by Larry Niven
“Now breathe.”
All of Mary Ann’s world contracted to a pinpoint centered on the ripple of pain that started deep inside her, then blossomed as her hips stretched to make room for the new life. The feeling intensified until it was neither agony or pleasure but merely sensation—
Dimly she heard Jerry say, “Cadmann, get the hell out of here.”
“But—”
“But what? Get lost, Colonel. This is probably the only place on Avalon that you aren’t needed.”
“Mary Ann—”
“Go, stupid,” she managed to say before another wave of pain hit her. Then another, and a third that broke like a receding wave, leaving her exhausted upon the shore.
“Breathe!” Marnie urged, and wiped Mary Ann’s forehead. The pain was deep and vast, but not like a pain that would mean she was hurt. Her body was built for this. There was a burning, stretching sensation that receded and then strengthened, and she wanted to scream—
“Breathe!” With a start, she realized that she had literally forgotten to inhale. Everything vanished from her universe but the killing pressure in her abdomen, the sensation of a new life struggling through the darkness.
The light separated into coherent dots, floated away. Then they weren’t dots at all.
They looked like tiny fish. Samlon? She almost laughed. What a time to think about—
“Breathe!”
This time the sensation was strong, almost like being pulled inside out, a long, shudderingly exquisite moment beyond time. The breaths and the minutes blurred, each a discrete entity, each forgotten as soon as it was gone. Consciousness fogged. How could she stretch so, without tearing? She would die. She would faint. The moment would never end, would go on and on—
A terrified Joe swam through the darkness, followed and swallowed by a larger something, just a shadowy glass fish shape, a samlon shape, swallowed in turn by something else, larger and more voracious. A grendel swallowed them both. It looked at her with blazing diamond eyes, challenging her. It fluxed like something out of an M.C. Escher painting, and was swallowed in turn by a mere samlon, but the legs of the grendel burst through its body, its teeth pierced through, so that as she watched, as she screamed, the samlon became—
“Breathe!”
“Push!”
The fragile hallucination vanished, wavered like steam above a hot spring and was gone, and there was only the reality of breathing. She held and pushed with the strong lower abdominal muscles.
There was a shared exclamation of relief in the room, and suddenly the stretching relaxed, the burning cooled. The pain was over. An unbelievably powerful wave of physical relief swept through her.
A sensation, cool, moist, rough terry cloth against her face.
A sound: a baby . . . her baby, crying.
Her vision was still blurry, but she saw Marnie cleanse a squiggling red-skinned thing that wailed like a siren, and Mary Ann’s heart melted.
She closed her eyes again, and a moment later Jerry pressed a warm bundle into her arms. Its face was still daubed with blood and fluid, its eyes shut tightly against the strange and terrible world it had suddenly been thrust into. Its hands, just the size of walnuts, were fisted tightly.
And Marnie whispered, “It’s a girl.”
She tried to speak, to say, Thank you for my daughter, or anything at all. Nothing emerged but tears.
Just north of the Colony, the Miskatonic had been dammed. The new lake rippled blue in the hazy light of Tau Ceti. A half-mile across the lake the water spilled over a dam. When engineering completed the new construction, power would flow from a hydroelectric plant.
The dam. The solar cells. The fusion plant. Together they would make the colonists the wealthiest human beings in the history of mankind. They would have energy, and land, and the lessons of three hundred years of industrial Earth to guide them. A few more years, and wealth untold . . .
“I love it,” Cadmann said, looking out over their artificial lake. “Hendrick has created a miracle. It’s the only lake on the island fit to swim in.”
Sylvia nodded. She shielded her eyes as she peered down the asphalt shoreline.
Two vehicles came toward them at high speed. On the straight flat road they moved faster than the designers had expected, or wanted. Mary Ann and Terry were racing motorized wheelchairs. Mary Ann was a meter ahead. Avalon’s newest mother didn’t need the chair, but it was fun to be babied.
