Acorna and her friends, except for the boy, who was gathering up his small family, trailed behind the locals.
Jungle people with spears surrounded three priests in Hissimi garb sitting in a wagon like the ones Captain MacDonald was using. The wagon was loaded with bundles.
"Ungrateful savages," one of the priests muttered. "We bring them emergency food and medical relief and they treat us like enemies."
"We are enemies, holy brother, strictly speaking," the youngest of the three priests said in an undertone.
"Not right at this moment," whispered the third. Then, showing his teeth to the a.s.sembly, he announced in a loud voice, "We are friends. We come in peace from the Mulzar of Hissim. He sends lovely gifts. Food, medicine."
"Why should we need medicine?" the High Priestess said.
"There"s a terrible plague on our planet that has decimated the ranks of our own Temple cats," the man explained.
Haji, Pash, and Sher-Paw strolled forward and faced the three, their tails jerking angrily.
"By their tails!" cried the eldest.
"And their whiskers!" cried the second.
"It"s our own Temple guardians. What are they doing here? We heard of no raid. How did you capture them?"
"We didn"t," the priestess said. "They came here with these people who were seeking refuge from the murderous Mulzar of Hissim." Seeing the priests" confusion, Miw-Sher stepped forward and translated the words for the benefit of the Mulzar"s men.
"Miw-Sher! What are you doing here? You traitor!"
The high priestess stalked forward, her tail switching, her yellow-green eyes slitted and her ears laid back into her golden-brown hair/fur.
The three priests fell silent, fear apparent in their eyes.
The priestess snarled at them. The big cats moved closer and closer to the Mulzar"s men.
"Well, now," Becker said, stepping back from the wagon and pulling Acorna with him, "we can see you"re busy with your new visitors-the ones we were telling you about, ma"am. I can see you have things under control. So we"ll just be going now."
No one said a word as he and Acorna, folio-wed after a moment of indecision by Miw-Sher and RK, returned to the flitter. The three male guardians of the Hissim Temple followed behind them, and a moment afterwards, Grimla zoomed out the door and hopped in the flitter, too. The boy they"d brought home followed close behind Grimla, carrying the basket of kittens, which he set inside the flitter. Then he retreated a short distance away, standing with his family and waving good-bye.
The flitter rose above the trees and flew away from the jungle.
Nadhari had not gone far before the wagon driven by the women caught up with her. She figured she had two choices at that moment. She could either walk back to Hissim and possibly be discovered along the way by Edu"s guards searching the roads for unusual travelers, or she could blend in with these women on the road, save herself some steps, and possibly wan herself some allies.
She chose the second alternative and flagged the travelers down.
"Who are you?" demanded one, but another woman caught at her sleeve.
"It"s Lady Nadhari!"
"Yes," Nadhari agreed, "that"s me."
"What are you doing out here?"
"I had to get my friends safely out of Hissim. I have done so, but I still have unfinished business with my cousin. I was hoping you could take me back to the city with you."
"You"d best ride up top, then."
"Thanks. I will, just for a little while. I think it might complicate your lives if I accompanied you all the way back. I"ll make my own way once we"re closer to Hissim."
"You"re cutting it close if you want to find the Mulzar. I have heard it said that the Mulzar is about to leave the city with the Fed"ration man."
"I wonder why," Nadhari said, though she had some idea of what might be driving him.
"Don"t know, Lady, but I"m sure he"s leaving soon. Maybe he"s going after the cats."
"Hah! Him?" said a younger woman. "He don"t care for cats. He"s got no use for creatures got more"n two legs. Him, he likes that machinery like they got at the Fed"ration post."
The woman shot an a.s.sessing glance at Nadhari that was, in the darkness, visible only as a gleam from the whites of her eyes. If she expected Nadhari to defend her cousin the Mulzar, she could relax, Nadhari thought. Edu was far worse than the woman thought he was. Nadhari knew from long experience that the only living creature Edu had ever cared about, two-legged or otherwise, was himself.
After that exchange, they rode in silence.
The little cavalcade halted once they reached the holding of the oldest woman in the outskirts of the city. None of them could pa.s.s through the gates into the middle of town until morning, so Nadhari took the time to demonstrate how to use the Metleiter boxes to her interested audience. She only hoped she remembered all of Scar MacDonald"s instructions on how to get the boxes up and running correctly.
