by Larry Niven
Their home was roofed now, and planted with grass seed. Rows of strawberries and lettuce and carrots and corn stretched across the mesa wherever there was enough soil to give anything a chance. Much of it would be lost. She expected the strawberries and the hybrid melon-cactus to do the best. Two pens of captured turkeys and their cage of Joes were thriving, and as she fed the Joes their morning leaves, they were actually happy to see her. The kittens had sprouted into twelve-inch furred lovelies, only slightly less beautiful, and better-tempered, than young foxes. The furs would be useful, and the flesh . . .
A sudden cramping wave of nausea fanned through her, and she doubled, gasping, choking back the sour fluid in her throat. This was the third morning that . . .
Morning . . . ?
She grinned, looking up at Cadmann toiling at the drainage slit.
Mary Ann threw the rest of the leaves into the cage and dusted off her hands.
“Well, Missy, I think that I have some news for Madman Weyland.” The Joe looked up at Mary Ann and chattered friskily. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”
Call her Mama.
The taste of the river changed with the seasons. For a time the water would run sluggish and cold. Then the taste of life was scarce; the flying things were scarce; the swimming things were dead.
Later the water would race, carrying the taste of past times. Mama had seen scores of cycles of seasons. She was wise enough to ignore the ancient tastes: bodies or blood or feces of life her kind had long since exterminated, long buried in mountain ice, released as the ice melted.
In the hot season the water would be bland again, carrying only spoor of flyers and swimmers and another of her own race.
Mama’s taste was discriminating. One of her kind lived upstream. Another lived even farther upstream, and that one was a weakling. It lived where game was so scarce that Mama could taste starvation in its spoor. Not worth killing, that one, or her nearer rival would have taken her domain.
In winter there was something strange in the water, something she couldn’t identify. Not life; not interesting.
The world began to warm again . . . and something new was on the island. Something she had never tasted, something weirdly different, was leaving spoor in the water. It was as yet too faint to identify. Mama began to think about moving.
If she followed that spoor she would have to fight, and that was no step to be taken lightly.
By summer she could taste several varieties of prey! The things weren’t merely leaving feces in the water; she tasted strange blood too. Her rival was eating well. Was it time?
Her rival was youthful (Mama could taste that) but large. The faintness of her scent placed her many days’ journey upstream. She would be rested and fed when Mama arrived . . . and Mama settled back into her pool. She had not lived two scores of cycles by being reckless.
If her rival sickened, she would taste it.
Days flickered past. The time of cold had come. Ordinarily, Mama scarcely noticed passing time, for the taste of swimmer meat was always the same. Nothing attacked. Her curiosity lay dormant . . . but it was active now, for living things were leaving spoor even in dead of winter, and blood ran down the river now and again.
Oh, the variety! Here was blood from something vaguely like a flyer. This one must have been big, a plant-eater; she had to dig far into her memory to find anything similar. That horrible chemical stench was entirely mysterious: hot metal and belly acid and thoroughly rotted grass. This unfamiliar scent, judging by its components, would be the urine of a meat-eater not of her own kind. Hunger and curiosity warred with discretion, for Mama had never tasted anything like that, nor seen one either.
Once there was a living thing in the water. She snapped it up and chewed contemplatively, trying to learn of it. A swimming thing, primitive, built a little like a swimmer . . .
The world was warming when the river gifted her with two larger members of the same species. Bottom feeders tasting of mud, they must be breeding despite the presence of her rival upstream.
And that, one bright hungry morning, was the burnt blood of her own kind!
Taste of fear and speed and killing rage, taste of chemicals, taste of burning. If lightning or a forest fire had killed her rival, then an empty territory lay waiting for her upstream. If another rival, then Mama would face a formidable foe.
The swimmers were startled when Mama came forth in an eating frenzy. Swimmers were nothing; the taste did not engage her curiosity at all. But Mama’s rival would be fat now, and hyperkinetic from impact of sensory stimuli, and Mama dared not come upon her as a desperate starveling. She had not fought a serious rival in many years.
