Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing. She had heard, in school, that no one could live long alone without going crazy, without thinking they heard and saw other people. She had never believed it, but she had been told. So if she had gone crazy, without noticing it, she could have imagined the whole thing. The other ship had never really come, and nothing had happened to it. Why she had imagined such a gruesome fate for its colonists she did not know; it must be some evil streak in her, probably the same one that made her decide to stay here alone.
That idea, once rooted, bore tempting fruit: it would be easy to find out the truth. The machines would have recorded the transmissions, if there had been transmissions. All she had to do was play them back. Or play back nothing, and know she had made it all up.
She knew what she knew; she didn’t need any machine to tell her the truth. Day after day, she went into the center to check the gauges, the weather, to record the necessary items in the log. Day after day, she eyed the machine records and did not play them back.
It was, in the end, an accident. She had meant to check the date she’d planted carrots the year before.
Something interrupted; her finger slipped off the control that reversed the calendar search.
“—With what?” asked a frightened, angry voice that was not her own. It was real. It had happened. The machines did not lie, could not lie, and that meant the voice on the tape had been a real person, real in fright and pain.
And now was dead. She began to shake without realizing it; her hands and then her arms, her feet and then her legs, her whole body, shaking with the same fear, with the same shock. They had been human — people she could have known, could have talked to — and now they were all dead. With shaking hands, she fumbled over the controls until she turned the recording off. Silence rushed in on her, the silence she had grown used to, that she had thought of as peace. No voices. No voices anymore. Slowly, slowly, her breath steadied. She felt tired; she wanted to go to sleep. When she looked at her hands, with their red, swollen knuckles and knotted veins and age spots, they looked more fragile than flowers. Her gaze slid downwards, caught on the fringed drape she had made for herself. It seemed more indecent than her body; she yanked it off as she stood, balled it in her hands and threw it on the floor. “They’re dead!” she said aloud, in a voice she hardly remembered using. Her mind divided like water running down a slope: she wondered why she was outraged, she wondered why she was afraid, why she was not more afraid. She would not have killed them, those strangers, though she had not wanted them here.
She went outside again, into another day that insisted on being like any other. Again it was hot, humid, the sky clotted with clouds moving slowly before a steady wind. Why did it matter if they were all dead? They had come; they had gone; she was alone again, and she had wanted to be alone.
It was not the same.
It would never be the same.
Something — no, someone, some creatures — lived on this world that wanted to kill her — that had killed humans — and she had not known any such danger existed. She could not unknow it, struggle though she might.
The air stank of strange smoke; a grassfire burned on in the distance, its smoke plume mourning the nests. Though the grass would return and cover the nakedness of the land with her shawl, the People would always know where the scars were. This smell would last.
Defeat, drummed the righthand. Not defeat, victory: they are gone and we are here, drummed the lefthand. One by one, the righthand changed places, until the lefthand drumming carried all the power of the People.
Far above, a sinuous white streak where the monster had flown, scarring the very air. The righthand reminded that generations ago such streaks had been seen far off to the south. The lefthand continued drumming Victory, victory, safety, haven, return.
The scar in the sky blew away to nothing. No more monster noises from the air, no more bad smells. The People danced, winding around the burnt earth, sending out a long spiral coil of dancers to find live sprigs of grass, passed from one to another inward, until the site had been replanted. They danced on, drumming and dancing, until the wind drums answered, until the sky people gathered to dance in their own coils and spirals, weeping at the monster tracks, filling them with sweet tears that nourished the grass. On the move again after the rain, following the wind drums across the grass, laden with the gourds of skylight-maker, drum-beater, the youngest troop of the People called questions to each other. Why scars in the sky? Why monsters in gray and green? Why flat-faced? Why wingless, toeless -
Not toeless, one called back. Short-toed, foot-clothed in toeless garments.
Garments, not shells?
Not shells, garments.
None without them… shells.
No flesh-bond. Garments.
Then — the sky creatures also garments? A lively debate followed, whether the stinking corpses of great flyers had been shells or garments or separate creatures, allies of the monsters. One held out for machines, no more than complicated mechanisms like those of the stone-tossers. The others laughed scornfully. A city tale, something the shore-dwellers thought up when their brains were smoke-dimmed. Machines could not fly… who could draw the strings tightly enough to have the wings flap. Those wings did not flap.
That we saw.
It could work. The same enthusiast; they knew that eagerness for machines. The People had good machines; they were proud of this enthusiast. It could work, but it would need a new idea. They loped on, silent now. Never distract someone on the path of a new idea; it is like distracting a hunter on the trail of game, and means missing a feast.
The enthusiast fell behind; they knew what that meant. A time of sitting still, a time of seeking out other enthusiasts, a time of playing with sticks and little stones and sinew, and eventually there would be a new machine, something no one had ever seen. It did not concern the rest of them until then. If there are others, someone called, free now to call.
Others? Where?
The legends. The sky-scars. Somewhere south. Others. Allies of allies, allies of monsters. All alert, they crowded around. More monsters? More nest-burners, nest-scrapers? More thieves and children of thieves? It would be brood seasons before the nests just replanted were ready for young again; in the meantime they would have to nest elsewhere, which meant unfriendly seasons contesting for marginal sites with the others who roamed the grasslands. And would they come back, eager for the great nestmass, only to find more monsters?
An elder troop overheard their keening and swept them up. No monsters had been seen after that earlier sky-scar. Chances were it had been a scouting raid, no more.
No one ever looked.
Many brood seasons. Monsters are hasty. No need. No one ever looked. That from a youngling as enthusiastic this way as the machine-enthusiast had been. They all knew that, as they all knew everything about each other.
Too far. The desert. The thornbrush. Then too wet, and trees too tall. Worse than cities. The final insult, strong enough to discourage anyone but this youngling, who had the hunter’s own determination to follow any trail where it led.
Stinking trail, one of the oldest finally said. No good at the end. Empty belly, can’t eat monsters.
They had tried, only to be spectacularly sick in the burnt grass.