The Legacy of Heorot (36 page)

Mary Ann stood up from her wheelchair. "Sylvia—do you need help? I mean, answering your questions. I get nightmares. I think I know what you're talking about. Something wants to come through. The samlon and the Joes and the grendels and—" She waved her hand. "They go together. It makes my head hurt."

"Sure." Sylvia smiled. "You're on the network. Whenever Jessica can spare you, get on. The conference name is GRENDEL—heck, that one's full of stuff. I'll start a new one. HEOROT."

Hendrick came back for another box. He was preternaturally silent.

Cadmann caught his elbow and pitched his voice low. "Something else?"

"No."

"Come on." Cadmann eased him back from the others.

"You're the last man I'd... okay. I'm tired of this, Cadmann." His voice had been low-pitched, but it rose now and other voices stopped.

"Ding dong, the monsters are dead. They're dead! And you'll never believe it, and that's good, because maybe it means I can take a break—"

"Hey, I haven't been pushing."

"No, but now everybody else has the bug. Okay. Go ahead and worry.

There are going to be nightmares, sure, and we'll get over it sometime. Me, I'm finished," Hendrick said. "I finished my calibrations on Geographic's antenna. I have some long-overdue fishing to get in, and I'm taking the weekend off."

"Sure. Alone?"

Phyllis sighed. "I've got a ton of work. Any volunteers?"

"None." Hendrick said, kissing her cheek. "So it's just me and Boogie Boy. He never gets nightmares. Zack okayed it."

"Fine. Go. I went, and it patched me back together. If I knew a cure for nightmares I'd use it on Mary Ann. Take your break, man!"

Hendrick nodded. He hoisted his rucksack over his shoulder and walked away across the dock. He left an awkward silence.

Sylvia gazed at her husband suspiciously. "Ah-ha! So what was all the giggling about? Or can't you tell me?"

"Sure, I can tell you. I just can't tell the military arm."

"What is it?"

"Close your ears, Weyland. Mary Ann deliberately faked Cadmann out and had a girl. We're going to arrange a marriage for our hapless children. We figure our grandkids will have the best genes in the Colony and end up ruling the world. We can look forward to a comfortable, secure old age."

"Ah ha."

It was late. Jessica was six days old and out of the camp's communal nursery with all tests completed. She lay sleeping in an elaborate hand-carved thornwood cradle in one corner of the biology lab. Mary Ann, Sylvia, Marnie and Zack's wife, Rachel, shared a pot of coffee.

"Cassandra!" Sylvia shouted. "Oh, damn."

"Problem?" Rachel asked.

"No more than usual. The computer's got holes in its head. Cassandra: Background search. Reproduction cycles. Search all for match to terrestrial forms.

"That gives her a hobby. Now. Speaking of reproduction," Sylvia said over her shoulder, "that leaves you and Marnie."

"Jerry and I are trying..."

"I think I'm too old," Rachel said wistfully. "Thirty-seven now. Zack and I have just about given up on children."

"Need positive thinking," Mary Ann said. Her face suddenly lit. "Psychiatrist, heal thyself." She clapped her hands, delighted with the joke.

"Cassandra," Sylvia called. "Find all on reproductive cycle emulations. Joes and pterodons." She bit her lip nervously. "The way Cassie was bunged up I just don't know how much we can expect, but let's see."

A few seconds later, FILE NOT FOUND flashed in the air.

Sylvia sighed. "I'll find it. At least they're in there. Now all I have to do is figure out the file names."

Rachel frowned. "I thought Cassandra could find anything—"

"That was the general idea," Sylvia said. "But the first grendel trashed part of Cassie's memory, and the worst is we don't know which parts. She's got holes, the way—"

"Of course. I'm sure you'll find it. Is it really important?" Rachel asked.

Mary Ann took out a worn notebook and thumbed through its pages. "There was something I heard once. I keep trying to remember. I thought about it during labor, so you know how much it must have hammered at me."

"You'll think of it," Rachel said.

"What is it?" Marnie took the notebook and browsed in it.

"I don't know, dammit. I just don't."

