Bebe (15 page)

Quickly focusing beyond it, he peered out into the darkness. The leader of wild pack males had returned. Spear set aside, he had re-armed himself with a fist-sized rock instead. Subordinate males gathering around and behind him, they lined up along the front of the porch, a grim and glaring troop of rock-carrying humans, half smothered in fast-falling snow and hell-bent on getting inside.

At him, no less.

“Lovely,” Tral said, as the human studied first the rapidly repairing glass and then him. The corners of the pack leader’s bearded mouth turned up in a vindictive smile before, yanking back his arm and releasing a savage roar, the males swarmed the porch and began to pummel the window. They focused their brute attack on the cracked center of damage already inflicted and quickly took up the appearance and rhythm of an organized labor force building a new commuter rail.

The sound inside the cabin was deafening. Sensing the expedited speed and force of the attack, the window electrified, delivering a single shock strong enough to send the next male who struck it flying backwards out into the snow. Unfortunately, it was not their leader, which might have ended the attack right then. The males all stumbled back a step anyway, but only until their injured teammate, his hair standing out on end and slightly smoking, eased himself to sit up in the snow.

That hard-won pause barely lasted long enough for the spider-web cracks in the broken window to mend once more. It was a scary thing to see the entire surface covered in splintering glass and peppered with circular impact shatters in so short a time.

Realizing their companion was not killed, another bellowing shout—this time from all three of the remaining wild pack—rattled the front porch rafters. They hefted their rocks once more and resumed their tag-team round of beating, pounding and smashing to get inside.

A small hand touched the back of Tral’s leg, causing him to jump until he realized it was just the little female, sidling wide-eyed up beside him, cautiously using him as a shield between herself and the shouting, snarling males. The glass was struggling to catch up. The wild pack was going to break in.

Pulling his dart gun from his belt, he checked the barrel. Nope, still only just the two tranquilizers. Who would send a zoologist out into the wilds of a preserve populated with aggressive humans with only two tranquilizer darts? That was incredibly poor planning on someone’s part; he blamed the bureaucracy.

“Bad,” Bebe said.

Tral had no idea if she meant the humans in general or the situation as a whole, but he couldn’t agree more. She clutched at the back of his shirt, trying to tug him into retreating along with her.

“No, I need to stay here.” He couldn’t say he wasn’t touched though. After everything he’d done to her today—he wasn’t sorry about the spanking; she’d deserved every lick of that—she was still trying to lead him off to safety.

She jumped as the window dealt out another shock.

“Very bad,” Tral agreed. He picked her up and carried her back to the bed. Setting her down near the headboard and pillow, he pulled the blanket up around her and then sternly pointed his finger directly in front of her nose. “Stay. I mean it this time. Your feet need the rest, and I am not going to be ignored on this again. Bebe, stay.”

She looked at his fingers and then up at him, before the vigorous pounding at the window briefly stole her attention. Swallowing nervously, she then nodded. “Stay.”

“Good.” On his way back to the window, he paused to rummage through the unkempt stock and supplies scattered across his shelves until he found his ammunition box. A useless gesture really. When they broke through the glass, he had every intention of pumping both tranquilizers into the pack leader in the hopes that it took him down quickly. If he was lucky, that might diffuse the situation entirely. If not, he sincerely doubted there would be enough time to reload before the other three males overtook him. Still, he supposed, it was better to have them than not.

Seating himself at the foot of the bed to await the inevitable, he opened the box and pulled out the instructions, re-familiarizing himself with the procedure. They were probably going to kill him, but the less he looked like a bumbling idiot while they attempted it, the better he’d feel when they succeeded.

Never in his wildest dreams did he think he’d go out like this, beaten to death by humans with rocks. He could already see his demise making the national news. ‘Scientist Slaughtered By Wild Humans.’ Or worse, ‘Scientist Slaughtered and Devoured; Human Populace in Audotat Natural Preserve Put Down.’ If he allowed something like that to happen, he’d be very lucky if his uncle didn’t kill him all over again. Tral smirked, shaking his head once. Suddenly, the humans and their rocks didn’t seem so bad.

