Fireflood Read online

  "Turn out your lights," the jay said, in a voice as brash and demanding as any real bluejay's. "It's dawn-- you can see well enough."

  The human hesitated, swung the light away, and turned it off. He motioned to the helicopter and its lights faded. As the jay had said, it was dawn, misty and gray and eerie. The flyers faced Dark's adversaries again.

  "We have no more resources than you," the raven flyer said. "How do you expect us to help you? We have ourselves. We have our land. You have the same."

  "Land!" Dark said bitterly. "Have you ever seen my land? It's nothing but piles of rotting stone and pits full of rusty water-- " She stopped; she had not meant to lose her temper. But she was hunched on the border of captivity, straining toward sanctuary and about to be refused.

  "Send her out so we can take her without violating your boundaries. Don't let her cause you a lot of trouble."

  "A little late for such caution," Jay said. "Redwing, if we bow to their threats now, what will they do next time? We should let her in."

  "So the diggers can do to our refuge what they did to their own? Pits, and rusting water-- "

  "It was like that when we came!" Dark cried, shocked and hurt. "We make tunnels, yes, but we don't destroy! Please hear what I've got to say. Then, if you ask me to go... I'll obey." She made the promise reluctantly, for she knew that once she had lived near the volcano, she would need great will to leave. "I give you my word." Her voice quivered with strain. The humans muttered behind her; a few steps inside the boundary, a few moments inside and then out-- who, besides Dark, would accuse them of entering the flyers' territory at all?

  Jay and Redwing glared at each other, but suddenly Jay laughed sharply and turned away. He stepped back and swept one wingtip along the ground, waving Dark into his land. "Come in, little one," he said.

  Hesitantly, afraid he would change his mind, Dark moved forward. Then, in a single moment, after her long journey, she was safe.

  "We have no reason to trust it!" Redwing said.

  "Nor any reason not to, since we could just as well be mashed flat between stone and armor. We do have reason not to help the humans."

  "You'll have to send her back," the leader of the humans said. He was angry; he stood glowering at the very edge of the border, perhaps a bit over. "Laws will take her, if we don't now. It will just cost you a lot more in trouble."

  "Take your threats and your noisy machine and get out of here," Jay said.

  "You will be sorry, flyer," the humans' leader said.

  Dark did not really believe they would go until the last one boarded the helicopter and its roar increased, it climbed into the air, and it clattered off into the brightening gray morning.

  "Thank you," Dark said.

  "I had ulterior motives," Jay said.

  Redwing stood back, looking at Jay but not at Dark. "We'll have to call a council."

  "I know. You go ahead. I'll talk to her and meet you when we convene."

  "I think we will regret this," Redwing said. "I think we are closer to the humans than to the diggers."

  The black flyer leaped into the air, wings outspread to reveal their brilliant scarlet underside, and soared away.

  Jay laid his soft hand on Dark's shoulder plate to lead her from the lava to volcanic soil. His skin felt frail, and very warm: Dark's metabolism was slower than it had been, while the flyers' chemistry had been considerably speeded up. Dark was ugly and clumsy next to him. She thought of digging down and vanishing but that would be ill-mannered. Besides, she had never been near a flyer before. Curiosity overcame her. Glancing surreptitiously sideways, beneath the edge of her armor, she saw that he was peeking at her, too. Their gazes met; they looked away, both embarrassed. Then Dark stopped and faced him. She settled back to regard him directly.

  "This is what I look like," she said. "My name is Dark and I know I'm ugly, but I could do the job I was made for, if they'd let me."

  "I think your strength compensates for your appearance," the flyer said. "I'm Jay." Dark was unreasonably pleased that she had guessed right about his name.

  "You never answered Redwing's question," Jay said. "Why come here ? The strip mines-- "

  "What could you know of strip mines?"

  "Other people lived near them before they were given over to you."

  "So you think we should stay there!"

