Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  I nodded.

  “And tomorrow,” he continued, “tomorrow, I’m going to make getting the skimmer ready to fly my highest priority.”

  I leaned into him, holding him, trying with all my being to tell him how much I loved him, needed him.

  As we turned back to eat a feast we didn’t want, the sun dropped below the low hills. I left my hand in his as we came into camp, unwilling to drop my connection to him just to make Kayleen feel good. She handed us our plates, her eyes shining with unexplained tears. We sat one on each side of her, awkward, each of the three of us alone. As the last light faded from the sky, the light from Kayleen’s cooking fire danced brightly in the cold night.

  5

  DOG DAYS

  Windy and I shared the last watch. She noticed the silence before I did. She lifted her long neck, sniffing the air, her nostrils extended, her stubby tail straight up. I stood, arms tucked close to ward off the night chill, the hair on my arms rising. Behind me, Kayleen and Liam slumbered in the darkened tent near the end of the ramp. In front of me, dark trees and rocks stood silent sentinel, washed lightly by starlight.

  When Liam and I hunted djuri for the band, the world around us silenced. That same silence surrounded us now. Earlier, night birds and small animals had skittered from bush to rock to tiny tree, each sound slightly different from home. Now, no birds called and no little jumping animals moved. The light of two moons paled as it fell through clouds. The wind had even died. I stepped close to Windy’s side, whispering, “What do you sense?”

  Her skin quivered, but she didn’t move or shift her attention to me. She smelled or saw something that I didn’t. We stood, silent, straining to hear anything. I reached for her lead and untied it, holding it loosely in both hands.

  Gravel crunched.

  Something—not us—breathed out.

  Windy exploded. She reared back, jerking me with her as I tightened my fists on her lead. Her eyes widened in fear as she yanked the lead line tight.

  The perimeter bells peeled danger.

  I screamed. “Liam!” and raced the few steps between me and Windy, tugging on the line, trying to get close enough to grab her halter.

  A single howl, close. I couldn’t see anything. Low growls came from three directions.

  Windy pulled her line taut, quivering, her back feet pointing at the danger. The whites of her eyes were clearly visible and her ears lay flat against her head.

  Liam pulled on my arm. I jerked free. “No! Help me.”

  I’d lost a hebra to paw-cats once. I wasn’t going to lose this one.

  A low form rushed in from the dark, close. Half my height, brown and fast. Long—too big for a demon dog. It opened its jaws. Tongue and white teeth, the teeth gleaming in the faint starlight.

  Liam whooped and it veered away. More ran past us, ten or twelve of them, a few body-lengths away, long and dark, sleek. Their white eyes and teeth glowed, their bodies visible as dark movement more than shape. They crouched low, circling. If they stood up they would be waist-high.

  Kayleen grabbed Windy’s line. She tugged, cursing. The terrified hebra knocked Kayleen to her knees and vaulted over her, bleating and disappearing up the ramp into the wide cargo door. Howls chased me and Liam as we leapt onto the ramp, stopping to grab Kayleen’s shoulders and heave her up with us. The ramp jerked upward, closing fast as we tumbled into boxes and into each other in the suddenly small hold.

  Something jumped at the ramp, missed, and fell back.

  Windy bugled off to my right, back in the cabin. The hull rang as she kicked at it. Kayleen scrambled after her.

  Muffled barks sounded outside, some close.

  I pushed myself up in the darkness, testing.

  One knee felt scraped. Not bad.

  My voice shook. “You two okay?”

  Liam, tense. “Fine. That was damned close.”

  The soft sounds of Kayleen comforting Windy competed with muted howls and ripping noises as the pack outside assaulted our gear.

  Light slammed into the corridor. I thanked Kayleen for it under my breath, able to see the anger filling Liam’s dark eyes. “Get Kayleen,” he snapped. “You take Windy.”

  “Why Kayleen?” I asked. She and Windy were safe.

  “Because she can find me a weapon.” One look at Liam’s face and I scrambled down the corridor, slowing as I went through the opening.

  Windy had backed against the screen in the front of the cabin. Kayleen stood at her head, her back to me, talking softly to the shaking hebra. “It’ll be okay. You’re okay.”

