Again he held up the harness and pointed at the monitor. A chorus of screeches told him the response. Then, above the avian howl, he heard another sound, like a Klaxon alarm announcing a fire drill at a school or hospital. All the avians immediately calmed down. They settled quietly on the ledges and stared down at the tank sentinel.
The lair was strangely silent. After a few seconds Richard heard the beating of wings and moments later a new avian flew into the vertical corridor. It rose slowly up to his level and hovered just opposite him. It had a gray velvet body and sharp gray eyes. Two thick rings of bright cherry red were wrapped around its neck.
The creature studied Richard and landed on the ledge opposite him, across the corridor. The avian that had been in that spot scurried out of the way. When the gray velvet bird spoke, it was soft and very clear. After the speech was finished, the black velvet avian flew up beside the new arrival and apparently explained the furor. Several times the two avians stared across at Richard. The last time, thinking that perhaps their nodding heads were a cue, Richard displayed the graphic flight one more time and held up the harnesses. The bird with the cherry rings flew over beside him for a closer look.
The creature made a sudden movement, frightening Richard, and he nearly fell off the ledge. What may have been avian laughter was silenced by a few words from the gray velvet leader, who then sat quite still, as if it were thinking, for over a minute. At length the avian leader gestured toward Richard with one talon, opened its huge wings, and soared out through the opening into daylight.
For several seconds Richard did not move. The great creature rose up, up into the sky above the lair and was soon followed by the two more familiar avians. Moments later Nicole’s head appeared in the opening. “Are you coming?” she asked. “I don’t know how you did it, but it looks as if our friends are ready.”
52 FLIGHT 302
Richard pulled the harness tight around Nicole’s waist and buttocks. “Your feet will dangle,” he said, “and at first, when the lattice cord is stretching, you will have the feeling that you’re falling.”
“What if I hit the water?” Nicole asked.
“You have to trust the avians to By high enough that you won’t/’ Richard replied. “I think they’re quite intelligent, especially the one with the red rings.”
“Do you think it’s the king?” Nicole asked, adjusting the harness for comfort.
“Probably their equivalent,” Richard answered. “He has made it clear from the beginning that he intends to fly in the middle of the formation.”
Richard walked up the steep incline to the wall, carrying all three harness lines in his hands. The avians were sitting quietly together, staring out at the sea. They acquiesced as he tied the harness around their midsections, just behind the backs of the wings. Then they watched his computer monitor as he again showed them the graphics of the takeoff. The avians were to lift off together, slowly, pull the harness lines taut directly over Nicole’s head, and then lift her straight up before flying north across the sea.
He checked that the knots were secure and then returned to Nicole’s side at the bottom of the incline. She was only about five meters from the water. “If, by some chance, the avians do not return for me,” Richard told her, “don’t wait forever. Once you find the rescue team, assemble the sailboat and come across. I will be down in the White Room.” He took a deep breath. “Be safe, my darling,” he added. “Remember that I love you.”
Nicole could tell from the pounding of her heart that the moment of takeoff had finally arrived. She kissed Richard slowly on the lips. “And I love you,” she murmured.
When they broke their embrace, Richard waved at the avians on the wall. The gray velvet avian cautiously rose in the air, followed immediately by its two companions. They hovered in formation directly over Nicole. She felt the three lines pull tight and was momentarily lifted into the air.
Seconds later, as the elastic cord began to stretch, Nicole was falling toward the ground again. The avians flew higher, heading out over the water, and Nicole felt as if she were a yo-yo, bouncing up and down as the cord would stretch and then contract with a jerk when the avians rose swiftly to a higher altitude.
!t was an exciting flight. She touched the water once, just barely, while she was still close to shore. She was temporarily frightened, but the avians lifted her quickly before anything more than her feet were wet. Once the lattice cord was at its full extension, the ride was fairly smooth. Nicole sat in her harness, her hands holding on to two of the three lines, her feet dangling below her about eight meters from the tops of the waves.
The middle of the sea was quite calm. About halfway across Nicole saw two great, dark figures swimming along beneath her, parallel to her course. She was certain they were shark biots. She also detected two or three other species in the water, including one, long and skinny like an eel, that reared itself out of the sea and watched her fly by. Whew, Nicole thought as she surveyed the water, I’m certainly glad that I didn’t swim.
The landing was easy. Nicole had been concerned that the avians might not realize there was a fifty-meter cliff on the opposite side of the sea. She needn’t have worried. As they approached landfall in the Northern Hemi-cylinder, the avians gently increased their altitude. Nicole was set down gingerly about ten meters from the edge.
The huge birds landed close by. Nicole climbed out of her harness and walked over to the avians. She thanked them profusely and tried to pat them on the backs of their heads, but they jerked away from her touch. The creatures rested for several minutes and then, at a signal from their leader, they flew off across the sea toward New York.
Nicole was surprised at the intensity of her emotions. She knelt down and kissed the ground. It was only then that she realized she had never really expected to escape safely from New York. For a moment, before she started searching for the rescue team with her binoculars, she reviewed everything that had happened to her since that fateful crossing in the icemobile. Before New York is a lifetime ago, she said to herself. Now everything has changed.
Richard untied the harness from the avian leader and dropped it on the ground. All the birds were now free. The creature with the gray velvet body craned its neck around to see if Richard was finished. The rich cherry red of its rings was even clearer in the full daylight. Richard wondered about the rings and what they signified, knowing there was a high likelihood he would never see these magnificent aliens again.
Nicole came over beside Richard. When he had landed she had embraced him passionately. The avians had boldly stared, signaling their curiosity. They too, Nicole thought, must be wondering about us. The linguist in her imagined what it would be like actually to talk to an extraterrestrial species, to begin to understand how an altogether different intelligence might operate. . .
“I wonder how we say good-bye and thank you,” Richard was saying.
“I don’t know,” Nicole replied, “but it would be nice—”
She stopped to watch the avian leader. It had called the other two creatures to come beside it and the three birds were standing facing Richard and Nicole. On a signal they all spread their wings, to their full extent, and formed into a circle. They turned around one full revolution and then fell back into a straight line facing the humans.
“Come on,” Nicole said. “We can do that.”
Nicole and Richard stood side by side, their arms outstretched, and faced their avian friends. Nicole then put her arms on Richard’s shoulders and led him through a circular turn. Richard, who was sometimes not very graceful, stumbled once but managed to complete the movement. Nicole imagined that the avian leader was smiling when she and Richard straightened out after their revolution.
The three avians took off seconds later. Higher and higher in the sky they rose, until they were at the limit of Nicole’s vision. Then they flew south, across the sea toward home.
“Good luck,” Nicole whispered as they departed.
The rescue team was not in the vicinity of the Beta campsite. In fact, Richard and Nicole had not seen any sign of them during a thirty-minute drive in the rover along the coast of the Cylindrical Sea. “These guys must really be stupid,” Richard groused. “My message was in plain view there at Beta. Could it be that they haven’t even come down this far yet?”
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