Silent Dances

by A. C. Crispin

  "It's too painful to go back there an ymore, so they sleep outside ,"

  Tesa signed . " When the chick re tu rn s, they give him his hatching cloak , and they move back in until the yearling gets established in a

  coho rt group his own age . But if the chick dies on the flyaway, they hang his hatching cloak outside an d let the whole thing decay."

  "Well, we have plenty of room for you here, Tesa."

  Tesa gave her a small, tired smile . " I didn ' t think you'd leave me sleeping in the water on one leg. I came to ask for a diffe re nt kind of

  favor."

  "What is it?"

  "First, what will happen to me now that Sailor has left?" Meg sat back . "

  Well, we didn ' t know when that might happen , so we couldn ' t make definite pl an s, but ..." She

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  smiled, wanting Tesa to know she was looking out for her best

  interests . " We thought you might be ready to go home. You dese rv e a break an d you ' ve put your surge ry off for so long. Once you have that done , well, you could go to the Ashu Miza ri as you had o ri ginally pl an ned , or ... perhaps come back here as a diplomatic liaison."

  The young woman nodded, but seemed to draw away. "Tesa ," Meg as ked , " what do you want to do?"

  Tesa looked at her with that long gaze she'd picked up from the Grus. "I don't

  know what I want. I feel overwhelmed. Right now , the thing I want most

  is to go off by myself, have a sweat bath , an d pray for answers."

  Meg knew little about Tesa' s spi ri tual beliefs; however, as a religious

  person herself , she had to respect Tesa ' s needs. She wasn ' t su re how she felt , though , about her going off alone. "Can't you build a sweat bath here on the knoll? There ' s plenty of room , an d Thorn and I would respect your p ri vacy."

  Tesa shook her head. " I need to be away, to find my answers, to build

  my lodge-maybe to even ask for a vision."

  Meg felt a twinge of alarm. Didn't Indian visions sometimes require

  fasting and hallucinogenic drugs or self-mutilation? "Well, I don ' t

  know, Tesa ..."

  The young wom an fixed her with an intent gaze. "I haven't been able to

  practice my religion since I left StarBridge." Meg felt mo re comfo rt able knowing she ' d practiced her religion at StarBridge . Rob Gable wouldn

  ' t have tolerated anything harmful . " How much time are we talking

  about?"

  "Four days ," Tesa signed. "Four is an impo rt ant number to my people."

  "How far will you be going?"

  "To a forest I visited the other day with Sailor."

  That couldn' t be too bad , Meg thought . They 'd been able to go and

  come back in the same day. "Will you take your voder with you and pay

  attention to it , even when you're praying?"

  Tesa looked surpri sed . " Oh, sure . That ' s a reasonable request . And I '

  m not foolhardy, Meg. I ' ll keep the sled hove ri ng, just in case ." She smiled confidently.

  Meg still felt a little uneasy. " I'd feel be tt er about this if Thorn were here ..."

  Tesa re acted strongly . " My re ligious practices are none of Thorn ' s business ! He's an agnostic , what re spect could he

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  have for my spi ri tual needs ? Besides, you' re his superv isor, why--"

  Meg held up a hand to interrupt. " We we re never much for rank around

  here , Tesa . I like to get eve ry one ' s opinions on things of importance."

  Tesa seemed concern ed . " A re you going to ask eve ry one on the Crane if I can do this?" Her signs were subdued, not angry .

  "Well, no. It's really none of their business , either. Or Thorn ' s."

  Frankly , it wor ri ed her to have Tesa go off alone--but she ' d al re ady done that many times with Sailor and had taken small jaunts on her

  own , alone . She knew the young woman was expe ri enced and

  levelheaded . " All ri ght, Tesa, it's all ri ght with me . But don ' t forget about the voder, or the sled."

  The young woman seemed to deflate with relief. " Thank you, Meg . When I come back , I'll know what path I've got to take."

  Meg watched her leave and noticed an added lightness in her step. Thorn

  will probably be furious when he gets back, but that ' s too bad. She dese rv es this small request.

