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them near the top of the waves and keep the line from uncoiling off her arm.
She coughed and spit out the sea. Fur was crushed to her chest, and awkward joints jabbed her ribs. Still,
the current grew faster, rushing with more power past her face. It jammed itself in her ears and made her
body lie straight out in the wa-ter till she flailed like a length of rope herself.
And then they were clear, and a clublike hand hauled them off the sea. Wren clung, one hand on the lift
and one hand on Tsia's blunter. He submerged with them, then fought his way free. As the water swept
down, he clawed his way up toward the controls. Savagely, he jerked them with him. The surge chased
them up. A second later, he hit the controls and sent the lift shooting from the surge while Tsia and cub
hung from his hand like a limp and bodiless cargo.
s
Tsia could not see at first. She clutched the cub like the life-line, and could not make her fingers uncurl.
Her eyes were slit-ted like a cat's. Looking at her bared expression, Wren did not doubt the cub had
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called her to help it. She breathed so harshly he could hear it over the wind.
As the lift reached the platform deck, he slid one hand around her waist and half propelled her forward
while she coughed until she retched. Her arms were still curled around the cub as she went to her knees
on the catwalk.
"Daya," she croaked. She could see things other than the purple-white deck now: Wren's hooked nose,
his pale gray eyes. His gaze darting from her to the cub as he watched and judged her movements. The
dark shades of his blunter, the sea spray beading and running off, while more fell like rain from his
eyebrows.
With one hand on her back to balance her in the wind, Wren stripped a seedpod from her blunter and a
clump of weeds from her boot. She reached up to him, and through her biogate, she could feel his
sudden tension, the wariness that was re-flected in his eyes. For a moment, she froze. Then she realized
that her hand was stretched out like a cat's paw. She blinked, and the feral light seemed to fade from her
eyes.
"Okay?" he shouted over the wind.
She did not try to speak again; she just nodded. Her stomach churned, and she felt disoriented by the
smell of the wind. It took a moment to realize that the confusion was not all her own, but half from the
cub in her grip. She soothed the crea-ture with her hands, but it did not relax. Its nostrils were filled with
her scent and the odor of the man. Even through the weather cloth of her shirt, she could feel the light,
quick ham-mer of its heart. As if the death blow would fall any instant, it trembled against her body.
She sat back on her heels and stared into the cougar's eyes. Like a shock wave through her body, her
biogate seemed to expand. The snarling in her head deafened her ears. Startled, she turned her head and
broke the link. Then, slowly, she reached up to her neck and grasped the claw that was hooked in her
neck to shift it onto her blunter. A second later, the cou-gar dug it back in. She shifted it again, holding
the paw until its claws pierced the fabric of her jacket instead of her skin. The cougar growled.
"Stop it," she said softly.
Clumsy cat feet seemed to tumble through her brain.
"Ruka," she soothed, "take it easy. It's all right now." She halted.
Ruka. The cat had a name.
Startled, she looked up at Wren. "It is Ruka."
His eyes shuttered. "You named it?"
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"I did not. It had a name that it spoke."
"Through your gate?"
She nodded. The cub still growled, but fear was no longer the dominant sense in its mind. As if the
biogate had changed its view of her from human being to cat, it clung to her like a child to its mother.
Tsia could barely hold it in her arms. It had been small compared to the older cat, but it weighed al-most
as much as herself.
Wren reached down and started to haul her to her feet, but at his movement, the cub twisted and hissed.
Tsia wrenched it away and staggered up to her feet.
Wren stepped back and said nothing, but his eyes were flat and hard. He motioned toward the bulk of the
construction hut. Tsia nodded. She made to follow Wren, but the cub kicked and raked with his back
legs so that his claws tore raggedly across her thighs. Staggering, Tsia cursed. The cub vaulted from her
arms. He landed half-on, half-off the catwalk and yowled as his rear legs scraped across the sponge.
Mucus spread like a film of saliva on his spiky wet fur. In her head, Tsia felt the mother cougar yowl.
Abruptly, she poured her strength through the gate to drown out the mother cat's voice. Stop. Danger,
she sent urgently.
Startled, the cub froze. Wren stayed motionless, his eyes darting from one figure to the other. Ignoring [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]