wingless creature's strange tests any easier.
"No more of that."
Caleb opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of
it. Zara could hear him talking to himself and that would
further convince her he needed to be restrained in some way.
"I wouldn't let anyone hurt you."
"No more. Others are coming to capture us."
"They're coming to help."
"Ray, I'm not sure I should be the one to tell you this, but
I'm a little bit afraid Caleb might not."
His anger flared. How could she tell his secret to Danson?
The knowledge of his illness would virtually assure a forced
separation from the symbion.
"No! Not die."
"You won't. I won't let them."
"Caleb?" Zara appeared then, her features a carefully
composed mask.
Panic ignited all his nerve endings, and his wings shot out,
knocking objects from shelves in the small space.
The commotion of broken glass and falling books startled
Zara, and she jumped back, toppling a small table and a
chair. The noise frightened his symbion even though the
creature only heard through Caleb's ears now. It flapped its
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wings, stretching them out to their full span and creating a
turbulence in the bungalow.
Zara scrambled back, hands up to fend him off. "Calm
down Caleb, no one's going to hurt you."
"No one is going to hurt us," he said. "I'm not ready to go
back to the lab."
"No one's making you go back. Ray is coming here."
"To knock me out. I'll wake up strapped to a bed with my
wings cut off. Zara—"
The mental image terrified the symbion, and instinctively it
took flight, ignoring Caleb's mental protests. Everything
began to fall from the shelves as the creature beat its wings
frantically, seeking escape from the confined space.
Zara managed to slip toward the door and ran outside, but
Caleb followed, painfully scraping the fluttering wings on the
door jamb as he exited. He feared once free the symbion
would take flight, but instead it zeroed in with his new night
vision on Zara who had taken off through the waist-high sea
grass that formed a barrier between Caleb's bungalow and
the next.
"Female."
"Leave her alone. Let's just get out of here before they find
us."
"Female is necessary for mating."
Hawk-like, Caleb tracked Zara's movements as the
symbion launched him into the air. With the instinctive skill of
a creature born to hunt, Caleb swooped over Zara, and once
again scooped her up in his arms.
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He had lost control completely again. His symbion ruled
this frantic moment, and once again they took off over the
water, careening south toward the deserted column islands
that stretched for tens of thousands of kilometers across the
planet's otherwise desolate southern hemisphere.
Zara screamed and struggled, and the symbion bade him
tighten his hold just enough to cut off blood flow to her brain
for an instant. She went limp, assuring that she would not
accidentally free herself from his possessive grip mid-flight.
Now that he had escaped capture by his enemies, he
needed to find a secluded, easily defendable place to rest, a
territory of his own where he could claim his mate. He flew
into the night sky, determined that the humans would never
put their hands on him again.
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Chapter Seven
Arilani had managed to control her rage and indignation
thus far, but her hold on her emotions was wearing thin. She
stood in a very small conference room in the largest of the
research station's laboratory buildings, squeezed in with Jidar,
Namara and Dr. Danson and a number of the geneticist's
human staff members.
She felt trapped and again wondered how the humans
could stand living in such confined spaces without access to
the sky.
"How can we be sure Dr. Faulkner abducted Dr. Abbott?"
one of Danson's underlings asked. Arilani stifled her
immediate response and deferred to her leader, who seemed
unnaturally calm in the face of this unmitigated disaster.
"Marks on the ground near Dr. Faulkner's dwelling indicate
Dr. Abbott was lifted into the air mid-stride ... as she seemed
to be running toward the next building. Because she
expressed concern over Dr. Faulkner's mental state, we must
assume she was taken against her will."
"Why? Just how dangerous is he?"
"The symbions are non-violent."
"Why is Caleb doing—?"
Danson shushed his colleagues and took up the discussion.
"We really have no idea what he's capable of in this state.
Zara told me over the radio that there was something we
didn't know, something Caleb hadn't told us, and that's my
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greatest concern right now. Whatever his secret was, that
could be why the joining went wrong."
A jumble of voices erupted in the conference room then,
and Arilani had to cover her sensitive ears. She shot Jidar a
pleading look, silently begging him to stop the commotion.
