Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (29 page)

After Toby planted his
three bugged spears, Yvette transitioned into scouting support for Oleander.
The women built several new recon bases one to two days walk away and expanded
the range of scouting projects. For his part, Toby threw himself into the base
defenses. He met with Yvette regularly when she brought in new samples, with
pictures of potential plants on the wall: tangle vines,
poisonous fruit,
stinking fungi, flowers that attracted stinging insects, and leaves that
secreted enough acid to cause blisters. During visits,
Oleander accompanied Yvette to make sure her friend was safe. Yvette
confined the visits to the desk in the utility room where he stored his
microscope and notebooks.

“What
are you two smiling about?” Toby asked after a few weeks.

“We
just tried wrangling our first herbivore,” Yvette replied. “The creature is
sort of like a cross between a Shetland pony and an alpaca.”

“With
really bad snot issues,” Oleander said, giggling. “Johnny wants the milk, and
Rachael needs the manure pellets for fertilizer. So we’ve been trying to catch
one.”

Covering
her mouth, Yvette said, “When I first encountered the herd, they were huddled
together with their necks in a totem-pole arrangement. I thought it was a
mythological beast with four heads. They run like gazelles.”

“You’re
so beautiful,” he blurted.

Yvette
blushed, and Oleander cleared her throat. “Stick to business, Doc. Any
suggestions?”

“First
you need to name it. I categorized them in the order Artiodactyla—even-toed,
hoofed mammals—and suborder Ruminantia, which has every grazer from deer to
giraffes. Traditionally, you start with the discoverer’s name, then the unique
Latin, such as Chenonceau’s
xeno-hydra-
bovidae
. We’ll know more after closer observation. Lastly, you pick the common
name such as hydra deer.”

“How
do we corner one of those things at the rodeo and not get kicked?” Oleander
asked.

“Find
out what it likes. Try hand-feeding until it trusts you, and then slip a
harness over its head. Grazers generally have a reflex to spook forward if you
clap or make a loud noise behind them.”

“We
never see you anymore in the scouts,” Oleander remarked to him. “What do they
have you doing?”

“Well,
we’ve already created an inhospitable zone, burning off any close vegetation on
the mesa’s slopes,” Toby replied. “Herk has installed two drawbridges, one
fifty meters from the bottom and one about that distance from the top. They’re
rigged with explosives he cooked up.”

“I
know about the subsonic speakers to scare native life away because we installed
them around the perimeter,” Oleander noted.

“I’m
scattering bones around the river paths when I’m done with them to make it look
like a really nasty predator lives here. The next layer is the genmod stinging
nettles at panda nose height. I only have a couple more months of work until
I’ll be able to plant those. Things are going much faster with my new talent.
They don’t need me to adapt the native food plants yet because Rachael decided
to go with mostly
Sanctuary
transplants. So I’ll soup up the stink pods
next. Herk wants sleep thorns, but I’ve explained how thick the panda fur and
fat layer is.”

“Yeah.
I can’t believe you measured that corpse in the jungle while you were wearing
the armor,” Oleander said. “Shimmer gear is hot and awkward.”

“It
was a golden opportunity. Those other two natives mauled the trader to death
mere hours from here. Normally, ursoids posture: stand taller, stretch necks,
and roar to give the intruder a chance to leave. This was an ambush with no
honor. One grabbed the trader in a headlock to prevent the use of fangs in
self-defense while the other slashed the victim with claws. When he was too
weak to stand on his own—”

Yvette
interrupted. “How do you know he was a trader?”

“His
backpack was full of dried, aromatic leaves. They also stole the pouch at his
hip, which I assume contained some sort of portable currency. I filmed the
entire autopsy and dragged back samples of everything on the travois.”

She
nodded, remembering how he had referenced the American Indian history books to
build the cot-like frame he used to drag his treasure back. When Toby set his
mind to something, he accomplished it.

