Arriving approximately at the humans’ level, and shielded by green fans from their sight, he extended his natural ears and listened to their ongoing conversation. He understood only the vaguest fragments of spoken Interworld but soon realized the humans were talking about the Thrintun and their long-ago time. He picked up the word for “master.”
Nyawk-Captain was preparing himself for the forward rush that would put an end to these human thieves and intruders on his mission-when he suddenly froze. Through a gap in the greenery he saw one of them pointing a wandlike object at him. And he could not move!
The human diddled its fingers, and Nyawk-Captain felt his paws twitch, his leg kick, his tail go stiff. Either the humans had recently developed a psychokinetic power unknown to the Patriarchy, or this was a display of power from the Thrintun artifacts they had discovered in the box. Experience and common sense suggested the latter.
As the device worked his body over, Nyawk-Captain could also feel his attitude toward the human holding it begin to change, becoming mellow and accepting. Nyawk-Captain hated that! After a few seconds, the human stopped diddling the keys of the device and turned away.
Nyawk-Captain was himself again.
Without the traditional challenging scream, he leaped through the wall of leaves and slashed left and right One of the humans went down under his blows, flagging bloody strings of tissue. Nyawk-Captain paused only to shake fragments of meat and fabric off his paws.
The human holding the Thrintun device dropped it and rolled to one side. The artifact skittered through the leaves, up-ended, and dropped. The human reached for it.
Realizing its immediate value, Nyawk-Captain dove after it, pushing that human away with a forehand swipe that snagged cloth and skin. He fought his way down through twigs and vines, into the lower levels of the canopy.
Too late!
He could see the wand falling, spinning, finally striking the brittle soil of the forest floor.
Whatever the device might be, Nyawk-Captain’s instincts told him that by retrieving it he would preserve his honor and buy his way back into Admiral Lehruff’s good graces. He leapt for a nearby trunk and raced down it headfirst, moving just slower than terminal velocity. Nyawk-Captain did a diving roll across the ground and gathered up the fallen prize.
He paused only to stash it with his powered armor and then headed back up the tree to finish off the remaining humans.
Hugh Jook was messily dead, scattered in four pieces across the center of their clearing. Several meters away, Sally Krater crouched in fetal position with her hands locked around a tree limb. Fellah had disappeared.
The attack had broken Cuiller’s left arm, that much he could tell from its angle, although the onset of shock had spared him much pain yet. He also felt blood oozing from four puncture wounds in his upper chest. Possibly some cracked ribs, too.
Cuiller lifted himself and approached Krater slowly, not wanting to frighten her more. He spoke gently and touched her head, massaging her temples with his good hand.
“Lieutenant? Sally? Are you hurt?”
No response.
He began moving his palm in wide circles across the nape of her neck and shoulders.
“Sally. It’s all right. Time to wake up.”
“N-no-oh,” she moaned.
“Time to move, Sal.”
“It’ll come back!”
“No, no. The cat’s all gone. Come on now, wake up.” Cuiller reached for her hands, still clenched around the limb, and pulled on them gently. Reason began to return to her eyes. She straightened. Her fingers slipped loose. The hands fell inertly into her lap.
He lifted them with his good hand, and worked his stiff arm gently around her shoulders. He pressed it against her as much as he could without grating the ends of broken bone.
Sally slid close to him and nestled her face against his uniform collar. Her hands crept up, around his shoulders, locking behind his neck. Cuiller rubbed her back in slow, smooth circles, puffing her closer.
Sally’s mouth lifted. Her lips first touched the corner of his jaw, then moved south to find his own.
He kissed her for the first time, for a long time. Then the world began to catch up with them, and Cuiller pulled back just enough to look into her face.
“Hello,” he said, smiling.
“What happened?” She seemed newly awakened, disoriented, lost.
“We had a visitor. Kzinti kind. Are you hurt at all?”
“I-I don’t think so. You?”
“Some. Not a lot of pain yet.”
“Where’s Hugh?”
Cuiller glanced over his shoulder. “The kzin got him… He seems to be dead.”
Krater roused. “Seems to be…? Maybe I can-”
He pulled her back down and locked eyes with her. “You can’t, Sally.”
She sagged, leaning against his good arm. He caressed her once more.
“Come on,” he said. “We can’t stay here. That kzin may come again.”
“Wherecanwego?” “Anywhere away from here. Back toward the ship. I don’t know.”
“Can you use the harness?”
“Not with this arm.”
Careful not to look directly at Jook’s remains, she began to feel for his pack and gather their scattered possessions and laser weapons.
“Then we’ll have to make slow time,” she said.
The two ofthem moved off quietly. Cuiller remembered to keep a hand over his chest wounds so as not to leave blood spoor.
The Elders of Pruntaquila, those inventors of language and studied readers of emotion, believed that bang is the process of becoming.
“And if I do not stay outof that orange monster’s reach,” Fellah muttered inhimself “then I willbecomelunth.”
He crept under and through the varied leaf layers, hiding after the kzin’s brutal attack. He spent a few solemn moments studying the remaining humans as they crouched in place, wasting time. Then he moved on, toward a place of greater distance and safety. And as he moved, Fellah considered all that the humans had been saying.
Clearly they did believe themselves the inheritors of the Thrintun Masters. In their own inverted language, this Interworid, they were both givers and receivers of Discipline. Their talk hinted at complex relationships and exchanges of Power in patterns that even a Balladeer had never contemplated. And yet they were not alone in their desire for control. That kzin had thought of himself as “free,” too.
Much had occurred in the “long, long time” since Guerdoth had packed Fellah away in the time-bending case. And that implied other things… If the Thrintun were all dead and these new creatures risen unpredictably in their place during these three-times-five unimaginable spans of time, then so were the Prunraquila gone from this universe.
“I will have no mate,” Fellah said aloud, mournfully, in his native tongue. “I will leave none of my line. Nor any student. And I will make no mark on the future.” It was a dismal thought. For a brief span, Fellah considered offering himself up to the kzin’s claws.
Then something else occurred to him.
All his life he had known the straitjacket bindings of Thrintun Power and had endured the frivolous whims to which the Masters were prone. But in the few hours he had spent among these humans, even when they were threatened by the terrible kzin, he had felt uncertainty and… excitement! Fellah saw now that the iron course of Discipline, even when it was shaped as commands to love and respect, had been like a heavy weight on his mind.
