Silent Dances (31 page)

Bruce was also on the bed, leaning against the wall, legs stretched out and

crossed at the ankles. Between the two men sat Lauren, winding up

remnants of grass. Tesa was disappointed that Thorn was not there.

151

Her feathered costume was balled up in Peter's lap while he finished

tying a knot
,
his handsome hands moving expe
rt
ly. He tu
rn
ed the
re
pai
re
d garment
ri
ght
-
side out
,
shook it, and said something
.
Tesa
glanced at her voder.

"Nothing comes loose,"
he'd said. "How does it look?" Tesa held back
grateful tears as she looked at her shi
rt
, clean and beautiful again
,

then she grabbed Peter in a warm hug.

"I used to help my mother restore
Pima feathered baskets," Peter said
,
his words marching across Tesa
'
s voder
. "
There's some similarity in
technique
.
That battle was quite a lot to put a valuable a
rt
ifact

through
!"
He looked at Tesa with a w
ry
expression
. "
Not to mention a
p
rett
y good inter
re
lator."

"Tesa,"
Bruce asked
, "
when did you have time to make this?"

Tesa looked up from the voder,
sta
rt
led
. "
I didn't make ..."

Meg gave Bruce a disappro
ving frown.

"
You'
re
a native dancer
,"
the lanky weatherman insisted. "You'
re
used to making
costumes."

"Weaver
made this!" Tesa signed sharply,
t
ru
sting Meg to translate
. "
I
never even saw it until it was almost finished. You're just selling the G

ru
s sho
rt
again
,
B
ru
ce!"

Bru
ce tu
rn
ed the edge of her garment over. "Come on, Tesa, this thing

'
s pieced together like a quilt top," he said
,
plainly disbelieving
. "
You
had
to show them how to do that."

"Weaver figure
d out the technique herself
,"
Tesa insisted, "after seeing
my old star quilt
.
She created new techniques to join the skin to the

weavings
.
To make clothing for an alien species--especially when the

maker has never worn any herself-is pretty sophisticated
.
Su
re
ly
,
even
you
can see that!"

Bru
ce shook his head. "Forgive my skepticism
,
but old beliefs die

hard
, l
il darlin
'.
I can still remember the first day I saw this pre
tt
y
marble
."
B
ru
ce indicated T
ri
nity hove
ri
ng over them
. "
That day I
thought
-
I'll b
ri
ng my family here, build a city
,
make the kind of money
I'd always known I'd make by going into space
.
Then Scott and Meg

found the G
ru
s, and that dream ended
.
But that was okay, because

we'd get something better out of it. We
'
d help get Earth full CLS

membership."

He scratched his thinning gray hair. "
If, as you say, Weaver made this for

you-
-
and, of course
,
I'm not doubting your word ... well, that could be
the proof Earth needs
.
I should
be

152

thrilled ... but there must still be a part of
me that kept on hoping that I was

right in the first place ... that someday there'd be cities on Trinity
that
I'd

helped build."

The Indian woman looked at the others, confused, wondering how many of

them shared Bruce's feelings.

"Tesa," Meg tried to explain, "when we found Trinity, none of us had any First Contact experience. We were colonizers."

"I'd never stepped off a space
station!
" Lauren told her. "I collected and organized data, and kept the robot probes
running.
It was two years before I

set foot on the planet."

"And you?" Tesa asked Peter.

"Thorn and I had no extraterrestrial experience," Peter admitted. "We had to have special training before we came. Szuyi had worked with the Simiu, but

they were so sensitive and unpredictable, she asked for an assignment with

minimal contact"--Peter laughed dryly--"and ended up with her favorite

phobia."

"Remember, Bruce," Lauren said, "when Scott first told us that he thought they'd found an intelligent species?"

He nodded. "I told Scott he was crazy. I said they looked more like a food

source then Earth's best shot at CLS membership."

Tesa tried to mask her shock when she read those words. "Scott was

furious," Meg reminisced. "You two fought over making contact with the

Grus."

"I respected his opinion," Bruce insisted, "but when I watched the Grus

playing catch with a stick, or spending hours fixing their feathers ... their

intelligence was hard to accept." He gently touched the feathers on Tesa's

shirt. "But when Scott said he wanted to call the CLS, whose side was I on?"

Meg smiled and nodded, obviously remembering.

"I backed you and Scott all the way," Bruce said, "and when the Falcon and Deborah tried to stop you"

Tesa frowned at the strange reference on her voder, but Meg quickly

explained. "That was Bruce's nickname for Jim Maltese, because of a holo-

vid show they'd
seen-The Maltese Falcon."

"I was the
only
one on your side," Bruce continued. "I even convinced Lauren. But that's the past." He indicated the Grus shirt with a grim smile.

"This ... will change things. This will shut up all that Simiu chatter. Once the

Grus' intel
ligence

153

is confirmed
,
Jamestown Founders will lose its claim to T
ri
nity
,
forever."