He did. His warning call echoed around the room, silencing
everyone and drawing their attention to him. "I have once
again sent out search parties, and I believe in daylight we will
have a better chance of locating them both. We will do
everything we can to bring them back here safely. Symbions
have a homing instinct, however, and I do believe eventually
Dr. Faulkner's will lead him back where he belongs."
Danson spread his arms wide, and Arilani tensed. She had
to remind herself among humans such a gesture was one
meant to invite calm acceptance. In essence the doctor was
embracing those assembled and asking for their support and
cooperation, not declaring his intent to fight as an Icarian's
spread wings would indicate.
"What we all need to do right now is get back to work. Our
purpose here is still to find a solution for the Icarian breeding
problem, and that can't stop just because we've had a
setback in our main project."
Arilani scoffed at his words, but fortunately no one in the
worried crowd noticed. As Danson's Icarian equivalent, she
knew better than he did that the joining of symbions to
humans was their last hope. Jidar and Namara had staunchly
refused to allow sperm and egg donations and would not
submit their subjects to the process the humans called
"artificial insemination".
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Centuries of dwindling population had left them with little
option. Male and female Icarians with DNA patterns that were
t
oo similar could not breed successfully. The only way to
literally infuse new life into the dying race was to accept alien
mating material, and Jidar insisted the only way to do this
was to bring humans, joined with symbions, fully into their
society.
If Danson's project failed, there might not be another
generation of Icarian children, and their race would die off
completely in less than a century.
"Thank you all for your help," Danson said as his people
and Jidar's began to file out of the room. "Together we can
succeed."
Arilani bristled. She despised Danson's motto. Those four
words, in her estimation, would be chiseled on the death
marker of Icarus. This noble cause had gone terribly wrong,
and at the moment, she had only Danson to blame.
When everyone else had left, she remained, glaring at her
human counterpart. "You know exactly what happened at
Caleb's bungalow, don't you?"
With a quick glance into the corridor to make sure none of
the others had lingered, Danson shut the door of the
conference room. "Ari, we can't be certain anything
happened, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions."
"You knew an adult symbion's first and strongest instinct
after joining would be to mate, and that mate should be me."
Again, Danson spread his arms, and in response this time,
Arilani mimicked the posture with her wings.
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"We will get them back, and once I've tinkered with his
biochemistry, I'm sure everything will be fine. I believe the
problem is just a matter of blocking some of the receptor's to
Caleb's brain so he can better control the symbion's natural
urges."
"And if he impregnates Zara in the mean time?"
Danson shrugged. "That won't preclude him from
accepting you as a mate, if Jidar agrees to it."
Arilani reared back, shocked by Danson's cavalier
assessment. "I will not share my mate with another female.
That is not how we do things. I am next in line to mate, and
since Jidar and Namara cannot produce offspring together, it
is my child who stands to one day assume Jidar's position."
"I understand that, Ari. Even if Caleb does ... have
intercourse with Zara, she won't conceive. The women here
all suppress their fertility with medication."
"And this medication never fails them?"
"No. Hardly ever." He sputtered a bit, and she advanced a
step.
"If it should occur, you will have to see that she does not
produce a child. I cannot take a mate who has already seeded
another womb."
"All right. I'm aware of the Icarian traditions, but in light of
the situation—"
"Those traditions can only be changed if we have a new
leader, one who is not opposed to the human ways of doing
things. With Caleb and I ruling as regents, we could double
our population in a year and in ten be poised to double it
again when the next mating cycle approaches."
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Danson sighed. "Ari, you know I'm on board with this. I
will do anything necessary to see that this project succeeds."
"Including destroy any offspring Zara conceives with
Caleb?"
Danson looked uncomfortable. Arilani leaned close,
determined to make him understand that he would know
much more than just discomfort if Arilani lost her intended
mate to Zara.
Finally, he nodded. "Yes. If she conceives, and I doubt that
will happen. We'll find him before he has a chance to do
anything. If it happens, I will convince her that the fetus
won't be viable and get her to terminate."
Arilani smiled. "Good. Now, I'm going to search for my
mate. Be ready to fix whatever went wrong. I expect to be
well on my way to sitting in Namara's chair by this time next
year." She whirled around, making sure to brush her wing
tips over Danson's chest as she left the room. She uttered her
final warning before the door slammed shut behind her. "If
you don't take care of this, Raymond, I will."
