Children of the Sky (The Talari Subversion Book 1)

by Houston V. Grant

  I quested outward trying to sense a biosim, but there was none. When the sun went down, we set out. We stayed in the vehicle for the most part, until I started to pick up a fairly close, yet weak biosim signal. I suspected it was from a lion and we got out to investigate.

  “Keep your head on a swivel and stay close,” Yaro instructed. “Do not go near any cuts in the earth—they are good hiding places for animals and you will not see them until it is too late. Stay in the open.”

  We both carried .30 caliber hunting rifles, and Yaro also had an AK on his back. I kept an electrical field around me at all times, using it to locate and scatter the various biting and stinging things that were all around us in this habitat. It even worked against mosquitoes. But I had to stay vigilant—even though I had a shield around us, there were still large predators and other dangerous animals out there that might not be stopped by the shield. Or, might not be stopped in time if they came charging. Even with my caduceus, I didn’t know if I could issue a shock strong enough to drop a charging rhino or a group of lions. On the open plain, with no real cover, my shielding was being put to the test.

  Hunting on foot in the savannah with nothing but moonlight made this easily the most terrifying night of my life. After that first distant signal, I didn’t detect even a hint of a biosim. Then just before dawn, I got a faint sense of one. It was barely strong enough to recognize, let alone to identify or link with, but I could sense the direction, so we went after it.

  The signal became stronger as we neared it, but I still couldn’t identify it and my efforts to link to it were unavailing. The good thing was that it wasn’t moving, so we didn’t have to stalk it through the bush. Grateful not to have to chase down a zig-zagging beast, we closed in, but when we got to the place where I was sure it would appear, nothing was there. I tried to feel it with Electrosense, but that didn’t work either.

  Up to this point, my ability to control biosims had been inconsistent at best, and now I wasn’t even sure if I’d correctly interpreted the signal or if I was chasing ghosts. And then the signal suddenly got much stronger. The ground began to shake, and from the earth emerged a massive, long-necked, hook-beaked, flightless bird. The thing towered over us—it was at least ten feet tall—and looked more like a Tyrannosaur than any bird I’d ever seen. It had long, powerful legs that ended in foot-long talons and a crest of red feathers that ran from its forehead all the way down its neck. It appeared to still be sleepy as it shook the dirt from its body and flexed its stumpy little wings.

  To his credit, Yaro kept his cool. He just said, rather calmly, “what in the fuck is that?”

  I’d seen drawings of these things before, but I never thought I’d see one in real life. It was a phorurhascid, commonly known to science as a terror bird, and the name was fitting. They’d been extinct for over a million years and their fossils had only been found in South America, but it was unsurprising that the Tkosi could use an extinct species as a biosim. Or maybe they weren’t extinct when this particular one was created. Clearly this thing had been employed to guard something significant.

  It woke quickly and began to look about. The antelope nearby had all scattered upon its initial appearance, but a group of wildebeest that were insufficiently concerned with self-preservation still lingered. Perhaps its height threw them off—they were probably used to predators skulking low to the ground and trying to sneak up on them unseen, so maybe they figured that anything as tall as a giraffe wasn’t a threat. That was a mistake.

  The terror bird approached the wildebeest easily and smashed one in the head with a lightning-quick downward strike of its beak. It hammered at the unlucky wildebeest several more times and I heard the skull crack from all the way where we were hidden. I watched as the bird ripped off hunks of meat and tossed them down its gullet.

  “That’s it,” I whispered to Yaro. “That’s what we’re here for. Get ready in case this doesn’t work.”

  I could feel the bioelectric impression of the bird very strongly and, still a little unsure of myself because of the difficulty I’d had to date, I reached out to establish the link to control it. I moved quickly and after grappling with it for a moment, I felt the link slide into place.

  “I’ve got it!” I announced. I pulled on the link, telling it to come to me. I was scared, but also thrilled as the massive beast turned towards us and started walking.

  “I think it sees us,” Yaro said nervously. “It is coming closer.”

  I hadn’t explained to Yaro what I was doing, so I understood his concern, but all of my effort was focused on controlling the thing, so now wasn’t the time to explain.

  I could sense the creature’s physical and emotional condition through the link. It felt groggy, which made sense considering that it had been sleeping in the earth for thousands of years, and it was hungry and stiff. It felt lost and confused. I could feel it looking around, trying to process the landscape that now confronted it. It searched vainly for landmarks or points of reference, but everything had changed except for the mountain.

  I tried to get a sense of whether it knew where the city that was here before was situated, or where the portal that attached to it might be, but I couldn’t be sure of what it was feeling. It was aware of me too—it remained wary, but I sensed a dim recognition of me as a friend—but it might react differently when it saw me and realized I wasn’t like any Talaris it had ever known.

  Still, it felt comforted by my pull and cooed like a pigeon as it came closer. It stopped and struck at something on the ground, then picked up whatever it had killed and swallowed in one gulp. I sensed the satisfaction it got from eating and pulled it closer. Emboldened by the sensations that I was picking up from the bird, I stood up. It’s enormous head swiveled and its gaze immediately locked on me. It tilted its head to the side in the way that dogs do and the red crest on its head came up to attention.

