Heritage of Flight (12 page)

"Please ask the Cynthians how long these incursions last."

Symbols formed on the screen which blanked, then lit with the answer. “Every two seasons, sir.” That answer came with commendable speed. More symbols came, and Rafe shook his head. unable to understand the jumble of light and pattern. He swayed, then caught himself.

"Then, as far as I'm concerned, that settles it,” said Borodin. “If they come every other year, you'd be spending half your lives as refugees, or in constant fear of going out one morning and coming back like ‘Cilla. Or not coming back at all from a very unpleasant death. Which option do you choose?"

"Your lieutenants were quick enough to adjust the comms to ‘speak’ to the Cynthians,” Beneatha lowered her head, as if planning to attack. “Why can't they adjust it to transmit offworld so we can leave here? Or"—she raised a hand for attention—"you listen to me now! I've listened to you. All right, I understand that we're supposed to be safe here. Can't we move?"

"We haven't even got a flier,” ben Yehuda replied. “You tell me how I can build transports, and I'll start tonight."

"You don't really want to risk the Secess’ interpreting the message and finding out our coordinates, do you?” Borodin asked. Was the xenobotanist being difficult on purpose, or were her objections based on arcane civ principles, or just wishful thinking? “Never mind my orders,” he went on, making his voice warm and persuasive. “I think we have an obligation to protect ourselves and the children. It hasn't been much of a life for them so far; one reason we brought them here was to give them a chance at a better one.

"I hate to say it. But if we can't contain this ... infestation, well, I don't like it either, but the eaters won't be the first extinct species our race has racked up, starting on Earth and moving out into the stars."

"Perhaps,” suggested Dr. Pryor, “your officers might ask the Cynthians if they have any ideas for helping out.” Borodin inclined his head to her with the courtesy he hadn't used since his last home leave. She was a civilian, and an aristocratic-looking one at that, but he liked her calm resourcefulness. The instant she spoke, the noise level sank noticeably.

"Try it,” he told Rafe.

But as the underofficer transmitted the question:
Cynthians/eaters ... Cynthians/interrogative?
the winged creatures mantled. So much for that good idea. Rafe tried again, but the aliens grew increasingly agitated.

"Sir, he's ready to pass out,” Pauli hissed at him.

"Then I'll try,” Borodin said. He might have been born patient and learned tact in space, but standing back and letting other people conduct the negotiations went hard with him. He took over the comm from Rafe, who sat with his head buried in his hands, and tried to assure the Cynthians that they didn't have to fear.

But he was clumsy with the symbols, unfamiliar with the analogical reasoning Rafe used to communicate with them; and the winged creatures grew more and more agitated. Finally they went into full threat, display, their horns out and gleaming with clear venom. Their antennae quivered too quickly for human eyes to follow or the equipment to receive.

"They're terrified of the eaters,” Pauli whispered. “Or of what we're asking."

As the communications gear crackled and squealed, the Cynthians mantled again, their wings hurling them into the air with a scatter of metallic-colored dust. Their wings flashed so brilliantly in the moon and firelight that for a moment, no one realized that the comm lights had blinked out. Even the screen blanked, except for the small green point that floated languidly from left to right on the now-dark panel. As if waiting for that, the fire crashed in on itself, burnt logs crumbling into ash and glowing embers, then subsiding into darkness.

"That must have been some speech,” Pauli whistled. As usual, she was the first to recover her composure.

Borodin nodded. “Tomorrow, on my orders and my responsibility, we will organize our defenses. I think we can conclude that the Cynthians can't be expected to help us on this. So we will burn off that strip, set up our watches, and see what we can manufacture in the way of pesticides to be used only as a last resort. Is that clear?” He glared over at ben Yehuda.

"I don't
like
killing things,” the engineer said. “Why look at me?” He glanced down at his and his son's flamethrowers, then grinned wryly.

"One last thing: every morning some of us will sortie to make certain our local environment is clear. Understood?"

In what seemed like another life, she and Rafe had dreamed of such missions; in their dream, though, they had found only friendly, beautiful life ... like the Cynthians who, unaccountably, had fled. Well, this was as close to that dream as they were going to get.

Why did it feel unfamiliar, as if she prepared not for a sortie, but to solve a puzzle for which, somehow, she had lost the critical pieces?

7

"Dr. Pryor told me that ‘Cilia's fever is down.” At least Pauli could begin her report cheerfully.

Borodin nodded, then promptly won an argument by ignoring the possibility that it might exist. “I'm going to be the only one taking a glider with me, Pauli. You may be lighter and quicker than I, but I've got more flight experience."

"Are we going to need that glider, sir?” Rafe asked. “What do you plan to launch from?"

"Those, if I have to,” he pointed at some distant rock spurs. “It's an emergency measure. I'll use it only if we have to get a message through and something blocks our communications. We'll have a backup. Me."

Pauli grumbled, then subsided. Pilots relied on instinct, trained over as many years as they stayed alive and flying. Borodin, as he said, had the experience. If he thought he might need to fly out of a situation they could handle until he brought in backups, she had better let it stand. She smiled encouragingly at Ari ben Yehuda, whose flamethrower made him bend almost double until his father adjusted its harness. Then she turned to give her own final instructions.

"Strip the settlement's perimeters. Start digging a trench and fill it with brush, dried ground scrub, or anything else that's flammable. If the eaters come, pour oil into the trench and shoot. If we see smoke, we'll approach from the river."

Beneatha looked stubborn.

"Do it,"
Borodin said. “I can't risk leaving Pauli or Rafe behind to see that orders are carried out."

"That marshal prepared you for everything, didn't he, Captain,” the xenobotanist gibed. “Weapons, which none of us have access to. Martial law. Secret orders. But they didn't prepare you for the eaters. So naturally, now, you have to kill them."

