"I will." He set down his cup, brushed a crumb from the front of his white shirt, carried his empty plate to the sink, and made the call on the spot. He didn't want her doubting him, or accusing him of more failure than he had earned. She was, he thought, too p.r.o.ne to anger, even with a good excuse, and he felt his real failures keenly enough without her comments.

The airport clerk, once more, was sympathetic and promised immediate action. Nick suggested that once they had the little jet back, they should check the latch on its hangar. He did not suggest that anyone was letting the Chickadee out deliberately, for that seemed unlikely.

When he was done, his wife nodded as if he really had solved the problem.

She took a bite of her cold toast, drank her juice, and pushed the dishes away. Then she said, "It's time to go."

"I'll go out with you."

She shrugged, as if to say, "Suit yourself," and left the room for her briefcase. Andy followed, stretched to reach the garage-door control, and held the door for his parents.

Together, they waited on the walk while the Tortoise ambled from its cave and positioned itself for boarding. But Emily did not board. Instead, she stared at the Chickadee on the roof, and her mouth set in a rigid line. The bird shifted its weight from one leg to the other. A shingle came loose, slid down the slope of the roof, and fell among the rhododendrons.

"And now the roof is going to leak," she said.

"I can fix it," said Nick. "I will."

"But look at that!" She pointed at the streak of birdlime. "Look at what it's going to leak!"

Nick laid a hand on her arm. "It'll wash off the roof. I'll take a hose to it today." With gentle pressure he turned her to face the oak that overhung the lawn. He pointed. "But look there." "Where?" She searched the shadows among the great tree's branches.

"There!" cried Andy. "I see it!" Nick lined his arm up beside her head so that her gaze could follow its line.

"Is that it? It's pretty." The strange, bitternlike bird was there again, or still, its beak thrusting into the shadows above its head; its small eyes, like beads of sparkling ebony, blinked in the morning light.

Now that bird turned, focusing those dark eyes upon them. Its beak swung to the horizontal. Its wings lifted as if in a shrug. They flapped once, twice, and it dove off its branch. Its course carried the bird, a heavy flier, low over the lawn before it could rise and circle close above their heads.

"It's right over you, Mommy!"

Indeed it was. It was so close that they could feel small gusts of breeze from its straining wings, and the shadows of its pa.s.sage across the sun were pa.s.sing waves of coolness. But now its circle was rising and broadening, and its eyes seemed aimed at Emily alone. She moved to one side, and the bird's...o...b..t shifted to remain centered on her. The Chickadee moved too, c.o.c.king its head to watch the little drama below it. It sidled along the rooftop as if to be closer to the action. Its beak gaped, and in the brief glance she spared it, Emily could see the tongue within its mouth.

The strange bird suddenly broke off its circling, uttered a raucous shriek, and dove straight for Emily, its beak an outthrust dagger. Andy screamed. Nick grabbed his wife and pulled her toward him. She felt the buffet of the bird's heavy wing against her arm as it missed.

It did not give up. As Andy, still screaming, grabbed his mother around the legs, hobbling her as effectively as quicksand, and as Nick, cursing, tried to pry him loose and get them all into the house, the garage, the Tortoise, anywhere safe, the bird bent its course around again. It flew up between the oak tree and the house, performed a graceful Immelmann looping turn, and arrowed back toward the target it seemed to have chosen so deliberately.

This time, it did not make it. It did not even come close. Its course took it over the roof of the house, and as soon as it was within reach, the Chickadee lunged and caught it by one wing.

The smaller bird swung on its suddenly forced pivot. There was a snap of breaking wingbone. It struck with its beak, stabbing, and the Chickadee's throat blossomed red.

The Chickadee cried out in apparent pain. As its beak panted, the bittern--if that was what it truly was--fell to the roof, its beak and one good wing flailing. One huge foot clamped it into place, while the Chickadee's shorter, blunter beak struck once, twice, three times. As blood spattered on the roof, Emily felt a droplet of something wet and cool strike her cheek.

Another droplet struck Nick's white shirt, and she knew that hers too must be blood, blood that had lost its warmth in its voyage across the intervening s.p.a.ce.

The Chickadee cried out once more and leaped, more clumsily than usual, into the air, leaving its victim behind. It flew off, heading this time in the direction of the airport, presumably going home to nurse its wound.

The dead bittern slid slowly down the slope of the roof to land in the shrubbery. It was accompanied by two more broken shingles. Nick finally got Andy loose from his mother and scooped him up to hold him safe, his thighs enwrapped by one paternal arm. The boy began to cry. "Let's go back in the house," said Nick. With his free hand, he tried to steer Emily toward the door they had just left.

