42 - Keep on Rocking

Dag shook herself free of the code, which clung to her as if for comfort, set it all in tidy order in her head, in her files, and found herself sitting in an alcove, across from the pierced stone wall.  The lin was full of messages when she got back and she pulled three sheets out of it, to dry before they stopped immediately forming.

 

A letter from her son, a letter from his father.  A letter from the Data manager of the lin who hoped to see another story, filling out the first Empress’s data with her own, modern thoughts.

 

She sat down next to her special project, a trio of warbird eggs in a wax-warmed incubator.  They would be hatching any day now and she intended to be the first thing they saw.  As the Empress had said.  ‘they imprinted’.  But even the first Emperor hadn’t succeeded in making that imprinting stick.  All the breeding generations had finally produced a domesticable war bird.  At least that was the hope.

 

All the zardukar here had a set, in the hopes of raising the first birds that did not have to have their beaks clamped shut and forced into hoods all the time... and then have to be abandoned as working animals when they got too big and too old.

 

Amardad, who had rooms on the left --she data-mined files from Mishka Chernoyi... a builder... perhaps for the first Emperor -- had already hatched hers.  All three were mad and wouldn't imprint at all.  All his files hadn’t yielded up proper dates or times yet.  Mishka's buildings, some so fanciful they must surely be... one of her eggs was peeping and rocking.

 

It bumped the other two, clack, clack and they peeped also, as they had been answering her talking to them.  They would hatch the next two days, in order. Warbird eggs were almost the size of her head, long and narrow so they would not roll in easily in the nest, and dark red, like the stones of the ground the birds preferred for nesting.

 

“You keep right on rocking, you,” she said and rose to put on water for tea, set out the butter and neobarley alongside the closed worm-jar, since a fledgling would eat its own weight in worms every day.  Thank goodness the breeding grounds up along the edge of the canyon here were full of the metre long yellow and red striped worms.

 

She wasn’t terribly sure she wanted pets... that she’d eventually ride.  The bird-litter from the city had been uncomfortable and jouncy. She wasn’t sure she’d be firm enough to be able to ride a warbird, and they made her nervous.  But the zardukar were a limited population, funded by the Empire, and if they were available to help with experiments, of course they did them.

 

The egg lurched and cracked... then it stopped moving and she twitched as if to grab and help it.  She stared at it and folded her hands in her lap, biting her lip.  It began its rock once more, fighting to get out.  The breed master scientist had taught them over and over and over again, not to touch no matter how badly you wanted to; and she wanted to.  She found herself itching to help the struggling thing, visible against the inner membrane.  A tiny hole tore and a miniature hook gaped out the hole, panting.  

 

Her tea pot whistled and, suddenly reluctant, she went to pour tea.