Saturn Rukh (40 page)

“It must be like being married for decades and having your spouse die,” said Dan somberly. “I’ve heard it’s like losing half your personality. This is bound to be worse. Eagle has lost half its brain.”

“At least you can survive without your spouse,” remarked Sandra somberly. “Eagle is doomed. Sooner or later its upper eye is going to have to go to sleep.”

By the time Petra had brought Petru close to Galru, Petro was awake. Galru was surrounded by other members of the flock, so their help wasn’t needed, but they decided to stay in formation with the stricken rukh and its helpers. Since Petra could see better from their position below Galru, Petro let Petra continue flying Petru. There would be no hunt this daylight period.

~ * ~

As the flock moved lazily in a large circle, those in the flock just below Galru lifted up the lifeless neck of Galro and carefully tucked it into its feathered niche at the base of Galru’s keel, closing the lifeless, stiffening pincers about feather quill roots to hold the neck in place. A large quill from someone’s tailfeather was stripped and used to fasten Galro’s head into position by weaving the quill through the white feathers on either side of the keel. With the drag of Galro’s neck gone, Galru flew easier, and there was now time to comfort Galra.

“I tried to thinklink again and again, and he doesn’t answer,” wailed Galra in chordal tones that brought sadness to all in the flock.

“I’m afraid he will never answer,” boomed Conro, the eldest of the flock, the balding keel allowing the rich tones of wisdom and authority to rumble unmuffled into the air. “I have seen many such in my lifetime. When the eye stays half-open, the brain behind the eye is dead.”

“But what am I to do?” cried Galra, the tones of the sad cry now laden with overtones of fear. “I cannot stay awake forever, and without someone to control it, Galru cannot fly.” “In time, the end must come for all of us,” boomed Conro in tones again of wisdom and authority, with additional tones of finality added.

“I’m afraid!” wailed Galra in abject tones of despair.

“We’ll stay with you,” reassured Falro with tones of sympathy and comfort.

“And sing to you,” said Petra, who started up the cheerful “Circling in the Sun Glow” song.

~ * ~

When Dan checked for messages before going to sleep, he found there was a return-receipt net-letter waiting for him. It was the one he had been dreading. It was from a court clerk in Houston, informing him that the court had granted Pamela the divorce. The decree would become final after the mandatory two-week waiting period. There was also a video message from Pamela. When the video started, only Pamela was in view of the camera. This didn’t surprise Dan, for he had noticed in the header that the video had been sent late in the evening Houston time, long after the kids should have been in bed, for they had school tomorrow. Pamela was quite calm, and had a self-satisfied smile on her face.

“I just called to say good-bye,” she started. “And to let you know that in two weeks you will be free to play Buck Rogers for as long as you like. You no longer have to worry about me or the children. We will be well taken care of.” Her smile grew more vindictive. “Especially me. I have found someone who
really
cares about me.” She reached out and drew a handsome young man into view. The man put his arm possessively around Pamela, and with an arrogant smile, stared challengingly at the camera.

“Dan,” said Pamela. “I’d like you to meet Mike Travolta. I believe you know who he is. We are planning on getting married as soon as the divorce is final.”

Dan knew who Travolta was, for he had received many return-receipt net-messages from him over the past many months. Travolta was Pamela’s divorce lawyer. He probably had started to court his client as soon as he had found out how rich she was. It was no wonder that all of Dan’s attempts to negotiate a reconciliation with Pamela had ended in failure. Dan could tell by Travolta’s smirk and the fact that he was still at Pamela’s house well after midnight that he was already living with her. Travolta started to say something, but Dan, feeling betrayed, turned off the console. He tried to take it bravely, but secure in the knowledge that the habitats were soundproof, he purged himself of his loneliness and misery by crying himself to sleep. That night he again dreamed about winning the Solar Lottery, but the minute he accepted the check, everyone vanished and he was left alone, with no one to share his riches with.

~ * ~

Two dark periods later, Galra’s eye blinked shut once again as the sun set and dusk came to the skies. This time the blinking eye stayed tight shut in sleep. The flock could have wakened her, but that would have only prolonged the inevitable. As the giant body of Galru, no longer under conscious control, slowly slipped into a downward spiral, the voices of the flock rose into the “Death Dive” song as they escorted Galru along the first stages of the long dive down into the darkening depths.

