by David Weber
“They don’t look too dangerous,” he said. “I mean, they don’t have nasty hooked beaks, so I’m guessing they’re omnivores or scavengers rather than hunters. I can’t really get a good look at their feet, though, so it’s hard to say.”
“Karl said something . . .” Toby’s voice faltered. “I can’t remember what.”
“Did he say they were dangerous?” Christine asked. “I mean, do they have poison or spines or something that might make up for them not being super huge?”
“Naw, nothing like that,” Toby assured her. “It was something about them being migratory and moving into lower areas when winter came on. Something like that. I’m pretty sure he didn’t say anything about them being dangerous.”
Anders wondered if he imagined the warble of doubt in the younger boy’s voice, but when none of the others questioned Toby, he figured he must have. After all, they knew Toby a lot better.
“Here’s my idea,” he said. “Stephanie wouldn’t like it very much if we hurt—or even really disrupted—the rock ravens, not just to get a present. So how about I go in alone? I’ll grab whatever’s there, then get out.”
“I don’t want to give away too much,” Jessica said, “but I can say that what Stephanie left is small enough for one person to pull out. Still, wouldn’t you like some of us to fly cover?”
“Or maybe go in for you?” Toby added. “Like you said, Stephanie wouldn’t like it if any of the rock ravens got hurt and, well, you’re not the best flyer here.”
“I am,” Anders replied, “the worst. I know that. You know that. More importantly, Stephanie knew that. I’m sure she wouldn’t have set up something I couldn’t handle. So I’m going in.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but he was actually nervous about taking his glider in among all those birds. However, he also didn’t want to give anyone a chance to talk him out of it. Stephanie had set this up for him, not for the whole gang.
Shifting his goggles back to normal range, he readied himself for the maneuver. He knew that Christine or Jessica would have managed a fancy dive, but he figured prudence was best. He’d drop down to the level of Stephanie’s purple whatever, then go in on a flat horizontal course until he came up alongside. He’d grab it and get out. Then they’d all scatter and the rock ravens could go back to doing whatever it was rock ravens did.
Perfect.
Except, as with most plans, it didn’t work out quite that way.
The rock ravens didn’t react until Anders was on their level and speeding toward them. Then, rather than scattering as he’d figured they would, they bunched up. Not wanting to hurt them, Anders started braking. That would have been a bad idea with a traditional glider, since he’d risk losing loft as well as speed, but he had the counter-grav unit to compensate.
He’d managed to slow up before he reached the flock. Then, to his horror, the flock came at him. The sounds they made were more like the shrill shrieks of a peacock than the hoarser caws and croaks of Old Earth ravens. They penetrated into his inner ear, creating a sensation of vertigo. His body felt as if he were wobbling, falling, even as his intellect assured him that the counter-grav unit had to be keeping him aloft.
The rock ravens were all around him, mobbing him, beating at him with their wings, pecking indiscriminately at the glider’s fabric, his clothing, the exposed skin of his face, their hard beaks tapping against his goggles. He felt hot beads of blood coursing into streams. The edges of the feathers rasped against his skin, causing a small pocket of his brain to guess that whatever made the side veins was stronger and coarser than the material of terrestrial feathers.
For a long and terrible moment, overwhelmed on all sides and all senses, Anders found it nearly impossible to think. He was aware of the voices of his friends shouting at him on the open channel of his new uni-link, but he couldn’t make out anything over the shrieking of the rock ravens. He had to get free of the flock before they drove his faltering glider into the edge of the cliff. The counter-grav unit couldn’t stop that.
The cliff face swirled and danced in front of him. The shrieking in his ears reverberated louder and louder. Buffeted by angry aviforms, Anders struggled to find a way to avoid certain doom . . .
7
Counter-grav!
Anders fumbled for the control, then pushed the weight-control slide to make himself lighter. For a moment, he thought the sheer mass of the avians on top of him would hold him down, but although the mob of ravens was dense, it couldn’t contain him. He peeled up and out, floating toward the sky with increasing speed once the obstructions had been pushed aside. Quickly, he leveled off, then brought himself lower once more.
