Silent Dances (39 page)

she saw her face in the water
.
Thinking of her dreams
,
she felt uneasy.

190

The dreams had not cared where she slept.
They were always just behind

her eyelids
,
waiting for her consciousness to slip away. The pa
rt
of her
as old as mountains
-
her instinct, her
nagi
-
was
try
ing to guide her
.

Tesa breathed deep
,
clutching her pipe and closing her eyes, and bid

the dreams come.

By the time Thorn approached Black Feather
'
s nearest roosting site
,

it was nearly dusk. He came in high over the staging area and felt a stab

of disappointment when he didn
'
t see any b
ri
ght flashes of white. He
circled and pulled up his binoculars, t
ry
ing to identify a huge flock of

small
,
greenish avians.

He recognized the carrion birds, a species not often seen in Taller's territory.

In fact, he'd never seen more than twenty of them, but the marsh was

crawling with them, so many they
appea
re
d like a swarm of i
ri
descent
beetles.

Finally they noticed him and, startled, lifted off the ground
in a great green

cloud
.
He passed through them cautiously as
they examined him. They

circled in mass, then prepared to
settle down again.

But not before Thorn saw what their bodies had been hiding. Thorn grabbed

hold of a handgrip in stunned horror. The picked remains of Black Feather's

flock lay in clusters of bones and drying sinew. Even as the carrion birds

settled down, Thorn recognized what made this very wrong picture even

more
wrong.

There were
no feathers.
If the flock had been felled by a sudden disease, or

a natural toxin, or even if they'd been wiped out by Aquila, there would be

feathers, like snow, littering the grass, blowing around. But there were so few

you could count them. The entire flock had been killed and skinned, quickly

and professionally, then left for the elements
to clean up.

Thorn felt naked sitt
ing out in the open
,
an easy target for some smug

killer who could
,
with a modern weapon, stop the elect
ri
cal cur
re
nt
that kept his body running-giving the car
ri
on birds
yet
another meal.

As he filmed the gri
sly scene
,
his biologist
'
s mind wondered a little
hyste
ri
cally if there would be a population surge of carrion birds

because of the sudden wealth of food. Thorn descended and skimmed

the ground
,
his mind careening
wildly.

He aimed for a tight g
ro
up of stunted trees
,
w
an
ting to get
191

under cover
.
He hovered the sled
,
yanked off his nullifiers, and

listened for a long time
.
The only sounds were the softthroated cooing

of the carrion birds
an
d the endless whispe
ri
ng of the wind
.
He slid
cautiously off the sled.

This was a good van
tage point
.
He couldn
'
t be seen from above or

from the site of the a
tt
ack.

As he walked
toward a natural opening in the trees, something t
ri
pped

him. Thorn caught himself, spinning to make sure nothing could take

advantage of his accidental misstep. He glanced at the thing that had

snagged his foot, seeing something half-submerged in the brackish

water
, covered by
a blanket of tall grass. He le
an
ed toward it, and
something p
ri
mal in his mind screamed at him to run, get the hell out

of there.

He pulled the grass away and stepped back in shock as he
looked into

Peter Woedrango's face. The rich, dark skin was gray now, the black,

laughing eyes, sightless. After a moment
of stunned anguish
, Thorn ri

pped more grass away, wanting
to know what or who had killed his friend,

his partner.

It had been a modern weapon
,
he was sure
,
even though
whoever had done it had tried to make it look like an animal attack. The surprise on

Peter's face was typical of the short blast that shut a body off without bursting

a capillary. The weapon could've been Terran, but that didn't matter to him at

this moment
.
What mattered was that Peter was dead
,
and Black

Feather
'
s flock was dead.

He was cold and sick inside, looking at his friend, wanting to gather him up

and take him back. But he needed time to think. He'd find the
Demoiselle

and pack Peter into its emergency vacuum suit, then chill the body to stop

the decomposition. Then he'd come back tomorrow, maybe with Bruce, to

bring Peter and the
Demoiselle
back to camp. And he
would watch Bruce
'

s face when he saw the
body.
Peter had
been his friend, too, especially

after Scott died. What kind
of a man could let his best f
ri
ends be killed

just to make money?

Thorn
stared long and hard at Peter
's body,
as though remembe
ri
ng

how it looked would motivate him to go on. He stared at the gaping

wound whe
re
Peter
'
s heart
an
d lungs had been
,
where his soft org
an
s had been to
rn
out
an
d consumed in a way only the great raptors

could do.
Like Prometheus,
he thought bitterly,
only yours won
'
t
regenerate
,
old buddy.
But

192

Thorn wasn'
t fooled
.
He knew the Aquila had come only after Peter was

al
re
ady dead
.
There was no spilled blood anywhere, only some that

had seeped out of his torn organs and mixed with the marsh water in

the cavity left behind.

The Aquila weren'
t Death he
re
. That title belonged to another species.

193

Sailor stood hock-deep in the river's swirling water, feeling, for the first time

in his life, lonely. He dipped his head for a drink, then tilted it up, feeling the

cool water slide down his long throat. Well, he wouldn't be lonely, he

thought, once he found Black Feather-or at least, not as much.