“The
entire experience was most illuminating. Scavengers cleaned the evidence I left
behind within hours. I think he was about ten E years. I built several charts
for bone and tooth growth based on the samples from the mass grave. The L
pandas seem to mature more rapidly than humans. I placed the oldest bones at
about twenty-five E years, a full solar cycle. He was probably a village elder
by their standards. On Earth, pandas can live up to thirty-five years.”

Oleander
said, “Herk would like it if we could mount the COIL on the mesa, surrounded by
automated gauss guns.” The guns fired tiny shavings of metal accelerated by
magnets to high speeds. They were designed for space to limit recoil and damage
to ships. The dial could adjust from needle size to quarters, but each
ammunition load ran out in one shot at the largest setting. Death by a thousand
needles was far more economical.

“We
might actually build a few more guns along with flash bangs. The grenades are
very effective at discouraging the nocturnal fauna, a fact I discovered while
hauling back the fresh meat and organs.
”

Shaking her head in wonder,
Oleander said, “You stood your ground against four of those cats. Aren’t you
afraid of anything?”

“They were my samples,” Toby
insisted, “and I had to get back to Yvette.”

Yvette felt flattered and queasy at
the same time.

Deciding
on the direct approach, Oleander asked, “So you want to get some sunshine
tomorrow? The herd we’re trying to catch has wandered into the five-klick
perimeter and keeps setting off low-level alarms. You’d be doing us a big
favor.”

Gazing
at Yvette as he answered, Toby said, “Of course.”

When
he left so the two women could shower, Yvette elbowed her roommate. “Why did
you do that?”

“The
man earned his degree herding goats,” Oleander insisted. “He’ll be a big help.”

Yvette
glared.

Oleander
slipped out of her gear unselfconsciously. “I thought maybe if you saw him
outside the lab, it might help. If he hadn’t flipped out before, would you date
him?”

“Yes.
Are you on his side?”

“This
isn’t about sides. I happen to know you’ve been having him do your homework for
you.”

“I
have him working on a small, unofficial project,” Yvette admitted.

“Hmm-hmm.
This way, he gets a date, and I get a few hundred kilos of tasty, little
burgers-to-be.” The noise of the shower drowned out further complaints.

****

The
next morning, Toby started by showing them how to tie harnesses. “I’ve herded
goats, so I can show you the basic knots.”

The
capture process went smoothly with Toby in the stealth armor and the women
scaring the prey toward him. Over the course of the day, they retrieved four
females and one male. Everyone helped haul the animals into the pasture the
Herkemers had constructed.

“We
weren’t expecting so many,” Rachael said as she fed and watered the animals. “I
think we should build an overhang so they can have shelter when it rains. If we
hurry, we can raise it before the suns go down.” Everyone else was roped into
the impromptu improvement project while the three scouts were released to hit
the showers.

Yvette
told her roommate, “You can go first. I want to check the panda news feeds.”

Rubbing
the green slime matting her hair, Oleander said, “Thanks. I owe you one.”

Since
Toby was already entering a report on his computer pad, he handed the device to
Yvette. “You can borrow mine.”

As
she surfed the feeds, Yvette explained, “The pregnant female pandas move closer
to the lake for weaving and threshing duty. Today the satellite caught one
right after birth.”

He
removed the armor and hung it neatly. Then he mopped his forehead with his
shirt.

Flipping
through, she squealed, “She had twins! They were so tiny. The mothers lactate
just like we do, but we couldn’t see the breasts under all that fur.”

“It’s
good to see you happy,” Toby said sincerely.

“New
life always does that for me.” Yvette was at her softest after a delivery. Only
when she returned his computer did she notice how buff Toby looked. He’d been
exercising a lot in the higher gravity.

When he felt her physical
attraction through the link, he swallowed hard. “I figured out how to return
from the lake to here without being caught—”

“Shh!”

Oleander stepped outside a moment
later, in clean gear and a breather. “Next.”

“Um . . . He’s going to show me how
to decontaminate my footwear properly according to British Livestock
Protocols,” Yvette improvised.

Raising an eyebrow, Oleander said,
“Okay. I’ll be waiting outside in case you need me.”

Toby said, “You could hose off the
suit.”

