Many of the beasters had so modified their bodies that it was the remnant of humanity that seemed out of place. On the far side of the open space, Cayten observed a pack of wolfheads lounging against the bulkhead: a dozen or so men and women with wide yellow eyes, facial hair in grizzled tufts, and furry bodies as hard and narrow as slats.
One woman detached herself from the pack and came toward them. "Look," she said, baring hypertrophied canines. "A carrion dog. And a big bull." She laughed, and Cayten felt a flush of anger — too intense. She snarled, made a little darting movement toward the wolfhead, then veered back to Thendard's side. Her jaws ached to close on the wolfhead's throat, and it was so bizarre an emotion that she felt faint.
Thendard rumbled a warning at the wolfhead, who stepped back. Then she laughed again. "Will you breed with the elephant?"
"Pay no attention," Thendard told Cayten. "The wolves hold everyone in contempt; it's their nature. But they have no particular courage."
They moved on through the Level, and Thendard explained. "She wouldn't have dared to speak, had she been alone. The wolves need each other to feel real. Besides, there's no real antipathy between wolves and hyenas. They derive from completely different habitats. It's not like the leopards and the hyenas, who truly despise one another. Or the hyenas and lions, who've shared the same hunting grounds for eons. Should we meet a leopard — or worse, a pride of lions, stay very close to me, Cayten, even though there's probably no great danger. This is a safe sector, well-monitored. Only a mad person would seriously attempt to injure you here; the deckhead crawls with lawmechs."
Thendard pointed up, and Cayten saw a lawmech clinging to the rough steel of the ceiling like a black metal insect, its scanners rotating, its stunners deployed in all directions. "I see," she said. "But what if we can't find Genoaro in the safe sectors? What if he's in the tween corridors, or even the Dark Level?"
Thendard frowned. "No, he's not that far gone, Cayten. And if he were, all you could do would be to go home and change the locks. He wouldn't be Genoaro anymore. What you feel now is just a pale, clean shadow of what the creatures on the Dark feel. You're still a woman now, 95 percent human. You still think like a human being; your perceptions are only lightly filtered through the hyena persona. If we went a little way into the tween corridors and came across a corpse a couple days' ripe, you still wouldn't be able to ignore the maggots. You'd have to crank up the skein a good bit before you'd really enjoy a meal like that."
She felt an unpleasant disorientation when she realized she was not quite as repulsed by the idea of eating carrion as she had been after she had learned what Genoaro was doing. "Thendard," she said in a weak voice. "Shut up, please. Help me look, but shut up."
He nodded, and groped for the skein at the back of his neck. Cayten marveled that he could reach it at all, considering his bulk, but he did, and made an adjustment.
Instantly his affect changed visibly to a more intense mode, and his features became unfamiliar. His eyes filmed over, as though inward thoughts preoccupied him, and his vast body slouched into an even more slope-shouldered arm-swinging stance.
They moved deeper into the Level, into areas where the lights were dimmer and the lawmechs fewer, closer to the tween corridors. Here the beasters lived in greater earnest. The tall, graceful antelope; the tiny, delicate gazelles; the truculent Cape buffalo — showed white rolling eyes to them, as the men and women of the herd played the game with fearful abandon. Apparently, the sight of an elephant bull and a hyena bitch traveling together was odd enough to frighten the more timid of the beasts. Often when the two of them emerged into a nexus, the herds would scent them and bolt for the exits, abandoning the plots of force-grown grass they had been feeding on.
"How do they know?" she whispered to Thendard, in a suddenly empty nexus. "Why do they fear me? I don't look like a hyena."
"The skein. It transmits an ID signature." Thendard's voice was not his own; it had become a trembling rumble. "Every other skein picks up the signal and tags the wearer's perceptual process with the correct cast. Haven't you noticed? How you don't have any trouble knowing the part each beaster plays?"
She heard a stealthy creak. In the far corner of the nexus was a tangle of rusting girders, like a patch of tall, angular brush. She caught a swift movement, and picked out the shape of a small, lithe man stretched out along a crossbar. His skin was tattooed in jagged splotches; his golden eyes watched her, unblinking. After a moment he opened a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth and hissed at her. A leopard, she thought, and understood Thendard's explanation. An air of leopardness hovered about the watching man, as if he cast a double shadow: one manlike, one less substantial — the long, dangerous shape of a big cat.
"The intensity depends on the setting of his skein, and yours," Thendard said. "If he were cranked all the way down into his hindbrain, you wouldn't be able to see a man at all. And he'd try to kill you, if he could cut you away from me. Leopards hate hyenas — hyenas will eat any leopard they catch in the open. Leopards won't eat hyenas, unless they're starving, but they like to kill them when they can surprise one alone, then hang the carcass in a tree as a trophy. It's a bone-deep hate, much deeper than, say, the mutual contempt that hyenas and lions have for each other."
They passed into a darker corridor. Thendard threw up his head and snorted. "We've found a pack, though I can't say if it's Genoaro's." His little eyes gleamed, and he shuffled forward at a ponderous gallop.
She followed, and now her body and its movements seemed to grow stranger. She found herself running beside Thendard, using a bouncing, light-footed shamble that was both utterly alien and undeniably comfortable.
She laughed. A mindless titter came out of her mouth and frightened her into silence. She sniffed at the air, and she smelled that scent that she had in late months come to associate with Genoaro: a smell of old blood and death and unwashed bodies.
THENDARD STOPPED at the end of the corridor. A hot light came from the nexus beyond. Cayten peered around Thendard's bulk.
The nexus was very large, a hundred meters across, and lit by blinding mercury arcs. At the far side, a metallic clatter attended the opening of a heavy door. From the dark opening, a four-footed creature bounded, some sort of antelope with a striped brown hide and short, twisted horns. It stood blinking for a moment, then leaped away, pursued by a pack of beasters that rose abruptly from concealment.
"Hyenas," Thendard whispered.
The beasters ran after the animal, yipping, giggling, and Cayten could hear the clash of snapping jaws, echoing across the nexus. The animal's eyes rolled desperately, but it appeared slowed by some injury or weakness. It stayed just ahead of the pack, eluding them with sudden cuts and frantic leaps.
The hyenas were closer now, and Cayten recognized Genoaro at the back of the pack. He ran with his head thrown back, eyes fiery, mouth stretched wide open, as if he were swallowing the moment. She felt a deep revulsion; at the same instant, she longed to join him. The futile dodging of the animal suddenly seemed less pitiable and more exciting.
"It's not a real animal," Thendard said. "It's a thinframe robot hung with vatmeat. But it's a good simulation. See. It doesn't really try to escape, just tries to make a good chase of it. The Level management provides them, for a fee."