But he was clumsy with the symbols, unfamiliar with the analogical reasoning Rafe used to communicate with them; and the winged creatures grew more and more agitated. Finally they went into full threat, display, their horns out and gleaming with clear venom. Their antennae quivered too quickly for human eyes to follow or the equipment to receive.
"They're terrified of the eaters,” Pauli whispered. “Or of what we're asking."
As the communications gear crackled and squealed, the Cynthians mantled again, their wings hurling them into the air with a scatter of metallic-colored dust. Their wings flashed so brilliantly in the moon and firelight that for a moment, no one realized that the comm lights had blinked out. Even the screen blanked, except for the small green point that floated languidly from left to right on the now-dark panel. As if waiting for that, the fire crashed in on itself, burnt logs crumbling into ash and glowing embers, then subsiding into darkness.
"That must have been some speech,” Pauli whistled. As usual, she was the first to recover her composure.
Borodin nodded. “Tomorrow, on my orders and my responsibility, we will organize our defenses. I think we can conclude that the Cynthians can't be expected to help us on this. So we will burn off that strip, set up our watches, and see what we can manufacture in the way of pesticides to be used only as a last resort. Is that clear?” He glared over at ben Yehuda.
"I don't like killing things,” the engineer said. “Why look at me?” He glanced down at his and his son's flamethrowers, then grinned wryly.
"One last thing: every morning some of us will sortie to make certain our local environment is clear. Understood?"
In what seemed like another life, she and Rafe had dreamed of such missions; in their dream, though, they had found only friendly, beautiful life ... like the Cynthians who, unaccountably, had fled. Well, this was as close to that dream as they were going to get.
Why did it feel unfamiliar, as if she prepared not for a sortie, but to solve a puzzle for which, somehow, she had lost the critical pieces?
7
"Dr. Pryor told me that ‘Cilia's fever is down.” At least Pauli could begin her report cheerfully.
Borodin nodded, then promptly won an argument by ignoring the possibility that it might exist. “I'm going to be the only one taking a glider with me, Pauli. You may be lighter and quicker than I, but I've got more flight experience."
"Are we going to need that glider, sir?” Rafe asked. “What do you plan to launch from?"
"Those, if I have to,” he pointed at some distant rock spurs. “It's an emergency measure. I'll use it only if we have to get a message through and something blocks our communications. We'll have a backup. Me."
Pauli grumbled, then subsided. Pilots relied on instinct, trained over as many years as they stayed alive and flying. Borodin, as he said, had the experience. If he thought he might need to fly out of a situation they could handle until he brought in backups, she had better let it stand. She smiled encouragingly at Ari ben Yehuda, whose flamethrower made him bend almost double until his father adjusted its harness. Then she turned to give her own final instructions.
"Strip the settlement's perimeters. Start digging a trench and fill it with brush, dried ground scrub, or anything else that's flammable. If the eaters come, pour oil into the trench and shoot. If we see smoke, we'll approach from the river."
Beneatha looked stubborn.
"Do it," Borodin said. “I can't risk leaving Pauli or Rafe behind to see that orders are carried out."
"That marshal prepared you for everything, didn't he, Captain,” the xenobotanist gibed. “Weapons, which none of us have access to. Martial law. Secret orders. But they didn't prepare you for the eaters. So naturally, now, you have to kill them."
"You'd prefer that they'd killed ‘Cilla instead?” another scientist snapped, much to Pauli's relief. Things were getting too polarized: military on one side, civs on the other. “I'll round up the older kids. They can help."
By afternoon they had passed beyond the sections of the plains explored on previous scouting trips. Here rock spires jutted out, and ben Yehuda turned scanners on them. “I don't know how you guessed, Captain, but they'll block transmissions from here."
Pauli grinned. No fog from the river spread out this far, and the spatter of rain that usually came from the mountains at around noon had long since dried, leaving only a smell of green and of freshness. The sun shone, and the winds were lively. I could like this world, she assured herself.
"The rocks look like jaws,” Rafe told her.
