Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (41 page)

Rhoades smiled at him, “You ready to give up on that funny math?”

“Uh, no sir. I’m ready to show you what I’ve worked out.”

“Oh?!
” Rhoades said, leaning back in his chair, “Put it up on the big screen.” He waved offhandedly at his big wall screen and laced his hands over his stomach.

Over the next thirty minutes
Kinrais
astounded Rhoades by demonstrating how he’d found some odd phenomena
predicted by
Donsaii’s math. Then he described how these phenomena explained the increasing redshift of more distant galaxies and the excessive speed of galactic rotation without invoking dark matter or dark energy. Rhoades was a math wizard and could easily follow the odd phenomena that occurred in Donsaii’s math when applied to
enormous
distances. Besides
,
the computer plotted them out for him. 

He turned to
Shan
, “These are
really
interesting findings. Of course their importance will be much greater if you are correct about them explaining away dark matter and energy. Having only superficial familiarity with the astrophysical phenomena involved I’m not as confident about that part of what you’re saying. Have you shown this to any physics experts?”

“Yes sir.”

Rhoades tilted his head,
“One of your grad student buddies, or someone who really knows their stuff?”

“Ell Donsaii
,
sir.”

Rhoades felt his own eyes widening, “Really?!”

Kinrais
nodded.

“And
she
says this is correct?”

“Yes sir. I only pointed out to her these odd phenomena that occur at great distances
in her math
. She’s the one who showed me how it explained the red shift and rotation phenomena.”

“Oh, so she already knew about this?”

“Uh, no sir. I told her about the distance phenomena I’d observed in her math and she worked out the astrophysical implications
over one night
.”

Rhoades tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, “My
Lord
,
that girl’s smart! Well
,
the two of you should publish this and I’m sure your part in it will get you that PhD you’ve been chasing.”

“Thank you sir. She’s already submitting this paper.”

Rhoades looked at the screen again and saw
a
manuscript listing
Kinrais
as first author. “Amazing!
If you’re going to be first author on a paper with Donsaii,
I should buy you a beer.
Hell, the whole department should buy you beers.
You up to going out with a few of us?”

“Yes sir. Not tonight though. I’ve got a date to cook dinner for my girlfriend.”

“Hah, I’ll bet you burn it!”

Shan grinned lopsidedly, “I probably will.”

***

Dex coasted in for a landing on the big shelf in front of the Yetany cave. “Syrdian! I found a
small herd of zornits in the meadow just up from the cave!”

Syrdian’s head swiveled around, “Great! I’ve just finished here, let’s go get one.”

Dex looked around. Wood had been stacked in the fire pit ready to be lit. The big ledge in front of the cave had been swept clean. Hie could see that Syrdian had even stacked and rearranged the supplies in the common storage area. At the north end of the big ledge Syrdian had carefully stacked the supplies they’d brought down to the cave on top of Dex’s big zornit hide leather
s
. There were some of
hies
harnesses, a few nodules of flint,
some of the flint knives Syrdian had made,
a leather bag of dried meat and sitting on top of it all, Dex’s meteorite, upright on its legs. Hie tilted hies head, “Why is our stuff down at the end there?”

“So it’ll be obvious what we’re bringing to the tribe if they accept us.”

“Oh.”

“Are you ready?”

Dex’s wings rose, “Sure.”

Syrdian grinned at himr. “Don’t you think we should take the travois to bring
a
zornit back on?”

Dex grinned,
“If you’re so sure we’re going to get one, it’d b
e a good idea, yeah.”

“I think it’ll bring bad luck to go up there without the travois. We don’t want the spirits to think we don’t expect to have a good hunt.”

Soon they were hiking up the mountain pulling their two
empty
travois. They made a short detour to pick up their spears
from the place they’d hidden them
, then took a game trail through a brief stretch of forest into the meadow where Dex had seen the zornits.

Dex’s wings sagged in relief when hie saw the zornits
were
still there. They were pretty close to where the game trail came out onto the meadow so they set the travois
down
and took their spears back down the trail to the open area on the other side of th
e
forested area.

“Ready?” Dex asked
. W
hen Syrdian dipped
hies
head
Dex
beat into the air
,
thinking how nice it was to
be flying
at this lower altitude
again
.
Once hie had enough altitude, h
ie checked on
Syrdian
with
hies back eyes
then
swept out and back around to
drop into the meadow
just over the tree line, stooping on the zornits. As usual the
zornits
scatter
ed
before
himr
.
Hie chose
one
, beating wing after it
,
then flaring
over it
to slam
hies
spear down
over its shoulder
. The spear hit a rib and bounced off relatively
harmlessly
. Dex wheeled right
,
switching
the second spear hie’d been carrying to hies right
hand
. Syrdian, sailed over the zornit, slamming a spear home and wheeling left.  Dex finished hies turn and beat hard after the panicked zornit
successfully
plunging
hies
second spear into place.  It must have hit the brain because the zornit
immediately
dropped
skidding and
quivering to the ground.

