The Search for Kä Read online

  *What’s bothering you?* I asked him.

  *Female here because of me. Cubs. Afraid. Don’t want hurt.*

  *Don’t take all that blame on yourself,* I said gently.

  *Yayshah came along because of Tarani, too—because she can talk to Tarani the same way you can talk to me.*

  I felt a sense of agreement from him. *Woman knows what female needs. I don’t.*

  There was sadness and guilt in the thought, guilt I was forced to share. Keeshah had been deeply enthralled in a period of his life which excluded me, a time when he had been totally preoccupied with the biological need to mate and reproduce. In order to achieve perfect communion with those needs, he had instinctively cut off the conscious functioning of our mindlink. He had been mate and father only, totally devoted to Yayshah.

  Tarani and I had been cornered near the poison-filled volcanic crater the Gandalarans called the Well of Darkness. In desperation, I had called to Keeshah. Nothing short of imminent physical danger to me could have penetrated that instinctive blockage, I was sure—but Keeshah’s devotion to me had let him re-establish our conscious link, and he had come to us. His presence had saved our lives.

  Once he had broken it, Keeshah had not been able to achieve again the natural communion he had forsaken. Yet his loyalty to his family was still in operation, making him feel selfish and concerned that his preference for me would interfere with their welfare.

  *I know it troubles you that you can’t take care of Yayshah the way you think you should,* I told Keeshah.

  *But look at it this way—there are three of us now who love her. We won’t let her or the cubs come to any harm.*

  2

  When Tarani awoke, I asked her about Yayshah’s caution.

  “She moves easily,” Tarani said, after slipping into and out of a quick linkage with the female sha’um. “And I sense only a little discomfort because of the cubs. But her eyes seem to be hurting—I think the light hurts her eyes.”

  “Of course,” I said. “The Valley is shady and relatively cool—she must be suffering from all this light and heat.” I looked up at the sky which was, as usual, smoky gray with the cloud cover. I didn’t have to gauge the position of the brighter spot that marked the sun to tell that it was mid-afternoon; my Gandalaran inner awareness operated like a perpetual clock.

  “Let’s stop here and rest,” I suggested. “We can move on after dark, if we feel like it—it will be easier traveling for Yayshah.”

  We found a spot between two tall boulders that was relatively shady. Yayshah snuggled down until she was both on and in the bushy growth at their feet, and went promptly to sleep.

  *Hunt,* Keeshah told me, and bounded away, headed for the higher hills.

  “Keeshah’s concerned about Yayshah,” I told Tarani, as we rearranged some vegetation to make a comfortable resting spot beside one of the big boulders. “Can you tell me how long it will be before the cubs are born?”

  Tarani opened her backpack, dipped her hands in, and brought them out full of berries. She tipped one handful into my cupped hands and shook her head.

  “I truly do not know, Rikardon,” she said. “If Yayshah were still in the Valley, she would know, probably down to the very minute. It would be … natural for her.”

  Natural? I wondered. Meaning instinct? Or simply the same sort of inner awareness as the people have? That would mean that the sha’um have their own equivalent of an All-Mind. Not surprising, I thought. The very fact that sha’um can link with men and communicate rationally is proof of their intelligence.

  But why would it need to be theirs? They might share ours. Keeshah and Yayshah have as much a sense of individual identity as do Tarani and I—more, I corrected wryly, considering that the question of “Who are you?” is a multiple-choice test for Tarani and me.

  “You say she would have known, in the Valley,” I said to Tarani. “Do you mean she doesn’t know, now?”

  “I think she does know, at least in a general sense,” Tarani said. “But she cannot tell me. She does not think in ‘days’ as we do. When I ask, she says only: ‘soon.’”

  I looked over at the silhouette of the sleeping female. As she rested on her side, the underslung swelling that held the cubs—she had told us there were three—mounded out, higher than the cat’s hips, and rose and fell with Yashah’s breathing.

  “We’ll be in Thagorn in two days,” I said. “The cubs won’t arrive before then, will they?”