The muscles along his eyelids and jawline twitched. In the warm sunlight, his face seemed as remarkable to Pauli as his body had felt the night before. He had clung to her as if her touch, her heartbeat, were all that protected him from the eaters, or from his dreams of them.
"Can't you think of anything better to talk about?” she asked, grinning reminiscently and not minding ben Yehuda's knowing, gleeful “oh ho!"
Rafe turned to her and smiled. The strain in his face lightened, and seeing it, Pauli was even happier.
Carrying communication gear, Borodin headed for the peaks.
"Heads up, sir!” Pauli shouted. Overhead, brilliant motes glinted and danced above the rock teeth. “I thought you said that the Cynthians were nocturnal, Rafe."
"I said ‘probably nocturnal."’ He drank from his trail flask and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then smeared his hands down his trouser legs before answering. “Apparently they can come out during the day if they have to.” He paused, watching them. “They're watching us. Wonder why they don't land? They've always been friendly.” He grimaced as if he too tried to remember something—as if he too groped for a missing piece in a puzzle that he only half understood.
"They've been watching us all morning,” ben Yehuda lowered his field lenses, rubbed his back to ease it, then swung his flamethrower back over his shoulder. “First few times I saw it, I thought my eyes were playing tricks. And you two were ... let's call it, preoccupied."
Rafe turned on him, and he held up a hand. “With your work, of course. What did you think I meant?"
"Captain was really right about the idea of a backup after all. Never mind the rocks. Even if we could transmit past them, those Cynthians can generate enough interference to make any transmissions impossible."
She activated her own lenses. They whirled almost sickeningly, seeking rapid resolution and polarizing against the sunlight. Distance grids and markers snapped into place.
"More rock spurs at four hundred meters,” she said. “Rafe, do they look anything like the formations you saw before?"
"There's the captain,” ben Yehuda pointed.
Borodin had clambered three-quarters of the way up the nearest peak. He shook off his pack, then flung his arms wide and shook his head to indicate that the comms were not working.
"Comms are out,” ben Yehuda interpreted, but neither Pauli nor Rafe paid attention to him.
"The rocks ... not quite like the others. It looks like the eaters have already broken free,” muttered Rafe. His lenses fell from his hand and slapped against his chest. Then he looked up. Swooping at them with a breathtaking, precipitous urgency that delighted Pauli even as she started to back away were five Cynthians. Two of them were the larger, more somber elders.
She gazed at them, unable to dismiss a sudden, horrible idea. “Did the eaters break free of those formations?” she asked slowly. “Or were they hatched?"
Adrenaline made her dizzy and sick in a way that she had not been for years.
Rafe turned around to stare at her, his lips going white.
"Hatched,” he repeated. “Hatched. Call myself a xenobiologist, damn it. I didn't want to think of that, either. Enough happened right away that I didn't have to. Hatched. You do understand what you've just implied, don't you?"
In her dreams, she had tried to solve a puzzle, had lacked the essential piece. Now it came to hand, and it cut shrewdly. Dammit, how could she have known? She was a
pilot, only a pilot; her talents were for math and flying; yes, and killing enemies.
"The Cynthians aren't watching us,” Pauli said. “They're guarding them. The eaters ... that's who they're protecting.” She wanted to bend over and vomit. No, the eaters weren't sapient ... not at this stage of their life cycle. They were merely hatchlings, voracious, driven by their instincts for survival to devour everything within range until the weather cooled and they encapsulated themselves once more, to emerge as...
No wonder the Cynthians fled questions about the eaters. No wonder they refused to help find a solution that would block the eaters’ movement from pasture to pasture. They might urge their newfound, oddly shaped friends to move, but in the end, if the newcomers did not move, they would be abandoned. Even if it meant their lives—for what were the newcomers, against the life of their own species?
Fire lanced down to char the nearby brush.
"Get moving!” Distance thinned Borodin's voice. He had one arm already in the glider's harness but he waved his free arm frantically, then fired again into the bushes. “Eaters!"