  I took the lead from her. “Liam needs you.”

  Kayleen looked at me, her eyes wide. “Is he all right?”

  “We’re both okay. Just go see what he needs. I’ll stay here.”

  “Don’t leave her,” she pleaded.

  “Of course not.” I reached a hand up to stroke Windy’s long trembling neck. “Shhhhh… you’re okay.” I took over Kayleen’s litany, focusing on the hebra, barely noticing as Kayleen left. “We didn’t let them eat you. You were good, you gave me good warning.” I couldn’t help remembering Jinks again. Her death had bought me safety, probably bought my life. My hand shook on Windy’s quivering neck, and I forced myself to take long deep breaths, struggling to slow my heartbeat. Hebras felt what we felt.

  Part of my attention stayed focused on Windy, and I listened for Liam and Kayleen. I made out Liam’s voice.“… I’ll throw it. Tell me when.”

  What was he doing? The soft whine of the ramp opening back out was nearly obscured as the barks and howls intensified, surely now spilling through an opening. The ramp clicked closed and a muffled whump sounded outside, following by an animal scream and frightened yelps. Windy shivered, leaning into me, her skin rippling as the boundary bells pealed exit, barely audible through the ship’s hull.

  Kayleen and Liam came through the doorway, Liam’s face quietly satisfied. “I think we drove them off.”

  “What did you use?” I asked, relinquishing my place next to Windy to Kayleen.

  Kayleen answered. “Remember that crazy-ball? The one Alicia stole? I wanted to see what one would do.”

  I closed my eyes. The bones in my legs stopped holding me up as the adrenaline rush left me all at once. I sat. “Jenna said they explode and throw out hard objects.”

  Liam grinned. “Sounds like it worked.”

  “How do you know it didn’t hurt the ship?” I asked.

  “That’s why we threw it just as the door closed,” she said. “Jenna told me nothing hurts ship skin.”

  I hadn’t seen any marks from our hard landing, and the New Making had sat on the grass plains for years with no sign of weathering. Still… “What about our stuff?”

  Liam sat down next to me. “They were ripping it up anyway. They needed a message.”

  “They were bigger than demon dogs.” I shivered. “Scarier.”

  “Yes.” Liam sighed. “But they looked like cousins. Maybe we should call them big demons.” He laughed, the sound marred by a nervous glitch.

  Nonetheless it broke the tension and I smiled at him. We were all right. Even Windy. “Windy warned me. We’d have died if she hadn’t sensed those things before the bells went off.”

  Kayleen crooned at Windy. “Good beast.” Then she spoke to us. “Good thing I brought her.”

  I eyed the two of them. Kayleen leaned into Windy. The hebra butting her softly, her ears forward and soft. “You mean instead of leaving her safe in the hebra barn back home?”

  Kayleen recoiled as my words struck her, and even Windy raised her head, looking at me accusingly.

  “We’d all be safer somewhere else,” I said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, but not caring. It was truth.

  “Like at home.” Liam stood up. “I want to go outside and look around. Kayleen, are the boundary bells still working? Still showing clear?”

  She nodded. “I’ll go with you.” She looked at me. “Chelo, will you stay with Windy?”

 
I frowned. I wanted to go with Liam.

  Liam knew. “No, Kayleen. Windy will be happier with you. Besides, we need you safe. You’re the only one who can get us home.”

  Kayleen looked torn. “Give her a minute to calm down, and I’ll tie her back here. Then I can go stand in the doorway and watch.”

  We had to wait. Only Kayleen could open the door.

  But that couldn’t be right. Jenna had. Maybe I couldn’t fly it, but this was my technology as much as Kayleen’s. It belonged to all of us. I thought of the reader Jenna had given me once in the cave, a pale way to read data buttons compared to Joseph and Kayleen’s skills, but it had worked. Surely the skimmer had some manual controls.…

  I stood, my legs still a little shaky. “Okay. I’m going to go back and clean up in the hold.”

  “Here,” Liam said, “I’ll help.”

