Silent Songs (24 page)

The Simiu was just as he'd left her, only the dental work and depilation were completed. A new shift of aliens had come in and she thought they were reviewing the analysis of the previous group. Since the grinding had stopped, she'd grown indifferent. She'd convinced herself she didn't need sleep, that Simiu were strong enough to remain awake indefinitely. The loss of her fur made her cold even in the warm, humid environment, but she welcomed that, since it helped her stay awake.

Even though Taniwha was young, he recognized the song of madness. The calf entered her brain rudely, wanting her to know he was there. He demanded answers. K'heera was not of the World, surely she understood these evil beings. What were they doing here? What were they doing to his people, to his father? K'heera tried to shut her mind down, not wanting to cope with anyone else's pain, but the youngster would not be shut out. He showed her what was happening on the beach.

Slowly, she responded.
The aliens are studying your people,
she thought at him.
Why. I don't know. I don't know what they want, I'm a prisoner, just like
them. Save yourselves. There's nothing you can do for them. . . .

Taniwha made K'heera see through his father's eyes as groups of aliens guided huge vats over to the Singers, vats that sloshed and dripped pungent liquids.

Together, they watched the aliens surround the female Singer. Her panic surged through the herd, even as Taniwha's father uselessly urged calm.

The being holding her head suddenly pushed her snout underwater. Every Singer and K'heera experienced her desperate struggle for air, but eventually her nostrils opened convulsively and she inhaled. Her lungs pumped furiously, pushing

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water out, then sucking it back in again, her mind-thrashing panic driving the herd insane.

Finally it was over, and Taniwha's father watched as the aliens flayed the flesh from the dead female and threw it into the vats. Her blood poured into the River of Life, and its scent was more than the captive Singers could bear.

The Great Hunger was truly among them--no longer content to hide in the ocean, it had invaded their beloved River to feast on them!

Hysterically, they battered the energy corral, burning themselves on the webs. Taniwha was caught in the throng, no longer able to see his father or
hear
his mother, as the Singers pushed against their prison with all their might. Finally, the aliens must have realized they would suicide on the grid.

They dropped one of the webs, allowing the captive herd to flee westward up the River.

K'heera, carried along on the tide of panic, watched their flight. She knew it was useless, and her knowledge shocked Taniwha as he was swept away.

They can find your people whenever they want,
she told him bitterly. Just then, the aliens began drowning the other bull. The dying male's panic overpowered all other mental communication.

Taniwha felt his parents try once more to affect the mind of the alien holding his father's head. They used every bit of mental ability they could muster on the creature's intellect, but the alien ignored them. Its comrade handed it a chunk of hot, bloody flesh, cut from the not-quite-dead young bull even as their victim's mental death screams shook the herd to their core.

The alien holding Father took the steaming meat, and calmly popped it into its wide mouth. Only then did the herd realize that every alien on the beach was eating flesh cut from the bones of their friends. The atmosphere among the un-Worldly creatures was one of feasting and joy.

Taniwha
heard
K'heera as she thought wildly of the Captain's Night party she'd attended with Jib. The Simiu fought back nausea, but her stomach was so empty she had nothing to bring up.

Suddenly the happy crowd turned its attention to Father. The young calf tried to turn back, to somehow rescue his father, but his mother's sister suddenly appeared beneath him and physically stopped him. At that same moment the old bull's captor dropped Father's huge head under the waves and sat on it while licking gobbets of Singer meat off its fingers. Other aliens clambered onto Father's back, hacking at his tough, aged skin with sharp

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tools, ripping it away from the fat and muscle. The aliens scraped at the bull's rich fat stores, ignoring the blood and grease that covered them.

Still, Taniwha
heard
his father's song. The bull struggled futilely to keep the images of his death from his youngest child. Despite Father's efforts, Taniwha, his mother, and K'heera, too, witnessed the slow, painful death of the old male.

Tell Jib!
K'heera begged Taniwha.
Tell Jib and the others, before they're
captured, too.

Suddenly Taniwha's aunt blocked him from responding to K'heera's plea.

