Heritage of Flight (10 page)

"We can't!” Beneatha, the xenobotanist, argued. “For one thing, how do you expect us to pack up the hydro tank into those hills?"

Rafe sighed, as he usually did whenever Beneatha opened her mouth, wishing, as always, that Beneatha were less hostile toward the military members of the settlement. He'd have liked to study the Cynthian diet, for example, and he had asked for Beneatha's help. But the one time he had approached her, she had barely been civil. Even to him, whom Pauli had accused of being three-quarters civilian himself. Perhaps if he had not been—if Pauli's preoccupations with flying, with the traditions of the service, had meant half as much to him as she did herself ... Rafe shook his head. There was no time now to waste in regrets.

He glanced over at the woman who was the source of most of such regrets for him. She had hoped, he knew, to command a ship like the
Amherst
herself. Once they had made plans together for such a ship. That and service in exploration might have meant a life together of discovering and surveying planets such as this one. But now, with the Secessionists grabbing and fortifying undefended planets, Pauli could only hope for advanced pilot training which would qualify her for the type of combat duty that was more suicide than combat.

Oddly enough, she resented being deprived of that. But at least she was alive. Rafe was glad of that. There had to be something wrong with a system that condemned its bravest, brightest young people to early deaths, something even more wrong when those people themselves acceded to their death sentences—and you didn't have to be three-quarters civilian to think that.

Rafe became aware that he had been silent too long. People were staring at him. So, for that matter, were the Cynthians. One of the smaller, more garish creatures mantled its wings, then settled back as Uriel half turned toward it.

He brought himself back to the present. “I'll tell the Cynthians we can't join them in their mountain caves for the winter."

He selected his symbols carefully.
Domes/plants in rows. River/humans.
That ought to be clear enough, even if you left out Beneatha's protests about the hydroponics. The humans had to stay near the river in order to find food, water, and shelter.

Ariel's antennae quivered and stiffened. The poison horns on its head extruded themselves, gleamed wetly, then withdrew quickly. Wings flapped and scattered spangles of violet and silver across the night sky as it rose and vanished in the direction of the foothills. Why had Ariel fled the human camp?

"That wasn't a retreat, that was a withdrawal,” Pauli commented. “What did you tell it?"

"That we had to stay where our home was."

Uriel, ink-blue body with pale-green and silver mottlings, wrapped its upper wings firmly about its body, indications of fear and distress. The screen filled with the elder's message:
humans: caves ... humans: caves ... humans: caves
...

"Insistent, isn't it? And we have months until winter, too?"

Before Rafe could respond to either, Uriel also lifted away from the camp, followed, more reluctantly (or so it seemed), by the other smaller Cynthians. Powder from their wings sprinkled down upon the watching humans.

Why would they want the humans to move up to their eyries? You'd think that the Cynthians would be territorial ... , unless winged creatures were not as turf conscious as landbound ones. If that were so, it would be the first case of nonterritoriality that Rafe had ever studied.

I'd like to get into those hills
, he thought.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Borodin's hand.

"If you're thinking what I think you are, Lieutenant, forget it till we learn more about this planet. I'm not about to risk you."

"I'm getting a little tired of being too valuable to risk,” Rafe pointed out. “How about ground recon? That's usually in my job description. Since you don't want me heading for the mountains, why not let me take a team into the river plain?"

Borodin chewed his lip, unable to see a reason to refuse. “Fine. When would you want to leave?"

"I doubt that after tonight's little talk that the Cynthians will be back tomorrow. I could leave at dawn."

Borodin nodded. Rafe's gaze slid involuntarily over to Pauli.
Come with me? Please?
But she was staring after the Cynthians, then looking down at the gleaming dust on the hand she had raised to her lips as the younger ones had risen, a concerted splendor of wings.

Rafe sighed, knowing that nothing he could offer would ever replace her dream of flight.

Then he shrugged, and went to choose those civilians and children who would accompany him. Dawn came early on Cynthia.

Carefully Pauli stored her glider and started toward the dome they had designated as the settlement's dining hall. Great flying weather, she thought in satisfaction. Even the experimental, short glider flights she had tried in order to test them had given her a dizzying sense of freedom. She loved the way that the wind rushed against her eyes and forced tears into them, turning the patchwork land below a green-blue. Risky, the civs clucked. Sure: but a one-man ship was riskier, and that was the ship she had wanted.

Were any of her friends at New Pax or on board
Amherst
still alive? Involuntarily she glanced toward the plain in the direction that Rafe and his scout team had taken. If the wind had been right, she might have flown after them.

Maybe the war would end soon, and that Becker would return with the
Amherst
, and new orders for them all. Or maybe, a more cynical voice whispered to the darkness behind her eyes, maybe the war would only end when no one was left with the strength to fight it, or even to endure it any longer.

Well, for her, the war was definitely over.

"I expected Lohr to join us today in testing the gliders,” Captain Borodin commented as he entered and hung away his own glider. “He's been panting to test out his wings."

"Lieutenant Adams convinced Dr. Pryor that his recon was a field trip, and thus took priority over joy riding,” Pauli said. Her voice was harsh. “Frankly, what I think was that ‘Cilla wanted to see the plain, so Lohr went along to watch out for her. You know, lately she's shown a tendency to break away from the crowd and run on ahead. Besides, Ayelet was going with Rafe, and Lohr likes her."

"That'll be useful to know in a couple of years when the children all start pairing off,” Borodin said. Then, after too long a meaningful pause, “Adams is doing fine work, don't you think?"

Speaking of pairing off, are you, Captain?
If the captain wanted to praise Rafe, let him put a commendation into the computer log.

As they came out of the dome, someone ran into Pauli, sobbing hysterically.

Ayelet! Several of the civs ran to soothe her. Was Rafe's expedition aborted so soon? Where was the rest of the party? Where was Rafe himself?