  Kayleen had trapped herself into staying to comfort her hebra. For a moment, I saw her tense, realizing it, and thought she might try to keep us with her in the cabin. But she simply turned to Windy, her back to us, and began crooning again.

  We hadn’t really made much of a mess tumbling inside. Four or five boxes lay on the floor, some empty, so they must have held the camping gear. One of the silver boxes had been pulled out of its safe nest and opened. The crazy-ball had probably come from there. Ignoring that box for now, Liam and I stacked the others. As he finished setting the last one up high, I walked over by the hold door, really the ramp, now folded in so it looked like a square against the hull.

  Most altered technology could be used by hand. Sure enough, I spotted three small symbols etched faintly onto the wall to the right of the door, about my shoulder height.

  I studied them.

  A circle, a triangle, and two lines next to each other. The circle for opening? I reached up and brushed my fingers lightly over the symbol. Cool air washed across my cheek as the door began to open. I gasped and felt Liam’s hand on my shoulder. I touched the triangle. The lights began to fade slowly.

  Damn.

  I swallowed. The lines were to the right. I ran my hand over them, and the ramp stopped, partly open. I turned my attention back to the lights, trying to turn them back up, succeeding at plunging us into darkness.

  “Good idea.” Liam’s voice in my ear, sounding pleased. “Not so good execution,” he teased.

  The lights bloomed back on and the door finished closing. Neither was my doing. Kayleen stood in the doorway, her mouth a tight, disapproving line. “I would have shown you how to do that.”

  Maybe. I bit my tongue and called back, “Thanks.”

  Kayleen came up beside us. “Windy’s cross-tied. Before anyone goes out, we’ll need weapons.”

  Ghosts of Jenna saying almost the same thing at the beginning of our fight with Artistos—the one that ended with Joseph leaving—flitted through my memory. I had kept a small light laser gun from that time, had even carried it everywhere with me the first year afterward. It didn’t do any good today, resting in a spot I’d hollowed out for it in a cubby in my wagon.

  What did Kayleen giving us weapons mean? That she’d rather die than fly us back under duress? After all, we could use the weapons on her. Or did whatever fantasy she’d built about our life here override her common sense completely?

  Maybe she just knew I wouldn’t shoot her.

  I sighed audibly, resigned. “What did you bring?”

  She gave each of us one of the hand-lasers like mine, small fast weapons that could be pocketed and wouldn’t necessarily kill. They’d be enough to hold off something like the dogs in ones or twos, but not a pack of them. I already had a flashlight clipped to my belt, but she handed Liam one.

  She pawed slowly through the box. I was pleased to see one of the little data-button readers meant for people like us who didn’t bathe in information. There were a few more crazy-balls (wrapped carefully), some of the same thin stakes Jenna had laid out in the hangar on the Grass Plains, Kayleen’s frizzer (which made us invisible to the Artistos data nets), and a multitude of things I didn’t recognize.

  Kayleen pointed at the long thin sticks. She said, “These are pretty traditional projectile weapons—aim, fire, if you hit the target you kill it. I practiced with them on djuri. They work, but they’re hard to aim. Besides, I’ve only found one box of the projectiles.” She set aside three small boxes that could probably be pocketed or strung on belts. “Good for disrupting data flows.” She grimaced. “Not much use here.”

  She picked up an oddly shaped lump of ship-silver metal with buttons on it. “That’s what I wanted. This thing sends out a range of sounds that we can’t hear. When I played with it, some of the settings made almost everything, even the birds, get quiet. And some made them attack each other, and all the time I was just pushing a button. I’ve been trying to find information about them on the data buttons, but no luck.” She shrugged. “If we see those dogs again, I want to try this. It might affect a whole pack.”

  Liam had that “she’s crazy” look again. “Well, will it make them run away, or attack us, or lie down and lick our feet? I’ll bet it’s not the last one.” He stood up. “Let’s open the door. I want to see what we can salvage.” He held up his right hand with the little laser gun in it. “Thanks for this.”

  She nodded, and Liam reached for the symbols by the door. I don’t know whether his hand or her mind actually started it, but the ramp began to fold out. Chill air and the slightly acrid smell of the volcanic landscape spilled into the hold. Clouds now hid all the stars and moons, so the only light we had was the large rectangle pouring from the door.

