The whole Choir went rigid. “We’re musicians, artists,” Yearling muttered, “not children.”
“And because you are musicians you can carry many more of these songs than most folk,” Teacher countered. “Why do you think we teach these songs to children? Because they help us.”
“Then teach them to children,” Yearling shot back.
“Children are less likely to survive,” Teacher said quietly. “These songs must live on with or without children.”
The only sound was Simon’s mumbling and the whisper of the winds as they rode the updraft. It wasn’t just that the magnitude of what was coming was sinking in, Ensign realized, it was that they had always looked down on adults whose only repertoire was such childish songs. Skilled and talented as they all were, they hadn’t seen them as worth studying.
“He’s right,” The Geek said into the silence. “Songs like this are tool songs. They help us to survive. We will need them and we must learn them.”
“Wait a minute,” Ensign put in. “You have a lot of these, right?”
Teacher bobbed agreement. “More than enough to keep us occupied for the rest of our trip.”
“Well then, why not split it up and make each of us learn just a few of them?”
“No.”
“But—”
“He’s right,” Shorty said quietly. “We all have to learn these songs. The odds are better that way.”
Ensign started to protest, saw Shorty’s point, and shut up.
“Now,” Teacher said as if he had not been interrupted. “Once again.
To find the best fields when the Sun’s sinking low…
They were lucky at finding thermals all that day and they rested for the night, floating well above the dangerous cloud tops. Ensign felt glad for that. While the distant Sun and the inevitable lightning below meant that there wasn’t much difference in how well the High Folk saw at night, the end of the sunlight meant fewer thermals to ride. The fact that Teacher as pod leader and pathfinder was sparing them from the more strenuous night flying told Ensign of what he would expect for the rest of the journey.
The strange lights were still in the sky. Two sparks, one bright and one dim just above the horizon. They looked so inconsequential, he thought. Were they really worth fleeing? He could see that they had moved since the night before.
They followed the same travel pattern the next day and the day after that. Ride thermals, glide as much as possible, and rest during the night, all the while learning more and more simple songs by day and teaching them to the remoras at night. There was no time for feeding and not much to feed on. The rising columns of air didn’t reach far enough down into the atmosphere to bring up nutrients to support plankton.
By the fourth day hunger had become a companion. Ensign’s remoras felt it as well, wiggling and buzzing in protest at their own hunger.
“We’re going to have to eat soon,” Ensign said to Teacher during a brief break in the learning.
“I have been looking for a feeding ground,” Teacher said in his best pod-leader voices. “There is a place up ahead, I think.”
Teacher’s “place” turned out to be a cloud canyon with strong updrafts on both sides. The canyon bottom was darkened by plankton fed from the upwellings.
“Not especially rich, is it?” The Geek transmitted tight-band to Ensign as Teacher led them in.
“Richer than anything else around,” Ensign whispered back. Neither mentioned the shark danger in a feeding ground surrounded by clouds.
Normally Ensign would have avoided a place with this kind of cloud topography. But the whole choir was hungry and he was probably hungrier than the others. There really wasn’t an alternative.
As the pod closed in on the plankton field they instinctively sorted themselves out into feeding formation. Most of the group stayed to the center of the canyon, but the plankton floated thicker at the edges. Ensign weighed the situation and moved closer to the cloud wall, almost under the overhanging mass.
This is dangerous, he thought as he opened his mouth to start scooping plankton. Still, the richer feeding meant more energy and he had burned much more than the others.
The plankton here was thin and poor. It hadn’t been in the sunlight long enough to grow and fill out so it was gritty with unexpanded parts. Ensign knew he wouldn’t get enough nutrition out of this.
Will I make it? he wondered as he scooped in the tiny creatures that lay in his path. Will I be one of the ones who crosses the bands? His flanks pulsed as he forced the planktonladen air through his feeding passage and expelled it through his side and bottom vents. Each pulse brought a little more food to be filtered out and a little more hydrogen to add to his store.
Like all his kind, Ensign remained a realist. He knew that of all the Choir his chances were probably the worst. The low hydrogen supply, the energy he had to expend and now this, feeding next to a cloud bank.
He tried to think positively, but the place oppressed him. Had his brush with the sharks made him more sensitive? No, scanning the pod he could see that everyone appeared nervous. Even Simon had squeezed his body down a little from the tension.
He also realized that everyone else gave the edges a wide berth. Shorty, who was next in on the feeding line, had left an unusually wide space between himself and Ensign, all the better to stay away from the cloud banks.
