The Legacy of Heorot (19 page)

Cadmann watched them for a long moment, then sat down in front of his campfire. He stirred at a pot and ignored them. A week's worth of beard shaded his face. He moved stiffly—the cracked ribs, Sylvia reminded herself. She wondered if he would let her inspect the damage or take a blood test to check infection, or even take his temperature.

There was something in his expression—something wild and uncomfortably strong, and her stomach went sweet-and-sour.

"Cadmann," Carlos said, his dark hand outstretched.

Cadmann looked at the hand and removed a flask from his pocket, taking a deep pull.

Carlos's hand hung there in the air like half of a suspension bridge awaiting completion. Finally he humphed and put his hand back in his pocket.

"What the hell do you want?" Cadmann said at last. The entire campsite was unkempt. The Cadmann she had come to know would never have been so sloppy.

"Just wanted to make sure that you were all right, amigo," Carlos said uncomfortably. "You were hurt pretty bad."

Cadmann glared at them, took another pull and then dropped the flask to the side.

The eyes, the unsteadiness. He was drunk, roaring drunk, and had probably been drunk since he came here. "Yeah. Hurt bad. I guess you must care about that. Your conscience acting up? Hell with it."

"Cadmann..." Mary Ann began, moving forward. One flash from those bloodshot eyes, and she stopped.

"Keep away from me," he growled. "All of you. Not one of you came up and put your ass on the line when it would have made a difference. Stew in it."

"You can say that to me," Sylvia said. "But not to Mary Ann. She stuck up for you every time."

"Then where was she?" He screamed it. "Every night, every goddamned night I've had nightmares, waking up with that fucking monster blowing Ernst's blood in my face. I don't know why the hell it didn't just bite my head off. I don't know... "

The shepherd pup sensed fear and anger, and stood next to Cadmann with bared teeth, growling low in its throat. "She cares," Cadmann muttered. He took a piece of meat from the pot and threw it to the dog. "It's all right, Tweedledee. They're friends." His laugh dwindled to a chuckle.

"That looks... fresh," Sylvia said cautiously. Turkey? Samlon?

Where's the other dog?

He said, "There's a... critter living up in the rocks. Like a marmot. The dogs sniff ‘em out just fine." He paused. "It would be polite to invite you to supper, but I'm not feeling terribly polite right now. Why don't you just say your piece and leave?"

"I miss you..." Mary Ann began. Cadmann glared balefully at her, opened his mouth and for just a moment Sylvia was sure that he was going to say something to send her fleeing back to camp in tears. Instead, he just closed his mouth and seemed to chew on the thoughts.

"Yeah. That's great. I can do a whole lot with that." There was a chorus of cheerful barks from the rocks at the northern periphery of the mesa, and another shepherd came bounding out, radiating good, healthy-puppy energy.

It ran up to Carlos and, wagging its tail, sniffed his crotch heartily, immediately gave the same treatment to Mary Ann and then to Sylvia. Satisfied, it trotted over to Cadmann, who ignored him, and then over to his littermate. They sniffed at each other's hindquarters and bit playfully.

"Crotch sniffers of the world, unite!" Cadmann called.

"Cadmann," Sylvia said finally. "I'm not going to lie to you. We need you. We lost a lot of good people last week. We're trying to put the Colony back together again. You wouldn't have any opposition to the kind of programs that you were talking about."

"I don't care now." He shrugged. "Maybe in a couple more weeks I'll give a shit, but probably not. Don't tell me about your goddamned problems. I like it up here just fine. Dogs have their instincts, you know? They don't cripple themselves up with what they want to believe, and I like that just fine. Why don't you just get your asses back down the mountain and leave me alone?"

"Cadmann..."

"Get the fuck out of here!"

Carlos touched Sylvia's arm and pulled her back. "Ah,... amigo... is your radio working? If there's any kind of problem, anything we can do..."

Cadmann nodded wearily. "Yeah. You'll be the first to know. Don't hold your collective breath."

Sylvia turned, trying to hold the tears back. "Sylvia!" Cadmann called.

"Yes?"

"You take care of yourself." Mary Ann was still staring at him, and for a moment something passed between them: regret or loneliness or resentment. Something, but it was a message shared just by the two of them, and not for anyone else.

