Orphans - Kevin Killiany [35]
For a moment she considered tripping all three traps, but her sense of self-preservation won out over her sense of humor. Moving back into the underbrush, she made her way around the clearing.
Almost too late, she noticed the cut branches. Someone had made one route through the thicket slightly easier than the others, then made an effort to conceal their handiwork. Here was a hunter with more respect for her intelligence. She backed away from that path, having no interest in finding out what sort of trap had been prepared.
Unfortunately, this put her in the position of having to decide on a course of action when she could see no more than a few meters in any direction. On the other hand, her size placed her easily under the canopy of shrubs, making her at least as invisible as her pursuers.
Until three local days ago, Pattie had never regretted not having to wear clothes. Her exoskeleton protected her against everything from the vacuum of space to the crushing pressures of an ocean floor with equal ease. The only time a Nasat wore any sort of artificial covering was for aesthetic effect—a flamboyant taste Pattie did not share.
What her satisfaction with her natural form did not anticipate, however, was first contact with members of a primitive, clothes-wearing culture. The natives had no concept of alien life-forms, much less alien intelligence. To them a naked being who resembled one of their local insects could not possibly be anything other than a giant insect.
Or, depending on the nature of their mythology, if any, she might be regarded as a magical creature, like a unicorn on Earth. While the idea of being a unicorn appealed to her in the abstract, in the concrete— or rather, in the underbrush—the prospect held little charm.
In any event, her first meeting with the colonists native to this vessel had degenerated almost instantly into headlong pursuit. And after three days running without food or medicine and precious little water, she was tired. The fact that three local days was only a bit over two standard days comforted her not at all.
To her right was the stream and beyond it the trail she thought the others had followed. Even in her flight, she had been following that road without actually using it, a strategy in concealment her pursuers had evidently figured out.
That stream was a problem. In the last kilometer or so it had begun flowing faster; she was no longer sure she could ford it easily. She wondered if the natives understood how unusual a brook with a slanted surface, sloshing twice as deep along its left bank, really was. In any event, somewhere ahead of her she knew it had to either turn across her path or join a greater current flowing to her left, against the spin.
Either way, it presented a danger. Not only was crossing it problematic in her condition, she would be in the open, exposed as she made the attempt.
To her left a twig snapped. Pattie fought the reflex to flee right.
The hunters obviously knew within a few hundred square meters where she was. They were trying to herd her, trying to get her to bolt in panic in a direction of their choosing. She had to admit she was perfectly willing to comply with the bolt in panic part of their plan. The trick would be doing it successfully in a direction they did not expect.
The more she thought about it, the more backtracking made sense. They knew where she was trying to go, or at least they knew what direction she had held to for three days. And, though the concealed trail in the underbrush indicated at least one dissenting opinion, they did not have much respect for her intelligence. Doubling back now might just throw them off. She’d ford the stream farther up, above the traps where it was running slow, and move perpendicular to her course for a day or so before continuing after the others.
Her mind made up, she turned back the way she had come. She ran low, close to the ground to