Silent Dances

by A. C. Crispin

  female , but she had lea rn ed her lesson. Vee ri ng off erratically , she flew away . The shu tt le did not pursue her.

  Tesa an d Sailor slowed to a stop and watched the gi an t limb finally

  crash , smashing the ove rt u rn ed sweat lodge , obliterating it. The chick cradled in the massive nest had to have been killed . Tesa 's ang ry

  tears we re invisible on her rain-soaked face . She tu rn ed away.

  Tesa glanced at her voder, still strobing . She would order them to stop

  the attack . She was the interrelator. They had no ri ght to damage T ri nity's environment or kill its inhabit an ts, no ma tt er what the Aquila had done.

  She was about to tap an order into the voder when a line of dialogue tr

  ailed across the bo tt om of her small screen. The Baraboo was communicating with someone.

  "Destroy the camera ," the message read . " It might have filmed you . I'll get Albaugh to pick it up later."

  That was not coming from the ship . Tesa asked the voder to locate the

  coordinates of the speaker . The voder confirmed the transmission site.

  It was coming from the Singing Crane.

  "We're being monitored." This speaker was aboard the ship. Tesa re alized , too late, that her probe had ale rt ed the shuttle ' s crew to her p re sence . " Who is it?"

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  "It's not Albaugh," the Crane said, " but it could be anyone else. Get out of the re ."

  " Negative ," replied the ship . " We'll take out the camera. And the witness."

  "Negative, yourself!" ordered the Crane. "Do you read? Negative on that last."

  "You're overruled," said the ship . " No witnesses." They're going to kill us, Tesa thought with surprising calm. Realizing she was being pinpointed

  through the voder, Tesa gestured to Sailor as she sped away. A blast of

  power slammed the ground where the two had been , sta rt ing a fire

  that was quickly snuffed out by the rain . As soon as the bolt struck,

  she slapped the voder off and shut down the scanning equipment on

  the sled, praying the ship would think she'd been hit.

  The Grus youngster paced her through the woods as she dodged and

  weaved, heading for their hollow tree . They had to get inside ... and hide until the ship left.

  " Father Sun is up ," Tesa signed . Sailor uncoiled his neck. The human had crept out a few times in the night , pee ri ng through the trees,

  searching for the shuttle ' s colored lights. She'd never seen any, but

  she was still too f ri ghtened to risk tu rn ing on her voder . She had even shut the sled down, for fear the ship ' s crew might tr ace her

  through its power cell.

  It had been a long night as the two fri ends huddled together in the belly

  of the hollow tree. It had been hours before they had mustered enough

  courage to even sign to each other, but finally, Tesa had tu rn ed on a small lamp , and they began to talk.

  Sailor told her of the massacre, and of Peter ' s death at Thorn ' s hand .

  This news was more than Tesa could handle, an d she c ri ed , hugging her knees , while Sailor , g ri ef-stricken himself , t ri ed futilely to console her.

  When she thought of Thorn, the pain was sharp, but after what she ' d

  read on her voder she could no longer deny his involvement. His an d

  how m an y others? Even so , Tesa believed it was the p ri vateers that had masterminded an d commi tt ed the massac re , though it seemed someone had loan ed them the Baraboo to do it.

  She laughed bitt erly . The re would be no First Contact now. Not on T ri nity . The re was nothing she could do about it, either. Sailor wondered if the Baraboo had followed him. He

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  couldn ' t imagine any other reason for its appe ar ance, until the ship attacked the Aquila . He confessed that pa rt of him had rejoiced when the male had been killed , but then an other pa rt of him was repelled . It wasn't ri ght , he decided , for outsiders to kill the c re atures of the World, even creatures as despised as Death . The whole thing had him

  thoroughly confused.

  Tesa also wondered why the ship had appeared. Scott had speculated that

  the re might be some connection between the criminals and the Aquila .

