Silent Dances (26 page)

When she stepped onto the platform, Taller was there, rigidly attentive,

staring pointedly into the reeds. Tesa followed his gaze, worried, but then

she saw the flash of silver that meant Thorn had come for the insulated

container.

"He's waiting for you," Taller signed, without taking his eyes from Thorn. His feathers raised slightly, then settled. "Perhaps you should tell him it would

be better for him not to come anymore," Tesa suggested to mollify the

uneasy avian. Taller stared at her. "Do you wish to speak with him?" She

met his eyes levelly. "Yes, I do."

Suddenly the avian riffled his feathers and shook himself all over like a dog

settling his fur. "Then, by all means, talk with him," he signed, then stepped back inside the shelter.

Taking advantage of her moment of privacy, Tesa slid down the

embankment, slapped on her stilts, and quickly strode through the water.

However, when she approached the reed line, she found herself strangely

reluctant to cross that boundary.

Thorn stared at her as the first moon lit the sky.

"The coffee was wonderful," she signed, feeling inane.
"I wasn
't sure he'd find it," Thorn answered,
"or
if he'd deliver it." He seemed reluctant to sign Tal er's name.

"I looked for you on the bluff, but didn't see you."

"I saw you now and again," Thorn signed. "You seemed pretty absorbed in

what you were doing."

It's happened, already,
Tesa thought bitterly.
We're different. He acts like I'm
someone's wife, and I feel like one!
"Does Meg know you're here?" she asked.

Thorn smiled slightly. "Oh, yeah. We ... had a long talk. We understand each

other. It's okay." He looked at her as though she were a hologram from

another solar system. "I thought about you all day today--I couldn't get

anything done.
I can
't come any closer, but can't you come over here?"

No,
Tesa realized with
a sudden
shock,
I can't.

Thorn stopped
smiling
. "
Is it going
to work, Tesa, with you

128

an
d the Grus? I've had a lot of second thoughts about it today."
That

startled her. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm just not sure it
'
s
ri
ght to expect you to live with them,
become ...

what? Taller's second mate?"

He's just jealous,
she told herself. He couldn't understand
what the chick

meant to her
,
what this kind of life meant to
her. "Give it time, Thorn. Give me a chance to do my
job."

His quick smile re
tu
rn
ed
. "
You'
re ri
ght
.
I'm just wishing
we could be together." Thorn looked over her head suddenly, and she followed his gaze.

Taller had emerged from the shelter and was studiously preening. "You'd

better go. Coffee'll be
here in the mo
rn
ing
."
He blew her a kiss and
strode away.

When Tesa climbed the platform, Taller stopped preening.
"Your interest in

him might be easier to understand," he signed
, "
if he were taller
."
Befo
re
she could
re
spond, he flew to the clear water
an
d took up his one
-

legged watch.

It was not until the third evening that Tesa had time to call up Sco
tt'
s

markers that we
re
patiently waiting for her in the computer
.
The
re
we
re
six of them
,
one for each camera. Eagerly
,
she ordered the system
to see if
an
y of the equipment was still functioning
.
Scott had put two
cameras at each nest, just in case one failed
.
She wouldn't let herself

believe there wasn't at least one functioning
.
She looked at the first

nest. Suddenly the small voder sc
re
en went black.

At the bott
om of the dark sc
re
en she read that the first camera had

been destroyed by lightning
.
Nest One's second camera had no video
,

but it did have audio.
Now, won
'
t that do me a
world of good?
the young
woman thought
,
disappointed.

Fearing the worst, Tesa then asked the voder to tell her how many
cameras

we
re
nonfunctional
.
Her hea
rt
sank as she read that one camera at
each site had been destroyed.
Well, that still leaves me two working

cameras, and this "hearing" one,
she told herself optimistically.
She asked
the voder to connect her with the good camera
at Nest Two.
She'd

carefully muted the voder earlier
,
so it wouldn
'
t attract
Taller'
s a
tt
ention.

The small screen abruptly flared into color and Tesa sucked in a sharp

breath.

She was looking at the edge of a giant nest built of sticks, twigs, an
d tree

limbs
.
On it perched a massive female Aquila, ruby
-
red eyes blazing
,
beak opened
,
screaming into the wind.

129

As Tesa watched, another of the bronze creatures, this one golden-eyed,

landed, holding in its talons a stout limb.

They're nesting!
Tesa realized excitedly.

The smaller, golden-eyed male fitted the limb carefully into the construct only

to have the female rip it out and throw it over the side.

Now, there's intelligence,
Tesa thought, amused.
Any fool could see
that
wasn't the right color.
She asked the computer how much memory was left,

and was surprised to find that it was completely available--that nothing was

stored in it.

That can't be right,
Tesa thought. She ordered the camera to record from

dawn to sunset and then called up the last marker. The last camera at Nest

Three was also fully functional, but it was spying on an empty nest. All its

memory, too, was available.

They could come back,
she thought.
I'll keep checking.
Tesa realized that she could use the "hearing" camera at Nest One to her advantage. If that

nest were inhabited, the camera could record the Aquila's vocalizations and

Tesa could program her voder to try and translate them. It would take time to

limit the voder's other functions, but it might be worth it.

