Cobra Strike

Pyre's position.

Finally they were gone, and Pyre could address the task of moving the bololin carcass closer to the Dewdrop. With his servos the creature's weight wasn't a significant problem, but it took him four tries to find a grip that was reasonably balanced. Finding a wide enough path through the trees and bushes was another problem, and more than once he found himself wondering how in hell the beasts managed it on their own.

Eventually, though, he made it. Dumping the carcass beside his camouflaged laser comm, he activated the latter and slipped on the headphone. "Pyre to Dewdrop," he muttered. "Anyone home?"

"Lieutenant Collins," a voice came back promptly. "I believe Governor Telek and her people are still in the lounge, sir; let me switch you."

"Fine," Pyre said. A moment later Telek came on the circuit.

"Everything all right, Almo?" she said.

"Far as I can tell. Listen, I've got a bololin carcass for you and two freeze boxes' worth of tarbines and mojos. You want to warm up your equipment or wait until I can deliver them in person?"

"You got a tarbine? Wonderful! Impregnated or not?"

"Both types-which is why I've got a spare bololin."

"Uh-huh. I understand. Well... I suppose I ought to do the bololin first, before any scavengers get to it. Can you hook up the field analyzer to the laser comm for me?"

"Sure."

It took only a few minutes to set up the field analyzer and plug its control line into the laser comm's telemetry port, and by the time he'd finished Telek had the necessary control/display console hooked up at her end. "Okay," she said. "Now stand clear."

The analyzer remote, looking for all the world like a large double starfish with gripper treads, crawled up the bololin's flank to where the heart would be on most earthstock animals. A scalpel extended from one arm to slice a neat incision in the dark hide. Pyre paused long enough to make sure the analyzer's camera units were firmly mounted to nearby trees and then headed out to walk a sentry circle around the area. They couldn't afford to have either scavengers or

Qasamans stumble onto the post-mortem now... and besides, it wasn't really something he wanted to watch. It was three hours before the remote's return to the ground signaled the operation was at an end-and the bololin was no longer recognizable as such. Averting his eyes, Pyre again put on the headset. "Pyre."

"Ah, you're back." If Telek was at all tired, it wasn't evident from her voice.

"You want to open up the freeze boxes and get me one of the tarbines? Better start with the unimpregnated one."

"You sure you want to do it out here?" he asked doubtfully.

"I've got as much sensitivity with the remote as I do with my hands," Telek assured him, "and I'd just as soon start getting some answers before we have to leave. Or at least have the questions I'll want Yuri to ask."

"You're the boss." Finding the proper box. Pyre opened it and set the chilly tarbine down on a patch of bare ground. The remote skittered over to it and Pyre resumed his walk.

He returned twice more, replacing the mess first with an impregnated tarbine and then with the mojo, wondering each time how long Telek could continue to handle delicate surgery without sleep. But she kept at it, and the eastern sky was starting to glow when the remote's operating light finally flicked out. "Well?" he asked into the headset as he started collecting the gear together.

"I'm not sure," Telek said slowly. "The data seem clear enough... but I'm not really sure if I believe it. Mojos and tarbines appear to be entirely different species... and the mojos don't seem to impregnate the tarbines as much as they inoculate them."

"They what?"

"Well... the mojo's only external sex organ is designed like an organic hypodermic needle. What it does is inject a seminal fluid that contains virus-like nuclei instead of more complete sperm cells. The nuclei... well, this is still preliminary, but it looks like they invade some of the cells in the tarbine's back and turn them into embryo mojos."

Pyre stared down at the mutilated mojo on the ground, already begi

"That's what I said," Telek agreed with a sigh. "But the more I think about it the more sense it makes. This way the mojo relegates both the nourishment and protection of its young to another individual-an entirely different species, in fact-and therefore doesn't have to make that sacrifice itself."

"But what incentive does the tarbine have to live until the embryo kills it?"

Pyre objected. "And what about the training most young have to receive from their parents?"

Christopher's voice came on the circuit. "You're thinking of the usual insectean pattern where one species lays eggs in the body of another, which becomes the larvae's food when they hatch. But the young mojo doesn't have to kill its host.

If you look closely at the way the skin and muscle are arranged in the tarbine's back, it looks very much like the critical area could be split open and resealed with a minimum of damage and no real loss of flight capability."

"Assuming the mojo doesn't exceed a maximum size," Telek added. "And as to post-natal instruction, the mojo's brain seems to have a larger proportion of the high-neural-density 'primary programming' structure than earthstock or

Aventinian animals I've studied. That's an assumption, of course; Qasaman biochemistry doesn't have to be strictly analogous to ours-"

"And you fried part of the brain shooting the thing down-" Christopher put in.

"Shut up, Bil. Anyway, it looks very possibly like the mojo young can simply poke through the tarbine's skin, fly its separate way and take up housekeeping in the forest."

"Or on somebody's shoulder," Pyre frowned as a sudden thought struck him. "On somebody's shoulder... the same way the tarbines ride bololins?"

"So you noticed the similarity, did you?" Christopher commented. "What makes it even more intriguing is that the tarbines have the same organic hypo organ the mojos do."

"As do the bololins themselves," Telek added, "though God only knows what species they use as embryo-hosts. Maybe each other; the top of the size chain has to do something different."

" 'Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,' " Pyre quoted the old saying.

" '-and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum,' " Telek finished for him. "You're the third person who's brought that up tonight. Starting with me."

"Um. Well... the contact team still going sightseeing tomorrow?"

"Yes. I think I'll clue them in on all this as soon as they wake up-maybe Yuri will be able to worm out some more information from Moff." Telek paused and Pyre could hear, faintly, the sound of a jaw-cracking yawn. "You'd better get under cover and get some sleep, Almo," she said. "I think under the circumstances you can skip that riverside fauna survey we talked about yesterday-I've got enough data to keep me busy for quite a while."

"No argument," Pyre agreed. "I'll call in when I wake up."

"Just be careful you're not seen. Good night-or morning."

"Same to you." Shutting down the laser comm, Pyre spent a few moments rearranging its camouflage and hiding his other equipment. A dozen meters away was his shelter tree; tall and thick, its lowest branches a good five meters above the ground. A servo-powered jump took him the necessary height, and a few branches higher he reached his "shelter," a waterproof one-man hammock bag slung under a particularly strong branch and surrounded by a glued-stick cage sort of arrangement. It made Pyre feel a little strange to sleep inside such a barrier, but it was the simplest way to make sure no carnivore could sneak up on him, no matter how quiet it was or how deeply asleep he was.