  But what kind of a relationship could it be , if the humans slaughtered

  the Aquila an d their chicks?

  Tesa and Sailor had discussed these questions long into the night, but still

  had no answers . Now, in the pale light of mo rn ing, they cautiously left their hiding place.

  Searching the sky, Tesa could not see the shuttle and Sailor couldn ' t he ar it , either . Hesitantly, Tesa tu rn ed on her sled, leaving the scanners off.

  She did not d ar e activate the voder. Besides , who could she call , who could she trust ? She refused to believe Meg was involved, but if she

  risked contacting her she might be putting the older wom an in danger.

  Sailor helped her remove her things from the hollow tree and secure them

  on the sled. "Let ' s go back to the sweat lodge ," Tesa signed . " I want to salvage my blanket and feather shi rt ."

  The young Grus looked at her skeptically with one eye. She didn't tell him

  she wanted to search for the Aquila chick, though she held li tt le hope that it was still alive.

  When they reached the attack site, Tesa ran her hand over the blackened

  end of the gi an t limb . They walked the length of it, one on either side, until they found the sweat lodge re mains.

  The lodge was completely obliterated, with only a few saplings sticking out

  from under the limb to mark the place. A little farther away, Tesa found a

  corner of her grandmother's quilt and a piece of her feathered shirt poking

  out. She pushed against the limb, but they were too f ar under to dig out

  without help. She fought back tears , not w an ting the loss of these two things to become her breaking point. They're not lost forever, she told

  herself. I'll get them out someday. Taking a deep breath, Tesa walked on.

  Sailor hesitated when he re cognized the re mnants of an Aquila nest , but finally followed . Tesa pushed on, wanting to know the worst . For some re ason , she felt that someone other

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  than the chick ' s mother should know of his death an d mou rn him.

  The end of the limb fan ned out into m an y smaller branches, cupping

  the nest . Tesa could not see the chick. Had a predator carried off his

  body already?

  Scrambling through the flexible branches , she pushed aside the

  flaming red leaves.

  "What are you doing?" Sailor signed.

  By now Tesa was searching fr an tically , and his question triggered the flood of tears she'd been barely holding back. She shook her head, unable

  to answer, and kept searching. Finally, seeing how upset she was, he began

  timidly poking through the leaves. Tesa stifled a surge of manic laughter as

  Sailor dutifully explored even though he didn't know why.

  "The baby," she explained, "I've got to find the baby." His willingness to help visibly fading, Sailor explored with less interest . Suddenly he jumped back

  so violently, he had to fan his wings to land. Tesa scrambled to the spot,

  heedless of branches that slapped her knees and shins. His reaction

  had to mean he'd found the chick, alive!When she pushed back the

  cushiony curtain of leaves, the chick lunged at her, nearly grabbing her

  thumb. Tesa fought for control. Out of the nightmare and bloodshed,

  something had survived! She began pulling off her boot, planning to use her

  sock to hood the chick.

  She gl an ced at Sailor . He was keeping his dist an ce , standing as still as one of the trees behind him . He must think sh
e'd gone crazy. Well,

  perhaps she had, but she was damned if anything else would die today!

  Yanking off her sock, Tesa rolled it up, then pushed back the leaves with the

  hand holding the sock and grabbed the chick's head with the other. Holding

  the thrashing avian's head, she pulled the toe of the sock over his beak until

  the anklet was down around his hunched shoulders. She could feel the

  vibrations of the Aquila baby's terrified screams.

  Wrapping her arms around his plump body, Tesa lifted the chick carefully out

  of the cushiony leaves that had no doubt saved his life. Unable to see , the

  avian now offered little resistance . He was big enough to fill her arms .

  She set the creature carefully on the forest floor.

  He had a few bruises, a couple of cuts, but nothing was b ro ken . His legs , a pale yellow , ju tt ed out from his pelvis

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  uselessly , both feet curled around small pieces of wood, but even so ,

  the young talons were sharp . His down was a soft gray - white, but

  dark feathers were starting to push their way out.