As per their tradition
Dex and Syrdian
landed
by the zornit
embracing in celebration and dancing up and down
. This was their
tenth
zornit hunt but only their
fourth
successful one
. Syrdian unwrapped hies neck from Dex’s and said, “It is
a
wonderful
omen
that we
had this
fruitful hunt right before the
tribe’s
return.
”

***

Done up as Raquel, Ell walked up the walk to the little house Shan shared with Ryan. The door opened and Ryan came out. “Hi Ryan. Are you leaving?”

“Yes,
” he rolled his eyes,
“
banished from my own home so that my roommate can have his way with you. It’s shameful.”

“Oh! Don’t go on my behalf. I’d be happy to split my dinner with you.”

“Hah, no you wouldn’t! Shan’s told me how much you eat.”

Ell blushed.

He leaned close and whispered, “Besides I’m happy to go. He’s been acting like a moony eyed fool. ‘
Raquel
this and
Raquel
that.’” He winked, “I can hardly stand being around him in this state.”

S
han appeared in the doorway, an
oven mitt on his hand. “Ryan, you promised you’d get out of here
without
harassing my new girlfriend.”

Ryan winked at Ell, then turned to say, “
Your
girlfriend? She’s just agreed to go out with
me
tomorrow night. You’d better hope your cooking’s better than
your
usual if you want to keep her.” He headed on down to the sidewalk.

Ell climbed the steps to Shan who put his arms around her. “Don’t leave me for
that
guy. No matter
how
bad you think my cooking is, his is a lot worse.”

“Girlfriend?” she asked.

“You’re the one who called me your ‘intended boyfriend,’” he grinned, then drew himself up and put a hand on his chest, “I accept.” He looked down at the dish in her hand, “You brought something?” he narrowed his eyes, “Just in case my lasagna isn’t edible?”

“Dessert, I knew you wouldn’t have enough for a growing girl like me.”

Shan laughed and led her inside.

To Ell’s surprise the lasagna was
excellent
. She lifted her last forkful at him, “This is amazing. A mathematician clogger, who plays basketball and can
cook
? Who would have thought?”

“Ah Raquel,
Raquel,” he shook his head despairingly, “
I have depths you haven’t even come close to plumbing.”

“Good to hear that there’s a little mystery left,” she said, eyes crinkling. “I’ll hope to discover those depths a little at a ti
me, so as to keep me interested?
”

“Yeah,” he grinned ruefully. “I’ll have to reveal them one micron at a time so you don’t realize just how shallow they are.”

“So you were going to tell me what Donsaii thought of the issues you had with her math?”

“She
is
amazing you know?” Then at the appearance of an arched eyebrow he hurried to say, “Though not as amazing as Raquel Blandon, the girl
I
love.”

Raquel tilted her head, “You
love
me?” she asked huskily.

***

Deltain daydreamed as hie flew near the back end of one of the “V” shaped flights of
the
Yetany
tribe. In hies mind h
ie’d been planning out the locations
hie
would check one last time for evidence of Dex’s remains. Hie should be able to check them tomorrow, then head east for hies new life with the Olnetch tribe. Hie didn’t think hie’d be able to stand it, living at the Yetany’s cave with its constant reminders of Dex.

Hie’d never
really understood
the depths of hies love for hies chil
d while Dex was still alive. H
ies heart ached with the memory of times when hie could
and should
have told Dex how proud hie was of
himr
. The beautiful harnesses that Dex made. Hies little insights into better ways to do things.

They entered a long glide and Deltain realized they were
finally
coasting down toward the cave. Quite a few flights had already landed and dalin were crowding the big ledge in front of the cave. There were usually a lot of dalin on the ledge right after landing, but this seemed… different. They seemed excited? Or disturbed, or something? Deltain noticed there was a large fire in the fire pit, had someone flown ahead?

As hie coasted in the last bit of the distance
hies
heart beat faster.
Hie
saw a distinctive silvery yellow color on a pair of wings. A color that few had and… only Syrdian had had such brilliant color. Could Syrdian have survived?
Could Dex?!
Hies eyes scanned rapidly over the crowd and then settled back on the strapping big golden brown dalin with the complex harness standing next to Syrdian!

Deltain broke hies glide and beat wing to lift himrself up over the crowd, “Dex!” hie cried.
“Dex!”

Dex’s wing
s
arched and spread in response. Hie stepped back, spread wings pushing dalin back to clear a space in front of
himr
where
hie
waved
hies hands
for Deltain to land.

Deltain flared wing and settled in front of Dex. Tall Dex, standing proud, no longer looking cowed as hie had in the past. Standing like one confident in hies status. Dex strode the two steps to Deltain, throwing arms and wings around
himr
. Deltain felt overwhelmed but distantly noticed that Dex was suddenly significantly taller than Deltain was. They wrapped necks around one another, “Parent!” Dex said with a juddery voice.