The Mystery of Ireta (17 page)

“Then we’ll eat,” said Varian and began to pull her legs out of the sack, slowly, to give the giffs no reason for alarm. “Yes, they’re the young ones,” she said as she slowly got to her feet and stared down at the small bodies pressing in about the sled.

Seen in proper perspective, she realized none of these giffs were adult-sized. The tip of the longest head crest came only to her waist. She’d estimated that a fully grown giff would be as tall as an average human with a wingspan of at least eight to ten meters.

“What do we do?” asked Bonnard.

“Sit up slowly. I’ll bring you breakfast in the sack,” she said, moving carefully to the supplies.

Kai had pulled himself into a sitting position now and gratefully accepted the steaming beaker.

“Breakfast with an audience,” he said, sipping.

“I wish they’d move or talk or something,” said Bonnard, glancing nervously about him as he blew to cool the liquid in his beaker. He almost dropped it when one of the giffs stretched and flapped its wings suddenly. “They’re not even trying to get at us.”

“Look but don’t touch?” asked Kai. “Frankly, I’d just as soon they kept to themselves. Those beak points look sharp.” He glanced at Varian, who had a small recorder in her hands now, and holding it at waist level was slowly turning a full circle, recording the faces of their audience.

With equal care against sudden movement, she placed the recorder on one shoulder and turning again, stood so still for a long moment at one point that Kai asked what was up.

“I’ve the recorder directed on the main summit. There’s quite a bit of activity there right now. I can’t see what it’s all about . . . oh, yes, I can. It’s the adults. I’d swear . . . yes . . . they’re calling this lot.”

As reluctantly as any curious young creature, the juvenile giffs began to lumber awkwardly away, disappearing so suddenly that Bonnard cried out in alarm.

“They’re okay, Bonnard,” said Varian who had a better view. “We’re right on the cliff edge. They’ve just walked off it and if you’ll glance over your shoulder, you’ll see them soaring away, perfectly safe.”

“Muhlah!” exclaimed Kai with utter disgust. “We had ’em close enough and didn’t telltag ’em .”

“What? And scare them into bringing momma and dad down on us? We don’t really need to telltag giffs anyway, Kai. We know where they live, and how far they range.” She patted the recorder. “And I’ve got their faces all on tape.”

“They sure had a good enough look at ours,” said Bonnard. “I wonder if they’ll remember us next time.”

“All furless, crestless faces look the same,” said Varian with a laugh.

She was moving about the sled now without restraint and handed each a bar of subsistence protein. She perched on the pilot chair to munch hers.

When they had finished eating, joking about the manner of their awakening, they made ready to leave the sled. Kai and Bonnard carried the recorders and additional tapes, Varian had her gift of the grasses. Kai also wore a stunner, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. Not, he thought privately, that he’d have much chance the way those giffs could move.

As they emerged, the sun came through the cloud cover, for its morning inspection, Bonnard said. From the caves in the cliffs came hundreds and hundreds of golden fliers, as if called inexorably by the thin thread of sunlight. Bonnard quickly aimed the recorder and caught the spectacle of hundreds of giffs, wings raised, beaks open, caroling a curious warble as they turned in the sparse sunlight.

“Ever seen anything like that before, Varian?” asked Kai in amazement.

“Not quite like that. Oh, they are beautiful creatures. Quick, Bonnard, on the third terrace to the left, get that lot!”

The giffs, one after the other, dropped off the ledge, wings spreading and lifting, soaring, turning over, as if letting each part of their bodies bathe in the sunlight. It was a slow aerial dance that held the observers spellbound.

“They’ve got their eyes closed,” Bonnard said, peering through the focusing lens of the recorder. “Hope they know where they’re going.”

“They probably have some sort of radar perception,” said Varian. She increased her face mask’s magnification to observe more closely. “I wonder . . . are their eyes closed for some mystical reason? Or simply because the sun is strong?”

“Carotene is good for your eyes,” said Bonnard.

Varian tried to recall if she’d ever seen a fang-face or one of the herbivores squint or close their eyes completely dur-ing sunshine. She couldn’t remember. Full sunlight was a rare enough occasion so that all human eyes were invariably on the sun. She’d check the tapes out when she got back to the camp.

