Heritage of Flight

by Susan Shwartz

  Perhaps in Beneatha's wanderings, she had seen the children on their way to whatever refuge Lohr thought he had found for them. (Rafe didn't think that the boy could get them all the way to the caves, which, at any rate, were occupied.) Couldn't they even trust me to care for my own son? Serge was gone, missing with all the children except Ari and Ayelet, whom David had taken home once his son's fever and sweating and nausea subsided.

  Husky specimen that he was, Ari was out of danger, now. And waiting outside to talk with Rafe. Rafe called him in; and his sister came too. Perhaps one of them might have an answer for him.

  Ari flushed and went silent. But Ayelet proved more talkative. Since she had not eaten any of the tainted bread, she had escaped the madness, though worry about her brother and her colony had set dark circles under her eyes and made her jump at any sudden movement.

  "Why did you pass up the bread?” Rafe asked her.

  "Lohr said I was too fat,” the girl muttered, her eyes downcast, her full cheeks flushing awkwardly.

  Rafe looked over at ben Yehuda, who shrugged, then took over the conversation.

  "Sweetheart, did Lohr ever say anything to you that—"

  "I've been trying to remember!” she cried. “You know Lohr: he's always quiet about what he thinks. Do you think you can bring him back, him and the littlests?"

  Rafe covered his face, massaging temples with trembling fingers.

  I'm not the one to ask. Rafe the weakling, with his smile for everyone, and his broken nerve. Look what happened: Pauli takes off for the cliffs, risking her neck because she knew I couldn't handle that mission. What happens here? She leaves me in charge, and the whole place falls to hell, or worse than hell. And now those mad bastard kids stole my son! Lohr, if I ever see you again...

  Someone shook at him, and he leapt up, his hand grabbing for the weapon he always carried these days.

  "Oh, ‘s'you,” he grunted, staring bleary-eyed at the tech who watched him from a wary distance this time. Last time he'd tried that, Rafe had caught him by the throat.

  "Wha's it now?” he grumbled.

  "Someone's coming in!” cried the man. Someone? It had to be Pauli! Thank God. Tears came to his reddened eyes again. Rafe struggled out of his uncomfortable chair, stretched the worst aches from his spine, and hurried outside.

  Noon light glinted off the reflective surfaces of canted wings as his wife's glider banked and spiralled down toward the camp. Rafe started toward her, breaking into a shambling run as he anticipated her turns and her landing site. He was there as she touched down, staggered, and overbalanced into his arms.

  For a moment, Pauli's face retained the exultant grin she wore whenever she managed flying time. Her body was taut, ready ... poised, seemingly, for takeoff the moment she caught her breath.

  Never love a pilot! he reminded himself. But the look on her face reminded him just how easy he had found it to love her. But as he steadied her, pressing her against his body, the exultation went out of her; and she clung to him. Her grief flooded out from her hands and the skin of her cheek to engulf him.

  "I've got answers for us,” she whispered. “Thorn's flying search, and he should call in soon. He'll let us have the computer from the caves, and all the supplies we gave him."

  Rafe straightened up, one moment past the brattish impulse that tempted him to sob out his failure in his wife's arms. How tiny she was—and how brave! And how terribly he had failed her when she had trusted him to keep order. Well, he'd kept some order, but he had not been able to prevent the children from fleeing, or the madmen from breaking loose. Smoke still wound up in greasy trails from some of the ruined domes; crudely painted black moths still dripped down the sides of many others.

  Almost as bad as the ruined worlds, he thought, choking back tears. No wonder the kids fled us. They'd had a bellyful of adult “protection." His hands tightened on Pauli's narrow back and he drew on the strength that was the greatest thing about her.

  After a long moment, she drew a shaky breath, and pushed free of him, her hands fumbling, despite long familiarity, with the glider's harness until the wings toppled from her back to the ground.

  "Get everyone out here,” she told him. “Everyone, even the people who are sick—but not crazy enough to run wild if we take them outside. I'll speak to them outside the commhut."