The shrieks of the rock ravens had shifted to something that sounded suspiciously triumphant, and Anders craned around to see how much damage they done to his glider. Thankfully, Bradford Whitaker’s usual tendency to skimp on anything other than anthropology hadn’t won out when he’d been choosing his son’s glider. The high-tech fabrics were dimpled but largely intact.
“Wow!” Toby’s voice was the first to register on Anders’ recovering ears. “That was amazing.”
“Good thing you got out of there so fast,” Chet said. “You think well on your feet—and off them, too, now that I think about it.”
His warm chuckle startled Anders, until he realized that what had been to him a horrible ordeal had probably lasted no more than a few seconds. The peacock cries of the rock ravens had distorted more than his sense of balance.
“You okay, Anders?” Jessica’s voice held deep concern. “They didn’t get your eyes or anything?”
“I had my flying goggles on,” Anders replied, “and I’m really glad. They definitely were going for my eyes. Clever little monsters.”
“Land at base,” Christine said firmly. “We better make sure you and your glider didn’t take any real damage.”
Anders thought about arguing. With the counter-grav unit on, it wasn’t like he could fall or anything, even if his glider was damaged, but he knew that tone. If he argued, Christine would simply get Chet to help her grab him and tow him in. Chet would probably think it was really funny.
When they landed, the girls made a fuss over the peck marks on his face. When Anders got a look at himself in Christine’s pocket mirror, he couldn’t argue. He looked pretty bad, with blood and streaks of what he thought was probably bird shit all over his face. The shit wasn’t restricted to his face, either. Neither were the feathers. . . . Bits of down and longer wing feathers stuck to him, giving evidence of how violent the rock ravens had been in protecting their territory.
Anders plucked off one of the larger feathers and tilted it back and forth, noting how the colors shifted in the light through blues into browns.
“Well, I guess something good came out of this,” he said. “We can collect samples for the SFS biologists. Anyone got a small bag?”
Jessica said, “I’ll borrow from Valiant’s stash.”
On Sphinx, even kids knew how to plan in advance for emergencies. There was a first aid kit in Chet’s truck and another in Jessica’s car. Fresh water wasn’t a problem, either. Within a relatively short time, Anders was scrubbed off and had been deemed fit for action once more.
“Well,” Toby said philosophically, “at least now we know rock ravens will fight back. I wonder if that’s what Karl meant when he said we should keep clear of them?”
“Now you remember?” Anders retorted sarcastically.
“Hey,” Toby said with an eloquent shrug of his supple shoulders. “I thought he was just worried about the birds. You know how he and Stephanie are. Nature first.”
“You’ve got a point,” Anders agreed. “Now, how do I get that thing? Obviously, it’s not going to be as easy as just grabbing it. For some reason those idiot ravens have decided they want to keep it.”
“I wonder,” Jessica said, “if it’s the color. Stephanie picked it because it was close to the shade of those hexaflies you two saw here. I wonder if the rock ravens t
hink that that’s the biggest stash of hexaflies they’ve ever seen and you want to swipe it.”
Anders laughed. “I bet you’re right. If they’re sight hunters, the color would mean more to them than the fact that Stephanie’s package is the wrong size and smell and all.”
“Hey, don’t be too hard on them,” Christine said. “After all, there were a lot of hexaflies here not long ago. They’ve got a lot of reason to hope.”
Chet nodded. “Color might be our answer. What if we waited until after dark? If the rock ravens are sight hunters, then it’s likely they bed down or roost or whatever it is birds do it at night.”
“That’s a good idea,” Anders said. “Do you think we need to tell the Harringtons? I mean, I’m not sure they’d like the idea of us cliff-diving after dark.”
