The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

Author:Malka Older
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

Chapter 11

“How could he be so dismissive?” I expostulated, when we were finally alone.

We were on a remote platform, large enough for a medium-sized cat to run and pounce within its confines, and connected to the rest of the mauzooleum by stairs going up and down. It was far from the visitor’s path though; I wondered how the cat had found us, or been aimed at us.

Mossa was examining the container, built into one of the long bars surrounding the habitat, that held the caracal’s genetic identicals, proto-caracals in cell form. They hadn’t been stolen, but I assumed she wanted to get an idea of what the containers were like. “Who? Oh that … director, or whatever he was? It happens.” She was commendably dismissive herself. “There are plenty of people who don’t like Investigators, and particularly don’t like to see someone like myself leading their investigations.”

“Oh surely—” I began, and Mossa looked up with a face etched into blankness.

“Forgive me, Pleiti, but I believe your experience in Valdegeld may not be typical of the entire planet.” That silenced me, and before I could recover to argue the premise— I had, after all, spent years away from the closed environ of the university before achieving my position, and the Preservation Institute should reflect academic attitudes, and so was my milieu as much as hers—Mossa had moved on to the place where the caracal had emerged from its habitat. The mostly transparent barrier had been re-closed with a temporary fastening. “Hm. Of course they’ve made too much of a mess fixing this for me to see much here. But perhaps…”

She turned to examine the bit of platform we stood on, and started walking in the direction which, I knew from my map, was the most direct route to where we were attacked. Again and again she knelt to the surface of the platform, and frowned. Finally, just up a small flight of stairs from where we had been strolling—had it been only two days before?—she grunted with a sort of triumph. “Here.”

I squatted reluctantly beside her, feeling my knees creak. “See these scratches?” Mossa reached into her bag and pulled out a crumple of cloth. A crumple of blood-stained cloth, I realized, recoiling.

“Mossa! Is that—”

She was already straightening out the shirt, aligning the punctures in the cloth with the damage to the metal of the platform. “Yes. The last claw did not find much purchase, but these are clearly from the same—”

“A caracal’s claws are retractable,” I pointed out, having looked this information up during the long period of wakefulness after cleaning her wounds that night. “Why would it leave claw marks on the ground?”

Mossa looked up at me, her eyes bright and present above her atmoscarf. “Why indeed? In fact, that hint of a mark here is more telling than the lack of scratches up till this point. It seems that something made the feline angry just before it touched the ground here.”

I considered that. “Someone carried it here, harassed it somehow, and—”

“Pointed it at us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.