She wouldn’t really have minded, except for the loss of sleep. For a few months, before Andy had begun to sleep the night through, she had been so exhausted that she had spent her days at the lab in a fog. But she had also done some very good work then, including the groundwork for her Bioblimp. Nick had suggested that the exhaustion had loosened the restraints on her creativity. Perhaps he was right, though she had not realized that that was a side benefit of a wakeful baby until much later. At the time, she had had to content herself with the realization that the nighttime house had been pleasantly quiet, and the dawn hours, alive with birdsong, had been relaxing, peaceful, mellow. She had come closest, then, to understanding the lives of her ancestors, their days and seasons timed by the rhythms of the sun.
What had awakened her? Some sound? She peered at the clock across the room: Its glowing numerals announced smugly that the time was a quarter to five in the morning. It would be another hour before the radio turned itself on to get them out of bed.
But there was light. Dawn was breaking outside, and there was no birdsong. Was that what had awakened her? That absence of normality? That silence?
No. A soft crunch sounded overhead, a scritch of avian claws as they stepped along the peak of the roof.
That goddamn Chickadee!
“I believe you,” she said. “You said you called the airport, and you said they came and got the Chickadee, and I believe you.
“So why is the damned thing still here?” Her voice was so tense it was almost a scream. “I want it gone!”
“Me too!” said Andy.
Emily suppressed a glare at her son. Like most children she had ever met, he did not know what to want for himself. He learned, he built himself, by modeling himself on those who meant the most to him. He was heartbreakingly loyal, and there were times when that loyalty made her heart turn over in her chest. But right now he was staring yearningly at the window, clearly wishing that the Chickadee would come down off the roof for him to watch. His loyalty was so obviously just that, no more, unreal, a lie for whatever in-built reasons, that, for a moment of irrationality, she wanted to strangle the little bastard.
Her toast and juice sat untouched before her. Her coffee quivered in its cup when she lifted it to her mouth. A swell of tears hovered on the brink of her lower eyelid. She dabbed at the moisture with a hanky from the hanky bush.
Nick stared at his plate. Yes, he had called. Yes, they had come. When he and Andy had returned from their shopping trip, Mrs. Palane across the street had said so, describing the truck, the crew, the bait that had lured the bird into the truck, and the sigh of relief that had seemed to emanate from the trees, where presumably the local—and diminished—population of swallows was hiding out. If he wasn’t sure about the sigh of relief—Mrs. Palane did have a tendency to hyperbole—he did believe the airport crew had come for the Chickadee. But, yes, here it was again. He had clearly failed.
He said: “They can’t be securing it very well.”
“I’ll say! This is the second time it’s come back!” She jerked her head sharply to one side, making her dark hair fly as if to emphasize her anger.
He explained why he didn’t think they were tethering it at all. “It has to be a hangar bird, and the hangar door can’t be latching properly. Either that, or someone is letting it loose at night.”
“Don’t tell me about it. Tell them!”
“I will.” He set down his cup, brushed a crumb from the front of his white shirt, carried his empty plate to the sink, and made the call on the spot. He didn’t want her doubting him, or accusing him of more failure than he had earned. She was, he thought, too prone to anger, even with a good excuse, and he felt his real failures keenly enough without her comments.
The airport clerk, once more, was sympathetic and promised immediate action. Nick suggested that once they had the little jet back, they should check the latch on its hangar. He did not suggest that anyone was letting the Chickadee out deliberately, for that seemed unlikely.
When he was done, his wife nodded as if he really had solved the problem. She took a bite of her cold toast, drank her juice, and pushed the dishes away. Then she said, “It’s time to go.”
“I’ll go out with you.”
She shrugged, as if to say, “Suit yourself,” and left the room for her briefcase. Andy followed, stretched to reach the garage-door control, and held the door for his parents.
Together, they waited on the walk while the Tortoise ambled from its cave and positioned itself for boarding. But Emily did not board. Instead, she stared at the Chickadee on the roof, and her mouth set in a rigid line. The bird shifted its weight from one leg to the other. A shingle came loose, slid down the slope of the roof, and fell among the rhododendrons.
