Silent Songs (36 page)

Weaver leaped to her feet, crying out to the skies.

She must see her mate, Taller,
Javier realized.

Their guard moved toward the female Grus threateningly. Without thinking, Javier darted between them, ready to take the rod

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for her. Old Bear was right beside him; Martin moved quickly to his other side. Soon Carlotta, Chris, and Noriko joined them. The guard hesitated, glancing at the knot of defiant humans. Impulsively, Javier threw his head back and imitated Weaver. Old Bear followed his lead, as did Martin and the others.

Humans nearby copied them, and soon every captive in the colony was yelling like a Grus, even the Simiu, who howled to the sky. All of them sent their voices soaring up to a woman who could not hear. The guards appeared confused as they moved among the humans, plainly wanting to discipline them, but not knowing where to start. Finally, they gave up.

Javier watched Weaver standing tall, head thrown back, crown blazing a fiery red, her clipped wings drooping in the classic pose of her people. The Grus calls ripped through his body and he relished the feeling of their terrible cacophony.

Just then, a squad of Chosen soldiers flashed through the air, pursuing the Interrelator. Shaking her spear, she took off, her avian escort forming a wall between her and the Chosen soldiers. Javier's heart tightened in fear, even though he was thrilled by her reckless courage. Soon they were gone.

He glanced at Old Bear.

"That's
my
granddaughter!" the old man signed, his eyes shining with fierce pride. "Some woman, huh?"

Javier smiled and nodded as they moved back to the reeds.
No
exaggeration there,
he thought.
Some woman.

He glanced at his companions, knowing that only Carlotta could understand the old man's signing. He pointed after Tesa and made the universal sign for

"okay." They all smiled, as Martin gave him a clenched fist, and Chris a thumbs-up.

Weaver had settled back onto her hocks and resumed her work, but when she caught his eyes, she lifted her head, turning it to flash her bright red crown at him.

Yes, beautiful one,
Javier thought at her, I
saw your lover calling to you. I
saw him.
As he stripped the leaves from the reeds, he noted the bright expressions on Meg's and Mrs. Lewis' faces. They moved deftly, their features animated, their bodies alert. He would've felt hopeful then, but for the doctor. Szu-yi rocked on her knees like a sick child, hugging herself and sobbing. Setting his jaw, Javier planned his next move.

Damn, these things are slow!
Tesa thought, trying to force the alien sled to go faster. The Grus and Aquila blanketed her, but speed was critical as she aimed for a narrow bottleneck where the

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River curved between two overgrown forested banks. The trees there formed a natural canopy over the water. If she could just get through that narrow junction .. .

Fetterman's Fight,
she thought. It had worked hundreds of years ago for Chief Red Cloud and his war party. It
had
to work now for her--and for the people of Trinity. She signaled to the avians and they peeled away from her in pairs, diving to hide in the dense forest that surrounded the River.

The bottleneck was dead ahead.

Hurry up!
she urged the pokey sled, wanting to kick her heels in its sides.

The squad of aliens gained on her. She shook her lance at them brazenly, whooping, then slid under the canopy, through the narrow pass.

The aliens followed in a wedge. As soon as they emerged on the other side, the sky above them darkened. Hundreds of waiting Aquila, including the ones who'd leafleted the colony, launched themselves from the trees, taking the soldiers by surprise.

If the sleds had protective shields on them as human sleds did, none of the soldiers had a chance to engage them--or to use their weapons. The Anurans quickly spun around, trying to retreat, but the Aquila snatched them off their machines, dropping them into the River.

Tesa knew few of the invaders would survive. She'd worked on the attack for days, negotiating with the Hunters, begging them for the kind of cooperation they'd only given once before. Now, as the Aquila yanked the aliens off their sleds, dropping them to their deaths, she felt sickened.

Then the Grus surrounded her, calling victoriously. The human remembered the glimpse she'd had of Weaver, and she remembered why she was doing this.

It was all over in minutes, just as it had been for the arrogant Corporal Fetterman. In 1866, he'd boasted that with eighty trained soldiers he could wipe out the Sioux nation, but that wasn't the way things had turned out.

