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practice on for days. That thing could break your ankle, lady. All we want to do is show you a real good
time, and maybe have a little fun with the monkey-cat. Come along, now."
Diana lunged. Her knife flew forth. It was Tigery steel, the back heavy and rasp-surfaced, the edge
sharp enough to cut a floating hair. Suddenly the shirtfront of the pistoleer gushed red. He howled. She
pushed him against the clubber. They fell together. She stepped on the Adam's apple of the clubber, and
heard it crack, in the course of attacking the knifeman. He slashed at her not unskillfully, but she parried,
gave him the rasp across his face, and opened his fighting arm on the inside from elbow to wrist, after
which he lost interest in anything but trying to stanch the blood. At this range the bola artist could not
exercise his craft well. She severed the cord of a ball that snapped toward her, swayed back out of the
way of the rest, and chased him several meters before letting him escape.
"C'mon," she said through the ululations at her feet, "let's get out of here 'fore the cops arrive."
"Hee-yao!" gasped Shan U as they made off. "I thought I knew about handling trouble, but you "
"Oh, I don't go lookin' for fights," Diana said. "In fact, I hate them. I'd've tried to talk or bluff us past
those klongs peacefully. But they weren't listenin'. Well, I grew up amongst Tigeries on Imhotep, and
when they see danger clear before them, they don't shilly-shally."
Targovi, I learned from you. Pain smote her. What has your fate been, dear brotherlin?
"Do you think the, the casualties will live?"
"I didn't try to do anything fatal, but there wasn't time for finickin', was there? Does it matter?"
Beneath the coolness she felt a dull but strengthening shock. She hadn't done anything like this
before not really though Targovi had put her through lots of practice; and she had been around when
a couple of Tigery brawls got bloody; and she had, herself, perforce been physically pretty emphatic
three or four times when human males got the wrong idea and couldn't be persuaded out of it otherwise.
I'll prob'ly have the shakes for a while, once the adrenalin wears off. But not for long, I hope. I mustn't let
what I've been through, what I've seen, prey on my mind. Nothin' was done here except justice. The
war, now, the war is different, people killin people they've got no grudge against and have never even
met. Though some wars in history have been the lesser evil, haven't they?
I don't know, she thought in rising weariness. I simply don't know. How good it'll be, floatin quietly
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down the river with Axor, if that works out.
She lost track of time and was a bit startled when they came to the waterfront. Warehouses bulked
behind wharfs where a medley of craft lay tied and a hodgepodge of persons, human and nonhuman,
bustled about. Machines scurried among them. Beyond, the stream flowed broad and brown. The
opposite shore was dimmed by a thickening rain. Shan U registered a feline dislike of the wet, but Diana
welcomed its warm sluicing. She felt cleansed.
They reached Waterblossom. The riverboat was easily a hundred meters long, though so wide that that
was not immediately evident. Four loading towers and a couple of three-tiered deckhouses did not much
clutter her. The low freeboard was garishly painted in stripes of red and gold; the topworks were white,
brass-trimmed. Her captain had said she was made of Terran and Cynthian woods, which Daedalan
organisms did not attack, and driven by an electric engine. Should he be unable to recharge its capacitors
otherwise, he carried a steam generator which could burn nearly anything.
Half a dozen Cynthians and two humans were on deck, cheerily helping wheel a cage toward shelter
from the rain. "Ay-ah, behold
Wo Lia, the performer." Shan U pointed. "Come aboard and meet her. We can all have a nice cup of
alefruit cider."
Diana frowned. She hated the idea of confining any creature. Still, yon beast didn't seem mistreated.
More or less mansize, it hunkered on four limbs, black-furred, its head obscured by a heavy mane. She
spied a short tail, and the forepaws had an odd, doubled-up look about them. Well, who could possibly
know all the life forms, all the wonders of every kind, that filled the Imperial planets, let alone the galaxy
and the universe? To fare forth !
Shan U led her over the gangplank. She passed near the cage.
"Hs-s-s, little friend," went a whisper. Coming from low in the lungs, it sounded like an animal noise to
anybody who did not know the Toborko language. "Stay calm. We will talk later. Make sure you and
your camarado take passage on this boat."
Barely, Diana reined herself in. The humans doubtless noticed how she tensed before relaxing, but
could put that down to the exotic surroundings. The Cynthians doubtless paid no heed to her shifts in
stance or expression.
She forced herself to look afar, out again across the river. Underneath tangled strands of mane, the
face in the cage was Targovi's.
Chapter 10
Waterblossom set forth after the thunderstorm that had been brewing reached explosion point and then
spent itself. Sweeping the length of the valley with that swiftness and violence which the rapid rotation of
the planet engendered, it turned the air altogether clear. From her place in the bows, Diana looked
westward across a thousand kilometers or more.
This was the first tranquil moment she had had in hours. The time had been frantic during which she
made her way back to Aurea, located Axor, persuaded him not easily, because her arguments were
thin at best, and her excitement didn't reinforce them to come along, got their baggage packed,
returned through lightning-vivid cataracts of rain, settled into her tiny stateroom and improvised
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accommodations for the Wodenite down in the hold with the freight. Dinner had been served while the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]