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Decker glanced at the still-open hatch of the skimmer. "You finish up here. I'll take her back to the hub."
"You know she's a guide."
Decker said coldly, "Her gate will be of no use here. She's going in the reclamation pit with the others.
In less than an hour, there will be plenty of water in the pit, but there's no open passage to anything
nearby nothing from which a ma-rine animal can come."
Shjams, staring still at Tsia, frowned. "What does that have to do with her?"
"She's linked to some kind of eel or fish. Kurvan confirmed it on the hike."
His words hung in the air. Tsia held her breath while time spun out in a long, thin web like an ancient
ghost from the node. There was no change in Shjams's expression as the woman turned away. A sound
escaped Tsia's throat, even through her tightly clamped lips. Decker dug his fingers into her shoulder
and hauled her up. He shoved her in front of him, then followed her across the tarmac. Tsia, her mind
numb as ice and her thoughts as sharp as crystal, did not once look back.
Shjams stared after her, then triggered the hatch and climbed up into the ship. Blindly, she went forward
and sank down in the pilot's chair. The soft molded itself to her hips and shoul-ders, and she cursed its
calm complacency.
"She thought I was her sister."
Shjams stared at the blank set of flight screens as if they were a wall. She didn't feel the chill air that
circulated from the open hatch. She didn't notice the rain that swept into the cabin from the door. There
was a harshness in the air, as if someone breathed with difficulty, and it took her a moment to realize it
was her own throat, so tight against the tears, that choked off the breath from her lungs.
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
"I was," she whispered to herseif. "I was."
20
Tsia rolled back against the wet rock. Above, a rough circle of gray light was filled with raindrops that
seemed to fall as slowly as snowflakes. The edges of the reclamation pit, out-lined with the silver light,
glistened from the groundwater. Falling rain splattered her neck and face. The water at her feet was
already ankle-deep from the seeps that flooded through the cracked rock walls, and since the gray light
didn't reach all the way to the bottom of the pit, and the sallow pit lighting was faint as a lamp in a
warehouse, it looked as if she stood in an ebony pool.
From beside her, Doetzier spoke quietly. "Did you get to a manual com?" His voice was so low that it
barely reached Tsia's ears over the sound of the running, dripping water.
"No," she returned, her voice equally low. They stood close together with the zeks overhead, at the top
of the dank hole. Like chickens waiting for the knife, they stood and stared up at the gray sky circle.
Five meres, three freepicks& Nitpicker being lowered as they watched. Nine people waiting to die. And
that hunter who crept on the edge of her mind still tested her gate with each breath.
She looked around the pit with distant eyes. Absently, she scratched the skin graft on her thigh. Around
her, the cored-out walls were rough with sharp, circular cuts. Four meters that was all the width there
was. Four meters; twenty minutes, and the water already ankle-deep.
For a moment, she watched Nitpicker's limp body brought down the lift by the zek with the long arms.
The blackjack and his victim dropped into the darker layer where neither sky nor pit lighting reached,
then back into the dirty, yellow-lit area at the bottom.
"How far did you get?" Doetzier breathed the question with-out moving his lips, and Tsia dragged her
attention back to his words.
"The skimmers "
Wren and the thickset Bishop caught Nitpicker as the zek tossed her off his shoulder. Gently, they
lowered her limp body to a bed of rock that stood knee-high above the growing pud-dle. Laz, his tall
frame huddled on a rock, watched them work without moving. While Wren checked for Nitpicker's
pulse, the zek rose immediately back toward the rim. He had not brought down a weapon. Blackjack
wouldn't have hesitated to sacrifice him if they thought he'd be used against them. The ankle-deep pool
reflected his rising shape as a twisted, dancing body.
Tsia looked at Doetzier as his own water-image split and shook and put itself back together. The skin
was tight around his eyes, and she could feel in his biofield the control he ex-erted over his pain. The
side of his face was egg-shaped, and the lump from the flexor red-blue with dead blood. His left eye was
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
still half-shut from the swelling; his Up was split and fat. His shoulders were bent as if he were tired and
in pain, but his gaze was alert and seemed to snap with the energy that filled his biofield. His hands,
hidden in shadow, drammed against his trousers as if he waited, not for death, but something& else.
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