Ell Donsaii 12: Impact! (20 page)

As she watched all of this, Phil’s mother had gone from being amazed that Ell Donsaii was going to sit with them during their son’s surgery, to being pleasantly surprised at how kind she was to the star struck young man.

Later, as they sat quietly in the waiting room, the young woman obviously got a lot of work done. She murmured almost constantly to her AI as she stared off into a space only she could see in her contacts. Nonetheless, when several young people in the waiting room recognized her and came over to pay their respects, Donsaii was unfailingly polite and gracious, despite the fact that it obviously interrupted the work she’d been doing.

When the surgeon came out to talk to them after Phil’s operation, he also appeared to be quite startled to recognize Donsaii. “Um, hello Ms., excuse me, Dr. Donsaii.” He said a little wide-eyed, “are you here for Mr. Zabrisk also?”

Donsaii nodded, “I’m just here to provide a little moral support.”

The surgeon told them that Phil’s surgery had gone well, but that he would be on crutches for 2 to 3 months and that it would be 6 to 12 months before he recovered as much as he was going to.

Ed asked, “Will he get back to normal?”

The surgeon shook his head slightly, “After a severe injury to a joint like this, it’s never completely back to normal, but we hope it’ll be back to pretty good. He’ll probably have at least
some
mild arthritic symptoms. Sometimes for reasons that aren’t completely clear, the hip rapidly goes on to severe arthritis and requires a joint replacement. As you know we don’t like to replace hips in young people. Hopefully that won’t be the case. Some patients do exceptionally well, playing sports and essentially doing everything they did before. Cross your fingers, say your prayers and we’ll all hope your son will be in that group.”

***

Dex looked curiously down at hies feet. The meteorite’s new bracelet sat around hies ankle with four watery clear spots on it, similar to the ones on the meteorites. Hie checked hies harness again. Hies most important tools and hies allotment of the smoked zornit as well as a few of the sausages were all securely fastened. Little Mata seemed to be solidly attached to Dex’s harness as well.

“Is everybody ready?” Dex asked the group behind himr on the ledge. Hie heard an affirmative chorus but wasn’t sure that everyone had answered. “Sound off,” hie said, another thing hie had learned from the meteorites. “One.”

“Two, three, four, five, six,” hie heard trailing off into the wings of the V on each side behind himr. Moments later the count came back to himr, “… four, three, two…”

“One,” hie said. “Okay,” hie bellowed, “your lights are gonna come on now.” As hie spoke, the lights on hies own ankle bloomed, creating a large glow down around hies feet. As hie looked back to the sides hie could see the glow about the ankles of several of the dalins just behind himr on either limb of the V. “Okay, we’re taking off unless someone shouts out that you’re not ready?”

Hearing nothing, Dex spoke quietly to the meteorite standing in front of himr. With its typical squealing sound, it lifted into the air. Its lights came on and it drifted out and up away from himr. They had all practiced this a few times now and when it got to be a reasonable distance up and away from himr, Dex beat into the air behind it. Behind himr hie could hear the other dalins of this flight lifting into the air as well. “Sound off. One,” hie shouted. Hie felt like the rocket was drifting to hies left and hie slowly followed it in a big turn that hie knew would lead himr around to the south of the mountain and then off to the east.

Moments later the count came back to himr, reassuring himr that everything was okay with this particular flight. Hie was more worried about the flights that would be taking off behind them. Each of the six rockets were supposed to lead a flight of dalins with Syrdian at the point of the last flight. The fourth flight worried himr most. Malnot was leading it, and although Dex had come to like Malnot quite a bit, Malnot was not very assertive. In addition, Qes and Fantais had asked Malnot if they could be in hies group and hie had agreed. Although Qes and Fantais had not caused a great deal of trouble since Qes had broken hies arm and Dex had straightened it back out, hie worried that they would cause problems. Worse, if Malnot couldn’t handle it, Syrdian would come up on them and have to deal with the issue.

Since hie
despised
Qes, dealing with Qes’ petty problems was particularly difficult for Syrdian.
Maybe I should have been in the last flight instead of the first?

Nothing for it now. Hie could only keep stroking steadily onward in this long, extra migration. Dex hoped the meteorites would be able to bring them in for a landing on reasonable ground before they were all too exhausted. None of them had been flying much recently and hie worried that many of the dalins might not be in good enough condition for migration length flights. The fact that hie was carrying Mata made it unlikely that Dex would fly off and leave weaker members behind. Hie just hoped not to be embarrassed by hies own lack of endurance.

After they had been flying for a dek or two, Dex was beginning to feel a little bit strained. Although hie was sure hie could push on until noon, hie called out to the rocket hie could hear squealing along in the gloomy murk up ahead of himrself. Just the noise the rockets made to fly had turned out to be easy enough to follow through the dust. Though they had offered to make a louder noise, it turned out to be unnecessary.

The meteorite responded, “Yes Dex?”

“If you can find a place to land sometime soon, I would like to check on everyone to be sure they’re okay.”

“Okay, we’ll start to descend in approximately twelve centideks,” the meteorite said. “We should be on the ground in about twenty-five. Will that be okay?”

“Yes,” he said but he wondered,
how can the meteorite possibly know that there will be a clearing to land in twenty-five centideks from now? It’s a marvel that it can see at all. Even more amazing that it can see the ground below us to keep us from crashing into it! But it stretches all sense of the incredible to think that it can see a clearing that we will reach in another twenty-five centideks! I couldn’t see a clearing that far ahead, even if there wasn’t dust in the air!

Nonetheless, in what Dex estimated to be about 10 to 15 centideks, the meteorite said it was descending. Dex was able to begin just gliding behind it as the whistling sound from it diminished slightly and the meteorite dropped slowly downward in front of himr.

