Cobra Strike

  Reaching to his neck, he covered the pendant's translator mike. "I've got it," he murmured. "The Sollas street paintings make the place look sort of like a clump of forest-same colors and everything. Keeps the bololins from shying away."

  There was a long enough pause that he began to wonder if no one on the Dewdrop was monitoring the circuit. Then Nnamdi's voice came in over the earphone.

  "Interesting. Weird, but entirely possible. Depends partly on how good the bololins' eyesight is, I suppose. Governor Telek's still asleep, but I'll suggest this to her when she wakes up, see if she got any data on that last night."

  "Fine," Joshua said, "but in the meantime can you find any sociological rationale for wanting those herds to come trampling through Sollas?"

  "That does put into doubt Moff's assertion that they simply can't keep the bololins out, doesn't it?" Nnamdi agreed thoughtfully. "I'll work on it, but nothing comes immediately to mind. Wait a second-face left a bit, will you?"

  Joshua obediently turned his head a few degrees in the requested direction.

  "What is it?"

  "That red-bordered sign near the gate-haven't seen anything like it anywhere in

  Sollas. Let me get the visual translator going...."

  Joshua held his head steady for a moment to give the tape a good image, then turned back to face the others.

  "Okay," Nnamdi said after a moment. "It says, 'Krisjaw hunts this month: the 8th and 22nd at 1O'." Today's the eighth, I think, if the numbers we've seen elsewhere are accurate. Wonder why they bother to post a sign with the other comm lines they have."

  "Maybe a village this small doesn't have the same wiring as Sollas does," Joshua suggested. It looked at like Cerenkov and the Qasamans had about finished the preliminaries; Mayor Ingliss was gesturing toward the an open car of the sort they'd used in Sollas all week. "I'll try to find out," he added and let his hand fall to his side.

  Its mike open again, the translator came back online. "-will be able to visit the farming areas later," Ingliss was saying. "At the moment many of the workers are out hunting, so there would be little to see."

  "Is that the krisjaw hunt?" Joshua spoke up.

  Ingliss focused on him. "Yes, of course. Only krisjaws and bololins are worthy of mass hunts, and you would have heard a warning siren if a bololin herd were approaching."

  "Yes, Moff has mentioned krisjaws once or twice," Cerenkov said. "I get the impression they're dangerous, but we don't know anything more."

  "Dangerous?" Ingliss barked a laugh. "Immensely so. Two meters or more in length, half that from paws to shoulder, with wavy teeth that can shred a man in seconds. Savage hunters, they threaten both our people and our livestock."

  "Sounds a little like our spine leopards," Rynstadt commented grimly. "Native

  Aventinian predators that we've been fighting ever since we landed."

  "It wasn't always that way here," Ingliss said, shaking his head. "The old legends say that krisjaws used to be relatively peaceful, avoiding our first settlements and willing to share the bololin herds with us. It was only later, perhaps as they realized we intended to stay, that they began to turn on us."

  "Or as they found out humans were good to eat," York suggested. "Did this happen all at once or gradually?"

  Ingliss exchanged glances with Moff, who shrugged. "I don't know," the latter said. "Records of those early years are spotty-the malfunction that stranded us here ruined much of our electronic recording equipment, and interim historical records did not always survive."

  Nnamdi's voice clicked in on the circuit. "Pursue this point, Yuri; everyone," he said. "If the krisjaws are really showing signs of intelligence we need to know that."

  "The reason I asked," Cerenkov said, "was that if they really did 'realize' you were settling here, they might be a sentient species."

  "Our own biologists have studied that question," Moff said, "and they think that unlikely."

  "They don't show any great ability to learn, for example," Ingliss offered. "All the villages-and some of the cities, too-hold periodic hunts in which often as many as fifty villagers and visitors participate. Yet the krisjaws haven't learned to stay away from civilized areas."

  The light dawned. "Ah-so that's why you post a krisjaw hunt notice by the gate,"

  Joshua said. "So anyone passing through will know about it, as well as just the local population."

  Ingliss nodded. "Yes. It's an opportunity to practice the human predator's own hunting skill, and all who wish to come are welcome. Krisjaw hides are also very prestigious, and many people find the meat superior to that of bololins. If you'd arrived an hour sooner-but, no, you haven't got mojos, of course. Nor weapons, I see."

  "Sounds like you should be close to wiping the things out by now," York grunted.

  "Actually, we are," Ingliss nodded, "at least in the inhabited regions of

  Qasama. I speak of them as dangerous and numerous, but in fact a 50-man hunting group is fortunate to return with one or two trophies. In the days when Huriseem was first built a man could stand atop the wall and shoot one each hour."

  "You're lucky any of you survived," York said.

  Ingliss shrugged, a more deliberate gesture than the Aventinian version. "As I said, we were fairly well established before they began threatening us in earnest. And by then our adoption of the mojos as bodyguards was also well underway. Ironically enough, that program was stimulated in large part by concerns over the krisjaws."

