As if from a long way off, he heard his father saying, «Maybe.… Maybe it isn’t my business to judge, Maquinista. Maybe my business is to pilot sailcars the best way I can. Maybe the exact nature of those sailcars is none of my business. Wouldn’t you say that’s the case?»
«I can have Rayo repaired and ready for trials in two weeks,” said the engineer.
Raoul saw the Wrath of Agni kindling a light of greed in his father’s eyes, and felt some of his childhood crumbling away from the core of his belief, leaving him exposed and naked in this adult world, while outside the hut the monkey‑men sang a slow lament.
And as he mourned, the sounds of the Specialists changed. There were little squeals and shufflings, and a deadly barking. Suddenly things were different, Maquinista was cocking his head, and the dream of glory faded from his father’s face to be replaced by a questioning look.
Then came the trampling of heavy footsteps.
A solid body of cai‑men burst into the hut. They were bunched about something, corralling it with their scaly bodies. They flung short-arm punches at it, barking and grunting in excitement. The air was fetid with their fishy stench and as they milled around one of them knocked over the lamp. A trickle of fire ran across the floor. Maquinista threw a sack down, snuffing the flames.
«Get the hell out of here, you bastards!» he shouted, «How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from my camp!»
Cocodrilo detached himself from the others and stared coldly at the engineer. «If you had the sense to take proper security measures I wouldn’t have to waste my time on your part of the delta, Maquinista! Just take a look at what we found out there!»
He reached among his men, seized a pale arm and dragged out a struggling figure which he flung to the floor.
«A felino spy, Maquinista,” he said softly. «Now, what do you think of that?»
Karina looked up at them, bleeding, her tunic hanging in rags.
«What were you doing out there, girl?» asked Maquinista quietly.
«Spying, that’s what!» snapped Cocodrilo. «Now you’ve seen what can happen around here, Maquinista, I’ll take her away for disposal. I’ll report this to the Lord, of course. I don’t suppose he’ll be very pleased.»
«You tell me, girl,” said Maquinista.
Karina was silent, staring at them with blazing eyes.
«Disposal?» echoed Tonio uncertainly.
«Well, she can’t go back to the felino camp now, can she?»
Tonio regarded Karina. «Who is she, anyway? She looks familiar.»
Raoul said, «She’s Karina. You remember, father — El Tigre’s daughter. She came up on deck the other day.» There was a bitterness in him. He’d liked Karina, but now he suspected that her apparent friendship on that occasion had been a ruse to pump him for information. So here she was, caught. A dirty spy. She deserved everything she got — except disposal. That was taking things too far.
«El Tigre’s daughter?» Tonio’s expression was worried. This presented a political problem.
«There’s no way we can let her talk to El Tigre now,” said Cocodrilo, jerking Karina to her feet. She lashed out at him but her fingernails had no effect on his horny skin. He laughed coldly. «You’ve met your match, girl.»
«And there’s no way you’re going to dispose of her, either,” said Maquinista.
«Talk!» Cocodrilo suddenly shouted, wrenching at Karina’s arm. She winced, blinked back tears of pain, tossed her head so that her hair flew like spun copper, then slammed her elbow into Cocodrilo’s stomachs The man‑creature grinned toothily, tightening his grip so that Karina gave a little mew of pain.
«Easy, Cocodrilo,” said Maquinista. «We’ll keep her out of sight for a while.»
«Won’t her people come looking?» said Tonio.
«I doubt it. They’ll probably assume she’s gone brute. They often do, around her age. Then after a while they snap out of it and go back to camp.»
«They’ll follow her trail,” objected Cocodrilo.
«I don’t think so. There were guanaco clouds blowing in from the sea today. The rain will wash away her scent.» In fact they heard a light patter on the roof at that moment, and the wind gusted cooler.
Cocodrilo’s jaw was set stubbornly, tips of the teeth showing against his lips. «I still say dispose of her.»
«Maybe.… Oh, I don’t know.» Tonio looked from Cocodrilo to Maquinista helplessly. It was a complex situation. «Where can we keep her? How can we be sure she won’t escape?»
«She wouldn’t escape from the tortuga pens,” said Maquinista.»
Cocodrilo’s mouth opened in a slow grin. «I’ll say she wouldn’t.»
«Now, I’m going to report this to the Lord,” said Maquinista, eyeing Cocodrilo closely. «And if any harm comes to her, he’ll have your hide, Cocodrilo. He wants no part of murder.»
Tonio said, «But what happens when we release her in the end? She’ll still tell them everything.»
«Ah, but it’ll be too late,” said Maquinista. «Can’t you sense it, Tonio? Don’t you feel the gathering unrest in the camps, in the jungle and the foothills and on the plains, everywhere? Can’t you feel that the climax will come this Tortuga Festival? After that, I think we’re going to see a different situation on the coast. A different relationship, one way or the other.…»
And Raoul shivered, only half understanding the deliberations of his elders but knowing, somehow, that the existence he’d always known was threatened.
«Take her away, Cocodrilo,” said Maquinista.
The heavy bodies clustered around Karina again, pawing her, pinioning her. She was dragged struggling from the hut. As she passed Raoul her eyes met his and she said viciously, «Don’t you have anything to say, brat? Don’t you have any say in what goes on around you?»
Then she was gone, out into the curtain of rain.
Nobody spoke for a long time. Nobody looked at anyone. The rain grew heavier, and big drops began to force their way through the roof and splatter to the earthen floor.
The maturing of Mariq
It was unseasonable, the rain. Usually heavy rains came a month later, after the Festival, washing away the debris and cleaning the coast ready for the winter. But that year, the Year of Nodal Conception, freak depressions in the South Atlantic brought early storms.
It was a year of changes in many ways. Locally, the relationship between Specialists and True Humans would never be the same again. Climatically, it marked the onset of a new Ice Age. Historically it was marked by a new calendar: the Johnathan Years. In some remote parts this calendar is still used; but elsewhere it is just a memory in the Rainbow, along with various other ancient calendars.
So they dragged Karina into the new Ice Age, through swamp and jungle which would be cool dry pampas twenty thousand years later, when the Triad would come together and free Starquin. They dragged her brutally, because they were little more than brutes, and they tripped her often because they enjoyed seeing her fall; and they enjoyed seeing her get up again, with her mud-soaked tunic clinging to her body. The rain fell ceaselessly and the cold wind blew, and Karina fell again.
Cocodrilo bent to pick her up this time, his sharp fingers probing at breast and groin.
«She’s weak as a kitten, this cat-girl,” he grunted, setting her on her feet. «Soft and weak, like a fungus.»
His companions muttered agreement as they ploughed through mud and water, their bodies well adapted to this kind of travel.
Siervo had watched the first clouds sweep low over the treetops but he’d anticipated rain long before that, with the first cool breath of wind and rustle of leaves. Maybe even before that, during the steamy summer, he’d known this year was going to be different — the year which, to him, was the Year of Goldenback.
Last year had been the Year of Mariq. He’d named the creature Mariq after a child he’d once known, in Rangua. As the years passed he’d found, to his dismay, that he’d stopped thinking about Mariq. So perhaps the tortuga had been an attempt to perpetuate her memory.