  Cautiously Tesa re moved the sock hood . The avian's eyes we re still

  brown , as they'd been when the c re atu re hatched, but now flecks of re d showed th ro ugh, like slivers of rubies.

  A female, Tesa thought , pleased . The females were the dominant sex among the Aquila and we re larger than the males. Then Sailor asked

  the question that jarred Tesa out of her p ri vate re ve ri e : " A re you going to kill it now?"

  Tesa looked at him darkly, t ry ing unsuccessfully to bank her anger . If she loved the Grus, if she conside re d herself one of them , killing the Aquila was only logical . Eve ry one that lived to adulthood would

  someday take a Grus ' life in order to sustain its own . But she was a heyoka now. She would never again do what was expected of her.

  "No," she signed, " I'm not going to kill her!"

  Sailor seemed to deflate a litt le then, and signed , "Oh, good. I've had my fill of pain and death . What will you do?" Good question. She'd never find the mother , and Tesa was afraid to re tu rn to the humans ' base. She didn ' t know who she could trust . The p ri vateers or their Crane conspirators might kill her before she could tell what she knew. Her quilt

  and her shi rt pinned under the t re e would convince the others she'd been crushed in her sweat lodge when the limb fell . They'd think the

  sled had been destroyed with her, since she'd promised to keep it

  nearby . Pretending to be dead , she thought with grim irony , had to be one of the g re atest contra ry acts of all time.

  She looked at the cumbersome, half-grown Aquila chick sitting

  awkwardly on the ground , staring app re hensively at her two strange

  captors . Tesa clearly re membe re d her dream whe re Sailor had shown her a bundle of feathered cloth and signed, "This is the

  answer ." Inside the bundle had been an ang ry Wakinyan-a

  thunderbird.

  Are you the answer? she asked the chick in her mind. "You've got expe ri ence with raptors ," Dr. Rob had said. "You could tame one, like the old falconers did."

  She turn ed to Sailor , a being she had sworn to love and protect . Then she looked at the Aquila she could not bear to see die . She wondered

  if, when the chick opened her beak, she was c ry ing for her parents.

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  I still can't hear you, little thunderbird, Tesa thought, ... but I could if you used sign language.

  A great calm suddenly settled over her. "We're leaving here," she told Sailor matter-of-factly.

  "Will you put that garment back on its head before we leave?" he asked

  curiously.

  "We're leaving," she repeated. "Thunder is coming with us.

  Sailor's feathers stood straight out. "Thunder? Death's child? Are you

  joking?"

  "I'm not. You're on your flyaway. You have to learn things to help yourself

  and your people. You and I are going to learn to communicate with your old

  enemy. If we can talk with her, we can negotiate a compromise, just as your

  grandfather did with the Blue Cloud people. What would your people think, if

  you could convince Death to stop eating them?"

  Sailor said nothing, so Tesa began loading sticks from the nest onto the

  sled. The chick needed to cling to them to help shape her feet until her soft

  bones stopped growing. The Travellers would tell them a route west, where

  a good hiding place lay-far from here, where they could raise Thunder.

  After hooding the chick again, Tesa carefully lifted the avian onto the sled,

  placing her in the miniature nest. The chick was shivering, so she took a

  feather cloak from the back of the sled and covered her with it. Her dream

  image came back strongly. This was right.

  Finally, when she was ready to go, Sailor signed, "What will you do if we

  fail?"

  "You mean, if we can't teach her sign language?"

  "Yes. If my people are right, and Death is nothing but a conscienceless

  predator, what wil you do?"

  Tesa looked at him steadily, so he could test her if he wanted. "If we fail, I

  promise you, I'll kill her myself."

  "Fair enough," the Grus youngster agreed.

  Tesa settled herself on the sled, and the strange trio lifted off the ground,

  flying through the dark cover of forest to find refuge somewhere on the

  World.

