Alex was at a loss for words. He should have said something more memorable than “You speak Russian?” but truly, he hadn’t expected the bird, however intelligent it was, to start talking immediately in his native language. Even on the ship, they usually spoke standard. Well, he could invent something that sounded good for the history cubes. Who would know?
“We come in peace for all the citizens of Earth.” Hadn’t someone already used that? Oh well. “Uh, you are our first contact with a civilization other than our own.” No response. It didn’t seem to be too handy with small talk. Neither was Alex. He slumped back against a cushion. He had been trained to communicate a few basic concepts, to start learning an alien language, if he could. He was to lay the groundwork for more meaningful communication later.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this fast. Here he could say anything he wanted, but nothing seemed worth communicating, and the creature wasn’t interested. The whole encounter seemed meaningless.
Alex looked over at the bird seated awkwardly on the floor. It had folded itself rather haphazardly together and looked forlorn and a little moth-eaten, to tell the truth, like a malnourished dog. Purely on impulse, he leaned forward and reached out a hand to touch the down on its broad shoulder, where wing and arm and back and chest met. It was soft on the surface, hard-muscled underneath. He stroked the length of the arm softly, and the creature didn’t flinch or pull away, but reached out to touch his cheek with its longest fingers. Its hand was very warm, warmer by several degrees than his own body temperature.
A part of his mind protested: this wasn’t remotely in tune with the demands of protocol, or even of scientific inquiry. How was he going to explain this to his superiors? Extremely disordered behavior, said his mind. Situational diplomacy, replied his body. He put an end to the discussion and moved closer to the alien.
Physical contact with the telepathic creature made them both of one mind, one feeling. The bird’s large, sensitive hands moved lightly around his neck, under his ears, to his shoulders, and down. He moved his own hands in the same way on its longer body. Sensual warmth without sexual arousal flowed between them in the smoothing together of skin and velvet. Alex felt the weight of the expedition’s problems fall away from him, as he lost himself in the drowsiness of warmth and contact. They stretched slowly together on the floor of the tent.
Girat could feel the visitor relaxing, loosening his grip on his pain, letting the tension flow from his muscles. When they touched, Girat could feel the sources of his tension: they lay not so much in the vibrations that filled the air of the tent, as in the pain and isolation of creatures who’ve abandoned their nests, who’ve left behind all the rest of their kind, forever.
As she began to understand its pain, Girat felt herself grow closer to the visitor, and she sensed the ambiguity in the visitor’s mind concerning the exchange of warmth and the reproduction of his species. Very different from her associations concerning the two functions. To Girat, there was no relationship between gene sharing and mind sharing. She projected that thought to the visitor, and felt him drowsily agree to the idea of sharing. Their minds and bodies moved together.
Lying stretched out on the floor of the tent, she shared her breath with him, breathed the air as it came from his body. Their muscles moved together, their limbs glided over each other.
Girat could feel the pain leaving his mind, the edges of his regret dulling. Slowly, she pushed further into his unconscious. He would be left with a sense of loss, which is a worthy emotion, but would no longer feel such pain and longing for his Earth. She spoke to the visitor in words for the first time since they had touched.
“This is a suitable happening for the end of a deathflight. I am honored.”
She was lying against him on her chest, one arm over his shoulder, the other reaching forward beyond their heads, her hand curved back toward her face, her long fingers lightly flexed. Alex smiled sleepily. He should find this experience a lot stranger than he did.
Instead, he felt comfortable on this planet for the first time since they’d arrived. He’d been welcomed by one of Pyerva’s own people, and they could explore their differences and their similarities. What a wealth of information she could give him.
She rose up slightly on one arm, turned to face him. “This is a suitable happening for the end of a deathflight,” she said. “I am honored.”
“What is a deathflight?” asked Alex. Perhaps this would explain the mummified birds in the cities.
She sat up slowly. “When we left the cities, thousands of seasons ago, we left the technology that would support a large population. We must keep our numbers low.” Flexing her wings slightly, she stretched her arms out in front of her, tendons and muscles stretching. “So, when a person has accomplished some good and has made a contribution, she is allowed to return to her ancestors’ city to die, and one of her eggs is quickened.”
This made no sense to Alex. “But why did you leave the cities in the first place? They could support millions.”
“The vibrations,” she replied. “The cities and their electronics produced vibrations — ” she touched his arm, and he associated the word with the electromagnetic spectrum, “ — that scar the mind and damage the body. Some people — my ancestors — could feel them, like a sickness, eating at them. They left the cities, got as far away from them as they could, and settled in the rock eyries where we live now. Most people stayed in the cities until it was too late. Perhaps they couldn’t feel the vibrations, or perhaps they ignored them. They did not live healthily until death, and their young suffered even more.” She paused. “It’s time that I left,” she said, rising slowly from the floor of the tent, drawing Alex up with her. “If I rest too much, I’ll be unable to die properly.”
Alex stood stunned for an instant as her meaning sank in, then turned incredulous. He was just beginning to put the pieces together, and there was much more they should talk about. She couldn’t die now. She couldn’t abandon him.
He grabbed her arms, to keep her in the tent until she regained her senses.
When he grabbed her, Girat instinctively pushed back, but she was too weak to have any effect: almost all her remaining strength was in the muscles that controlled her wings. With a violence of emotion that blew through her mind like a wind, he objected to her leaving, objected to her dying, and threatened to prevent her from continuing her deathflight.
Girat had never found herself in violent opposition to another intelligence. She was totally without referent. She could accept the impersonal barbarity of her environment, she could comprehend searing pain and transmute it. Those were natural occurrences: she could transcend them. But the artificial constraint of one person by another, this was beyond acceptance and comprehension.
He couldn’t intend to keep her here! He couldn’t place his mind and power in opposition to hers! What kind of incomprehensible monsters were these aliens?
Incredulity and rage burned reason from her mind. She shook uncontrollably. There were other ways of dying. She’d accept a hasty death on the ground before she’d be kept alive against her will.
Suddenly she stopped. The cause of his irrational behavior was available to her: he couldn’t understand what she was thinking, he couldn’t hear her, even when they were touching. She thought again what a lonely, comfortless existence these creatures must lead. But she could project. As long as they were touching, she could put parts of her mind into his, just as she could project words from a distance.