  “If the birth were that close,” Tarani assured me without hesitation, “she could not have left the Valley. For the last day or two, she will be too large and weak to move around much.”

  Tarani finished her berries and set aside the pack. I had been collecting my berry pits in one hand; now I threw them all away from me and watched them scatter into the ground cover. I leaned back against the boulder. Tarani joined me and rested her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and drew her close against my chest.

  “I miss the feel of your body against my back when I ride, “I said, my mouth brushing her dark headfur. “If Yayshah ever gets tired of you …”

  She punched me in the side, and we wrestled playfully for a few seconds. She pulled free and knelt a few feet away, panting from the exertion, but laughing at me.

  When her gaze fell on Yayshah, I felt a twinge of jealousy at the tenderness that appeared in her face. Only a twinge.

  “I think it good that we are going no farther than Thagorn,” Tarani said. “When I asked you if it would harm the cubs for me to ride her, as she wished, do you recall what you said?”

  “That she’s the best judge of that,” I answered.

  “She may not be,” Tarani said seriously. “She is the first of her kind to bear cubs outside the Valley, and she can rely on instinct only to a limited extent. She will know when the cubs are endangered, of course, but I do not feel sure that she can prejudge what will endanger them. Do you see?”

  “I see,” I assured her. “But remember that in Thagorn, she will be in as natural an environment as we can provide for her—forested hills, free-running game, the company of other sha’um. Please don’t worry, Tarani,” I said, aware that I was repeating the same thing I had told Keeshah. “Yayshah will not suffer harm from any action of ours.”

  “I hope not, Rikardon. I—I couldn’t bear it. Volitar died because of me, and Lonna—” Her voice choked off. I felt an odd sensation, like the crawl of an electric shock up my arm. Only this was not physical. It tingled in my mind. And it seemed to be getting stronger.

  Is Tarani doing this? I wondered. Or is somebody doing it to her?

  Whatever it was, it was most certainly affecting Tarani. She was kneeling in the viney ground cover. Her hands—long, finely boned, graceful—tensed on her thighs, and her whole body went rigid. She started making gasping sounds.

  Yayshah twitched awake and looked at Tarani.

  “Forgive me, Yayshah,” the girl gasped. “I would control it—but I cannot—” She’s doing it herself, I realized. She’s doing it to herself.

  “Tarani,” I whispered, scrambling over the short distance between us to encircle her wire-tense body with my arms.

  She struggled, pushing at me almost feebly, as though her hands had gone to sleep and she couldn’t quite judge where they were. “Rikardon, please let me go,” she moaned.

  I held on to her squirming body with some difficulty. The fur on the back of my neck and on my hands stood on end. A charge was building inside Tarani, a kind of pure-thought energy that seemed to reach out to touch my mind, which recoiled as if it had been singed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Yayshah surge to her feet, her eyes wild, the fur around her neck rippling out.

  “Get away,” Tarani said, her voice muffled against my shoulder. Her efforts to free herself intensified. “Please, darling, move away, get away from me I do not want to hurt you!”

  “No,” I said—yelled, rather, for the sensation felt like a physical noise. “I won’t let you go. Whateve
r this is, we’ll beat it together.”

  In a sudden reversal, Tarani threw her arms around me and held on desperately. Her whole body was trembling; I could almost feel her fear in my fingertips. The shift in balance tipped us over. My shoulder struck the ground just as all hell broke loose.

  Tarani screamed, and the sound was both expression of and reaction to the searing raw emotion that burst forth from her. It was as though everything she had lived through in the past five years had been gathered together and distilled to the essence of experience, mixed liberally with Tarani’s power of illusion, and broadcast in one giant feedback whine.

  Fear joy guilt love loneliness disappointment shame frustration anger anxiety pride triumph love grief fury sadness satisfaction pride shame terror fury love guilt rage fear …

  It was instantaneous.

  It was devastating.

  I blacked out.

  Keeshah woke me, nuzzling my shoulder with a whiskered cheek, my mind with his anxious questions. My head hurt. Something … something had happened—but what?