♦ChaptEr 14♦
reunion
Alas how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
—George MacDonald, “Phantasies”
They sang as they strode downhill.
Tweedledee bounded around Cadmann’s feet. She was leaner, stronger now than she had been only eight weeks before. She was acclimated to the heights and rigors of Mucking Great Mountain, but still seemed happy to be coming back to the Colony.
Even here, only a few meters past the firebreak, the distant grind of machinery assaulted Cadmann’s ears.
That sound, a constant background hum down on the flatlands, never reached his home in the mountains. A thin line of dust marked the bass rumble of a tractor tilling the fields.
Mary Ann walked next to him, her blond hair barely rising to his shoulder. Her presence was a comfort in ways that would have been difficult to imagine just a few short weeks before.
How long ago had he walked this path with Ernst and Sylvia? Back before any of the grief. Back when he could reasonably expect a quiet slide into old age amidst herds of children. And he’d wished for Kodiak bears.
The view had changed. The fields had expanded; there were more buildings. The wreckage left by the monster’s assault was not visible from here. With twelve adult casualties out of a hundred and ninety-two, the Colony felt pressure to work. There was healing to be done.
Now Cadmann had his home, and something new . . . something very new with the only person in the camp who had believed in him. He put his arm around her waist and pulled Mary Ann in closer to him. She had lost some weight, much like Tweedledee, but her curves were still rounded, and now . . .
Now . . .
His arm wound all the way around her shoulder, down to her belly, which was firmer than it had been—the work and the life up on MGM was not conducive to softening. Soon her figure would be filling out. And out! And then . . . He looked at her almost surreptitiously. The nine-mile walk hadn’t tired her. All downhill, half a mile altitude change—the walk had strained his own healing wounds, and if someone offered them a ride back he’d take it.
He smiled, utterly content.
The machine stutter was more distinct now, and when Cadmann looked up, the tractor was rumbling up the glazed earth road toward them, and someone atop it waving his hands semaphore style.
Cadmann cupped his hands to his mouth. “Yo!” Tweedledee galloped off down the road, kicking her hindquarters up into the air with every lope.
In his backpack he carried skins and dried meat and samples of all of the plants near their camp, carefully bundled and labeled. Cadmann Weyland, first of the mountain men! Much better than Great White Abo.
The tractor was close enough to make out the driver. It was Stu Ellington taking his rotation in the fields. “Hey, hey! If you’d waited another two days, I would have won the pool.”
Cadmann laughed, yelling back, “If you’ll split it with me, I’ll vanish for another forty-eight hours. Who wins?”
Stu stopped the tractor in front of them and put the engine into neutral. Hot air curled from the engine in waves.
“One of the twins. Phyllis, I think. Not sure. Hell with it. It’s great
to see you, Cad. Mary Ann. Back to stay?”
“ ’Fraid not. Opening negotiations. Somebody had to break away from the Colony first.”
Stu looked down at them from his seat, his grin cutting through the dust and sweat, and shook his head. “Just glad you’re both back, man.” His expression grew somber. “I’m so sorry for what happened.”
“Yeah.” Cadmann looked decidedly uncomfortable; then Mary Ann hugged him and patted her stomach.
“Stu! Think I’ve got a piglet in the pen!”
“Oh! Whoa! Well, this is an occasion, M’lady!” Stu swung down from the tractor and offered a hand to Mary Ann. She looked back at Cadmann, who just picked her up by the armpits and hoisted her aboard the tractor.
“You know how to drive one of these things, I believe?”
“Betcha,” she said happily, and swung up into the seat. She gunned the engine. The tractor made a great, lazy circle. The two men followed it at a short distance.
For a while there was companionable silence, and then Stu broke it. “We’ve done a lot of rebuilding since you’ve been gone. Not just buildings, Cad. We’ve got the defenses up, and stronger. Stupidity. Just stupidity.” He seemed to need to hear something in return. “We got blind-sided once, but it’s not going to happen again, I can guarantee it.”
