Heritage of Flight

by Susan Shwartz

  Abruptly Borodin seemed to be adapting to his new position and surroundings. “Now, I think we could build gliders like the ones I flew at home before I entered the service. Once they're built, all we have to do is find a high place, like those mountains, wait for an updraft, and step right off into it."

  Lohr laughed.

  "Would you like to try?"

  The boy followed Captain Borodin's hands as they described the flight of his hypothetical hang glider. The boy's eyes glowed and he nodded enthusiastically. He's quick and eager. He might have made a good pilot, Pauli thought sadly. But now? Mud farmer, grass-grower, hydroponicist at the very best he can hope for ... Well, wasn't that a fine surprise? At least this time, Pauli was sorry for someone other than her own wretched self.

  'Cilla edged up next to her again. I think I've been adopted, Pauli thought. This time the girl thrust a scrap of fax into her hands. Sketched crudely onto it was a glider. A talented child, perhaps. Were there paints among the supplies Becker left us? I'll have to check. So many talents. It was like mining: how could you find the gifts beneath the damaged exterior of the child?

  "Our resources are limited, Captain,” Dr. Pryor told Borodin calmly as several of the civilians began to nod. “We should not waste them on adventures or toys, even camouflaged as ways of enabling us to investigate our new home. Besides, the gliders you describe are risky."

  "Risky to the badly trained, or to the careless, Doctor,” retorted Borodin with more spirit than he had shown since Amherst landed. “None of my students are ever careless."

  The blonde, austere physician glanced skeptically about the circle of civilians, then met Borodin's eyes. He wasn't going to be able to charm this one, Pauli thought. She was canny and underneath the age, the tiredness, and the concern for the children, there was a sophistication and intelligence that would make the medical officer a canny ally or a bad antagonist.

  Rafe tried to catch Pauli's eye and grin over Borodin's rather heavy-handed attempt to conciliate the medical officer. His sense of the ridiculous was catching; in fact, years ago, it had helped catch Pauli too. But tonight, she didn't feel like laughing with him. Tonight—she remembered the Amherst's trail arcing up into the darkening sky, then dissipating with the night wind. She had stared at it until it was gone. There would be no more ships: she was sure of that.

  Good genes, she thought. As if I were just a set of chromosomes to be put in freeze. Breeding stock.

  They might be stuck out in the No Man's Worlds, but if Rafe tried to presume on that, he would be very sorry.

  After a moment, Rafe looked away. Then he rose to throw wood, carried down by the river and cast up on its banks, onto the fire. Sparks cascaded upward in a preposterously magical, comforting torrent. It was almost as bright as noon. Even Ayelet, the more sullen of David ben Yehuda's twins, smiled. Her father looked up from the tiny engine he was stripping and smiled too.

  It might work. Hope kindled on Borodin's face. All over the camp, children turned to the adults. Those children's futures depended on the adults’ ability to bring them back into human emotions, a human way of life. It wasn't just caretaking, though; the adults wanted so much to love them. ‘Cilla backed away from the fire, and Lohr caught her arm, brought his face up next to her thin one, and whispered urgently.

  Instants later, the little girl laughed and ran off to speak with other children. Was Pauli imagining it, or had Lohr warned her not to fear the fire?

  Lohr looked after his tiny sister and smiled, the unfeigned, free grin of a tired child. Then, abruptly, he stiffened and pointed at the night sky.

  "There!” he cried, and his voice turned into panic and rage.

  Enemy ships, thought Pauli. Not already; and me, unarmed. She had no ship with which to pursue them, even though such pursuit might spell death for the rest of the colony.

  Longing for the armaments of the Amherst and a good armscomputer here on Cynthia, Pauli leapt up. Instinctively her hand dropped for the sidearm that should have hung at her belt. She swore horribly. She'd laid it aside in deference to civ opinion that the sight of weapons might interfere with the children's readjustment.

  Such as it was.

  Pauli glanced up at the sky, hoping to see the same illusions that the children saw, then dispel it with a stunning display of logic.