Sylvia said, "Nothing on this planet looks quite right. They're aliens, not Earth life forms. We found ducted glands in the samlon that hold stuff that swims around like active sperm, but they might be phagocytes of some kind. There's an embryonic set of what might be a uterus and an ovary. They're squashed flat across the intestinal wall, not much more than a pigment. And just when we were making progress, the grendel mushed up the labs! The only thing I can be sure of is that we're not sure of anything."

Mary Ann watched her with big, trusting eyes. How much had been lost from that brain? Like Cassandra, Sylvia thought. What might be triggered by the right words? "The grendels all appear to be female. They might be parthenogenic, but we don't have the equipment to be sure there isn't something like testes. The pterodons all seem to have both sets of sexual organs, but the Joes—"

"They mate like rabbits. Like we do sometimes." Mary Ann was wrestling with something, face wrinkled as if in agony, and Sylvia was only moments away from prescribing a sedative.

"Listen," Rachel said soothingly. "Stop trying so hard. Close your eyes for a moment. Stop being so serious."

"I can't help it."

"All right, what do you see with your eyes closed?"

"Joes and samlon and grendels chasing each other. I don't like it, Rachel."

"All right. Now pull back. See yourself watching that scene in a holo theater. Make the picture flatfilm. Black and white. Get some emotional distance."

Mary Ann's face calmed. "Better."

"Play circus music in the background."

Mary Ann laughed, clapping again. "That's it, it's perfect. Now they look like wooden animals on a merry-go-round. I hear a calliope in the background."

Sylvia sat back and grinned in admiration. She had never had a chance to watch Rachel work.

Rachel nodded. "Now. Open your eyes. Good. What did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"Juice and a chicken omelet. Cadmann made it. He's a good cook, good as me. I never knew."

"Good. Close your eyes again. What do you see?"

"Samlon and grendels and... frogs." Her eyes flew open. "That was really weird."

"Something Freudian, Rachel?" Marnie asked. "She might be telling you to jump in the lake."

"Maybe. Does that mean anything to you, Marnie? Any connection between Joes and frogs?"

"Behaviorally? Reproductively? Ecologically? It's probably some kind of pun."

"No, it's real," Mary Ann protested. "Something—diamonds?"

Marnie giggled.

"Oh, I just don't know." Mary Ann sat and stared at the wall.

"Sylvie—"

Sylvia's eyes were unfocused. "Damn," she said softly. "You're right. It strikes a chord. Frogs. There was a special kind of frog. Something I read once. Cassandra," she said. "String search—frogs. Cross reference: Joes, samlon, grendels."

"Ladies—" Rachel yawned—"Zack has nightmares without me to hold his, uh, hand. Ahem. I'm calling it a night."

"Make it two," Marnie added. "Sylvia, Mary Ann, till morning. Are you going back tomorrow?"

"Yes," Mary Ann said uncertainly. Her eyes were still fixed on the whirring space above the holo stage. "Now I want to stay with Sylvia. Cadmann will be back for me."

There were hugs all around, and Rachel and Marnie left the lab.

Sylvia watched the fluxing holos, occasionally freezing the images.

There were visions of tree frogs and giant African frogs powerful enough to knock a man down. Pictures of frogs as they fed and mated and were spread out under the dissection knife.

Sylvia felt something cold and nasty in the pit of her stomach. A frog with nasty habits. She hadn't believed it the first time! But it did work, it did make sense. Oh, shit!

"Mary Ann," she said hoarsely, "I want to talk to Cadmann. Would you find him, please? Bring him here."

Mary Ann backed away from her, eyes wide and frightened. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe a chance in a hundred. I hope to God I'm wrong. Because if I'm right..."

With timing that was surreally precise, Jessica woke up, and began to scream.

GONE FISHING

"Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales."

BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Hendrick Sills took Skeeter Four south toward Mucking Great Mountain. His back and shoulders and mind ached from three solid weeks of work, and he was more than ready for a rest.

Catfish had been sighted down south of Mucking Great. And plentiful samlon.

