The Sea is Full of Stars wos-6

by Jack L. Chalker

  It was at once so easy, so natural, she felt that surely she must have been born and raised here and just could not remember, and it was also fun! This was really neat, arms slightly behind and flattened there, legs stretched out behind, the feet nearly perpendicular to the ground. Her head, too, was at an angle that allowed her to see in almost any direction, although too much head movement slowed her. It was as if the whole form automatically locked in place, with those things that weren’t necessary or would get in the way placed in positions that, if they couldn’t help, couldn’t hurt.

  She was surprised at how few beats it took to remain aloft; you just grabbed a thermal and rode it up, kind of like sliding along stairs, while avoiding the downdrafts, which were apparent to her. Small, sudden ones that could get you weren’t so easy to see, but she could feel them across the underside of her skin and automatically compensate.

  When she cleared the top of the cliffs and kept rising, she felt almost triumphant. Beyond, she could see the setting sun in the distance, feel its last warmth, and then look down over a rugged land of volcanic soil, frozen lava flows, and, where some time had been allowed, dense, lush forest, including some pretty tall trees. It was both stark and beautiful; in spots she could see steaming pools of water and more steam emerging from some fairly recent craters. The thermals were also nearly impossible to make out, changing rapidly over the hottest areas, and she felt the bumps and found herself working harder than she wanted to.

  She banked and turned toward the tall forest, and as she did, saw that the forest was not only alive with vegetation, it was alive with animals, too, a lot of very large animals that showed clearly in the infrared. And she heard singing, a kind of exotic chant that was being joined by more and more voices as the sun began to vanish.

  She didn’t know if she was welcome at the party or not, but she was going to crash it anyway. She needed food, and shelter, and somebody to tell her just where and what she was. Maybe somebody down there among the singers to the coming night knew who she was.

  It was clearly a colony, or perhaps more properly a town, but one designed for a race that flew. There was a series of lava tubes lit with the glow of fires, and inside the trees themselves were small houses made of wood and grass and bamboo, sometimes a large number of them at different levels, some on top of others, in a single tree all the way up to the top.

  At first she wasn’t sure where to land, but then she saw a flat area in front of a very large lava cave with a huge pit in the center that had obviously been hollowed out. Two small waterfalls emerged on each side of the tube, then ran out in channels on the rock, flanking but not touching the pit, then dropping off again down to a series of small falls and pools below.

  Carved into the black lava flanking the tube were strange, demonic-looking faces that were almost the reverse of the people there; creatures with the faces of mean-looking birds and the bodies of animals, looking somewhat like great bats with fanged beaks and angry eyes painted red. An elaborate series of colored patterns was carved and painted on the flat, and around the pit and standing on both sides of the riverlets were wooden statues carved with even more hideous shapes, one atop the other, creating totem poles over ten meters high and topped by the bird faces in the stone sculptures.

  The singers were standing in a circle around the whole thing, looking inward, illuminated now by two flaming torches planted inside the pit. There were perhaps a dozen people there, all females, and their faces and bodies were painted with colorful patterns using some kind of eerily glowing phosphorescent paint. It made them look something like the strange creatures in the carvings.

  This was clearly some kind of temple or cathedral.

  She tried to land nearby without being on the actual “platform,” content to wait until whatever ritual they were performing was done and someone took notice of her.

  It was now quite dark, but the torches and the reflected lights from the caves and tree houses gave off a decent glow. There wasn’t much danger of fire except from possible volcanic activity; the whole place was so humid you almost got wet flying through it.

  Although none of the singers were clothed, something she oddly didn’t even think about, they did wear earrings, some small nose rings, and thin, tight bracelets and anklets. They also wore thin belts around their narrow waists and, attached to them, something that might be a utility case or a scabbard.

  They were all beautiful, exotic-looking creatures. She hoped she looked like that; she’d find it easy to look like any one of them. The glowing designs made it difficult to tell if they had any more normal makeup on, but they looked like erotic statues, standing there, arms raised, wings folded back but still very visible, almost like great horns from this angle, rising from the back of their shoulders. They seemed to be in a trance, staring straight ahead, taking no notice of her. The feathery hair was short but styled; the ears, she discovered, were large and pointed, and while flush against the face in flight, they unfolded and were prominent on the ground. In fact, she was suddenly aware that her big ears were out, and that she could turn each independently.

  Then, abruptly, the chantlike song was done, and as one their heads went back and they issued an eerie, bloodcurdling sound that came from somewhere deep in their chests. Then they pivoted, so fast it was hard to tell which way they all turned, the wings spread out, the tails extended, forming a continuous wall masking whatever was going on in front of them, in that pit.

  The sounds of terrible, panicked squealing came from there, as if some huge pig or boar was being held down. The winged chanters took yet another step in, as if slaughtering it with sharp knives or swords. The sounds died, they closed in even more, and then the wings folded and they leaped into the pit in a frenzied orgy of gluttony, using nails and sharp teeth to shred the poor animal that had just been killed and tear off and eat strips of flesh and bone, their phosphorescent color dulling as it was covered with blood.

