Conquerors' Heritage

7

"Getting pretty noisy out there," her assistant Bkar-otpo commented from across the shelter, his tone sounding a little uneasy. "How strong do these winds get, anyway?"

"Don't worry, we'll be all right," Klnn-dawan-a told him, shutting the analyzer back to standby and keying for a datalist. "These shelters can handle anything Gree's likely to throw at us. At least this time of cyclic."

"Yes, I've heard stories about those equinox storms," Bkar-otpo said. "You ever been in one of those?"

"A couple of times," Klnn-dawan-a said. The datalist came up, and she ran a quick eye over the numbers. Promising; definitely promising. Maybe this time they'd finally hit the proper window for the genetic-ring transmutation. "I wouldn't want to be in a field shelter during one, but a perm building stands up to them just fine."

"It must still be pretty impressive—"

"It's wonderful and exhilarating both," she interrupted gently, stepping over to him and holding out the datalist. "File this into the recorder, would you? And then run up a comparison between it and the other samplings."

"I obey, Searcher," he said briskly, all business now as he took the datalist and pulled his couch up to the recorder. "Will we be taking another set of samplings this latearc?"

"Assuming the wind dies down, yes."

"I've been wondering about that," Bkar-otpo said doubtfully. "Even at the best of times, Chigin whelps can be pretty unpredictable. No telling what this storm will do to their dispositions."

"We'll be fine," Klnn-dawan-a assured him, focusing her attention again on the wind. Was it marginally less violent than it had been a few hunbeats ago? Possibly. "I'm going to take a quick look outside, see if I can spot the edge of the storm."

"You want me to go with you?" Bkar-otpo asked, half standing up.

"No, I'll be fine," she said. "I won't be going very far."

"I could call an Elder to go with you," he persisted, his hand hovering near the signaler control.

"I'll be fine," she said firmly. "You just get busy with that comparison, all right?"

He seemed to sigh. "I obey, Searcher," he said again, and turned reluctantly back to the recorder.

Klnn-dawan-a stepped to the shelter door and began unfastening the catches, mentally shaking her head and wondering yet again what exactly she was going to do about Bkar-otpo. Fresh out of school, studious and earnest as all get out, he was the totally stereotypical searcher assistant.

With, unfortunately, what looked like the beginnings of a strong crush on her.

She was holding on to the grips tightly as the door came open, but even so, the wind nearly ripped it out of her hands. Maneuvering out into the blast, she sealed the door behind her. Gree's sun was long gone below the horizon, and for a beat she stayed where she was beside the shelter as her lowlight pupils widened to compensate for the darkness. A few beats later, with the rocky ground now adequately visible, she headed off between the cluster of wind-buffeted shelters toward the edge of the shallow hollow the group had set up in.

The simplest thing to do, of course, would be to arrange for Bkar-otpo to be transferred to one of the other three Dhaa'rr study groups on Gree. It would give him time to forget her and maybe latch on to someone who wasn't ten cyclics older than he was and already bond-engaged. If she did it properly, chances were good that he'd never even guess that she'd been behind the transfer.

The problem was, he might. And if her own experiences when she was nineteen were anything to go by, that would be devastating to him. Klnn-dawan-a had always considered herself a rather plain sort of person when she was growing up: average in appearance and personality, considerably less than average in conversational ability and family status. Her intellect had been sharp enough, certainly, but she'd never found that to have much in the way of appeal to the people around her. It wasn't until she'd discovered her love of alien studies and the close-knit group of people who felt likewise that she'd really begun to feel at home. By the time her friendship with Thrr-gilag had begun to grow into something stronger, she'd been strong enough herself to take the chance of getting hurt.

Bkar-otpo, unfortunately, wasn't anywhere near that stage yet. Nevertheless, it was clear that she was going to have to do something, and soon. The bond-engagement threads she always wore weren't deterring him in the slightest; neither were her attempts to work Thrr-gilag's name into the conversation every chance she got. Apparently, she was just going to have to come out point-blank with it.

And then, maybe, she'd get him transferred.

