Plot summary

When the galaxy's most skilled hunter is asked to use his skill to protect an important political mission, he realizes that he needs specialized aid. Thus Billy Singer must seek the telepathic creature only known as "Cat", whom he had caught and trapped for a museum. Cat agrees to help on the condition that, once the mission is over, he be given the chance to hunt his former captor. Billy accepts Cat's offer. However, Billy has been growing increasingly fatalistic in the time leading up to the story, and originally offers to let Cat kill him with no struggle. Cat, a hunter refuses, encouraging Billy to flee. Billy does so, but remains fatalistic, with Cat reading in his mind a wish to die and his foreknowledge of a final location. Billy must reconcile his personal chindi

Chindi

In Navajo religious belief, a chindi is the ghost left behind after a person dies, believed to leave the body with the deceased's last breath. It is everything that was bad about the person; the "residue that man has been unable to bring into universal harmony". Traditional Navajo believe that...

 to evade Cat. Billy turns increasingly primitive, away from the technology of the day, and eventually returns to his Navajo

Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...

roots.