"You'd prefer that they'd killed ‘Cilla instead?” another scientist snapped, much to Pauli's relief. Things were getting too polarized: military on one side, civs on the other. “I'll round up the older kids. They can help."

By afternoon they had passed beyond the sections of the plains explored on previous scouting trips. Here rock spires jutted out, and ben Yehuda turned scanners on them. “I don't know how you guessed, Captain, but they'll block transmissions from here."

Pauli grinned. No fog from the river spread out this far, and the spatter of rain that usually came from the mountains at around noon had long since dried, leaving only a smell of green and of freshness. The sun shone, and the winds were lively.
I could like this world,
she assured herself.

"The rocks look like jaws,” Rafe told her.

The muscles along his eyelids and jawline twitched. In the warm sunlight, his face seemed as remarkable to Pauli as his body had felt the night before. He had clung to her as if her touch, her heartbeat, were all that protected him from the eaters, or from his dreams of them.

"Can't you think of anything better to talk about?” she asked, grinning reminiscently and not minding ben Yehuda's knowing, gleeful “oh
ho!"

Rafe turned to her and smiled. The strain in his face lightened, and seeing it, Pauli was even happier.

Carrying communication gear, Borodin headed for the peaks.

"Heads up, sir!” Pauli shouted. Overhead, brilliant motes glinted and danced above the rock teeth. “I thought you said that the Cynthians were nocturnal, Rafe."

"I said ‘probably nocturnal."’ He drank from his trail flask and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then smeared his hands down his trouser legs before answering. “Apparently they can come out during the day if they have to.” He paused, watching them. “They're watching us. Wonder why they don't land? They've always been friendly.” He grimaced as if he too tried to remember something—as if he too groped for a missing piece in a puzzle that he only half understood.

"They've been watching us all morning,” ben Yehuda lowered his field lenses, rubbed his back to ease it, then swung his flamethrower back over his shoulder. “First few times I saw it, I thought my eyes were playing tricks. And you two were ... let's call it, preoccupied."

Rafe turned on him, and he held up a hand. “With your work, of course. What did you think I meant?"

"Captain was really right about the idea of a backup after all. Never mind the rocks. Even if we could transmit past them, those Cynthians can generate enough interference to make any transmissions impossible."

She activated her own lenses. They whirled almost sickeningly, seeking rapid resolution and polarizing against the sunlight. Distance grids and markers snapped into place.

"More rock spurs at four hundred meters,” she said. “Rafe, do they look anything like the formations you saw before?"

"There's the captain,” ben Yehuda pointed.

Borodin had clambered three-quarters of the way up the nearest peak. He shook off his pack, then flung his arms wide and shook his head to indicate that the comms were not working.

"Comms are out,” ben Yehuda interpreted, but neither Pauli nor Rafe paid attention to him.

"The rocks ... not quite like the others. It looks like the eaters have already broken free,” muttered Rafe. His lenses fell from his hand and slapped against his chest. Then he looked up. Swooping at them with a breathtaking, precipitous urgency that delighted Pauli even as she started to back away were five Cynthians. Two of them were the larger, more somber elders.

She gazed at them, unable to dismiss a sudden, horrible idea. “Did the eaters break free of those formations?” she asked slowly. “Or were they hatched?"

Adrenaline made her dizzy and sick in a way that she had not been for years.

Rafe turned around to stare at her, his lips going white.

"Hatched,” he repeated. “Hatched. Call myself a xenobiologist, damn it. I didn't want to think of that, either. Enough happened right away that I didn't have to. Hatched. You do understand what you've just implied, don't you?"

In her dreams, she had tried to solve a puzzle, had lacked the essential piece. Now it came to hand, and it cut shrewdly. Dammit, how could she have known? She was a pilot, only a pilot; her talents were for math and flying;
yes, and killing enemies
.

"The Cynthians aren't watching us,” Pauli said. “They're guarding them. The eaters ... that's who they're protecting.” She wanted to bend over and vomit. No, the eaters weren't sapient ... not at this stage of their life cycle. They were merely hatchlings, voracious, driven by their instincts for survival to devour everything within range until the weather cooled and they encapsulated themselves once more, to emerge as...

No wonder the Cynthians fled questions about the eaters. No wonder they refused to help find a solution that would block the eaters’ movement from pasture to pasture. They might urge their newfound, oddly shaped friends to move, but in the end, if the newcomers did not move, they would be abandoned. Even if it meant their lives—for what were the newcomers, against the life of their own species?

Fire lanced down to char the nearby brush.

"Get moving!” Distance thinned Borodin's voice. He had one arm already in the glider's harness but he waved his free arm frantically, then fired again into the bushes. “Eaters!"

There they were, heaving away from the crumbling structures across the plain, between the rock teeth. The ground was mottled and roiling with them. Pauli started to tremble. She imagined that she could already hear the gnawing of the eaters’ huge mandibles and the hiss of acid. This was nothing like the fast, savage cleanliness of ship against ship in the silence of space. Rafe stood at her shoulder. He was no fighter, not really. If he had survived this, she could too.

"Get them all!” shouted the captain. “I'll fly the news back."

She wanted to scream at him to wait, to warn him that the eaters and the Cynthians were different stages of the same race, but he was poised now, waiting for an updraft, he had found it ... Pauli drew her weapon and waited for the eaters to come within easy firing range. No use wasting the charge. Her hand shook. How strange that she hadn't expected revulsion to slow her down. It wouldn't have done so in space. She was damned if she would allow this to happen to her.

"Do as much damage as you can, then retreat,” she heard Rafe instruct the ben Yehudas and the other civilians on the flamethrower crews. “If you're cut off, head either for the rocks or the river. I don't think they'll follow you there."