Commitment Hour

robes that belled out from their bodies, making it impossible to tell whether the figures were male or female.

'Greetings,' they said in unison. The voices were identical, and pitched in the middle between man and woman. Their beaks scarcely moved when they talked. 'Welcome to Birds Home,' they went on. 'You are honored guests. We will serve you on behalf of the gods.'

They spoke with an unfamiliar accent — not Tober, and not like any Southerner I'd heard. The accent of heaven.

The bird-servant in the middle stepped forward. Its colors were blue, white and black, like a jay. 'I will take the Gifts offered by your infants,' it said. 'Please give them to me.' It held its hands out stiffly — normal human-shaped hands, but the skin was a whorl of blue and white plastic.

I bent quickly and picked up the metal case Steck had unloaded. 'Here,' I said, hurrying forward and placing the case in the creature's arms.

'Thank you,' it answered, with a small bow. Cradling its arms around the case, the bird-servant turned and walked off through the doorway in the wall.

Another bird stepped forward. This one was bright red with black facial markings — a cardinal. 'I will serve as guide for the woman Cappie. Please come to me.'

I nudged Rashid; we helped Cappie forward. As we approached the cardinal, it said, 'Only Cappie please.'

'She can't walk,' I answered.

'Only Cappie please,' it repeated.

'Not very sophisticated programming,' Rashid muttered.

'I can walk,' Cappie said. 'I can, Fullin. Please.'

Rashid eased away from her. Reluctantly, I did too. She took a deep breath and forced herself to totter the last two steps toward the bird-servant. For a moment, I thought she was going to pitch forward against its chest; but it reached out and steadied her with an arm around her shoulders. 'Hello, Cappie,' it said.

She didn't speak; she just nodded.

The third bird stepped forward: white with tufts of gray, like a snowy owl. 'I will serve as guide for the man Fullin. Please come to me.'

Taking a deep breath, I picked up my violin and the Chicken Box. 'I'm Fullin,' I said. The butterflies in my stomach didn't stop me from moving to the creature.

'Hello, Fullin,' it said. It put its arm around my shoulders, the same way the other was supporting Cappie.

'You will now sleep,' the two birds said in unison.

Rashid's head snapped toward Steck who was still at the far end of the chamber. 'You said there was no knock-out gas!'

'Sorry,' Steck answered. She lifted the breather of her scuba tank and placed it into her mouth. With Rashid's helmet still tucked under her arm, she hopped into the water under Mistress Gull's wing. In a moment, Steck's head disappeared beneath the surface Rashid ran to the edge of the water, then stopped. He turned back to me; the color had drained from his face. 'Gas,' he said. 'She knew my force field doesn't protect against gas.'

He sat down abruptly on the stone floor, his face stricken.

A great sleepiness washed over me. The bird-servant's arm tightened around my shoulders to keep me from falling.

I woke on the hard stone floor. My cheek hurt from pressing against the rock, but otherwise I was intact.

You couldn't say the same for my owl bird-servant. The body of my Commitment guide lay on the floor to my right; its head lay to my left. Wires dangled from the head's severed throat, but the cut looked very clean. It had to be the work of Rashid's pistol, the one that shot invisible beams.

Why would anyone destroy my bird-servant? But of course, the killer wasn't just 'anyone'; it had to be Steck.

Still woozy, I dragged myself to my feet and looked around. How long had I been unconscious? My mouth was as dry as sand; I must have been out four or five hours. Maybe longer — there was no way of telling except by the stiffness in my bones.

Cappie and her bird-servant were gone. Closer to the edge of the water, Rashid lay on the stone floor. He no longer wore his armor — nothing but a light cotton undershirt that came down as far as his knees. I wondered if he'd actually been wearing that under his armor or if Steck had put it on him…

…after she'd taken his suit. No one else would dare to steal Spark armor — campfire tales said it could defend itself, even when the wearer was asleep, but Steck must know how to get around those defenses. How to make them her own.

'Rashid!' I called to him. When he didn't move, I knelt and shook his shoulder. No response. At least he was still breathing.

I shook him several more times without success. He looked deeply unconscious. Perhaps Steck had done something to him, some anaesthetic injection like the one Doctor Gorallin used to put children to sleep before taking the Gift of Blood and Bone. Whatever the reason, Rashid showed no sign of waking up soon.

