The Legacy of Heorot (3 page)

"Sir!"

We were needed. Then.

His clothing was all nonsynthetics that might take a generation to replace. How long would it be until they thawed out the silkworms and the mulberry bushes for them to feed on? Not exactly a high priority item...

He didn't remember closing his eyes, but when he opened them he was lying down, and the sun had set. Cadman grabbed his toolbox and a folding stool and hustled from the room. Getting old is one thing, dammit! Senility will just have to wait.

ON THE BEACH

Glory to Man in the Highest! For Man is the master of things.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, "Hymn to Man"

A jeep roared by, full of colonists who were full of beer. "Grab some wheels and we'll race you to the beach!" Cadmann waved and pointed to his toolbox. They razzed him and careened out of the compound, singing.

Electric lights were wavering to life around the camp as workers changed shifts. The party atmosphere was infectious. Avalon's inadequate twin moons would smile on a beachful of frolicking spacefarers.

The folding stool's seat was several centimeters too small, but as he bent to the task of repairing and refastening the wire, he forgot the discomfort.

Avalon's moons cast double, divergent shadows with their bluish glow, and the stars were brilliantly sharp and clear. No crickets. And along about evening the nightbirds aren't beginning to call because the things they use for birds here don't sing. And maybe we'll fix that, with bluebirds and mockingbirds if the goddam ecology people want them. I wonder if they brought crickets?

Cadmann unwound two meters of wire and scraped at the clotted dust surrounding the loose connection, then clipped the old wire free and attached the new. He fired the soldering torch.

Do they still stand retreat at the Academy? Cadets in archaic uniforms standing in rigid rows, plebes telling jokes in hopes of making upperclassmen laugh and be seen by the officers... sunset guns, bands, the Anthem, the flag lowered slowly to the beat of drums... He attached the leads from the voltmeter. The needle jumped into the red. Done.

Mist had rolled in from the sea. The stars were gone; the moons were wavery blobs. Cadmann felt pinpricks of moisture on his face.

A calf on the far side of the wire grunted longingly and shuffled over, looking at him with huge, liquid eyes. Cadmann reached through and petted it, and it licked his hand.

"No mother, eh, girl? Must be tough not to have a mommy cow to love you." Its tongue was rough and warm, and it moved more urgently now as it tried to suckle at his hand.

Cadmann laughed and pulled his fingers away. The calf shivered. "Aw, come now, you can't suckle my fingers... " Then he saw fear in the calf's eyes. Its head jerked to and fro, then stopped abruptly as it stared toward the stream.

The other animals moved toward him. They stood together in clumps. A filly whinnied with fear, and Cadmann came to his feet.

"What's bothering you, girl?"

The feeding stalls were enclosed by the electric fences and narrow walkways. Cadmann carefully stowed the tools and went into the compound. What's bothering them? The filly was to his right. Instead of trotting over to him she bucked. Cadmann opened the gate to her pen. "Heidi. Here, girl." She moved warily. "Here." He ruffled her mane. "Shhh. Heidi, Heidi," he crooned. "Quiet, girl."

Night came suddenly. Both moons were at half stage: bright enough, but they left pools of dark shadows through the barnyard, some of them back by the dog pen. There were ten young German shepherds in the pen, and their ears were flattened against their heads. They growled deep in their throats, teeth bared in the moonlight.

"Hello?" There was no answer. "Who the hell is out there?" There was nothing, in the pens or beyond in the deep shadows leading to the bluff. The sound of the panicked animals was a rattling cacophony. Cadmann stood still and listened. Nothing. Carefully he took out the Walther Model Seven pistol and checked the loads. Silly. Nothing here. If Moscowitz sees me with this he'll take my pistol away. He slipped off the safety, then put it in his pocket and left his hand there.

What in the hell was going on? He looked back at the animal pens. The German shepherds, dogs bred for their loyalty and intelligence, were going berserk. The wildest of them was also the eldest, a nearly full-sized bitch who was actually biting at the electrified fence, touching it and recoiling, returning again and again.

Cadmann ran to the pen's gate and gave a low whistle. "Sheena. Come, girl. What's out there? What is it?" She came to him slowly, and stood trembling, panting, eyes fixed and staring out into the darkness. He opened the gate, careful of the other dogs. "Back. Come, Sheena."

He left the gate open long enough for Sheena to get out, then grabbed the fur at the scruff of her neck when she tried to run ahead. These dogs need training. It's time. She growled low in her throat. The others barked furiously. Sheena strained ahead.

All the animals were yowling now. Darkened windows behind him filled with light.

"What son of a bitch is screwing with those dogs?"

"Zee virgin, she is mine!"

Another light blinked on. A male voice bellowed, "Hey, you! I just got to sleep. Will you for Christ's-? Oh. Cadmann. Cadmann, a lot of us are on the night shift. Cam you wrap that up fast?"

"Sure, Neal. Sony."

The window slammed. The dog strained at his hold on her mane. "Easy, girl-" Cadmann dug in his heels. Never go out at dusk without a flashlight. Rule One. And I forgot.

"Cadmann!"

Cadmann jumped. Sheena strained just at that moment, and his grip slipped. The shepherd sped baying into the dark.

"Good going, Weyland."