Just like Shorty, he thought. Always play it safe and cautious. He wondered why someone with that attitude had decided to come on this venture. Especially one who thought Teacher would use them up unhesitatingly in pursuing his goal. Teacher’s power? Was Teacher’s hold on him really strong enough to make Shorty go against his instincts? I guess that’s what he meant when he said Teacher is a great pod leader.
Not that Teacher’s influence had stopped Shorty from being careful and cautious. It was just like him to pick the safest course through the plankton field. He’ll make it, Ensign thought. If anyone makes it, Shorty will.
Ensign probed the clouds with sound. Risky, because sharks could hear those probes. But it was even more risky to feed blind so close to clouds.
The clouds swirled close, glaring white and lemon yellow in the bright sunshine. Ensign found pale echoes from temperature and density discontinuities within them but no sign of anything dangerous. He continued to work his way along the edge, probing, feeding and feeling the tension grow within him until he wanted to scream on every frequency he could reach.
The plankton field was so poor that two passes would exhaust it. The pod reached the end of the cloud valley and banked into a group turn to make their final feeding pass. The formation left Ensign the low man and even more exposed. But it also meant he got a few precious more minutes of feeding time and a tiny amount more food. He held his course until he was almost into the mist.
As they came back on the new course Ensign continued to probe with his sonar. Again he stayed close to the cloud bank and Shorty gave him plenty of room. There was less plankton this time and it was more roiled by the currents of their passage.
The tension grew as they passed the halfway point in the field. Then three-quarters, then seven-eighths. Still nothing in the clouds but returns from discontinuities. There were more of them now, perhaps because the Sun was past its zenith and the clouds were cooling. They shivered and danced under Ensign’s sonar probe, rising up gently or soaring quickly as was their nature.
Soaring? Wait a minute! His body contracted and he blasted out a warning, but already the sharks were on them.
SKREEEE
With a blare of hunting noise three sharks jetted out of the clouds. Not diving from the cloud banks, but charging up from beneath. Ensign roiled away instinctively and was instantly lost in the clouds. He could not see, but he could hear Shorty’s despairing screams.
Without thinking he rolled into the opposite direction out of the terrifying clouds and into the light. The pod was already rising and closing up in a defensive box as one of the sharks pushed over and dove back on them from above. The other two had Shorty, tearing at his wing edges with their mouths full of ripping teeth. There was a huge ragged hole in his inner wing, but Shorty was still screaming as they sank back toward the clouds.
Ensign flattened his body and dove. The sharks had fastened on Shorty with a predator’s intentness and didn’t see him coming until one of them was sent spinning by a blow from his outer wing. The other twisted and snapped at Ensign. The thing missed and Ensign gave it a concentrated blast of sound as he went by. In the background he heard the pulse of sound as the rest of the pod concentrated their voices on the diving shark. And over everything else the screams.
The first shark writhed, obviously hurt, but it flicked out its wings and lunged at Ensign. Its mate left Shorty screaming and joined the attack.
But both sharks had expended their available hydrogen in their jet attack. Now they were slow and vulnerable. The injured shark’s right wing only extended halfway so its attack came as a slow roll. Ensign held position until the last instant and then rolled out of its way. The shark’s teeth caught his trailing edge for an instant and then Ensign’s wingtip counterblow whipped it free and ruptured its main gas cell like a popped balloon. Damaged beyond hope and already dead from the concussion, the shark plummeted into the clouds.
The second shark was slow but Ensign’s preoccupation let it set up its attack. It came in low and from behind only to fly straight into the most massive sound beam Ensign could emit at that angle. Three of his sounding chambers focused on the attacker and even his remoras added their sounds. For an instant the sound drowned out Shorty’s screams.
Blinded, deafened and damaged, the shark blundered past Ensign underneath. It twisted, flicked its tail and started to turn back. Then it seemed to shudder, shrivel and collapse in on itself under a massive blast of sonar energy from the entire Bach Choir. Even out of the beam’s focus, the wave of noise shivered Ensign to his core.
As the remains of the third shark dropped into the clouds, Ensign shook himself and tried to get his hearing back. The nerves in his active hearing chambers had been damaged by the Choir’s blast, but they would heal. Almost without thinking he switched to auxiliary hearing chambers, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Shorty was still screaming, a despairing, high wail that quavered across frequencies and seemed to echo everywhere at once. He was already lost in the dirty yellow murk below them but his screams went on and on.
Without a word Teacher gave the signal for the pod to rise. Still in defensive formation, the Bach Choir climbed toward the now-setting Sun, up and out of the terrible valley in the clouds.
Behind them the screams faded and were lost in the everpresent whisper of the wind.