  But it was not enemy ships that she saw.

  'Cilla gasped, a sound more of wonder and welcome than of terror.

  Rafe rose to his feet, his face stunned. Apparently, then, the survey that chose Cynthia as a good home for Becker's refugees had not studied the world long or closely enough to discover if it had any inhabitants.

  High above the camp, hovering in the thermals that made the flames of the settlement's first fire dance, as if they had been lured away from the mountains by the flame's flicker, fluttered a splendor of immense wings.

  4

  'Cilla struggled free of the adult who tried to embrace her and protect her from the sight by hiding her face against his shoulder, but she remained motionless.

  Rafe rose to his feet, his mouth almost slack, his eyes glowing. So he hadn't guessed either, Pauli thought. He tracked them as they swooped across the night sky. Huge, she judged them. But as they flew nearer, she saw that most of their apparent size lay in the vast wingspread that had so dazzled her when she first saw them. Firelight, reflected by some bioluminescence in their pigmentation, made them glitter with all the colors of deep space. Indigo galaxies shone on their front wings, and on their scalloped, elongated rear wings flickered whorls of silver and violet nebulae.

  They were fliers by right of birth, unlike Pauli, who had craved the power of fight all her life, and had just been grounded by someone else's whim. Fliers, and therefore kin to her; winged and beautiful, and therefore wholly wonderful. Grief, jealousy, and a sudden fierce love for the winged creatures warred within her. She looked over to see Ro nod at Rafe and bring out the comm equipment and a compterminal. That was precisely the sort of first-in work that she and Rafe had planned to spend their lives at. But they had quarrelled, had drifted asunder, and now she had neither the right to work with him nor to touch the tears that glistened on his face. Pauli sighed, then rose and walked toward the tangle of equipment.

  "Look at the antennae on those creatures!” Rafe whispered. “Set the receptors for high frequencies."

  Pauli leaned forward, faster than Ro, to make the adjustments. Her eyes strayed to Rafe's face, rapt, confident of his skill.

  "The antennae are quivering,” Rafe observed. “That has to be communications. I wonder what they're saying about us.” He welcomed intelligent aliens to study, desired them the way she desired a ship of her own and free space to fly it in.

  "You wouldn't think anything that big could get off the ground,” muttered Ari ben Yehuda.

  "Air pressure's heavier here,” said Rafe. “And their bodies are probably a whole lot lighter than ours, even in .8 gravity. Chitin, not bone, for support material, maybe a more efficient circulatory system ... I can think of many adaptations that would make a creature—a person,” he corrected himself with a smile"—flight-worthy."

  "I read that in order for there to be intelligence, the brain has to weigh a certain amount,” said ben Yehuda. Skilled with all forms of tools, a great reader, he was out of his depths here, and knew it.

  "Intelligence as we know about it.” To Pauli's astonishment, Lohr spoke up. Concealing his surprise, Captain Borodin ruffled the boy's hair approvingly. Dr. Pryor smiled at him the way Rafe smiled at the Cynthians.

  "Do you know why you're right?” Borodin asked the boy.

  Lohr flushed at so much adult approval and shook his head. He started whispering at ‘Cilia, who was scribbling again. Her shoulders were hunched, but in concentration rather than fear.

  "I'll tell him,” Rafe offered. “Relatively speaking, in our own brains, the synapses—the links by which impulses are transferred—are distant from one another. Move them closer together, pack them in the w
ay you've been packed into the docking bay, make the other modifications that I suggested, and presto!” The children laughed delightedly at his imitation of a magician. Even the aliens’ wings swayed in the breeze, sending sparkles of color glittering above their blue and crimson surfaces.

  "That's how you might get one large, light, and presumably intelligent creature. Such as the ones we have here."

  One large, light, and winged creature. Since gravity was .8 of Earth-normal here, such a being would have less need of long runway space or a high takeoff speed. Probably, given the updrafts in the mountains and the wind currents that made passage across the seas perilous on this world (if they had a ship to attempt it), such creatures could fall languidly into flight and soar for hours.