  And when she gets back, Scott' s ghost teased , she'll have all the answers.

  It was hard for Tesa to leave Taller and Weaver. After Sailor ' s depa rt u re, the flock came to offer good wishes and assurances that Sailor ' s

  flyaway would teach him the things an adult had to know . The avians

  told funny sto ri es of gentle mishaps, and narrow escapes that were

  never really dangerous. Their conce rn was touching , especially since they t re ated Tesa no differently from Sailor's biological parents. After

  they left, Tesa packed and t ri ed to explain why she needed time alone.

  Taller and Weaver accepted her news with good grace, but it was clear they

  had hoped she would stay with them.

  " I'll be back in four days ," she promised. " Perhaps we'll take a trip then ," Taller suggested.

  "I'd like that," Tesa signed . She wanted to see a lot mo re of T ri nity befo re she'd have to leave . The Grus seemed as reluctant as Meg had to

  bid her fa re well when she signed goodbye and headed toward the

  dark forest where , only two days ago, she and Sailor had had their

  strange interaction with the Aquila.

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  Thorn wondere d if his own good sense hadn't been disto rt ed by Peter '

  s di re predictions. He sat at the river' s edge whe re Black Feather ' s flock should have been , and wasn ' t, and wonde re d why these avi an s were so late retu rn ing , and where the hell his partner was.

  Bruce had told him that Peter wasn' t expected back on the Crane until

  tomorro w , that he was mapping ground coordinates for satellite su rv

  eys . That was one of the easier things about working with scientists .

  Research required large amounts of uninterrupted time, so

  investigations weren't as difficult as they had been on other jobs . But

  this job had its own problems.

  It wasn' t anything like tracking down illegal impo rt s of protected

  wildlife on Ea rt h , or setting up elaborate stings to stop the poaching of ra re c re atu re s , though it had seemed similar enough when they ' d been recruited.

  Well , if Peter wouldn ' t answer a signal , and he hadn ' t since the day befo re yesterday , Thorn could go looking for him, but that was a very time

  - consuming prospect . It would probably be mo re efficient to go

  looking for Black Feather . Thorn could check out the two nea re st

  roosting sites, and that would only take a day or so . Peter had

  probably gone looking for the tardy flock himself.

  If Thorn found the flock, he could talk to the avi an leader, ask if he ' d found an ything unusual in his travels . Thorn had spoken to Black

  Feather before , with Taller present . Taller's son was tolerant of hum an s an d t ru sted his father's judgment. Then , if Peter had gone looking for the avians himself, Thorn would find him an d give him hell for igno

  ri ng his signal.

  Thorn re called Peter ' s wa rn ing with an uneasy d re ad. He'd felt a ter ri ble fo re boding since then . It's Trinity, he thought, looking at the clear -

  ru nning ri ver . It wakes up that ancient part of you that can instinctively save your life if you' d only listen to it . He shive re d suddenly in the still , warm air.

  Actually, that hadn ' t been his thought at all. That had been something Scott had said to him a long time ago.

  He piloted his sled along Black Feather' s migrato ry trail. Tesa inhaled air that felt like fire ,
as the steam from the hot rocks filled her up an d pou re d out of her as ri vulets of sweat st re aked her nude body . It had taken her hours to const ru ct her

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  small beehive - shaped hut , to find twelve flexible saplings to take the place of Earth ' s white willow t re es , an d pl an t them secu re ly in the forest soil. The saplings were joined to make a squa re at the top that

  represented the universe - no rt h , south, east , and west. She couldn ' t cover the exte ri or with bl an kets, so she ' d used autumn - colo re d conifer boughs.

  In the center of the tiny lodge she'd brushed away the forest floori ng an d

  scooped out a hollow for the rocks , just the way gr an dfather Bigbee had taught her. The shallow depression re presented wakicagapi-all the dead loved ones. The scooped-out soil was patted into a path leading to

  the sweat lodge, a path for spi ri ts, and as she shaped the li tt le ri dge, Tesa had hoped that Sco tt and Water Dancer would join her in the inipi, the sweat bath.