She'd reached the edge of the hollow now and the predator fence that protected the encampment. The wind was stronger here, with a tangle of eddies and crosscurrents that seemed determined to knock her off her feet. Bracing herself against a shoulder-high rock, she put her hands up to protect her eyes and peered out across the sky.

Good luck was with them. The cloud formations that indicated the edge of the windstorm were clearly visible between the rolling foothills directly ahead and the taller mountains rising beyond them. Ten hunbeats—twenty at the most—and the winds should begin settling down. Should be no problem for her and Bkar-otpo to get out to the Za Mingchma farm and take their tissue samples on schedule.

She shifted her position against the rock, letting her gaze drop to the foothills themselves. The lights of perhaps fifty Chigin houses were visible through the tight mesh of the predator fence, the homes scattered unevenly up and down the slopes of the hills and even part of the way up the sheer face of the mountain behind. Farm families, most of them, working hard to coerce a living from the thin soil and thin air up here. Aloof to the Zhirrzh study group for the most part, but at least not openly hostile the way the valley and city residents always seemed to be.

Klnn-dawan-a frowned, her gaze pausing on one of the plots of land. The fence surrounding the whelp enclosure looked wrong, somehow. She stared hard at it, feeling her lowlight pupils widening to full enlargement. The landscape brightened slightly....

There it was: a thick tree branch, apparently blown there by the wind, leaning against the middle of the enclosure fence on one side and holding it partially pinned to the ground.

She fumbled out her caller from the survival pack fastened around her waist, her view of the landscape ahead changing again as her darklight pupils expanded to pull in the heat radiance that surrounded all homoiothermal creatures. The tips of the houses' chimneys and the smoke pouring from them took on a gentle glow; larger, more diffuse images appeared inside the enclosures of the nearest yards: whelps, huddled together against the wind or else prowling their circuits in mindless defiance of the elements.

In the enclosure with the downed fence there was nothing.

"Terrific," Klnn-dawan-a muttered under her breath, half turning to aim the caller at the top of the white cutting pyramid in the center of the Zhirrzh encampment. The brilliant darklight beam lanced out, and over the wind she faintly heard the clang as the alarm mounted to the pyramid's top went off in response. She turned back around again, peering out into the darkness—

An Elder appeared in front of her. "Yes, Searcher?"

"The fence at the Ca Chagba farm has been breached," she shouted over the wind. "The whelps have gotten out. I'm going to go look for them. Tell Director Prr-eddsi, and ask him to send someone to help me."

"Not a good idea, Searcher," the Elder shouted back. "Especially not in a storm like this. They could get vicious."

"I'll be all right," Klnn-dawan-a assured him. "I've been to the Ca Chagba farm several times—the whelps know me as well as they know any Zhirrzh. I don't think they'll bother me."

"They're not going to be able to smell you in this wind," the Elder objected. "It's too big a risk."

"It's not that big a risk," Klnn-dawan-a said firmly. "Regardless, I'm taking it. Oh, and tell Prr-eddsi he should send someone to alert the Ca Chagba family, too. There's a good chance they don't even know their whelps are missing. Go on, get going."

"I obey, Searcher," the Elder said reluctantly. "Don't go far; I'll have an escort for you in a beat."

He vanished. Moving out of the limited shelter of the hollow, Klnn-dawan-a slid the caller back into its survival-pack pouch and pulled out her stinger. The whelps might or might not bother her, but there were other dangers roaming the mountains out there. Keying the weapon on, feeling the reassuring vibration against her palm as its energy capacitor filled, she opened the gate in the predator fence and stepped outside.

"Searcher?" an Elder's voice called faintly in her ear. "We were told to come help you."

"All right," Klnn-dawan-a said, glancing around at the pale shapes. Good; Prr-eddsi had assigned three of them to her. That would help. "We're searching for missing Chigin whelps," she told them. "I want two of you to start quartering the area. Pay particular attention to gullies, the lee sides of rock formations, and other wind-protected areas. You"—she gestured to the third, a fairly recently raised Elder named Rka't-msotsi-a—"stay with me. Keep an eye out for predators."

