The ship hovered twenty kilometers in the air, and as Gallen conducted a visual search, the Seeker Maggie had made circled Felph’s palace on a wide trajectory.
They had been hunting for two hours. Gallen had asked the ship’s AI to display anything with a wingspan of more than four feet. So far the AI had shown nothing, but suddenly Maggie’s Seeker picked up a scent and rocketed north on a zigzag course.
Gallen could see nothing in that direction; he ordered the ship to watch for him while he rested his eyes.
Gallen let the sensors on his mantle show him the scene behind his back. Orick, Maggie, Tallea, and Zeus all sat on the bridge behind him.
Orick had been teaching Tallea. He said, “‘Then the disciples went to Jesus, and asked, Lord, if a man sins; then repenteth afterward, and sins. again, how many times shall we forgive him? ‘Til seven times?’
“Jesus answered, ‘I say unto you, not seven times, but ‘til seventy times seven.’ “
Tallea asked, “Four hundred and ninety times? Why that number?”
Orick sighed in exasperation. His lesson on repentance and forgiveness seemed taxing for the bear. Orick’s Christian concepts seemed almost beyond Tallea’s grasp, but Orick had understood these concepts since he was a cub. The knowledge of such things was in the air back on Tihrgias.
“It’s not the number of times you forgive that’s important,” Orick answered Tallea. “It’s just a metaphor. What Jesus really meant was that we should continue to forgive offenses, even when we’ve tired of it.”
Zeus asked Orick, “This god of yours, Orick, why does he care what we do?”
“He is the father of our spirits,” Orick answered. “If you had a child, and I harmed it, you would rightfully take offense. In the same way, if you harm God’s child, He takes offense.”
Zeus said, “You say your god is forgiving. But who will he forgive? And what?”
“He will forgive you,” Orick said boldly. “He has said ‘Though your sins be as, scarlet, yet shall they be white as snow.’”
Zeus looked away. His long black hair was mussed, his dark brown eyes intense, brooding. His jaw quivered, as if in anger or fear. This talk of sin seemed to aggravate him.
Zeus suddenly whirled back toward Orick. “Quit staring at me, bear! I don’t need your repentance!”
“I … I’m sorry,” Orick said. “But you look-agitated. I thought maybe I could help.”
“I don’t need your help,” Zeus said.
“Perhaps you need God’s help,” Orick answered.
Zeus stood abruptly, turned his back to Orick, and gazed into the monitors above Maggie’s chair. He said, “There’s our quarry!”
Maggie had aimed her monitor well north of the Seeker, where two lonely Qualeewoohs flapped their wings slowly in the morning light. The picture was grainy, but Gallen could clearly make out the dark feathers.
Gallen said, “Ship, send, the Seeker north at six hundred kilometers per hour until it intersects those Qualeewoohs. I want to see how they smell before we go in.”
“Affirmative,” the Al said.
Gallen’s mantle whispered a warning, flashed an image of Zeus standing behind him, slightly crouched, as if ready to spring. Zeus’s hand strayed to the. pistol holstered on his right hip.
The bears crowded near to look at the screen, unaware of Zeus. Gallen could see from Zeus’s shaking hand, from the quivering jaw, he wanted to draw his weapon and fire. Yet he was afraid-for good reason. Gallen realized, Zeus doesn’t know the powers of a Lord Protector.
Go ahead, draw, Gallen silently urged. Gallen would spin and shoot before Zeus knew what hit him.
Zeus hesitated, eased his stance. He’d decided to wait.
So we wait, Gallen thought. Yet he wondered at the reason behind Zeus’s show of aggression. He doesn’t trust me to bring in the Qualeewoohs, Gallen knew. But something more seemed to be going on.
Gallen took the helm, brought the ship down, keeping the Qualeewoohs in sight. The ship bounced as it pounded through air currents, shaking the cameras.
In moments the Seeker screamed up behind the prey.
When the Qualeewoohs sensed the pill-shaped Seeker on their tails, the birds split-one right, one left-and hurtled to a small hillock crested by standing stones.
“Quarry identification is positive,” the ship’s AI whispered, its deep voice filling the helm.
The Seeker followed the Qualeewooh that had split right. Winging toward a cleft in the rocks, the Qualeewooh spun in the air, folding its wings to make the narrow escape.
The Seeker, traveling at just under ninety kilometers an hour, could not match the bird’s deft maneuver. It slammed into a stone abutment and exploded into a fireball.
In seconds Gallen’s ship reached the site. The Qualeewoohs dived into the rocks, seeking shelter in a crevice. On the barren plain beyond this rock pile, Gallen didn’t see so much as a bush or gully for a kilometer. He’d cornered the Qualeewoohs.
Gallen reached into his pack, pulled out the Qualeewooh translator Felph had given him, and hooked it to the voice mike he’d been carrying ever since he’d confronted the Lords of the Sixth Swarm on dronon.
That done, Gallen opened the ship’s hatch and called, “You two in the rocks, come out.” His voice rang as if with a shout, echoing back from the stone walls below.
Gallen waited, but the Qualeewoohs didn’t emerge from hiding. He repeated the order.
After a full minute, he looked over at Orick and. Maggie. “I guess I’ll have to go get them. Anyone want to follow?”
He didn’t want Maggie to come, felt relieved when she declined. Orick said, “They won’t be so afraid if you meet them alone. Maybe it should just be you who is talking to them.”
“Good point,” Gallen said.
Zeus immediately grumbled, “I’m coming, too.”
Maggie lowered the ship a meter from the ground, and Gallen climbed down, followed by Zeus. The hillock stood no more than sixty meters high, yet Gallen found it a rough climb up the huge stone slabs, leaping from foothold to foothold. He stretched his senses, let his mantle magnify incoming sounds. Everything was still. He ordered the mantle’s motion detectors to kick in.
He wasn’t afraid. Instead he felt coiled, ready. He’d hunted more dangerous prey. Yet the Qualeewoohs couldn’t be ignored as a threat. One had mastered the art of aerial decapitation.
Together, Zeus and Gallen reached the top of the hillock, stood on a huge flat rock. Gallen looked down on all sides. To the east, he heard a scratching sound, something scraping rock as it tried to dig deeper for cover.
“Come out,” Gallen said. “We must talk.”
Almost instantly he was aware of a form to his right, swerving up to meet him. It came so fast, only his mantle let him react. He drew an incendiary rifle, leveled it at the bird.
A Qualeewooh whipped up the ravine toward them, batted the air with its wings so it hovered nearby, staring at. them. Gallen hadn’t been prepared for the awesome sight.
The bird was huge, at least thirteen feet at the wingspan. Forever after, he’d hold the image of that encounter, the Qualeewooh beating its wings, the wind coming off them like a storm, the dark purple brooding of its feathers, the strange black mask over its long face, filigreed with swirls of silver, the dark eyes, like black quartz with a tinge of violet, staring at him.
Gallen wasn’t prepared for the intelligence in those eyes, the intensity, the crazed gleam. The Qualeewooh opened its mouth and whistled, a strange sound that somehow reminded Gallen of ropes twisting in the air. Gallen saw rows of teeth in that deep, beaklike face.
“Even if you take my mask, you will have no soul,” the Qualeewooh whistled.
Gallen pointed his rifle at the Qualeewooh’s breastbone. “If I wanted to wear your mask, you’d be dead. I came to talk.”