  They had to come from the mountains. Desire slashed through Pauli to take one of the gliders that Captain Borodin planned to build and fly into the mountains to see the Cynthians dancing in the gusts and downdrafts of the high passes.

  "Perhaps we should move clear of the fire,” she suggested. “If you recall, on Earth, there were creatures that used to dive straight into flame. Wishful thinking aside, we don't know for certain that these beings are really intelligent."

  "You think there might be a similar tropism?” Rafe looked up from his adjustments to the communicators’ frequency. “They haven't dived at the flames yet. In fact, I'd say that they had been rather careful to stay out of range, which makes me think that they've at least got a well-developed survival instinct. But your point's good, Pauli. Maybe we should move away from the fire, away from the camp itself. They didn't come out during the day, or when the ship was still here. Perhaps they're shy and nocturnal."

  He looked around eagerly, almost unable to wait to lure the creatures into landing.

  "Lohr, please get me the spray canisters we stacked in the supply dome,” he said.

  The boy ran off. When he reemerged with the canisters, Rafe examined them, then nodded. He sprayed the first one. Sweet. The second was more pungent, under-laid with a sort of green fragrance, doubly welcome after weeks of a ship's recycled air. With a mutter of satisfaction, Rafe tucked the canisters under his arms and moved out of the fire-lit circle.

  There was a story, Pauli remembered, an ancient one from the days before spaceflight, about humans who conversed with alien sailors by means of scents and powders. Was that what Rafe was going to try? Let orange stand for pi, or vinegar represent Avogadro's number, or the square of the hypotenuse, or something? Assuming, of course, that these creatures would even have mathematics.

  Attracted by the scents, the Cynthians circled in. Pauli tested the speed with which her sidearm would pull free of its holster, then helped Ro to carry the comms out where Rafe waited in the darkness. Then she gestured the anthropologist back. In a settlement like this, Ro Economus was far less expendable than a grounded pilot.

  "I wonder how long it'll take the microcomp to break their language patterns,” she muttered.

  "Now who's overly optimistic?” asked Rafe. “We'll be lucky to convince them to meet with us again and try to communicate."

  "Get the tapers. We'll record all of this,” Pauli told Lohr. Then she went back to watching the Cynthians, circling lazily in the sky. They seemed to come in two sizes, one about a third larger than the other; and both types were descending. “Move it fast!” she hissed at the boy and wished, when he scurried off, that she had at least been gentler.

  "They're going to stay,” Rafe murmured. “Maybe those smells intrigue them. Or maybe we do."

  Lohr and ‘Cilla ran to Pauli with the recording equipment. The firelight cast gigantic rippling shadows of their running figures on the ground cover and dancing high on the curved walls of the domes.

  Sudden static snarled out of the computer's voder. Two of the larger Cynthians detached themselves from the main formation and dived near the children. Their antennae quivered so fast that Pauli could barely see them. Iridescent heads lowered. Between the violet compound eyes, horns stiffened and grew bright with drops of some viscous fluid.

  "Move very slowly,” Pauli told the children, thanking God that her voice stayed low and calm. “Get back ... right now..."

  In an instant more, she'd have range enough to draw...

  "No!" Rafe shouted, and leapt forward. “We're friends!” The lights on the comm danced a frantic pattern, while sounds squealed up painfully until they were too high-pitched for human ears.

  Pauli rested her hands on the children's shoulders and walked them back to the fire where Dr. Pryor received them protectively.

  "Pauli, get back here. They're going to land!” Rafe cried. No thought of danger, of where she might be needed, but “get back here!” he ordered, and she still dropped everything to be near him.

  This time Pauli drew her weapon, ignoring various civilian scowls, before she left the fire. Borodin, she was glad to see, also drew. The significance of those horns, and their gleaming tips, hadn't escaped him. That had to be some natural defense.

  "Look at that!” murmured the botanist, who had put up such a fight at any military personnel being allowed—allowed!—to remain on Cynthia. “Why must they automatically assume that these ... flying things are hostile?"

