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She hesitated, glanced forward, then stuffed them in her pocket. "I'm a guide, Wren. My place is on the
land, not above it."
He shrugged. "Not what I would have guessed from the way you hang on to your past. You spend more
time thinking about those docking hammers than any guide I know."
"Daya, Wren, my sister's up there," she returned in a low voice.
"On Orpheus? Eurydice? You don't even know which ham-mer she works on now. Customs won't tell
you they keep their inspectors protected. Your sister is your past," he said harshly. "Your future is your
freedom from that."
Anger sparked in Tsia's eyes. "Freedom is like a memory," she retorted. "Once lost, twice gone."
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
"You can't lose what you've never truly had."
"Which? My freedom or my future?"
He turned to face her, and his cold, gray eyes seemed to bore into hers like screws that turned through to
her heart. "Does it make a difference?"
She stared at him for a long moment. "No," she said slowly. She sat back, and her mind was chilled and
locked in a circle of thought so old and worn that even the bitterness had faded to a faint taste on her
tongue. She knew what he meant. She had traded her future for her biogate, then her freedom for her
future. Now she had neither freedom nor future, and only the biogate was left. Only the voices of the
cats in her skull to re-mind her of the life she once had. Ten years& Ten long and distant years. In her
mind, the subtle snarling of the cougars overrode the growling of the feline tarns; the distant purr of the
sandcats in the dunes was drowned out by the watercats in the sloughs. Only her memories of family
were separate from the growling through her gate. It was the only part of her mind still untouched by the
sound of the cats. The only part where she still had hope. Stupid hope, she told herself harshly. Hope
that had no place in the crime of her existence.
"No," she said softly, but Wren heard all the same. "It makes no difference at all."
From the pilot's seat, Nitpicker steadied the skimmer into the storm. "Get soft," she called sharply.
"We're starting the first pass."
"First?" queried Tucker.
"We're on manual," the pilot snapped back. "With the wind shear, there's no way I can drop us on the
deck the first time across."
The skimmer bumped up in a sickening rise, then dove like a stone in a well; it tilted, then surged
forward hard. Tsia's fin-gers dug into the arm of her soft.
Wren glanced at the tightness of her jaw. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tucker leaned forward and
asked, "Feather, can you feel the bloom from here? The jellies in the sea?"
Tsia made an irritated noise as the skimmer banked sharply left. "Daya, Tucker, I thought you were
bugging Striker, not me."
Wren grinned coldly at her expression. "You've got nothing better to do."
She snorted.
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
"And you're on contract."
She gave him a dark look. "Give me a minute," she said shortly to Tucker. She stretched her thoughts
through her biogate. Instantly, catspeak filled her mind. Soft clawed feet seemed to pad across her brain;
the murmur of the mental growls was like an orchestra tuning itself in the background. She concentrated
until she found, behind the din^-like a low swamp fog the energies of the other beasts. Large shadows
became distinct in her mind those were the schools of fish that clouded the surge of the ocean below.
A flicker of light was a nessie who writhed through the sea. But the weight of the pumping, surging
hunger that hung like stirred-up silt in the sea that was the bloom of jellies that rose to and dove from
the storm-tossed surface. "I can feel them," she returned shortly.
Tucker watched her curiously, ignoring the lurch of the skimmer and gripping the back of her soft to
keep his balance against the turbulence. "I once flew with a guide who couldn't feel anything that wasn't
right under his fingers. We're a hun-dred meters above the sea. How can you" his voice hic-cupped as
the skimmer rose again abruptly "feel a bloom of jellies this far up?"
She shrugged. "They're strong. Just past peak, but heavy very heavy in the water."
Wren did not glance back. "A guide whose virus resonates to a tree species can feel an entire forest
through the leaves and roots. Why shouldn't she feel the jellies from here?" The ship jerked to the side
and swept in a hard turn up against the wind. The skin on Wren's sharp face almost sagged back from his
chin with the acceleration.
Tucker fought the pressure to lean forward. His sweet-bitter breath over her shoulder made Tsia flinch.
"I meant," he per-sisted, "how can you tell the jellies from anything else in the water?"
"Practice," she returned shortly. "I've been at it for a while."
"At your age, I would hope so," he retorted ungently. "What I'm asking is "
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