  Not a word of their child. Neither of them had ever been good with fine words: nor had they needed that many words between them. Now he could see grief bleeding her white, as it had bled him from the moment when he learned that Lohr preferred the wilderness to the adults who had murdered an entire race to protect them.

  She stood waiting, the bright folds of her wings casting sparkles upon the grimy flightsuit that she had worn for the climb, as people walked, hobbled, or were carried toward the central area outside the commhut. Then, walking slowly so that everyone could see that she was still alive, still sane, still there for them, she joined them.

  "I understand,” she began in a clear, quiet voice, “that some of you have decided that we don't belong here. What I want to know is where you do think we belong? There aren't any ships, you know, to listen to us whine, and come take us away—unless, of course, you want to run the risk of the Secess’ finding us.

  "Have you thought of what might happen, though, if our own people find us? what they'll call us? how we're likely to be sentenced? Maybe some of you have, because some of you, I can see, think that the only thing left for us to do is die here."

  She let the mumbling begin, rise, then peak in a few shouts of angry agreement, “How dare you?” she began in a breathless, angry voice that rose like wind blowing across stone: cold and unforgiving and dangerous. “How dare you suggest that we let ourselves die here? What sort of remembrance is that of the people we killed: to lose heart and die, and leave their world a desolation?

  "I ask you, do you really think you deserve to die, and to forget what you've done—what we've all done? An entire species is dead, killed by us to protect our children. And now our children are missing"—her voice crackled with sarcasm—"and some of you are probably whining that we ‘cannot interfere,’ or that the kids—children, all of them!—are smart enough to choose wisely.

  "I told you when we killed the Cynthians: we have to make our own choices, and live with them. We ... we the adults. That's what adults do. If we don't shoulder the burdens, no one else will. But we cannot choose death for our children, who've had so little of life."

  "Where are they? Find them!” Pauli heard people in the crowd begin to cry.

  "I've got a man looking into it,” she assured the people. “Thorn Halgerd. He's giving us the supplies we gave him—bribed him with—to leave us alone. Giving them to us, because human children are lost, and he cannot bear that any child suffer pain if he has breath to stop it. He's coming down now. I don't expect you to love him. But I do expect you to make him decently welcome. Because his first thought, when he heard that our children were lost, was to think how best to help us. Not to scheme how he'd wait till we'd killed ourselves off, then contact the Secess'."

  There was some grumbling at Halgerd's name but, “Dammit, when my son was trapped by stobor, Halgerd leapt in to save him and almost died himself! I'll make him welcome, if no one else will,” ben Yehuda called. He would, Pauli thought. And Dr. Pryor—for Alicia, he was the son she never had—at the Kwanzaa feast, she had taken two ears of corn, Pauli remembered. One was for the promise of children. But the other had been for Thorn. And Beneatha was probably too guilt-ridden to protest at all. Useful for now, Pauli thought, and her humility would probably last for at least five minutes after any success they might have in pulling themselves together.

  "I ask you: if we give up, what sort of a memorial do we leave for the Cynthians? What sort of life have we provided the children? And without them, what reason do we have to go on living?

  "Now,” Pauli went on, “those of you who weren't exposed to the tainted bread, half of you form up into search partie
s. That's right: count off right now! The rest of you, clean up that mess, and keep it clean! Get the people who are walking wounded to help. It'll relieve their muscle cramps, just the way dancing did in Earth's Dark Ages. And once this place is clean, you can all start acting like human beings, not scared animals!"

  The trampled square swarmed with what looked like madness, but was far more purposeful.

  "What about the grain supplies?” Beneatha's voice was a shadow of its usual hostile self. Asking about the grain is a punishment she has passed on herself, Pauli realized. She rose to her feet, starting to walk toward the woman who was still very ill. Her face was greenish, and she wavered perceptibly, even as she leaned on the arms of two of the life-sciences people. But when Beneatha waved Pauli back, she obeyed. At least I can give her more dignity than she had up in the foothills.