The other two Elders acknowledged and vanished. "Where are we going?" Rka't-msotsi-a asked.

"We'll start at the creek," Klnn-dawan-a told her, taking a bearing on one of the houses and pointing ahead and to the left. "That section where the cut's particularly deep. Stay close."

She headed off, struggling to keep her balance in the wind, hoping that Prr-eddsi would be willing to send some of the other Zhirrzh to help in the search. Elders were fine as communicators, but as hunters or trackers—particularly at latearc—they left a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, chances were good that Prr-eddsi would do nothing but stay where he was. For all his genius with alien languages, the director was about as timid a Zhirrzh as Klnn-dawan-a had ever seen.

"Searcher?" Rka't-msotsi-a's voice called faintly in her ear. "I checked ahead, and I think I may have spotted them. There's something, anyway, in that cut you mentioned down by the creek."

"Good," Klnn-dawan-a said, passing over the fact that she'd given Rka't-msotsi-a explicit instructions to stay with her. "How many were there?"

"I'm sorry," Rka't-msotsi-a said, a tinge of bitterness and self-reproach in her voice. "I couldn't tell."

"That's all right," Klnn-dawan-a hastened to assure her. Rka't-msotsi-a had been raised to Eldership only a cyclic ago, the result of a drudokyi attack elsewhere on Gree, and she was still coming to grips with these new limitations that had been imposed on her. And of course she'd been only thirty-four cyclics old when it had happened, barely five cyclics older than Klnn-dawan-a. That had to make it even more difficult. "Let's go take a look."

They headed off, Klnn-dawan-a straining to keep both her lowlight and darklight pupils as wide-open as possible and to keep watch in all directions. Rka't-msotsi-a, she knew, had been mauled badly by the drudokyi before her injuries had raised her to Eldership, and Klnn-dawan-a had no desire to suffer through something like that herself. Perhaps the whole unpleasantness surrounding that event explained some of Director Prr-eddsi's timidness, too, especially regarding Gree's animal life. He'd been right there with Rka't-msotsi-a when it had happened....

Off to their right, something moved behind a rock formation. "Searcher!" Rka't-msotsi-a snapped. "There!"

"I've got it," Klnn-dawan-a said, her stinger tracking that direction. Something alive, all right, and certainly big enough to be a Chigin whelp. Trouble was, it could be any of a number of other things, too. Including a drudokyi. "Go get a closer look. See if you can tell what it is."

"I'll try," Rka't-msotsi-a said tightly. She flicked toward the rock, vanishing as she passed through it toward the creature behind. Klnn-dawan-a waited, holding her breath....

And then Rka't-msotsi-a was back. "It's a drudokyi," she hissed.

Klnn-dawan-a's tail twitched violently. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Rka't-msotsi-a said, her voice trembling. "I'm sure. It's a big one, too."

"All right, don't panic," Klnn-dawan-a said, glancing quickly around her. "At this time of latearc there's a fair chance it's already fed. Let's just ease away and head for the creek."

There was no answer. "Rka't-msotsi-a?"

But the Elder was gone. "Terrific," Klnn-dawan-a muttered, looking around again as she began carefully backing away. She could dispose of the animal over there, certainly; on full power the laser beam from her stinger would vaporize a slender line through hide and muscle and bone, the explosive expansion of the resulting gas creating a hydrostatic shock wave that would instantly incapacitate and then kill the creature. The problem was that, despite Rka't-msotsi-a's identification, Klnn-dawan-a herself wasn't totally convinced the skulking creature was indeed a drudokyi. If not—if it was instead one of the missing whelps—then killing it without provocation could easily wipe out the vanishingly small amount of goodwill the Zhirrzh study group had so painstakingly built up with the Chigin community here. Best if possible just to get out of its way.

She took another step back; and as she did so, the mass behind the rock shifted position a little. Klnn-dawan-a raised the stinger warningly....

"Left!" Rka't-msotsi-a's voice shrieked in her ear.

Klnn-dawan-a spun around. From out of nowhere a second darklight-glowing image had appeared, bearing down on her with the speed and power of a double-wide railcar.