The window dealt out another strong shock, and a yelp preceded the heavy crash as another male was thrown back out into the snow. Whoever it was, groaned, a sound both low and full of pained regret. And still the pounding resumed. The glass was really sounding on the verge of shattering open. Splintering more rapidly than it was able to repair, it was chipping away under the steady onslaught of smashing blows.

This was ridiculous. It might well mean the end of his career, but Tral really wasn’t in the mood to die tonight. If he wanted to survive, then he had no choice but to call for re-enforcements.

Bebe watched him with wide blue eyes, glancing uncertainly back and forth between Tral and the window, her fingers tap-tap-tapping constantly.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her, but he wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth. Having witnessed the pack leader’s reaction to seeing Bebe firsthand, by himself Tral didn’t think it likely he would hurt her. But throw three more bachelor males into the equation and it wasn’t hard to imagine the end result. He’d read the literature. Humans had killed over breeding rights before. Nor was it unheard of for the female fought over to be hurt or killed herself in the process.

Gun in tow, Tral eased back to his work table, venturing close enough to check the progress of the window—yes, it was definitely going to breaking—and then snagged his computer. Retreating back to the bed, he sat down, balanced it on his knees and switched it on.

Now, who to call?

There were emergency procedures in place for occasions such as this, but Tral hesitated to set them into unstoppable motion. When an armed force deployed—in the middle of winter, and especially in a storm like the one currently building outside—empathy tended to decrease with the increasing discomfort of the soldiers involved. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the human insurrection would be dealt with in a very permanent way. The wild pack’s intentions notwithstanding, Tral didn’t particularly want them killed. For one thing, it would leave him without a job. For another, he wasn’t entirely sure the little female wouldn’t be lumped in with the wild pack and summarily executed along with them. He could plead and protest until they shot him too. He was, after all, a very small cog in a very large governmental wheel.

“I sorely regret not being a bigger cog,” he said to no one in particular.

He even more sorely regretted not personally knowing many larger cogs. At the moment, he could think of only one with both the clout and the inclination (maybe) to either want Tral rescued from what would surely be viewed as his own ineptitude or who could be counted on to go out of his way to spare the lives of the humans involved.

“Crap.” His fingers hesitated briefly over the keys before, reluctantly, he dialed his uncle’s number. Having become something of a well-known activist since his retirement, while rescuing his fool of a nephew might not rank highly on his list of favorite activities, Tral was almost half certain his uncle might put himself out to prevent the wholesale slaughter of the wild pack.

The computer beeped twice as the call engaged, and after only a few seconds, the screen suddenly lit up with the familiar interior of his uncle’s living room. That his uncle’s face did not immediately position itself within view of the screen was a little surprising, but the mystery promptly solved itself when the struggling top half of a smaller human forehead, complete with one grey eye, rose to fill the lower corner of the screen. It was a very red head, the curling wisps of fiery hair streaked through with age, and a charming spatter of freckles sprinkled liberally over a now wizened face.

Pani’s eyes lit up when she recognized him. “Tral!”

“Hello, Pani,” he greeted. “Can you get your Papa?”

Her face disappeared from the screen as she obediently turned her head and yelled across the house, “Papa! It’s Tral!” Then her freckled pixie face centered into the viewer again as she climbed up onto the console’s chair and leaned into the monitor to better see him. “Hello.”

“Hello.” The window dealt out another nasty shock, and clearing his throat to hide his own growing unease, Tral said, “Actually, can you physically fetch him for me? I really need—”

“I talk.”

“I know, and very well. Can you—”

“Where are you?”

“At work. Pani, can you—”

“I talk.” Folding her hands before her, she made herself comfortably available for conversation. “How are you?”

Tral puffed an exasperated breath, trying hard not to snap at her, and from somewhere off screen, the deep baritone of his uncle’s voice finally called out, “Where did you go? Pani...”

The voice, much closer now, suddenly broke off as Pani cast a smile at something off screen. She waved her hand. “I talk!”

In a low disapproving tone, Tral heard his uncle ask, “Is that on?”