  I felt, more than heard, Yaro take the safety off his rifle.

  “Don’t shoot,” I said, watching with fascination as the bird came closer. There was mild confusion coming from the bird—it somehow recognized that I was the one that had established the neural link, but it was confused upon actually seeing me. It was the same feeling I had when I got catfished by a Tinder date. But much like my last Tinder date, it must have decided I looked close enough because it trotted towards us.

  “He is getting closer. Ready your shot,” Yaro said.

  “I’m not gonna shoot him,” I answered. “I want him to come closer so I can see him.”

  “This is not a normal beast,” Yaro said excitedly. “I do not know what it is, but I can see it is dangerous.”

  “It’s not gonna hurt us. I’m controlling it mentally.”

  Yaro made a noise that I interpreted as utter incredulity, but he didn’t say anything. The bird had slowed to a walk, but it was steadily approaching our position.

  The shot from Yaro’s gun next to my ear was deafening. A poof of feathers showed that he’d hit the bird in the flank and it went down clumsily in the tall grass. The sensations coming through the link immediately changed from curiosity to panic and anger.

  “Damnit” I shouted at Yaro, my emotions mirroring the bird’s. “It wasn’t dangerous until you shot it!”

  I tried to send soothing feelings through the link, but the bird was overcome with panic. The shot had taken it in the thickest part of one of its wings, but hadn’t hit anything vital. It was wounded, but not mortally so and now it was agitated. In other words, it was even more dangerous now.

  After a moment, the bird popped back up from its spot in the grass and trained its gaze on us. It was less than two hundred yards away and I wasn’t sure if it was going to fight or flee, and I don’t think it knew either.

  My efforts to calm it were working. Then for reasons known only to the bird, it decided to charge. Stumpy wings splayed to show the red feathers underneath. It accelerated amazingly fast and would cover the distance in seconds. It knew Yaro was the threat and keyed
in on him. I was trying my hardest to control the thing but it wasn’t responding to my efforts, it just kept coming.

  Yaro prepared another shot.

  “I can stop it,” I said. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Fifty yards and I am shooting!” Yaro said.

  At a hundred yards I began to get a grip on the bird again and with each step nearer, I had more control, but it was closing fast. Hoping I was making the right decision, I snatched Yaro’s gun away just as the animal neared fifty yards.

  “What are you doing?” he cried, trying to snatch the gun back. But he didn’t need the gun; I had control.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  Yaro turned to run.

  “Don’t run!” I said, sensing the bird’s instinctual desire to chase and feeling the pull of those instincts against my grip on it. “Don’t run!” I shouted again, fearing that I wouldn’t be able to hold it against such a strong primal urge.

  Despite his own instinct of self-preservation, Yaro was familiar enough with predator behavior that he knew sound advice when he heard it, and, struggling against his own fear, he stopped.

  The bird let out a blood-curdling screech that would’ve rivaled the roar of any lion and stopped no more than ten feet away from Yaro and me.

  Yaro was frozen in place and the tears in his eyes showed how terrified he was, but I really did have control of the thing. It was exhilarating! I had just brought a twelve-foot tall, extinct, apex predator from a full-out sprint to a screeching halt with the power of my mind. I fed it feelings of praise and soothing through the link and it ruffled its feathers in response.

  “I’ve got it,” I said again.

  I commanded the bird to sit and it did, folding itself on the ground like an ostrich. Through the link I could tell that it felt calm again and the wound that Yaro had given it was little more than a nuisance at this point.

  Up close the thing was even more terrifying than before. Even though it was sitting calmly, I checked and double-checked my grip on it before I went any closer. It regarded me with large, yet beady eyes set far back in its wedge-shaped head as I approached. It tilted its head to look at me and I could see how heavy and solid its axe of a beak was. It was still smeared with streaks of blood and clumps of fur from the wildebeest it had hammered to death. I’d originally planned to pluck feathers from the thing to get the DNA I needed, but now that I was up close to it, I didn’t want to risk it.

  It occurred to me that I could command it to sleep, so I did. It curled its long neck across its body and closed its eyes. I swabbed some blood from the wound Yaro had given it to get the DNA.

  “I think this is mission accomplished,” I said, sealing the swabs in the vials I’d brought.

  “That is it?” he asked. “All that for a couple of feathers? You are not going to take it back to the Association? Not going to take its head or feet?”

  “Nope,” I said, “We’re not gonna kill it.” And seeing what he was thinking, I added, “And no pictures. You should take some feathers though.”

  “How do you know it will not move?” Yaro asked. “How do you know I will not try to pluck a feather and it will take my head off?”

  “I put it to sleep,” I said. “Mind control. It won’t move unless I wake it again.”

  Yaro looked extremely skeptical. In his position I’d feel the same, so I plucked some of the red crest feathers and shared with him.

  I didn’t know how the bird had come to be buried. At first I thought it had dug a burrow, but maybe it had just laid down on the ground and gotten covered up over time. I was ready to go, but I couldn’t just leave a living terror bird laying out.