The monsters were all dead. Ding dong! The work was well and fully done, and it was time for a rest in the hinterlands. Only two days, there was work to do; but two days. Just him and a German shepherd and a fishing pole. Just a forty-eight hour rest from troubleshooting the troubled Colony's many troubles. For a little while he didn't want to hear about flow rate and freshwater access, electricity, sewage and all the other little things. He didn't want to muck around doing brain surgery on Cassandra. He didn't want to oversee another team jury-rigging the veterinary clinic's ailing apparatus. "I'm tired of doing your job as well as mine, Carolyn McAndrews!" he shouted. The entire ordeal had been a drain, and now that the weeks and months of unrelieved tension were over, he was ready for some fun. Ding dong!

Company would have been nice. But Harry Siep had twisted an ankle. He wouldn't say how, but Hendrick suspected it involved back windows and the inopportune arrival of a husband. He'd be on his ass in the com shack for a week to come. And Phyllis, lovely Phyllis, was on duty.

Boogie Boy was tied to the passenger seat by a short leash. In the early days, they had tried longer cords, but one night an overexcited dog had leaped out at a pterodon. The poor creature had nearly lynched itself before the beleaguered chopper pilot could set the Skeeter down again. In the air, short leashes were s.o.p.

Hendrick peered out through the flowing, eternal mists. Cadmann's Bluff was down there somewhere. He couldn't see it. He dropped a little lower to get a better view.

The cultivated area of the plateau was beginning to bear fruit. From the air it now looked more like agricultural land than chicken scratches in the dirt.

And then there was the main house itself.

It had grown up the mountainside now. An underground house could be expanded far more readily than a traditional structure, and Cadmann had a dwelling that would do for a multigenerational homestead.

Deadfall boulders poised above the paths up either side. Naturally. Hendrick chuckled. And in a cleared strip at the bottom was the minefield that could be activated at the touch of a switch. "Can't blame him, maybe," Hendrick said aloud. Boogie Boy's tail thumped against the deck. "But damn it all, there's got to be a better way." The dog whined in sympathy.

Hendrick swerved up through the clouds and around the edge of Mucking Great Mountain. He headed south, picking up speed as he went. Two days. Then, perhaps, when he returned to camp, he would make a decision about Phyllis.

Baby fever! The contagion had infected the camp. Even Phyllis McAndrews, the eternal fiancee, had gotten gooey-eyed at the sight of Jessica Weyland. And last night, after an especially intense evening (God. Where did she get the energy? Or the flexibility?), Phyllis had hinted broadly of shooting the rapids. That the beautiful physicist might want a baby didn't surprise Hendrick: that she might want to be tied down to one tall, rawboned engineer did.

He laughed to himself. The tragedy that had befallen the Colony had an interesting side effect: ten surplus women in a community of fewer than two hundred. Hendrick was seriously tempted to remain a roving bachelor—yet he wondered if he could ever have claimed a prize like Phyllis back on Earth.

Decisions, decisions...

There was the strike camp. Overgrown now, but still clearer than the jungle that pressed in from all sides. Cadmann had singed the ground two months before, when the kill teams stalked the last grendels. The ground was flat, and a stream gurgled not thirty meters distant. Two months ago it had been choked with fat, flashing samlon.

The Skeeter settled with a bump. He unhooked Boogie Boy. The shepherd jumped down and sniffed the ground, bounded around in a circle and then set his paws back on the doorframe, begging Hendrick to come out and play.

Creepers and grass pushed back through the blackened earth and formed a thick cushion underfoot. He wished that the wind would clear away the mists, let him see the stars. There was nothing that Hendrick loved more than to lie on his back beneath a canopy of stars.

He'd done a lot of that when he was a boy in Michigan. Now Kalamazoo seemed just exactly as far away as it was. Impossibly far away, never to be seen again. Those had been good times, although the area was no longer as rural as it had been in his grandfather's day, when deer would come up to the back door.

Grandfather would have approved of Avalon.

Hendrick set up his lamp, then unrolled the air mattress and opened the valve. The mattress sucked air.

Boogie Boy bounded around him, then jumped onto the mattress, tail idling. When Hendrick said "Hey!" Boogie's tail whipped like a rotor. Hendrick shoved him away. The dog barked in frustration, then gave up and ran off toward the bushes.

Hendrick opened his fishing kit and examined the rod and reel. He checked his hooks and lures, and the play in his line, and was satisfied. Tomorrow was going to be a good fishing day. For now, there was little to do but sleep.