02 Quetzals Flock

QUETZAL'S FLOCK
under cultivation was far greater than would be required for the limited population of
the Crag Caverns.
There were irrigation channels, fed by the same underground supply which fed
the pools in the caverns. The water glinted black under the fiery light of the star. He
glanced up at it. It was an ugly, red monster - old, decrepit, its bloated surface,
varicosed with blackish purple veins. There was something new, Hammadi reined in
his Picun beside him and looked up. Out to one side, like a gaseous blister, was a what
looked like a gathering boil on the star's equator. It stood out against the magenta sky.
"It is the sign of the Dwarf. Few have seen it."
"And none have lived who have!"
The comment came from within. They looked at him and said nothing. A great
Sentinel soared in the sky above them. It swept back and forth without any apparent
motion of its great wings. Far across the plain, he could see another speck in the sky.
Perhaps, this was the nearest they came to each other. He felt the inner man stir. What
sort of creature could spend such a solitary existence? Never to congregate with its
own kind, not even for the purpose of mating.
Kane had found that part of Hammadi's story hard to swallow. He knew that
lower forms of life had once existed on Old Earth, which had been hermaphroditic.
None had been a creature as biologically developed as these birds. He reminded
himself that this was not Old Earth. On this world, the rules were not the same as for
those which had developed around yellow suns.
Jubal would soon be torn apart. The inner man knew that. It was part of the
plan of the Masters. The planet would not survive another brush with the Dwarf. This
time, the turbulent planet would burst open and spew its magma heart into space.
Nothing could survive, not the descendants of those who had come in the Ship, not
the Sentinels.
He had fallen into a deep reverie. It was a combination of the heat and the
dusty stillness of the plain. The Picun had found its own way deeper into the Schwarm
crop. He was a few hundred meters from his companions, quite close to the rim of the
old crater which housed the Crag Caverns. Before he realised what was happening, a
half dozen riders emerged from beyond the ridge. They wore jet black Kous, hooded
against the pounding heat.
Kane had no sense of danger, the meeting was inevitable. The riders slowed to
a halt in a semicircle around him. They inspected him like a quarry which had been
finally run to earth. He stared back, mildly interested. A grey cloak in a half circle of
black cloaks.
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