Tesa took a deep breath as she wheeled her sled around, assessing the damage.

Many of the bodies had never made it to the River; a few slammed into the trees, and some on the narrow banks. Most of the sleds had crashed in the River, some had hit the trees, and a few were still circling aimlessly over the scene. As Tesa flew over the carnage, she spotted one corpse with an Aquila still perched on it. The avian mantled the body with her wings, the way her people did to hide food from one another.

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Tesa waved at her frantically, signing "No! No!" before she remembered that Hunters didn't sign.

Thunder was suddenly beside her.

"I warned them not to eat the aliens!" Tesa signed to her friend. "Remind that one."

The Aquila dropped like a rocket, backwinging to the side of the older avian.

Tesa braked her sled and leaped off as Thunder settled as close to the mature female as she dared.

"She's not eating," Thunder signed. "Something's wrong."

The older female's red eyes were glazed. Tesa could see now that she wasn't mantling the corpse; her wings were drooping because she no longer had the strength to hold them up.

Thunder said something to the afflicted Aquila. The sickened avian responded weakly--then slowly pitched forward. Tesa ran over and touched her neck, searching for a pulse.

"Oh, no," she signed, "she's
dead!
What happened to her?"

Thunder ruffled her feathers worriedly. "All she said was 'bad fish,' that the monster was 'bad fish.' "

Cautiously, Tesa examined the dead Hunter. The alien corpse was one of the red and blue types. One taloned foot had hooked into the alien's spine; the other clutched its shoulder. The Aquila's middle talon had punctured a yellow shoulder patch. The patch oozed fluid, and the avian's scaled foot was slick with it.

By now, dozens of Hunters crowded around them. Taller and the cohort settled near, brazenly walking among their old enemies, staring at the fallen raptor. The rest of the Grus cautiously kept their distance on the Riverbank.

"The Hunters are asking what happened to South Wind," Thunder told Tesa.

"Some of them are her daughters."

"I'm trying to figure that out. Tell them . . . I'm so terribly sorry. . . ." Jib's warnings came back to her all too vividly.

"Why are you apologizing?" Thunder asked. "SouthWind fought for the World and her story will be told to every hatchling."

"She will be remembered by the Wind people as well," Taller signed to Thunder. "Ask her daughters if we may take a feather. We will use it to mourn her for as long as it survives."

Tesa was startled by Taller's gesture, realizing he was speaking for all the Grus leaders.

"Our feathers don't decay for many years," Thunder told him. "It's a long time to mourn for someone not of your own."

"We'll mourn SouthWind even if we must pass her feather on to our children," Tal er assured her.

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There was a ripple of activity among the Hunters as they conferred together.

Finally, Thunder signed for them.

"Her daughters are moved by your offer. They would like you to take her feathers, but not for mourning. I have told them of Weaver's need for strong flying feathers. They want you to take South Wind's primaries, so Weaver can fly to freedom on their mother's wings. That would be a fitting memorial for a Hunter!"

Tesa's eyes caught Taller's. They'd collected shed feathers from the Grus flock, but many were so frayed and worn they feared they wouldn't be strong enough for Weaver.

The Grus leader's feathers stood straight out, his crown shrinking with emotion. Finally, he bowed his head in gratitude, then he and every Grus present pointed their bills to the sky and called, lifting the spirit of SouthWind, urging her good speed on her journey to the Suns. Her voice catching, Tesa joined them.

Finally, the Interrelator turned back to her avian translator. "Thunder, I've got to know what killed SouthWind. These yellow patches ... SouthWind's talon pierced it. .. ."

Thunder blinked at Tesa. "K'heera was taken by aliens who were this color.

She touched one of them before collapsing."

Tesa dug her Swiss Army knife out of her pocket, and snapped open its small cell analyzer. Whatever she could learn here could only help them in future conflicts.

Jib parked his alien sled in a hidden place and approached the bank of the River. He tried not to imagine what would happen if Tesa were killed or captured in her planned raid on the Anuran village. He had every reason to be afraid for her, but even so, he'd be able to control his anxiety better if he'd been getting any decent sleep lately. But that'd been impossible.