  She'd found the stones all over Tri nity du ri ng her t ri ps with the Grus.

  They we re different from the stones on Earth, but they had one thing in

  common-they had designs on them only avi an s could see . She'd built

  her fire in the old way , the patte rn of the sticks and logs representing the universe and her pa rt in it. When the rocks were hot, she'd carried

  them into the lodge with a forked stick an d placed them into the hollow,

  first the gr an dmother rock for the ea rt h , then four rocks for the universe, then the gr an dfather stone on top for the sky.

  She'd burn ed her sweet grass and lit her pipe filled with re d willow bark

  fr om Ea rt h as she watched the smoke ri se. Taking a dipper she'd

  made, Tesa had filled it with cold water from the soft - sided, woven pail

  Weaver had made her an d thrown the water on the rocks . Now the

  steam filled her every cell.

  Eve ry thing she was doing had been done for thous an ds of years -

  but not here . On T ri nity , this oldest of ceremonies was new .

  Splashing more water on the rocks , Tesa endured the pu ri fying

  steam , waiting befo re she would lift the flap the first of four times , an d sign mitakuye oyasin-all my re latives.

  Even as she signed the prayers, following the an cient ri tes, eve ry thing she was doing was tying her to T ri nity. The rocks, the soil , the

  saplings , eve ry thing in the lodge was fr om the World . As she inhaled the breath of the rocks that cu re d ills an d eased pain , she prayed for an swers . The heat surrounded her, and as she bent over the dipper ,

  she saw her face in the water . Thinking of her dreams , she felt uneasy.

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  The dreams had not cared where she slept. They were always just behind

  her eyelids , waiting for her consciousness to slip away. The pa rt of her as old as mountains - her instinct, her nagi - was try ing to guide her .

  Tesa breathed deep , clutching her pipe and closing her eyes, and bid

  the dreams come.

  By the time Thorn approached Black Feather ' s nearest roosting site ,

  it was nearly dusk. He came in high over the staging area and felt a stab

  of disappointment when he didn ' t see any b ri ght flashes of white. He circled and pulled up his binoculars, t ry ing to identify a huge flock of

  small , greenish avians.

  He recognized the carrion birds, a species not often seen in Taller's territory.

  In fact, he'd never seen more than twenty of them, but the marsh was

  crawling with them, so many they appea re d like a swarm of i ri descent beetles.

  Finally they noticed him and, startled, lifted off the ground in a great green

  cloud . He passed through them cautiously as they examined him. They

  circled in mass, then prepared to settle down again.

  But not before Thorn saw what their bodies had been hiding. Thorn grabbed

  hold of a handgrip in stunned horror. The picked remains of Black Feather's

  flock lay in clusters of bones and drying sinew. Even as the carrion birds

  settled down, Thorn recognized what made this very wrong picture even

  more wrong.

  There were no feathers. If the flock had been felled by a sudden disease, or

  a natural toxin, or even if they'd been wiped out by Aquila, there would be

  feathers, like snow, littering the grass, blowing around. But there were so few

  you could count them. The entire flock had been killed and skinned, quickly

  and professionally, then left for the elements to clean up.

  Thorn felt naked sitt ing out in the open , an easy target for some smug

  killer who could , with a modern weapon, stop the elect ri cal cur re nt that kept his body running-giving the car ri on birds yet another meal.

  As he filmed the gri sly scene , his biologist ' s mind wondered a little hyste ri cally if there would be a population surge of carrion birds

  because of the sudden wealth of food. Thorn descended and skimmed

  the ground , his mind careening wildly.

  He aimed for a tight g ro up of stunted trees , w an ting to get 191

  under cover . He hovered the sled , yanked off his nullifiers, and

  listened for a long time . The only sounds were the softthroated cooing

  of the carrion birds an d the endless whispe ri ng of the wind . He slid cautiously off the sled.