Tesa shook her head,
frowning
.
Having accepted the shi
rt
, Bruce was
now really making too much of this simple thing. Her garment wasn
'
t a

patch on the sto
ry
-walls, on the complex legends of the White Wind

people
.
There was a secret in those beautiful walls, and in the cloaks
,
a secret Tesa hadn't been able to ferret out. Maybe someone on the

Crane
could.

Tesa lifted her hand to get their attention, an
d when they tu
rn
ed to

watch
,
she began to sign about the world inside the nest shelter
.
She
told them about the sto
ri
es she could almost see, about the fractu
ri
ng
of light th
ro
ugh a shimme
ri
ng
'
s wings, about how Weaver searched
through piles of feathers or strands of grass to find just the
ri
ght one

for her project, when, to Tesa
,
they all seemed identical
.
She realized
that she was moving her hands in the same a
rt
ful way her

grandmother did when she was telling a good sto
ry,
and that the

others were watching her with the rapt look a good sto
ry
teller always

gets. It pleased her that they stopped looking at Meg, who was

translating aloud
,
and watched her,
an
d the picture images she was

creating.

Finally,
Tesa patched her voder into one of Peter
'
s computer links
an
d
called up the sto
ry
-walls. The group looked and glanced at one

another
,
cu
ri
ously. They couldn't see it, either.

"The stori
es are there
,"
Tesa insisted
. "
Taller
an
d Weaver tell them,
an
d the chick follows it on the wall
--
but to me it's invisible
.
They keep a
calendar on a cloak
.
They show me things, and they feel
sorry
for me
that I can't see it." She keyed in the Lakota words
sintkala waksu
. "
This
is what we call the stones we use to heat the sweat lodge. It means `bird

stones.' They have designs on them that our ancestors said were

drawn by birds. The designs disappear after a while and then
,
it's said
,
only the birds can see them."

Lauren looked confused. "What do birds see that we can't?" No one seemed

to know.

"Szu-yi'
s taken some simple medical scans of the Grus," Meg told

Tesa
, "
but nothing as specific as opthalmology studies."

"
She'd never get that close to their faces," Lauren agreed. "They act
pretty silly when you sta
rt
waving scanners around them
,"
Bruce
agreed
, "
even when they're
not
try
ing to eat them."

154

"
Of course, they want to eat it," Meg chided him, annoyed.
"
One way
they recognize food is by how it reflects sunlight. Shiny things are

delicacies." That made eve
ry
one look at one another as though they
'

d just discovered another key to the puzzle.

"It's not just shiny things,"
Tesa signed
. "
And what's the connection
between their food and their a
rt
?" She picked up the woven cloak and

stared at it.

"Specialized vision helps animals find food ..."
Peter mused
, "
see
enemies
,
recognize one another
...
but there's a big jump between that
and
"--
he picked up the
cloak--"creating
a
rt
."

"When the Simiu met the
Desiree,"
Tesa signed, "they showed the crew a
film they'd prepared in all available light spectrums
,
many of which

were invisible to humans."

"But," Bruce argued, "
that was one technologically advanced race

meeting another. The Simiu and the Mizari both see in a slightly

different light spectrum than we do, yet we can see most of their a
rt
,

even if some colors are a little b
ri
ght. Why would the Grus create
art

only
in a spectrum we can't see? You said you
thought
you could see some of the image, but not well enough to be sure
."

Tesa'
s brows furrowed
-
she felt stumped.

"If there'
s something there," Meg said
,
finge
ri
ng the cloak, "then it
'
s
got to be in their feathers
.
We could analyze the feathers
,
ask the

computer."

Bruce looked doubtful.
"Lots
of chemicals in feathers."

"So, let
'
s get sta
rt
ed
,"
Lauren said impatiently
,
and taking a feather
from one of the bags, she pulled a scanner from Peter's pocket and

asked the computer for a chemical breakdown. A list of complex
,

impossibly long words rolled across the sc
re
en.

"Now, ask it how those chemicals show up under different light spectrums,"

Meg said.

Lauren talked to the computer. "There are
a couple
,"
Lauren said
, "
but
this one stands out. Porphy
ri
n
.
It's visible under ultraviolet light
."
The
computer diagrammed the feather, with the porphy
ri
n highlights lit up

in a distinctive pa
tt
e
rn
.

Laure
n asked the computer how many avian species throughout the

Known Worlds could see in ultraviolet.

"Sixty-
five point six two percent of all known avian species can see

ultraviolet markers," the computer replied.

"
Like insects
,"
Peter said, smiling.

155

Lauren asked what else avians could see in comparison to
human

beings. "Ninety-
four point eight th
re
e percent of all avi
an
species can
see polarized light."

"Well, ultraviolet markers would help them find food," Bruce said, "an
d
polarized light probably helps them navigate. But what has that got to

do with a
rt
istic expression?"

Tesa grew excited at the information about ultraviolet light, rememberi
ng

how Doctor Blanket had looked draped over her shoulders
. "
Is there a

light damper on board
?"
she asked.

"No," Meg told her, "but Szu-
yi has a hand
-
held ultraviolet lamp. She
uses it to check for ce
rt
ain fungi on the native food, like aphlotoxins
.

Lauren
,
call her
an
d ask her to b
ri
ng it."