Then all the women but her hostesses-the youngest and the oldest of the ladies, a grandmother and her granddaughter - packed up their goods and their boxes and departed for their own homes. When the time came to seek a night"s rest, Nadhari was perfectly willing to sleep in her new friends" stable. It was empty now because its former occupants had been slaughtered, victims of the recent plague, but the old woman and her granddaughter wouldn"t hear of letting Nadhari bunk down there. Instead, they made a pallet for her on the floor near the cooking fire. They tried to insist that Nadhari take their bed, but she declined, saying that she needed to be able to flee quickly if necessary without involving them.
Which brought up the point of how Nadhari was going to get into the city in the morning. At the urging of her hostesses, she abandoned her plan to climb the walls of the city and wing it from there. After some discussion, the ladies convinced Nadhari to borrow a gown from them so that she might pa.s.s though the main gate into Hissim without attracting undue attention.
Once settled onto a p.r.i.c.kly pile of dry gra.s.s gathered into a loose sack, Nadhari fell deeply asleep, a skill she had learned in her years as a fighter. She knew she would rouse at the lightest footfall, ready to fight or run if the need arose. But this night, at least, pa.s.sed peacefully.
The next morning the farm women dressed her in one of the grandmother"s ragged spare gowns. They all piled into the wagon together and drove it back to the city"s main gates. There the old woman regaled the guard with a tale of finding the vehicle, clearly the Temple"s property, abandoned and empty on the desert"s edge. As good citizens, she told him, they were returning it, and she was sure that the guard would reward them richly for their good deed.
That did the trick. The soldier confiscated the wagon, chided them for interfering in civic matters they did not understand, and sent the women away as fast as he could-empty-handed, of course.
By the time her friends had finished loudly arguing about the injustice of the guard"s behavior, attracting the attention of every person within earshot, Nadhari had quietly made her way to the wall enclosing the Federation outpost.
The post was not large, as such places went, but it covered maybe five square miles, all of it walled, rather than fenced. She doubted electronics or surveillance equipment played a part in protecting this section. It seemed to depend on height and a guard who patrolled at intervals Nadhari timed by mentally counting hippopotamuses. She made her way through town to the end of the wall farthest from dwellings and from the post gate. The guard wasn"t due to return for twenty minutes or so.
Though she had never been privileged to change into a cat, as Tagoth could, the perimeter wall provided no great challenge. She was over it and on the ground well before the guard was due to return. At that point, she thought she might ambush him or her and take the uniform. With that she would return to the Condor and send a message to some friends of hers in high places in the Federation. They might be interested in a few of the family stories she had to relate about the Mulzar and how he"d found a soulmate in the current post commander. If they were not interested, she was pretty sure she could persuade Hafiz to mount an investigation. Meanwhile, she would slip back over the wall and foment revolution and dissent, not necessarily in that order.
From the shadows where she lurked, quite at home, she saw a lone Federation officer approach an apparently disabled flitter. The flitter lay abandoned in the field between the wall and where the Condor and the Traveler were docked. The large s.p.a.cegoing vessels blocked the small local transport craft from the view of the Federation headquarters building. So no one would see her take out the officer and relocate, in military parlance, his or her uniform to her own person.
Unfortunately she had lacked worthy opponents since she"d taken the cushy job with Hafiz. Her reflexes and defensive instincts were not what they once had been. She circled around behind the officer and grabbed him as he bent toward the flitter.
But just then she was distracted by the Condor"s robolift cranking and shuddering toward the ground. She looked toward it for just a moment, thinking somebody ought to oil that thing. And that, of course, was when someone attacked her from behind. No low-tech scruples for this a.s.sailant, she thought as she crumpled to the ground with the force of the stun waves from the gun. It was her last thought for some time.
9.
"For a horse-and-buggy civilization, these guys make tracks," Becker said, sounding worried. "This is starting to look ugly. I m guessing the welcome wagons with the poison goodies are Edu"s advance guard. Soften "em up with the disease and then send in the regular troops to finish them off or at least subdue them. Maybe we should have left both of the kids with the cat queen, rather than just one. The Mulzar won"t know for quite a while that his trick didn"t work at the jungle temple."
Acorna didn"t translate verbally this time. She just transferred Becker"s ideas into Miw-Sher"s head.
"You can"t leave me behind," Miw-Sher protested, without even questioning how she understood Becker"s words. "You need me to show you where to go - or at least dart of where to go. We need to find my uncle Tagoth. We need his help. We"ve got to get to the Aridimi Stronghold before the Mulzar"s men do. It is really hard to find. Or at least that"s what Tagoth says, but he knows how to get to it. He"s been there before."