“And now the roof is going to leak,” she said.
“I can fix it,” said Nick. “I will.”
“But look at that!” She pointed at the streak of birdlime. “Look at what it’s going to leak!”
Nick laid a hand on her arm. “It’ll wash off the roof. I’ll take a hose to it today.” With gentle pressure he turned her to face the oak that overhung the lawn. He pointed. “But look there.”
“Where?” She searched the shadows among the great tree’s branches.
“There!” cried Andy. “I see it!” Nick lined his arm up beside her head so that her gaze could follow its line.
“Is that it? It’s pretty.” The strange, bitternlike bird was there again, or still, its beak thrusting into the shadows above its head; its small eyes, like beads of sparkling ebony, blinked in the morning light.
Now that bird turned, focusing those dark eyes upon them. Its beak swung to the horizontal. Its wings lifted as if in a shrug. They flapped once, twice, and it dove off its branch. Its course carried the bird, a heavy flier, low over the lawn before it could rise and circle close above their heads.
“It’s right over you, Mommy!”
Indeed it was. It was so close that they could feel small gusts of breeze from its straining wings, and the shadows of its passage across the sun were passing waves of coolness. But now its circle was rising and broadening, and its eyes seemed aimed at Emily alone. She moved to one side, and the bird’s orbit shifted to remain centered on her. The Chickadee moved too, cocking its head to watch the little drama below it. It sidled along the rooftop as if to be closer to the action. Its beak gaped, and in the brief glance she spared it, Emily could see the tongue within its mouth.
The strange bird suddenly broke off its circling, uttered a raucous shriek, and dove straight for Emily, its beak an outthrust dagger. Andy screamed. Nick grabbed his wife and pulled her toward him. She felt the buffet of the bird’s heavy wing against her arm as it missed.
It did not give up. As Andy, still screaming, grabbed his mother around the legs, hobbling her as effectively as quicksand, and as Nick, cursing, tried to pry him loose and get them all into the house, the garage, the Tortoise, anywhere safe, the bird bent its course around again. It flew up between the oak tree and the house, performed a graceful Immelmann looping turn, and arrowed back toward the target it seemed to have chosen so deliberately.
This time, it did not make it. It did not even come close. Its course took it over the roof of the house, and as soon as it was within reach, the Chickadee lunged and caught it by one wing.
The smaller bird swung on its suddenly forced pivot. There was a snap of breaking wingbone. It struck with its beak, stabbing, and the Chickadee’s throat blossomed red.
The Chickadee cried out in apparent pain. As its beak panted, the bittern—if that was what it truly was—fell to the roof, its beak and one good wing flailing. One huge foot clamped it into place, while the Chickadee’s shorter, blunter beak struck once, twice, three times. As blood spattered on the roof, Emily felt a droplet of something wet and cool strike her cheek. Another droplet struck Nick’s white shirt, and she knew that hers too must be blood, blood that had lost its warmth in its voyage across the intervening space.
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The Chickadee cried out once more and leaped, more clumsily than usual, into the air, leaving its victim behind. It flew off, heading this time in the direction of the airport, presumably going home to nurse its wound.
The dead bittern slid slowly down the slope of the roof to land in the shrubbery. It was accompanied by two more broken shingles.
Nick finally got Andy loose from his mother and scooped him up to hold him safe, his thighs enwrapped by one paternal arm. The boy began to cry. “Let’s go back in the house,” said Nick. With his free hand, he tried to steer Emily toward the door they had just left.
“No,” she said. She patted his hand with her own, understanding his protective feelings. But she was a biologist, a genetic engineer, and she had just been attacked by something whose behavior was not natural.
