“The rep, sir,” the pilot said, interrupting his line of thought.
“General?”
“They’re dead.”
“You’re certain of ‘that. Once before you said they couldn’t have survived—”
“I’ve got the bodies. Or what’s left of them. Set the room on fire and then shot themselves through the head.”
“Really? Did they really do that? Both things?”
“Yes,” the general said.
“They had four days,” the rep mused. “Four days before we located Fortress Two. They must have known we were coming. I wonder why they didn’t use the time to get out of there?”
“Maybe they were tired of running. They just cooperated for a change.”
“Yes,” the rep said. “A man of Stauffer Davis’s past would surely, eventually, see the madness of fighting us. Cooperation. That’s exactly what it was, General. Good night.”,
The general said goodnight, switched off his lapel mike, opened his book and began waiting for the elevator which was working now that the technicians had repaired the sabotage to it.
Zeus. Yes, it would be marvelous. But how did you get to the top, an individualist and all? Could it be done. He read on while the lift descended to gather him up.
As the last of the copters lifted away from the ruined fortress and turned into the blackness toward homebase, two birds nestled together in the branches of a large tree halfway down the side of Needlepoint, looking up into the underbellies of the brutish troop carriers. They were as large as a six-year-old child, each, and covered by thick, downish feathers the color of yil tree leaves, yellow and lovely. Their faces were incredibly soft and gentle. On the end of each long wing, a rudimentary hand with four fingers and two thumbs was concealed in a pocket which feathers crossed over.
“Are they really gone?” she asked.
“They won’t be back. Even if they suspect some trick, they won’t know what they’re looking for.”
“How do you feel?”
“Still some shock,” he said. “We should have had more time, before they came, to get used to ourselves, to what we’ve made of ourselves. But now we have years for that”
She was silent a while. Then: “Can we really have others like us?”
“In two days I learned every single piece of data and procedure having to do with the Artificial Wombs. I took two more days to structure these bodies because I wanted to be careful, sure—when I could have made them in hours. We can have children. They will be whole and healthy, children like us, birdmen. They’ll be intelligent. Your people had gone further than they realized in conquering the secrets of the genes. If they had not been so set onto the single track of creating soldiers, they could have done marvelous things. They might even had come up with a plan like this to save themselves from the last ravages of the battle with the Alliance.”
“How long will it take? For babies?”
“I think—five months. You’ll have them naturally, not through eggs, of course.”
“When?” she asked.
“Now?” he asked.
It would be perfect to conceive their first child on this night, the first night of their residence in the new bodies, the night the Alliance thought them dead and forgotten.
“It’s going to seem silly—the mechanics of lovemaking,” she said, a touch of embarrassment in her voice.
“No, no!” he said. “You’re beautiful. And your children will be too.”
Tonight, the first child, the first of the secret, unseen, unsuspected warriors conceived in the dark of the woods, the warriors that would one day reclaim the land of their forefathers, reclaim Demos for people of the air … Tonight, love and conception and an effort to overcome awkwardness at not being human. Tonight, celebration. Tomorrow: going to come the revolution . . .