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Elliot's boat was right behind him, and with a jolt the holofield changed its perspective. La Do
The water grew whiter, choppier, and the race was really on. The river was narrower and faster here, and the towering walls of the northern mountains rose up around them in jagged iron-gray sheets.
Elliot coaxed his engine to sharper life. With a sure hand La Do
The water splashed up and licked at them, and Cadma
The image switched back to Carlos, who was looking back over his shoulder at the approaching boat.
Cadma
Everyone was cheering now, and it grew riotous as the image switched from one perspective to the other; the gap between the boats narrowed, and the race finally became nose to nose. The river narrowed as it sluiced through a gap between, two towering slabs of rock, and Carlos narrowly held his lead, Elliot coming up fast.
Then, as they came out of it, and the way widened again, Elliot rammed Carlos from the rear. La Do
Elliot's boat spun twice, dipped and swung perilously and then finally stabilized.
The hologram switched to Carlos's craft and a triumphant Bobbi shaking her fist at Elliot as they widened the distance.
Carlos gu
Rock walls flashed by. Cadma
Fast!
But then...
"Switch back!" someone yelled, and suddenly they were with Carlos's boat, and it was in trouble. Something was terribly wrong, and the boat was spi
Another rock? But Carlos's face was distorted, and he was grabbing for Bobbi, screaming something unintelligible. The boat seemed to be collapsing, the holoimage buckling and blurring. The last image that they had was of rocks and water and churning foam, and a brief glimpse of Bobbi tumbling through the foam toward the rocks, thrashing her hands frantically as she disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
Chapter 16
ON THE CLIFF
All men think all men mortal, save themselves.
EDMUND YOUNG, Night Thoughts
First there was a humming. Mama was a good distance from the water, and her mouth was full of blood and feathers. She looked for insects swarming. If she found the nest she would eat it whole...
But the swarm sound was louder now, and too uniform, and there were no dark clouds that could be insects. Something strange, in unfamiliar terrain. Mama made for the water, not yet fast but already wary.
The humming was louder as she reached the water.
It came around a bend upstream. She couldn't see the intruder's shape; it was too distant yet. But it moved on the water, not through it. Moved fast.
Finally. Mama's eyes were above the water. The snorkel between her eyes drew air; her lungs heaved. There was rage in her, and something else: sphincter muscles relaxed back of her neck, speed began dripping into her blood, and her entire body began to fizz. The vulnerable snorkel withdrew into her head. She watched the intruder come—not quite toward her, she hadn't been seen yet—then why was the intruder already fast?
But Mama was fast now, and she moved.
This was her territory now. She knew it that well, she had been here that long. Mine. She too was almost above the water as she reached the intruder. She struck from the side. For a bare instant she knew that she had won.
Skin with a thin taste, a taste like metal but not as strong, ruptured on impact and tore in her jaws. No meaty texture, no taste of blood. Not won: lost! Tricked! And where was her enemy?
The metallic skin filled with water and began to sink. Confusing tastes drifted in its wake. Things thrashed the water in slow motion, beasts caught between fighters. She ignored them. Where was her rival?
Still fast, Mama streaked for her cave before she could be blind-sided. At the underwater mouth she turned. She couldn't be attacked now except from the front.
Now there was time. Mama lifted her eyes above the water and watched two beasts thrashing. If meat were suddenly snatched beneath the surface, she would know that her enemy was below. But the prey were swept downstream, thrashing, trying to reach the river's edge. They reached shore unmolested, and scrambled from the water unmolested.
Mama had been tricked. She had bitten something, but it wasn't meat, and where was her enemy?
There! Just like the other, it skimmed across the water, almost toward her. It swerved away as Mama streaked toward it. The intruder was fully on speed, and young. Mama thought. She herself had never moved so fast... but its turn was too slow. She was on it, and her teeth closed with terrible strength—
On thin, tough, tasteless skin, and flesh that ruptured and bone that broke—fragile bone, prey blood, prey meat, with no taste of speed. Not at all the flesh of her own kind, and she'd been tricked again!
She had barely slowed. She kept moving, fleeing the site of her kill, curving toward safety, sliding across the bucking surface of the water. Where is my enemy? Where?
Behind her, meat thrashed in the water, then subsided. More prey was climbing the cliff, unmolested, and that was hardly surprising. In the middle of a duel one does not pause to dine.
How may I lure my enemy?
My enemy's territory, my enemy's prey: Challenge!
Carlos Martinez was shaking: with cold, with shock and pain from the fractured cheekbone and the flap of scalp torn away when he wrapped himself around Bobbi's unconscious body to shield her from the rocks.
She lay curled on her side, flat stomach spasming, river water still trickling in a brown stream from her mouth, eyes glazed, but open and wandering blindly. (Alive, vivo! flashed insanely into his mind, alive, vivo!, scrambling his thoughts.) She was in shock, and probably concussed, but all that really mattered for the moment was that she was alive.
He gripped his head tightly, fighting the ringing and the pain. In a few moments they quieted, and he massaged Bobbi's rib cage firmly as he looked about him.
Later in the year, when the snow from the northern mountains melted, the spot he stood on and another thirty meters of tumbled rock would be submerged. In another ninety days there might not have been a place for them to crawl onto. He and Bobbi might have been dashed against steeply sloping walls of naked rock. A few hundred meters north or south the water dashed against sheer cliff. As bad and barren as this shelf was, it still represented something very near a miracle.
He would have to fight rapids or climb to get off the beach. He managed a quick prayer of thanks that he wouldn't have to try. Rescue would come soon. Thank goodness for the holo links! The camp would have seen exactly what happened.