Now Steck had his armor. And his force field. And the beam-shooting pistol that she used to kill my bird-servant. She must have hidden in the water until the gods put the rest of us to sleep, then come out again for…

For what? What did my mother intend to do in Birds Home?

A shiver rippled through me. Whatever Steck wanted couldn't be good.

I went back to the headless bird-servant. My Chicken Box lay on the floor nearby, but my violin was gone. Stolen by Steck.

Why? Why would she want my violin? But then, it had originally been hers, hadn't it? My violin, my sheet music, the instructional books that taught me how to play… all Steck's. A gift of music, given by my mother.

I swore that when I got back to the cove, I would buy a different instrument. I would never so much as touch the bow that had belonged to Steck.

'And you took the wrong thing, Mother,' I said aloud. 'You should have taken the Chicken Box.'

I opened the box. The Beretta still lay inside. I checked; it was fully loaded.

'Mother,' I whispered, 'watch out.'

Then I headed into Birds Home to find her.

TWENTY-ONE A Coffin for Fullin

Beyond the open door lay a corridor sloping slightly downward. There were no lights — only the glow spilling from the hangar area behind me. After a time, I tucked the gun into my belt at the small of my back and walked with one hand brushing the wall. The stone was cold and weepy with moisture.

My moccasins whispered on the floor — not quite as silently as Dorr could move, but even with echoing rock walls, the sound wouldn't travel far. If I could catch Steck while she was busy with something…

But what would she be busy with? What did she want to do? She must have been planning this for twenty years — somehow meeting the Knowledge-Lord, persuading him to come here at this particular moment, lying to him about the 'knock-out gas' so he wouldn't interfere with whatever she intended…

I just couldn't imagine what she wanted. Even wearing Rashid's armor, what could she do against gods?

But the gods used machines as tools — machines like the bird-servant, with wires dangling from its severed head. She had dealt with that machine easily enough.

Sacrilege didn't stop Steck for a second. I wondered what would.

As the light from the hangar faded behind me, I became aware of a glow far ahead. Good — I'd been worried that the gods and their servants didn't bother with lights because they could see in the dark.

Soon I could tell I was heading for a large chamber, lit to dim melancholy by gray-blue electric light-tubes. Holding my breath, I pressed tight against the corridor wall in case someone in the chamber might see me; but there was no motion out there, no sound. After a minute of listening, I moved forward cautiously.

The room was at least as big as Tober Cove's town square… and like the square it contained bodies. Bodies in glass coffins.

Every coffin was smashed and every body was dead.

I moved to the closest. Tears stung my eyes — Urgho, poor Urgho. It looked like he had been sleeping peacefully inside the coffin; then someone had hammered against the glass until it broke. Before the boy could wake, the killer sliced Urgho's throat with one of the broken glass shards: up, across, down. Urgho's blood had sprayed in gushers against the inside of the coffin until the flow gurgled to a stop.

Steck had done this. My mother. Then she went on to the next.

The next was Thorn, one of the noisy neighbors living in the cabin next to Cappie and me. She had been female over the past year, but this was her male body — dead, killed like Urgho, blood running down the walls of the glass casket and pooling in the bottom.

I moved on: Chum, Thorn's lover. Chum's male body, dead.

And in the next coffin…

The next coffin…

'Oh, Cappie,' I whispered.

Cappie, the brooding male Cappie, drenched in his own blood.

She was supposed to Commit male, I thought. Her hands were burnt, so she was supposed to Commit male. But that half of her was dead.

I reached through the broken glass and laid my hand on his cheek. It occurred to me I had never touched her this way, male me, male her. 'Cappie,' I whispered.

The corpse was beginning to cool.

I forced myself to pull away. There was nothing I could do here — nothing but look, memorize why Steck had to die.

Cappie had been sleeping: the way all our souls slept in Birds Home when they weren't needed. His body was naked… and as I looked more closely, I saw tiny tubes and wires stretched out from the bottom of the coffin, reaching into Cappie's body from head to toe. Feeders, I thought. A mother bird brings food to her nestlings; and here in Birds Home, the gods supplied Tobers with food too, as we slept. Food, water, whatever care a body needs…