She looked down, at the hand that still gripped the handle of her briefcase, and noted without surprise that her knuckles were stark white. Deliberately, she loosened her grip, scooched, opened the case, and extracted a tissue. She dabbed at her cheek, stared briefly at the spot of red upon the tissue, wondered which bird the blood had come from, and crossed the lawn to the bittern. Two rhododendron branches, broken from their parent bush, lay beneath the body. A pungent odor declared that that body had fouled itself as it died.
Emily used the bloody tissue to cover her fingers as she drew the bittern into clearer view on the lawn. Even in death, its orange-on-gray color scheme gave it a kind of beauty. But close up, that beauty was the stark beauty of a weapon designed for a single job. Now, finally, when it had almost been too late, she recognized it.
The back of the head bore a small, implanted plug of the sort that on the Tortoise received a cable from the controller computer. The beak was as long as her hand from wrist to fingertips, sharp, and stained, as if it had been dipped in some sticky substance. The claws were talons whose specifications probably had been lifted from the genome of a hawk or eagle. Around one ankle was a metal band.
A shadow fell over her. She looked up at Nick and Andy. “An Assassin bird,” she said. “But why was it after me?”
The police arrived half an hour later. Nick had called them immediately, while Emily made herself and her husband another pot of coffee. Now here they were, their Roachsters hogging the driveway and forcing the Tortoise back into its garage. Nick, Emily, and Andy had been herded onto the walk by the front steps, where they would not interfere. The police themselves were stomping all over the lawn, taking samples of the Chickadee’s dung, retrieving feathers of the Assassin bird from beneath the oak tree and the bird feeder, sliding the body, looking much smaller than it had in life, into a plastic bag. The officer whose responsibility was this last task was being very careful not to touch the beak.
Nick was explaining: “It showed up first by the bird feeder—my son spotted it—but then the Chickadee chased it off…”
“A chickadee?” The tone of disbelief that escaped around the officer’s wad of gum was thick enough to bottle. It smelled of peppermint.
“An escapee from the airport. We just thought this, this Assassin bird, was just a pretty bird. We looked it up and figured it was some kind of bittern. Then it showed up in the tree there…” He pointed.
One of the cops, dark-skinned, grizzle-haired, with a weathered look to his lined face, kicked at Emily’s briefcase, still on the ground, and said, “Bitterns don’t roost in trees. They’re a swamp bird.”
Nick shrugged. So he had thought, Emily knew, but there the bird had been. “That’s where it was today too. And when we came out, it flew around her, in circles…” He gestured overhead with one arm. “Then it attacked, and the Chickadee got it.”
“So where’s the Chickadee?”
“It flew off. I guess it’s back at the airport.”
A shadow swept overhead. They all looked up, and Emily said, “A Hawk!” The police insignia were plainly visible.
The Hawk, fanning its wings and tail, descended onto the lawn, braced its legs, and darted its head to left and right. The bubble-shaped pod on its back opened, and a figure familiar to both Nick and Emily emerged. He waved to the other officers and approached the Gilmans, leaving the Hawk alertly scanning the neighborhood.
“Detective Bernie Fischer,” he said to Nick. “We met on the expressway. Damned birds.” To Emily, he said, “I thought I’d asked you every question I could think of yesterday. Now…” Someone passed him the bagged Assassin bird. He gestured with it. “This gives me a bunch more. What happened?”
Nick watched Emily as she answered: “It was no accident, Bernie. It can’t have been. Someone had to aim it at me. Me!”
She looked from the detective to her husband. If he had been a cat or dog, she thought, the fur above his neck and shoulders would have been bristling suspiciously. She could almost hear his thoughts—Bernie? Bernie? My wife is not that informal with strangers.
“Wait a minute,” Nick said. “This detective was the cop who interviewed you at the lab?”
Emily and Bernie both nodded. Emily said, “Why not? He found out I was a gengineer at the expressway, and then he needed to talk to a gengineer.”
He was clearly unable completely to restrain his skepticism that that was enough to explain his wife’s familiarity with the other man. But in a moment, he relaxed, and Bernie asked Emily again, “But what happened?”