~ * ~

The first indication the humans had of Eagle’s demise was the downward tilting of Peregrine at the start of the hunting dive the next morning. During the hunting dive, Sandra and Dan used the biviewer on the control deck to take a careful inventory of the flock as Peregrine shifted positions within the hunting cone. They looked carefully for the telltale white-feathered neck of the elder rukh, but Eagle was no longer among them. The elder rukh had obviously died sometime during the night.

When night came again five hours later, Sandra was already outside on the airlock door, waiting to start the daily language lessons with Uppereye. She had a long list of questions to ask, and hoped that the rukhs didn’t have a cultural taboo against talking about the subject of death.

“Eagle is not with flock,” started Sandra the minute Uppereye arrived. “Is Eagle okay?”

“Eagle not okay,” replied Uppereye. “We sing song to Eagle. Song of leaving forever and diving forever and sleeping forever. Eagle not return, not climb, not wake, ever.”

“Why did Eagle die?” asked Sandra.

“Eagle old,” explained Uppereye. “Eagle very old. Only Condor older. When rukh get very old, upper eye or lower eye stops working. Body still working. Other eye still working. Eye soon gets tired and sleeps. Body dies, air gets too hot. Rukh dies. All old rukhs die someday.”

Sandra knew that the rukhs were at the top of their food chain and had no natural enemies. Now was her chance to ask some oblique questions about their physiology and their society.

“How old was Eagle?” she asked. Uppereye paused as it tried to remember.

“Uppereye not certain. Eagle old when Peregrine was child on wing of parent. Eagle about sixty plus twenty dimmings of Sun.”

“Eighty dimmings?” queried Dan over the radio link from the control deck where he was on watch duty. “Eighty Saturnian years? These rukhs live over two thousand Earth years!”

“Not really surprising considering their size, and the thirteen years it takes between conception and birth,” replied Sandra over the radio link. She then returned to speaking to Uppereye through her backpack speaker.

“Do all rukhs die when old like Eagle?” asked Sandra.

“Nearly all rukhs die like Eagle,” replied Uppereye. “Some rukhs die other ways. Sometimes body hit by lightning or meteor and stops working. Rukh falls and dies.”

Sandra knew that the various flocks stayed well separated from each other so they didn’t intrude on each other’s feeding territories, but she wanted to find out if they ever fought over territory. “Do rukhs ever die other ways? Does a rukh ever make another rukh die?”

Uppereye’s neck bobbed in surprise. “Words of Sandra not understood by Uppereye. Rukh cannot make other rukh die. Rukh too big for other rukh to eat.” Uppereye paused for a brief moment as she thought a thought that she had never thought before. “Big rukh could eat baby rukh ... but
no
rukh
never
do that!”

“So, rukhs never die by getting eaten,” confirmed Sandra. “All rukhs die from either an accident or old age.”

There was a very long pause before Uppereye replied. “The elders say that sometimes rukhs get eaten. A whole flock of rukhs get eaten at the same time by ... Uppereye have no human word for creature. Our thought for creature is large, many mouths, rising, everywhere, fear, despair, capturing, swallowing, everything.”

“How large?” asked Sandra.

“Very large. From horizon to horizon to horizon,” replied Uppereye, looking far to the north, south, east, and west with its eye as its neck sacs talked. “Rising up everywhere at the same time, capturing everything, swallowing everything. No escape.”

Sandra reserved judgment. “How many mouths?”

“Very many mouths” came Uppereye’s quick response. “Sixty times sixty. Maybe more.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” said Dan. “A creature with thirty-six hundred mouths? It makes biological sense for a creature to have a lot of feet—millipedes for example—but a lot of mouths?”

“At least you’ve given me a good name for Uppereye’s mythological creature, Dan,” said Sandra over the radio link. “Millipede means ‘thousand footed,’ so we’ll just use the Latin for ‘thousand mouthed,’
Millistoma mythicus.”
She switched to the backpack speaker. “We will name it the ‘millistoma,’ “ she said to Uppereye. “Have you ever seen a millistoma?” “No,” said Uppereye.

“Has an elder of the flock seen a millistoma?”