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  CHAPTER 18

  Thunder

  it'll be just like a pair project, Tesa told herself, thinking of the team-work exercise developed at StarBridge. Except there'll be three of us.

  They were four days into their journey, and a thousand miles from home

  when they found the old volcano the Travellers had told them about. It had

  blown its top ten thousand years before and collapsed, creating a bowl-

  shaped caldera. They crested its rim, stopping to catch their breath in the

  high altitude, and looked into the enclosed ecosystem that was about to

  become their home.

  The walls of the volcano towered thousands of feet over the shores of its

  crystalline blue lake. The Travellers assured them they had stocked it well.

  Stands of stately autumn-colored conifers formed dense patches of aged

  forest that climbed the inner walls. Old woodland was bordered by shrubby

  areas that opened into lush meadowland.

  Near the lake, the wal s were pockmarked with old Tree Ripper dwel ings,

  caves they'd carved in the hardened lava, but hardly any of the great beasts

  wintered here now. If a cave had no smell, they were told, it was safe to use.

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  In the center of the beautiful lake was a small, conical island whose plume of

  steam attested to the volcano' s linge ri ng life. There ' d be plenty of hot water there.

  When Tesa had first seen the volcano in the distance, it had looked to her

  like a giant tipi with an open smoke hole. Now, with a surge of happiness,

  she descended into the caldera.

  Taller stood outside the door of the humans ' shelter and noted that

  slab of wood bea ri ng Puff ' s human name was beginning to split. The pain of his human f ri end's loss had just begun to lessen , and now

  there were new deaths to suffer through.

  First- One-There appeared at the door and seemed sta rt led to find him .

  Her fleshy face was drawn , gray . She did not look well, but then , wasn

  ' t his own crown shrunken and pale these days?

  "Taller," she signed , " I didn ' t know you we re here."

  "I need to
speak with you alone," he signed.

  The human woman stepped outside. " We are alone . Relaxed is out

  working with the others."

  The two old fri ends strolled toward the cliff edge . " How is Relaxed ?"

  the Grus leader asked.

  "These last two weeks have been hard on him," First-One signed. " He still blames himself , probably because he found both of them . He thinks

  that if he had been he re , he could've stopped Good Eyes from going

  away . He feels re sponsible for the Collector's death as well, but I don '

  t know why."

  "Relaxed is no more to blame for that than I am for Black Feather' s death. If

  I hadn ' t introduced him to humans, he might ' ve been more

  cautious ... Yet, the pain is raw."

  "I think it' s ... Good Eyes ' death that is causing him the most trouble .

  She was so young ..." First-One's chin trembled.

  "We all loved her," Taller signed comfo rt ingly . When the human could not re spond , he draped his wing over her momenta ri ly . " That ' s why I wanted to speak with you. I ' ve heard things lately . Some things I ignored , some I paid attention to. I'd like to tell you what I know , but I must ask you not to share it with the others."

  " Why?" First - One asked.

  "Because this information may lift hopes needlessly."

  "Lift hopes? What do you know ? What have you heard?"

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  "I have heard that Good Eyes is alive," Taller signed. "I have heard she is with Sailor on his flyaway."

  First-One's shoulders sagged. "I can't believe that. If she were alive , she would contact us. We had to tell her parents that she was dead. We had to tell them we couldn't retrieve her body until we got be tt er equipment. It

  just about killed them . Good Eyes' friends and her adviser on StarBridge

  took her death very hard. And what about the pain it caused us? She would

  never have let us suffer like that if she were alive."

  "Perhaps she felt she had no choice."

  First-One stared at him. "You know something else."

  "I've also heard that Relaxed killed the Collector."

  "That's crazy! That makes less sense than ..."

  "I agree," Taller signed. "Relaxed came to me himself with that bitter news.

  His feelings about the Collector and Black Feather seemed too genuine to

  doubt."