"There's no shame in loving the dead, Cayten. But you have to live for the living."
She looked up, her eyes full of hot tears. "But he's not dead. He's not. There must be something I can do."
Thendard rose from his powerchair and paced heavily back and forth. "I don't think so. What? Cayten, please, it'll be easiest if you think of him as dead. They don't come home from the Dark."
"You don't know he's gone to the Dark?"
"No.... But it's what I prefer to believe. If he hasn't gone into the Dark, then he's a purposeful monster, like the others who hunt the tween corridors for helpless victims. I prefer to think that he can't help himself. I loved him, too, Cayten. He was a good man, a good friend, full of humanity. Some beasters gain in humanity, on the Level. Some lose, and there's no way to tell in advance which way it will go."
"Why do you do it, then?" She watched him with narrowed eyes, holding in a sudden rush of anger. Thendard had proved stronger than Genoaro; she could not contain her resentment.
"Adventure? Renewal? All the standard rationales for which you have no patience...."
A silence grew between them.
"What will you do?" Thendard finally asked.
"I'll take him home, if I can find him. Is it any different from ganglusar dust, or wireheading, or any of the other ways people can lose themselves?" she asked.
"No," Thendard said, and nothing more. His deep-set eyes were dark with premonition.
"Help me again," she asked. "I can't be a hyena bitch anymore. Help me build a new body — I'll look for him as a lioness, if you'll help me."
Thendard pursed his lips. "Lions despise hyenas," he said. "They're too much alike — except that the lions are stronger."
"I know," she said.
She submitted herself to Thendard's medunit, and, over the course of a month, it carved her into a new being. The process was sometimes painful; but the pain the medunit's drugs could not wash away, she endured without complaint. A deeper source of pain was Genoaro's continued absence.
The medunit reinforced her bones, built new tendons, installed fifty kilos of clone-doubled muscle. It paid particular attention to her hands, enlarging and knitting them into massive clubs of bone and sinew.
She could flex her hands only with difficulty. Her nails had become needle-sharp hooks, gleaming scimitars. Fangs touched the flesh on either side of her mouth, cold and hard.
Thendard watched as she stood naked before a mirror, admiring her new shape, flexing the ropy ridges of muscle that had altered the shape of her body into something only marginally human in appearance. "You look dangerous," he said mildly.
"I don't feel that way."
"You will in a bit," he said, and handed her a new skein.
Thendard was right. She ran the Level every night for a week, growing more comfortable with her new persona, nudging the vernier a little higher each night. She evaded the attentions of the dominant lions she met, who were eager to recruit her into their prides. She ignored the frantic sexual posturing of nomad lions. She saw hyenas, which bounded away when they became aware of her watchfulness, but she found no sign of Genoaro.
She felt herself growing into her new persona, though once or twice she wondered if she was instead shrinking into a smaller mindshape. These thoughts she immediately dismissed. The lioness skein gave her a seductive pleasure; it grew more irresistible each time she took it. She began to understand the pit that had opened under Genoaro's feet. The delight she felt was primarily centered in her heightened senses, and in the novelty of her new viewpoint; everything — scents, sights, sounds, tactile sensations — took on a more immediate, vital presence. She was always careful to feed well before she went up to the Level, so she could pad through the herds with no more than a intellectual appetite. She only rarely thought of making a kill, and then it was no more than a passing impulse, easily quelled.
She talked to Thendard about it, but he dismissed her notion that the lion was a nobler creature than the hyena.
"Lions are lazy creatures, Cayten," he told her. "There's no lion so content as a zoo lion — one who has nothing to do but eat and sleep and fuck."
When he said this, she experienced a poignant animosity, just for an instant. She felt her lips writhe back.
He looked away quickly, as if he did not wish to see what was in her face.
"I'm sorry, Thendard." She took a deep breath. "I don't know what got into me."
He looked at her and smiled. "I know." He reached out and took her hand — her paw — and smoothed his great hand over it gently. "You should be careful, Cayten. I never thought to see you so caught up in this. What of your life? Your work?"
"My life... is stopped. Until I can find Genoaro and bring him home."
"Cayten, Cayten.... You'll never bring him home, though it saddens me to say this to you. Give it up."
"No!"
She went away, back to the Level, where she roamed for a day and a night among the beasters, hunting Genoaro.
She failed to find any trace of him, but at the end, when she was exhausted and surly with hunger, she found Shinvel Dward and two of the critic's bond servants.
She trapped the three of them in a dead-end tween corridor. Dward glared without recognition as Cayten moved closer. The two bond servants — delicate, pale girls with elaborately braided red hair — darted back and forth aimlessly, making little shrieks of alarm.
Dward stood her ground, clashing her jaws in warning. "I'm a citizen of Dilvermoon, catbitch. Harm me, and you'll deal with the lawmechs!"
Cayten glanced up at the deckhead, which was empty. "I see no lawmechs."
Dward paled slightly. "I'm strong; you won't have an easy time of it."
Cayten growled and showed her fangs.
Dward fell back a step, and now there was terror on her lumpy face.
Cayten shook herself, and turned down the intensity of the skein. She felt a weight of outrage slip away — a surprisingly heavy weight. Abruptly the world seemed a cool and precise place, much reduced in contrast. She took a deep breath and straightened from the tense crouch she found herself in. "Don't you remember me, Shinvel? Me and my pretty little breasts. They at least are the same."
Dward's mouth fell open. "Cayten Borlavinda? Is that you? What have you done?"
"Adapted."
Dward's face displayed amazement, then resentment — finally rage. "What do you mean, frightening me that way? I should teach you a lesson!"
To her surprise, Cayten felt a growl rising from her chest, and she took an involuntary step toward Dward. "You'll teach me no lessons tonight, Shinvel. Don't provoke me. Tell me where Genoaro is, if you want to leave the tween corridors undamaged."
Dward stood frozen for a moment, then relaxed by slow degrees, smiling crookedly. "Still chasing that worthless dog? I can tell you where to look, but I don't think you'll find him."
"Where?'
Dward laughed a humorless hyena laugh. "He's gone into the Dark, of course. None of us have seen him on the Legal Level for over a month."
Cayten's mind clicked into belief, and she turned away.
Dward called after her. "You've made a bad enemy today, cutie. See if I don't ruin you in Bo'eme; see if I don't."
The words made no impression on her.
She was afraid to go into the Dark. Thendard had told her terrible stories about acts of depravity too imaginative to have ever been conceived by real animals. "The Dark isn't a clean place, Cayten," he had said.
Now he warned her again. "No one who values their humanity goes into the Dark. The Dilvermoon authorities tolerate the Dark only because it drains off the violently insane and their natural victims. The Dark saves the lawmechs the trouble of catching and protecting."