He looked round for the speaker. "Where are you?"
"Outside the cave at the moment—well, mostly. Why don't you get dressed and come and join me?"
Orduval paused a long moment, then ran a finger down the stick-seam of the sleeping bag and peeled it open. He then inspected himself more fully.
His bony frame felt tender, bruised, but he could see no open cuts or grazes. When last he saw it, bits of shattered bone protruded from his leg, but now the dark skin was pristine, without even a scar. He swung both legs to the side and cautiously stood up. He still ached, all over, even the crown of his head. With care he stepped over to the water chiller, found a cup hanging on the side, and filled and drained it three times, before turning to his clothing.
Definitely from the hospital, for he recognised the tabard his grandmother Utrain bought him years ago, also the hospital-issue undergarments and his loose trousers and cotton shirt. His desert boots resting beside these garments were the same ones he wore in getting out here, yet he distinctly remembered the right one having been split. Picking it up he tried to find a mend, but it was as invisible as the repairs made to his body. Glancing round, he then observed his old clothing piled over by the wall, bloody, ripped and filthy. He dressed in the new.
Upon first waking he had supposed some desert Samaritan had rescued him, but factoring in the renewed state of his body, those intact boots and a fuzzy recollection of something significant before he had lost consciousness, he knew this situation to be abnormal. Once dressed, he rummaged through the food supply until he found several bars of compressed fruit and jerky, two of which he gobbled swiftly, taking his time over a third. Despite the bruising, he decided he had not felt so good in a long time, and it was then he realised that his body must be clear of the anti-convulsives. He decided to just enjoy the moment—until the next fit struck him—and stepped outside the cave.
The midday sun had heated the surrounding rocks to oven temperature—warm enough to fry meat and boil water. An arid breeze blew and dust misted the horizon. Orduval studied the object at the edge of the small clearing before the cave, and recognised the basic shape of one of the big cats of Earth, though which genus he could not guess. It was fashioned of silver metal and utterly still, so logically had to be some kind of statue placed here by his rescuer, and his earlier vision just another hallucination. This logic shattered as the statue turned, jointless as mercury, and regarded him with amber feline eyes.
"I projected a pretty picture that finally lured the searchers to find and save the kid who fell through into an abandoned skirl nest," it announced suddenly. "No problems there, and the only minus point being the mother getting infected with religion—she thought the images had been sent by the Shadowman. No one saw me, either, when I holed a water tank to put out a fire in a burning building in Transit, or when I pushed a foundering shrimp boat ashore on Brumal."
Orduval suppressed his abrupt fear and odd feeling of dislocated loss. This…thing just did not fit into his perception of reality. However, here it was, so his perception of reality must be wrong.
"Was that building you mentioned the Sunlight Tower?" he ventured. "They said it was lucky the water all poured down the correct lift shaft, and that it was surprising so small a quantity put out the fire."
The cat shrugged. "I squirted in fire-retardant gas as well, and it broke down into base gases before the investigators got to work. Anyway, those are three examples of how I occupy my time here, within this system, whenever I've got the time to spare, of course. But you, Orduval—"
"What are you?"
"Me—I'm Tigger."
Orduval tasted the name, ran it through the processor that was his brain, checking the ancient languages he knew. "Like…tiger. You're a tiger?"
"Not exactly," Tigger replied.
"Well, you appear to be made of metal."
"Yup, cell-form and pliant," said the tiger proudly.
"You still haven't answered my question. I want to know—" Orduval froze, blankness occupying his mind, though he retained an awareness of time. Minutes passed, but he felt disconnected enough from them to not become too concerned " — what you are." His body ached and slowly his muscles unlocked. The scene had changed. Tigger was now right in front of him.
"Yes," said Tigger, "there'll be no more falling off mountains for you, which is, I have to say, a pretty unhealthy occupation—nor anti-convulsives either. I placed a block to stop the clonus, so the fits will eventually fade. I've got to admit I can't yet figure out what's causing them."
Orduval felt his legs grow weak and shaky, and he slowly sank down until he was sitting in the dust. "What are you?"
"You're a bright spark, Orduval, just like your brother and your sisters. Let me ask you this: do you think that after you lot left it, Earth just ceased to be?"
No more anti-convulsives.
Orduval clamped down on his feelings and tried to understand more clearly what he had just been told. Really, he should have fathomed this being's source once it gave him its name. "You are a technological product of the human race…from Earth."
"Close enough."
Orduval narrowed his eyes, stared at the cat, and made an abrupt reassessment. "You're a product of a product."
"Startlingly fast."
"Does humanity still exist?"
"Now you're getting ahead of yourself. Yes, humanity, in all its wonderful and sometimes repulsive variety, still exists and has spread throughout many star systems, and will soon be coming here."
Orduval began to feel bolder. He stood up. "And do humans tell you what to do?"
"Sometimes they do, though not very often. Generally, the machines rule the Polity. We're better at it."
"Polity?"
"Empire, dominion…call it what you will."
"Why do you bother to rule?"
Again that tiger shrug. "Why not?"
Orduval closed his eyes. He could feel himself absorbing this new data and placing it on hold, ready to apply it to the huge body of knowledge resting in his narrow skull, before making massive reassessments. He replayed the conversation thus far, then asked, "Why am I different? You inferred that rescuing me was a different matter from rescuing all those others."
"I was instructed not to reveal myself or to interfere here. I've been ignoring that order and until now got away with it. You were one of four people—you can guess who the others are—I decided to watch very closely. You would have died here, either quickly from exposure or your injuries, or later from your fits. My intervention will be discovered, though perhaps not for some time."
"You did not need to actually show yourself to me. I'm sure you could have anonymously engineered a scenario similar to the others."
"Similar, maybe. But then there were those fits…"
"What about them?"
"Well, I interfered a bit more than can be covered." Tigger looked to one side, exposing his teeth, then turned back to centre his gaze on Orduval again. "Your problem was interesting to neurologists on Sudoria, in the Orbital Combine stations and in Fleet—mainly because of the notoriety of your three siblings. No engineered scenario would prevent those neurologists getting a bit uptight after seeing the first scan made of your brain after your return home."