Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [130]
When we get back to Kauai, everyone goes through decontamination.” “As you wish, Sergeant,” said the officer sourly.
The woman still had not moved. She stood statue-still, looking up into the brilliant blue sky. It seemed that Charlotte had no alternative but to go to her.
Charlotte replaced the handset of her beltphone and took two steps forward, saying: “My name is Detective Sergeant Charlotte Holmes of the UN police. I’m arresting you on suspicion—” She was interrupted by a cry of alarm from the helicopter that had settled on the far side of the woman’s position. The uniformed men had been obediently climbing back aboard, but the last one had paused and turned—and now he was pointing, apparently at the two women.
“Look out!” he cried.
Charlotte’s right hand tensed about the handle of the gun, and her left moved back to support it. Her forefinger curled around the trigger—but the red-haired woman hadn’t moved a muscle, and there was no evident threat. Charlotte heard a strange squawking sound emanating from the region of her hip and realized that someone was trying to attract her attention by shouting over the voice link to her handset. She lowered her left hand again, rather uncertainly, and plucked the handset from its holster. “It’s okay,” she said impatiently. “She has no weapon. It’s all under control.” “Look behind you!” screeched the unrecognizable voice, still trying to shout at her although the volume control on the beltphone was automatically compensating.
“Corruption and corrosion, woman, look behind you!” Uncomprehendingly, Charlotte looked behind her.
Gliding toward her from the vivid brightness of the climbing sun was a broad black shadow. At first she could judge neither its breadth nor its exact shape, but as it swooped down upon her the truth became abundantly and monstrously clear.
She could not believe the evidence of her eyes. She knew full well that what she was seeing was impossible, and her mind stubbornly refused to accept the truth of what she saw. She understood, as her unbelief stupefied and froze her, why the voice had been trying so hard to achieve an appropriate level of amplification. In addition to the need to warn her that she was in danger, there had been a need to express shock, horror, and sheer terror.
It was a bird—but it was a bird like none which had ever taken to the skies of Earth in the entire evolutionary history of flight. Its wingspan was larger than the reach of the helicopter blades that were already spinning again as the automatic pilots prepared for flight. Its vast wings were black, but they glinted like the wings of starlings; their pinion feathers somehow reminded Charlotte of scimitars and samurai swords. Its enormous and horrible head was naked, like a vulture’s, and its eyes were the size of basketballs; they were crimson in color, but as they caught the sunlight it seemed that they were all aglow with a sulphurous inner light.
The creature’s raptorial beak was fully agape, and it cried out as it swept over her head. Its call was a terrible inhuman shriek, which put Charlotte in mind of the wailing of the damned in some ancient mythical hell. She felt as if she had been frozen in place, like a pillar of salt, to await her doom as that terrible beak closed upon her tender flesh—but the beak passed her by, and the huge claws too. Their talons were aimed at the other woman: Rappaccini’s unnatural daughter.
Charlotte’s momentary petrifaction came to an end. Even as she perceived that she was not the target of the monster’s dive, panic took hold of her and threw her aside like a rag doll. She had no time to realign and fire her gun, nor even to think about realigning and firing it. Her reflexes rudely cast her down, tumbling her ignominiously onto the silvery sand.
Rappaccini’s daughter, if that were indeed what she deemed herself to be, did not change her position in the slightest. Her