"Go on," he repeated. He stooped to pick up the flask. He shook it disgustedly, then tossed it aside again. "Me, I'm going to stay very very drunk until there's nothing left to drink."

The three of them returned to the Skeeter, but Mary Ann turned and faced them defiantly. "I'm not going back. He can't say it, but he wants me to stay."

"Mary Ann—"

"Can't you see him? He's killing himself up here. He really wants you,

Sylvia—"

Carlos wisely made no comment at all. Sylvia opened her mouth in protest, but Mary Ann cut her off.

"Don't say it, Sylvia. Don't lie. He wants what he can't have." She stood up straight, a short, strong, pretty blond girl on the ripe edge of plumpness. A woman whose hibernation instability was far more subtle than Ernst's had been. But she was intelligent enough to know what was gone, and perceptive enough to know what was true between Sylvia and Cadmann.

"He can't say that he wants me to stay, but what is he going to do?

Throw me out? I can't climb down by myself and he knows it. Leave me here.

I'll be all right."

"I can't do that."

"Because you don't know what kind of man he is. Not really. I do. I know just what kind of man he is. You don't know him like I do."

For a long, hard moment they faced each other, then Carlos said. "All right. I expect to hear some kind of message from you or Cadmann about this over the radio in the next twenty-four hours. Otherwise I'm coming back."

"Fine."

Carlos entered his side of the Skeeter. Sylvia looked at Mary Ann carefully. There was something in her, some strength that had not been there since the Landing.

"It's changed all of us," Sylvia said quietly. "Maybe you're right.

Maybe you're the only one who knows him now."

She hugged Mary Ann, kissed her on one warm cheek. "For God's sake take care of him, Mary Ann. He needs someone."

Mary Ann clung for a moment, then stepped back. "I will. I'll try. Now, go on."

They climbed into the Skeeter. The rotors whipped to life and Carlos levitated them, higher and higher and then to the east, until Mary Ann's figure was a tiny, vulnerable speck, walking slowly and uncertainly toward Cadmann's camp.

HOMESTEAD

The dwarf sees further than the giant when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "The Friend"

Powdered eggs and powdered milk and freeze-dried bacon didn't seem to be a promising start for breakfast. But in combination with Mary Ann's skill and the last of the samlon meat, they produced a savory fragrance that drifted up from the pan in thin wisps.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the twin shepherds, padded quietly around the camp, tongues lolling pinkly, looking hopefully at the fire. They sniffed at the smoke but kept their distance. If they were very polite Cadmann would let them lick the plates.

A whiff of ocean salt stirred the leaves and dried grass on the mesa. Avalon's eternal mist was blown away for minutes at a time. From the edge of the mesa she could look down onto the flatland, where the Colony was distantly visible: a flash of solar cell banks, the dim, interlocking rectangles of the tilled and irrigated land. The far-off hum of a Skeeter tickled the air.

A protracted groan issued from the tent behind her, and she turned to watch Cadmann elbow himself clumsily out past the flaps.

He glared at her, rubbing granular sleep from the corners of his eyes, and grunted, "What the hell are you doing here?"

She didn't let him see her flinch. "Cooking breakfast." She stirred the eggs and crumbled in another pinch of dried bacon crisps. Tweedledum, the male, crept up within a meter of the fire, drooling. Cadmann shooshed him away and crawled up closer, shouldering Mary Ann gently aside. His bloodshot eyes narrowed with interest. He started to say something, then caught her smiling at him and turned it into a yawn, scratching himself crudely. Mary Ann caught an awesome whiff of morning breath.

Both of Cadmann's big hands went to his head. "God, that hurt."

"You earned it. You finished off the vodka last night."

"No," he croaked, genuine distress in his voice. His voice sounded as if something small and struggling were trapped in his larynx. Cadmann backed into his tent, and emerged holding his canteen. He waggled it in one hand, grinning through a week's worth of beard at the answering swish. "Hair of the dog."

He tossed it back, guzzling with short, choppy movements of his Adam's apple. Why do you do this to yourself? Doesn't matter. You'll have to stop now.

