Stop with the beast defeated, and the eggs safe, and the salutary moral is clear. The lowlander singers I had heard had always stopped there. But it’s not the end of the story. The four dead hunters had been among the most experienced, many of the others were injured, and food was scarce that year anyway. The seven dead from the attack fed the pack for a while, but after that they plundered the nests to survive, and no children were born that year.
I did not think White Ring would expect the singer to continue, even if she knew of the ending. The ill-omen of it would be too strong. Any singer would know what she meant by requesting it, and know, if he knew the end, to leave it off. But oh, my clever boy! He sang the rest of the song.
For a moment, as he continued where she had expected him to stop, she stood paralyzed. The others blinked in surprise, but his voice transfixed them and they were silent. White Ring drew her head back, and I saw her killing claws twitch. Even so she waited until he had finished.
“You made that up,” accused White Ring’s daughter when he fell silent. White Ring still held her threatening pose, ready to strike. But she dared not touch the singer; there was no other on board.
“You’re very young,” I said, my leg muscles tense with the desire to jump. “It’s fashionable these days to leave that verse off, but anyone of any experience and education knows that’s how the story ends.” I swiveled my snout towards White Ring, and bared my teeth. “Isn’t that so?”
“I have never heard it,” said White Ring, still poised to strike. Her gaze was fixed on the boy, a small, brown-specked shape in the middle of the circle. “You have violated your obligation as a singer. Why? There can have been no collusion. Can you have done such a terrible thing merely from a hatred of lowlanders?”
Even if I had told her he was mine she would not have been able to imagine why such a thing would matter. And besides, he had sung truly. I might have laughed, but I did not; this was a dangerous moment.
“I have heard it,” said a quiet voice. The others turned their heads but I never took my eyes off White Ring. She never took her eyes off my son.
“My great-aunt’s mate was a singer,” the voice continued. I placed it—a sturdy, handsome male, gray and black feathered, still young. He had kept quiet before now, as was proper. “He died when I was still a chick, but I remember he sang it in just that way.” Silence. And then, even more timidly than before, “I was surprised to hear it requested. I wondered if you would signal the singer to leave the ending off. But then I thought, he won’t sing the ending, no one ever has except my uncle.”
White Ring and her daughter would have no qualms about killing the black and gray male. They drew their heads back, hissing.
In that instant, a voice came from the speaking tube. “We have completed our calculations.”
The low ceiling made it impossible to jump. Instead I drew my head back and then struck forward with all the force I could muster, hoping the boy would be quick enough to move out of the way.
The room erupted in screams and shouts. My teeth snapped together where White Ring’s neck had been an instant before. I grabbed her shoulder and as she raked me with her claws I brought my foot up with its deadly killing claw. White Ring grabbed me and sank her teeth into my shoulder, but she was too late. My foot came up, and I drove my claw into her belly, and pulled my leg convulsively back.
Her jaws opened in a scream, and I let go of her and stepped back. The black and gray male was locked with the daughter. No one else was in the room—they must have fled down the ladder well.
“You are dead, White Ring,” I said. Pink entrails sagged out of the bleeding slash in her belly. “I need only keep out of reach for a while.”
“Return to Earth,” she said. “What if we’re all that’s left?”
I wanted to take a step back and lean against the wall, but I wasn’t sure if she still had strength for a last charge, and I didn’t want to show any weakness.
“You have doomed us,” she said, and fell to her knees, and then onto her side, guts squirting out with the force of her fall. Still I did not approach. Until she was reliably dead she was a danger.
Instead I looked over at the black and gray male, who stood now over the daughter’s corpse. His feathers drooped, and he was covered in blood, whose it was impossible to tell. “Are you hurt?” I asked. I hoped he wasn’t. He was handsome, and obviously strong.
“Yes,” he said.
“Go down to the doctor. On your way, inform the engineers of the change in command.” He bowed his head low and limped to the ladder well. My son had climbed up, and made way for him.
I stepped over to the daughter and pushed her with my foot. She was dead. Carefully, tentatively, I did the same for her mother.
Dead.
“Well, my chick,” I said. “There will be new songs, and they will be yours.” I turned to see him standing at the well. He bobbed his head. We had always understood each other.
My shoulder hurt, and my neck, where I had been clawed. I would have to see the doctor soon enough myself, but not this very moment. I turned around to see the image of the smoking, burning Earth. “Earth is dead, or if not it may as well be. Mars will be ours.” If anyone still lived on the Earth, perhaps one day they would venture away from the world and find, on Mars, the evidence of our triumph.
Let cowards retreat. We go forward. We live!