The tall blonde snatched the binoculars
from his pack and focused on the working men in the distance. “No. If Rachael
sees me run the hose from the greenhouse, she’ll put me to work hauling lumber.
We have a linguistics briefing coming up in an hour. Till then, I just have to
stay off her radar and watch the man candy.”

Once inside with Toby, Yvette
asked, “How do we manage the trip back from Meteoropolis?” She could feel his
thrill at the word ‘we’.

“Over the top,” he whispered.

“The desert? That’s insane.”

“It will be just after a flare, the
safest time. Nothing will be there to attack me.”

“Let’s say you could manage the
climb. There’s still no way you could carry enough water for the walk back.
Even in a spacesuit, you’d fry.”

He raised his forefinger. “What if
we put big tires on the rover?”

“Convert it into a dune buggy?”

“Yes. Zeiss has already approved a
desert-rover expedition based on my research. He’s just waiting for someone to
have spare cycles to man the rover controls. Once he signs off on the redesign,
the rest is a simple matter for the engineers.”

It could work. The man was an evil
genius. For a moment, she experienced a surge of gratitude, admiration, and a
hint of lust.

****

Yvette walked into the briefing a
couple minutes late and sat in the back next to Oleander, who was playing
solitaire on her computer pad. The nurse whispered, “Toby will catch up after
he neatens up some gene-sequencing notes on his desk.”

“I watched Out-of-body from down
here,” Oleander muttered. “I’ve got your back.”

Yvette blushed. “Nothing happened.”

“Did you want it to?”

“A little. Do you think I’m crazy?”

“Wanting what you can’t have? Why
should you be any different than the rest of us?”

On the big screen, Lou stood
awkwardly in front of a board. “As far as Earth languages go, L panda is
closest to aborigine in nature in that the language seems to have subtle
variations based on the nomadic tribe, just like we have slang or
regionalisms.” The next slide said, ‘Top Ten differences from Earth languages.’
“All I can give you for now is a very high-level feel for the nature of their
language.”

Lou clicked to a picture of a
pirate. “There are three different r sounds. Depending on how deep and resonant
the growl, the same word can have different meanings. To help underscore the
emotional subtext, we’ll draw Rs like claws.”

The picture changed to a panda with
ears laid back. “Second, not all language is spoken. Like a good dirty joke,
the eyes and ears can add inflection. Parts of their communication will not be
captured in audio, so we want to add motion video to the surveillance.”
Oleander groaned at the added complexity.

The next photo was of a bat.
“Third, they have no long e sound, like eek.”

Yvette zoned out, wondering about
the Toby issue until she heard Lou say, “The key take-away from phase one is
that they appear to have no alphabet of their own.”

Several people moaned at this. Lou
projected a copy of the Russian alphabet on the screen. “Not to worry. Early
evangelists made up a language to translate the bible into fifty tongues. Like
Cyrillic, it may take us a few passes to refine a written language for them.
The remaining common panda phonemes have been rendered as twenty-five distinct
letters for the first pass of our transliteration effort.”

“Are we supposed to learn to read
and write this new language?” Johnny asked.

“Those of us in Olympus will. Your
scouts should be able to use the oral-only Pimsleur method like I do. We’re
also working on a good way to teach the new alphabet to the natives in an
intuitive manner.”

Mercy interrupted. “Like typing
‘the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ when you try out a new keyboard.
We want to build a sentence that has all the letters at least once, and we’ll
draw pictures to go along with it.”

“A Rosetta Stone comic book,” Herk
suggested.

“Yeah,” Lou said, less than
thrilled by the comparison. “The next phase is going from letters to words. The
method I used is based on cryptoanalytic techniques. We count the number of
times a word appears in the language, and the ones that appear most often are
the most important.” He put up a table for English. People recognized the
common ones: the, be, to, and, in, have, I. “The top twenty-five words make up
a third of all printed material. The top hundred make up half. Each additional
step will take us exponentially more effort. English has about 5000 in daily
use. The typical person has about a 50,000 word vocabulary. There are on the
order of 250,000 in Webster’s dictionary.”