Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (35 page)

Syrdian stepped out and away
from the cave
so hies wing beats wouldn’t affect their fire.
Hies wings lifted and beat a few tentative beats. Dex asked, “Does it hurt?”

Syrdian shrugged hies wings, “It feels funny and a little sore.”

“Let me look.” Dex stepped up close and looked at the wing top and bottom. “It doesn’t look like it’s coming apart. Try a few harder beats.”

Syrdian stepped back and beat hard enough to scoot hies feet along the ground. “It still doesn’t hurt! Do you think I can fly again?”

Dex, surprised to be asked, said, “I think you should see how it feels in the morning
. If it’s still
good
,
try flying
then.”

“OK.”

They moved back to the cave area and Dex picked up
hies
meteorite from where it stood in front of the cave.
Hie
crouched studying it, turning it, reaching around it with
hies
hand. At one point
hie
tied it back to
hies
chest harness, walked around a little, then undid it and set it back down, backing away to study it more.

Syrdian, having turned the spits over the fire said, “Wh
at
are you
doing with
your meteorite?
”

“Have you noticed it’s bigger than when it first landed?”

Syrdian raised
hies
head in surprise, “It is?”

“Yes. Not a lot bigger, but it’s a little longer and a little bigger around too.”

“Has it been getting bigger all along, so gradually we never noticed?”

“No, it seemed to get bigger all of a sudden several hands of days ago. It doesn’t seem to have gotten any bigger since then.”

Syrdian came aroun
d and studied it, “I can’t tell.
”

“I’m not sure I would either if I hadn’t carried it all that time. My hand doesn’t reach around it as easily, and if it were on my harness again it would be more in the way than it was back when I first got it.
It also has this little patch of holes in it that didn’t used to be there.
”

“Well I wish it would tell us more ways to get food. I’m so tired of being hungry all the time.”

“Hey maybe if you can fly, you can go up and down stream to get more swimmers?”

“Or over to the next stream. I’ve been hoping I could fly soon. It would help. Do you think I could fly down far enough to get to some of the lakes and rivers we normally catch swimmers in?”

“Maybe, but it’ll be hot
.”

“Ugh.”

“Well
,
m
aybe you could take the he
at for a little while?” Dex looked off into the distance and then shrugged, “B
ut then,
when you were feeling the worst because of the heat
,
yo
u’d have to fly up and
up into thin air. You’d better be sure you’re flying
well
before you try it, and just go partway
down there to see what it’s like
before you go all the way.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure I want to try it. Last
spring
I flew almost down to the sea, but it was hot and exhausting. I
could
see why we go south for the summer.”

While they were eating
,
Syrdian saw a
faint
red dot appear on the side of the me
teorite. Wordlessly hie pointed.

Dex
stood
up excitedly
,
stepping to the meteorite
. T
he red dot brightened and lines appeared on the wall of the cave. At first the lines seemed to show a straight stick, pole or shaft. Then the picture focused in on the end of the pole. The end of the pole developed a slot in it.

Next the pictures showed something that
looked very much like a flint knife without its handle.  Then it showed something that
looked like a flint knife except it looked like it had been flaked to
have
edges on both sides.

The pictures went away for a moment, then reappeared, this time wit
h the knife next to the shaft. T
hen with the haft of the knife in the slot in the sh
aft. T
hen with fiberlin wrapping around the shaft and haft
;
and finally with it tied off to produce a knife with an extremely long handle.

Hie
stared. The picture showed a
weapon
! A
weapon
which would be much more devastating than the
fire hardened points
on their shafts and with a much longer reach than a knife
. Why hadn’t
hie
thought of this
himrself
?

The pictures now showed the double edged flint at the tip of the
shaft
. Such a
device
would provide
much
better protection than the fire hardened points
on their shafts
!
Fire hardened
points were
helpful
for fending off attackers and large predators but a flint
tipped
shaft
would
n’t just fend off, it
c
ould
penetrate and injure.

Syrdian’s eyes widened when the images showed a dalin flying with the
flint tipped
shaft
in a hand and a small zornit under it.
Then the zornit got bigger. And the zornit got bigger yet.
Wait, maybe the dalin is flying closer
so
the zornit
appears to get
bigger?
Then suddenly the
dalin appeared to be plunging the shaft
into
the zornit. Then the
zornit had the
shaft
sticking out of its side as the da
lin got smaller—or flew past it?