  "But that's enough about ancient history," Moff put in. "We have a limited amount of time; if you wish to observe the village we'll need to begin at once."

  For just a second Joshua thought he saw something odd in Moff's face. But then the Qasaman had turned away toward the open car pulled up behind Ingliss and his companions, and Joshua decided he'd imagined the whole thing.

  Looking around curiously, he followed the others to the car.

  It had been literally decades since Telek had pulled the kind of all-night lab work she'd done the previous night-and never had she done it via the waldoes of a remote analyzer. Clumping into the Dewdrop's lounge around noon, she felt like a good computer simulation of death. "What's happening?" she asked Nnamdi, heading immediately for the cahve dispenser in the corner.

  "What're you doing here?" he frowned up from the displays at her. "You're supposed to be in bed doing some REMs."

  "I'm supposed to be running a mission," she growled back, bringing her steaming mug over and dropping into the seat beside his. "I can sleep next year. Bil still down?"

  "Yes. Left a call with the bridge for four o'clock."

  And Christopher had done little except watch and make occasional suggestions.

  Amazing how tiring it can be to kibitz, she thought acidly, then put him from her mind. "Is this the village Moff promised us?"

  "Yes; Huriseem. The stately fellow screen left is Ingliss, the mayor. This seems to be their version of the marketplace we saw in Sollas. Minus the bololins."

  "Then the place is walled?"

  "Solidly. And Joshua brought up an interesting point about Sollas's wild color scheme a while ago."

  Telek listened with half an ear as Nnamdi described Joshua's idea about the cities seeming like clumps of forest to the bololins, the remainder of her attention on the scent and taste of her cahve and on the organized chaos on the displays. With the smaller marketplace of the village, she realized for the first time that services as well as goods were on display. One booth seemed to be manned by a builder, with wood and brick samples on a back table and what looked like a floor plan on a computer display screen set on the front counter.

  So why don't they do the whole thing via computer? she wondered. They like the personal contact? Could be.

  Nnamdi finished his recitation and she shrugged. "Could very well be. I'll check later and see if the computer can make an estimate of the bololins visual resolution. Sure seems stupid to help the bololins stampede your city, though."

  "That's almost exactly
what Joshua said," Nnamdi nodded. "Could there be something we're missing here? About the bololins and people, I mean?"

  "I don't think we've got the whole society figured out after a week here, no," she said dryly. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

  "Well..." He waved a hand vaguely. "I don't know. Some symbiotic relationship, like the people have with the mojos."

  "I'd call the mojos more pets than symbionts, myself, but given the bololin-tarbine arrangement the point is well taken." Telek frowned into space, trying to remember all the forms of symbiosis that existed on the Worlds. "About the only possibility I can think of is that banging away at the bololins helps drain off the city-dwellers' aggressions. Keeps them peaceful."

  "Oh, their aggressions aren't drained off, just rerouted," Nnamdi snorted, gesturing toward the display. "You missed the bargaining session at a jewelry store half a block back. These guys would put Troft businessmen to shame."

  "Hmm. Probably a logical avenue to channel it into, given the mojo ban on fighting. That and politics, maybe...."

  She trailed off. "Something wrong?" Nnamdi asked.

  "I'm not sure," she said, picking up the mike. "Joshua, do a slow three-sixty, would you?"

  The scenery shifted as Joshua complied, pausing occasionally as he pretended to look at some booth or other... and by the time he'd completed his circle Telek's odd feeling had become a cold certainty. "Moff is missing," she told Nnamdi quietly.

  "What?" He frowned, hunching his chair closer to the display as if that would do him any good. "Come on, now-Moff doesn't even go to the bathroom unless the contact team's off in some corner where they won't get into anything."

  "I know. Yuri; everyone-Moff's gone. Anyone know where he went or notice him leave?"

  There was a short pause. Then, at the edge of the display, Telek saw Cerenkov raise a hand to his pendant. "I hadn't even noticed, Governor," he said.

  "There're so many people around us here-"

  "Which may be precisely why he picked this place," Telek cut him off with a grunt. "Has he said or done anything unusual this morning? Anyone?"

  There were four quick negatives. "All right. Everyone keep an eye out for him, without being too conspicuous about it, and try to notice his expression when he shows up."

  She turned off the mike and sat glaring for a moment at the noisy market scene.

  "What do you think it means?" Nnamdi broke into her thoughts.

  "Maybe nothing. I hope nothing. But I think I'm going to replay this morning's tapes, see if I can spot anything in Moff's behavior myself. Keep an eye on things; let me know if anything happens." Picking up her cahve, she stepped to an unused display in the corner and keyed for the proper records.

  "Should we alert Almo and the bridge?" Nnamdi asked.