She went through the whole story again, just as she had for the other cops. When she came to the Chickadee, Nick interjected, “I don’t see how it could keep escaping. Maybe someone’s been letting it loose on purpose.”
“We’ll look into it,” said Bernie. Then, when Emily had finished her report, he asked her, “Why did someone have to aim this bird at you?”
“It’s an Assassin bird. Programmable.” She pointed at the plug in the bird’s head. “The military uses them.”
“Ah,” he said. He looked at Nick. He shifted his gaze to Andy, standing between his parents. “Then we should be able to track it down. I’ll get right on it.” One hand lifted as if he would like to squeeze Emily’s shoulder, but he redirected the intention movement toward the boy. “Your son?” As they nodded, he patted Andy on the head. “We’ll keep your mother safe,” he said. “That’s our job.”
Bernie lifted off in his Hawk shortly thereafter. With him went the Assassin bird in its plastic bag. After him went the other cops, leaving behind footprints, a cigar butt, and a handful of gum wrappers.
“Andy,” said Nick. He made a show of examining his watch. “The Chickadee’s gone. Isn’t there a veedo show you like about now?” When the boy, thus reminded of his favorite show, “Warbirds of Time,” rushed toward the house and veedo, Nick added, “Should I be jealous?”
Emily bent to pick up her briefcase. She stared at him. She said, “At a time like this you can ask such a question?”
“The way he looked at you…”
“And the way I called him Bernie?” Her wide mouth contracted into a disgusted moue. “Yes, we got fairly friendly yesterday. But not that friendly.” She tucked her briefcase under one arm long enough to clap her hands once, sharply. The Tortoise emerged once more from the garage.
The door to the house opened suddenly, slamming against the side of the house. Andy yelled, “Daddy! Phone!”
“I’ll see you tonight.” Emily climbed into the Tortoise, and the vehicle began to move immediately. She did not look back. Nor did Nick, staring after her, yearning, resisting the pull of the phone, cry anything after her.
Only later did she learn that the phone call had been from the local airport. The Chickadee had returned just as the retrieval crew had been about to leave. Unfortunately, before they could get it back into its hangar, it had dropped dead. What had Nick done to it? Who was going to pay? And did he know he could be arrested for destroying other people’s expensive property?
As Nick told her that evening, it had taken him ten minutes to explain, though his explanation did little to soothe his caller.
* * *
Chapter Nine
SO HER HUSBAND was jealous.
When Bernie Fischer was in a hurry, he didn’t waste time soaring. He used the jets to get as high as he could. Then he blasted straight across the sky until he could put the Hawk into a dive to his destination. The practice wasn’t recommended, for even with its composite skeletal implants, the Hawk was more fragile than an all-metal jet, but it was fast.
He snorted to himself. He was not in a hurry now. He had lifted off quickly enough, but as soon as he had gained some altitude, he had turned the jets off. He would take his time and glide, soaring, back toward headquarters while he thought about Nick Gilman’s reaction to him.
“Jealous,” he muttered to himself as the landscape pivoted about his vantage point. “Hah!”
He had never thought of himself as a ladies’ man, but Connie had said Emily had a yen for him, and maybe she did. Maybe her husband was right to worry.
Mentally, he slapped his wrist. Bernie, he thought, your mama raised you better than to think like that. Like a typical male fat-headed skirt flipper.
The Hawk’s passenger pod had a rearview mirror much like that in a road vehicle, though its purpose was more to give the pilot a glimpse of whatever might be in the small space behind him. Sometimes he carried prisoners. Now he bent the mirror so that he could see his own face. Was he handsome? He supposed so, or close enough. Sexy? Ask Connie, or Emily.
The radio’s buzzer sounded. He picked up the phonelike handset and spoke: “Fischer here.”
“You still anywhere near the Gilman place?”
He peered through the pod’s transparent wall. He could already make out the roof of the Aerie. “Almost home, now.”
“Litter! We have a complaint from the county airport. They have a dead Chickadee.”
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