  Jay replied to her abrupt anger in a gentle tone. "I was going to say, this place is nicer than the strip mines, true, but a lot of places nicer than the strip mines are more isolated than we are. You could have found a hidden place to live."

  "I'm sorry," Dark said. "I thought-- "

  "I know. Never mind."

  "No one else like me got this far, did they?"

  Jay shook his head.

  "Six of us escaped," Dark said. "We hoped more than one would reach you. Perhaps I'm just the first, though."

  "That could be."

  "I came to ask you to join us," Dark said.

  Jay looked at her sharply, his thick flaring eyebrows raised in surprise. He veiled his eyes for a moment with the translucent avian membranes, then let them slowly retract.

  "Join you? In... your preserve?" He was polite enough to call it this time by its official name. Though she had expressed herself badly, Dark felt some hope.

  "I misspoke myself," she said. "I came-- the others and I decided to come-- to ask you to join us politically. Or at least to support us."

  "To get you a better home. That seems only fair."

  "That isn't quite what we're hoping for. Or rather it is, but not the way you mean."

  Jay hesitated again. "I see. You want... what you were made for."

  Dark wanted to nod; she missed the shorthand of the language of the human body, and she found she was unable to read Jay's. She had been two years out of contact with normal humans; or perhaps it was that Jay was a flyer, and his people had made adjustments of their own.

  "Yes. We were made to be explorers. It's a useless economy, to keep us on earth. We could even pay our own way after a while."

  Dark watched him closely, but could not tell what he thought. His face remained expressionless; he did not move toward her or away. Then he sighed deeply. That, Dark understood.

  "Digger-- " She flinched, but inwardly, the only way she could. He had not seemed the type to mock her. "-- the projects are over. They changed their minds. There will be no exploring or colonizing, at least not by you and me. And what difference does it make? We have a peaceful life and everything we need. You've been badly used but that could be changed."

  "Maybe," Dark said, doubting his words. The flyers were beautiful, her people were ugly, and as far as

  the humans were concerned that made every difference. "But we had a purpose, and now it's gone. Are you happy, living here with nothing to do?"

  "We're content. Your people are all ready, but we aren't. We'd have to go through as much change again as we already have."

  "What's so bad about that? You've gone this far. You volunteered for it. Why not finish?"

  "Because it isn't necessary."

  "I don't understand," Dark said. "You could have a whole new living world. You have even more to gain than we do, that's why we thought you'd help us." Dark's planned occupation was the exploration of dead worlds or newly formed ones, the places of extremes where no other life could exist. But Jay's people were colonists; they had been destined for a world that was being made over for them, even as they were being suited for what it would become.

  "The terraforming is only beginning," Jay said. "If we wait until it's complete-- "

  "But that won't be for generations."

  Jay shrugged. "We know."

  "You'll never see it!" Dark cried. "You'll be dead and dust before it changes enough for people like you are now to live on it."

  "We're virus-changed, not constructed," Jay said. "We breed true. Our grandchildren may want another world, and the humans may be willing to help them go. But we intend to stay here." He bli
nked slowly, dreamily. "Yes, we are happy. And we don't have to work for the humans."

  "I don't care who I work for, as long as I can be something better than a deformed creature," Dark said angrily. "This world gives my people nothing and because of that we're dying."

  "Come now," Jay said tolerantly.

  "We're dying!" Dark stopped and rocked back on the edge of her shell so she could more nearly look him in the eye. "You have beauty all around you and in you, and when the humans see you they admire you. But they're afraid of us! Maybe they've forgotten that we started out human or maybe they never considered us human at all. It doesn't matter. I don't care! But we can't be anything, if we don't have any purpose. All we ask is that you help us make ourselves heard, because they'll listen to you. They love you. They almost worship you!" She paused, surprised by her own outburst.

  "Worship us!" Jay said. "They shoot us out of the sky, like eagles."

  He looked away from her. His gaze sought out clouds, the direction of the sun, for all she knew the eddies of the wind. Dark thought she sensed something, a call or a cry at the very edge of one of her new perceptions. She reached for it, but it eluded her. It was not meant for her.

