Icarus Rising

by Bernadette Gardner

  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.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  58

  Icarus Rising

  by Bernadette Gardner

  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.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  66

  Icarus Rising

  by Bernadette Gardner

  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