  This was a good van tage point . He couldn ' t be seen from above or

  from the site of the a tt ack.

  As he walked toward a natural opening in the trees, something t ri pped

  him. Thorn caught himself, spinning to make sure nothing could take

  advantage of his accidental misstep. He glanced at the thing that had

  snagged his foot, seeing something half-submerged in the brackish

  water , covered by a blanket of tall grass. He le an ed toward it, and something p ri mal in his mind screamed at him to run, get the hell out

  of there.

  He pulled the grass away and stepped back in shock as he looked into

  Peter Woedrango's face. The rich, dark skin was gray now, the black,

  laughing eyes, sightless. After a moment of stunned anguish , Thorn ri

  pped more grass away, wanting to know what or who had killed his friend,

  his partner.

  It had been a modern weapon , he was sure , even though whoever had done it had tried to make it look like an animal attack. The surprise on

  Peter's face was typical of the short blast that shut a body off without bursting

  a capillary. The weapon could've been Terran, but that didn't matter to him at

  this moment . What mattered was that Peter was dead , and Black

  Feather ' s flock was dead.

  He was cold and sick inside, looking at his friend, wanting to gather him up

  and take him back. But he needed time to think. He'd find the Demoiselle

  and pack Peter into its emergency vacuum suit, then chill the body to stop

  the decomposition. Then he'd come back tomorrow, maybe with Bruce, to

  bring Peter and the Demoiselle back to camp. And he would watch Bruce '

  s face when he saw the body. Peter had been his friend, too, especially

  after Scott died. What kind of a man could let his best f ri ends be killed

  just to make money?

  Thorn stared long and hard at Peter 's body, as though remembe ri ng

  how it looked would motivate him to go on. He stared at the gaping

  wound whe re Peter ' s heart an d lungs had been , where his soft org an s had been to rn out an d consumed in a way only the great raptors

  could do. Like Prometheus, he thought bitterly, only yours won ' t regenerate , old buddy. But

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; Thorn wasn' t fooled . He knew the Aquila had come only after Peter was

  al re ady dead . There was no spilled blood anywhere, only some that

  had seeped out of his torn organs and mixed with the marsh water in

  the cavity left behind.

  The Aquila weren' t Death he re . That title belonged to another species.

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  CHAPTER 17

  The Flyaway

  Sailor stood hock-deep in the river's swirling water, feeling, for the first time

  in his life, lonely. He dipped his head for a drink, then tilted it up, feeling the

  cool water slide down his long throat. Well, he wouldn't be lonely, he

  thought, once he found Black Feather-or at least, not as much.

  What is it about this river, he wondered, that only the wrong people show

  up? The last time he'd been here, Relaxed had been hiding on the far shore,

  watching Good Eyes. He was always spying on her, but whenever Sailor

  told her, she merely waved at Relaxed, then ignored him. To Sailor, Relaxed

  seemed like a predator, always watching, waiting for you to be careless.

  Two days ago, when Relaxed had been at the river, Sailor had said nothing.

  If he'd told Good Eyes, she might have wanted to speak to the human male.

  Sailor was already feeling the pull to leave, and the time he'd had left to

  spend with Good Eyes was short enough. He'd had no desire to share it.

  So, he'd suggested they go eat black nuts. Thinking of what had happened

  then made his feathers stand up, so he shook himself, wagging his tail so

  that everything fell into place. He

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  was acting like a baby, letting these memories clutter up his mind and make

  him lonely and depressed. He was on his flyaway now, learning things that

  would make a difference to him, to his people. But where was Black

  Feather?

  Lifting out of the water, he flew to the opposite shore, near Relaxed's hiding

  place, landing near some Travellers who were squatting on the dark soil of

  the bank, preening. Maybe they had seen Black Feather. Sailor edged

  nearer, hoping to speak to them.

  Finally, two of the avians, elders by the look of them, stopped grooming and

  addressed the young Grus. They knew who he was, they said. They told

  him, in their truncated language of bill-clapping, that they had wanted