Carnival

The ripple of brightness was expected this time, a pattern of motion designed to catch a predator’s eye just the way light snagged on the V-shaped track of a big fish underwater.

If he had to take a guess, he’d wager that was what Dragons ate. It made sense of the jaw full of slender, needle-sharp back-curved teeth, the sharply hooked talons. Following the light, he thought about that, distracted himself with images of arrowing, broad-winged green-and-blue beings hauling great silver fish squirming from the protected waters of the bay.

They were far superior images to the one that persisted when he did not force himself to think of something frivolous.

The rill led him through cool rooms and several corridors, his feet passing over carpetplant and what passed for tile the way the strand of light passed over moving images of jungle understory. He memorized this route, too. It was always good to know how to get out of whatever you were getting into.

He smelled cut greenery, and then cooking, and finally the hospital reek of antiseptic, adhesive, and synthetic skin. The pale glow lingered around a closed iris. Vincent paused and rested his fingertips against the wall beside the door.

“House, open the door, please.”

It spiraled obediently wide. This was a public space, and there was no reason for House to forbid him entrance.

The murmur of voices washed out as he stepped inside. Or a voice, anyway. Katya bent over a flat-topped table covered with layers of folded cloth, one hand on the neck of the animal she whispered to and the other on his muzzle. It looked as if the bandages had been changed.

Girl and khir were alone in the room. Katya glanced up, tensing, at the sound of the door. Walter might have lifted his head, but she stroked his neck and restrained him, and he relaxed under her hand. She also seemed to calm when she saw Vincent, but he knew it for a pretense. Her shoulders eased and her face smoothed, but no matter how softly she petted the khir’s feathers the lingering tension in her fingers propagated minute shivers across his skin.

Vincent cleared his throat. “Just how smart is a khir?”

She smiled. “Smart.”

“As smart as a human?”

“Well,” she said, stroking Walter’s feathers back along the bony ridge at the back of his skull, “not the same kind of smart. No. They don’t use tools or talk, but they understand fairly complicated instructions and they coordinate with humans and with their pack mates.”

“So they must communicate.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Pity he can’t talk,” Vincent said, sadly.

Katya colored, olive-tan skin pinking at the cheeks. “Miss Katherinessen,” she said, “I’m sorry about Miss Kusanagi-Jones. I want to offer my personal assurances that I and everyone in Pretoria house will do everything we can to find him and bring him home safe. Agnes is coordinating the search now, and I’ll relieve her in the morning.”

As if her words were permission, he stepped over the threshold and came fully into the room. The white tile floor was cool, even cold, shocking to feet that had already grown accustomed to carpetplant and the blood-warmth of House’s hallways. “I shall be praying for your mother,” he said, “and her safe and timely return.”

“Thank you,” she said after a hesitation, and licked her lips before she looked up again. “Do you pray often?”

“Sometimes.”

“Ur is a Christian colony.”

“Founded by Christians. Radicals, like New Amazonia.”

She kept her eyes on the khir, as if watching him breathe. He lay quietly, the nictitating membrane closed under outer lids at half-mast. She smoothed his feathers again. “We’re taught that Christians were among the worst oppressors of women. On Old Earth. That they held women responsible for all the sin and wickedness in the world.”

He chuckled. “Not my branch of the Church. We’re heretics.”

“Really?” She brightened as if it were a magic word. “Like Protestants?”

He shook his head and reached out slowly to lay his hand on Walter’s flank behind the bandages. The khir’s hide was soft and supple under scales like beads on an evening gown, pebbled against his fingertips. The khir sighed as another breath of tension left his muscles. Vincent’s own heart slowed, the ache across his shoulders easing in response.

“Descended, philosophically speaking, from the very first heresy of all. One that was eradicated by the Paulines about two and a half thousand years ago, for being prone to sentiments that were thought to undermine the authority of the Church.”

He had her interest. She brushed the back of his hand and he could feel her trembling, though she restrained the appearance of it well. “But was it really a…church yet?”