“Now, look Varian, only some of ’em are doing the flying act,” said Bonnard. He had swung around, recorder still operating, and focused on the juvenile giffs scratching about on the fish summit.

One of them let out a squawk, tried to back away from something and, overbalancing, fell back. Its companions regarded it for a long moment as it lay, flapping helplessly.

Without thinking, Varian began to climb toward the summit to assist the creature. She had put her hand over the top, when an adult giff, with a cry shrill enough to be a command, landed on the summit, awkwardly turning toward Varian. When she judiciously halted her climbing, the giff deftly flipped the juvenile to its feet with the wing claws. The wing remained a protective envelope above the young giff.

“Okay, I get the message, loud and clear,” said Varian.

A second grating sound issued from the adult giff whose eyes never left Varian.

“Varian!” Kai’s call was warning and command.

“I’m all right. I’ve just been told to keep my distance.”

“Make it more distance, Varian. I’m covering you.”

“It would have attacked me if it was going to, Kai. Don’t show the stunner.”

“How would they know what a stunner is?” asked Bonnard.

“Point! I’m going to offer the grass.” And slowly Varian took the rift grasses from her leg pouch and with great care held up the sheaf for the giff to see.

The creature’s eyes did not leave hers, but Varian sensed that the grass had been noticed. She moved her hand slowly, to place the sheaf on the top of the summit. The giff made another grating noise, softer, less aggressive in tone.

“You’re very welcome,” said Varian, and heard Bonnard’s snort of disgust. “Courtesy is never wasted, Bonnard. Tone conveys its own message, so does gesture. This creature understands a certain amount from both what I’m doing and what I’m saying.”

She had begun to descend to the sled’s terrace level now, moving deliberately and never taking her eyes from the giff. As soon as she was back, standing with Kai and Bonnard, the adult giff waddled forward, took up the grass and then, returning to the sea edge, dropped off. Once it had sufficient wing room, it soared up again and out of sight among the other fliers.

“That was fascinating,” said Kai on the end of a long-held sigh.

Bonnard was regarding Varian with open respect.

“Wow! One poke of that beak and you’d’ve been sent over the edge.”

“There was no menace in the giff’s action.”

“Varian,” said Kai, laying a hand on her arm, “do be careful.”

“Kai, this isn’t my first contact.” Then she saw the worry in his eyes. “I am always careful. Or I wouldn’t be here now. Making friends with alien creatures is my business. But how I’m ever to find out how mature their young are if they’re this protective . . .” She stopped, whistled her surprise. “I know. The giff was protective because it’s used to protecting the juveniles. So, they’re not equipped to protect themselves at birth, or for some time thereafter. Still,” and she sighed her disappointment, “I would have liked to get inside one of their caves . . .”

“Look, Varian,” said Bonnard in a whisper and indicated the direction with the barest movement of his forefinger.

Slowly, Varian turned to see a row of juvenile giffs watching from the summit, wings in a closed position, tilted up beyond their backs, wing claws acting as additional supports to their sitting. Varian began to laugh, shaking her head and muttering about the observer observed.

“So we’re fair peek,” said Kai, leaning against the edge of the sled and folding his arms. “Now what do we do in your program? Be observed in our daily morning habits?”

“You can, if you wish. Be interesting to see how long their attention span is, but there’s a great deal going on up there.” She pointed skyward where the giffs were circling, but some groups spun off in various directions, with purposeful sweeps of their wings. “We don’t seem to have hit a rest day,” she said, flashing a smile at Kai. “Bonnard, if I give you a leg up on the sled’s canopy, I think you can see the summit. Can you tell me what the juveniles were squawking about? Or what overbalanced the one I wanted to rescue?”

“Sure.”

“Just don’t dance about too much. Your boots’ll scar the plascreen. And no, you can’t take ’em off,” Kai added as Bonnard began to speak.

They hoisted him up and, moving with great care, Bonnard positioned himself where he could see the summit.

“There’s dead fringes up here, Varian, and some slimy looking seaweed. Aw, would you look at that?”

The juveniles, attracted by his new position, had abandoned that section of the summit and waddled over to stand directly in Bonnard’s line of sight. Disgusted, he propped both hands against his hips and glared, actions which set them all to squawking and shifting away from the edge. Kai and Varian chuckled over the two sets of young.

