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a rough cave. Tsia started to duck under the boulder, but Bowdie eyed her strangely. He seemed to see
right through her to the ghosts that lay in her past. For a moment, all she could do was stare back. Then
she shivered and pushed her way by him.
Wren paused outside and dug in his pocket for a sealed packet of seeds. He spilled some into Bowdie's
large hands and popped a few in his own thin-lipped mouth. He spoke to the other mere in a low voice,
and Tsia could not hear him. She wrinkled her nose and wrapped her arms more tightly around her body.
Wren knew she hated that odor; he could have stood downwind.
The inside of the hollowed area was wider than it appeared. Striker, who was seated on a crumbled
protrusion, moved over to make room for Tsia, but neither woman stretched out her legs. Instead, they
huddled for warmth. Striker's thick braid still dripped water, which ran down her back in a skinny,
twisted stream. On the far side of the cave, Nitpicker leaned against the rough wall with Doetzier and
Kurvan beside her. Her trousers and the lower end of her shirt were torn with a dozen small holes. Her
shoulders were bowed, as if she were in pain, but Tsia could almost smell something stronger through the
heightened senses of her biogate; and what she smelled was fear.
Tsia watched Nitpicker closely. Wariness she had felt before, and even fear in the pilot when the dart
ships whipped by the Nitpicker's fibergun had been discharged so she couldn't fire back& When the
nessies had almost crushed the pilot the time she fell in the pod& When the woman had faced down that
laze, and the weapon misfired instead of burning out her heart& But fear now? In the safety of the
cave? In her head, the cougar padded closer, and she felt her hands clench tightly.
East, she muttered in her head, to the cat paws that an-swered her thought. Go east.
Striker glanced at her face. "You okay?" she murmured.
She jerked her head up. "Of course," she returned sharply.
Kurvan caught Striker's expression. "Your neck," he said to Tsia. "What happened?"
Something in Nitpicker's eyes flickered. Tsia stilled. There was no tightening of muscles nothing she
could discern with her eyes& No one else reacted; but in her head, the cub snarled, and Tsia's scalp hair
prickled. "Got jammed in the cabin," she said slowly. She didn't look at the pilot. "In a torn piece of
webbing. Just about jerked my own neck off to get free."
Kurvan studied her for a moment, then dug in Wren's pack for the med gear. Automated for almost any
kind of injury, the scame took only a moment to set up. He held up its attach-ments with a question in his
eyes. She nodded slowly.
Tilting back her head, she gave him room to work on her neck. As the scame fields swept over her flesh,
the medlines automatically dulled the sensation. When Kurvan sat back, he looked satisfied. "There'll still
be some swelling, but that should do it except for a salve." He pulled out a tube and tossed it to Tsia; he
left her to rub that on herself while he be-gan to repack the scame.
Tsia unsealed the tube and wrinkled her nose. From the damp dirt beneath the rocks she sat on, from
Nitpicker's open wounds, from the «alve itself scents seemed to grow in strength. Ruka padded closer;
Tsia's nostrils flared. There was an almost acrid odor that reminded her of something like Wren's nolo
seeds. The hairs on her neck prickled again. She fingered the tube absently, then tossed it back to
Kurvan.
He caught it with a slap. "Could get infected later," he said mildly.
She shrugged.
Striker barely opened her eyes. "No microbe would dare dig into a guide's flesh or bone. You know
what they say: You can't kill a guide 'less you get one through his gate."
" 'Sightless without the biogate, and blinded when they use it,' " murmured Doetzier. He pulled his
darkeye case from a slot in his weapons harness, gave Tsia a glance, then neatly slid the darkeyes into
first one, then the other brown eye. The contacts turned his irises completely black, and he blinked twice
to center them. Expressionlessly, he returned Tsia's gaze.
Tsia hid a shiver. The darkeyes the other meres used, which made motion and contrast so clear, made a
guide claustropho-bic. Without her link to the cats, which sharpened her vision of movement, she could
never have worked as well as she did with the meres. Her night sight was only half as good as vision
through the darkeyes. She eyed the other two packs in the cave. "Did we lose the rest of the gear?" she
asked.
Striker grunted affirmation.
Doetzier eyed Nitpicker as she pulled the skin grafts from the medkit beside her. "What happened down
there?" he asked quietly. "Wren said Feather came back for his enbee, then he sent Bowdie to help."
Nitpicker shrugged. "I got tangled in the slide. Lost my enbee. Mud kept coming. Feather called the eels
to dig me out." Gingerly she unsealed her trousers from her boots.
Doetzier eyed Tsia speculatively. "I thought eels were car-nivorous."
Nitpicker rolled her trousers above the first bite mark. "They are." She glanced over at the other mere.
"Toss me that scame, would you? And get me some seam-sealer."
Doetzier complied. Tsia, unable to meet Nitpicker's eyes, got to her feet and pulled her blunter close
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