  "Wait for me at sunset," Jay said, his voice remote. He spread his huge furled wings and sprang upward, the muscles bunching in his short, powerful legs. Dark watched him soar into the sky, a graceful dark blue shape against the cloud-patterned gold and scarlet dawn.

  Dark knew she had not convinced him. When he was nothing but a speck she eased herself down again and lumbered up the flank of the volcano. She could feel it beneath her feet. Its long rumbles pulsed through her, at a far lower frequency than she ever could have heard as a human. It promised heat and danger; it excited her. She had experienced no extremes, of either heat or cold, pressure or vacuum, for far too many months.

  The ground felt hollow beneath Dark's claws: passages lay beneath her, and lava beaten to a froth by the violence of its formation and frozen by exposure into spongy rock. She found a crevice that would leave no trace of her passing and slid into it. She began to dig, slowly at first, then faster, dirt and pulverized stone flying over her shoulders. In a moment the earth closed in around her.

  * * *

  Dark paused to rest. Having reached the gas-formed tunnels, she no longer had to dig her way through the substance of the mountain. She relaxed in the twisted passage, enjoying the brilliance of the heat and the occasional shining puff of air that came to her from the magma. She could analyze the gases by taste: that was another talent the humans had given her. Vapors toxic to them were merely interesting scents to her. If necessary she could metabolize some gases; the ability would have been necessary in many of the places she had expected to see, where sunlight was too dim to convert, where life had vanished or never evolved and there were no organic chemicals. On the outer planets, in the asteroids, even on Mars, her energy would have come from a tenuous atmosphere, from ice, even from the dust. Out there the challenging extremes would be cold and emptiness, unless she discovered hot, living veins in dying planets. Perhaps now no one would ever look for such activity on the surface of an alien world. Dark had dreamed of the planets of a different star, but she might never get a chance even to see the moon.

  Dark sought a living vein in a living world: she moved toward the volcano's central core. Her people had been designed to resist conditions far more severe than the narrow range tolerated by normals, but she did not know if she could survive this great a temperature. Nor did she care. The rising heat drew her toward a heightened state of consciousness that wiped away caution and even fear. The rock walls glowed in the infrared, and as she dug at them, the chips flew like sparks. At last, with nothing but a thin plate of stone between her and the caldera, she hesitated. She was not afraid for her life. It was almost as if she were afraid she would survive: afraid the volcano, like all else, would finally disappoint her.

  She lashed out with her armored hand and shattered the fragile wall. Steam and vapor poured through the opening, flowing past her. Before she stopped normal breathing she chanced a quick, shallow mouthful and savored the taste and smell, then moved forward to look directly into the crater.

  Whatever she had imagined dissolved in the reality. She was halfway up the crater, dazzled from above by light and from below by heat. She had been underground a long time and it was almost exactly noon. Sunlight beat down through clouds of steam, and the gases and sounds of molten rock reached up to her. The currents swirled, hot and hotter, and in the earth's wound a flood of fire burned.

  She could feel as well as see the heat, and it pleased her intensely that she would die if she remained where she was. Internal oxygen sustained her: a few deep breaths of the mountain's uncooled exhalations and she would die.

  She wanted to stay. She did not want to return to the surface and the probability of rejection. She did not want to return to her people's exile.

  Yet she had a duty toward them, and she had not yet completed it. She backed into the tunnel, turned around, and crawled away, hoping someday she could return.

  Dark made her way back to the surface, coming out through the same fissure so the land would not change. She shook the dirt off her armor and looked around, blinking, waiting for her eyes to reaccustom themselves to the day. As she rested, colors resolved out of the afterimage dazzle of infrared: the blue sky first, then the deep green trees, the yellow of a scatter of wildflowers. Finally, squinting, she made out dark specks against the crystal clarity of the sky. The flyers soared in small groups or solo, now and again two coming together in lengthy graceful couplings, their wings brushing tips. She watched them, surprised and a little ashamed to be aroused despite herself. For her kind, intercourse was more difficult and more pedestrian. Dark had known how it would be when she volunteered; there was no secret about it. Like most of the other volunteers, she had always been a solitary person. She seldom missed what she had so seldom had, but watching the flyers she felt a long pang of envy. They were so beautiful, and they took everything so for granted.

