I, he thought, have company coming. Best get ready for it. With a tremendous, muscle-torturing effort, he sat up. He could not raise his wings above his head to fold them with his arms, but the pack had enough power left to do it for him. His arms dropped like leaden weights as the straps released.
Then the Uther arrived. There were three, one with a half-grown neonate attached behind its head. The neonate’s eyes, Greg remembered, could detect movement above and behind and warn its parent—which made Uthers with a baby on board prized military recruits. Different circumstances, different values. Greg tried to imagine an army of pregnant human women.
The other two were, at first sight, indistinguishable. But, knowing what to look for, Greg found four light streaks on the cephalothoracic barrel of the one on the left, while the one to the right of the pregnant adult was even-colored.
The one with the neonate sang. “What providence (buzz) gives to (buzz) Uther, our eyes see and teeth suck in. (Buzz) Enemy flock may belong to,” Greg’s translator provided in a time-driven compromise between the original Eponan mote order and normal conversation. The vaguely poetic result, Greg knew, made the Uthers sound more benign than they were.
And this didn’t sound very benign.
“To you,” Greg replied, though he wasn’t sure he’d been spoken to, “this human offers greetings.” He’d learned long ago that the translators made fewest mistakes when he expressed himself in some approximation of Uther mote sequence, and prided himself on his ability to do this. “For stillness I am sorry, but great discomfort now any movement would make.”
“Spy trick (buzz) Greg Konstantis would (buzz) maybe. (Buzz) We (buzz) Uther laugh,” the four-streaked Uther hooted. “Laughter.” Somehow, they already knew his name—of course, Knute probably had search parties out looking for him in response to his voice mail message. Their conversation was not meant for Greg and his translator was having problems, but the last notes of the triad corresponding to the second buzz sounded a bit like D-flat C E G.
Then they addressed him directly. “To the Human flock we say ‘Back over the High-hills Greg Konstantis maybe fell.’ Laughter. To the ground-under, you must go now.”
About thirty meters, Greg reckoned. Experimentally he tried to lift his arms. No good. He checked the power level—actually it wasn’t that bad, maybe 2 percent left. He activated the emergency descent mode, then simply scooted toward the edge of the huge umbrella-like leaf until friction no longer held him, and slid off.
The wings deployed to 80 percent automatically, assuming a configuration that would look like a flattened M from the front, with him at the lower middle point of the M. This slowed his fall like an air brake. At three meters altitude, they beat down the rest of the way, and the thrust broke his fall to the point that his feet hit not much harder than if he had jumped off a chair.
His leg muscles were not that tired and, surprising himself, he was able to stand. The forest floor was already in twilight and squishy with roundleaf underfoot. All kinds of grunts, whistles, and clicks greeted his arrival.
A small springcroc sprang up from almost under his foot and snapped its shell-like jaw at him in midair. It missed. Then it performed some kind of acrobatic maneuver to land balanced on its single leg, staring at him with the beady crocodile eyes set on top of its jaw. For a moment Greg thought it would spring again, but, instead, it sank down into the roundleaf as he watched, its busy foot drilling a hole for it in the soft muck.
A bright beam of light cut down from above and cast a pool of light beside him. A brief cacophony of off-key notes followed it. “That way Greg Konstantis must go,” said the translator.
He picked his way through the vegetation toward the pool of light, and it moved away.
Notes. “This light Greg Konstantis must follow.”
He followed for twenty minutes until he saw a single pentagonal tower, about five Uther stories tall, with a rounded roof that would look like another pagoda tree from above. From below, it looked vaguely like a giant mushroom. He walked toward it.
About halfway there, a door—really a section of wall on a pivot—swung open and a human female walked out to greet him.
“Hi,” Kanti said, her voice full of disappointment. “Bach kidnapped me at our rendezvous.”
Before he could answer, the three Uther landed. Two assumed relaxed poses but the one with the neonate flowed to a tripod posture on his rear wing fingers—it was a sign of dominance.
Kanti sighed and waved a hand at the Uther with four light streaks. “Greg, meet Bach.”
The Uther hooted, then broke into a passable rendition of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” then hooted again. Greg understood. Another typically Utherian disaster had struck his mission—Bach had gone over to the Fay D-flat Seege and was laughing at how he’d tricked them.
“Bach, hello. Kanti’s friend you are still?”
The Uther hooted and sang, and the translator followed, “Laughter. Such a thing Kanti still thinks—so Kanti I captured easily. Slow thinking, humans are still. Flockmate one is or is not. (Buzz) a friend is. With that word, I jest.” It hooted again. “Laughter.” Utherensis had been named by a Dane who pronounced it “ooter” for die sound they made when amused.
But Greg was not amused. He tried hard to think. “Good things, D-flat Seege may destroy. Unprofitable in the far, far time this flock may be.”
A warble from the Uther with the neonate, then, “Star travel, Fay D-flat Seege want, and star travel humans will not trade. But the starbase humans defend too lightly. So, the star-base D-flat Seege will spear—will eat. Then star travel and great power the metaflock Fay D-flat Seege will have.” It hooted. “To themselves weak humans help do this. To all providence gives.”
Bach warbled and added. “The stars I gain quickest this way. Highest of Fay D-flat Seege this Uther will fly and Fay Bach this flock may become someday.”
Greg shook his head. “Your old Flock, Bach must remember. They, the Fay D-flat Seege may kill—if the starbase technology the Fay D-flat Seege takes. If humans, Fay D-flat Seege tries to fight, many Fay D-flat Seege we may have to kill. What profit such a big killing makes?”
The translator’s discords faded and Bach warbled in return, but fell silent when the Uther with neonate overwarbled. “Unnecessary, a big killing may be,” the translator said, “if the Uther lifestyle you respect. Big enough for both, the Universe may be. Boundaries, small killings will keep and good fun, small killings are. To the Fay D-flat Seege, you humans now belong. D-flat Seege, you will flight-follow when, from this star other humans have fled.” It hooted then sang, “Earth itself, by grace of the Fay D-flat Seege wings, you could someday manage.”
Greg shook his head. His fellow humans typically abhorred any war and either had peace or fought only as big a war as necessary to defeat an aggressor. But he refrained from saying that, feeling that that discussion belonged at least at Knute’s level.
“In mind—and body—I am tired.”
The Uthers all hooted, having won what they probably thought of as a verbal victory.
“Then sleep,” the Uther with the neonate, “you humans shall have. But your wings we shall have in trade—and all of what may be weapons or escape aids, we shall have too.”
The Uthers eventually took everything but their clothes and food only the humans could eat. And that, they had to carry to their ground floor quarters in their hands. The lower wall was solid rock, and the cleverly counterbalanced section of pivoting wall was at least a meter thick. It could be locked behind them by simply disconnecting the counterweight, which Bach demonstrated with a hoot. It then motioned them into a bare gravel-floored room that opened into a sandy courtyard.