Chan nodded. But he began to cry again, deep-chested sobs that went on minute after minute. Tatty felt the tears in her own eyes. It had seemed so obvious that Chan would be better if the Stimulator worked, that afterwards everything would be better. Now she sorrowed for the loss of the innocent child. Her baby was gone, and he would never come back.

She cradled him to her, stroking his head and patting his shoulders. She became aware of another change in him, one that filled her with foreboding. Chan was becoming physically aroused, moving his body uneasily against her.

Tatty had been warned of this in the first briefing. Flammarion had told her that Chan’s adult body might announce its presence, and he had emphasized that rejection would be bad for Chan. There could be permanent psychological damage. Tatty had listened and nodded. There were far bigger problems to worry about.

“Tatty!” Chan was frightened. Long past puberty, he had always been blissfully unaware of his own sexuality. Now uncontrollable urges were possessing him, and he had no idea what was happening.

It was the fear in his voice that made Tatty ignore her own worries. “It’s all right, Chan. You’re going to be fine. It’s not a bad thing.”

Not bad for you. Bad for me. It makes no difference. Chan needs me, and no one else cares if I even exist.

Gently, Tatty guided Chan along another critical segment of his rite of passage from child to man. She held him, and at the same time despised herself.

Worst of all was her inability to remain aloof. Two months was a long time — too long. Tatty felt her own growing response and fought against it. She shivered, hesitated, resisted, but finally groaned and clutched him to her.

During lovemaking he had begun to weep again, long mournful sobs that shook his body. At the moment of his climax he cried out, “Leah! Oh, Leah.”

At the height of her own passion, Tatty wept also. Her tears were silent. But she thought of Esro Mondrian, and in the final seconds she at last whispered his name.

Chapter 14

Twenty thousand years ago humans had hunted the woolly rhinoceros and fought the sabertooth tiger. Five thousand years ago the quarry was wild boar and bears and hippopotami. One thousand years ago, out on the great plains of Africa and India, the prize kills were lions, elephants, and tigers.

The great game preserves of Earth’s equatorial and polar regions still existed, but hunting was strictly forbidden. Blood lust had to find other outlets. Adestis was one of the most recent, and perhaps the best ever.

Dougal MacDougal loved Adestis. Lotos Sheldrake had never tried it until today, but she hated the very idea of it. She had come along as part of MacDougal’s safari only for her own purposes.

She clung to her bright-sided weapon and struggled across spongy ground after the Ambassador. The air was thick and humid, and it was filled with large, drifting spores that floated along easily in the hardly noticeable gravity. Lotos batted them away from her head and peered in front of her for a first sight of the group’s destination.

There it was. No more than a few minutes walk away, the enormous brown tower reached far up towards the grey sky. Already Lotos could see the first file of pale-bodied warriors moving nervously around the entrance holes. They were tasting the air, feeling the approach of danger with their sensitive antennas.

Dougal MacDougal strode confidently in front, heading straight for the giant round-topped citadel. The forty other party members followed, with Lotos bringing up the far rear.

She suspected that she had too much imagination for this sort of enterprise. Already she could visualize the curved jaws of the defending soldiers tight around her waist, or the sticky and madly irritant spray enveloping her. The projectile weapon that she was carrying would kill a warrior outright — if she aimed true and made a hit in the head or the even more vulnerable neck. A body shot would not do. The soldier might die eventually, but before it did so the creature’s dying reflexes would make it fight on, killing anything that did not smell and taste right. And the soldiers were only the first line of defense. Beyond them lay the dark interior tunnels, swarming with their own defenders loyal to the death. Surrender or acceptance of defeat was unthinkable to the inhabitants of the tower. For the attacking party to succeed, it would have to penetrate to the central chamber, and kill its giant occupant.

Dougal MacDougal led the way to the base of the structure. Avoiding the main entrances, he fired a thread-thin grapnel line to a point high above ground level. With a running pulley he hauled himself easily up, to many times his own height. In half a minute he was braced against the hard wall of the mound, chipping a secure foothold. The others followed, helping each other. There was little risk at this stage, since even a direct fall would not be fatal.

Clinging to the pulley line, half a dozen of the attacking group lifted sharp picks. They hacked at the hard cement of the mound until they had made an opening big enough to crawl through.

Far below, the soldiers were in total confusion. They ran here and there, touching each other with their antennae and criss-crossing the approach routes to the tunnel entrances. None thought to crawl up the side of the tower.

“All right.” MacDougal was panting and excited — far more enthusiastic for this than for anything in his official life. “That’s big enough. Everybody inside.”

Lotos scrambled through, last in the group. She found herself in a spiral tunnel that wound steeply down toward the middle of the fortress. There was an overpowering smell here, of chemical secretions and fungal growth, and the curving wall was made of the same hard cement. But the tunnel was deserted. They ran along it at top speed, until after a hundred steps the leaders skipped to a halt. Scores of defenders were emerging from side passages, blocking the way ahead.

“Shoot your way through.” MacDougal was waving his weapon around, as much a menace to his companions as to the enemy. “These are no real danger — but keep your eyes open for the soldiers. They’ll know any minute what we’re up to, and they’ll be after us.”

The projectile weapons were powerful enough to blow asunder the soft bodies of the workers. But there were hundreds of them. Progress became slower and slower, through a carnage of dying tower-dwellers. Lotos found herself skidding in disgust over layers of pallid flesh and greasy body fluids, losing her footing every few seconds. She was last of the group again, at least ten paces behind the rest. If the soldiers came from behind … but the big central chamber was in sight ahead.

Lotos paused to catch her breath. And heard from behind her the scrabble of hard claws on the runnel wall.

She turned. Less than twenty paces away were seven warriors, approaching at top speed. She screamed a warning, lifted her weapon, and fired it on automatic. A stream of projectiles cut into the warriors. Four curled into death spasm, knotting their bodies on the hard floor of the tunnel.

But the other three were still coming. Lotos blew the head clean off one of them, and cut another in half with a hail of fire. The last one was too close. Before she could aim her weapon, mandibles as long as her arm reached forward to grip her at chest level. Their inner edges were sharp and as hard as steel.

Lotos’s arms were pinned to her side by the encircling jaws. She could not free her gun, or fire it at the soldier. She heard the others of the party shouting at her, but they could not get a shot at her attacker without hitting Lotos. The pressure on her chest increased, from discomfort to impossible pain. Lotos could not breathe. She felt the bones in her arms crack — her ribs cave in — her heart flatten in her chest. In the final moment before she lost consciousness she bit down hard on the switch between her rear molars. As everything turned dark she felt a gush of blood in her throat, jetting up from her lungs into her gaping mouth . …