  The winged dance went on for hours, until the sun, reddening, touched mountains in the west. Dark continued to watch, unable to look away, in awe of the flyers' aerial and sexual stamina. Yet she resented their extended play, as well; they had forgotten that an earthbound creature waited for them.

  The several pairs of coupled flyers suddenly broke apart, as if on signal, and the whole group of them scattered. A moment later Dark sensed the approach of the humans' plane.

  It was too high to hear, but she knew it was there. It circled slowly. Sitting still, not troubling now to conceal the radio-beacon in her spine, Dark perceived it spiraling in, with her as its focus. The plane descended; it was a point, then a silver shape reflecting scarlet sunset. It did not come too close; it did nothing immediately threatening. But it had driven the flyers out of Dark's sight. She hunkered down on the stone promontory, waiting.

  * * *

  Dark heard only the sudden rush of air against outstretched wings as Jay landed nearby. His approach had been completely silent, and intent as she was on the search plane, she had not seen him. She turned her attention from the sky to Jay, and took a few steps toward him. But then she stopped, shamed once more by her clumsiness compared to the way he moved. The flyers were not tall, and even for their height their legs were quite short. Perhaps they had been modified that way. Still, Jay did not lumber. He strode. As he neared her he furled his wings over his back, folding them one bit at a time, ruffling them to smooth the feathers, folding a bit more. He reminded her not so much of a bird, as of a spectacular butterfly perched in the wind, flicking his wings open and closed. When he stopped before her his wings stilled, each bright blue feather perfectly placed, framing him from behind. Unconcealed this time by the wings, his body was naked. Flyers wore no clothes: Dark was startled that they had nothing to conceal. Apparently they were as intricately engineered as her own people.

  Jay did not speak for so long that Dark, gr
owing uncomfortable, reared back and looked into the sky. The search plane still circled loudly.

  "Are they allowed to do that?" she said.

  "We have no quick way of stopping them. We can protest. No doubt someone already has."

  "I could send them a message," she said grumpily. That, after all, was what the beacon was for, though the message would not contain the sort of information anyone had ever planned for her to send.

  "We've finished our meeting," Jay said.

  "Oh. Is that what you call it?"

  Dark expected a smile or a joke, but Jay spoke quite seriously.

  "That's how we confer, here."

  "Confer-- !" She dropped back to the ground, her claws digging in. "You met without letting me speak? You told me to wait for you at sunset!"

  "I spoke for you," Jay said softly.

  "I came here to speak for myself. And I came here to speak for my kind. I trusted you-- "

  "It was the only way," he said. "We only gather in the sky."

  Dark held down an angry retort. "And what is the answer?"

  Jay sat abruptly on the hard earth, as if he could no longer support the weight of his wings on his delicate legs. He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

  "I'm sorry." The words burst out in a sigh, a moan.

  "Call them," Dark said. "Fly after them, find them, make them come and speak to me. I will not be refused by people who won't even face me."

  "It won't help," Jay said miserably. "I spoke for you as well as I could, but when I saw I would fail I tried to bring them here. I begged them. They wouldn't come."

  "They wouldn't come..." She had risked her life only to have her life dismissed as nothing. "I don't understand," she whispered.

  Jay reached out and touched her hand: it still could function as a hand, despite her armor and her claws. Jay's hand, too, was clawed, but it was delicate and fine-boned, and veins showed blue through the translucent skin. Dark pulled back the all too solid mass of her arm.

  "Don't you, little one?" Jay said, sadly. "I was so different, before I was a flyer-- "