Her thumbs jerked spasmodically against the stinger's triggers, sending a brilliant slash of laser fire cutting through the air as she tried desperately to swing the weapon around to bear on this new threat. The light blazed into her dilated lowlight and darklight pupils, stabbing agony into her eyes and head and plunging everything else around it into terrifying darkness. Desperately, she swung the stinger back and forth, not sure she was even aiming in the right direction, hearing the roar of the drudokyi over the wind, feeling the click as the stinger shifted to autokill mode, smelling the drudokyi and the exotic Gree air and her own fear—

The drudokyi slammed into her, knocking the stinger from her grip and driving her backward to the ground. She gasped in pain, the predator's weight and heat settling on top of her, crushing her against the cold rocks. Dimly, she felt herself slashing again and again into the thick hide with the edges of her tongue....

And then, quite suddenly, the weight was gone. Klnn-dawan-a opened her eyes—she hadn't realized until then that she'd closed them—to find a group of Zhirrzh crouching over her. "Are you all right?" Bkar-otpo asked anxiously, dropping to the ground beside her and taking her arm. "You're—Director Prr-eddsi, she's covered in blood!"

"It's all right," Klnn-dawan-a gasped, patting his hand reassuringly as she struggled to get air back into her body. "I'm all right. It's the drudokyi's blood, not mine."

"Are you sure?" Prr-eddsi asked from her other side.

"I'm sure," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I think it must have been dead before it even reached me."

"That may well be," Prr-eddsi rumbled. "It's still only by immensely good luck that you're not an Elder by now.

"I know," Klnn-dawan-a said, a shiver running through her as she took stock of herself. Her face and torso were sticky with warm drudokyi blood, a stickiness that was rapidly turning to ice in the cutting wind. Her head still throbbed with the aftereffects of those blinding laser flashes, her whole body ached from that fall to the ground, and her tongue tingled with fatigue and the acrid tastes of the drudokyi's hide and blood and her own poison.

But she hadn't been raised to Eldership, and her body was still whole. She had indeed had immensely good luck.

"I'm glad you agree," Prr-eddsi growled. "I trust the lesson will find a permanent home with you. You should never, ever, go out into a dangerous situation alone. If Rka't-msotsi-a hadn't alerted us when she had, that other drudokyi would most likely have gotten to you before we did."

So that was where Rka't-msotsi-a had disappeared to just before the attack. "Believe me, I won't do it again," Klnn-dawan-a said. "I was just worried about the missing whelps."

"The whelps would have stood a considerably better chance against a pair of drudokyis than you did," Prr-eddsi countered, a shade less gruffly. "Anyway, they're fine. They're down by the creek. We've alerted the Ca Chagba family—some of them have gone down to herd them back."

"Good." Klnn-dawan-a pushed herself up and onto her left side. Her tail, freed from where it had been pinned beneath her leg, decided it was going to hurt, too. "Then I presume the sampling is still on for this latearc."

"You can't be serious," Bkar-otpo objected, clutching at her arm again. "After what you've just been through—?"

"Do be quiet, Bkar-otpo," Prr-eddsi said, running a critical eye over Klnn-dawan-a. "Are you really going to feel up to that, Searcher?"

"I'm fine," Klnn-dawan-a said, getting all the way to her feet and peering up at the sky. The wind was still pretty fierce, but the edge of the storm was markedly closer than the last time she'd looked. "Besides, we're at a critical point in the ring transmutation. We can't afford to miss even a single sampling right now."

"All right," Prr-eddsi said. "If you're sure you can handle it. But you take the time first to get cleaned up. And I mean really cleaned up. You walk into a whelp enclosure smelling of drudokyi, and you won't get a chance to put this latearc's lesson into practice. Bkar-otpo, escort her back to the encampment. And then start getting the sampling equipment together."

The wind had died down to a bare whisper by the time Klnn-dawan-a eased open the gate of the enclosure surrounding the Za Mingchma farm. "Hello?" she called gently in the Chigin language as she and Bkar-otpo slipped inside. "Anyone home?"