  Pauli wanted to snarl at her. But it was more important to get out there in the dark and help Rafe. He was hooking the commgear to the ports of the readout display. From time to time, squeals and screeches and flutters of dazzling wings showed that he was making some progress.

  Finally he stood, weariness apparent in his stooped shoulders. The sky was beginning to pale; and the fire had burned down. The Cynthians took off and circled about the camp once before they headed back toward the mountains.

  "We can't just let them go!” Ro whispered, her voice hoarse.

  "We won't,” Rafe said. “They'll be back. They're just as curious as we are.” He rubbed an aching spot on his back, stretched, then shook himself. “I managed to intrigue them ... I swear I did. That should give us the time we need to learn to talk with them."

  He turned to walk back toward his own quarters, and never once spared Pauli a glance.

  Why not talk with these creatures? she thought with a return of that morning's bitterness. After all, what else do we have to do?

  It took weeks even to work out a simple code, long frustrating evenings in which no one could tell whether the Cynthians would even appear or not, or whether the settlers were too weary to do more than stare at the winged creatures and tap out a few desultory experiments on the computers. The planet was hospitable, after a fashion: after its own fashion, which was to demand work of those who hoped to live there.

  A day of storms, of struggle even to move from dome to dome, and the Cynthians could be counted on not to appear. On such days, clouds would hide the mountains that served, effectively, to isolate them on a broad, fertile plain. Many times, Pauli wished to explore, to take the flier she no longer had, or even the gliders that Borodin had spoken of, and soar over the plain, up into the foothills—but usually, when evening came, she was content simply to sit with the others.

  After stormy days, or on windy evenings, the Cynthians would not appear. But on the clear nights, or those with only a few freshening winds, that the Cynthians did appear, no one could ever tell what might startle them, hurling them aloft and back to their mountains. Perhaps it would be the smell of meat cooking, or a too-rapid movement by one of the settlers.

  Anything could jeopardize the fragile accord Rafe was building between himself and the winged natives of the refuge world.

  But gradually he reported progress. Gradually he moved out farther and farther from the camp to where the Cynthians would be willing to land. Their visits increased in frequency. Rafe had been right, Pauli thought. He had succeeded in intriguing the Cynthians. After a time, not even a storm that might have shredded their wings could keep them away from the fires, from Rafe, and from the signals that he, and they, tried to send to one another.

  "Their semiotic usage—their
system of signs—is vastly different from ours,” he reported to Borodin after one particularly successful visit. “No specific nouns and verbs; just concepts that can be adapted to either. Most of them have to do with flight ... you wouldn't expect winged creatures to have a sign for swimming; and sure enough, there isn't one. This doesn't surprise me.

  "They've got a sign for fire. It's semantically allied—do you see?—with the sign for destruction. Your analogy of Earth moths, Pauli..."

  So that first evening, it had been the fire that frightened the Cynthians. Odd, Pauli thought. At first, I thought they feared the children. But how could anyone fear children, especially those as badly traumatized as the ones here had been? Strange: she had always assumed that one good way of establishing contacts with aliens was through the young of each species.

  "There's something that's been puzzling me,” Rafe spoke up the next evening, after the Cynthians braved rain and wind to appear at the tiny camp. “I want to get a sample of that fluid on their horns."

  "Rafe, if they turn on you, we haven't got an antidote for that,” Pryor warned him.

  "I think they know they can trust me,” he replied.

  "You'll cover him,” Borodin mouthed at Pauli, who moved in.

  "You'd better let me take the sample,” she told Rafe. He was too valuable to risk, and she—she knew her reflexes were faster than most. After all, she was—had been!—a pilot.

  Taking a slide, she dabbed with it at the horn of the nearest Cynthian, then leapt back before it could do more than rear up in surprise. She smelled the alien: dusty, like old leaves in the autumn on the homeworld she remembered now only in the sort of dreams from which one woke crying. Perhaps, if she were lucky, she could remember it thus, not as a nightmare vision of a world charred until it no longer had autumns or any other season, or a world irradiated into a trackless, endless winter.