Heritage of Flight (16 page)

"Look at that,” said Dr. Pryor.

The screen blanked, filled with the symbol for eaters, repeated again and again, then blanked again.

"I think that Uriel has put it all together,” Rafe observed.

Was there a symbol for
sorry
? Even if there was, what good was it? What possible apology could be made for ending a race?

Uriel raised its head, and Pauli thought that it looked straight at her with those dulled, faceted eyes. Its wings quivered, and it strained upward, turning in its last moments toward its mountains. Then, in a little eddy of luminous dust, scattering from its crumpled wings, it toppled.

The skies were quite clear thereafter. Pauli supposed that after a few years she might even get used to not seeing Cynthians aloft at twilight. She still gazed into the skies, the way she had when all she had wanted was to be a pilot and to fly free. She had to: the children had begun to adopt her mannerism—developed after the last Cynthian fell from the skies—of looking shamefacedly away from the heavens she felt as if she had profaned.

Somewhere in this world might be updrafts on which other Cynthians danced. Somewhere there might be relief from the consequence of Pauli's actions—if not of her intentions. Pauli hoped never to see them, never to have to gaze again at a screen where a simple interrogative glowed. It was burned into her mind now. If she was faced again with the test, she feared that she might kill just to prevent herself from seeing it.

I didn't have the Cynthians destroyed so the children would grow up to be penitent, guilt-ridden cowards. I may be a genocide, very well, so I am. Maybe I can't bring those children up innocent. But they were victims, and they must not suffer for my crimes too.

Whatever guilt she and the other adults felt was their private, fitting punishment. Now they were the Cynthians. And the creatures they replaced had left them a standard of conduct that would be hard to equal. Cynthians fought to live and to protect their young.

That being the case, Pauli had better gifts for the children than her guilt. Gradually she forced herself to speak again of flying, to enjoy the sight of gliders swooping aloft, to dream of other larger craft that one day they might try to build. After all, she reminded them, the stars were a part of their heritage. That wouldn't change, she vowed, whether the ships came for them in the next hour, the next year ... or never.

If my child is a boy, I'll name him Serge
, Pauli thought.
Rafe would like that too. If she's a girl, then ‘Cilla will have a namesake and someone to look after.

After all, Pauli was a Cynthian now, and would soon bear a child. And all Cynthians must grow up with a heritage of flight without shame. No one knew better than she that Cynthians protected, their own.

PART ll

Survivor Guilt

And I alone escaped to tell you.

—Book of Job

10

Alien greens flourished in the fields still marked out by the scars of trenches where the harsh, resilient native ground scrub had begun to grow back, healing the places where the land had been burnt clean. Beyond the fields half the adults and all the children of Cynthia colony ran and played. Slowly they were forgetting the seemingly endless war between Alliance and Secess', the slagged worlds and the hunger. From here, Pauli Yeager didn't think they sounded any different from children who never wet their beds, or woke screaming from nightmares or from memories.

"Consequently I rejoice
she thought wryly,
"having to construct something upon which to rejoice."

There were grounds for rejoicing. So far, no Secessionist ships had ventured this far into the No Man's Worlds to discover their refuge. Wide-spectrum immunities protected them from any disease their new home might have had in store; and there had been no predators they couldn't defend themselves against.

She winced, then, laboriously bent down to examine a fretwork of humming rods. It generated a faint violet light which shone around the fields and a generous space beyond, and extended all the way down to the river.

"You can touch them,” the techs had briefed her and the rest of the settlement. “A human's electrostatic field won't trigger the charge. It isn't strong enough. But..."

The stobors’ fields would. As always, Pauli winced at the name. But she supposed it probably had been inevitable. She rubbed the small of her back. Sturdy and weathered after these seasons downworld, she had been slowed only in the last month by the pregnancy that made bending down a penance and prohibited her from joining the scout parties that once again were travelling across the plains and into the foothills and the mountains beyond.
I'm doubly grounded now
, she thought, but contentment had eased some of the old hurt. Something else to rejoice for: Pryor had assured her that if she hadn't aborted spontaneously in her first trimester of pregnancy, the child would probably be undamaged by any radiation she had absorbed.

These days, her back ached constantly. So did her feet despite Dr. Pryor's constant attempts to keep her off them. But she had to inspect the fields that were replacing their hydro tanks, and the defenses that protected the fields against stobor.

She sighed. The stobor had first turned up that spring, another one of the little surprises that survey had failed to warn them of before they'd been landed here. Her husband called them one part lemming, one part platypus, and the rest God-knows-what. Including electric eels, because stobor seemed to come equipped with their own electrostatic fields. Touching one stobor earned you a nasty shock. Stumbling into two or three paralyzed you. After they'd almost lost one man who'd done just that, and who was saved only by David ben Yehuda's rough CPR (which cost his victim a couple of broken ribs), Pauli had ordered everyone in the camp to learn the emergency procedures, down to every child strong enough to manage them.

Contact with more than three would probably stop your heart permanently, not that anyone had felt like experimenting. And of course, the damned things had to travel in packs, herbivores drawn irresistibly to the crops vital to the settlement's survival.

Well, what else could they expect? Ordinarily, the ground would have been scoured by the eaters; and the stobor would have sought elsewhere for forage. But with the eaters gone, and fields sprouting more appetizing crops than the ground scrub, the stobor turned up right on cue. At least they'd figured out how to turn the stobor's natural defenses against them without having to wipe out the entire species. And that definitely was something to rejoice about, even if
it was
impossible to consider the stobor sapient beings.