“Good to know that.”
Stu was almost as tall as Cadmann, but somehow at the moment he seemed much smaller. “Do they know that you’re coming back? Did you radio?”
“No, I sent a homing pigeon.”
Stu looked stricken, and Cadmann felt a little disgusted with himself. “Look, Stu—if you did what you really felt was right, then fine. I have no interest in seeing or hearing anyone crawl. What’s got me twitchy—skip it.” They have defenses. Great, but where do I come in? Can they make me inspect them? Damn.
There was a general shout of greeting ahead of them as Mary Ann and the tractor passed the first of the outer pens. Within moments, Cadmann was the center of attention.
I’ve only been gone for five weeks . . .
But any momentary discomfort was quickly drowned in a sea of reaching hands.
“Cad! Welcome back!”
“—to see you—”
“—things haven’t been the—”
And other fragments piled one atop another, overlapping, irritating and at the same time deeply soothing.
Mary Ann stopped the tractor by the machine shops and dismounted with Cadmann’s assistance. She melted into his hands with a calculatedly sensuous grace that put him on guard.
What was she projecting? She was using that “forced float” that insecure women use when . . .
When presenting themselves before a rival.
Sylvia.
She wore her lab smock, which was freshly pressed and looked like nothing so much as a maternity gown. And a maternity gown that she wouldn’t be wearing much longer. She waddled a bit when she walked, and was carrying the baby low in her belly.
She smiled at him, at them both, and there was something very like a wall of glass between her emotions and the smile.
Her pageboy haircut was a little longer than the last time he had seen her, and needed a trim around the edges. She held out her hands to him, then, not quite smoothly, shifted positions to offer them to Mary Ann first. “Mary Ann. You look wonderful.”
“So do you. I’m hoping to get some of that glow pretty soon now.”
“You mean . . .?”
“Yep.”
Sylvia hugged Mary Ann hard, then held her hands out to Cadmann. He took them, fighting to follow her lead, to maintain the distance between them. Some sense of proportion was called for here, but the instant he touched her skin, something inside him melted. He ached for her.
“Cadmann.” Her mouth tweaked in an attempt at a casual smile. “Is Mary Ann right? You haven’t been shooting blanks?”
“Nope, someone slipped a live round in there. At least, that’s what we’re hoping. At least, that’s what we came down to find out.” He hesitated. “Would you take care of my lady for me?”
“You know it.” There were tiny moist jewels forming at the corners of her eyes, and she squeezed his hand. “Hey, big man—are we going to be seeing more of you? I’m going to be losing a passenger in a month.”
It had to be his imagination, but her hands suddenly flushed with warmth. He released them, embarrassed by the strength of his reaction. “I wouldn’t miss it. As soon as you’re in labor, I’ll head back down. Promise. Aside from that . . . I’ve got livestock now, and crops. I just don’t know.”
She nodded, unwilling to pressure him. “Listen . . . I’ll take Mary Ann for a full checkup. Stay for dinner?”
“Count on it.”
Mary Ann hugged Cadmann and planted a long, proprietary kiss on his mouth, pressing herself against him, to the appreciative guffaws of the crowd.
Then she and Sylvia linked arms and marched off together.
Cadmann shifted his pack around until the pain in his ribs eased (and a fresh ache started in the bone of his right hip). He continued on into the camp. A zigzag walkway through the minefield was painted bright green, and he followed it, noting the guns placed to cover that path. He nodded approval.
None of the children were walking yet. We’ll have to fence off the minefield when they get older. And—No! Not my department!
He grinned when a small pink face passed him carried in a papooseka backpack.
What the hell. He didn’t have to live here to love those little faces. It wasn’t the children’s fault that their parents were idiots. Dammit, these were his children too.