"No," she said. She patted his hand with her own, understanding his protective feelings. But she was a biologist, a genetic engineer, and she had just been attacked by something whose behavior was not natural.

She looked down, at the hand that still gripped the handle of her briefcase, and noted without surprise that her knuckles were stark white.

Deliberately, she loosened her grip, scooched, opened the case, and extracted a tissue. She dabbed at her cheek, stared briefly at the spot of red upon the tissue, wondered which bird the blood had come from, and crossed the lawn to the bittern. Two rhododendron branches, broken from their parent bush, lay beneath the body. A pungent odor declared that that body had fouled itself as it died.

Emily used the b.l.o.o.d.y tissue to cover her fingers as she drew the bittern into clearer view on the lawn. Even in death, its orange-on-gray color scheme gave it a kind of beauty. But close up, that beauty was the stark beauty of a weapon designed for a single job. Now, finally, when it had almost been too late, she recognized it.

The back of the head bore a small, implanted plug of the sort that on the Tortoise received a cable from the controller computer. The beak was as long as her hand from wrist to fingertips, sharp, and stained, as if it had been dipped in some sticky substance. The claws were talons whose specifications probably had been lifted from the genome of a hawk or eagle. Around one ankle was a metal band.

A shadow fell over her. She looked up at Nick and Andy. "An a.s.sa.s.sin bird," she said. "But why was it after me?"

The police arrived half an hour later. Nick had called them immediately, while Emily made herself and her husband another pot of coffee. Now here they were, their Roachsters hogging the driveway and forcing the Tortoise back into its garage. Nick, Emily, and Andy had been herded onto the walk by the front steps, where they would not interfere. The police themselves were stomping all over the lawn, taking samples of the Chickadee's dung, retrieving feathers of the a.s.sa.s.sin bird from beneath the oak tree and the bird feeder, sliding the body, looking much smaller than it had in life, into a plastic bag. The officer whose responsibility was this last task was being very careful not to touch the beak.

Nick was explaining: "It showed up first by the bird feeder--my son spotted it--but then the Chickadee chased it off..."

"A chickadee?" The tone of disbelief that escaped around the officer's wad of gum was thick enough to bottle. It smelled of peppermint.

"An escapee from the airport. We just thought this, this a.s.sa.s.sin bird, was just a pretty bird. We looked it up and figured it was some kind of bittern. Then it showed up in the tree there..." He pointed.

One of the cops, dark-skinned, grizzle-haired, with a weathered look to his lined face, kicked at Emily's briefcase, still on the ground, and said, "Bitterns don't roost in trees. They're a swamp bird."

Nick shrugged. So he had thought, Emily knew, but there the bird had been.

"That's where it was today too. And when we came out, it flew around her, incircles..." He gestured overhead with one arm. "Then it attacked, and the Chickadee got it."

"So where's the Chickadee?"

"It flew off. I guess it's back at the airport."

A shadow swept overhead. They all looked up, and Emily said, "A Hawk!" The police insignia were plainly visible.

The Hawk, fanning its wings and tail, descended onto the lawn, braced its legs, and darted its head to left and right. The bubble-shaped pod on its back opened, and a figure familiar to both Nick and Emily emerged. He waved to the other officers and approached the Gilmans, leaving the Hawk alertly scanning the neighborhood.

"Detective Bernie Fischer," he said to Nick. "We met on the expressway.

d.a.m.ned birds." To Emily, he said, "I thought I'd asked you every question I could think of yesterday. Now..." Someone pa.s.sed him the bagged a.s.sa.s.sin bird.

He gestured with it. "This gives me a bunch more. What happened?"

Nick watched Emily as she answered: "It was no accident, Bernie. It can't have been. Someone had to aim it at me. Me!"

She looked from the detective to her husband. If he had been a cat or dog, she thought, the fur above his neck and shoulders would have been bristling suspiciously. She could almost hear his thoughts--Bernie? Bernie? My wife is not that informal with strangers.

"Wait a minute," Nick said. "This detective was the cop who interviewed you at the lab?"

Emily and Bernie both nodded. Emily said, "Why not? He found out I was a gengineer at the expressway, and then he needed to talk to a gengineer."

He was clearly unable completely to restrain his skepticism that that was enough to explain his wife's familiarity with the other man. But in a moment, he relaxed, and Bernie asked Emily again, "But what happened?"

She went through the whole story again, just as she had for the other cops. When she came to the Chickadee, Nick interjected, "I don't see how it could keep escaping. Maybe someone's been letting it loose on purpose."

"We'll look into it," said Bernie. Then, when Emily had finished her report, he asked her, "Why did someone have to aim this bird at you?"

