Silent Dances (7 page)

been slapped. She recal ed Scott's

delight and awe as he touched the gift of another being. After seeing him on

the holo-vid and calmly discussing his work, she felt as if she'd come to

know him. "No!" she signed. "He was killed by animals on Trinity?"

Rob shook his head. "I feel like I've told you this backward. He was killed,

accidentally, by the Grus."

She was completely bewildered now.

"The Grus sign, but they use their voices, too." Tesa nodded numbly.

"However," Rob continued, "their voices are so loud, the vibrations so

powerful, it can be fatal to humans. We had to send special filming

equipment that wouldn't be affected by it. The films are all soundless. Meg

and Scott had to begin wearing
industrial sound nullifiers
when they

arrived."

Rob paused, glancing at the holo where Scott still walked, vibrant and alive.

"Over the years, they got careless. They wouldn't wear the nullifiers in the

evening when it was usually
safe
. The night before the attack, Scott had

dismantled them to recharge the batteries, something they did once a month.

The next morning they were watching the sunrise without the devices. The

Grus called out a warning. Meg was deafened and knocked unconscious,

but Scott had a weak blood vessel in his brain. It burst, killing him."

"How terrible!" Tesa signed.

Rob sighed visibly. "Water Dancer was also killed, as was his mate, and

their egg with its unborn male chick. This brought new politics into play. With

no heir, Taller is now in real danger of being deposed." Rob paused to sip

his cooling coffee. "From the very beginning," he told her, "Taller has

instinnctively grasped that our presence has changed the lives of his people

in ways he can't yet comprehend. Many of them would prefer to either ignore

the humans or drive them from Trinity."

"Either scenario," Tesa signed, "would be perfect for the Terran colonialists or the privateers marketing those skins."

30

"Exactly. Right now things are bleak." Rob smiled ruefully. "But there's one ray of hope."

Tesa looked at him curiously.

"Taller'
s mate,
Weaver, laid an egg after Meg left. That in itself wasn't any big deal, she lays one every year. However, for the last ten years they've

been infertile."

Rob fixed Tesa with a look. "Three days before your tapping, the crew called

Meg at Shassiszss where she was hospitalized.
This
egg is fertile. Taller

says it's a male."

Is this where I come in?
Tesa wondered.

"Before the accident, Scott was going to be àdopted' by Water Dancer and

help rear Dancer's chick. This was Taller's idea, and it's very radical, since

chicks are usually raised in
st
ri
ct isolation
until they can fly."

So, that's why they need an interrelator,
Tesa thought. "Taller wanted to wed Scott to the Grus through family ties, but Scott would have had to wear his

nullifiers twenty-four hours a day. He wouldn't have been able to take them

off even for an hour. Meg would have had to shuttle recharged units to him,

but then Scott died, and Meg had to leave."

"And that's when you learned about the surgery?"

Rob nodded. "While recuperating, Meg looked for someone to take Scott's

place. She had decided, impulsively, to ask Gallaudet to recommend some

deaf candidates, when the crew told her about the egg. That lent real

urgency to the search. Then Meg found out about you, she called Kkintha,

and here we are."

"Was it your idea to throw me a curve about that surgery?"

"
It wasn
't a curve," he responded defensively. "I couldn't ask you to do this while withholding
information
that could
mean a lot to
you, personally. Meg had her work done on
Shassiszss
, but yours would be much more

extensive. You'd have to go to Earth and spend more than a year in surgery

and therapy. You couldn't do that
and
raise this chick, so I told you about the surgery first. My first obligation
is to
you.
True, part of me was relieved when you didn'
t want it
. If you have doubts ..."

"I can have the surgery
anytime,"
she signed firmly. "I need to go to Trinity now."

Rob looked at Tesa skeptically. "You're hedging. You think you've found
an

excuse
your parents will accept."

"Is that
so terrible?" Tesa asked, annoyed. "This
will lessen

31

their disappointment. It's not that I'll
never
have it done ...

just not now
." So why did she feel like she was lying?

"Well, when Meg comes she'll interview you. The final

decision
is hers. If she agrees, you'll leave immediately. You've got to get to

Trinity before that egg hatches."

Tesa looked over at Trinity,
imagining
herself there.

The scene shifted to a massive forest full of monstrous multicolored trees,

larger than Earth's redwoods. Tesa thought this was how the Earth might

have looked when her people kept their own ways. But that was hundreds,

even thousands of years ago, and those old buffalo days were only stories

now.

She recalled her last night on Earth, hugging Grandmother and crying,

fearful she'd never see her again. The old woman had brushed Tesa's tears

away and told her, "Somewhere there's a world where the way of life we

loved, the old ways,
a
re
not just
interesting relics of the past. You could find that world,
takoja,
but you can't find it sitting here."

Suddenly a huge, dark form swooped across the holo's scene,
skimming

the treetops, snapping Tesa from her memories. The image grabbed her by

the heart, startling her so much

that she
stood up and bumped into the table with the doughnuts. Tesa

stepped closer to the hologram. The creature alighted on
a monstrous
nest

built on a limb of that gigantic tree. "What is that?" Tesa asked Rob, pointing.

"We call them the Aquila," he signed.

The bird was clutching prey in its talons, tearing it apart
with its
hooked

beak, feeding it to a chick huddled in the nest. "
It's intelligent
," she signed.

Rob frowned. "No, the data hasn't indicated that."

Tesa couldn't explain why, but she
knew
she was seeing an
intelligent

being.

