Silent Dances (19 page)

Peter nodded. "Yeah, but your language isn't
hers." Thorn
stopped scraping dishes, then reluctantly nodded. "When did you get so smart in matters of the

heart?"

"I wasn
'
t aware it was matters of that pa
rt
icular organ we
were discussing. Actually, it's just too painful for me to watch you bumble your

way through another star-crossed affair. It's bad for business, friend." Peter

pushed the pile
of plasticware into the basin of thin suds
an
d tu
rn
ed on
the
sonics. "And speaking of business, something's on your mind,

something you couldn't tell me when we were unloading the shuttle."

Thorn turned so that he could keep one eye on the dining
area. Meg had

gone back outside with Dr
. Li to
load pl
an
t samples into the shuttle
.

Bruce, Lauren
,
and Tesa were huddled over a new computer work

station, correlating some kind of programming using Tesa
'
s Mizari

voder
. Thorn
didn't want that pa
rt
icular instrument picking up this
conversation, since none of them knew its range or limitations
.
Finally
,
deciding that the voder and its operator were well occupied, Thorn

continued.

"We had a visitor yesterday," he said. "An Aquila.
Dropped a calling card
,
but didn
'
t fly low enough to excite the
Grus."

"Well," Peter began, "you've got to expect that now
and..."

"Tesa saw it," Thorn interrupted. "Then, when we asked
her, she lied to
us."
The whole
thing with this new "interrelator
"
got under his skin
. If they could
've just maintained the status quo for two more months they

might
'
ve been able
to finish up and get out of here. Who could have

expected Meg
to come back at all, never mind so soon
an
d with

someone else?

"Is that why you're coming on to her,
to gain her trust?" Peter gave him a
cockeyed
,
better
-try-another-
tactic look.

94

"No," Thorn said. "But I'm not happy about her lying to me."

"So, brush up your technique, try to win her over," Peter said, carefully

keeping his expression casual. "She worked with raptors, maybe she was

just captivated by the big eagle. Things'll go better if she trusts you. We can't

afford to have her get in our way, not when things are so close to breaking. I

just hope you do better this time than you did with Lauren."

Thorn looked annoyed. "Do I have to hear about that forever? It didn't cause

you
any hardship to pick up the pieces." Peter gave him a toothy grin and

glanced at Tesa. "Hey, and I wouldn't mind helping you out again, old pal."

Thorn gave him a sour look. "So, what about the Aquila?"

"Bruce is coming," Peter whispered, then smiled warmly at the weatherman.

"Well, Ùncle Bruce,' did you get that program squared away?"

"You can stow that uncle stuff," Bruce said, "only Lauren gets away with that.

Yeah, the program's running. That Mizari voder's one clever piece of

equipment, but its operator is a little closemouthed about showing it off."

Peter and Thorn exchanged a glance. Then, they both looked at Tesa, with

Lauren at the work station. Turning the sonics off, Thorn let the dish water

drain, then activated the quickdri.

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

Bruce said to the other men, guardedly.

"We were just talking about that," Peter said. "I don't know that it's anything to worry about."

"You don't think we should reconsider using sonic perimeters?" Bruce

asked. "I'm not burying another friend on this poor excuse of an Eden. I won't

risk Meg."

"Calm down," Peter said. "One Aquila isn't necessarily the advance guard for an invasion."

"But we're not doing
anything,"
Bruce insisted. "If we can't use the sonic perimeters, then how about an early warning system, or some kind of

investigative work?"

"You know the problem, Bruce," Thorn reminded him, stacking the cleaned,

dry dishes. "If we get caught messing around with `Death,' we're out of here."

"Scott wasn't afraid to violate the taboo," Bruce insisted. "I looked through his paperwork-he'd planted cameras at
scatte
re
d nest sites
, to study their behavior. We could reactivate

95

SILENT DANCES 95 those cameras through the satellites. We might find

out why they're flocking and working cooperatively, when they were only

independent predators before."

"I thought of that," Thorn assured him. "I spent weeks trying to reactivate those things when Meg was gone."

"You never mentioned it before," Bruce said warily.

"I was afraid you'd object. I figured if it worked out, fine, and if it didn't, no one needed to know. Well, it didn't." He could see Lauren signing something

tentatively to Tesa.

"The cameras were trained on active nests," Thorn continued. "There were six of them. Three were destroyed when the trees they were in were felled in

electrical storms. One of them developed a hardware problem and burned

out. Another one won't function because something's built a nest on top of it,

and the last one just plain disappeared. Something may have carried it into a

burrow."

"The one under the nest," Bruce said. "Can't we clean it?"

"They don't exactly have àself-cleaning' cycle. Bruce, that thing isn't three

meters from an active Aquila nest. Scott must've planted it during an inactive

period but now it can't be approached safely. All our other cameras are in

use for active research projects, so we can't remove any of them without

damaging that research. I tried to figure out some way to substitute one, but

Dr. Li would raise too many questions."

Bruce looked disgusted. "If she'd ever done any exploration work, she'd

know not everything can be done by the book."

"She knows more about the research approval system than anyone on

Earth," Peter reminded him. "Without her, this project hasn't got a prayer."

"Maybe," Bruce grumbled.

"Maybe, if you were nicer to her, Bruce ..." Peter trailed off suggestively.

Bruce's venomous look and Peter's cynical grin indicated a joke well worn.

"I'm serious," the meteorologist said. "I'm not burying anybody else--not even Dr. Li. If we can't do approved research on the Aquila, we'll just have to rely

on the oldest Terran technique for coping with nuisance wildlife."