"I don't see them," Bkar-otpo muttered nervously. "You suppose something's wrong?"

"I doubt it," Klnn-dawan-a said, looking around as her tail sped up with uncomfortable anticipation. She certainly hoped nothing was wrong, anyway. The drudokyi attack had taken more out of her than she'd realized, and all she really wanted to do right now was go back to her shelter and curl up in bed where she could ache in peace. The last thing she needed was a confrontation—any kind of confrontation—with a Chig.

"Then where are they?" Bkar-otpo demanded.

"They're probably just—there they are." Klnn-dawan-a pointed as the group of whelps came silently toward them around the side of the house. "They were just staying out of the wind," she added, bracing herself as she stepped forward and offered the back of her hand. Certainly the whelps had seen the two of them often enough; but as Bkar-otpo had pointed out earlier, the storm wouldn't have done their moods any good. If they got it into their limited minds that the family's grant of safe passage no longer applied to these particular intruders...

The lead whelp trotted up to Klnn-dawan-a and sniffed delicately at her outstretched hand, and for a beat he rumbled deep in his throat. Then, flattening his ears and nostrils back again, he trotted away.

Carefully, Klnn-dawan-a let out her breath. "See?" she said. "No problem. Come on."

The three chrysalises were fastened to the south side of the farmhouse, huge tangled masses of silky threads spun by the whelps that were now secreted within them—whelps in the process of metamorphosing from mindless animals that guarded the farm into the full sentience of adult Chig.

"Gives me the creeps every time I think about it," Bkar-otpo muttered as Klnn-dawan-a knelt down beside the first chrysalis and opened her sampling kit.

"I don't see why it should," Klnn-dawan-a replied, selecting a probe and a tissue sampler. Using the probe to pull away some of the silk, she eased the slender needle of the sampler into the chrysalis mass. "In some ways it's parallel to our own transition from physical to Elder."

"Maybe that's what bothers me about it," Bkar-otpo said, producing a probe of his own and pulling some of the chrysalis silk back out of Klnn-dawan-a's way. "The parallels with the way the Chig treat their whelps."

Klnn-dawan-a flicked her tongue in a negative. "Now you've lost me."

"Well, just think about it a hunbeat," Bkar-otpo said. "The Chig treat their whelps like animals—"

"They are animals."

"You know what I mean. They could at least keep them in a storage outbuilding or something instead of leaving them unprotected in the open like this. You know how many of them die from exposure and predator attack before they even reach metamorphosis stage?"

"A fair number," Klnn-dawan-a conceded.

"A fair number? You call seventy percent a fair-number? And that's up here. I hear the death rate's even higher in the cities, where the whelps from different families are always fighting with each other."

"These are Chig, Bkar-otpo," Klnn-dawan-a reminded him. The tip of the sampler needle touched something solid: the whelp body sleeping within. Carefully, trying not to move the tip, she touched the button on the end, feeling the slight vibration as the tiny suction driver inside the device began the task of drawing fluids and soft tissue into the sampler's collection tube. "You can't judge aliens by Zhirrzh ethical standards."

"Maybe not," Bkar-otpo growled. "But we can certainly judge Zhirrzh by Zhirrzh standards. And I sometimes think the Elders use us physicals the same way the Chig adults use their whelps."

Klnn-dawan-a threw him a frown. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Bkar-otpo sighed. "I don't know," he said. "All I know is that we seem always to be giving up stuff for the Elders. I guess I shouldn't have said anything."

"No, I don't think you should have," Klnn-dawan-a agreed shortly. "And before you start talking such nonsense again, I suggest you think about all the ways the Elders contribute to Zhirrzh society. From interstellar communications all the way down to saving me from those drudokyis a tentharc ago."

"Yes, Searcher," Bkar-otpo muttered. "I will." The sampler stopped vibrating, indicating that the tube had been filled to its designated level. Carefully, Klnn-dawan-a eased it out of the chrysalis, wondering what all that had been about. But it was probably nothing. Bkar-otpo was only nineteen, after all, and youth was always rebelling against something. This was probably nothing more than that.