What is it about this river,
he wondered,
that only the wrong people show

up?
The last time he'd been here, Relaxed had been hiding on the far shore,

watching Good Eyes. He was always spying on her, but whenever Sailor

told her, she merely waved at Relaxed, then ignored him. To Sailor, Relaxed

seemed like a predator, always watching, waiting for you to be careless.

Two days ago, when Relaxed had been at the river, Sailor had said nothing.

If he'd told Good Eyes, she might have wanted to speak to the human male.

Sailor was already feeling the pull to leave, and the time he'd had left to

spend with Good Eyes was short enough. He'd had no desire to share it.

So, he'd suggested they go eat black nuts. Thinking of what had happened

then made his feathers stand up, so he shook himself, wagging his tail so

that everything fell into place. He

194

was acting like a baby, letting these memories clutter up his mind and make

him lonely and depressed. He was on his flyaway now, learning things that

would make a difference to him, to his people. But where was Black

Feather?

Lifting out of the water, he flew to the opposite shore, near Relaxed's hiding

place, landing near some Travellers who were squatting on the dark soil of

the bank, preening. Maybe they had seen Black Feather. Sailor edged

nearer, hoping to speak to them.

Finally, two of the avians, elders by the look of them, stopped grooming and

addressed the young Grus. They knew who he was, they said. They told

him, in their truncated language of bill-clapping, that they had wanted

to speak to him
the other day, but were afraid to while those not-of-the-

World were nearby.

Respectfully, Sailor explained that they did not have to fear his companion,

since she had earned her place on the World before he had fledged.

They knew
that
, they
said
. They'
d been refer
ri
ng
to the two who had been on this shore.

Two?
Sailor turned one eye on the Travellers, using the other
to examine

the ground and the imp
re
ssions of Relaxed
's footwear. Each of the

humans wore a different pattern, and they were easy to recognize. Finally,

Sailor saw a fragment of pattern from the dark-skinned human called the

Collector, because of his interest in salvaging feathers.

Why had he been here?
Sailor wondered.

The two had hidden here, the Travellers told him, talking to each other in

their strange spoken language. They must have been angry, since their

voices rang with feeling. Even when they parted there was much unresolved

between them. You

could
see it in their
bodies and their faces.

Sailor felt uneasy, but he needed to find Black Feather. Behind him, in the

reeds, he was surprised by a flash of blue.

The Blue Cloud people were busily building, weaving their fragile, baglike

nests to sturdy reed stalks. But their people had agreed long ago not to nest

where the White Wind people

lived. Too many things seemed suddenly out of place.

The Travellers clatte
re
d, pulling Sailor
'
s attention back.
They'
d
wanted to speak to him the other day, they told him.

They had wanted
to give their condolences to him and his
father.

195

SILENT DANCES 195

Sailor blinked in confusion but did not reply.

Black Feather had been a good companion, they said, clack ing and

snapping. A companion and a protector, who had watched over the nests of

the Travellers as though they had been his own. Never again, they said,

would they travel the
pathways of his migration because of the evil that

had been
done to him and his people by those not-of-the-World. Then
the

stout
-
bodied avians
re
tu
rn
ed to their preening.

Sailor felt cold all over, as though his feathers had been saturated. He'd

been foolish to think he could interpret the Travellers' chattering talk. He'd

thought they'd said
condolences--but
they must've said
congratulations.

Hesitantly Sailor asked if the Travellers knew where Black Feather was, and

why he had not yet returned to the river? Several of the squat-legged birds

glanced at one another, then exploded into flight. The elder pair waddled

into the river. With his longer legs, Sailor easily kept up with them.

Frightened now, he implored them for information.

Finally, the old male stared at the youngster with one eye. He would never

have said anything, he told Sailor, if he hadn't thought that the massacre was

common knowledge. It wasn't the Travellers' duty to bring
messages
of

sorrow
and pain.

What had happened? Sailor asked. He didn't understand. As Sailor stood

rooted in shock, the elder explained how his group had been accompanying

Black Feather's people on their migration, and were resting with them at a

staging ground not a day's flight from here. Then the
aliens
had appeared,

hovering over the flock in their large, silver ship. The Travellers had been

terrified.

But Black Feather had not been afraid. His father knew them, he'd said.

They meant no harm. And then he'd fallen dead, still reassuring his people.

They had all fallen, right where they stood. Some of the Travellers had been

caught by the invisible force and they, too, fell dead. Anyone who could, had

fled, but not one of the White Wind people had been spared.

That had been days ago, and his people could still barely speak of it among

themselves. The Blue Cloud people had told
them that the aliens came

out of the ship on big, flat flying
things that hovered over the dead. The

aliens then walked
through the marsh
,
cu
tt
ing the skins off the White
Wind people.
They had even made a fire while they worked, and threw one

196

of the dead females on it, then ate her after she was burn
ed up.

Later,
the Blue Cloud people said
,
the aliens we
re
so insane, they even
killed each other
.
The World had changed forever, the Traveller obse
rv