The mud barns had a roof but no outer wall, except for an eighteen-inch lip around the edges to keep in the mud and the baby bucks. At any time of year there were usually one or two bucks legging around, squeaking miniatures of the windstorms with wings. Fickle as they were with their handlers, adult thrikes tended to show little care for their young after weaning them. Perhaps an expected result of constant human companionship and care, Challis thought, but the high-maintenance flux condition of thrikes clearly kept their attention spans as short as their tempers.

She stepped over the rim into the shade and tried to make her eyes adjust. Someone was on the far end of the barn, gently mudding a buck's hide to keep the flies and body temperature under control. Meanwhile, a crowd of ten or twelve people flocked at the gate of the first stall on the right. They carried walking sticks and toffee sticks, chattering up a commotion at a lord majotta's dinner party.

"Let her in," Rasalas said impatiently, trying to move shoulders and elbows aside. He got hardly a glance. He should have tried direct skin contact. "Hey!"

"Whatever you're all here to see," Challis lifted her voice. "You're wasting your time."

The voices stopped when the party saw her. Surprise, and a dash of skepticism, flavored the silence into a riveting one. Here was a young person, hardly a powerful tamer of beasts, with an expensive glowing neck patch over the simple tunic and trousers of a flux cropper. Punchcord-banded cuffs encircled her arms above the elbow, with two little filaments trailing down to join another set of cuffs around her wrists, these much more intricately woven and longer in shape to qualify as flux bracers, called circunets. She was staring around slowly, hazy eyes falling short of meeting faces as if sizing everybody up at once. Then she brushed the circunets over each other in two swift movements to sharpen an invisible knife. A slight shuffle ran through those closest to her, and the crowd moved back out of her way.

Rasalas pushed past to clack open the gate but he remained outside around the corner, leaning his head back to close his eyes until his sister had seen everything she needed to.

Challis stepped into the dimly lit square of mud scattered with leaves. Only one other person was inside – no wonder they needed her help. The flux shortage meant a worker shortage, too. Bleak times. People were dying every day for lack of flux, and here she was helping pterosaurs reproduce. She turned to look at the massive body of the thrike dominating the space.

Its toothy beak snapped open and shut once like a crocodile's. This one was the glossy blond of fresh wood chips, tipped with black on its beak and tail, and caked with a layer of rust-colored mud on the swollen underbelly. A long, rippling neck twitched where it met the protruding scapulae at the base of the wings. While reclining fatly on its side, the thrike kept these wings folded into sheaves next to its body, though Challis knew they constituted over eight meters of wingspan and prayed that they would stay where they were.

As she watched, the thrike stiffened and strained, talons squelching into the mud while a wing bent forward to push finger-length claws at the ground. Low grunts rumbled and reverberated in Challis' knees. Then she noticed the dark spill of substance coating the thrike's legs. She turned to the boy in the corner of the stall.

"How long since she popped?"

He stopped scrubbing the inside of a steel basin and exhaled, his tired eyes on the laboring animal. "Two bells? Maybe three."

"What's with all the attention?"

"Just part of the Exhibition," he said with a shrug, not bothering to lower his voice. "Why anyone pays for a ticket and then spends time back here is beyond me."

"Mm."

"And maybe word got around that you were coming."

Challis gave a disdainful chuckle. "They have no idea."

She got down on her knees and, hoping her anxiety wouldn't set off the thrike's already thin temperament, felt along the thrike's bulge. A buck was twiggy and bony at birth, with multiple protrusions that could get stuck in the mother's uterine wall on the way out. Challis rubbed slowly down the outside of the contracting hide, frowning. The sandpaper surface was tight and sticky beneath her fingers.

"Fill that basin up, will you?" she said to the boy, who looked awfully young and thready. "As full as you can carry. And I'll need some lather. Ras?"

The boy pushed his way out the gate. Challis squinted in frustration, trying to brush away the image of someone's face just in front of her – in front of Rasalas: an Oledrocca woman with a pale kerchief over her hair that swept out to the sides over her shoulders. Of course, while his sister was swimming in mud, Rasalas had the nerve to flirt with the nearest female. Challis heard and saw her laughing.

"Ras!" she snapped.

His voice swore and muttered something before she heard it come close.

"Here."

The peppery odor got stronger as he drew up to the gate. Rasalas blew out a breath. Only once in the last six years had Challis made him actually come inside to help, and he wasn't eager to do it again. Not for all the balappus bark in the rainforest. And especially not with an audience.

"Find Corvin, quickly," Challis said to the wall. "Or better yet, someone else who's just been flying. Make sure they've got their uniform."

Something in her tone sent Rasalas out at a run. Sunlight spun over Challis' vision as her brother raced across the grounds, his head on a swivel.

