Slowly, carefully, with the pistol in his hand, Brad picked his way down the hillside to the edge of the village. The water was halfway up his shins, but the drizzle was easing off noticeably. Mithra was rising above the mountains, casting a sullen ruby glow across the hollow as it scudded among the dwindling clouds.
And the cat from Beta was standing halfway across the impromptu lake, near the outermost circle of buildings, in water deep enough to almost reach its belly.
It raised its heavy-boned head and gave out a roar that shook the hollow. Brad thought he knew what the cat was trying to say: I’m wet and cold and hungry and I don’t like this one bit.
Well, neither do I, Brad replied silently to the beast.
The half-drowned village looked dead, abandoned. Nothing was moving down there. Brad took a few cautious steps downslope. The cat spotted him at once and started padding toward him.
“For future reference,” Brad said aloud to Emcee, “the beasts don’t seem to notice me unless I move. Standing still, I become part of the background to them. I think.”
Another whooshing roar streaked by overhead. Brad saw the hot contrail of another reentry flash past and disappear on the other side of the hills.
“They’re coming from Beta, all right,” he spoke into his helmet microphone. “Lots of them.”
The cat was coming closer, splashing through the water toward him. Brad was torn between the urge to kill it as quickly as he could and the worry that he’d deplete the pistol’s power pack by firing it at too distant a range.
Suddenly a figure emerged from one of the buildings. A Gamman stood in the doorway, staring at the cat, then turned to look Brad’s way. Behind him, Brad could see other Gammans, huddling just inside the doorway, peering over the first one’s shoulder.
“Get back!” he shouted, hoping that his suit’s computer could translate his words adequately. He waved his free hand at them, gesturing for them to retreat into the relative safety of the house.
The cat turned toward the Gamman, who took a tentative step toward it.
“Get back!” Brad repeated, waving both his arms.
But the Gamman moved toward the cat. Defenseless, without even a hunting stick in his hands, he headed toward the cat. And the others walked behind him.
Brad stumbled down the rain-soaked hillside, trying to close the range between himself and the cat. The beast paid him no attention, not with the handful of Gammans so much closer.
Point and shoot. Brad raised his arm and fired at the cat. It twitched and howled. Brad fired again and the cat bounded away, splashing across what had been the village’s farmland, sending up sheets of spray as it leaped away from Brad and the villagers.
Brad slogged through the shin-deep water to the Gammans, who stood stock-still, petrified with fear or awe or surprise, he didn’t know which.
“Brrd!” said one of them. Brad recognized him as Lnng, one of Mnnx’s hut mates.
“Are you all right?” Brad asked.
“You drove it away,” Mnnx said. The computer couldn’t translate tones of voice, but Brad got the feeling that the Gamman was not happy to be rescued.
“That monster was going to kill you,” Brad said. “Kill you all.”
“Of course,” said Mnnx.
Brad looked over his shoulder and saw that the cat was coming back toward them. Limping, but heading for them, its head low, its eyes glaring angrily.
Disbelievingly, Brad asked, “You want it to kill you?”
“It is death time.”
Another of the Gammans said, “Time for us to die.”
“That’s crazy!” Brad snapped, then he realized that the computer probably couldn’t translate the word to them.
The slinking cat had cut the distance between them by half, and it was still coming.
Brad stood there with the Gammans and watched it come.
One of the aliens started to chant words that the computer didn’t recognize. The others took up the hymn; that’s what Brad thought it must be, a hymn of death. He saw that their eyes were covered with an opaque membrane.
They’ve closed their eyes while they stand waiting for the goddamned cat to slaughter them. Somehow Brad felt angered. They’re standing here like a bunch of martyrs, waiting for their deaths.
Well screw that!
Brad raised his hand and aimed at the cat’s glowering eyes. He fired and the thin, bloodred line of laser energy found its mark. The great cat collapsed, its headful of fangs splashing into the water.
For several moments the Gammans didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“You can open your eyes,” Brad said sternly. “It isn’t going to kill you.”
They stared at the cat’s inert carcass.
“It’s dead!”
“You killed it!”
“Damned right,” said Brad. “I saved your lives.”
“But that’s wrong!” Mnnx rumbled.
“How can new Folk live if the old Folk do not die?”
“The Sky Masters will be angry with us,” one of the aliens wailed.
For a moment, Brad thought they were going to attack him, or at least rip the pistol from his hand.
Overhead, another entry vehicle zoomed past and disappeared over the hills. Brad heard the distant blast of its sonic boom. More cats arriving, he thought.
“I want to talk with Drrm,” he told them. “I need his wisdom.”
They glanced uneasily at one another, their big bulbous eyes glancing nervously at Brad while they muttered among themselves in deep, reverberating tones.
Brad turned his back to them and searched the hollow for more cats.
At last Lnng said, “Come with us; we will take you to Drrm.”
Brad followed the Gamman toward the structure that he had dubbed the longhouse, the rest of the aliens trailing behind them. The sky was clearing nicely, he thought, although Beta hung up there like an evil red eye that covered a quarter of the sky and filled the hollow with baleful red light. Ominous. Unsettling.
As they splashed through the water, Brad said, “At least the rain’s stopped.”
“There will be more,” answered Lnng. “Worse. Much worse.”