“Hey, recorder man, you missed a dilly of a sequence!”

“Don’t I just know it!”

“C’mon down,” Varian told him, having learned what she needed to know.

She wandered over to the sea edge of the terrace, lay down, peering farther over the drop.

“I’m not allowed up. Am I allowed down? There appears to be a cave over to the left, about twenty meters, Kai. If I use a belt-harness, you could probably swing me to it.”

Kai was not completely in favor of such gymnastics, but the belt-harness, winched safely to the sled’s exterior attachments, could hold a heavy-worlder securely. He was glad not to be at the end of the pendulum swing as she was to reach her objective.

“Are they watching, Bonnard?” Varian asked over the comunit.

“The young ones are, Varian, and yes, one of the airborne fliers is watching.”

“Let’s see if they have any prohibitive spots . . .”

“Varian . . .” Kai grew apprehensive as he, too, saw the adult giff fly in for a close look at Varian’s swinging body.

“It’s only looking, Kai. I expect that. One more swing now and . . . I got it.” She had grabbed and caught a stony protrusion at the cave entrance and agilely scrambled in.

“Rakers! It’s abandoned. It’s gigantic. Goes so far back I can’t see the end.” Her voice over the comunit sounded rumbled and then hollow. “No, wait. Just what I wanted. An egg. An egg? And they let me in. Oh, it rattles. Dead egg. Small, too. Well, only circumstantial evidence that their young are born immature. Hmmm. There’re grasses here, sort of forming a nest. Too scattered at this point to be sure. They can’t have abandoned a cave because there’s been an infertile egg? No fish bones, or scales. They must devour whole. Good digestions then.”

Bonnard and Kai exchanged glances over her monologue and the assorted sounds of her investigations, broadcast from the comunit.

“The nest grasses are not the Rift Valley type, more like the tougher fibers of the swamp growths. I wonder . . . okay, Kai,” and her broadcast voice was augmented by the clearer tones that indicated she had left the cave, “pull me up.”

She had grasses sprouting from her leg pouches as she came over the lip of the ledge, and the egg made an unusual bulge in the front of her ship suit.

“Any sign of alarm?” she asked.

Kai, securing the winch, shook his head as Bonnard leaped to assist her out of the harness.

“Hey, their eggs are small. Can I shake it?”

“Go ahead. What’s in it is long dead.”

“Why?”

Varian shrugged. “We’ll let Trizein have a gawk and see if he can find out. I don’t necessarily wish to fracture it. Let me have that plascovering, Kai,” and she neatly stored the egg, surrounded by the dead grasses, and then brushed her gloved hands together to signify a task well completed. “That’s thirsty work,” she said and led the way back to the sled where she broke out more rations.

“You know,” she said, halfway through the quick meal, “I think that each of those groups was out on various set tasks . . .”

“So we’re staying around to see what they bring home?” asked Kai.

“If you don’t mind.”

“No.” He inclined his head toward the juveniles, some of whom had indeed lost interest and were bumbling about the summit at the far side. “I’m enjoying the reversal of roles.”

“I wish I could get into a cave currently in use . . .”

“All in one day?”

“Yes, you’re right, Kai. That’s asking too much. At least, we’ve experienced no aggressive action from them. The adult construed my action as helpful rather than dangerous. It did accept the grass . . .”

They all glanced upward as an unusual note penetrated the sled’s roof, a high-pitched, sharp sustained note. The juveniles on the summit came rigidly to attention. Varian gestured to Bonnard to take the recorder but the boy was already reaching for it, doing a scan of the skies before he steadied the device on the alert young.

A mass of fliers fell from the caves, gained wing room and flew with an astonishing show of speed off into the misty southwest.

“That’s the direction of the sea gap. The net fishers?”

“The juveniles are clearing away,” said Bonnard. “Looks like fish for lunch to me.”

Out of the mist now appeared wing-weary giffs, barely skimming the water, rising with obvious effort to ledges where they settled, wings unclosed and drooping. Varian was certain she’d seen grass trailing from the rear claws of one. They waited, and so did the juveniles, occasionally poking at each other. Bonnard, fretting with the interval, moved toward the sled exit but Varian stopped him, just as they saw an adult giff land on their terrace.

“Don’t move a muscle, Bonnard.”