Cadmann seemed more at peace with the Colony since Jessica’s birth. His hair was a little grayer than it had been a year ago, but he stood taller, leaner, an animate extension of this hard and beautiful land. He gazed out over the lake, to where the iron peaks of the northern mountains rose up and tickled the clouds.
“Our work is never going to be finished,” he said confidently. “Think of what we found lurking in our little corner of this planet.”
“Terry’s worked out plans for an expedition to the mainland.”
“We should go as soon as we finish some of the other work. There’s a lot to catch up on.”
Her eyes searched the sky, “God, I feel so tied to this planet now. I wouldn’t want to leave. I really wouldn’t.”
There was a shout from the edge of the lake. Mary Ann had pulled ahead of Terry.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?” Cadmann asked. “About us. About them.”
“Absolutely.”
“I look at Mary Ann. I think about Jessie, a bit of me that will go on after I’m gone. Everything just seems a lot lighter. And she gave me that gift.”
“I’m glad that we’re friends.”
“We couldn’t be anything else, Sylvia.”
She jumped: a shockwave as loud and sudden as a clap of thunder reverberated across the plain.
Mary Ann shrieked and pointed up into the sky. Cadmann whipped his binoculars up. “There she is. Don’t you just love rocket ships? Bring her down, Stu!”
Sylvia spotted a thread of vapor trail as the Minerva began its descent. Now its shape could be seen: bastard birth of airplane and insurance building, the blunt bucket of a craft that had brought them down a precious few at a time, and delivered them to Avalon without an injury or mishap.
It hit the lake and skimmed across it like a drop of water on a white-hot plate. It had almost reached shore before its wings touched the glistening blue surface. Then clouds of steam rose up with a roar like a muted waterfall. It maneuvered the rest of the way in short bursts.
“This is your package, isn’t it, Sylvie?”
“The very. Nat Geo gave me an early Christmas this year.”
The Minerva thumped into the dock, rotated and locked in. After a moment the hatch opened, and Hendrick Sills climbed out. “Bumpy ride this time. We may have a storm coming in.”
“Well, let’s get the mail in.”
Mary Ann and Terry pulled up to the dock.
“I win!!”
“She cheated.”
Cadmann glared at them fiercely. “All right. What have you two been talking about?”
“Oh, about the same stuff as you and Sylvia.”
“Then our relationship is doomed.” Cadmann jumped up on the landing platform and helped Hendrick down. Stu emerged after. He carried a sealed metal box.
“We’ve got the goods here,” Stu announced. “But hardier and more patient souls than I are going to have to download and sort them out.”
“You don’t look happy,” Cadmann said.
“Maybe I’m not,” Stu said.
“With good reason.” Carolyn McAndrews came out of the hatch, followed by her sister Phyllis. Carolyn’s face was tight with rage. “They proxmired the e-Eridani expedition.”
“What?” Cadmann demanded.
“They canceled the e-Eridani ship,” Phyllis said gently. “And all the others. There aren’t any more interstellar flights.”
“All true,” Stu said. “Maybe our pictures weren’t pretty enough—”
“That news is ten years old!” Mary A
nn said. “Nothing we sent to Earth could have got there in time to make any difference!”
Carolyn glared angrily at Mary Ann. “We know.” Her eyes softened. “He was joking, Mary Ann. Not a very good joke.”
“We’re all there is,” Terry said. He looked down at his wheelchair. “Pretty heavy responsibility. I guess I’m glad we didn’t know before we’d killed off the grendels. When too much depends on me, I always get stage fright.”
Sylvia kept a greedy eye on the computer disk. “We’re still here. And you’re carrying a year’s worth of news, and a complete encyclopedia update. With all of the data lost in the attack, this is what I’ve been looking for, and to hell with the proxmires.”
“What is it? Just what are you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I can feel things, patterns, trying to make connections in my head. Computers are good at that. We’ll see what happens.”
“Yeah. Well, you’ve got your mail.” Hendrick lifted a box and carried it down to the pier’s end.
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 holotheater. Make the picture flat film. 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?”<
br />
“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 holostage. “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.
♦ChaptEr 26♦
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.”