“I wouldn’t bug them,” Jessica said. “Stephanie always says it’s better to not say anything if you think someone won’t like the truth. We’re pretty far from where they have their house. If we don’t show a light, we should be fine. We’ll wait until the rock ravens get quiet, then send someone—”
“Me!” Anders insisted when Toby looked all too ready to volunteer. “This is still my quest. Anyhow, I’ll just use the counter-grav to lower myself. No problem.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Toby grumbled, but he didn’t protest further.
* * *
This time the plan worked. The rock ravens even cooperated by retreating into neat little holes in the rock as soon as the light began to lose its brilliance. They peeped a bit as Anders drifted by, but seemed to feel no inclination to go after him.
Maybe they think I’m a condor owl or something, Anders thought. They know how to pick their battles. That’s really not a bad lesson to take away from this. Not a bad one at all.
* * *
“Wow, that’s amazing what happened with the rock ravens,” Stephanie told the pickup as she recorded her latest message to Anders. “I had no idea they’d react that way. Jess wrote me about what happened, and it sounds as if you were great—and not nearly as out-of-control as you made it sound when you messaged me last night.
“I’m really glad you and Jessica both like my idea about her serving as liaison. Jess said that she actually got the impression Chief Ranger Shelton was relieved when she—I mean Jess—volunteered to be interviewed and to let the xenoanthropologists meet Valiant. You know how protective Irina is of Scott’s free time, but Chief Ranger Shelton isn’t the sort to assume that just because Jess is only fifteen she’s automatically available. And she and her family can sure use the stipend. I think it was a good move on your dad’s part to offer it.”
Stephanie sighed, thinking about how much she wished she didn’t have to delegate that particular job. She was glad Jessica would be able to supplement her family’s income, of course, but still . . .
“The coursework is just as intensive as we were warned. We weren’t even on planet two hours before a bunch of material for us to review was downloaded onto our uni-links.”
She went on to describe some of the material, which ranged from social customs to elementary forensics, with a lot of botany and zoology in the middle.
“—so then we got the full tour.” Stephanie giggled. “Poor Karl found out it’s even hotter here in Landing than he thought it’d be. I thought he was gonna melt right down in front of me, but even the air-conditioning’s set a lot higher here than it is back home! It’s rough on Lionheart, too, but I think dad’s right about how the ’cat shedding mechanism works. Lionheart’s been shedding like crazy ever since we got here, and it has to’ve been kicked off by the rise in temperature. My dorm room looks like a permanent blizzard from all the hair he’s lost! But the labs are nice, and the HD set up is a lot better than I thought it would be. I like my dorm room, too, even if I wish it was a little bigger. With all this space here on campus, you’d think they could give me more than one room! But I guess it’s really all Lionheart and I need.”
Lionheart jumped up onto the back of her chair as if summoned by the sound of his name and twitched his whiskers gravely into the pickup over her shoulder. She laughed and reached up to scratch him under the chin, then turned back to the message.
“I wish we could let him run around more on his own, but Dean Charterman—she’s dean of students for the university—made me promise I won’t let him out without me. She says it’s for his own protection, but I think she’s little worried about what sort of trouble he might get into . . . or cause.” She grimaced, then shrugged. “On the other hand, it might be she’s worried about contamination, too. I know some people’re still nervous about how freely we let humans move back and forth between planets here in the Star Kingdom, and I think some of them are afraid Lionheart might be carrying disease or parasites or something.”
Her expression made her opinion of that particular worry obvious, but then she shook her head with another grimace.
“I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising after the Plague and all,” she acknowledged, trying to be at least marginally fair about it. “But you’d think all of the screening and medical inspections they still have in force would help people get past it. It darned well ought to, anyway!”
She glowered, still scratching Lionheart’s chin, while she contemplated such benighted attitudes for a moment.