Peter and Thorn looked puzzled.

"Eradication," he said coolly. "How much do you think someone would pay

for one of those damned buzzards' skins?" Thorn and Peter studiously

ignored each other.

96

"Here comes Tesa," Bruce announced, barely moving his lips.

Thorn sighed. Things had been a lot simpler when he was down here alone.

He glanced at Tesa's wrist and saw that her voder appeared to be off. Its

small screen was blank.
"Now
you come to help with the dishes?" he asked, speaking and signing.

Tesa raised an eyebrow and smiled tentatively, handing him two glasses.

"No, you forgot these. I thought you'd forgotten how to
sign
, as well, but now I see you've remembered." Her smile grew warmer.

Thorn felt Peter giving him one of those I-told-you-so looks.

97

As she watched the shuttle take off later that afternoon, Tesa felt as though

she was seeing off summer guests. It was nice to see them come, but nicer

to see them go.

The air was cool, and there was no breeze. Inside the shelter, Thorn was

opening the sound shutters.
He'll make a good husband someday,
she

thought, smiling.

Meg touched her arm and she turned to see the older woman holding the

dreaded stilts. "Taller wants you to see the egg. We can't disappoint him."

Tesa's face fell as she gingerly handled the collapsed contraptions. She'd

forgotten all about them. Sighing, Tesa stepped into footpads that felt alien

and clumsy. Meg had already strapped in and was moving around with such

ease and grace, Tesa felt even more self-conscious. Tentatively, she moved

her foot, signaling the stilts to rise. They came alive, growing into four-foot-

tall leg extenders. Their matte-black color matched her shoes and

StarBridge jumpsuit.

"Take a few minutes to reacquaint yourself with those, Tesa," Meg signed.

"There's a gentle slope to the marsh."
Slope?
Tesa forced herself to be calm.

98

"
I'm ready
," Thorn
signed, st
ri
ding up on his own stilts. His approach
was so sudden
,
Tesa lost her balance and accidentally signaled the

stilts to collapse-however
,
because of the lower gravity
,
the reaction
was slow enough for her to recover without falling
.
T
ri
nity's buoyancy
just might save her.
"You okay?" Thorn asked, concerned.

"Great recovery," Meg signed, barely smiling. "Let's go."
Meg had told the
truth; the beaten pathway that cu
rv
ed down
the side of the bluff was

angled gently. Tesa grew more confident as they descended, Thorn first,

then Tesa, then Meg.
The vast waterway stretched before them
,
its

autumn-hued reeds nodding lazily
,
creating undulating waves of
ri
ch

color.
Then they were swal owed by the wetland and solid ground
tu
rn
ed
into thick mud that sucked at the stilts
'
long-toed feet.
Soon, Tesa's legs ached, and her face was coated by a slick
sheen of sweat
.
Before long
,

the water covered her thighs.

The air was alive with insects from the tiniest gnat-
sized to
some nearly

squirrel-sized. They were repulsed by Terran body
chemicals
,
but that

wouldn
'
t last forever
.
Eventually, the stinging, biting
,
and poisonous
a
rt
hropods would adapt themselves to the taste of bi
tt
er human
,
but,
Tesa hoped
,
not too soon.

Small mammalian,
reptilian
,
and amphibian forms da
rt
ed through the

air, splashed in the water
,
and clung to the tall
re
eds. And there were
avians
--
so many avians--all paddling, diving
,
perching
,
and peeking
at the strange travelers.

Eventually,
they met Grus
.
Being on their eye level was as sta
rt
ling for
Tesa as it was for the avians.
They
stared, eyes round
,
crowns fla
ri
ng
as she waved and forged on.

Just when Tesa was convinced her legs would give out, there was a break

in the reeds.
In the center of a wide circle of clear water sat a large nest

shelter perched high on its platform. A jumble of multicolored woven

reed mats made its steep Aframed walls look thrown-together

haphazardly, but, yet, it seemed homey and familiar
.
Many Native Ame

ri
cans had made
shelters of tule or reed mats--the Nez Perce, the

Thompson Indians, the Yokut, the Umatilla. To someone light-years away

from a summer tipi camp
,
this looked like home.

Tesa realized suddenly that the Grus who had been escorting
them had

now melted back into the reeds.

Meg drew near. "Thorn
and I will wait here for you." The young Indian felt
a stab of panic
. "
You're not coming? How'll I know what to say
?

Suppose I do something wrong?

99

"I thought StarB
ri
dge students were trained in diplomacy," Meg

signed
,
her eyes sparkling.

"I never took Nest Entrance 101."

"We didn'
t want to make a big deal about it, Tesa," Thorn signed
, "
but
Scott never got inside the shelter."

Tesa suddenly realized she would be the first human to set foot inside a

Grus dwelling, the shelter that was built solely for the reari
ng of a child
,
the
most impo
rt
ant thing in the avians' lives. "I understand
,"
she signed
with small motions.

"Just act naturally,"
Meg signed
,
then adjusted Tesa's collar and

smoothed her hair
.
She smiled sheepishly
. "
So, I'm nervous, too."

The stri
king white form of a mature Grus came out of the structure to

stand in the water, eyeing the humans
.
Taller,
Tesa thought.
Then
another stepped through the shelter
'
s entrance and suddenly she

wasn
'
t sure. The second one came down to perch one-legged where

the water lapped at the base of the platform
.
Tesa decided that had to

be Weaver.