She could
hear
her sister wailing her widow's song as her mate died horribly to feed these aliens, this new Great Hunger. Their people were captured, betrayed, slaughtered. What difference was there between one un-Worldly being and another? There would be no contact ever, ever again.

NO!
K'heera begged.
Please, listen to me, don't shut me . . .

Taniwha's aunt blocked K'heera's desperate pleading as she pushed him westward, away from the alien village. The calf's mother, on the east side of the web, was pulled away from the grid and finally swam with the free herd toward the sea. All Taniwha could smell through the great River of Life was blood and fear and death. And through the herdmind, beneath the mourning wail of his people, al the young calf could
hear
was the dying song of his father.

Tesa swam through the River of Fear . . . no, the River of Life. Underwater, in the dark, her arms propelled her body through the murky depths. Was she searching for Jib? She couldn't remember.

Suddenly she thudded into something solid. She turned, only to bump into something else. Blocked, she swam to the surface.

Before a curtain of stars in the dark night sky the Child Sun hung above the Moons. Two full, one half--the Moons of

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the Fledgling's First Adventure. She started to smile, but. .. the Moons weren't their usual ghostly white. They were . .. red.

All three glowed that ominous shade as Father Moon oozed, then dripped blood that fell straight down from space to plop into the River as though the big satellite were nothing more than a floating balloon. Drip. Plop. Drip. Plop.

Tesa watched crimson ripples slap against the obstacles clogging the River.

Brushing against the huge skeleton of a Singer, she suddenly realized the whole River was choked with those creatures' big white bones. Backing away, she collided with the stiff corpse of a White Wind, its elegant feathers waving limply on the current, pointing to others like it. Before she could move, the flaccid wing of a Hunter draped across her shoulder. Gasping, she floundered for the shore, pushing her way through the River of Death. A long, thin human corpse rolled up in her path. It was Meg. Beside the aged biologist floated Szu-yi. A short distance away bobbed Tesa's grandparents.

Not far from them a lifeless Bruce rode the gentle waves, and next to him, floating facedown, was a tall, slim form with dark hair and a white feathered shirt.

Just then the water bubbled and churned. She glimpsed something big--
a
fin? a snout?
--just before a massive, open maw ringed with scalpel-like teeth engulfed Bruce's body. Tesa screamed, her voice soundless, her lungs pushing air through her throat in panicky spasms as she splashed backward furiously.

But the water was still again with only a ripple and an open space where Bruce's body had once been. Then something smooth slid against her thigh, something strong and full of hunger.

Her feet touched ground--if it
was
ground they touched--and she struggled for land, pushing past bodies, stumbling over one last corpse, its ravaged brown face and sightless orbs staring sightlessly at the Moons.
Jib?
She pulled herself from the River and collapsed, her feathered shirt soaked red, coated--sticky with blood. But at least she was finally safe.

Then the Mate Kai shot up out of the River like a living mountain and came after her, its sleek skin marbled a searing red and blue, its wide mouth hanging open from the weight of its terrible teeth. She scrabbled backward, knowing it was too late, that she could never escape. The Mate Kai fell on her, grasping her shoulders roughly, and she swung out desperately.

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It blocked her blows easily and shook her, then slapped her face gently. She blinked . . . and found herself warm, dry, in her own shelter. Bruce was holding her, trying to wake her, to pull her from the sickening dream. "Okay,"

she signed. "I'm okay!"

"You were yelling your head off," he signed worriedly.

She collapsed against his chest, incredibly relieved to feel the warmth of his body, his thumping heart. He hugged her, but after a moment she pulled back. "Did you dream last night?"

Bruce shrugged. "If I did, I can't remember."

"Is Jib awake?"

"Not yet. Father Sun's just now rising."

She was out of the shelter in a second, wearing nothing but her faded StarBridge sleep shirt. As she burst through her clustered cohort, they leaped into the air in surprise, leaving a rain of feather dust in their wake.

When she finally ducked into Jib's tent, he was on his back, mouth agape, eyes half-opened and staring. When she then nudged him, he sat up quickly.