  "The grain? We aren't the first community to lose a year's harvest,” Pauli said. “But I'll bet you a year's pay it's the last we lose!” Beneatha refused to subside. She met Pauli's eyes, her chin up, her jaw truculent as ever.

  Pauli nodded respect at her and gave her the brutal truth. “We'd best burn it, once everything else is taken care of. I'm sorry."

  "Not half as sorry as I am,” Beneatha murmured, turning away. “Not one-quarter. I'll have my people get torches ready."

  "It can wait for now,” said Pauli. But Beneatha had already left.

  As the search parties set off, Pauli sank down on a bench, leaned back against the dome, and blew into hands chilled even through her gloves. “There's got to be something hot to drink,” Rafe told her. “Probably from last night."

  "It better be strong enough to fly by itself,” she said. “Thanks.” She pulled out communications gear, and shifted from frequency to frequency, sorting through the calls of one party. If getting hot food into her was the best he could do, he'd better go do it, he thought.

  Legs coiled under her like a child, Pauli was still rapt over the commgear when he returned, with clean mugs steaming in his hands. Hard to believe that that fiercely scowling girl led an entire settlement, or planned to wipe out a winged race—or had loved him and borne a son lost to them now! The familiar grief twisted his guts again.

  She glanced up and smiled at him, preoccupied, but trying to hide it.

  "I'm trying to raise Halgerd,” she said.

  "Why him, rather than the others?” Rafe asked.

  "Aside from the fact that he can cover more ground than the others? He's got Lohr's wings, remember? And his eyesight's naturally ... no, that's not right; he's modified for keen sight and greater than normal strength. He can hold out the longest ... wait a moment ... holding out!"

  She leapt to her feet. “Ayelet!” she shouted at the adolescent who was helping a woman whose hands were still shaking to wipe red smears of paint from a curved wall. “Get over here!"

  Ayelet bounded over.

  "Lohr took all the littlests, did he? All of them?"

  "They're not here,” the girl agreed.

  "That's what I thought,” said Pauli. She spoke into her comm. “Yeager here. Don't forget that the kids will be held to the speed of the slowest child among them, and they've got one with a bad limp."

  ” ‘Cilla!” gasped Ayelet.

  "What about her?” asked Pauli.

  "Lohr asked me once if anything ... anything ... ever happened to him, Ari and I should look after ‘Cilla. We told him that our father would help too, but you know Lohr. He thinks we should do everything on our own."

  "Did you promise?"

  ” ‘Course,” said Ayelet. That was right, Pauli nodded to herself. She'd thought that Ayelet and Lohr showed some signs of pairing off. If it hadn't been for Ari, when Lohr lit out for a hiding place, Dave might well have had to tie down his daughter.

  Interference crackled and hummed, shrieked up and down the scale as Pauli homed in on the one signal she had sought. “Thorn? Is that you?"

  "Captain?"

  Pauli shut her eyes with relief, and Rafe tried not to grit his teeth. His wife and the renegade were both pilots; small wonder they trusted one another ... at least somewhat.

  "Thorn,” she acknowledged. “Remember that they've got very young children with them. One of them limps badly ... and is holding a child. They can't travel that far, not burdened that way, and not with an undisciplined crew—” Yes, but they disciplined themselves well enough to stay alive in the burrows of Wolf IV.

  "There's searchers out too,” Pauli spoke into the comm. Another wail of static drowned out Thorn's answer, or perhaps the clone had planned it that way.

  "No, don't worry about it. I've told them to expect that you'll be calling in."

  Orders weren't enough for born-humans, the captain had told Thorn during a night that struck him now as unreal as any stass-tank dream. He had watched her as she slept, as he might have guarded one of his brothers. She could have had his life, could have his obedience, for a mere word; but she asked instead. Perhaps he could give her more than she asked for—perhaps even what she wanted: news of the children.

  He scanned the ground below him, banking to investigate a stand of stubby trees in which a crew of children might have hidden if there were no more than five of them, and none of those five was more than four feet tall.

  Orders weren't enough. But she—he could only call her Pauli when those clear, steady eyes of hers were on him, and it was disobedience to call her anything else—had ordered him: join the search parties, seek out the missing children.