Brushing grainstalks aside, several of the refugee children accompanied Rafe into the fields. He grinned at them, then had a lazy smile just for her and the baby-to-be before he walked over to the nearest cluster of civilians who, even now, Pauli tended to regard as a foreign species.
He's half a civ himself
, Pauli thought, but she tempered the words with a smile. When she had been a pilot (with a life expectancy you could measure in months) she had kept him at a distance. But now, if she had one reason to go on living, it was Rafe's faith in her.

'Cilla, who had become devoted to Pauli, God only knew why, limped over and took her hand. “How's the baby?” she asked.

Pauli laid ‘Cilla's hand on her stomach so she could feel the tiny, emphatic kicks.

The child laughed delightedly. Pauli expected her to limp away, but instead ‘Cilla stayed by her side, clutching her hand. The limp, Pryor had assured them, would not get much better; but at least they hadn't had to amputate the foot bitten and seared by the eaters.

Suddenly the hard little hand jerked. “Shooting star!” ‘Cilla cried.

A streak of cold fire blazed down the night sky and struck the horizon soundlessly.

"You have to make a wish,” the child commanded eagerly.

Pauli gestured at two former crewmembers.
Take all the children inside
, she ordered, her lips moving soundlessly.

I'll make a wish, all right
, she thought.
I'll hope it is just a meteorite.

"Impact coordinates recorded.” Another crewmember passed her his macrobinoculars. Pauli activated them, then hissed in aggravation. The haze from the shields, the domes’ yellow nightlights, even the spray of light from the beamers carried by some of the settlers, blocked her vision.

"Recon team?” Rafe asked.

Quickly Pauli ran over the list of people she called her reliables. There was no way that medic Pryor would let her lead a team, not with her pregnancy this far advanced. Pryor herself was both too old and too valuable to be allowed to lead a team, even if she had wanted to. Rafe? No way around it; he was the logical choice, and she wanted bearish, quick-minded David ben Yehuda along to back him.

"You'll lead, Rafe,” she said. “Take care."

Quickly they passed the word for the team to assemble.

"You'll maintain silence on the communicators, just in case..."

"The hills will block communications. I'll need a messenger,” Rafe cut in before Pauli could voice her concerns in front of casual passersby. It was always that way with them now: often they found themselves finishing one another's thoughts, anticipating one another's wishes. It meant that Cynthia colony had, in effect, two commanders.

"So I'll want a messenger,” Rafe continued. “Sorry about that."

Pauli shut her eyes. Of the few settlers who had had time to master the fliers (little more than old-fashioned gliders), the most skillful was Lohr, age twelve; and they both knew it. He was quick, smart, but if he had a chance to attack a Secess’ pilot, the survivor of an emergency landing, could she trust him?

"Look who's coming,” Rafe pointed. “So help me, that boy
smells
trouble."

Lohr skidded to a stop beside them. “If you're sending out a team, you need a messenger. I'm the best with the fliers...” his eager babble of speech ran down under Pauli's and Rafe's somber expressions.

Pauli looked him over. “And if I said that Rafe and David were just going out to check on stobor?"

"Lieutenant,” Lohr burst out indignantly, “not even the littlests believe stobor come down from the hills They're amphibians!” He brought out the word with pride. “You're sending a team out to check on the meteorite.
If
it's a meteorite and not a—"

"One more word out of you, Lohr, and you're confined to quarters,” Pauli interrupted, thanking God that none of the “littlests” were around to be terrified by Lohr accuracy. “And if I find you've been babbling to ‘Cilla or any of the other littlests ... no, I guess you won't frighten them. Get your gear, then, and tell Ari ben Yehuda that he's going along to keep an eye on you."

Rafe laid an arm across Pauli's shoulders. She wrapped hers about his waist, and they walked toward the dome where the team was assembling. Briefing was quick; farewells quicker yet.

"You come back,” Pauli whispered fiercely, her face buried against Rafe's shoulder. “Don't take any risks You just come back!"

No one knew better than an Alliance pilot just how deadly the Secess’ were. Compared to them, the native predators—or even the winged Cynthians they had had to eradicate—were games for the littlests.

By dawn, Rafe and his people were well up into the foothills, but the site where the meteorite hit—he gave it the name he hoped it would keep—lay far beyond, in the mountains themselves, past the high caves which he'd visited once as a thief. Rafe swore and reached for his macrobinoculars. Beside him, Lohr crouched, his pupils contracting to pinpoints. His lips were skinned back, and he all but growled.

"See anything up there?"

"A few sparks,” Rafe grunted. “Could be anything."

Lohr hunted through his pack and pulled out struts of metal and a gleaming length of mesh into which the struts slipped until long, flexible wings took shape.

"You won't get any help from thermals this close to dawn,” Rafe warned Lohr. “So it's a good thing you're light. Look: I hate to use you like this, but the sooner we all know whether or not there might be Secess’ around, the better I'll like it. You won't be afraid?"

"Can I have a blaster?” Cunning aged Lohr's face so that he looked far older than his age. He held out his hand as if he expected Rafe to hand over his sidearm. Stunner, explosive bolts, or laser—they were all blasters to Lohr; and he had wanted one for as long as Rafe knew him.

"Lohr, you know what Pauli told you about weapons,” Rafe sighed. “First, you're better off flying light. Second, if you've only got a knife, you'll probably have the sense to run from a fight you can't win. No matter how much you want revenge."

Lohr sized him up, and Rafe held his breath. Finally the boy shrugged, resigning himself—but only for the moment—to reality, such as Rafe's superior height and weight, and the fact that the others on the team would certainly back him.

He strapped the wings to his back and shook himself to settle them.

"One thing more.” Though Rafe kept his voice down, it seemed to boom against the overhanging rocks. “Tell Pauli I recommend evacuation."