Hyena Eyes

The world turned, and became a far more interesting place. She felt light, powerful, unnaturally alert. The scent that blew from the Dark resolved into a complex of distinct odors, each sharp and well-defined. There was the enticing sweetness of decaying protein, the harshness of corroding metal, the chemical tang of a thousand varieties of plastic. There were the scent-signatures of half a dozen predators who claimed territories in the near Dark. She turned away, a shudder twitching her hide, and ran into the tween corridors, head up, sniffing for Genoaro's scent.

The tween corridors seemed changed, dense with striving life, full of sounds and scents that she had not noticed before. She ran with an easy lolloping gait, tossing her head, occasionally voicing a high-pitched giggle, a sound that now seemed perfectly natural.

At the next corridor nexus, she surprised a group of wildebeests gathered around an algae-covered sump. They were, Cayten thought with the part of her mind that remained hers, a remarkably homely group of people with long, pendulous noses and awkward, rawboned bodies. They snorted, showed white eyes, but, evidently perceiving no threat in a solitary hyena, held their ground. She charged playfully around their flank, and they whirled to keep her in sight. Several children pressed back into the center of the herd, and Cayten was transiently horrified to find herself wondering if they could be separated from their parents.

She turned aside and raced off into the nearest corridor, choosing a direction at random, and a moment later she had forgotten her revulsion.

Genoaro's scent, along with the associated scents of other excited hyenas, came to her a few minutes later, as she passed through a maze of low-ceilinged access tunnels. She stopped, filled her nostrils with him, savoring the mingled odors of his sweat, the metallic burnt-clay reek of his glass furnace — a scent that still clung to him — and the coppery tang of fresh blood.

She pounded after him, smiling, feeling an unambiguous pleasure at the thought of seeing him. She burst from the access tunnels into a long, empty warehouse bay, and heard the yelping of a pack. The last hyena disappeared into a corridor on the far side of the bay, and she increased her speed, ignoring the pain that began to stitch her side. She could feel her face stretching in a wild fixed grin, and she barked with anticipation.

She caught up with the pack at the exit of the corridor into another large bay. She recognized Genoaro, running at the front of the pack, legs pumping easily, body hunched forward in yearning. Then she saw what the pack was running.

Half a dozen preadolescent children raced desperately for the next tunnel. They wore the gray rags of Holding Ark refugees, and their thin legs flashed in the blue light. They wasted no energy on cries for help.

A brief keen delight lifted her forward, shouldering the other hyenas aside. She caught up with Genoaro and laughed. He glanced over, recognized her, and dodged aside in startlement. He slowed, his face filling with confusion. Then he took her arm and jerked her to a stop.

She tried to twist free, but his fingers tightened painfully.

"What are you doing, Cayten?" he asked, in a voice she did not recognize.

"Hunting," she said, and giggled. Her feet still wanted to run, and she danced up and down in place.

He groaned and reached up to his skein. Watching his face, she thought: A light just went out behind his face.

He shook her. "Crank down, Cayten. Come on."

The pack disappeared into the far corridor, and she felt a sudden heaviness in her heart.

"Yes, all right." She twisted the vernier, and a large part of the world died away softly.

She became aware of what she had been doing, in stages, as though a holoprojectionist with an unsteady hand had taken control of her mind's eye. The Dark and its deadly scents. The tween corridors and their shifting currents of life. Her hunt for Genoaro. The Ark children, fleeing from her teeth, from her hunger.

"Oh," she gasped. "Oh."

"You don't understand," Genoaro said.

Her revulsion, which had first centered on herself, widened to include him, and she did pull away finally, and took several involuntary steps back.

"What... what were you doing?" She could barely stand to look at him, but then details sank in. His hair stood up in greasy tufts; his face was dark with week-old beard. His whiskery mouth was stained with some clotted black material.

Genoaro shook his head dumbly, watching her with dull eyes.

"What were you doing?" she shouted, and sprang at him, fists balled.

He made no move to defend himself when she thumped his chest. He said nothing until she grew tired and let her hands drop to her sides.