  Let me find them! he begged, and realized he had learned another word: prayer. He swooped still lower, the wind chilling his face even through the new beard he had grown, as he investigated a rockfield that began to slant upward toward the foothills. He wanted to find them: God, he yearned to find them, to bring the children, as a gift, back to the settlement and win a welcome he couldn't even imagine.

  He had the food and the computer for them, though those things had belonged to them from the start. But the children! There was strength in Lohr, whom he remembered as a swarthy, too-thin youth, his eyes bleak with hatred and caution, his hand shaking on a gun far too large for any boy to use. He was still young enough to cry, as he'd done after he knew that Ari would live and—thanks to his own quick work—so would Thorn.

  Thorn had never cried when he was Lohr's age. What good would it have done? He'd only have been sedated and tossed back into stass while officers pondered whether or not his tears betrayed some instability in his whole group.

  There were younger children too: a frail girl who clung to Lohr whenever possible—his sister; and the captain's child too! Faces upon faces: it seemed hard to know that an entire city of faces awaited him—and not one was his brother.

  But he had never failed in courage before. He banked again, and rose effortlessly on the thermals. Lohr was leading the children toward the hills, was he? The lad was no fool.

  Thorn scanned the terrain, grateful as he always was in action for his augmented sight, his hearing that let him distinguish search party from search party, static from chatter, and messages from...

  From music?

  Thin and plaintively reedy, the sound of pipes floated up to Halgerd on the damp air. “Halgerd here,” he spoke quickly, crisply, ignoring the one gasp of shock he heard. “Is any one of your runaways a musician?"

  "Lohr has pipes,” came the answer. There—he heard the music again, shrill, even infectious, coaxing the no-doubt exhausted children to struggle yet farther, up the slopes, into safe hiding behind their leader, who played to put new heart in them.

  "Then I've got a fix on them!” Thorn called, and gave out coordinates.

  He gained altitude and flew over them, trying to keep them in sight. Abruptly, however, the sun came out from behind Cynthia's heavy slate clouds, and his shadow flickered out over the runaways like a dark, elongated winged creature.

  He hissed in aggravation. “They've spotted me!” he announced crisply, without apology (he didn't think that Captain Yeag
er had a stass tank to shut him into, much as he deserved it; and nerve induction was useless if you had no other brothers who would share the pain your blunder had earned). “I'm going to land."

  "Wait for us!” came the deep voice Thorn remembered as belonging to David ben Yehuda. Interesting, he thought. That name came from Ararat. The Halgerd memories woke in him: Ararat was tough, and almost as proud a world—even making allowance for the fact that all the Alliance was rotten to the core—as Freki. Ben Yehuda ... he was one of the crew who had brought Thorn in. Why was he so far from home?

  "Thorn?” came Captain Yeager's voice, softer and more agitated than he had ever heard it.

  "Do you see ... a fair little girl, about your coloring, who walks with a definite limp? She might be carrying a child in her arms."

  Her child. Thorn remembered when it had been born. He swooped lower, and watched as Lohr forbade his tiny army to flee. Instead, the boy turned and shook his fist at the departing glider and its pilot. Damned good thing he didn't have a blaster this time, Thorn thought. This time, he probably wouldn't have tried to miss.

  Children down there ... children of all sizes and all colors, though most were still too thin, their bodies marked with the struggle to survive. A black girl there; there an Oriental youth; two or three children with coloring much like his own ... he scanned the crowd of tired children, his memories of the one child Pauli mentioned (and her own) as clear in his mind as a ship in the sights of the armscomp.

  Even as he watched, the boy Lohr gestured the children to move again, ordering them, encouraging them, and as the ragged, weary line started uphill again, taking out his pipe and playing.

  Thorn veered away from the children toward the search party that approached from the settlement. If he was wise, he would guide them from the air. But he was afraid he was not wise, not any longer; temptation burned strong to land and walk with the born-humans, as if he were one of them. If they would have him. He thumbed on his comm.