He cried out, wild-eyed, but Tesa couldn't read it.

Bruce, coming in behind Tesa, moved to the young man's side. "You're awake now, son, in camp in Florida. Everything's okay."

"No," the boy moaned, shaking his head.

"No," Tesa agreed. "Something terrible has happened."

He continued shaking his head, but remembered to sign. "It's fading, I can't remember. . .. The Singers .. . Taniwha ... K'heera. . . ." He rubbed his face.

"It's gone. Faded away. I hate bad dreams." His expression changed, as though he finally realized how odd it was for them to be there. "Did I yell loud enough for
you
to hear me?" he asked Tesa wryly.

She held his gaze with her own. "It was more than a dream."

The young Maori turned gray. "Yeah, it was a bloody
mess
of a dream, that's what. That's enough, isn't it?"

"Did you see the Moons bleed? Did you see the Mate Kai?"

Jib tensed and Bruce stepped between them, giving her a warning glance.

"Come on, Tesa," Jib complained, "you always look for answers in dreams.

You stayed up till all hours waiting for your lambs to come home, and when they didn't you went to sleep full of worry and guilt. Did you think you
wouldn't
have bad dreams?"

He was fully awake now and Tesa could see that he didn't want to believe that their shared dream had any significance. Could he

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be right? After days of direct mental contact with the Singers, their minds could simply be reacting to that absence. Beside her, Bruce said nothing.

"Dreams don't give me answers," Tesa told Jib finally, "but sometimes they give me ... suggestions that I'd be foolish to ignore. If you'd listen to your primal self. . ."

"My
primal
self only knows that it's hungry," Jib signed peevishly, "and that it didn't get enough sleep."

Before the Indian woman could counter his argument, a huge winged shadow passed over the tent. Looking out, Tesa saw Thunder's dark outline silhouetted against the bright sky. She darted outside as Lightning parachuted down. Seconds later, the Hunter dropped, her powerful wings blowing sand into small tornadoes. The cohort flew over to join them, heralding their friends' return with their raucous, juvenile calls.

"Thank the Suns you're here," Tesa signed, throwing her arms around Lightning, nearly knocking him off balance. He spread his wings to steady himself, then encircled her fondly. When the Hunter approached, Lightning surrounded her with his other wing and the three enjoyed a private moment together.

Bruce and Jib emerged from the tent. "Where's K'heera?" the young man asked.

Lightning ducked his head low. "It's all my fault," he began regretfully and explained the chain of events that led to K'heera's leaving him. "By the time I realized she wouldn't return, it was too dark to come back to camp."

"I followed her," Thunder continued the story, "along the River, until she stopped to eat. That was when she discovered the new creatures that are not-of-the-World."

Tesa watched the Aquila make her flat statement with a cold detachment, as though she'd been waiting to see those signs all along. But for the others, the news was shocking. The entire cohort, including Lightning, stood tall in surprise, their crowns shrinking up hard. Bruce and Jib framed quick questions, but Tesa held her hand up so Thunder could finish.

"The aliens attacked and overpowered K'heera, then placed her on her own sled and guided it inside a building. It was nearly dark then, so I had to wait until morning to return."

"A building?" Bruce asked quickly. "Were there others?"

"Yes. Many." Thunder quickly described a cluster of alien structures, and ongoing construction.

"Were these humans, Thunder?" the Interrelator asked.

"No, but they walk upright with two arms and legs."

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"Heeyoons?" Tesa asked. The avians were familiar with the many races associated with the CLS.

"No. They didn't appear like any of the people you've shown me. Their skins were hairless but shining, as if moist, and very colorful. They reminded me of distant cousins of the circle- swimmers. Even the strange trilling notes they used for language seemed similar. And like the circle-swimmers, I thought. . ." she hesitated, as though embarrassed, "they looked delicious."

"Ever hear of beings like that?" Tesa asked the humans.

Bruce shook his head. "Sounds like they evolved from amphibians. They could be Anurans."

"The CLS hasn't met any beings like that," Jib insisted.