  She had mixed reactions to the sight. One part of her, that hidden part, was repulsed, whispering that it was horrible, grotesque, wrong, sick. But the other part, the instinctive part that had gotten her off the cliff and here, felt an urge to join in and eat her fill.

  “You are new here, sister,” a woman’s voice said behind her, startling her almost into flight. “From where do you come and what is your clan?”

  She caught hold of the heart that was suddenly in her throat, turned and faced a woman very much like herself and the others up there at the feast.

  “I—I don’t know,” she managed. “I have no memory at all before waking up on a cliff knob a couple of hours ago. I was hoping that someone here would know me.”

  The woman was startled. “No memory? You recall nothing?”

  “I didn’t even know what I was, and I still do not know where I am,” she responded honestly.

  The woman frowned and thought for a moment, then said, “We will have to take you to the High Priestess and see what she can make of all this. I have heard of this happening with potions and with curses and in some cases blows to the head, but you do not show any signs of a head injury. Your accent is neutral, so it does not help place you. Come. This is the village of the Clan of the Grand Falcon. You are Ambora, as are we all. I am called Lema. Do you have a name?”

  “I must have, but as I said, I remember nothing.”

  “That would be a great terror to me. So, come! You must be hungry. Please come to my home and eat, and then after the Prayer for the Next Light, we will go down and see what the Holy One thinks of this.”

  “I thank you. You are most kind to a stranger,” she managed, and followed the woman toward the forest with the huts. Abruptly, Lema flew into the air, and she followed, as routinely as if this was indeed how she had always been. They rose about halfway up, then landed on a thick branch at the opening to one of the wood and grass huts.

  Moving up and down in this manner brought home to her a fact that hadn’t been evident before: she didn’t weigh an awful lot. Oh, she
was heavier than air, just like a bird, and probably hollow-boned as well, but in spite of the shape and height of the body, the wings and tail were probably half or more of her total weight. It made lift easy, but it also meant that they were probably fragile. She had to remember that.

  Lema looked in and sighed. “I see that Jocomo hasn’t brought the kids back yet. Oh, well, I am certain that I can find you something.”

  “You have children?”

  “Yes, two, both daughters.”

  The inside of the hut wasn’t that large, but was serviceable enough if you only slept there and wanted a place to keep your belongings. There was a long area in the rear built up with straw over which a rough-hewn log stretched from wall to wall. If that was the bed, and it most certainly was, then the Ambora slept standing up and stuck to wood. They could sit, but rolling over on those wings wasn’t something that should be chanced if it didn’t have to be.

  There was a mirror there as well. Not a fancy cut piece of coated glass, but a reflective volcanic rock polished to a fine flatness that served reasonably well. It was the first time she could see her face and body as one, and it was in one sense a fascinating revelation. She really was as beautiful as the others, as the singers and Lema. The “hair” was a mess, but it was a yellow-gold color, almost metallic in appearance, and the color patterns on her body and feathers, while not spectacularly colorful, were certainly a pleasing combination. The nose was a bit broad and slightly flat, the lips dark red, thick and wide, the neck quite long and yet thick, and, like the rest of her, lean and tough-looking. Her unfeathered frontal view showed skin that was shiny, like well-treated leather. She had hoped that the face, at least, would jog something in her memory, but while it was a sensual face, a pretty face, it wasn’t the face of anyone she felt she’d ever seen before.

  The “quick dinner” offered was yet another education, both in the culture of the Ambora and in her own unsuspected nature. It consisted of live prey; specifically small rodents, large insects and grubs, and, frankly, she found herself picking them up, doing a quick twisting kill or simply biting off the head in the case of the rodents, and then eating them in quick chomps. The first one, which she’d done following Lema’s lead, bothered that hidden part of her that wanted to kill nothing at all, but once she got past that, the rest seemed automatic and she thought no more of it. There was no question that the Ambora were messy eaters, but the blood and juices seemed particularly rich to her, and she had no problems consuming spillage. Everything was eventually eaten—bones, shells, whatever. They did not waste.

  All of the warm-blooded creatures had six limbs; some had a practical four and a decorative or vestigial two, others used all six. The bugs had considerably more legs than that.

  It was a primitive culture in some respects, but it had to keep its food live in reserve since there was no way to preserve dead tissue.

  When done, they flew down to one of the lower falls, stepped into the dark pool and washed themselves off, and she drank a fair amount of the water to wash everything down and to replace lost fluids. She hadn’t been aware of how dehydrated she’d been until she started to drink.

  “I am going to have to find my children,” Lema told her. “You would think that spending most of the day with children, Jocomo would want to be free of them, but he dotes.”

  She had nothing else to do; she tagged along, and in the process saw her first Ambora male. He was not impressive.