Next the zornit appeared, laying on its side with the
shaft
sticking out of it and the dalin
on the ground
next to it, cutting it up. Dex’s wings were quivering! “Do you see it Syrdian?”

“Is it saying you could kill a zornit from the air with a knife that had a very long handle?”

“Yes, yes! I think so!
Let’s give it a name. We
could call it a ‘spear.’ Where
’
s that flint you found?”

Dex took
hies
remaining
shaft with a
fire hardened
point
and cut a deep slot in the
blunt
end of
it. Then hie flaked a double edged knife from Syrdian’s flint. It wasn’t
a great
knife, but it fit
the
slot
he’d made
in the shaft
.
Hie
bound the split in the shaft shut around the blade hie’d made
with fiberlin
. Hie made a couple more blades that hie could haft onto shafts the next day when hie had good light and could find
some
nice straight shafts.

In the morning, Dex and Syrdian climbed eagerly up to the meadow after a meager breakfast of the remnants of their meal from the night before. Dex inspected the wounds in Syrdian’s wings again in the better li
ght of day, finding
that
the wounds
looked
much like little wing rips that had healed. There were slightly thicker ridges where the tears
had been
but even when
hie
picked at them with a claw, or pulled on them with
hies
fingers no openings appeared and Syrdian claimed to be having little pain. “Shall I try flying?”

“I guess. I think you should try a short distance first.”

Syrdian spread hies wings and tried a few tentative beats, then re-inspected hies wounds. Finally, hie beat hard enough to lift off and fly about five body lengths.

Dex beat over to look at Syrdian’s wing again
.
Syrdian said, “Oh! That little flight was much harder than
… I expected
!
Do you think
my wing
isn’t working right
?”

“No, it’s
really much
harder
to fly
high up on the mountain.
And
your wings are weak because you haven’t been using them.”
Dex looked around; there weren’t any zornits in the big meadow this morning. “I’m going to look for more shafts for the other flint points.”

Syrdian dipped hies head, “I’ll set up some flyer traps, then I think I’
ll try for swimmers up
stream a ways.” Hie didn’t say it but hie hoped that hies wings would help climb areas of the stream that were a struggle, even if hie didn’t fly the entire way.

“Syrdian! You got some swimmers!”

“Yeah,” Syrdian lifted hies string of three, “I went a little farther up the stream than before. It’s easier to climb
the rocks
with my wings
helping
. Did you have any luck?”

“A couple burrowers.”

“Good! Enough to eat for a change!”

They fell to breaking
down their catch
for roasting.

Syrdian asked, “Are the zornits back?”

Dex shrugged hies wings disappointedly,
“No.”

***

At
their
Teecee
group meeting Kira Piscova said, “
I’ve worked out what I believe is a vocabulary of about a thousand words for the
Teecees
. You’ve said I can try to talk to them when I’m sure that I won’t offend them. I don’t think it is possible to be sure that won’t happen. I can’t even be
reasonably
sure of
a lot
of these words until I see how they respond to them.”

Norris said, “You can make those tweedling sounds?”

“No, but my AI can
. It just plays back the word
as they’ve said it
. What I would hope to do is to speak the English words we have likely translations for and the AI would play the corresponding
Teecee
tweedle
it ha
s recorded
for that word.”

“And when they speak to us your AI would do the reverse?”

“Yes, although their sentence structure is different than our
s
and
so far
I haven’t
tried to have the
AI
rearrange them
into our usual structure
.”

Ell looked up at the screen where
video from the previous evening’s take was playing. I
t
showed the late afternoon on TC3.
Silver could be seen approaching the Teecee’s camp. “Could you let us listen to a translation of what they’re saying
in the section of video playing there
?”

Piscova shrugged, “
You
won’t be very
impressed
.”
She spoke to her AI and the audio from the ongoing
video
on the screens came on with a series of tweedling sounds.

A moment later t
he translation came on
with a mechanical AI voice saying,
  “Fish…
Silver
…
have.”

“Yes
…
s
tream
...
 
wings...
earlier
...
up
.”

“Two
...
small animals.”

“Eat.”

“Grazers?”

“No.”

Piscova said, “As you can see, mostly what we have
so far
are nouns. Figuring out verbs and other parts of speech is going to be much more difficult.”

“What do you think guys?” Ell said looking around at the group,
both
present
and
remote. “Should we try to say a few words to them?”

A chorus of affirmatives
came back at her.
Emma said, “This’ll be pretty historic. You don’t think we need an ambassador or something here?”