There they were, heaving away from the crumbling structures across the plain, between the rock teeth. The ground was mottled and roiling with them. Pauli started to tremble. She imagined that she could already hear the gnawing of the eaters’ huge mandibles and the hiss of acid. This was nothing like the fast, savage cleanliness of ship against ship in the silence of space. Rafe stood at her shoulder. He was no fighter, not really. If he had survived this, she could too.
"Get them all!” shouted the captain. “I'll fly the news back."
She wanted to scream at him to wait, to warn him that the eaters and the Cynthians were different stages of the same race, but he was poised now, waiting for an updraft, he had found it ... Pauli drew her weapon and waited for the eaters to come within easy firing range. No use wasting the charge. Her hand shook. How strange that she hadn't expected revulsion to slow her down. It wouldn't have done so in space. She was damned if she would allow this to happen to her.
"Do as much damage as you can, then retreat,” she heard Rafe instruct the ben Yehudas and the other civilians on the flamethrower crews. “If you're cut off, head either for the rocks or the river. I don't think they'll follow you there."
She was not going to freeze. She waved at Borodin, the signal of a mechanic to a pilot before the catapult engages. He grinned and signalled back, then stepped off the bluff, and into smooth flight.
And, circling high above, the Cynthians folded their great, luminous wings, and plummeted down to block him. Their arc held a deadly beauty.
"Don't engage them!” Pauli shrieked. “Get back, Captain!"
The puzzle ... the puzzle ... no time to think of it.
Of course, they'd try to stop him. The eaters were revolting, but they were the Cynthians’ offspring. And were they any less the same species for looking so different? Look at the children that the settlers protected. When they were rescued, they had all but degenerated into scratching, biting animals.
"What's wrong?” Rafe cried. He was methodically burning off the first eaters to crawl within firing range.
He wasn't a pilot. He couldn't read the conformation of the Cynthians’ flight pattern the way Pauli could. A concerted dive like that meant deterrence. And if it failed to deter, it could be turned into an attack.
Borodin, seeing the menace in those diving creatures, banked in a wide circle out over the plain where the eaters swarmed. Fiercely Pauli willed his glider to maintain altitude. It swayed in the crosswinds, and she felt the vibrations run up and down her arms as if she, not Borodin, were the one flying it.
"For God's sake, keep on firing!” Rafe shouted. The eaters were ominously close. They were hideous things, but except for those jaws and the acid, they were easy to kill. Just like the beautiful, sensitive creatures that circled overhead, trying to protect their ghastly offspring long enough to let them fatten themselves on the moist lowland grasses and enter dormancy—and then emerge as winged Cynthians.
Borodin veered and banked again, his wings slanting against the clouds and picking up the sunlight. Now he seemed to head back to the settlement along the route he had first chosen. The Cynthians dived at him again. This time they came even closer. They slashed at the glider's wings with their prehensile, gripping foreclaws. Again the captain banked. He lost altitude almost disastrously. Only a fortunate gust swept him aloft again.
Now, ben Yehuda and his son marched past Pauli. The muzzles of their flamethrowers wheezed and whistled blue fire. Three Cynthians dived at them. Ari yelped and bolted, then returned to retrieve his weapon.
One of the larger Cynthians saw Borodin making his escape. It launched itself at the captain and dragged its foreclaws on the metal fabric of the glider. Sparks ripped from the cloth. Then the Cynthian somersaulted backward, righted itself, and attacked again.
Borodin was only human, Pauli thought. He couldn't fight and fly a glider simultaneously. But compared with a Cynthian, what was a human pilot but the crudest interloper in the skies? The captain's attitude steadied; he gained altitude, then counterattacked by diving on the Cynthians.
Madness, Pauli thought. Madness. But what's his option?
She raised her gun, steadied it in both hands for a long shot. She had found the missing piece of her puzzle now. Judging from his expression, so had Rafe. And it had turned out to be sharp-edged and deadly.
"No!” One of the civilians hurled himself against her arm. Her gun jerked aside, and the energy bolt went wildly astray, sizzling across ground cover, narrowly missing another of their party. “That's an intelligent being!"
