Women of War by Alexander Potter Page B

in which I rested as a symphony of pressures against the cells of my exquisitely sensitive skin. I’d hum along.
    Then, there was the impact of large muscle movement. Oh, be sure I noticed when Ansky dropped to all fours, or stood on two legs, or bent over, or laughed.
    Last, and most intriguing to recall, sound. I’d registered everything I’d heard through the walls and fluid of my living cradle through ears disposed to greater range than most sentient beings possessed.
    Especially when those around me were, well, shouting.
    I ignored innumerable heated discussions about Ansky’s lamentable condition, cuing my memories to one word: Skalet. Sure enough, they’d argued about her as well.
    â€œSkalet? She’s incapable! A coward! I tell you I’ll be fine. Send me. You know I’m better at learning culture, at blending in with other species. Let our Web-kin skulk somewhere else.”
    Skalet? Even as I tried to wrap my brain around what Ansky was saying, very loudly and with enough passion to shake my surroundings, Ersh replied, “Thanks to your blending, you can’t travel until this latest creation of yours is uncorked and given to its father. I intend to monitor this emerging kind of Human closely. Skalet will go and she will learn them for us.” The unspoken “or else” penetrated Ansky’s abdomen; either that, or I was influenced by my subsequent wealth of experience with that tone.
    My world shifted and jiggled, then a tidal wave hinted that Ansky had moved to another chair and dropped in it without care for me. Parental she wasn’t. “It won’t be long.” This with certainty. Warmth implied a paw pressed over me. I kicked at it. “She’s impatient.”
    Really, I wasn’t. Especially in hindsight.
    â€œShe?” Ersh’s chime was nicely ominous. “Don’t become attached.”
    Perhaps my presence—or her preoccupation with its inconvenience—gave Ansky a little more spine than usual. “Becoming attached is my skill, Ersh. Who else brings back the interpersonal details we need about a sentient species? Who learns what it is to be that form? Skalet?” The growl under the word brought an instinctive echo from me, albeit consisting of a pathetic, soundless tensing of a breathing system that had no air in it yet. “Skalet spends her time in other forms—which is as little as possible—hiding in bushes. She uses gadgets to record from a distance, then presumes to tell us she’s gathered information firsthand. But she’ll have no convenient hiding places at this Kraal outpost. As befits a culture almost constantly in conflict, they’re more fanatical than she is about surveillance. Her devices will be useless.”
    â€œYes.” Ersh somehow made the word smug.
    Â 
    I blinked free of memory, for an instant finding it odd to have air against my eyes. “You threw Skalet off a cliff,” I concluded, doing my best to restrain a likely regrettable amount of triumph at the thought. Ersh had tossed me from her mountain to encourage my first cycle into Web-form. Skalet’s plunge had been no less perilous for lack of rock at the bottom. For I knew the Kraal.
    Not personally, being too young in Ersh’s estimation to leave her Moon, but the assimilated memories of my Webkin were clear enough. Kraal society had evolved an elaborate structure in which every individual had an allegiance to one or more of the ruling Houses through birth or action. Moreover, those allegiances, called affiliations, were permanently tattooed on each adult Kraal’s face. While they allowed no images of themselves until death, to ensure only final affiliations were recorded for posterity, their gates were guarded by those who remembered faces exceedingly well. Only those who had been introduced by a known and trusted individual would be admitted, given that advancement through Kraal nobility typically