“What are your thoughts about that?”
While Pilan and Scona stood there quietly talking, the noise around them quieted and the mewing cries of a cub filled the air. At first, neither Scona nor Pilan paid any attention, as cubs were often fussy at that time, wanting food. However, when it continued for an unusual amount of time and sounded more distressed, Scona’s demeanor changed.
Pilan recognized the signs of her maternal instincts coming into play.
She stepped away from the building and began turning her head from side to side, trying to pinpoint the direction the cub’s cries were emanating from. With a fix on the general direction, she started walking down the street toward an alleyway at the end of a row of businesses.
Pilan followed, but stayed a good ways back to give Scona enough room to turn on a dime if she should suddenly change her direction. She stopped at the entrance of an alleyway.
Pilan joined her a moment later. They stood and listened to the cries of a distressed cub coming from somewhere in the alleyway.
Scona turned her head just a bit, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the cub. She took a step, stopped and listened again, then looked at a huge dumpster sitting against the side wall of the printers business.
She hurried to the container, flipped the heavy top back with a flick of her powerful wrist. The screams of the cub exploded with a deafening din into the air of the alleyway.
Reaching in, Scona moved the trash around in a frantic attempt to find the cub. She jumped up on the side of the container, which gave her a reach to dig deeper and threw trash of all sorts out of her way and over the sides of the container. She glanced back at Pilan. “Hold my feet,” she ordered.
Pilan moved in and grabbed her booted feet. He cringed when the smell of soiled articles and moldy rot assailed his nose. He coughed and put one arm over his nose to breathe through the cloth and remove some of the container’s stench from his nostrils. Just when Pilan thought Scona would fall headfirst into the large container, she flung a box out into the alley.
As if uncorking a bottle, the alleyway exploded with a louder version of the angry, screaming cries of a cub.
Scona’s loud roar of displeasure startled Pilan, who almost let go of her boots. The cub too, quieted.
Falory passing on the sidewalk stopped to watch the goings on in the alleyway.
“Here!” Scona said handing Pilan a sopping wet and again screaming bundle of cloth out of the depths of the trash container.
With one hand, Pilan grabbed the wet mass and pushed Scona’s booted feet down toward the ground until she controlled her own balance point.
Pilan knelt and placed the cub on the ground for a quick examination. His fingers slipped and fumbled with the stained, wet and smelly wrap that held the screaming cub. Finally, the wrappings opened and Pilan did a quick visual inspection. He picked the cub up and looked at it front and back.
“Newborn, umbilical still attached,” he said over the cubs screaming cry. “She needs immediate attention.”
“Zicata life hold now!” Scona ordered.
Suddenly, the two adults and the screaming cub were gone. The screams echoed away in the length of the alley, leaving those watching the event staring at quiet emptiness.
* * * *
When Scona ordered Zicata to pounce them directly to the medical facilities, the sudden appearance of Scona and Pilan and a screaming cub surprised Pilan’s staff.
Pilan shouted orders to his staff, and a moment later, Scona found herself in the middle of turmoil. A rough shove from a nurse got her attention, and she quickly moved out of the way, backing up against a wall. “I’m going to my office,” she said and saw Pilan raise a hand in acknowledgement as she turned to leave.
Once out of the room and into the quiet of the hallway outside of life hold, Scona relaxed a moment before she headed toward the bridge and her office. Her coming duty was not pleasant