Silent Songs (44 page)

Oh, great,
Javier thought.
With a little more effort I could create both an
interspecies crisis and a marital spat!

Weaver stared at Javier full-faced. "The World could be home to you, my friend, and all the people your family. Or you could live here forever and still be as rootless as the empty man who left Earth not so long ago."

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Her words cut into his soul with cruel insight.

"Weaver," Taller addressed her again, this time gently, "come along. You've done what you could."

She stared at Javier for a moment longer, then finally turned her back and let Taller preen her. Javier wanted to say something, make her understand, but as usual, when he most needed them, words dried up on him. The cohort huddled together, but when they saw him watching, they, too, turned away.

Javier gazed around the savannah, at the Grus huddling together in pairs and cohorts, at the humans who had formed relationships and allegiances even under the worst circumstances. The only two beings on this plain who stood alone were himself. .. and the Interrelator.

He exhaled in a rush and stopped thinking, finally allowing his body to do what it had wanted to all along, and walked toward the solitary figure draped in an autumn-colored quilt.

Tesa's head told her to follow Jib's advice. The worst that would happen is that they would lose some time and Jib would be captured. The best might mean a reasonable end to an unreasonable situation. An end without bloodshed. Why did she find that so hard to believe?

Too easy,
she thought for the hundredth time.

Jib would be a good negotiator, he'd had excellent training. She could picture him standing firm before the invaders, presenting the White Winds'

demands, making the Anurans accept their terms.

That's where the image started cracking around the edges.

The Wind people would be waiting for the invaders to leave, but they wouldn't. Not while negotiations were stil going on. They'd hold on to Tesa's people, and the days would drag on, with tiny concessions to keep them hopeful, keep them busy.

When the CLS finally arrived they'd take over with more experienced diplomats.
Could
they
make
the invaders leave? How? Sheer force? For all Tesa knew, the invaders were evenly matched with anything the League Irenics might carry, they were just loath to use their power to kill. She couldn't see an end.

I
can't do it,
she thought. I
don't know enough. I can't tell those people how to
save their World. I don't know how!
Her chest tightened up so hard she could barely breathe.

Shutting her eyes, she willed her fear away. Blanking her mind, she watched the herd of Quakers she'd been halfheartedly observing as they placidly devoured entire fern trees at the edge

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of the grassland. Their massive size and the incredible confidence they exuded as they went about their everyday activities helped calm her.
They
didn't care about the Anuran invaders. To the huge orange and tan animals, each enemy was nothing but a bump on the landscape to be trampled.

Tesa imagined the huge herd storming through the Anuran colony, flattening buildings, crushing ships, laying waste valuable equipment, creating chaos and irreparable damage just like the malleable Leaf-Eaters had so obligingly done to the small camp she'd raided. Unfortunately the Quakers weren't nearly as cooperative. They considered anything that interfered with their enormous food requirements an annoyance. Nothing short of an aerial bombing raid would motivate them to move from wherever they were currently feeding. If there was any way to communicate with them, the Wind people had no idea what it was.

Where do Quakers sleep at night?
Tesa wondered.
Do they take cover in the
forest, or just settle down in the open?
The matriarchs stayed on the outside, with the younger herd members pushed toward the center where they could be protected. The few bulls that hovered around the fringes might've seemed like heads of the harem, but Tesa had been watching long enough to know that the matriarchs kept them there, that no male was allowed near a female, except by the oldest female's approval.

Where does a Quaker sleep at night?
She smiled, remembering the ancient joke.
Anywhere she damned pleases.

Suddenly the herd lifted their heads to gaze in her direction, so she turned to see what they were watching. A human had emerged from the flock and was approaching her. Tesa was startled when she realized it was First-Light.

What now?
She knew that the humans she'd rescued last night were dead against negotiating. Had they sent him out here to argue the situation further? She felt the pressure like a physical force crushing her, as heavy as a Quaker. How long had it been since she'd felt buoyant on Trinity?

She turned away from him just as he moved beside her. It was rude, but she couldn't help it, she couldn't stand another litany of complaints, demands, or a new piece of bad news.

When he didn't try to get her attention for several minutes, her curiosity got the better of her. Whatever it was wouldn't go away by wishing it. "What's the matter?" she signed brusquel
y.

He

stared at her as if he had no idea what she meant.

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"Why are you here?" she clarified. "Are you bringing a message? Does somebody want me?"

He paused for a maddening amount of time before carefully answering, "I didn't come to bring a message."

She exhaled wearily. "Then why are you here?"

He paused, as if talking to her was harder than anything he'd done in a long time. "I'm here ... for you."

She blinked, totally confused, completely missing the point.

"You looked like you could use a friend," he explained.

A friend?
"Is that what you're here for? To be my friend?"

"If you want, Interrelator."

She shook her head; that title was still so foreign to her. "Don't call me that. I don't feel like an Interrelator right now. I feel. . . totally
unqualified
... to do what they want me to do. . .." She stopped herself. She shouldn't be admitting this to anyone. The humans needed to have confidence in her.

"Who would be qualified to deal with invading aliens?" he asked. "The CLS

has
never
faced this problem before, so all you can do is what seems right to you. Your best guess will be as good as anyone's."

His simple statement seemed to clarify the problem, if only for the moment.

She changed the subject. "Call me 'Tesa.' No one calls me 'Interrelator.' "

"You were named after White Buffalo Woman, from Lakota legend," he signed.

"Yes, that's right," she agreed, surprised that he knew.

'To the Grus you are 'Good Eyes'--because your eyes are like theirs?"

"That started it. I kept the name because Taller said . . ."

His words came to her as though he'd signed them yesterday.
Good Eyes,
you see what others can't, you see the truth, even when it's upside down,
even when it's backward.