“We’ve met our professors,” she continued then. “Dr. Gleason’s officially only a department head, but my impression is that he pretty much runs the School of Forestry, and I don’t think he’s too happy to see us.” She snorted. “Seems downright determined to keep as far away from Lionheart as he can, too, which I think is just plain dumb. He’s supposed to be teaching forestry and he doesn’t even want to meet a treecat?” She snorted again, louder. “On the other hand, Dr. Flouret’s chairman of the College of Criminology, and I’m pretty sure he’s one of the good guys. Seems to be an old friend of Dr. Hobbard’s, and he had some really nice things to say about Chief Shelton, too.”
She paused, not quite sure what to say next, and felt a sudden burning sensation behind her eyes. She knew how interested Anders was going to be in everything she just told him, but she didn’t want to tell him about it; she wanted to show him, because that would have meant he was right here on Manticore where she could!
She bit the inside of her lip for a moment, then drew a deep breath and made herself go on brightly.
“In the meantime, Karl and I have been checking out the dining hall. You know how much I love to eat, and, fortunately, there are quite a few Sphinxians here with the kind of metabolism I have. At least they’re not going to starve me between official meals! And besides that . . .”
She trailed off. Much as she wished she could somehow make Anders be there with her, she knew wishing wouldn’t make it happen. Instead, she went back to what was really bugging her.
“I was fascinated—okay, a bit horrified, too—to hear how much trouble you had retrieving the package from the rock ravens. I don’t think anything could go that wrong with the rest of it, at least I sure hope not. . . . Message me every step, okay?”
She wanted to say more, to say how much more fun it would be if he was there with her, but she didn’t trust herself not to break down. Instead, she blew a kiss toward the pickup. “Miss you . . . Lots . . . ”
* * *
Keen Eyes was deeply worried. Over the last span of days he had searched for somewhere his clan—renamed in the depths of his mind the Landless Clan—might go. Given the hostility displayed by Swimmer’s Scourge, Keen Eyes felt that the route into the lowlands was unsafe. If he had his way, he would have taken the remnants of the clan into Bright Water’s territory and traded on that clan’s known liberality. However, the older People of his clan—sadly the majority among the survivors—held firm against this.
That Sour Belly was long past his best hunting days meant nothing to him—no more than did the fact that his current name came from the fact that he was old enough that his digestion was not what it once had been. He viewed this infirmity as an indication of his extreme age, and extreme age as reason enough for his opinion to be better than anyone else’s.
Keen Eyes couldn’t agree, but, short of reducing the clan even further—and robbing it of its source of stone tools—he had no choice. If Wide Ears or one of the other memory singers had survived, she might have overruled the elders, but Tiny Choir was less than a turning old, far too young to be recognized as an adult, much less take over as the clan’s memory singer.
Keen Eyes was also crippled in his ability to press his opinion because, before the fires, he had been among the younger scouts. The fact that many of his elders, including his beloved teacher, had died seeking the routes that had enabled the clan to get at least the elderly and the kittens to safety, did Keen Eyes no favors now. He was now the most senior scout . . . but not—at least in the minds of those such as Sour Belly—because he had earned the rank, but because he had been too careful of his life to die.
The decision—if any decision could be said to have been made, rather than simply made necessary by the creeping advance of colder weather—was to shift down into the lowest parts of their range and hope for the best. Keen Eyes suspected that by the reasoning of the Trees Enfolding Clan they had already violated the boundaries of their territory, but, thus far, the intrusion had been tolerated. How much longer—or further—that intrusion would be tolerated, Keen Eyes could not guess.
He could only hope that this fragile period of grace would extend until he could find them a new home.
* * *
Although the gang offered to help Anders with the rest of his scavenger hunt, none of the other clues offered the same level of threat. Probably the most “dangerous” challenge was one that took Anders to the burned out island where Stephanie and the others had fought to save Valiant’s clan. However, the danger offered by the island was due more to people than to the environment. It shared a border with lands held by the Franchitti family—a family that believed animals were for hunting, shooting, and imprisoning rather than preserving. They’d already received several reprimands for abuse of flora and fauna alike. As a result, they’d become very guarded about who crossed their airspace.