Zara woke to the sound of rushing wind and flapping
wings. For a moment, she believed she was falling, and every
muscle in her body tensed for impact. With a sharp gasp, she
realized she lay on a flat surface, unmoving and safe for the
moment.
Her last memory was of Caleb dragging her into the air
and sailing off with her over the dark ocean. She'd blacked
out from fear ... or no, he'd done something to her to knock
her out.
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Anger and indignation replaced her fear, and she sat up,
cursing. "Caleb, where are you?"
No answer. He'd abandoned her. But where?
A pink glow suffused the place in which he'd left her, and it
took her a moment of staring at the rough-hewn walls and
ceiling to figure out he must have taken her to one of the
Icarian aeries. Atop the towering islands that freckled the face
of Icarus's ocean, the planet's dominant species built their
dwellings out of carved sandstone and the thick, hardy vines
of an abundant plant called alor.
Zara recognized the alor growing from cracks in the rock
around her, and she smelled the distinctive, spicy aroma of
the plant's versatile leaves. She discovered the pallet on
which she lay had been made with alor down, the soft fibers
created when the leaves were torn from the vines. The aroma
seemed stale though, and Zara guessed by the sparseness of
the room, which contained no other furniture and no personal
items, that this was one of the thousands of aeries that now
stood empty since there were not enough Icarian families to
fill them all.
Why had he left her here? And how far had they flown
while she was unconscious?
She scrambled off the bed in a panic. The unusual islands
rose an average of a hundred meters above the ocean's
surface and many were much taller. Without her own set of
wings, she could never get down from the mesa-like top.
Unless an airborne Icarian search party happened by, she had
no way of telling anyone back at the research station her
location.
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"Caleb!"
Yelling for him only produced a disconcerting echo against
the walls of her lofty prison. Cursing him produced no positive
results either. He was gone. At the moment Zara wasn't sure
what she feared most, that he would never return, or that he
would.
She had no idea how to deal with the changes he'd
undergone, no idea what to say to cut past the confusion of
his hormone-induced emotions and reach the solid, intelligent
man she'd fallen in lo—she cared so deeply for. He was
someone else now, and to her embarrassment she realized
she hadn't fully prepared herself
for the depth of his change.
Frustrated and frightened, she began to explore the aerie.
No more than a single large room equipped with a sleeping
pallet, a waste disposal alcove, and an empty storage net of
woven alor, the place certainly could not sustain her for very
long. A wide arch led outside. Beyond the arch, a latticework
of leafy alor provided some shade and protection from the
brilliant Icarian sun and the relentless wind. The pink glow
that had illuminated the aerie when Zara first awoke had
turned buttery yellow now as the sun climbed in the eastern
sky.
Tentatively, Zara ventured beyond the shade of the plant
growth. The sharp drop-off at the edge of the island platform
seemed terribly close and unprotected. The Icarians needed
no barriers, even for their wingless children who seemed to
know instinctively not to wander too far from the shelter of
their cave-like homes.
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The strength of the wind made Zara fear she might be
blown right off the island, but determined to figure out her
position, she dropped to her knees and crawled to the edge.
Her heart leapt at what she saw. Graceful sets of wings
circled and glided on the wind, seeming just out of her reach.
"Hey!" She called and waved, at first thinking she was seeing
an Icarian search party wheeling around above the tumble of
rocks that surrounded her perch. No one answered, though,
or seemed to be aware of her presence.
"Whoa! Oh God." After nearly losing her balance, she
realized the forms spiraling around the base of the island
were not Icarians but unjoined symbions. The giant birds
nested among the jagged rocks, hundreds of meters below.
Dizzy and breathless, she sat back, desperate to anchor
herself to solid ground. This had to be one of the taller
islands. She could never reach the water on her own, and if
Caleb never returned, the lonely, windswept aerie would
become her tomb.
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Chapter Eight
Caleb circled the aerie for what seemed like hours after
placing Zara, unconscious, on the sleeping pallet inside. Guilt
ate at him over what he'd done. He'd never intended to harm
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