"He said ... I'd earned it...." She forced down the lump in her throat, and blinked until she no longer felt on the verge of tears. "But... I can't... see the answer to this. . . ." Why did she say that? Because he was here? Because the only time she'd felt any respite from this nightmare was a pleasant moment when she'd accidentally found herself in his arms?

"What do you
want
to do?" he asked suddenly, his piercing, predator's gaze holding hers intently.

"I think, probably ... we should try to do what Jib .. ."

He stopped her. "No. What do you
want
to do? In your
heart.
What do you
see
yourself, all of us, doing?"

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Tesa searched inside herself, and her hands answered without hesitation.

"We need to hit them hard, take them by surprise on so many fronts they'll be too divided to deal with everything."

"Fight?" He seemed surprised.

"You asked me what my
heart
wanted," she reminded him. "Well, my
heart
remembers old invasions and broken treaties and eloquent leaders who traveled far and spoke for days and died of broken hearts when they could not save their people. My heart doesn't want to talk ... except to say, 'Leave the World.' "

Javier thought about that.

"I can't just follow my heart," she assured him, sorry she'd been so blunt. "I didn't spend all that time on StarBridge to resort to brute force the first time I'm confronted with a difficult problem. . . . But... if we send Jib ... they'll
take
him, I
know
it. They've already got my friends, my grandmother. . .. Jib's like a brother to me. . . . They'll
use
him. . . ." She was back to the circular argument, like a snake eating its tail.

He'd signed nothing while she rambled on, and finally her signs trailed away. First-Light waited until she was still, then finally asked, "You're a
heyoka.
What does your medicine tell you to do?"

Her medicine?

That simply, it became clear to her. Tesa would have realized it herself, but she'd been too busy trying to be too many different people for everyone who needed her. She was a
heyoka.
Her conflict stemmed from the fact that what she wanted to do-- wage a futile war--was the exact opposite of what she
should
do--negotiate. That was the source of her turmoil. His question reminded her of what she should have never forgotten. Why hadn't her grandfather said anything to her? Because he was a
heyoka,
too, of course.

"Do you follow the old ways?" she asked.

"I respect them, but I wasn't raised with them."

"How much do you know about the Lakota?"

"I earned my doctorate studying the use of traditional Lakota medicine herbs."

She glanced at him sideways, the way the Grus did. "You're not an anthropologist?"

He smiled slightly and spelled, "Ethnobotanist."

Yes. She remembered Rob talking about him.

"Good Eyes," he prodded her, "what are you going to do?"

"Follow my medicine," she told him.

He nodded. "Then we'll fight."

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A great calm settled over her. There was a lot to do.
"I'll
fight. I have to."

"You won't fight alone, Good Eyes. The Wind people won't let you. And we won't let you, either."

"I can't ask anyone else to follow my path."

They were face-to-face, signing as privately as if they were surrounded. To her left, the massive Quakers moved on, the ground, even at this distance, rumbling beneath her. To her right, the Wind people went about their business, studiously ignoring the two humans, but Tesa knew most of them were covertly watching, especially Taller and Weaver. She stared into the dark eyes of this stranger, noticing again the gold earring.

He'd followed her eyes. "I can remove it."

She furrowed her brow. "Remove it?"

"You can sever the mechanism. It's not hard. ..."

"But then you'd be ..." He'd do that... for her?

When she didn't continue, he reached up to his ear, but she stopped him, her hand covering his. "No! I mean ... I don't want you to. It's not important." As soon as she'd signed that, she knew it was the truth. She hung on to his hand, feeling his warmth, the same warmth that had surrounded her last night.

Tesa found herself staring at the jagged scar cutting diagonally across his cheek. Impulsively, she released his hand to touch it. "How did you get this?"

"Eagle," he signed succinctly.

She jerked her hand away as if she'd been burned.
"Eagle?"

"A Hopi raptor rehabilitator, who was also a medicine man, wanted to release a recovered golden eagle," he told her. "I went with him. When he let the bird go, I was filming. She came at me, right for my face, for the gold patch on my cheek. At least, that's what I thought. She cut me, then took off.

The medicine man said the patch had nothing to do with it, that she'd marked me for something special."

"The scar looks like... lightning. A sign of the Thunder Beings...." Her dreams of the mythical creatures had made her a
heyoka.
Had they marked him for her?

Javier moved closer. "Whatever your decision, Good Eyes .. . let me be part of it."

She reached for the mark on his face again, then stopped her hand. Her indecision was gone. In answer to his question, she opened her arms, inviting him inside her blanket. He understood immediately what that meant; she could see the surprise, then the delight, on his normally staid face.

He moved inside the circle of her arms, sliding his own around

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her, pulling her to him in a strong, sure embrace, pressing his lightning-marked cheek against hers.

She wrapped the quilt around them like wings, absorbing the hidden force of his desire, taking strength from it. When his mouth finally joined with hers, the weight that had been pressing down on her changed into energy. Her spirit was electrified, as if the Thunder Beings had given her their lightning power to use against her enemy.

Tesa and First-Light clung to each other in the privacy of the blanket, tracing words on each other's back, sharing something neither of them had ever known, while the gathered flocks of the Wind people and a small scattering of humans went about their business, pretending not to see.

Except for Taller, who called to the skies, proclaiming his mate as the finest matchmaker of all their people. Who else had ever brought about the pairing of such a difficult species?

Weaver joined him, and the others took up the call, pair by pair, until the entire plain vibrated with the power of thousands of avian voices. The other humans reeled under the onslaught, but Javier and Tesa never noticed, thinking only that the strange feeling rocketing through them came from within.

Atle pulled himself out of his pool slowly, trying not to wake his wife, but he'd barely set foot on the ledge before her eyes were open. "Go back to sleep.