  Near the top of the rectangle, the bloody carcass of one of the big demons attested to the strength of the crazy-ball. Even dead, torn up by the shrapnel released in the explosion, the dog made me shiver: muscular, with long claws and longer teeth, short dark fur and a long nearly hairless tail. It was at least three times as big as the demon dogs back home. The ramp clicked down, fully extended. I swallowed and tore my eyes away from the dead dog.

  A light wind blew across the land below us, rustling the grasses and something from camp, maybe our blankets. I listened more closely, making the sounds loud in my mind, focusing down. Finally, I heard what I was listening for: the sound of little feet as the small night mammals I’d heard at the beginning of my watch moved restlessly over the rough ground, scurrying for a last meal before morning.

  I breathed out, whispering, “It’s okay, they’re gone.”

  As we walked down the ramp, shining our flashlights around, I still felt jumpy. Kayleen followed halfway, then stopped, a dark silhouette casting a long shadow in the light from the ship.

  I knelt and traced a paw print the size of my hand in a patch of loose dirt. Standing up again, I looked around. The rustling turned out to be the remains of our tent. Whether by the dogs or the crazy-ball, the near walls had been rent into shreds which flapped softly against each other, eerie in the dusk-before-dawn.

  Our cots lay in a jumble, overturned. Liam pointed out tooth marks on the metal, which had come from Artistos. I didn’t see any marks on the altered metal, although some of it had been thrown around by the dogs.

  We counted five more carcasses. All of the dead dogs had spilled blood from more than one wound. The blood smelled strong and rank, and buzzing insects gathered around. I remembered Akashi’s description from the first time I’d seen a crazy-ball. “If you throw that ball into a group of people, it will kill everyone close to it.” I hadn’t been able to count the dogs, but there had been more than five. The bells had pealed exit and I’d heard them running away. Still, we wouldn’t have been able to kill five with hand weapons and live.

  One of the blankets had become a last resting place for the biggest of the dead demon dogs, a bitch with half of one leg ripped completely off. Gruesome. The blanket was covered in blood, a total loss. Liam wrinkled his nose. “We’ll have to burn everything.” He paused, staring at the dead dog. “How does she expect us to live here?”


  “How did we learn to live on Jini? Paw cats are as bad.” I glanced back at the skewed skimmer. “Maybe we should capture as much of this information as we can.”

  He laughed wryly. “That’s what dad would do.” He, too, looked over at the skimmer, shaking his head. “Maybe I’ll draw one in the morning before we burn them. It would be good to learn about their habits so we can avoid them.”

  That sounded more like the Liam I knew, the roaming scientist. “Okay. I’ll help.” I had a good hand for recording details about animals and plants. “But I don’t want to dissect one.”

  “Me either. Let’s gather up what we can. I don’t want to spend another night here.”

  6

  BURNING THE DEAD

  Two hours later, the three of us stood almost a hundred meters from the skimmer, watching flames lick up a pile of mutilated bodies ringed with deadwood. Sweat coated my scalp and back from piling up the carcasses and gathering fuel for the fire, and I shivered in the slightly cool breeze.

  Liam picked up a stray piece of wood and tossed it on the fire, stepping backward quickly as smoke wafted toward him. Kayleen, too, stepped back. The pyre stank of burning flesh. Liam’s voice carried a sharp undertone as he said, “So in less than one full day, we’ve gotten the skimmer stuck, nearly died in a beast attack, lost some of our stuff, and gathered up all the easily available fuel around us. What do you think we might do with the rest of our afternoon?”

  The edge in his voice made me fidget. It wouldn’t do to see it in that light. “We landed safely, survived a nasty surprise attack, and we have almost enough wood to help us stay safe tonight.”

  He laughed. “Always, always, you see the best thing possible.”

  I smiled back at him. “Well, now we have a drawing of a fantastic animal never before seen on Fremont. Think of the tall tales you can tell some Story Night back in Artistos.”

  “Great. A picture’s sure to save our lives.” He cocked his head at the skimmer. “I haven’t come up with a good idea for levering it out of that hole.”