  *All right? Rikardon? All right?*

  *Uh-n-n … yes, Keeshah, I’m okay, I think.*

  I opened my eyes to see his head looming above me, the silver-flecked gray eyes fixed on me. I knew he wouldn’t believe I was really okay until I touched him—but when I tried to lift my arm, I discovered that it was cramped and tense, clutching Tarani’s still form.

  Memory.

  Panic.

  I fought it down, freed one hand, touched her throat. I breathed again when I felt the slow, strong pulse beating there. I noticed, now, that she was breathing easily; I had been too startled and frightened to sense the significance of that rhythmic pressure against my chest.

  I forced my stiff body to move, and rearranged Tarani until I had my other arm free. I laid her back into the vines gently, then went to get my water pouch and pour some of the lukewarm liquid into my headscarf. Like the rest of our clothing, it had seen better days, but the coarse linen soaked up the water thirstily. I returned to Tarani and pressed the wet cloth to the girl’s forehead, cheeks, and throat. My hands were still shaking.

  Wake up, Tarani, I urged her silently. Please, wake up.

  The girl’s eyes popped open, and her body went tense as a bowstring.

  “Easy,” I said. “It’s over. Take it easy, sweetheart.”

  The wildly staring eyes turned toward me and focused, and my heart jumped at the look of joy that swept into her face. She levered her upper body away from the ground and threw her arms around my neck.

  “Thank God you aren’t hurt, Ricardo!” she said.

  In Italian.

  A chill crept up my spine. I held her tightly for a moment, then I pulled gently at the girl’s shoulders, separating us. The joy had been replaced with puzzlement and fear.

  “Rikardon,” Tarani said, clenching and unclenching her hands around my upper arms. “What happened?”

  “Don’t you know?” I asked her.

  She looked at me in confusion, seemed about to speak, then turned her face away. She pulled a leaf from a vine and began shredding it with her beautiful hands.

  “I only know I feel … peaceful.”

  I put my hand on her cheek and turned her face up to mine. For a moment, I searched that face for any sign that she knew she had just spoken to me in a language totally alien to her. But it was just the same as it had been on that first occasion in Eddarta.

  Tarani had no idea what she had said.

  What Antonia had said.

  I avoided that thought and tried to answer Tarani’s question. “You’ve been letting grief and sadness build up in you for a long time, Tarani. You haven’t had a chance to let any of it go—you’ve been through too much, too quickly. What happened—well, you screamed, that’s all. With your voice … and your mind.”

  “My mind …” she echoed, then panic wrenched her away from my grasp. “Yayshah!” She jumped to her feet, looking around for the brindled gray cat. A rumbling from the spot between the boulders betrayed Yayshah’s location, and Tarani ran headlong toward the dark female.

  Yayshah crouched awkwardly, her tail lashing and her neckfur raised into a spiky mane. She backed away as Tarani approached her; pulling back her lips to expose the wide, sharp tusks at either side of a range of formidable teeth. Tarani faltered, stopped.

  “Yayshah—please,” Tarani pleaded, moving forward slowly and fighting to keep her voice steady. “Do not be afraid, it is over—”

  I tensed, knowing it was foolish, that there would be nothing I could do if Yayshah attacked. It was only when the female calmed and Tarani placed her hands on the furred head that I felt myself relax.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keeshah watching, seemingly unconcerned.

  *Did you know Yayshah wouldn’t harm Tarani?* I asked him.

  *Tell woman to leave,* Keeshah said, not bothering to answer me. *Female must eat.*

  Keeshah moved back up the hillside, and began dragging the carcass of a glith toward us. The glith were deer-sized animals that lived both wild and domesticated. Remembering our recent diet of dried foods and berries, I had an impulse to cook glith steaks for dinner. Looking at the bloody carcass, its throat torn clean away, changed my mind.

  I started to call Tarani away from the female sha’um, but the girl was already walking toward me. “How odd,” she said. “It was almost as though Yayshah did not recognize me.”

  Maybe she didn’t, I thought. Maybe she sensed that moment when you were Antonia, in the same way Keeshah knew Ricardo was different from Markasset, when I woke up in the desert.