"So is the captain!” Pauli shouted. “And he's ours, like the woman you almost made me burn down. What do you call these things? We have to kill eaters. Does it really matter at what stage of their life cycle we kill them?"
She flamed down three eaters, then backed away to watch the captain. She gestured to the others to fan out and increase firing, but that one man still shadowed her. She'd been lucky when he'd deflected her aim the last time. If he did it again, someone might get killed. Like a civilian. Or Borodin, whom a bad shot could bring down.
The Cynthian he had dived at evaded him, then lifted, to swoop at him from the side. Borodin dodged it, so intent now on this one adversary that he didn't notice how the others had climbed high overhead. In a ship-based scramble, his boards would have warned him. But in the air, in a glider, he had only his naked, insufficient senses.
"Watch it,” Pauli whispered, knowing that her voice couldn't reach him.
One of the Cynthians launched itself into a power dive. At the last possible instant before swooping below the captain, it jerked its head sideways and brushed the captain's hand and arm with its poison horns. Sunlight glistened off the clear venom as it spattered onto his face as well.
Borodin screamed in surprise and agony. With his hand and face burnt, his arm paralyzed, he couldn't keep the glider level. Like the Cynthian earlier, he went into a somersault, head over flailing arms and legs, tumbling out of the sky with the now-useless glider, slamming against a rock spur. The struts of the glider twanged and snapped, and the metallic cloth tore. Then the broken man and the broken craft fell to the plain where the eaters swarmed.
"I hope he died before he hit ground,” Pauli whispered. Sunlight, shining like the spurt of venom that had killed her captain, threatened to flood her eyes.
"Oh, God. I didn't mean it,” muttered the man who had spoiled her aim. She turned her back on him. She didn't want to hear his voice or see his face. If she noticed him at all, she might kill him, and she needed him alive to kill eaters.
She began to shoot again, and eaters crisped under her harsh, steady fire. The stink of their execution became intolerable. Rafe and ben Yehuda were retreating, gesturing for the others to pull back too, but Pauli kept on shooting, kept on walking forward.
She wanted to reach the center of that plain. There had to be something left of Borodin for h
er to recover—his service disks, a belt buckle, even a broken strut from the glider. Pauli would kill all the eaters, then go after it.
People were running past her, coughing and retching from the stink. “Get back, Pauli!” Rafe screamed. He ran over to her, had her by the arm, was forcing her away from the dead place. “You can't do anything for him now, and we have to get back."
She let herself be led to safety. Overhead, the Cynthians flew back to the refuge of their mountain caves, high in the hills which their hungry, mindless children could not scale.
8
Pauli stared up at the night sky and shivered. “Can we build up the fire?” she muttered in a plaintive voice she barely recognized as her own. “Eaters are afraid of fire."
Now, she was afraid, not only of eaters, but of the beautiful creatures who might come swooping out of the starlit sky, bearing stars on their wings, and death on their horns; creatures who had resolved their dilemma of whether to protect their own kind or their friends in a way Pauli now would have to emulate. If she would be allowed to. Right now, the civs’ priority seemed to be debate. She couldn't afford the luxury; she had to defend.
The only defense that she saw terrified her. Easier to die.
She started to lever herself up, to sit nearer the fire. “It's warm enough, Pauli,” Alicia Pryor told her firmly.
Rafe reached out and gripped Pauli's shoulder, returning the comfort she had lent him just the day before. Somehow it felt like years. At least, that much was right again. Before the physician could intervene with her drugs or her counsel, he bent and tucked the foil blanket firmly about her. He heard her whimper, buried in the hands she clutched about her mouth, and hugged her reassuringly. She turned her face against his chest.
Then the full reality of the situation hit him. With the captain zeroed out, command fell to Pauli. Sure, she was younger than he (though not by all that much), but commission dates and specialties were what counted in chain of command: her commission preceded his, and she had elected command track, as opposed to his own research specialization. He had promised her all during the hike back to camp that he would do anything, anything at all, to help her, but not this. He was devoutly grateful that their positions were not reversed.
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