McCaffrey, Anne - SS - Thorns Of Barevi.pdf - Anne McCaffrey - aro164

Thorns Of Barevi

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Anne McCaffrey - Thorns Of Barevi

CHRISTIN BJORNSEN WONDERED IF SUMMER on the planet Barevi could possible be

the only season. There had been remarkably little variation in temperature in the nine months

since she'd arrived here. She'd been four months in what appeared to be the single, sprawling

city of the planet when she'd been a slave, and now had racked up five months of comparat-

ive freedom tooth-and-nail survival in this jungle, after her escape from the city in a stolen flit-

ter.

Her sleeveless, one piece tunic was made of an indestructible material, but it would not be

very warm in cold weather. The scooped neckline was indecently low and the skirt ended mid-

way down her long thighs. It was closely modeled, in fact, after the miniskirted sheath she had

been wearing to class that spring morning the Catteni ships had descended on Denver. One

moment she was on her way to the college campus; the next, she was one of thousands of

astonished and terrified Denverites being driven by forcewhips up the ramp of a spaceship

that made the Queen Mary look like a bathtub float. Once past the black maw of the ship,

Chris, with all the others, swiftly succumbed to the odorless gas. When she and her fellow

prisoners had awakened, they were in the slave compounds of Barevi, waiting to be sold.

Chris aimed the avocado-sized pit of the gorupear she was eating at the central stalk of a

nearby thicket of purple-branched thom-bushes. The bush instantly rained tiny darts in all dir-

ections. Chris laughed.

She had bet it would take less than five minutes for the young bush to rearm itself. And it

had. The larger ones took longer to position new missiles. She'd had reason to find out.

Absently, she reached above her head for another gorupear. Nothing from good old Terra

rivaled them for taste. She bit appreciatively into the firm reddish flesh of the fruit and its suc-

culent juices dribbled down her chin on to her tanned breasts. Tugging at the strap of her slip-

tight tunic, she brushed the juice away. The outfit was great for tanning, but when winter

comes? And shouldn't she concentrate on gathering nuts and drying gorupears on the rocks

by the river for the cold season? She wrinkled her nose at the half-eaten pear. They were

mighty tasty, but a steady diet of them...

A low-pitched buzz attracted her attention. She got to her feet, balanced carefully on the

high limb of the tree. Parting the branches, she peered up at the cloudless sky. Two of the

umpteen moons that circled Barevi were visible in the west. Below them, dots that gave off

sparkles of reflected sunlight were swooping and diving.

The boys have called another hunt, she mused to herself and, still standing, leaned

against the tree trunk to take advantage of her grandstand seat.

Before her chance to escape had presented itself, Chris had picked up a good bit of the

lingua Barevi, a bastardization of the six or seven languages spoken by the slaves. She had

gleaned some information about her captors, the Catteni. They were not, for one thing, indi-

genous to this world but came from a much heavier planet nearer galactic center. They were

one of the mercenary-explorer races employed by a vast federation. They had colonized Bar-

evi, using it as a clearinghouse for spoils acquired looting unsuspecting nonfederation plan-

ets, and as a rest-and-relaxation center for their great ships' crews.

After years of the freefall of space and lighter gravity planets, Catteni found it difficult to re-

turn to their heavy, depressing home world. During her brief enslavement, Chris had heard

the Catteni boast of dying everywhere in the galaxy except Catten. The way they "played,"

Chris thought to herself, was rough enough to insure that they died young, as well as far from

Catten.

Huge predators roamed the unspoiled plains of Barevi, and the Catteni considered it great

sport to stand up to the rhinolike monsters with only a single spear. That is, Chris re-

membered with a grim smile, when they weren't brawling among themselves over imagined

slurs and insults. Two slaves, friends of hers, had been crushed under the massive bodies of

Catteni during a free-for-all.

Since she had come to the valley, she had wit-nessed half a dozen encounters between

rhinos and Catteni. Used to a much heavier gravity than Barevi, the Catteni were able to ex-

ecute incredible maneuvers as they softened their prey for the kill. The poor rhinos had less

chance than Spanish bulls and, in all the fights Chris had seen, only one man was slightly

grazed.

As the flitters neared, she realized that they were not acting like a hunting party. For one

thing, one dot was considerably ahead of the others. And by God, she saw the light flashes of

the trailing flitters' forward guns firing at the "leader."

Hunted and hunters were at the foot of her valley now. Suddenly, black smoke erupted

from the rear of the pursued flitter. It nosed upward. It hovered reluctantly, then dove, slant-

ingly, to strike the tumble of boulders along the river's edge, not far from her refuge.

Chris gasped as she beheld a figure, halfleaping, half-staggering out of the badly

smashed flitter. She could scarcely believe that even a Catteni had survived that crash. Wide-

eyed, she watched as he struggled to his feet, then reeled from boulder to boulder to get

away from the smoldering wreck.