  We went back to the place where the bird had first emerged, and while there was a depression there, the shifting soil meant the hole was not nearly as big as it needed to be. I commanded the bird to dig itself a hole, but it clearly had no talents in this regard, so we got shovels from our truck and started digging ourselves.

  It took hours to dig a hole big enough to hide a twelve-foot tall, half-ton bird. Even with it laying down and folded up, it was like hiding a Volkswagen. I gave the area continuous small blasts of electricity to drive away the snakes, scorpions, and biting things that were around, but it was still hard going. We dug mostly in silence, keeping an eye out for large predators and other people. It was hard work and took us several hours in the hot sun.

  “Why have we come up here for this?” Yaro asked during a water break. “You have come to find the prehistoric bird, and you found it, but we are not taking it with us. Instead we are digging it a big hole. What sense does this make? What is the purpose?”

  “I can’t really tell you,” I said. “I know it may seem a little crazy, but it’s Association business.”

  “It is not a little crazy,” Yaro said. “It is madness. I have learned not to ask too many questions about the Association, but this is something else. What do they think they are going to do? Are they going to make a Jurassic Park?”

  I laughed. “I really don’t know,” I said. “But I had a mission to do and I did it.”

  “But you did not even bring a gun,” he said. “You came to hunt a prehistoric beast without a weapon.”

  By the time we finished, it was too late in the day to head back, so we settled down to sleep in the truck before making the drive back in the morning.

  We started back at dawn. The going was slow through the savannah and we stopped several times for Yaro to check something on the truck or refuel. The radio came to life early. There were hunters and safaris in the area. They called to each other on the radio, giving short bursts with their locations or the locations of animals to hunt or see. Yaro responded to a couple of friends—adding a comment or a joke—but never giving our location, even when asked.

  We stopped to take a rest break and while we were outside the truck, a rhinoceros appeared on a hilltop in the distance. I was thrilled to see it, and Yaro may have been more excited than me.

  “I have not seen a rhino here in almost three years,” he said. “Let’s go see it. It won’t take long.” I agreed and we started driving over. We got to a position about two hundred yards from the rhino and got out.

  “Rhino can be very dangerous,” Yaro said. “But I want to get closer. Move very slowly and we will not startle it.”

  We crept closer until we were less than a hundred yards away, then less than fifty. The rhino looked at us, and turned to keep us in sight, but it didn’t stop grazing.

  “I think we are close enough,” Yaro said, and we both stopped.

  Just then, something startled the rhino and it started running. It stumbled and went down in a cloud of dust and then a truck crested the hill. Poachers.

  “We have to go,” Yaro said. “They will kill anyone they think sees them committing a crime, and we saw them.”

  We turned to run, but our truck was a football field away and the poachers were in their truck, field-goal range from us.

  Shots in the dirt at our feet stopped us. Our guns were still in the truck, along with my caduceus. I was wearing my chumahai, but it wouldn’t stop a bullet.

  The poachers came closer and dismounted.

  I reached out and was pleased to find that I still sensed the bird. I commanded it to wake again and come to me. Distantly, I felt it dig itself free from the hole and orient itself to its surroundings. And then it was moving. We just had to stay alive long enough for it to get here. We’d left it almost an hour ago, but hadn’t gone far because we’d been moving so slowly. I hoped it would make it in time.

  When the poachers started talking, I felt better about our chances. I wasn’t convinced that they were the killing type. There were four of them and they asked about what we’d seen, how long had we been out, general chit-chat. Yaro’s answers were short, but friendly-sounding and he didn’t seem worried.

  The bird was getting closer and moving as fast as it could. I still hadn’t let on that I could speak their language, so I acted as if I didn’t underst
and when Yaro told them that I was an esteemed scientist with the World Wildlife Association, here to study a newly-discovered species. They got a kick out of that.

  “A new species?” they asked with a laugh. “Which species have they just now discovered? What is the name that the people here call it by?”

  “I’m not sure,” he answered. “We were not able to find it. Some kind of plant that they think can be used to cure cancer.”

  “I hope they don’t find it,” one of them said. “They will just come and dig up the earth and kill everything here if they do.”

  There was silent agreement among the group.

  “What have you seen out here?” another one asked in English.

  “The usual,” Yaro said. “Lions, antelope, buffalo, wildebeest, birds.”

  The guy nodded. “Have you seen any rhinos?” he asked.

  “Rhinos? No.” Yaro shook his head firmly. “Haven’t seen any rhinos.”

  His questioner smiled grimly at that.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “We haven’t seen any either.”

  “They are disappearing,” Yaro said tartly. “There aren’t many left.”

  One of the guys opened our truck and looked inside. He started pulling things out and quickly uncovered our guns.

  “It must have been a very big and dangerous flower you were looking for,” he said, lifting the AK. “It is too bad you were not able to find it.”

  “The guns are for protection,” I said. “Unfortunately, the flowers seem to grow best in areas where lions live.” My bird was very close now, just beyond the next hill.