"It's an a.s.sa.s.sin bird. Programmable." She pointed at the plug in the bird's head. "The military uses them."

"Ah," he said. He looked at Nick. He shifted his gaze to Andy, standing between his parents. "Then we should be able to track it down. I'll get right on it." One hand lifted as if he would like to squeeze Emily's shoulder, but he redirected the intention movement toward the boy. "Your son?" As they nodded, he patted Andy on the head. "We'll keep your mother safe," he said.

"That's our job."

Bernie lifted off in his Hawk shortly thereafter. With him went the a.s.sa.s.sin bird in its plastic bag. After him went the other cops, leaving behind footprints, a cigar b.u.t.t, and a handful of gum wrappers.

"Andy," said Nick. He made a show of examining his watch. "The Chickadee'sgone. Isn't there a veedo show you like about now?" When the boy, thus reminded of his favorite show, "Warbirds of Time," rushed toward the house and veedo, Nick added, "Should I be jealous?"

Emily bent to pick up her briefcase. She stared at him. She said, "At a time like this you can ask such a question?"

"The way he looked at you..."

"And the way I called him Bernie?" Her wide mouth contracted into a disgusted moue. "Yes, we got fairly friendly yesterday. But not that friendly." She tucked her briefcase under one arm long enough to clap her hands once, sharply. The Tortoise emerged once more from the garage.

The door to the house opened suddenly, slamming against the side of the house. Andy yelled, "Daddy! Phone!"

"I'll see you tonight." Emily climbed into the Tortoise, and the vehicle began to move immediately. She did not look back. Nor did Nick, staring after her, yearning, resisting the pull of the phone, cry anything after her.

Only later did she learn that the phone call had been from the local airport. The Chickadee had returned just as the retrieval crew had been about to leave. Unfortunately, before they could get it back into its hangar, it had dropped dead. What had Nick done to it? Who was going to pay? And did he know he could be arrested for destroying other people's expensive property?

As Nick told her that evening, it had taken him ten minutes to explain, though his explanation did little to soothe his caller.

Chapter Nine.

SO HER HUSBAND was jealous.

When Bernie Fischer was in a hurry, he didn't waste time soaring. He used the jets to get as high as he could. Then he blasted straight across the sky until he could put the Hawk into a dive to his destination. The practice wasn't recommended, for even with its composite skeletal implants, the Hawk was more fragile than an all-metal jet, but it was fast.

He snorted to himself. He was not in a hurry now. He had lifted off quickly enough, but as soon as he had gained some alt.i.tude, he had turned the jets off. He would take his time and glide, soaring, back toward headquarters while he thought about Nick Gilman's reaction to him.

"Jealous," he muttered to himself as the landscape pivoted about his vantage point. "Hah!"

He had never thought of himself as a ladies' man, but Connie had said Emily had a yen for him, and maybe she did. Maybe her husband was right to worry.

Mentally, he slapped his wrist. Bernie, he thought, your mama raised you better than to think like that. Like a typical male fat-headed skirt flipper. The Hawk's pa.s.senger pod had a rearview mirror much like that in a road vehicle, though its purpose was more to give the pilot a glimpse of whatever might be in the small s.p.a.ce behind him. Sometimes he carried prisoners. Now he bent the mirror so that he could see his own face. Was he handsome? He supposed so, or close enough. s.e.xy? Ask Connie, or Emily.

The radio's buzzer sounded. He picked up the phonelike handset and spoke: "Fischer here."

"You still anywhere near the Gilman place?"

He peered through the pod's transparent wall. He could already make out the roof of the Aerie. "Almost home, now."

"Litter! We have a complaint from the county airport. They have a dead Chickadee."

He had said he would check out the hangar, hadn't he? "Get a gofer up to Platform 3, then. I have an a.s.sa.s.sin bird for the freezer. Evidence. Then I'll go see." Maybe it was the same Chickadee. If so...

"Thanks." The dispatcher's voice sounded relieved. "Everybody else is busy."

"Ten-four." Two-way radios might be more like phones now, but some things never changed.

The airport that had housed the Chickadee was an antique. Once, surrounded by fields, it had served crop dusters. Later, suburbs had grown up around it, the worn, brown gra.s.s of the runways had been paved, and it had been a base for commuter airlines and air freight services. Now gra.s.s struggled to reclaim the cracked and rutted pavement. The arch-roofed metal hangars were streaked with rust. A few small private planes, lifeless and mechanical, gathered rust on the parking ap.r.o.n near a dilapidated terminal building. Even fewer modern bird-planes were visible, though their lost feathers and other litter testified that more must wait in the sun-baked hangars or be off on flights.