“No,” replied Uppereye. “Elders learn about millistoma from elders before them. Millistoma comes once every dimming, when Sun is dimmest. The time when Sun is dimmest comes soon, so millistoma comes soon. Millistoma lives near equator. Flock is flying north to stay far away from millistoma.”

Sandra decided to leave it at that. It was obvious that the
Millistoma mythicus
was nothing more than an ancient mythological creature invented by the rukh culture. It was probably invented to explain the occasional disappearance of a flock of rukhs to a violent storm. Although the humans had yet to see a tornado on Saturn, Sandra didn’t doubt that they could be generated. Any tornado on Saturn would be bound to be a big one—big enough to tear a flock of flimsy balloon-bodied rukhs to shreds.

It was now time for Uppereye to ask questions. “Do humans die?”

“Yes,” said Sandra. “Most humans die old. For same reason rukhs die old. Part of body stops working. Sometimes brain behind eyes stops working. Sometimes part of body stops working.” She used the portable console to display an image of the inside of the human body and showed Uppereye some of the major parts that could fail. “Sometimes humans die young. A thing hurts the body and it stops working before it gets old. Seichi was hurt by things from the reactor and died young.”

“Things can make you die?” asked Uppereye. She lifted the end of her “shoestring” necktie and looked at it quizzically.

“A human can make a weapon out of anything,” muttered Dan over the radio link. “Even a shoestring necktie. Makes a good garrote.”

‘“Things used the wrong way can make you die,” said Sandra to Uppereye. She suddenly had horrible visions of future flocks of rukhs engaging in warfare using sac-rupturing rapiers made from sharpened radio antennas, garrotes and slings made from macropolyhextube line, and high-altitude-dropped flechettes made from anything small, sharp, and dense. She would have to make sure that the things the rukhs got from the humans in exchange for their polar helium were carefully screened for the weapons potential—although she had to admit Dan was right. Given enough ingenuity, anything could be turned into a lethal weapon. Sandra was afraid that Uppereye would ask her whether humans killed other humans, but fortunately the line of questioning went off on another tack.

“What number of dimmings when old human die?”

“Humans get old and die at about sixty plus twenty Earth years—not quite three dimmings,” replied Sandra.

“That makes Uppereye sad,” came the reply. “Uppereye like Sandra. Uppereye want to be friend of Sandra for whole life, but Sandra will soon get old and die.”

Sandra thought for a long while before replying. Although the humans were working and hoping that they would survive their present predicament, the chances of their dying for one reason or another before the rescue ship got there were realistically quite high. She finally decided that it was important that Peregrine be prepared for their death if it finally came.

“Sandra may die before she gets old,” she replied. “Sandra may die soon. All humans on
Sexdent
may die soon.” She used the portable console to generate a cartoon picture of Peregrine’s body with the reactor hanging below it on the end of the Hoytether. “This is reactor,” she said, pointing at the glowing image on the screen. “Reactor not okay. If reactor stops, then humans not be able to go home. Humans must stay on Saturn. Humans soon eat all human food. Humans cannot eat rukh food. Humans die. To not die, humans must go home.” “Uppereye not understand word. What does word ‘home’ mean?”

“ ‘Home’ is the place where a person lives,” said Sandra. As she said it, she suddenly realized that what was obvious to a human was completely unknown to a rukh. The flock had no “place” to call “home.” They wandered from thermal to thermal, drifting along with the trade winds, moving slowly with the seasons back and forth over the equator. She then realized that the rukhs did have a home—it wasn’t a mere “house,” however, it was something bigger than that—a whole planet. Sandra looked upward at the sky. The five-hour night was nearly over. During their session together, Uppereye had flown Peregrine steadily upward, gaining altitude for the next day’s hunt. They were now well above the water clouds and the ammonia clouds above were sparse. In the east, there was a brightening of the sky, heralding the imminent arrival of the Sun. “My home is out in that direction,” she replied, pointing to the east. “Although it is hidden by the light from the Sun. My home is Earth. You call it ‘Parent,’ the larger globe of ‘Parent-and-Child.’ You have a home too. It is Air.” She activated the portable console again and brought up the diagram of the solar system. After showing Uppereye where on Earth she had her house, Sandra showed her pictures of her relatives—Sandra’s equivalent of Peregrine’s flock.