Volpla, Wyman Guin [ebook reader for surface pro txt] 📗

launched herself across the stream. She swooped up the opposite hillside and landed neatly in the tree where the doves rested.

The birds came out of the tree, climbing hard with their graceful strokes.

I looked back, as did the girl remaining beside me. The soaring volpla half closed his planes and started dropping. He became a golden flash across the sky.

The doves abruptly gave up their hard climbing and fell away with swiftly beating wings. I saw one of the male volpla's planes open a little. He veered giddily in the new direction and again dropped like a molten arrow.

The doves separated and began to zigzag down the valley. The volpla did something I would not have anticipated—he opened his planes and shot lower than the bird he was after, then swept up and intercepted the bird's crossward flight.

I saw the planes close momentarily. Then they opened again and the bird plummeted to a hillside. The volpla landed gently atop the hill and stood looking back at us.

The volpla beside me danced up and down shrieking in a language all her own. The girl who had raised the birds from the tree volplaned back to us, yammering like a bluejay.

It was a hero's welcome. He had to walk back, of course—he had no way to carry such a load in flight. The girls glided out to meet him. Their lavish affection held him up for a time, but eventually he strutted in like every human hunter.

They were raptly curious about the bird. They poked at it, marveled at its feathers and danced about it in an embryonic rite of the hunt. But presently the male turned to me.

"We eat this?"

I laughed and took his tiny, four-fingered hand. In a sandy spot beneath a great tree that overhung the creek, I built a small fire for them. This was another marvel, but first I wanted to teach them how to clean the bird. I showed them how to spit it and turn it over their fire.

Later, I shared a small piece of the meat in their feast. They were gleeful and greasily amorous during the meal.

When I had to leave, it was dark. I warned them to stand watches, keep the fire burning low and take to the tree above if anything approached. The male walked a little away with me when I left the fire.

I said again, "Promise me you won't leave here until we've made you ready for it."

"We like it here. We will stay. Tomorrow you bring more of us?"

"Yes. I will bring many more of you, if you promise to keep them all here in this woods until they're ready to leave."

"I promise." He looked up at the night sky and, in the firelight, I saw his wonder. "You say we came from there?"

"The old ones of your kind told me so. Didn't they tell you?"

"I can't remember any old ones. You tell me."

"The old ones told me you came long before the red men in a ship from the stars." Standing there in the dark, I had to grin, visioning the Sunday supplements that would be written in about a year, maybe even less.

He looked into the sky for a long time. "Those little lights are the stars?"

"That's right."

"Which star?"

I glanced about and presently pointed over a tree. "From Venus." Then I realized I had blundered by passing him an English name. "In your language, Pohtah."

He looked at the planet a long time and murmured, "Venus. Pohtah."

That next week, I transported all of the volplas out to the oak woods. There were a hundred and seven men, women and children. With no design on my part, they tended to segregate into groups consisting of four to eight couples together with the current children of the women. Within these groups, the adults were promiscuous, but apparently not outside the group. The group thus had the appearance of a super-family and the males indulged and cared for all the children without reference to actual parenthood.

By the end of the week, these super-families were scattered over about four square miles of the ranch. They had found a new delicacy, sparrows, and hunted them easily as they roosted at night. I had taught the volplas to use the fire drill and they were already utilizing the local grasses, vines and brush to build marvelously contrived tree houses in which the young, and sometimes the adults, slept through midday and midnight.

The afternoon my family returned home, I had a crew of workmen out tearing down the animal rooms and lab building. The caretakers had anesthetized all the experimental mutants, and the metabolic accelerator and other lab equipment was being dismantled. I wanted nothing around that might connect the sudden appearance of the volplas with my property. It was already apparent that it would take the volplas only a few more weeks to learn their means of survival and develop an embryonic culture of their own. Then they could leave my ranch and the fun would be on.

My wife got out of the car and looked around at the workmen hurrying about the disemboweled buildings and she said, "What on Earth is going on here?"

"I've finished my work and we no longer need the buildings. I'm going to write a paper about my results."

My wife looked at me appraisingly and shook her head. "I thought you meant it. But you really ought to. It would be your first."

My son asked, "What happened to the animals?"

"Turned them over to the university for further study," I lied.

"Well," he said to her, "you can't say our pop isn't a man of decision."

Twenty-four hours later, there wasn't a sign of animal experimentation on the ranch.

Except, of course, that the woods were full of volplas. At night, I could hear them faintly when I sat out on the terrace. As they passed through the dark overhead, they chattered and laughed and sometimes moaned in winged love. One night a flight of them soared slowly across the face of the full Moon, but I was the only one who noticed.

I made daily trips out to the original camp to meet the oldest of the males, who had apparently established himself as a chief of all the volpla families. He assured me that the volplas were staying close to the ranch, but complained that the game was getting scarce. Otherwise things were progressing nicely.

