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Edges became sharp against the billowing, blowing trees. Windows and door-frames, outlined by the
glowing edges of their filter fields, floated in the dawn like massive eyes and mouths, just waking and
waiting for breakfast. Day was upon them in a shroud of rain and shadow.
Tsia no longer worried that Ruka might be seen. The brush was so thick that not even a darkeye could
pierce it. She did not bother to look for his shape; her gate was as open as she could make it, and he
was as much a part of her as the rain that soaked her skin. She hunted now, and the cougar knew it. He
could taste her determination through the gate, and his fe-line mind was eager for the taste of blood and
flesh.
When they reached the road that led to the freepick area, Tsia paused to locate the gray-green metaplas
stake that marked the freepick boundary. She and Kurvan opened its top to expose the com panel of its
beacon, but only its manual links were active. She waited while he triggered the manual com and notified
the freepicks that they were on the way in. After a minute, he finished up and closed the marker beacon.
Tsia gave him a speculative look as they made their way down the road: he had said nothing about them
being on foot.
He shrugged coldly when she asked about it. "I don't give out what doesn't need to be known. Especially
to guides."
Her lips tightened. She turned her back on his expression, and let Ruka watch him instead.
When they came to the edge of the tarmac where the road widened, Tsia paused, and the other meres
gathered in a ragged line. Nitpicker touched her arm. Anything? the woman finned.
Tsia returned a negative pressure.
They waited in silence while Tsia eyed the rain-gray surface. Up close, the tarmac was not completely
smooth, as if it was so old that the earth had moved beneath it or it had not been flattened to begin with.
The chemical and bacteria vats, when she looked closely, showed cracks at their seams and meld marks
on their support legs. On the other side of the tarmac, the hub itself was a dingy gray a thick, uneven
primer color, not a deliberate hue. Even that shade could not hide the fact that, although the freepick
stake was new, the pitting and scor-ing along a quarter of the prefab panels spoke of decades of use.
Freepicks never wasted credit on construction details.
Anything on your scanner? she finned on Bowdie's arm.
His fingers pressed back his negative.
She did not move forward. Her skin prickled, as if a hunter crouched close by, but she could see no sign
of weapon or even freepick waiting there to meet them. On her other side, Nitpicker shifted, and she
felt the hard line of the pilot's flexor press against her arm. She could smell the scent of the other woman
on the weapon. Unobtrusively, she took it, then subtly she removed the custom wrap on her own hilt and
slipped it over the other. Quietly, she passed her broken weapon back to Nitpicker's hands.
She eyed the tarmac again. She could feel the eagerness of someone's pulse. When she went first out on
the tarmac, to-ward the main hub of the stake, her heart was beating quickly, and her breath was short
and shallow.
She did not go swiftly or directly across. Instead, she paused and turned and darted a few steps this way,
then that. She ig-nored the massive vats to the right; she gave only a bare glance to the open pit to the
left. As if she were an animal, sniffing and testing the clearing, she advanced in hesitant spurts. She
breathed shallowly to take in the scents, but it was Ruka's nose that interpreted the odors she sent to him
through her gate. The hub the main complex in which the freepicks worked with its doorway faint and
blue-glowing in the dark, beckoned like a hand, and Ruka knew she would enter. He snarled low in her
gate.
Wait, she returned in her mind. Stay hidden. And wait.
She did not touch the hut as she edged toward the filter-field door. Scanners were triggered by
proximity, but as long as she didn't touch the actual sensors, the bioshield in her blunter would project the
scan signals for her heartbeat and body heat as that of a simple biological, not that of a human. She
smiled faintly. With Ruka helping to guide her, her actions were ani-mal enough to convince even the
most discerning nodie that it was a beast who advanced, not a mere.
She took the flexor from her belt. Keeping it at her side, she tapped the access on the door panel so that
her arrival was an-nounced. The door field cleared automatically to transparency, and she could see that,
although the door was open, the foyer inside was empty; the three hallways that led out of the
en-tranceway were dim. That was not unusual, she told herself. Even a grounded stake didn't waste
power. She spared the halls only a glance before she stepped inside. But she forgot to close down her
biogate as she stepped through the door, and the tingling sense of the filter field made Ruka jump in the
brush. Tsia jerked with his reaction, then flushed in the warmth of the foyer.
Idiot, she snapped at herself.
She paused inside, and behind her, the door opaqued again. She waited, her fingers loose and relaxed on
the weapon, and her eyes and ears alert. But only a single freepick appeared, with a thickset body and a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]