The airport manager was short, round, and bald, except for a thin fringe just above his ears. The hair that tufted above his eyes and in his ears and nose seemed much more plentiful. His name was Frederick Conal, and in between wide-eyed glances at Bernie's Hawk, he was complaining: "Yah, sure, it kept getting away from here, and he kept calling, telling me to come get it. And we did. Twice. But now--Look! Look at it, Officer! He says an a.s.sa.s.sin bird did it, but I think..."

"He's right," said Bernie. His Hawk stood next to a snow-white Dove. A twisted-wire cable bound the Dove's neck to a ring set in the concrete of the ap.r.o.n. Its interior--white leather and velvet, with black accents--looked very comfortable, but that was not what appealed to the Hawk. Bernie wondered if his predatory vehicle would try to take a bite. So did the Dove, apparently, for it sidled a few steps to one side, getting as far as its tether would allow from the Hawk's hooked beak.

Bernie did not choose to put the Hawk into dormancy. Conal was anxious for some reason, far more anxious than a dead Chickadee would seem to warrant. The detective wondered whether he might not play upon that anxiety. Scare him, he thought, and he might reveal something useful. And he wouldn't even have to try hard. Conal was a rabbit. And he, Bernie, was an official predator. He was, he thought, a Hawk himself. He liked the image.

"A beak this long," he added deliberately, using both hands to show howlong he meant. "It was trying to kill a woman, but the Chickadee grabbed it."

"That's what he said." Conal shook his head as if amazed at the heroism of a mere Chickadee, or at the fact that someone could tell the truth.

Bernie pretended to ignore the man as Conal gave the Hawk one more terrified glance. The Chickadee's carca.s.s, one wing splayed, eyes already glazed, lay on the pavement not far from where they stood. No one had bothered to rig a tarp to shade it from the sun, and already the flies were gathering.

Happily, so far there was no stink. He squatted beside the dead bird's neck and used a ballpoint pen to probe the wound. It was not the full depth of the a.s.sa.s.sin bird's beak, he found. Nor did it seem to sever any major blood vessels. He looked closely. The edges of the wound were discolored in a way that did not seem due to mere drying. He sniffed. The odor was off as well.

He stood again, dusting his palms over his uniform knees. "Where's its hangar?"

Conal's eyes flicked left while his right hand flapped at the air. "What do you want...? What's that got to do with...?" His voice squeaked. "Do you have a warrant?"

Bernie stared at the man. Conal's eyes had gone to the nearest hangar, so close that the Chickadee must have been trying to reach it when it died. Why had his panic suddenly increased? "I don't need one," he said. "You called me in, remember? And I want to know how this Chickadee could keep getting loose."

"But...!" The day was hot, but the humidity was mercifully low. Bernie had not noticed any great acc.u.mulation of moisture on his own body. Now, he noted with interest, Conal's bald head bore noticeable beads of sweat.

"You have the right..." Conal shut up as Bernie read him his rights. Then the detective turned toward the hangar. The door was held by a simple padlock-and-chain arrangement. He shook it. The door was solidly fastened.

"Unlock it."

When Conal refused, he drew his .357 magnum, held the muzzle close to the padlock, and pulled the trigger. The padlock shattered, and the Dove and other small planes parked nearby, startled by the report, spread their wings reflexively. Only his Hawk failed to respond. He pulled the door open.

"Lights?" Bernie kept the gun in his hand as Conal pushed past him, one arm extended to the right. There was a click, and a bank of overhead fluorescents came on.

The hangar was not much larger than the Chickadee itself. The floor was dirt, though a drain received the overflow from a metal sink whose single tap ran constantly, if slowly. Bernie supposed any bird confined to such a sweatbox would need plenty of water.

There was room in the hangar for the plane, a wheelbarrow, a food trough crusted with the remains of the Chickadee's recent meals, and a table. The jet's engine and pod hung from the ceiling. Maintenance tools decorated the walls. A few chairs were scattered around the periphery. A dungheap marked the Chickadee's customary parking position, and Bernie wondered why. At the Aerie, at the city's main airport, litter was never allowed to acc.u.mulate. Then he recalled the mess outside, and its revelation that what picking up was done here--which clearly wasn't much--had to be done by human hands.

"Don't you have litterbugs?" Conal twitched, satisfyingly rabbitlike. "They cost too much. We're just a small operation."

The hangar's corrugated metal walls concentrated the sun's heat pitilessly. Bernie thought that that alone, even with the water, might be enough to drive a plane to run away during the day. So might the stink the heat cooked out of the dungheap. He scowled at signs of spilled jet fuel, and Conal said, "We do put 'em outside during the day, you know. On the line, out there. The hangars are for foul weather, and night, and winter."