Hie passed the word back to the dalins behind himr that they were landing, “… in a meadow,” the meteorite had said.

In another10 to 15 centideks the rocket said, “You are about to land… You’re up three body lengths, two body lengths, one body length, time to land!” There was a pause, then the meteorite shouted, “Rossa, you’re going back up! Descend, descend, you’re at one body length, now land!”

Rossa was the sixth flyer at the right end of the V. If the meteorite hadn’t just proved that it could see a meadow twenty-five centideks of flight time away, Dex would have been astonished that it could tell what Rossa was doing back at the end of the V in this thick dust.

Dex walked from one end of the formation to the other checking on each of the dalins. Even though they had landed spread out like they flew, finding them in the murk wasn’t difficult because of the glowing lights on their ankles. They all drank some water from the bladders they carried and proclaimed themselves ready to fly onward.

Dex went to check in with the meteorite. As hie approached, it asked, “Do you think it would be good for each of the other groups to stop here as well? The next group will need to start descending pretty soon if they’re going to land in this same meadow.”

At first, Dex felt startled once again by the fact that one meteorite seemed to know what another one was doing, no matter how far away it was. But hie had seen this before and they were always correct about what another meteorite was doing. “Yes, I do think that would be a good idea if each of the groups landed here to make sure no one has gotten too tired or is having a problem with their harness. Also, as we fly, if you could keep an eye out for a lake or stream where we could fill our water bladders, that would be very helpful.”

The meteorite said, “We will come to a meadow with a large stream going through it in a little more than two deks. Will that be soon enough?”

“That will be fine,” Dex said, wondering once again how it could know such a thing. “We’re ready to take off if you are.”

As they counted off in preparation for lifting off again, Dex thought about how hie himrself knew approximately where streams were on the Yetany’s usual migration route south. But the meteorite that they were following had never left the cave area. It couldn’t have flown this eastward migration itself. Not that hie doubted the meteorites strange abilities any longer.

Instead hie wondered whether the Yetanys would have had
any
chance of surviving this disaster without the meteorites and their strange knowledge of things which Dex wouldn’t have thought they could possibly know…

Sure enough, after flying for what Dex would’ve estimated to be about two deks, the meteorite said they were about to descend to the stream. Because flying the point of the V where you weren’t riding in anyone else’s wing tip vortex was harder than the other positions, one of the other dalins had taken over the point from Dex for a while. However, the meteorite had spoken loudly enough that Dex could still hear it from the number two position. A few centideks later, Dex heard the slight decrease in pitch the meteorite made when it was descending. Moments later hie could tell that the meteorite was lower, then the glow from the ankle bracelet of the current leader began to descend. Dex began gliding down, minutely adjusting hies position to stay in the leader’s wingtip vortex.

They came in for another successful landing in a meadow. This time Dex landed a little too hard and nearly fell. When hie checked on hies flight, everyone in it said they were okay. Hie wondered whether anyone had been injured in the following flights. Approaching the meteorite, hie asked, “Where is the stream?”

“Up ahead about ten body lengths,” the meteorite replied. “We are worried that the water might have a lot of dust in it. This device,” Dex was close enough to see the big fin on the side of the meteorite turn fuzzy. Something fell out of it and Dex picked it up to study it. “That device,” the meteorite resumed, “is like your air intake device, but designed to clean water instead of air. If you pull it open, you can scoop dusty water up into it and clean water should come out the bottom.”

Dex led the other dalins up to the stream. Apparently Fagan immediately tried to drink, because Dex heard himr complaining, “This water’s muddy!”

“Don’t drink yet! Or, drink from your water bladders if you have some left. The meteorite has given me a device to clean the water with. Let me try it and see how well it works.” Dex looked at the new device the meteorite had given himr, puzzling about the instructions to “pull it open.”

The meteorite had moved itself up beside himr. Now it said, “It’s curled up like a leaf. Unroll it and you’ll see that at the big end it has two layers. Pull them apart.”

Dex did so and saw that it now formed a large bowl with a knob at the bottom.

The meteorite said, “Dip it in the stream so that the bowl fills with water. Clean water will come out the bottom.”

Dex dipped it and held it up. Sure enough, water began pouring out the bottom of it. However, in the dusty air, hie couldn’t tell whether it was actually clean. Tentatively, hie directed the stream into hies mouth. It tasted a little bitter but not dusty. Hie wondered whether hie was as sensitive to the taste of the dust as some of the others. “Fagan, come taste this water. Tell me what you think.”

The other dalins had crowded around Dex, waiting for clean water. Dex had to keep calling hies name so Fagan would know which direction to go as hie shuffled hies way through them. Dex re-dipped the water cleaner and held it up for Fagan to sample the stream coming out of the bottom of it. “It’s good!” hie said, sounding somewhat surprised. “Just a little bit bitter.”

Dex said, “Okay, let’s take turns filling our water bladders. Those of us who aren’t filling our bladders can eat and relax. After we’ve rested, we’ll try to fly farther yet today.”

Fagan quietly said, “I wish Syrdian was here. Maybe hie could catch us some fish in this stream.”

Just as quietly, Dex replied, “I’m afraid the muddy water has probably killed the fish.” Wistfully, hie said, “I hope the fish are healthy where we’re going…”

***

Warren lay in bed working on the mind-numbingly boring job of selecting the location of his axons in his visual field. They had started by building a vertical line up from the axon he had chosen as the center of his field of view. He would use the trackball to search for the axon that gave him a spark of light exactly on top of the line the computer could generate for him based on the axons he had already identified.

Once he had developed a good central vertical line, he had started just to the right of center and built another vertical line right next to that one. Eventually they had established a small area in the center of his visual field where the axons were clearly and correctly located.