  "The bridge, yes-but don't make too big a deal of it." She hesitated. "And

  Almo... no, let's not bother him yet. There'll be plenty of time to talk to him when we've figured out what if anything is going on."

  "Right."

  Telek turned to her display. The semidarkness there was interrupted by a flickering light, the Qasamans' version of a wake-up alarm. Shifting one way and then the other, the picture changed as Joshua rolled over and then sat up. "Rise and glow, Marck," he said to Rynstadt in the other bed. "Busy day coming up."

  "So what's new about that?" the other returned in a sleepy voice.

  Groping blindly for her cahve mug, Telek settled down to watch.

  Chapter 14

  The blue skies of Tacta were just a shade redder than those of Chata and Fuson had been, Jonny thought idly as he paused from his contemplation of the bush forest that edged to within fifteen meters of the Menssana's perimeter. More dust in the upper atmosphere, the experts had decided, probably spewed there by the dozens of active volcanos their pre-landing analysis had located. A potentially dangerous place to live, though that could probably be minimized by judicious choice of homestead. The weather and climate could be subject to rapid change, though, regardless of where one settled. All in all, he decided, a distinct fourth on their five-planet survey.

  Or in other words, Junca would be keeping its dead-last spot.

  Returning his gaze to the bushes, he found a large bird sitting on one of the thicker branches looking back at him.

  His first thought was disbelief that neither his enhanced vision nor hearing had detected its approach; but hard on the heels of that came the realization that the bird had probably been sitting there quietly for as long as Jonny had been standing there, its protective coloring and motionlessness serving to hide it.

  "You're in luck," Jonny murmured in its direction. "I'm not in charge of collecting fauna samples."

  A footstep behind him made him turn. It was Chrys, a vaguely sour look on her face. "Feel like being a politician again?" she asked without preamble.

  Jonny flicked a look past her at the bustling activity in the protected area between them and the ship. "What's up?" he asked, focusing on her again.

  She waved a hand in disgust. "The same fight they've been having since we hot-tailed it off Junca. The scientists want to take the time we didn't use there to go back for an additional look at Kubha or Fuson."

  "And Shepherd wants to just drop the two days we saved out of the schedule and head back home as soon as we're done here," Jonny finished for her with an exasperated sigh. He was roundly sick of the whole issue, especially when

  Shepherd's first refusal should have settled things long ago. "So what do you want me to do?"

  "I don't want you to do anything," she returned. "But Rey seems to think you might be able to inject a few well-chosen words into the debate."

  Put another way, Banyon wanted him to thunder the scientists back into their labs. Jonny had no doubts which side of the issue the Cobras supported-having been saddled with both the defense of the expedition and its hardest work, they were quite ready to head home as soon as possible. The four who were still in sickbay with injuries from the mad scramble off Junca probably held triple batches of that opinion.

  And it would certainly be the easiest way to settle the debate. Jonny Moreau the

  Cobra, Governor Emeritus, had more physical and legal authority than anyone else aboard, including Shepherd himself. He was opening his mouth to give in when he took a good look at Chrys's expression.

  It was angry. She was trying to hide the emotion, but Jonny knew her too well to be fooled. The tension lines around her eyes, the slight pinch to her mouth, the tight muscles in cheeks and neck-anger, for sure. Anger and a smattering of frustration.

  It was the same expression he'd seen on her far too often these past few years.

  And with that sudden connection came the truly proper response to the Menssana's intramural squabbles. "Well, Key and the others can just forget it," he told her. "If Shepherd's too polite to chew the scientists' ears off he can just put up with their yammering. I'm on vacation out here."

  Chrys's eyes widened momentarily; but even as a faint smile flickered across her lips the tension was leaving her face and body. "I'll quote you exactly," he said.

  "Do that. But first take a look here," he added as she started to turn back toward the encampment. "It looks like we're starting to attract the local sightseers."

  The bird was indeed still sitting quietly on its branch. "Odd," Chrys said, studying it through a pair of folding binoculars. "That beak looks more suited to a predator than to a seed or insect eater. The feet, too."

  Jonny bumped his optical enhancers up a notch. They did rather look like condorine talons, now that she mentioned it. "What's odd about it? We've catalogued birds and rodentoids here small enough for it to prey on."

  "I know... but why is it just sitting there? Why isn't it out hunting or something?"

  Jonny frowned. Sitting motionlessly amid the low bushes... as if afraid of losing what little cover its position provided. "Maybe it's hurt," he suggested slowly. "Or hiding from a larger predator."

  They looked a
t each other, and he saw in her eyes that she was following the same train of logic and reaching the same conclusion. And liking it no better than he did. "Like... us?" she eventually voiced the common thought.

  "I don't see anything else it could be afraid of," he admitted, giving the sky a quick sweep.

  "A ground animal-? No. Anything the size of a cat could get it in those low bushes." Chrys's eyes shifted to the bird. "But... how could it know-?"