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represented. They only laughed and flew away.
Finally we did the only thing left to do. We caught a winged one and
left her tied near the aliens' compound. Help us, we told the others, or
we will catch many more.
Losing their wings was the one thing they feared. So they agreed to
help.
Our plan was simple. The winged ones launched a band of us, wearing our
artificial wings and carrying the fire-pots. We would drop them and
land, and in the confusion caused by many small fires, we and the other
groundlings waiting impatiently would attack.
But we didn't know that the strange material of the base would itself
burn.
Those who went in first, who hadn't the prudence or the fear to sheer
away or run away, burned also, if they couldn't escape or weren't helped
to escape from the holocaust. Not one of the aliens had time to escape.
The strange material burned savagely, fiercely, swiftly.
By evening, cautiously reconnoitring winged ones flew over and reported
that nothing was left but ashes and burnt bodies.
When the ashes were cool, some of us went in. I found them together,
Crito Sung and the medic with the sunset fur. They must have been in a
partially sheltered area, their bodies were unburnt, they had died from
heat and smoke.
How peaceful their faces looked, though they must have known that death
was close. They lay side by side, arms about each other.
We sent them properly to the Presence. It was only when we removed the
remnants of their wrappings to shroud them in drylla leaves that we
discovered that many of the aliens - including the sunset-furred medic -
were female.
So our lives were our own again, our world our own again... and yet ...
and yet..
There was a great discussion. We had discovered, by accident, and then
by purposeful action, that the clutches of winged mating with wingless
were all wingless. But, if those of mixed heritage mated with the winged
ones, full half of their clutches were winged; and the clutches of those
winged, whatever their partner, were always exactly as the pure-bred
winged ones. And among the clutches of mixed to mixed, again some were
winged, not half, but one out of four or five. And the clutches of these
winged, too, were like the pure-bred winged.
So, by careful breeding over many generations, we could eliminate the
wingless ones, return to what we had been before the aliens came.
I argued against it.
Wingless ones are fighters, winged ones are not.
Suppose the aliens came again, to catch and mutilate. Suppose others
came, with worse intent.
Denying wings to our children's children was a monstrous cruelty.
But necessary.
And somehow, as I spoke, as I won others to my side, as I stole from my
children, under stress of necessity, what had been stolen from me, I
seemed to see the sunset-aureoled medic - smiling.
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