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eBook Category: Science Fiction Locus Recommended Reading List, AnLab Award Winner
eBook Description: We all have reflexes--if someone pokes a finger at your eyes, you'll blink and move your head back; it's nearly impossible not to react. We also have other reflexes, those ingrained in us through society and culture. When we have to interact with cultures and societies that are not ours, those reflexes can be just as difficult to control, sometimes with disastrous results.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 1977
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2005

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [45 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [46 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [30 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [256 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [34 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [87 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [104 KB] , hiebook (KML) [79 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [59 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [28 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [35 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [63 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [47 KB]
Words: 9844
Reading time: 28-39 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

I stood in the foothills and watched Thule cower beneath the brooding sky.

It was a day ripe for symbolism, and I was in the mood for the symbolic. Immense and dark clouds scudded low across a high, diffuse mist that cloaked the sun and let only a wan paleness filter through. The shrieking wind tore at the clouds and flung the ragged shards from horizon to horizon. A few droplets of rain spattered fitfully, splotching the stone with scattered moisture. The air hung heavy and tense, a tangible medium waiting to be shattered, cloven by the inevitable tendrils of lightning. To the west, the horizon was an ominous purple, and thunder muttered soft imprecations. Racing the stormfront, I saw the airboat from Argos, low in the sky and below the towering thunderheads. It was about time. I'd been waiting since noon.

The cockatrices lay in the electric tension. Their scarlet and gray windpouches--sails of blood-lanced flesh--could be seen above the rocks, billowing and patient, waiting to snare the creatures riding the air; while below, at the end of the tongue-tethers, the cockatrice themselves waited. They sat patiently, mouths open in nightmare faces, ready to snap the windpouch back, its victim trapped inside. Eyes hidden in folds of vomitlike green flesh, moisture-running snouts, slime-lathed bodies running fully ten meters to a barbed tail: one of the more handsome of Thule's creatures. There must have been a hundred of them up in the hills, looking for all the world like an invading armada sailing down to the plain. Now and then, a sail would collapse as a bird or wind-spider blundered into it, and the mewling of a contented cockatrice would sing duet with the rising wind. An incredible creature, actually. I would miss them.

The storm broke, loudly and wetly with a timpani of thunder, and all the windpouches crumpled as one. Cockatrices are fearful of rain, and hungry. The rain activates the exposed nerve-endings of the windpouches, making the cockatrice think a flock of birds has suddenly taken roost there. One of the Thule analogues for frustration is "like a cockatrice in a rainstorm." As children, finding one in the rocks near home, we'd tease them, throwing rocks into the pouch and watching it snap downward. The animal would groan angrily, then raise the pouch again. We'd toss another stone. Up and down, until the cockatrice would angrily lift itself from its cranny to see what the hell was going on. Then it would chase us from the hills like a wrathful dragon as we laughed and ran. That went on until once a kid fell and didn't get up quickly enough. She almost died before they got the animal off her.

I was getting wet, so I thumbed on my rainshield and watched the boat land a little down from me. Somebody poked a head out from the hatch and hollered into the wind.

"You Gavin Donal?"

"Yah."

"C'mon, then. Argos is ready to lift."