  For one thing, they were short. Very powerful-looking, with thick-muscled arms and torsos, but a good head shorter on average than adult females. They were also somewhat bow-legged, the hands and feet overly large and virtually identical, the limbs of a tree climber and dweller, and in many ways they looked more like feathered apes than bird-people. None had any really interesting color; they were light brown on the unfeathered front and a darker mottled brown on their feathered backsides. The wings were stubby little things that looked almost like growths and were flush against the body. About the only thing they had that was large and impressive was their male sexual organ, and that was in fact the only thing at all interesting about them. They must have great personalities, she thought whimsically.

  In this culture the women were the hunters and in most ways the protectors; the men were in charge of their territories and saw to the early raising and education of the children as well as being builders. It was the men who built the huts in the air, and it was basically one adult male per tree at any one time. There was no marriage as such, but a social code and a code of honor. Jocomo was not only the father of Lema’s two children, he was the father of all the other children by the other women who lived in the other huts in his tree.

  Nor were the males either effeminate or as bestial as they looked; in fact, they seemed as intelligent and articulate as the females. As a group, they did a lot of education and training of the young, and sometimes they just had too much to do and didn’t escort their children back before the mothers got home, as now.

  Still, she would discover, to her surprise, that Jocomo and the other males didn’t try to push their “wives” around and use their obvious muscles, if only to make up for the fact that the women had the figures, the looks, and the wings. The women, for their part seemed to regard the males as a combination baby-sitter and building superintendent, not as a boss. It wasn’t a matriarchy, but each had clearly defined roles and they stuck to them. Only later did she learn that the males did in fact crave a large amount of sex, but that the consummation of any union was done in the air. When you were the one who needed it bad but had no wings, you had a lot of practical reasons for keeping your women happy, and, under those circumstances, rape wasn’t even a power option.

  It was a balanced situation, but to some extent she did feel sorry for the men. It looked like all the weight of keeping everything operating and together was on them, but they had to work twice as hard to attract any woman, considering their ugly looks and inability to fly. Had the Ambora been an animal rather than sentient society, the males would have been reduced to strictly a reproductive role at the whim of the women, and both sexes knew it.

  Lema’s two daughters had their mother’s blue-green metallic hair color, but their feathers seemed very soft and snow-white, and their wings appeared overly large for their still-small bodies. They looked almost like angels. One was perhaps six or seven, the other even younger, and there was no mistaking their mother from their faces.

  They were happy to see Mom and were fascinated to be introduced to a stranger—it appeared that there were few strangers in a clan village—but, though protesting a bit, they soon marched off to their hut for the night, with their mother promising to come to them as soon as things were squared away with the newcomer.

  “Can they fly with those?” she asked Lema.

  The woman stared at her. “You really remember nothing! No, they can’t, not yet. They will be walkers until they are of age. At that time, when the first blood is passed, they will molt and for a short while be without feathers on their wings or tails. It is a serious time for young girls about to be women, and they usually go into a retreat with the priestesses until the first true feathers come in. It is a natural thing, but when you are that age you feel ugly and as if everyone is laughing at you. Then there is the ceremony of adulthood before the whole of the clan. They will be sent out on their first hunt, making nervous wrecks of both their parents, but it usually works out. After that, they are presented with their ceremonial daggers and then will see what the young men their age have built and choose a home and thus a mate. Then it begins again.”

  It was getting quite late now, and a lot of the lamps had been extinguished, while others were replaced with smaller, subtler flames. Lema, however, took her across the flat stone with the pit in it and to the opening of the great lava tube between the two carved creatures.

  She was surprised to see cauldrons over slow fires inside the large cave; since the Ambora did not cook their food, there seemed little use for
such things.

  A tall, looming shape came out of the depths of the cave, and she found herself looking at the tallest and most awesome-looking Ambora woman she’d seen so far. It was not just that she was tall, taller than any of the females outside, but that she also had her wings partly opened and curving around, projecting the effect of a great feather cape. She had jewelry of what might have been gold all over, and, most telling, she was tattooed on the front with those same bizarre designs as on the sculptures and totems; and she glowed, not with phosphorescent paint, but all over. It was a weird, yellowish aura that outlined her form several centimeters beyond her body.

  Lema brought her head down almost to between her legs, and, after seeing this and the awesome priestess, she did as well.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to bring this one to us,” the priestess said in a deep, nasal voice that was at once commanding and irritating.

  “I humbly beg the gods’ and spirits’ pardons, Holy One. She was lost, hungry, and confused, and seemed no threat to the clan.”

  “No threat? And just who gave you the authority to decide this? Did the heavens open and one of the gods point to you thus? Or did the spirits of the clouds whisper this authority? Does the safety and integrity of the clan mean so little to you, or did you have so poor a training…? Well?”

  “Please, Holy One, accept my repentance! I did bring her, and she has as yet shown nothing but good—”

  “Silence! Go now. By the end of daylight tomorrow you shall bring me sacrifice worthy to submit to the gods, and then you will receive their judgment in public trial! Say no more! Go!”

  She felt sorry for Lema, and wanted to explain. “Please, Holy One! She meant no—”

  “Shut up! At the moment I am trying to determine if there is some way I can keep from sacrificing you. Rise! Look at me! I want to look into your eyes and see your markings and your stance!”