Tactfully ignoring the presence of the onlookers, Challis inhaled deeply, forcing her lungs to adapt to the heavy tang. Thrike nests were always smelly, but today the stench of fresh mud and gluey fluids was shriveling her nose into jerky. Still, she managed to concentrate on the energy currents passing through the thrike, the unborn buck, and the thrike's layers of exhaustion that wanted to relieve her of a few limbs at the slightest provocation.

Challis straightened and got a head start, pulling off her belt to tie down the thrike's legs.

The thrike did snap at her then. It met Challis' act of hostility with a guttural croak, then the jaws thrust forward to spear at her ear. Challis, already on the alert, ducked away and swung an arm up on reflex. What would have been a staggering crack to her head was deflected to her circunet, but nothing catchable got caught in any teeth as Challis flew backward.

Surprised shouts came from the onlookers, and the gate rattled as someone tried to force it open.

"Stop!" Challis sprang onto her knees in a blink and held up a hand. "Stay back." If anyone even reached in, their arm could be torn off and eaten in three ticks, and then the real feeding frenzy would begin. Challis pulled her limbs in close, head down, hands tight over the back of her neck in a clear sign of non-aggression, knowing that the beak would have a hard time chomping into her from here. But the thrike never tried it. Challis was saved by another contraction. The next moment the thrike was heaving and straining, head almost touching the mud as it cranked itself into another useless twist.

Challis let her breath out in a short laugh, too relieved for pity.

"I'm trying to help," she said, with a lofty shaking out of the hand. "Takes more than that to nip me. Critter." The circunet had absorbed the power of the blow, but she wouldn't be surprised to find bruises underneath it tomorrow. Served her right, sending away all her helpers. Even in close quarters like this, if the threat wasn't literally grounded it could have been curtains for our favorite Gannagen.

The flux faded in the air as the boy returned from the pump. He was lugging the half-full basin and plopped it down as Challis untied her circunets and cuffs and laid them off to the side.

"That's all I could get," he gasped.

"It'll do. Thanks."

She plunged her bare arms into the basin up past the elbows. The boy handed her the lather, and Challis scrubbed briskly until her skin tingled. Not tingly enough. She closed her eyes, looking for Rasalas, and saw the dark outline of the barns swing into view. His hand flashed up over his face, wiping his forehead, and a moment later Challis heard him outside.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"Oh, get over yourself," he panted to someone, then, "Got Tofflar here, Chall. How can we help?"

The spectators quieted when the windworker gendracco passed among them, their chattering becoming awed whispers.

"Holy crickets above," Thax said loudly. His stiff hair was pasted back from his forehead, the flat color of wet sand that he claimed to be especially dashing. "Did a sewage-infected hog die back here? Please tell me you all got to see the races. If you want to tour the –"

"Listen, I need your jacket," Challis broke in. "Still powered up, right?" She knew it would be. Vortesharken strutted the glow for as long as they could during the Exhibition.

Thax stopped, as if insulted, squinting through the bars at her. "What, why?"

"We've got two thrikes in the danger zone and I'm not getting fired just because you were too stubborn to help. Please, Thax."

"Watch it, cropper. When I'm in uniform, it's 'Gendracco'."

Her mouth dropped open.

Rasalas turned and grabbed the front of the fine quilted uniform, jaw clenched. "Keep talking like that."

Thax just grinned, glancing to the side and then down at Rasalas' fist. "Or, maybe we could just skip the talk and get right to it."

A snigger came from the onlookers as Rasalas released him with a push. Thax sighed grandly and began unbuttoning. "Well, anything for the thrikes." Complex punchcord lining gleamed on his arms and chest as he shrugged out of the jacket, revealing his own set of arm cuffs and circunets: a myriad of fizzing threads where the kinetic energy of activated flux currents was caught and stored from his flight. It was, admittedly, impressive.

Challis, her face still burning, took the jacket and unceremoniously dunked it in the water. This had to work. She rubbed roughly at the lining and, to her satisfaction, fizzing flux leached out of the punchcord and into the tub in a crackling kaleidoscope of color.

Amid the sloshing she barely heard Thax's outbursts of dismay. She ignored them. Rasalas could handle him.

She lobbed the dripping jacket off to the side, its quilted surface beading up the water and the lining flat and lifeless. Hot prickles shocked up and down her arms this time as she immersed them in the tub again. The belt tugged, still pinned under her knee, and another floored rumble came from the thrike.

"What are you doing?" the other cropper asked. Challis finally remembered his name, Wicket, and spoke in a rush as she repositioned herself.

"Buck's stalled and blood flow is pulsing too weakly at the birth channel. This mother is still too young, or weak, to have much of a constancy charge in her circulation, so I'm going to get in there and give things a tug."

"And the flux?"

"This supercharged water could be enough to revive the channel and strengthen the contractions," Challis said in a voice that had no right to sound as confident as it did. "Short of shooting water straight up the poor animal or flooding the stall, it's the best I can think of."

