Silent Dances (43 page)

denied, but now that decision seemed inevitable. The massacre of Black

Feather's flock, and Peter's death-both obviously the work of humans-had

insured it. Meg ran a hand over the name of her partner burned into the

hardwood slab. Perhaps she had not told Taller because she could not let

herself believe that Scott's death could be so pointless. With a sigh, she let

herself back into the shelter.

It's just like a pair project
,
Tesa re
minded herself, swallowing her
frustration
,
as Sailor dropped a huge, flopping fish at her feet
,
then
stalked out of the cave
.
Except that
the pair hates
each other.
She
dispatched the fish
quickly with
her stone knife, then sliced meaty
strips
from it.

The small group
had been at this for two weeks
,
with little prog
re
ss
.

Thunder
shrieked,
Sailor sulked
, and Tesa worked.
Sailor had willingly
accompanied her here, but soon after
they'
d arrived he'd begun having

second thoughts
. To his people the Aquila were Death, pure and
simple
.

He was, as he constantly reminded
Tesa,
too
young
to be a pare
nt
.
He'd
finally agreed to stay to "protect
" Tesa,
so that the monster would not
kill her
,
but he reminded her frequently of her promise to slay the

creatu
re
when the
"
expe
ri
ment
"
failed.

Tesa endure
d this, since she was convinced that once Thunder started

signing fluently
,
eve
ry
thing would ch
an
ge
.
She kept
211

telling herself this as the long days st
re
tched on,
an
d the cold nights
grew lonely. Since he was being a father
,
Sailor insisted, he would

behave as one
.
He slept on one leg in the cold waters of the lake eve
ry
night
,
leaving Tesa alone with Thunder.

As for the Aquila,
she was
an
ything but cooperative. Her sharp p
re

dator
'
s bill w
as
fo
re
ver open in endless screams. She was either sta
rv
ing or full, there was no middle ground. And in spite of all Tesa
'
s

effo
rt
s, Thunder seemed capable of learning only the most rudimenta

ry
signs. If the voder hadn
'
t shored up Tesa
'
s belief in the Aquila
'
s
intelligence, she would've given up long ago.

When Tesa discovered pink and brown streaks in the cave's wall that

indicated raw iro
n ore, she wonde
re
d if the
re
we
re
enough to block
transmissions
.
Ne
rv
ously tu
rn
ing her voder on, she found she could
not tr
an
smit anything from inside the cave.

If 1 can'
t transmit
,
she knew
,
they can
'
t read me.
It was safe to use the voder in the cave.

She wanted Sailor to learn
Thunder
'
s language, but he balked
. "

Spoken language has no value
,"
he informed her matter
-
of-factly.

"Besides
,
if your device can understand
it"he pointed to Thunder
-"
why
should
I
bother?"

"
Not it
,
her!"
Tesa insisted. "This device makes mistakes. Only
people can
real y understand languages.
I can
'
t hear her, so I'm depending on you
.

You've
got to t
ry
."

He had simply turn
ed away and preened.

That was a week ago,
Tesa thought,
and what have I accomplished since

then? Maybe
my parents are right
. If i could
hear
,
I could learn the
language, maybe even
speak
it ...

She showed a strip of raw fish to the Aquila chick who was glaring from her

makeshift nest at the back of the cave. "This is fish,"
Tesa signed. "Fish is
food
.
Are you hung
ry?"
Total language immersion
,
she thought with w
ry
amusement. Best way to lea
rn
a l
an
guage was to have to depend

completely on it. Too bad her student didn
'
t app
re
ciate that. "Tell me
what this is," Tesa bargained
, "
and you c
an
have it
."
If you don't,
you
royal pain in the ass,
she thought,
you can damn well starve.

The chick lunged for the fish,
but Tesa pulled it out of
re
ach.
I won
'
t get
away
with this much longer
.
Soon she'll be chasing me for it
.
I'll have to
bring in a
perch for
her soon
,
she thought absently.

212

"Thunder, what is this food? Is it fish? You tell me." Tesa glanced at her

voder.

"I'm starving!" the chick was screaming. "The hunted are killing me! Mother!

Mother, save me!"

Tesa's attempts to get Thunder to use name-signs was another effort in

futility. To the Aquila you were either "the people, "themselves-or "the hunted"--everyone else.
Hell of a philosophy,
Tesa decided.

"You
a
re food!"
the Aquila chick insisted, staring at Tesa. "You and that other!
MY
food! Mine and my mother's! Mine and my father's! The hunted are

food! The hunted are ..."

How can she continue to punctuate everything with exclamation points?

Tesa wondered tiredly.
Do these people ever use declarative sentences?

Sailor said the cave walls muffled most of the chick's sounds. The last thing

they needed was a curious Aquila coming to investigate Thunder's cries for

help.

"Your father is dead," she signed patiently. "I'm sorry about that. I don't know about your mother. I'm your mother now, me, Good Eyes. Sailor is your

father. We feed you. We keep you warm. Here's some fish.
"
It was red with its own blood, something the Aquila could not resist.

"I'M STARVING! I'M STARVING! I'M
STARVING-The monotonous litany

trailed across the screen.

Now we're making progress,
Tesa thought with an almost sadistic pleasure.

"Tell me what this is." She waved the fish. "Fish," signed the chick with a short, begrudging motion. "What do we do with fish?" Tesa asked.