The veterinary lab had been repaired. Its side was a mass of patches welded in great discolored blotches at the corners. The structural damage to the quad had been repaired. Nothing could hide the scorch marks, but there were strings of colored ribbon wired up around the edges, and the beginning of a banner painted in bright orange and green.
In the center of the quad was something new that glistened in the morning light. Cadmann bent to read it. Set into the concrete was a metal tablet, tinted to look like brass, that said simply:
“Day 295, Year One. remember.” Following those words in a silent tribute were etched thirteen names. He traced them with his fingers. Alicia: gone. Barney, Jon, Evvie Sikes: gone.
Jesus.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Zack said behind him, and Cad turned to greet him, clasped his hands strongly.
Zack didn’t look tired—he looked hard and wiry and serious. He had trimmed his mustache short, and there was a partially healed burn scar along the inside of his forearm. “We were wrong—you were right. I’m sorrier than I can say.”
“Don’t bother being sorry. Just don’t let it happen again.”
Zack took Cadmann by the arm. “Come on. Let me show you Monster Watch.”
“The minefield—”
“We turn it on at night.”
“And new fences along the gorge. I like it.”
“You’ll like it better.”
Zack held the door of the commshack open as Cadmann shucked his backpack. Pain eased in ribs and hip.
Two extra screens had been mounted in the room, and there was a cot in the corner that looked recently used. Andy, the big man from Engineering, sat in a swivel chair, his dark face speckled with crawling dots of reflected light. He distractedly waved a hand in greeting.
One of the six flat video screens was dark, but three others viewed the Colony from varying local angles, and two scanned their island from the geosynchronous satellites.
“We’ve got the ocean-observation program going—this is the long view. We’re also analyzing weather patterns to attempt to build up a model. But we’ve got optical and infrared sensors working. We should be able to track anything man sized moving close to the surface. If the computer scans an object moving in our direction, it’ll call our attention to it.”
The picture abruptly changed to a high-altitude view of the ocean its
elf. Endless gentle white waves rolled in from the west. The ocean seemed deeply and peacefully azure. The illusion was one of guileless transparency. Of an ocean without secrets, welcoming their inspection, soothing away their fears.
“The ocean lies,” Cadmann muttered.
“What?”
“I was just wondering if anything has surfaced yet.”
“Nothing notable. Not so far.” The screen flickered again, and a roughly fish-shaped outline flashed darkly across the display. A wave of liquid crystals, and the silhouette became an animation. A statistical table ran its estimate column along the edge.
Andy watched the figures hawkishly, then relaxed. “Twenty meters along the side, surfacing fifty kilometers east of Landing Beach. Totally aquatic, Zack—I’ve seen these before. They don’t pose a threat to anything on the land.”
Zack traced a finger across the image. “Keep me posted. We can’t have damage to one of the Minervas.” To Cadmann: “We can get a lot more precise than that.”
“I was just about to ask—but you’ve made a good start.”
“We need more, a lot more. All the intelligence that we can gather.” He paused a careful moment, then asked, “What can you report from the highlands?”
“That’s what I was hoping to talk to you about. Mary Ann and I have kept journals. I have skins from six different small animals, and botanical samples. I want to trade my knowledge of the island for other services. I’ll map the interior, let you know anything that I find. In exchange, I want medicine and more vitamins. Mary Ann said Avalonian soil doesn’t have the right mineral balance.”
The computer zoned up on another large, shadowy form. This one was smaller than the first, but was tracked moving in toward the island. It broke the surface of the water for a moment, cresting, then dived deeply. The video image was lost.
“We need you, Cad. We have to assume that the thing we killed was one of a set. If there’s more than one, then there’s lots. We’re not slowing down expansion. We can’t. I swear that this colony is going to be a city one day. But we have to be more cautious. You’re best qualified to check our defense plans and suggest alternatives. If you don’t want to stay here, I won’t try to change your mind. We need a test outbacker. Someone to give us an idea of how an individual family would fare in the south country beyond Mucking Great. Someone is going to do it eventually, and no one is better suited than you. What do you say—be our guinea pig?”