Pauli forced herself to meet Borodin's eyes. What if Rafe was dead?

"There he is!” The captain pointed at a tiny figure that seemed to stagger as it hurried toward them.

She hurried to the arms locker, then headed out to meet him. Rafe was carrying ‘Cilla, and weaving as he ran. The little girl's face was gray and slack. Spittle glistened in the corners of her half-opened mouth, and she shivered convulsively.

"Dr. Pryor! We've got casualties!” Borodin was shouting. Pauli glanced behind her. The captain was helping the children, now staggering in one by one, to sit with their heads between their knees. One or two retched from the long run and the terror. Lohr bent forward in the long grass and tried to be sick from exhaustion. But he was too controlled. Borodin patted his shoulders.

"Don't let the kids come any closer to ‘Cilla,” Rafe gasped at Pauli.

She bent forward to examine the child herself. ‘Cilla's right boot was gone, except for a few shreds of curling leather that clung to her shin. Four deep punctures showed blue on her ankle. The entire foot looked as if acid had spilled on it.

"What did this?” Pauli demanded.

Rafe shook his head. “Another lifeform that survey didn't turn up. Damn them! Damn them all!"

6

Pauli thinned her lips as she bent over the unconscious child ...
that time during basic training in lab ... Leslie was trying to concoct archaic liquid fuels ... washed out of flight training on disability pension ... no funds or time for regrowth ... and besides, you needed two good hands to fly...

Had ‘Cilla survived the slagging of Wolf IV only to endure this? What would her injury mean to the rest of the children, who must know now that the adults could not protect them against enemies even on this refuge world? Would they be able to survive at all?

For the colony to survive, they might have to call on the gutter-bred survival abilities of the children whose memories and lives they had hoped to ease.

Alicia Pryor seemed to materialize, yet she did not look as breathless as Pauli felt. She knelt beside ‘Cilla.

"Will she lose the foot?” Pauli asked.

"Depends,” said the medical officer. “She's deep in shock. Unless she wakes, I won't risk sedation or painkiller. No, Rafe—don't touch her! Whatever acid she stumbled into, if I don't neutralize it fast, it's going to dissolve her foot!"

"Not acid ... a bite ... I saw..."

"First I work on ‘Cilla. Meanwhile, you bury everything—starting with the clothes you're wearing—that may have come in contact with this acid. Then you can tell me what you think you saw."

Rafe tried to protest.

"All right, then: what you know you saw. I can use all the help I can get. For example, from the way the flesh is torn here, it looks like some sort of lizard; but, given a bite of this size and a child no bigger than ‘Cilla, if that were venom, probably a nerve poison, she'd have died before she hit ground."

Pauli shuddered. The dash and detachment about death with which pilots tried to armor themselves were nothing, she thought, compared with Pryor's particularly chilling brand of scientific objectivity. Yet, at the thought of her death or, right now, of ‘Cilla's, Rafe had cracked.

Now he groaned. “Not a lizard. Horrible things, like grubs or maggots, and a meter long ... God, I have to...” he gagged, then swallowed convulsively, restraining himself.

Another world ... another life ... but Rafe had been similarly red-eyed. Beads of sweat had stood out on gray skin, matted the springing hair.
"I won't wait to know if your ship blew, or if you'll be flying back, Pauli,"
he'd sworn the night after a pilot from his home station had been blasted by Secess', working in that precise, hellish unanimity of theirs.
"You choose, Pauli. Flying or ... our future."

Unless she and all of the other pilots like her flew, what future could anyone have? It had not been a fair demand; Rafe had been too afraid, too anguished, for fairness, which was, Pauli sometimes thought, a peacetime luxury, in any case.

To spare them both, she had chosen flight. Had she chosen wrong? He retched dryly; that would change in a moment.

"Not here, you can't,” Pryor's hand, pushing him away, was gentle. “'Cilla's foot's already septic enough. Get him out of here, Pauli ... Pauli? Move it, Lieutenant! I haven't time for you now."

Pauli drew her gloves on and led Rafe to the riverbank. He gazed about, studying the ground with frantic care. Then he collapsed the way Lohr had and vomited at the water's edge.

"Steady now,” Pauli murmured. “Whatever else happened, you got the kids back alive. And you've given ‘Cilla a chance. She's tougher than she looks, you know. Lie back and rest."

Careful not to brush against Rafe's outer clothes, Pauli removed them. Already the acid from ‘Cilla's foot had begun to eat through the tough synthetic of his trousers, and had made inroads into the leather of his jacket.

Digging a hole in the soft, easily turned mud of the riverbank, she buried first the contaminated garments, then her own gloves. Covering the spot, she marked it with a large, flat stone. Rafe shivered convulsively, and she stripped off her own jacket and wrapped it about him, then moved to put herself between him and the wind.

"Let me get you a blanket,” she offered. But he grasped her wrist hard.

"Don't go, Pauli. You stay and listen. Someone's got to listen to me, Pauli, listen now, so I won't forget, and so I'll know I'm not crazy."

"You should tell the captain..."

"The captain's got all he can handle now. Damn it! Girl, just this once, don't play things by the book ...
please."
Rafe clasped her hands between his. His fingers were clammy and they trembled.

A second chance,
Pauli thought, and chafed his hands.

"All right, Rafe. Let's hear it."

"We headed south toward the flats. At noon we stopped to rest. About that time, we saw rock formations in the distance."

"I didn't pick them up,” she muttered.

"Scan registered them as about five meters high; you wouldn't have. Curious thing about them too. They were all oriented along this world's magnetic field. Exploration never mentioned them in the preliminary reports on Cynthia."

"Were they artifacts?” Pauli asked. “A technologically advanced lifeform here—and hostile?"