He'd been shut off from the mournful music of the Singers right after he and Tesa had left Bruce. One moment a sad but pleasurable background song had hummed in his mind, and then the next it had stopped completely.

Taniwha must've been maintaining that tenuous contact, and when the herd realized it, they'd cut him off cold. For Jib, it'd been like losing his sense of balance ... or even his sense of self. His resulting depression made dealing with Tesa even more difficult, and made their recent disagreements all the more painful.

Then, a few days after that, the new music started. It kept him awake, drifting through his mind just as he skirted sleep, yanking him awake to the unnatural silence of sound nullifiers.

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Old lullabies his mom had sung to him, popular tunes he'd been fond of, rhythmic Maori chants he'd thought he'd forgotten. Every morning he'd wake up groggy, with old, persistent tunes running maddeningly through his head.

In the last few days, the music had deteriorated into vague instrumental fragments, then chaotic sounds he couldn't recognize. He feared the telepathy withdrawal was making him lose his mind.

Unless ... it was Taniwha trying to contact him. Jib didn't discuss it with Tesa; she would insist it was just wishful thinking-- and he was terrified she'd be right. But, maybe the Singer calf had been touching the memories of music in his mind, growing more and more familiar with that part of his brain until he could once again insinuate his own music without startling the human.

But why? Could he be trying to communicate with Jib without his people knowing? That made some kind of sense.

So now he stood on the Riverbank, searching with his mind. But no matter what his mind craved, he could not initiate contact.

While Tesa had planned her raid on the Anuran colony, Jib had resolved to search the western end of the River until he found the Singers. He'd taken one of the stolen Anuran sleds and followed the waterway until he'd found a patch of the Singers' favorite water plant. Now he left the bank to stand in the water; trying to relax, he opened his mind. It was the only thing he could do.

That... and sing. He sang of the Land of the Long White Cloud, and the changing sea around her, of the Lovers Papatuanuku and Ranginui--Mother Earth and Father Sun. He sang of the Waikato River, the longest river in New Zealand, whose full Maori name was
Waikato-taniwha-rau,
"the flowing water of a hundred water monsters." For generations that river had ruled Maori lives, just as this River ruled the lives of the Singers. He sang from his heart, his fingers keeping time on his brown thigh.

Jib grew homesick for his beautiful country, his family and loved ones. That was a feeling he never thought he'd have, but singing of his people and their land made him feel more alone than he ever had in his life. Tesa and he were constantly at odds with each other these days. K'heera and everyone he'd come to care about on Trinity had been enslaved, maybe even killed.

There was little the young man could do to make any difference in the terrible situation they were now in. He felt helpless. Hopeless. As desperate as Taniwha had been the night he'd been stranded on the sandbar. Jib clutched his greenstone tiki as his voice rang out in sorrow.

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Closing his eyes, he felt despondency washing over him like a tide. He remembered the night Tesa had
heard
music, the night they'd worked together to free the calf and send him back to his parents. A night before the World had changed forever.

Still, the silence in his mind was absolute.

Give it up, mate,
he thought bleakly.
The Singers will never trust you again.

They'll die, and there's not a bloody thing you can do to help them.

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Jib turned to leave the River. As he placed one foot onto the shore, something massive jostled him, knocking him into the water. His arms flailed as the tepid water covered his head. He inhaled some, just as a powerful body shoved him back up into the air. Sputtering and thrashing, the Maori scrambled. His fingers felt familiar, slick skin, a round back, a wide body.

And then it happened, the jolt of mental contact directly into his brain. He shuddered, opening his mind, his heart pounding frantically.

Taniwha pulled him through the water like a ski board out of control as Jib clung to the powerful flippers, grinning wildly.

Atle's colors flared with outrage. "Twenty-five
dead?
That was the entire complement! Against a
lone
human and a group of primitive hunter-gatherers! It's not possible!"

"The Third, Amaset, was found dead with his company. . .." the Fourth-in-Conquest, Leuth, sang.

Atle sank down on his haunches. Another defeat like this and he'd be forced to give up command, to hand power over... to Dacris. Could the Second be right about these beings? Would he be forced to meet their ruthlessness with senseless bloodletting?