With a stunningly brilliant flare, the craft exploded. Fragments whistled into the underbrush

as far up the slope as her retreat, and the idiotic thorn-bushes She had recently triggered

sprayed out their lethal little darts.

The smoke of the burning flitter obscured her view now, and Chris lost sight of the man.

The other flitters had reached the wreck and were hovering over it, like so many angry King-

Kongish bees, swooping, diving, trying to penetrate the smoke.

An afternoon breeze swirled the black clouds about and Chris caught glimpses of the

man, lurching still further from the crash. She saw him stumble and fall, after which he made

no move to rise. Above, the bees buzzed angrily, deprived of their prey.

Catteni don't hunt each other as a rule, she told herself, surprised to find that she was

halfway down from her perch. They fight like Irishmen, sure, but to chase a man so far from

the city?

The crash had been too far away for Chris to dis-tinguish the hunted man's features or

build. He might just be an escaped slave, like herself. If not Terran, he might be from one of

the half-dozen other subju-gated races that lived on Barevi. Someone who had had the guts

to steal a flitter didn't deserve to die un-der Catteni forcewhips.

Chris made her way down the slope, careful to avoid the numerous thorn thickets that

dominated these woods. She had once amused herself with the whimsy that the thorns were

the gorupear's protec-tors, for the two invariably grew close together.

At the top of the sheer precipice above the falls of the river, she grabbed a long vine which

she had hung there for a speedy descent. On the river bank she stuck to the dry, flat rocks

until she came to the stepping-stones that allowed her to cross the river below the wide pool

made by the little falls. Down a gully, across another thom-bush-filled clearing, and then she

was directly above the spot where she had last seen the man.

Keeping close to the brown rocks so nearly the shade of her own tanned skin, she

crossed the re-maining distance. She all but tripped over him as the wind puffed black smoke

down among the rocks.

"Catteni!" she cried, furious as she bent to examine the unconscious man and recognized

the gray and yellow uniform despite its tattered and blackened condition.

With a disdainful foot, she tried to turn him over.

And couldn't. The man might as well have been a boulder. She knelt and yanked his bead

around by the thick slate-gray hair which, in a Catteni, did not indicate age. Maybe he was

dead?

No such luck. He was breathing. A bruise mark on his temple showed one reason for his

unconscious-ness. For a Catteni, he was almost good-looking. Most of them tended to have

brutish, coarse features, but this one had a straight, almost patrician nose, even if there was a

lot more of it than an elephant would want to claim, and he had a wide, well-shaped mouth.

The Catteni to whom she had been sold had had thick, blubbery lips, and she'd heard ru-

mors-never mind about them!

A sizzling crack jerked her head around in the di-rection of the wreck. The damned fools

were firing on the burning wreck now. Chris looked down at the unconscious man, wondering

what on earth he had done to provoke such vindictive thoroughness. They sure wanted him

good and dead.

The barrage pulverized the flitter, leaving the fire no fuel. The wind, laden with coarse

dust, blew odor-ously from the wreckage. The man stirred and vainly tried to raise himself,

only to sink back to the ground with a groan. Chris saw the flitters circling to land on the plat-

eau below the wreck.

"Going to case the scene of the crime, huh?" It was completely illogical, Chris told herself,

to help a Catteni simply because there were others of his race out to get him. But... she back-

tracked, just in case he had left any trace for them to follow. She went back as far as she

could on the raw rock. Where dirt began, ash had settled in a thick layer, obliterat-ing any

tracks he might have made. After all, the Catteni might stumble on her if they thought their

victim had escaped the crash.

He had got to his feet when she returned. She tried to lend her support but it was like try-

ing to guide a mountain.

"Come on, Mahomet," she urged softly. "Just walk like a nice little boy to the river, and I'll

duck you in. Good cold water'll bring you round."

A sharp, distant gabble of voices made her start nervously. God, those Catteni had got up

that rock face in a hurry. She'd forgotten they could take pro-digious leaps on this light-gravity

planet.

"They're coming. Follow me," she said in lingua Barevi.

He groaned again, shaking his heavy head to clear his senses. He turned toward her, his

great yellow eyes still dazed with shock. She would never get used to such butter-colored ir-

ises.

"This way! Quickly!" she said, urgently tugging at him. If he didn't shake his tree-stump

legs, she was going to leave him. Good Samaritans on Barevi had better not get caught by

Catteni.

She pulled at his arm and he seemed to make a decision. He lurched forward, one great

hand grasp-ing her shoulder in an incredible viselike grip. They reached the river bank, still

ahead of the searchers. But Chris groaned as she realized that the barely conscious man

would never be able to navigate the stepping-stones.

McCaffrey, Anne - SS - Thorns Of Barevi.pdf

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