Dag and the other bird-mothers, sat
along the balcony in front of their apartments and worked together on the thing
they had originally been gathered together for.
Code. Their birds, a whole
separate domestic flock now, that followed their mom’s and other flock members
around with unbroken beaks. None of
those birds needed to have their killing hooks clipped or beaks riveted shut. None of them wore hoods even. They took the silk straps in their beaks
almost eagerly because it meant going out for a run. Some of them were beginning to fetch them and
try to push them into the women’s hands.
At the moment the flock was all gathered
below the balcony, above the water, mist from the waterspray putting silver
beads on their feathers as they stood or rested or played with each other and
the women sat above, working. It had
taken some firm persuasion and several gates chewed and ripped to bits before
the birds all understood they were not to come up the stairs whenever they
wished.
Dag stood in her code world… the village
and the cottage, which had grown more and more to look like the village she
lived in, in the real world, as she had raised her bird. *code download damaged file erased undo
delete file corrupt… ### ###* When, clear as a horn call, clear as a shout,
every single zardukar heard/felt/saw
*ANOMALY PLANETARY SURFACE TERRAFORMING FLAW BIOMAT COMPROMISED AIR BURST
CLEANSING ORDERED BY PRIME. PROJECTED SNOWBALL STRIKES, TWELVE. COMMENCING
LAUNCH SEQUENCE IMPACT IN NINETY MINUTES.*
Dag reached along the whole row and
said, in her firmest voice. *Be still a moment. WAIT.*
The code continued with latitude and
longitude and everyone relaxed slightly when they realized it was to the north
and west of them; that they were not the target. *Isn’t that what we wanted?* Isme said. *More water?*
*Not dropping on the highlands,* Yasna,
who had stayed with Dag and begun to work with her and the other zardukar, said. *The water is supposed to be regular, slow
drops designed to fall into the lowest basins of land on the planet, in pieces
the size of the nails of your fingers or smaller… a steady rain of ice from the
moon. Something the size of a snowball
would have an impact as if someone dropped a rock on you from the sky.*
Dag was looking at the coordinates describing
the impact sight and in the real world, she bit her lip. In code her fists clenched and all of her
carefully harvested bits of damaged and partially deleted code flew away in
shards to hide in the shadows of the wild.
*Yasna. Isme. Everyone. I think
we need to get the Director. Look at
where those are going to hit. That’s the
capitol of Nadumon. That’s where his
Radiance, his husband, our warriors – and
my son all are! That’s not a
terraforming gone wrong. That’s an
attack by Prime.*
Ilikrena leapt out of code and whistled
for her bird, “I’ll get her, I’ll get the Emir-al, I’ll warn everybody…”
“—Everybody get under cover, even if we’re
not in the direct line of attack ---“
“I’ll alert the hive keepers.” “I’ll let
the terraces know to go under cover…” “He’ll kill us all!” “Shut up Asha! You
make sure the underground reservoirs are ready. Quit snivelling, we’re the
first feather-spitters to know.
Everybody ride!”
The birds, called up, came eagerly some
not bothering with the stairs but came straight up the stone. “You’ll be too big to do that soon,” Dag
muttered as she jumped onto Silly’s back.
“Boat-sheds…Lets go, Silly. Boat
sheds.”
All boats on the river were intensely
valuable, the wood of lollipapera trees was either hard or spongy depending on
if it was sapwood or heartwood and planks for boat building worth a day’s work
each. “I’ll warn them.”
Yasna waved her off. “Come back here. We’ll put the flock on the balcony under
cover.”
There was no central underground cavern
here at the river’s head, but the canyon walls hung over deep cuts on either
side. Dag thrust her hands into the
feathers at Silly’s neck, holding the silk strap in her teeth, crouched and
asked Silly to run. Run as fast as he
could.
Prime
is trying to kill us all, from the sky once more.
heartpounding
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