Rifle held awkwardly before her, Falise stepped down; squinting around in the darkness she asked, “Where are we? What’s that sound?”

“That’s the night chime. Entirely different from the day chime. Different invertebrates. And what I’m hearing is good. One of the tricks here is that if you hear something different in the chime, it means something’s happening. Like, if a bunch of foreign quetzals were lurking out in the forest? The chime would change.”

“Oh, sure. Sounds like a broken symphony, and I’m supposed to know there’s quetzals out in the darkness.”

“You’ll figure it out if you live long enough. Meanwhile, don’t creep-freak on me, because you’ve got a quetzal six feet away from you.” Kylee told her. “I mean it, don’t scream.”

“Sure, now you’re trying to humiliate me by making me—”

“Hey, Flute,” Kylee said, stepping over to hug the big quetzal that had rounded the front of the airtruck. “This is Falise. She’s soft meat. Don’t expect her to be smart.”

Flute blew a harmonic from his vents. Falise yipped, jerking upright.

“Kylee?” she asked. “I mean, I can see it. In the glow from the cabin lights. It’s . . . It’s . . .”

“Flute. He has a name.” To Flute, she asked, “What’s happening here?”

Ignoring the petrified Falise, she watched the flashes of IR across Flute’s hide. Mostly images and patterns for “I missed you,” “Chaco’s okay,” and “How’s Tip?”

“Tip’s holding on.” Kylee laid an arm across Flute’s neck. Gave him another hug. “I don’t know how that’s going to come out. He’s not healing. Just kind of staying the same. Madison’s hovering over him like a mobber over a chamois. Wish I had better news.”

Flute’s colors shifted to yellow, green, and pink patterns, his vents softly whistling in interrogative as his patterns asked, “Why are you home?”

“Got a rescue mission,” she said. “Let me plug the truck in, get the charge back up. Then we need supplies. We’ve got to find a downed shuttle. Figure it’s somewhere between here and the cannibals at Tyson Station.”

Flute chirped an affirmative, turning his attention to Falise and intensifying his colors.

“Yeah, she’s Dek’s sister. And no, she doesn’t have his sense. If I had to give her a quetzal name, if would be Tenth Black.”

Flute whipped his head around, colors shifting to a kaleidoscope of interrogative astonishment, and the white and incandescent red of amusement. He exhaled a flatulent harmonic that would have translated into a raspberry of disgust. Some sounds really did exceed species boundaries.

“Yeah, it’s true,” Kylee told him.

“What’s happening?” Falise asked. “Is it . . . I mean . . .”