Wicket stared at her, then at the thrike, face stuck in a grimace. Challis huffed. This boy was too young to be the only one on duty. "You going to try to stop me, or are you going to come around and keep her claws out of my face?"

"Oh." He jumped across to the thrike's other side and wrapped his arms around the wing joints as best he could. Challis stooped lower, twisted, and ended up completely bellying the mud. It soaked warmly through her tunic and trousers. One arm, her left, braced her while the other was swallowed up past her elbow in the birth canal of the thrike.

What a job.

Sweat flashed over her face as she felt around. The flux, fresh from Tofflar's jacket, buzzed painfully against her compressed arm. Maybe it would be enough to help speed things along, or maybe it was too late already. She pushed in just a little farther and found a blunt, ribbed structure with her fingers: the tiny crest on the back of a head. She took hold of it and dug her hip harder into the mud to adjust her angle.

Then a violent pressure squeezed her fist for a few ticks, hard enough to make Challis gasp. A distant part of her brain reminded her to relax her muscles, and the same part realized that the flux was helping, perhaps too well.

"Are you okay?" Wicket asked.

"What ni kirrne –" another voice cut in loudly over the murmurings.

Challis had her eyes shut. She would have noticed that the second voice belonged to Rib-eye, and would have withheld her unseemly response, except that something had just snapped at her submerged knuckles, twice. Like tiny teeth. What was it that Rasalas had said about her having the nerve for this? She was almost shaking out of her skin. But she couldn't stop now. She tilted her face up toward Wicket.

"Did you know," she puffed, her tone trying for casual, "that there are two of them in there?"

His mouth dropped open.

Challis regained her grip on the little crest of the first buck, and after the next pulse, pushed it a few inches further inside before hauling it toward her with all her strength. The mighty tug slurked out the body of a buck, a hot package of bones that lumped its way out and collapsed on top of Challis. She lifted the armful and struggled up to her knees to plop the buck into the basin of water. "Yours, Wick," she said, dropping back onto her stomach. "I'll get the next."

Wicket dove over to support the baby buck, clear its airway, and scrub it fresh in the energy-packed water. Challis reached in again alongside the thick cord still trailing from the buck. She pushed in almost to her shoulder this time, and snagged the little beak that had nipped her hand earlier. Buck Two was almost thrashing in excitement as Challis pulled again with an effort that pressed her lungs flat. Another package fell sloppily into Challis' arms. Getting to her knees again was a real trial, but she managed to heave the buck over the rim of the basin with a splash of relief. She and Wicket dodged the little beak and flurrying wing sprouts as they scrubbed, dried, and wrapped the second buck in cloth. They snipped cords and deposited all the sac scraps into a corner for the mother thrike to feed on later. The last thing they did was to tip the whole washbasin over the thrike so the leftover flux would soak into her muddy hide and begin repairing tissue damage. Adrenaline was still trembling through Challis' arms when she sat back against the wall to breathe.

The onlookers began clapping, or maybe they'd been going for a while. Challis didn't look at them. She dimly realized that Forge was talking, but his words were just a blur over the numb expanse of how little she cared. Sweat ran into her mouth, her heartbeat rocking her whole upper body and twinging especially in the right arm, the one that had dragged two new thrikes into the world. Twins. That was rare enough for domesticated thrikes, so rare that…

Challis sat up when Wicket called her name, as if repeating himself. Her double vision prevented her from seeing his expression clearly in the dimness of the barn, but his words confirmed her fear.

"Lost one."

She stared at the blanketed armful. Two inches of pale beak were visible against Wicket's shirt, and the short little tail drooped over one wrist. Everything was still.

Then the gate crashed open and Rasalas thudded down beside them.

"Give it to me," he said, seizing the unmoving buck out of Wicket's arms. He was crouched over it in the puddle, alternating pumping at its chest and rubbing its body with the cloth, before Challis fully realized what was happening. His harsh whispers seemed the only sound in the world as he fought the unstoppable.

"Gannagen." The voice smacked down like a mallet to the mud. The spectators had disappeared, and only Rib-eye stood outside the gate. He was looking at Rasalas but snapped his attention down onto Challis when she looked wearily up at him. "It's past tenth bell already," he said, not quite accusing. "Patrol will be back soon. You've got to go muck out those show stalls."

Rasalas didn't stop. "They can wait," he said, the words punctuated with a firm push at the baby buck. "This can't."

Challis chilled when Rib-eye stiffened his shoulders, just a bit.

"I must have misheard that, Rasalas."

Rasalas glanced at him before starting up again as determined as before. "No, sir."

Challis got unsteadily to her feet using the wall. Her eyes were on Rib-eye, but through her brother's eyes she could see the sprawled little body. Something seemed wrong with its neck, even as Rasalas tried to reposition it between compressions.

"We'll handle it, sir," she said, unable to look away. "He's just trying to fix what I've broken." She sighed. "As usual."