Hyena Eyes

Cayten shook herself, and turned down the intensity of the skein. She felt a weight of outrage slip away — a surprisingly heavy weight. Abruptly the world seemed a cool and precise place, much reduced in contrast. She took a deep breath and straightened from the tense crouch she found herself in. "Don't you remember me, Shinvel? Me and my pretty little breasts. They at least are the same."

Dward's mouth fell open. "Cayten Borlavinda? Is that you? What have you done?"

"Adapted."

Dward's face displayed amazement, then resentment — finally rage. "What do you mean, frightening me that way? I should teach you a lesson!"

To her surprise, Cayten felt a growl rising from her chest, and she took an involuntary step toward Dward. "You'll teach me no lessons tonight, Shinvel. Don't provoke me. Tell me where Genoaro is, if you want to leave the tween corridors undamaged."

Dward stood frozen for a moment, then relaxed by slow degrees, smiling crookedly. "Still chasing that worthless dog? I can tell you where to look, but I don't think you'll find him."

"Where?'

Dward laughed a humorless hyena laugh. "He's gone into the Dark, of course. None of us have seen him on the Legal Level for over a month."

Cayten's mind clicked into belief, and she turned away.

Dward called after her. "You've made a bad enemy today, cutie. See if I don't ruin you in Bo'eme; see if I don't."

The words made no impression on her.

She was afraid to go into the Dark. Thendard had told her terrible stories about acts of depravity too imaginative to have ever been conceived by real animals. "The Dark isn't a clean place, Cayten," he had said.

Now he warned her again. "No one who values their humanity goes into the Dark. The Dilvermoon authorities tolerate the Dark only because it drains off the violently insane and their natural victims. The Dark saves the lawmechs the trouble of catching and protecting."

"How could it be much worse than the tween corridors?'

Thendard shook his head, solemnly exasperated. "Do you never listen to me, Cayten? Well, listen now. The Dark is different. In the Dark, your skein knows only one setting: maximum intensity. Doesn't matter what you set it to; you're banged down into your hindbrain, all the way. Non-beasters can't even survive in the Dark. The datafield there stops your heart if you're not wearing a full-spec skein...."

"I've been running the skein pretty deep, Thendard. I could handle it."

He snorted. "Sure."

"Well, why not?'

He shifted uneasily in his powerchair, and didn't speak for a long moment. "Oh, maybe you could handle it. It depends on something I can't measure. Some of us are more human than others, and those who are most human can run the Dark and come back. They have a little reserve; they can still think like a human being."

She thought about it. "Have you been in the Dark, Thendard?"

His face changed subtly; his attention seemed to turn inward. She could see memories playing behind his eyes, as though tiny holotanks flickered and danced there. "One time," he said. "Long ago."

She waited for him to elaborate, as he always did, but for once no words welled from his mouth. Watching him, she was startled to see something unfamiliar in his face. Thendard's old, she thought. Why had she never noticed before?

Finally she said, "I'm going, Thendard. Will you come with me?"

He smiled a weary smile. "Can I change your mind?"

"No."

He shrugged and turned away, so that she could not see his eyes. After a long silence, which she could not bring herself to break, he sighed. "I'll go with you, Cayten, if you won't see sense. Why not?"

THENDARD INSISTED on certain preparations. "It's very different in the Dark, Cayten. You're a civilized woman. You'd eat off the floor in any legal corridor in Dilvermoon if you had to, and feel no fear of infection. Do that in the Dark, and you might have half a dozen parasites eating you from the inside out."

So she submitted to immunizations, to an implant of general-purpose nanovores, to an on-need endorphin synthesizer.

Thendard was pleased by her cooperation. "It's good of you to humor me. I'll feel much better about our expedition, especially if...." His voice trailed off.

"If what, Thendard?"

"If you don't come back, dear." The laugh lines around his eyes crinkled into sadness. "At least now you'll have an edge over the other Darkrunners. If you don't come back — and I do — I'll want to think of you as living a different life. Happy again. A long, healthy life. I wouldn't want to live in the Dark myself, but it's better to live in the Dark than to die there. No?"

Thendard and Cayten passed rapidly through the tween corridors, until they stood in a long, narrow hall, from which multiple doorways led into the Dark.

"This is the safest ingress I know of," Thendard said. "These tunnels let into a maze complex. The predators who wait for new — and unwary —prey... they prefer other, less complicated lurks."