched ears trembled as it blinked down at her with huge black eyes that reflected her ashen face, then it took the torch and left her alone again in the vibrating dark.

So. For some reason, the hrinn had taken her prisoner instead of killing her outright. She asked herself why, as her eyelids sagged, but the darkness gave no answer.

Stores was cool and quiet, the lights dimmed. Electronics hummed below the threshold of human ears. Heyoka drummed his claws on the front counter, waiting for Allenby but, after the passing minutes added up into the tens, and still no one came, he circled the counter and examined a large shipping crate shoved against the wall that was almost as tall as he was.

"You can’t open that!"

Balanced on his sound leg, Heyoka turned to Allenby’s startled eyes. "Why not?"

"It contains native artifacts being shipped to a university research program." Allenby was pale. "I’ve already transmitted the manifest."

Heyoka’s nose wrinkled in a fierce scowl. "Then help me find supplies for a search-and-rescue mission."

Allenby scuttled behind a pile of boxes in the corner. "I’m afraid I’m very busy at the moment, but please feel free to help yourself, Sergeant," he said in a quavering voice. "You’re quite welcome to anything that’s not already packed."

Then, without a doubt, everything he needed was packed. Heyoka’s ears flattened. Why was no one in this blasted station the least bit concerned that a human was missing? If it had been him, he could have understood this apathy.

Allenby’s scrunched-up face peered out from behind a unit of shelving, then disappeared again. Heyoka’s claws flexed. Very well, he would help himself to what he needed, and he didn’t care where he found it.

Bending over the shipping crate, he worked a claw into the locking mechanism and fiddled with it until it opened with a click. Easing the top off, he stared down in surprise at com-units, still sealed in colorful plas casings from the factory. Com-units . . . sent to a university from Anktan? Baffled, he reached for one.

"Begging your pardon, sir!" Allenby pushed the lid back down and relocked it. "I seem—to have more time this afternoon than I thought. If you’ll just give me your list, I’ll find what you need."

Heyoka appraised the little man and read fear in the tense lines around his mouth and the sweat sheening his pinched-up face. He took a short list scribbled on a scrap of plas out of his pocket and handed it to him.

Allenby scanned it. "No problem at all, sir. You just wait here. I’ll be right back!" He scurried off into the labyrinth of boxes and shelves that filled the enormous room.

Heyoka sat on a crate, thinking about the com-units, then turned as the door slid open behind him.

"You haven’t gone yet." The doctor’s face was relieved as she hurried into the room, arms full. "I’m glad I caught you."

"Volunteering for the search, Dr. Alvarez?" Heyoka scratched his ear.

"Call me Sanyha, please." Her tan face fell. "Eldrich has issued an order forbidding anyone to go."

"Yes." Heyoka stood up and limped over to a table of unsorted hrinnti robes. "Interesting, isn’t it? You thought everyone would be willing to help."

"They are." She bit her lip. "At least they would be, but Eldrich has threatened to terminate anyone who goes." She looked away. "No one will risk losing their job."

"Not even you."

She flushed. "Not even me, Sergeant. My real work here is as an anthropologist who just happens to be a doctor as well. A lot of us are double-certified to cut down on the overhead. I’ve spent the last six years working out hrinnti patterns of kinship. I’m not going to throw that away!"

"I’m not asking you to go." Heyoka selected a set of green robes, the same shade most of the males had worn the night before. "I wouldn’t trust you, or anyone else here, at my back anyway." He shrugged his arms out of the spare uniform he’d donned earlier and then pulled on the loose outer garment.

She laid down the items in her arms. "I brought you a medkit and a power brace for your leg. With an injury like that, I imagine you’ve used one before."

Heyoka stared at the black plas leg brace. His ear twitched. He’d used one all right, had cursed and strained for weeks to get his leg working in one just like it, weeks when he hadn’t known if he would ever walk again under his own power.

"I thought it might help." She looked away as he shucked his pants. "You were pretty crippled up when you left Sickbay."

He hitched up the flowing hrinnti trousers, then made himself pick up the slick, cool plas without flinching. "Thank you," he said in a tone that made it mean something else entirely. Then he turned away and adjusted the settings along the length of the brace so it would fit his hrinnti leg.

At least it was black, he thought. It matched his fur. Maybe it wouldn’t be so noticeable outside in the sun. But even if they didn’t see it, he knew full well they would smell it.

Behind him, the door slid open, then shut.