The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [29]
“The boy Andre Palanque-Delabrouille will verify that we agreed. I told him I had given him a ride; he accepted that. His female guardian screamed that I was an evil genie. When I offered a silver bar, she called me a silver-tongued genie, but she took it.”
I said, “Now, I’m still playing catch-up, so give me a sanity check here—”
“We’re sane.”
“I’ll decide that. You saw a child with an adult woman? You swooped out of the sky and picked him up in your claws ... hands. Carried him how far?”
“Skreek!” (The translator whispered, “Two hundred twenty-three meters.”) “In a loop, then back. The game requires we go against the wind. Land, then talk to woman Rosanne Palanque-Delabrouille.”
“Have you given thought to everything that might have gone wrong?”
“Much thought.”
“She was an older adult. In good health? She might have died of shock. The boy will be afraid of plucked chickens for the rest of his life. You offered her silver to say she is the boy’s guardian? What if she lied?”
“Surname was the same.”
“Did she show you identification?” He shrugged; feathers would have ruffled if he had evolved them. “Dammit. You’d have no contract. The news might be breaking on CNN right now. A child attacked by aliens ... twice now. The Chirpsithra ships could be asked to leave Earth.”
“We harm nobody, and the hunt is fair,” Silver Tongue said.
Z. Wayne Bennett spoke for the first time. “Don’t give me that! Do you think I can’t see you’re wearing a flying belt?”
Bennett might be more sophisticated than he looked. Then again, Silver Tongue’s gear looked very like a Buck Rogers flying belt. Thrashing for an answer to Bennett’s accusation, I noticed how many optical organs were pointed our way, and had my first bright idea.
“Z. Wayne, we’re being stared at. I don’t like it. Do you? Silver Tongue, is there room in your aerie?”
“There is room—”
“We can’t fly,” Z. Wayne said belligerently.
But I had the kids’ interest. I said, “There’s an elevator.”
We’d used it to lift amazing quantities of meat. It was just a flat plate, wide enough for all of us. Z. Wayne’s kids pulled him onto it against some resistance. We went up like a dream, with nothing between us and the drop, and unearthly varieties of sapience spread out below us. I was ready to snatch at a child, but Z. Wayne never let go of them.
Silver Tongue’s mate awaited our arrival, then backed away to give us room. We stepped out onto spongy wickerwork woven from Siberian vegetation.
Her right side was swollen way out of proportion, a foam plastic pillow outlining a wing bound tight along her torso. The skin of her face was ravaged and smeared with gel, with two pocks in her beak and a patch over one eye.
Her belly was the same sky blue as her mate’s. Where his back was a muddle of earth colors, hers was an elaborate scarlet design outlined in silver. I think the silver was tattooed onto a pattern evolved as a secondary sexual characteristic. I’ve never been sure. I picture him riding the wind high up, camouflaged against predators higher yet while he looked down for the bright flash and pattern of a possible mate. Mated, he would hunt for them both.
Bennett said, forcing himself, “Ma’am, how are you?”
She said, “Healing, thank you, Mr. Bennett. My eye is already replaced. Wing bones are growing in a template. My name is Sshreekeetht. How are you, Hammett?”
“Healing too.” She had him awed. “Silverback,” he said.
“Show her,” his father ordered.
The boy took off his shirt. Silverback looked him over, but came no closer. She said, “Z. Wayne Bennett, you must be wonderfully accurate with a shotgun.”
“I didn’t have the right load. If you’d been closer, you’d be dead.”
“You shot me when I was carrying Ham, yet the boy took no harm.” She paused to let us all realize how seriously the man had risked his son’s life, then said, “No harm except that my hands convulsed