  Tarani was watching me. “Did you hear me, Rikardon?” she asked. I nodded. “Have you no guess as to why Yayshah acted that way?”

  “None,” I lied, mentally shrugging my shoulders. “Remember, your experience with Yayshah is unique—very little of my understanding of Keeshah’s behavior will be transferable to Yayshah.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “There is something you are not saying,” she said at last. Before I could frame an answer, she laughed and stretched. “Ah, but I feel too well, too clean to begrudge you your secrets, my love.” She turned, whirled, twisted—danced across the rough hillside with all the grace and beauty I had seen in her when she had performed on stage. Even in her tattered desert tunic and trousers, wearing glith-hide boots that had been scarred and ripped by the pebbly slopes of the Well of Darkness, she was elegant, and I shared her joy in that physical expression of her mental release. Yet I couldn’t share it completely.

  Tarani doesn’t even know she knocked me cold with that psychic blast. She took my word pretty easily for what happened—didn’t ask questions, contradict, apologize. That’s very unlike my articulate, outspoken, inquisitive Tarani.

  She’s blocking the memory of the outburst, I realized. Little wonder; it must have been brutal for her. But she’s also blocking that moment of total confusion while she was waking—the few seconds in which Antonia surfaced.

  That’s three times, now, that Antonia has spoken clearly and directly to me—each time with words of love.

  Why do I get the feeling that, in spite of all the complications, I’m a very lucky man?

  3

  Tarani was cheerful the next day and I decided, no matter how scary the experience had been for both of us, that I was glad she had found some expression for the emotions she had been repressing. Nothing was said between us about the incident; she seemed to forget it, and that suited me just fine.

  It was on the afternoon of the following day that Keeshah woke me from a movement-lulled daze to announce: *Sha’um. Man*

  I sat up as we topped a rise and saw the sha’um and rider at the base of the hill. The animal stood halfway in a clearing, his hindquarters still hidden in high brush. His head and ears were up, and his nose pointed in our direction.

  The Rider was sitting high behind the cat’s shoulders, stretching as tall as he could, scanning the hillside. The wide-brimmed desert hat of the
Sharith uniform effectively hid his face, but I recognized the pale marking that swept up one cheek of the sha’um. I remembered him as Borral, and that gave me the identity of the Rider.

  “Raden!” I shouted. “Up here!”

  The boy’s head snapped up and he waved wildly. “Welcome, Captain!” he shouted back. “We have been waiting …”

  Tarani and Yayshah came up beside me.

  The boy’s arm froze in mid-wave. His legs relaxed their normal tension against the sha’um’s side, and dangled awkwardly; Borral moved slightly to balance the boy’s shifting weight.

  Tarani’s look of weariness was replaced by one of delight, and she stroked the fur on the dark female’s neck. “Come, Yayshah,” she said. “It is time you began to meet our friends.”

  The boy’s pose didn’t change as Yayshah made her way, carefully and heavily, down the gentle slope of the hillside. I directed Keeshah to follow her, stirred by an amorphous uneasiness. That feeling didn’t improve when I got close enough to Raden to see his face clearly in the shadow of his hat brim. The slack jaw and gaping look of surprise, I had expected. But his eyes were stretched wider than I would have thought possible, under his prominent supra-orbital ridge, and his gaze was fixed on the two females with what I can only describe as a look of sheer terror.

  “Raden, is it?” Tarani asked. “I am Tarani, and this is—”

  Tarani leaned forward to bring her left hand backward along the female’s jaw. The boy interrupted her, his wild eyes turning to me.

  “Captain, would you and—er—the lady Tarani mind—I mean—if you would care to rest here—I’ll tell the others that you and—er—the lady Tarani have come back—that is, if you—”

  “We’ll wait for you here, Raden,” I said.

  “What?” Tarani demanded.

  The boy glanced at her briefly, then looked at me with an unconscious pleading.

  “Take word back to Thagorn, Raden,” I said. “Say that Tarani and I—and our sha’um—request the shelter of the Sharith.”