He tossed the canteen to the side to clank noisily against a pile of rocks. The dogs attacked him simultaneously from either side, yipping at him to play with them or feed them or any one of a hundred other doggy concerns.

Cadmann wrestled with them for a tolerant moment, then shoved both away and glared at them nastily. "If you don't shut the hell up, I am going to shoot you both. I am going to line you up and shoot you both with the same goddamn bullet. Do you understand me?"

They arfed and snapped playfully at each other's tails and ears.

Cadmann stretched, naked but for a baggy pair of shorts. His muscular arms were only fractionally better tanned than his chest. He's lost weight. The wounds, and then the drinking—

Mary Ann stopped stirring the eggs as the first curl of smoke wafted up from the pan.

"What in the hell is that mess?"

"Call it an Avalon omelet. It's our breakfast," she said.

He thrust a fork into the pan, probing, and snapped at her, "How much of it is poison?"

She took the fork and shoveled a bite into her own mouth, glaring right back.

"Half, eh? Well, I'm tough. I can handle that." He tried to sit in a gracefully cross-legged position, but finally just sort of collapsed into a heap. "My head."

"Your breath. Here. Eat."

Cadmann took the fork back and scraped half the contents of the pan onto a plate. The suspicion in his eyes faded after the first bite. "Damn, this isn't half—"

At the first sign of her smile he shut up and hunched over the pan, sulking as he ate.

Mary Ann poured reconstituted nonfat milk and sipped contentedly. It was startlingly clean, and aerated, filled with tiny, needlelike ice crystals from the snowmelt stream that ran near Cadmann's campsite. Drunk. Hurt. Mad. And he's still picked a better place than Zack ever did...

She squinted across the fire at Cadmann. Time? Yes, while the hangover lasts. "You can forget about me going back to the Colony. I'm staying. You can carry me down, but I'll just climb back. If you want to break both of my legs, that might stop me, but I wouldn't bet on it."

"You are going," he said. He ate the last forkful of the eggs, squinted at her and belched with satisfaction. "Right after lunch."

"Keep the head down." One of Cadmann's broad hands clamped onto the back of her neck as they crouched behind an outcropping of rock near the eastern edge of the mesa. "Damn hangfires—"

Brapp!! The sound was not as loud as Mary Ann expected, but she heard it as much with her body as her ears. The shaped engineering charge rent the mountainside. Rock chips and clots of dirt flew in all directions. A gout of dust and powdered earth mushroomed into the sky. Crouching next to her, Cadmann grinned. "Fun, eh?"

She bobbed her head nervously. "Finest kind."

His hands were gentle as he helped her to her feet. Shielding his eyes against the dust, he surveyed his handiwork.

The third detonation of the day completed a hole in the granite face twenty meters above the mesa. It looked very like the opening excavation of a mine. Shelf-like slabs of rock jutted out from the earth, their ends shattered by the concussion.

"I'm not sure I understand why you don't just build on the flat."

"Weren't you in the camp?" She heard the sarcasm change to something else. He stared at her. "Mary Ann—" His voice softened. "Yeah. Well, there are monsters here."

"I know that."

"So we—I—don't want to be on the flat. Also, I want the flatland for farming—if I decide to stay, all of the farmland will be worth its acreage in gold foil. Second, drainage—if I build underground on the hillside, rain and snowmelt will run right off, if I build my roof right. Third, view. From where we'll... I'll be, I'll have the best damn view that ever was. Right down on their heads. And fourth, I want us to be unreachable. One path, and it twists, and I'll guard it. I won't be on some tabletop watching one of those come at me at ninety miles an hour."

She saw it now, and her ears burned. My God, of course not! Why didn't I see... the way he looked at me? Oh. "It was a stupid question, wasn't it?"

"Uh—"

"Cadmann, I know. I can accept it. But—well, sometimes it hurts."

His hand moved to touch hers, then drew back. She held her breath. He turned away to survey his work, then turned back, a deeply satisfied smile creasing his face. "There are more reasons, but those will do for the moment." He looked at her sharply. "Nobody's asking you to live in it. Or to stay here."

"I'm staying." She stood on her tiptoes and locked her arms around his neck. "I love you, Cadmann. I lost too much coming to Avalon. I'm not losing you, too."