The chick pulled her short neck deep into her hunched shoulders. "Eat," she

signed to the walls.

"Good," Tesa signed with false cheerfulness. She had signed with primates

that had showed more finesse than this irritable baby. She held out the

chick's reward.

Thunder's head flashed forward, the black-tipped beak burying itself in

Tesa's palm. In spite of the pain, Tesa grabbed the chick's head,

immobilizing it before Thunder could pull out a chunk of her flesh. The

piercing sensation shot up Tesa's arm, but she bit her lip, not wanting to cry

out and alert Sailor. She removed the sharp bill tip and stepped back,

releasing the chick's head at the same time.

Contemptuously the young Aquila signed, "You. Food. You. Food. You."

Yielding to her anger, Tesa threw the entire fish into the

213

SILENT DANCES 213 nest, and it slapped the chick hard. Thunder pounced

on it, tearing it apart, swallowing it scales, fins, bones, and all.

Choking back angry tears, the human wrapped her bloody hand. Wanting to

distance herself from the chick before she yielded to the temptation to wring

the fledgling's neck, Tesa ignored her throbbing palm and picked up the

leister she'd
made
. The three-pronged spear of the Northwest Coast Indians

enabled Tesa to fish almost as efficiently as Sailor did. She'd catch

something for dinner, poaching it over one of the steam vents with grain

she'd stolen from the gleaners' storehouses.

The rabbit-sized mammals, which looked like overgrown voles, were

compulsive gatherers. When she raided their burrows, Tesa always left

something else so that it seemed more like trading. But even though she

could make snares and traps, she couldn't bring herself to regard the

gleaners as prey. Suppose they could communicate? Suppose they were

intelligent? She tried not to think about the water-dwellers they were

consuming. If she stayed on Trinity, she'd have to become a vegetarian just

to be safe. What could she say to Dr. Rob if a creature that had once been

one of her food staples eventually received CLS status?

Tesa looked back at the cave. You're either the people, or the hunted.
Yeah.

Just
like a pair project.

Thorn wasn't sure what else could go wrong on a project that had already hit

big-time disaster, but he knew he was watching a problem in the making

now. He stood by with Meg as Bruce and Lauren unloaded the shuttle, while

Dr. Li kept inventory.

This is a big mistake, Thorn
thought, but kept it to himself. He and Bruce

were locked into a quick-draw situation, waiting for each other to blink. Bruce

did not believe Thorn's story of how he'd discovered Peter and Tesa. Thorn

believed Bruce's attitude was just a smoke screen for the meteorologist's

own involvement.

Lauren had been grief-stricken after Peter's and Tesa's deaths, almost

incoherent. Now she seemed numb, unnaturally calm. Thorn worried about

post-traumatic stress syndrome, but then, weren't they all suffering from the

same pain? Even Dr. Li's cool, detached manner had crumbled in the wake

of the double tragedy. Meg had told him that the doctor couldn't sleep

214

at night
, an
d that Bruce was keeping tabs on her use of selfp
re
sc
ri
bed mood ch
an
gers.

"This is a big mistake,"
Meg surreptitiously signed to Thorn
.
Her choice
of signs jar
re
d him.

"
What do you me
an
?" he asked.

"
All of us living down here, no one m
an
ning the
Crane.
It's a mistake,
I c
an
feel it." Her jaw was set in
an
expression of disapproval he knew too
well.

"The
Crane
is fully automated,
it
doesn't
...
"I know
that!"
her signs we
re
sharp with
an
noyance. "I'm

worri
ed about us
.
We've all ch
an
ged
.
It started with Sco
tt
's death
, an
d it's just kept going wrong since then."

"Have you talked this over with Bruce?
Maybe..."

The older woman
's eyes flashed in
an
ger
. "
Talk with Bruce?
He
never
asked
me how I felt about this, he just
told
me he was doing it. He even bullied Szu-
yi into going along with him. He says you and I a
re
n't safe

he
re.
And no mo
re
of your lone explorato
ry
trips, in case you haven
'
t
heard
.
Two of us have to be together at all times." Meg let out
an

exasperated b
re
ath.

Is that so?
thought Thorn.

"And I'
ll tell you something else," Meg signed
. "
Taller's ang
ry.
Bruce
didn
'
t ask
him
,
either
.
Then
,
when I said something to Bruce about
that
,
he just sno
rt
ed at me! I apologized to Taller
,
but that doesn
'
t
solve anything."

Thorn felt a headache coming on,
one he suspected would be around for

quite some time. If Bruce had no respect for Taller
'
s feelings
, Thorn

could be sure the meteorologist would have even less for his
.
But the

biologist
had
to have time to go out alone.
Peter
'
s program could trace
the transmissions em
an
ating from the p
ri
vateers
'
ship, but Thorn
needed harder evidence, he needed to
find
them,
see
their ship.

The last time Thorn had followed the pri
vateers' trail, the coordinates of

their transmissions had ... led him to the fo
re
st that held Tesa
'
s
massive tomb
.
A ship had been the
re
, transmitting du
ri
ng the storm
,
but most of the tr
an
smission was garbled because of weather interfe

re
nce
. Thorn
didn't know why they
'
d been there, and the ship had left
long befo
re
he'd arrived
.
But he had found the limb, and Tesa
'
s quilt.