More worrying, though, was the increasing incidence of suicide. Disturbed tumps — those who had been attacked by jaguars, for instance — were subject to a mental disorder known as loco. The symptons were a tendency to travel downhill until the tump’s progress was halted by the sailway track. It would then butt against this structure, endlessly, unable to feed, until it died. A few tumps had even been known to smash their way through the track and to disappear into the sea, presumably to drown.
It was a serious problem. It was also degrading for the lumpier who was obliged to stay with his mount, subject to the jeers of the True Human passengers on the sail-way.
Was that why they had sent Karina?
El Tigre’s story was that Karina was in disgrace for some reason, but there was a rumor rife in the tump-fields that the Canton Lord had commanded her presence here. The Lord must be worried about the falling tump population. He might look on sailway-butting as evidence of tumpier incompetence — the felinos always said the tumpiers were too gentle with their charges. The tumpiers’ methods contrasted sharply with those of the felinos, who simply terrorized the shrugleggers into obedience.
Perhaps the Lord intended the felinos to take over the tumpfields, and had sent Karina as an experiment.
Haleka shot Karina a glance of intense suspicion. The girl paced alongside like some big cat, nostrils twitching at the scent from the still-fresh wounds. Granted, she was a beautiful creature — even old Haleka could not help being stirred by her — but she was dangerous and the tump sensed it. Its path across the hillside — the wide wake of cropped and fertilized grass — showed a definite curve away from the side on which Karina walked.
It was beginning to head downhill.
It might be going loco.
«Get on the other side of the tump!» shouted Haleka.
«But you said.…»
«I don’t care what I said. Do what you’re told!»
The path of the tump straightened out over the next few minutes, but soon showed a marked tendency to the right. Haleka knew a moment of sudden fury, unusual for a tumpier.
How could he drive a tump when a wild animal walked beside it?
Night in the foothills
The foothills were exposed and, although Haleka halted the tump in a shallow declivity, the air was cool and breezy.
The tump did not halt readily. It edged relentlessly forward, its jowls chomping, while Haleka leaned against its nose and shouted tumpier oaths. Karina watched him with contempt. He was frail, and slant-eyed like all tumpiers — more like a True Human than a Specialist — and she wondered what creatures had lent its ineffectual genes to his make-up.
There were legends of a sea-going race of similar appearance to Haleka, who populated the floating islands of Polysitia and helped provide the continents with life-giving oxygen. In the Dying Years the minstrels would sing of Belinda, the most famous Polysitian, who was pursued and imprisoned by the black rider Or Kikiwa, blown ashore in a gale and loved by Manuel of the Triad before the Great Blue took her back to her people.
Haleka looked like the Polysitians of legend.…
Karina stepped forward and laid her hand on the tump’s nose.
The tump’s tiny eyes blinked, and it stopped moving.
Haleka glanced at her without expression. He reached into his robe and took out a handful of dried herbs, which he crushed in his palm and held under the tump’s nose. It was a mild narcotic — falla — to deter the tump from moving off during the night. Then Haleka gathered grass and leaves from the fringes of a stream. He took two rocks from a hempen bag hanging from the tump; a large flat rock and a smaller spherical one. With these he pounded the vegetation into a paste. This he ate with apparent relish, sucking his lips afterwards. Then, without having suggested that Karina satisfy her own hunger — indeed, without having uttered a word since she’d immobilized the tump — he unrolled his blanket on the ground, lay on it and closed his eyes.
I was only trying to help, thought Karina. She lay down too, but the ground was hard and she was cold. She had no blanket, and she felt alone and frightened. She longed for the companionship of the grupo. She didn’t feel whole. She wasn’t even sleepy. In her sorrow she began a soft whimpering.
She’d seen her sisters briefly after the meeting, when a mysterious messenger had arrived and spoken to her father just before he propelled her through the camp to the meat train, his face like thunder. The grupo hadn’t spoken to her. They’d avoided her eyes. They blamed her for their disgrace over the Iolande incident. They thought that if she’d stayed with them, instead of fooling around in the jungle, Iolande would never have got the better of them.
Karina whined.
«Will you stop that caterwauling!» Haleka was propped on one elbow, staring fiercely at her, the moonlight glittering from his slant eyes so that he looked like an alien creature.
After he’d settled back again, Karina crawled over to the tump and nestled up against the rough hide which provided some small warmth and shelter. She lay awake for some time, swallowing heavily and continuously and wondering whether she was sickening for something — her whole throat seemed to be choking up.
Then she realized that the proximity to the tump was making her salivate …
It was a night of discomfort and strange dreams, and just before dawn she discovered, drowsily, that she’d been incontinent; and in her despair she thought: this will surely convince Haleka that I’m some kind of wild animal .…
But in the morning Haleka had other matters to worry about.
«There was another attack!» An apprentice stood panting steam in the cold dawn.
«Where?»
«Further up the gully. They got at Axil’s mount!»
«Did he see them?»
«No.… We slept.» The apprentice avoided Haleka’s eyes.
«You were scared,” said the tumpier. «You heard, but you were too scared to do anything. By Agni, this is too much!» He stared around furiously. «Where in hell is that goddamned jaguar-girl? She’s at the bottom of this, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s insane, letting her loose among the tumps. As if the big cats in the forest aren’t enough for us to contend with, every grupo in the Canton will home in on the smell of her! This attack — was it felinas or jaguars?»
«There was a lot of damage. Jaguars hunt alone. I think it was a felina grupo.»
«And I know which grupo it was!»
Haleka sniffed the morning breeze, stiffened, then strode down the gully, splashing through the stream. Further on he came to a tiny waterfall spilling into a pool. Sitting beside the pool was Karina, naked and shivering, squeezing the water out of her tunic.
«Washing the blood off, eh?» He stood looking down at her, trembling with outrage.
«What? No, I.… What do you mean?»
«Explain what you’re doing!»
Karina stood with downcast eyes, the tunic hanging from her fingers, dripping. «I.… I thought, maybe it would make the tump more easy for you to control, if I.…» She swallowed. «If I washed myself and my clothes, so that.… So that the tump wouldn’t be so sure I’m a felina, and wouldn’t be so scared of me.»
«That would make a better story if you and your grupo hadn’t attacked Axil’s tump last night!»
«My … grupo?»
«Yes, your grupo. The famous El Tigre grupo. Or are you saying you’ve disowned them suddenly?»
Karina said quietly, «I think perhaps they’ve disowned me.»
«What do you mean?»
So she explained. And as she stood there, shoulders drooping, defeated, something of her sorrow transmitted itself to Haleka. She’d scrubbed herself until her skin glowed in the thin morning sunlight, her wet hair captured this sunlight like glowing copper and her figure was beautiful beyond belief. All this touched something in Haleka which took him right back to his youth, returning to him a strength and compassion which had been leeched away by the lonely years on tump-back.