The males now carried little stone-tipped spears with feathered shafts that they could throw in flight. They used them at night to bring down roosting sparrows and in the day to kill their biggest game, the local rabbits.

The women wore bluejay feathers on their heads. The men wore plumes of dove feathers and sometimes little skirts fashioned of rabbit down. I did some reading on the subject and taught them crude tanning of their rabbit and squirrel hides for use in their tree homes.

The tree homes were more and more intricately wrought with expert basketry for walls and floor and tight thatching above. They were well camouflaged from below, as I suggested.

These little creatures delighted me more and more. For hours, I could watch the adults, both the males and females, playing with the children or teaching them to glide. I could sit all afternoon and watch them at work on a tree house.

So one day my wife asked, "How does the mighty hunter who now returns from the forest?"

"Oh, fine. I've been enjoying the local animal life."

"So has our daughter."

"What do you mean?"

"She has two of them up in her room."

"Two what?"

"I don't know. What do you call them?"

I went up the stairs three at a time and burst into my daughter's room.

There she sat on her bed reading a book to two volplas.

One of the volplas grinned and said in English, "Hello there, King Arthur."

"What's going on here?" I demanded of all three.

"Nothing, Daddy. We're just reading like we always do."

"Like always? How long has this been going on?"

"Oh, weeks and weeks. How long has it been since you came here that first time to visit me, Fuzzy?"

The impolite volpla who had addressed me as King Arthur grinned at her and calculated. "Oh, weeks and weeks."

"But you're teaching them to read English."

"Of course. They're such good pupils and so grateful. Daddy, you won't make them go away, will you? We love each other, don't we?"

Both volplas nodded vigorously.

She turned back to me. "Daddy, did you know they can fly? They can fly right out of the window and way up in the sky."

"Is that a fact?" I said testily. I looked coldly at the two volplas. "I'm going to speak to your chief."

Back downstairs again, I raved at my wife. "Why didn't you tell me a thing like this was going on? How could you let such an unusual thing go on and not discuss it with me?"

My wife got a look on her face that I don't see very often. "Now you listen to me, mister. Your whole life is a secret from us. Just what makes you think your daughter can't have a little secret of her own?"

She got right up close to me and her blue eyes snapped little sparks all over me. "The fact is that I was wrong to tell you at all. I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone. Look what happened when I did. You go leaping around the house like a raving maniac just because a little girl has a secret."

"A fine secret!" I yelled. "Didn't it occur to you this might be dangerous? Those creatures are over-sexed and...." I stumbled into an awful silence while she gave me the dirtiest smile since the days of the Malatestas.

"How did you ... suddenly get to be ... the palace eunuch? Those are sweet lovable little creatures without a harm in their furry little bodies. But don't think I don't realize what's been going on. You created them yourself. So, if they have any dirty ideas, I know where they got them."

I stormed out of the house. I spun the jeep out of the yard and ripped off through the woods.

The chief was sitting at home as comfortable as you please. He was leaning back against the great oak that hid his tree house. He had a little fire going and one of the women was roasting a sparrow for him. He greeted me in volpla language.

"Do you realize," I blurted angrily, "that there are two volplas in my daughter's bedroom?"

"Why, yes," he answered calmly. "They go there every day. Is there anything wrong with that?"

"She's teaching them the words of men."

"You told us some men may be our enemies. We are anxious to know their words, the better to protect ourselves."

He reached around behind the tree and, right there in broad daylight, that volpla pulled a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle out of hiding. He held it up apologetically. "We have been taking it for some time from the box in front of your house."

He spread the paper on the ground between us. I saw by the date that it was yesterday's. He said proudly, "From the two who go to your house, I have learned the words of men. As men say, I can 'read' most of this."

I just stood there gaping at him. How could I possibly recoup this situation so that the stunning joke of the volplas wouldn't be lost? Would it seem reasonable that the volplas, by observing and listening to men, had learned their language? Or had they been taught it by a human friend?

That was it—I would just have to sacrifice anonymity. My family and I had found a colony of them on our ranch and taught them English. I was stuck with it because it was the truth.

The volpla waved his long thin arm over the front page. "Men are dangerous. They will shoot us with their guns if we leave here."

I hastened to reassure him. "It will not be like that. When men have learned about you, they will leave you alone." I stated this emphatically, but for the first time I was beginning to see this might not be a joke to the volplas. Nevertheless, I went on. "You must disperse the families at once. You stay here with your family so we remain in contact, but send the other families to other places."

He shook his head. "We cannot leave these woods. Men would shoot us."

Then he stood and looked squarely at me with his nocturnal eyes. "Perhaps you are not a good friend. Perhaps you have lied to us. Why are you saying we should leave this safety?"

"You will be happier. There will be more game."

He continued to stare directly at me. "There will be men.