The computer confirmed that it could hear occupants in the nest.

Wanting to give the voder's memory all the space it needed, Tesa scanned

her files to erase or download them into external storage chips. She didn't

want anything to limit the voder's ability to set up a mapping algorithm.

She'd wiped most of the files when she came upon something she hadn't

even known she'd recorded. It was a conversation between Peter and Thorn

days ago, probably when the two had been washing the dishes. She felt

guilty looking at it--it was, after all, nothing more than eavesdropping--but

when she saw that Peter had brought her name up, her curiosity overcame

her compunctions.

There was banter about Thorn's interest in Tesa, and Lauren's feelings

about that, and then the sentences became garbled and broken up.
They

must've turned on the sonics,
Tesa decided, scanning to see if there was

anything else in the conversation she could decipher.

The garbage cleared. Then the voder identified Bruce. His sentence was

plain.

130

"Meg said something to me about an Aquila leaving its lunch here
abouts
,"

he'd said.

Tesa felt a shiver of dread.

Peter remarked that he and Thorn had been discussing that, but for Tesa,

that conversation had been ruined by the sonic washer
.
Peter

downplayed the significance of the Aquila
'
s visit, but Bruce wasn
'
t so
easily put off. He wanted to do something, to be assured that the

ground crew was not in danger
.
The next sentence rocked Tesa.

"
Scott wasn
'
t afraid to violate the taboo
,"
Bruce had said. "I looked
through his paperwork
-
he'd planted cameras ..." The weatherman

wanted to find the cameras
, re
activate them. Tesa realized with a stab

of dismay that the
Crane
crew could'
ve already downloaded those

camera memo
ri
es to study them
,
which would explain why they were

empty.

Thorn said he knew about the cameras, and had looked for them.
The next

thing he said only confused Tesa
.
He insisted that
all
of the cameras were nonfunctional.

Tesa sat back,
staring at the display. It might
'
ve taken Thorn longer to

find Scott
'
s markers than it had Tesa
,
but she did not doubt that he'd
found them
.
If he
'
d found them
,
then he'd probably been the one who

'
d downloaded those memo
ri
es. But why would he lie about it?

Tesa didn'
t like finding out that Thorn was capable of lying. Whatever

his motives we
re
, she would have trouble viewing him the same way

now
.
Remember
,
he can't endure "the look,"
she thought.

She tri
ed to shake off her hasty suspicions
.
After all,
she
had no intention of telling anyone about the cameras, either. The Aquila
were
taboo.

Maybe Thorn felt compelled, as she did, to continue Scott's work. Still,

his lying unnerved her.

You hypocrite,
she scolded herself,
you
lied to
him
barely an hour after
you'd arrived
.
She squeezed her eyes shut, confused
.
What a backward

forward way to be.

Tesa opened her eyes to reread Bruce's bitter words.

"If we can't do approved research on the Aquila," he'd said, "
we'll just have
to rely on the oldest Terran technique for coping with nuisance

wildlife."

Tesa felt like ice.
She purged the memo
ry
without reading the last

sentences
.
She knew that Terran technique all too well.

131

SILENT DANCES 131 Eradication
.
Extermination
.
Extinction.

Genocide.

Gazing at the lone Grus standing in the inky water,
guarding his family
,

guarding her, she thought bitterly
,
Taller ... if you only knew who really

was the
Death.

132

The shimmerings predicted rain
,
and rain came
. Two days of
it, a

gentle
,
steady soaking that effectively canceled Tesa
'
s visits with
Thorn
.
But the coffee still arrived eve
ry
mo
rn
ing.

Tesa was busy re
cording Grus legends and filming the sto
ry
walls.

Even though the chick
'
s eyesight had improved
,
he still had trouble
focusing on Tesa and she wor
ri
ed that she might be too alien for him

to accept.

She was also tired of referri
ng to him in third person. The Grus explained

that the
ri
ght name would eventually "show up," that it was no one's
special task
,
as it was among Tesa's
people.

But on the chick
'
s fifth day in the World
,
the sky was b
ri
ght and
cloudless and no one could go near the slitted opening without finding

him under their feet
.
As the Father Sun edged over the ho
ri
zon
,
Taller
stuck his head through the slit, while his son stood comically between

his legs, pee
ri
ng out onto the
World,
his blue eyes enormous.

Stretching tall, the chick flared his stubby wings out straight
,
scared to

death.

"He can wait," Weaver told Tesa.
The avian was on the

133

nest
,
working on a cloak
. "
I w
an
t to finish this
,
first." She unfolded
the mate
ri
al
an
d stood in one smooth motion. "I've never attempted
an
ything like this ... It might not work. If it hadn
'
t been for your blanket
,
the idea would never have occurred to me."

Tesa stare
d at Weaver
,
confused. The avi
an as
ked the hum
an
to st
an
d
,
and when she obliged
,
the Grus female draped the feathered mate
ri
al over her.

"Taller helped with the design." Weaver dre
w the luxu
ri
ous folds over
the hum
an'
s shoulders
, "
but I'm not su
re
it
'
s
ri
ght, yet." She laced
grass thongs together and the mate
ri
al beg
an
to form sides
,
then
sleeves.