The Aquila had a bronze body with a golden head and tail.
Sunlight made

the bird seem as though it were made from
molten metal
. The creature

raised its head and its fierce red eyes stared straight through the young

woman. She gasped and stumbled back onto the couch.

Rob was alarmed
. "What'
s wrong?
Tesa, you okay?"

"
It's the Thunderbird
,"
she signed
,
pointing to the
Aquila. S
he was
shaking all over
,
not knowing
why, the feeling of dread she'd waked with now smothering her. The baleful

eyes of the Aquila continued to bore into her.

32

"That," Rob informed her, "is one of the most formidable predators on Trinity.

They kill and eat Grus."

Enemy to the Grus?
Tesa thought numbly, the terrible sense of deja vu

almost suffocating her.

He nodded. "Those big babies pose a king-size problem for the First Contact

team." She looked at him dazedly as Rob continued, smiling. "But, you've

got experience with raptors. You might be able to find a deterrent to keep

them away from the camp. You might even be able to tame one like the old

falconers did."

Tesa smiled wanly. The Wakinyan was not a creature to be
tamed.
She

turned to meet the gaze of the red-eyed Aquila, its wings stretched against

the wind, its beak open in a scream. Tesa still could not hear the thunder.

33

"Tesa! Pick your feet
up!"

Giving her Simiu instructor a sour look, Tesa pulled one stilt laboriously out

of the marsh muck, set it down, then struggled to lift the other. She didn't care

if the gravity was less than Earth's, this was hard work. Her calves and

thighs ached and she was covered with a gray goo from numerous falls.

Awkwardly, she trudged behind the baboonlike alien she had long ago

nicknamed, in sign, "Dr. Noisy." They slogged through a mock-up of a

freshwater marsh, balanced on four-foot-high, lightweight, black,

mechanized stilts, while the Simiu's rapid-fire commands flashed from her

voder.

The stilts had been invented by a Simiu and, Dr. Noisy had

proudly informed her, were "intelligent."

The word is "possessed,"
Tesa had thought, the first time she'd flexed her foot to give the "walk" command only to have both stilts collapse beneath

her. They folded almost flat for
storage
,
and that seemed to be their

favorite command. The

stilts made her feel like an awkward giantess, but they would allow her to

walk the marsh while she lived with the Grus.

It didn
't help that Meg Tretiak was
sitting on
a dry hummock,

34

her clear blue
eyes closely observing Tesa's progress.

The constant flash of the Simiu
'
s commands
on the voder
screen made

Tesa
question
her decision to take this
assignment.
You can still back
out,
she thought.
A ship leaves for Earth tomorrow.
Gritting
her teeth
, she plopped around grimly.

Tesa not only had to torture her body, but there were hours of lessons
to

master
the Grus' signs. The Ashu language had been difficult enough, but

the Grus
language sometimes
re
quired
a four-foot neck, the ability
to tu
rn
one
's head 360 degrees while
standing
on one leg, and
feathers!

Glancing at Dr. Noisy, she realized that the P.E. teacher was shrieking.

She'd gotten so used to
the flashing
voder she'd stopped paying
a
tt
ention
to it.

"I said, pick your legs
up! Up, UP, UP!
You'll be spending the next year on these things, so get used to them!"

Enough was enough. Meg or no Meg, Tesa turned the voder off and made

sure the
Simiu
saw her do it. She was lucky not to have to
hear
his

maniacal
screaming; she didn't see any reason to aggravate herself further

by
reading
his shouted instructions.

The infuriated teacher leaped up and down, waving to get
her attention
.

His salmon
-colored crest, marked with darker
red mottling
, flared erect, and his violet eyes were blazing.

Talk about earning your
name!
Tesa thought. "Don't you know it's silly to
shout at a
Deaf person?" she signed. Carefully, she turned her back on him.

Now he can scream away.

A ball of mud landed
squa
re
in the
middle of her back, throwing her wildly off balance. Desperately she windmilled her arms and tried to slow her

inevitable fall by weaving back and forth. This activated the "collapse"

command, and Tesa fell flat on her face
in the
shallow water. Pulling herself

out of the mud hand over hand on the mock weeds, she turned to see the

alien hugging himself with mirth while Meg covered her own mouth.

Balancing precariously on the collapsed
stilts,
Tesa moved her toe to

activate the "rise" command. If she'd ever considered giving up, that thought was gone now. She advanced on the Simiu.

She was almost on top of him when he stopped laughing long enough to

catch his breath. Opening his mouth with what must've been a tremendous

shriek, he scooted out from under

35

her threatening advance and began scampering all around the mockup.

Tesa chased him, walking faster and faster. Finally, he doubled back,

dodging in and around her stilted legs to throw her off balance. She lifted

one leg, then the other high out of the
water
, determined to stay upright.

When he finally latched onto her leg, she was forced to spin around like a

caricature of a ballet dancer, arms outstretched for balance. But when she

fell, she had the pleasure of taking the alien with her in a tangle of furred and

bare arms, legs, and mechanical stilts.

When Dr. Noisy pulled himself out of the water, he extended a long arm to

help Tesa up, but by that time she was laughing too hard to move. Finally,

they sat together, trying to catch their breath as they unstrapped their muck-

covered,
intelligent
stilts.
The Simiu sat on his haunches, gray goo and water plastering his mane flat, but wearing that unmistakable Simiu twinkle

of amusement. He pointed to Tesa's voder, and she turned it back on.

"I knew you could master those stilts," the voder read. "After a while the only hard part will be remembering how to use your legs
without
them." That was from Meg, smiling
at the two
mud-puppies from a safe distance. Tesa smiled