can see well enough.'
The human hesitated, swung the light away, and turned it off. He motioned to the helicopter and its lights faded. As the jay had said, it was dawn, misty and gray and eerie. The flyers faced Dark's adversaries again.
'We have no more resources than you,' the raven flyer said. 'How do you expect us to help you? We have ourselves. We have our land. You have the same.'
'Land!' Dark said bitterly. 'Have you ever seen my land? It's nothing but piles of rotting stone and pits full of rusty water-- ' She stopped; she had not meant to lose her temper. But she was hunched on the border of captivity, straining toward sanctuary and about to be refused.
'Send her out so we can take her without violating your boundaries. Don't let her cause you a lot of trouble.'
'A little late for such caution,' Jay said. 'Redwing, if we bow to their threats now, what will they do next time? We should let her in.'
'So the diggers can do to our refuge what they did to their own? Pits, and rusting water-- '
'It was like that when we came!' Dark cried, shocked and hurt. 'We make tunnels, yes, but we don't destroy! Please hear what I've got to say. Then, if you ask me to go... I'll obey.' She made the promise reluctantly, for she knew that once she had lived near the volcano, she would need great will to leave. 'I give you my word.' Her voice quivered with strain. The humans muttered behind her; a few steps inside the boundary, a few moments inside and then out-- who, besides Dark, would accuse them of entering the flyers' territory at all?
Jay and Redwing glared at each other, but suddenly Jay laughed sharply and turned away. He stepped back and swept one wingtip along the ground, waving Dark into his land. 'Come in, little one,' he said.
Hesitantly, afraid he would change his mind, Dark moved forward. Then, in a single moment, after her long journey, she was safe.
'We have no reason to trust it!' Redwing said.
'Nor any reason not to, since we could just as well be mashed flat between stone and armor. We do have reason not to help the humans.'
'You'll have to send her back,' the leader of the humans said. He was angry; he stood glowering at the very edge of the border, perhaps a bit over. 'Laws will take her, if we don't now. It will just cost you a lot more in trouble.'
'Take your threats and your noisy machine and get out of here,' Jay said.
'You will be sorry, flyer,' the humans' leader said.
Dark did not really believe they would go until the last one boarded the helicopter and its roar increased, it climbed into the air, and it clattered off into the brightening gray morning.
'Thank you,' Dark said.
'I had ulterior motives,' Jay said.
Redwing stood back, looking at Jay but not at Dark. 'We'll have to call a council.'
'I know. You go ahead. I'll talk to her and meet you when we convene.'
'I think we will regret this,' Redwing said. 'I think we are closer to the humans than to the diggers.'
The black flyer leaped into the air, wings outspread to reveal their brilliant scarlet underside, and soared away.
Jay laid his soft hand on Dark's shoulder plate to lead her from the lava to volcanic soil. His skin felt frail, and very warm: Dark's metabolism was slower than it had been, while the flyers' chemistry had been considerably speeded up. Dark was ugly and clumsy next to him. She thought of digging down and vanishing but that would be ill-mannered. Besides, she had never been near a flyer before. Curiosity overcame her. Glancing surreptitiously sideways, beneath the edge of her armor, she saw that he was peeking at her, too. Their gazes met; they looked away, both embarrassed. Then Dark stopped and faced him. She settled back to regard him directly.
'This is what I look like,' she said. 'My name is Dark and I know I'm ugly, but I could do the job I was made for, if they'd let me.'
'I think your strength compensates for your appearance,' the flyer said. 'I'm Jay.' Dark was unreasonably pleased that she had guessed right about his name.
'You never answered Redwing's question,' Jay said. 'Why come here ? The strip mines-- '
'What could you know of strip mines?'
'Other people lived near them before they were given over to you.'
'So you think we should stay there!'
Jay replied to her abrupt anger in a gentle tone. 'I was going to say, this place is nicer than the strip mines, true, but a lot of places nicer than the strip mines are more isolated than we are. You could have found a hidden place to live.'
'I'm sorry,' Dark said. 'I thought-- '
'I know. Never mind.'
'No one else like me got this far, did they?'
Jay shook his head.
'Six of us escaped,' Dark said. 'We hoped more than one would reach you. Perhaps I'm just the first, though.'
'That could be.'
'I came to ask you to join us,' Dark said.
Jay looked at her sharply, his thick flaring eyebrows raised in surprise. He veiled his eyes for a moment with the translucent avian membranes, then let them slowly retract.
'Join you? In... your preserve?' He was polite enough to call it this time by its official name. Though she had expressed herself badly, Dark felt some hope.
'I misspoke myself,' she said. 'I came-- the others and I decided to come-- to ask you to join us politically. Or at least to support us.'
'To get you a better home. That seems only fair.'
'That isn't quite what we're hoping for. Or rather it is, but not the way you mean.'
Jay hesitated again. 'I see. You want... what you were made for.'
Dark wanted to nod; she missed the shorthand of the language of the human body, and she found she was unable to read Jay's. She had been two years out of contact with normal humans; or perhaps it was that Jay was a flyer, and his people had made adjustments of their own.
'Yes. We were made to be explorers. It's a useless economy, to keep us on earth. We could even pay our own way after a while.'
Dark watched him closely, but could not tell what he thought. His face remained expressionless; he did not move toward her or away. Then he sighed deeply. That, Dark understood.
'Digger-- ' She flinched, but inwardly, the only way she could. He had not seemed the type to mock her. '-- the projects are over. They changed their minds. There will be no exploring or colonizing, at least not by you and me. And what difference does it make? We have a peaceful life and everything we need. You've been badly used but that could be changed.'
'Maybe,' Dark said, doubting his words. The flyers were beautiful, her people were ugly, and as far as
the humans were concerned that made every difference. 'But we had a purpose, and now it's gone. Are you happy, living here with nothing to do?'
'We're content. Your people are all ready, but we aren't. We'd have to go through as much change again as we already have.'
'What's so bad about that? You've gone this far. You volunteered for it. Why not finish?'
'Because it isn't necessary.'
'I don't understand,' Dark said. 'You could have a whole new living world. You have even more to gain than we do, that's why we thought you'd help us.' Dark's planned occupation was the exploration of dead worlds or newly formed ones, the places of extremes where no other life could exist. But Jay's people were colonists; they had been destined for a world that was being made over for them, even as they were being suited for what it would become.
'The terraforming is only beginning,' Jay said. 'If we wait until it's complete-- '
'But that won't be for generations.'
Jay shrugged. 'We know.'