“Pani’s talking.” Her pointing finger took up nearly the entire screen. “Tral—”

A large hand caught the scruff of her white and blue baby-doll dress, lifting her completely from the chair and out of the computer’s limited field of sight. Sliding into her place, Bach looked at him. There was absolutely no expression on his aged uncle’s face. No welcome at seeing him, no curiosity. No discernable irritation either, though, so that made him feel a little better.

“Evening.” Tral waved.

Ignoring both greetings, Bach turned to glare down at Pani, apparently standing nearby but out of sight. “You,” he said grimly, “know better.”

“Yes,” Pani agreed, no trace of apology anywhere in her voice. She tsked and there was a distinct trace of poorly suppressed amusement when she added, “Bad, bad Pani.”

Frowning, Bach turned his heavy head to stare at Tral once more and waited.

“Help,” Tral finally said. Whenever his uncle was involved, it was always good policy to come right to the meat of the matter.

Other than a slight angling of his head, his uncle did not move. “What is that pounding?”

Tral couldn’t help glancing towards the kitchen window before he reluctantly admitted, “That would be the humans.”

“Humans,” Bach repeated, just as slowly.

“They’re trying to break in.”

“Break in.”

“I’m under siege,” Tral explained.

“Under. Siege.” Every word his uncle uttered was increasingly dosed with greater and heavier degrees of disapproval.

“I want to see,” Pani said, her hand coming into view against Bach’s chest as she tried to climb into his lap.

“No,” he said, and pushed her hand away. To Tral, he said, “What exactly is happening?”

“The wild pack is trying to beat their way in with rocks.”

“On the windows?”

“Yes.”

Bach shrugged dismissively with his eyebrows and reached for the disconnect key. “The windows have been tested for that. They’ll hold.”

“Four humans,” Tral informed him. “One window. I promise you, it will not hold.”

His uncle stopped and looked at him. Sitting back in his chair, he grunted. “All right. We didn’t test for that. Exactly how did you rile them?”

“It’s a long story,” Tral hedged. “We don’t really have a lot of time. If you could—”

“We?” Bach cocked his head and waited, a veritable iceberg of expressionless expectation.

“Someone abandoned their pet in the Preserve. I found her and brought her to the station. She tried to escape this morning, and I think she might be in heat because the wild pack males followed us straight back here. Now, they’re trying to...” Tral cleared his throat, feeling all of six years old under that hard, unblinking stare. “...beat their way in to get at us. Or me, rather. Actually, I’m not entirely sure which of us might be the more immediate target.”

What do you know, but the story wasn’t all that long after all.

Sounding almost incredulous, Bach asked, “Did you steal her from them?”

“No, she was half buried in snow when I found her. If she’s in heat, they probably smelled her, but they didn’t actually see her until...” Tral hesitated, shifting uncomfortably in his chair before clearing his throat enough to continue. “They, uh...came knocking on the window.”

“The one they are now beating on?”

“With rocks,” Tral clarified. “That would be the one.”

Bach frowned. “Give her to them.”

Tral was openly appalled instead. “I can’t do that!”

“Of course you can.”

“She’s not equipped to live outside! What if they don’t clothe her? She’ll be dead before the night is out. She’s not healthy, either. You haven’t seen her.”

“I don’t need to see—”

“But she’s never—”

“Do
not
,” Bach said sharply, his dark eyes flashing, “interrupt me again.”

Tral censured himself mid-sentence. He closed his mouth until he could trust himself to continue. “I apologize, uncle. I was merely attempting to convey my strong belief that this particular house pet has never been forced to fend for herself. Ever. Up until this morning, she has been incredibly ill and, although perhaps over the worst of it, I suspect she is not yet completely well. I also have serious doubts regarding her abilities to survive even a few days without direct supervision. She wouldn’t know what to eat...”

“Supper time,” Bebe said from her corner.

Bach tipped his head, the only indication he made that he’d heard her.

Pani was more vocal. She tried again to climb onto Bach’s lap, struggling to get her face up into the monitor. “Who is that?”