Bloody idiot. Cadmann recognized the angry whine, had trouble matching the thin, almost effeminate frame of its owner with the label Terry Faulkner: Sylvia's husband. "She'll be back as soon as she's hungry."

"Eh?"

"Sheena."

"Oh. The dog. Yeah, I hope so. Listen, Sylvia sent me to get you. If you want to come to the beach party, get moving. We've got the last jeep and we're leaving now."

"Yeah, well..." There was nothing out there now, no sound but rushing water. Screw the picnic. I need a flashlight.

"Are you coming?"

Damn you! "Sheena! Come, Sheena."

"I'm leaving." Terry's thin lips twitched with a nervous tic that made it hard for Cadmann to look him directly in the face. His small fists balled up and set on his hips. "Sylvia said you should come."

Did you ever recover from puberty? What if I throw you in the creek? The dogs were quiet now. Heidi nickered and came to the edge of the pen seeking sugar. "All right."

The jeep slewed around in a tight circle, so quickly that only the ballast of several enthusiastically inebriated colonials kept it from tipping over on two wheels. Zack Moscowitz leaned out of the driver's seat. He was wearing driving goggles above a shaggy black mustache. "All aboard! Will each passenger kindly check his or her own tokens?"

Cadmann grinned in amusement. His or her. Like a book from the twenty-first century. "H'lo, Boss."

Moscowitz wiped at his goggle lenses but only succeeded in smearing the dirt more evenly. "Good to see you, Cadmann. How'd the outing go?"

"Great." Cadmann stood unmoving. Terry had already claimed the seat in front next to Zack's wife, Rachel. There was no other place to sit.

"Here we go, Cad." George Merriot squeezed over to make room. It took some squeezing-George could use a few extra sit-ups.

"Thanks, Major."

"Not any more. Cad."

"Right." Weyland climbed over Barney Carr and Carolyn, one of the

McAndrews twins. He wiggled his way into the middle.

"Seat belts, right? Everybody, right?"

There was a chorus of bored assents. Zack gunned the jeep and roared out of camp. The road out to the beach was smoother than that leading to the mountains, and more frequently traveled. It served the orbital shuttle, which made water landings.

"No problems, Cadmann?" the Administrator shouted.

"Ah-nothing, Zack." Cadmann was momentarily distracted by a whiff of perfume. Carolyn had taken advantage of a bump in the road to lean closer to him. Now if it had been Phyllis... but Phyllis and Hendrick Sills were a pair, and the twins were not identical. Carolyn was sallow in both complexion and personality. He smiled at her anyway.

"What about the fence?"

"Nothing serious. Break. I fixed it."

George Merriot laughed. "Hey, Zack, for a bare instant there, I thought you weren't playing company director this evening."

Moscowitz wove deftly around a pothole. "Never happened. Check that fence in daylight tomorrow, would you, Cad?"

"Enough!" Rachel Moscowitz shouted. "No business tonight. The night shift's on duty. Remember?"

"There was something," Cadmann said.

Moscowitz slowed, his eyes still on the road. "Yes?"

"Bit of disturbance with the animals. They were acting like rush hour at the stockyard. Scared. Crazy." The jeep lurched, and Cadmann gently removed someone's elbow from the back of his neck. "Might not be anything, but you never know. I took out one of the dogs. Sheena. She got away."

"Aw, not Sheena. Where'd she go?"

"Who cares?" George demanded. "They all got out last week. She'll come back."

Zack kept the jeep burning along the track at a racing pace, and as they bumped over a rise near the ring of thorn bushes, Cadmann could see taillights in front of them. We're in the last jeep? Christ, he drives fast. Cadmann asked, "Something special about Sheena?"

Zack said, "Naw, I've been slipping her a few scraps, that's all."

"He wants her in our home," Rachel said. "And we don't have enough room."

"Wouldn't be fair anyway." When Zachariah Moscowitz laughed, his heavy arching eyebrows and thick mustache simply cried for a thick cigar and a round of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady. "Ten dogs, and a hundred sixty colonists. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to get proprietary, does it?"

"No. Zack, stop. I'll go back and find her."

"Come on." Moscowitz flipped up the filthy goggles. "Gives me a whole new outlook on life. George, give the Colonel a drink, will you? Cad, we're not on duty tonight. Smell the sea and drink the beer and the hell with it."

Cadmann didn't laugh. The salt breezes tickled his nose now, and it cleaned away some of his worry. But he'd lost Zack's dog!

Zack was still talking. "I don't suppose that this really impacts on you. Cad, but I've been a paper pusher most of my life. Administration type."

"You're still the only man I know with pencil calluses behind his ear."

"Ah, but things aren't the same anymore. I still ride a keyboard, but I ride it light-years from home, on a planet still two twitches this side of the Jurassic."

"And so?" Cadmann could hear the breakers now, rolling in steady rhythm against the shore.

"And so on Earth I made decisions and was responsible for maybe one five-billionth of what happened on the planet. Here, I'm one one hundred and sixtieth of this planet's history. I'll have cities, states named after me. We'll be in the history books, Cadmann, and schoolchildren will know our names."

They always did name cities after their founders. They used to name them after warriors, too, but what's to fight here?

The jeep slowed to a crawl as the road ended at the edge of the beach. Bonfires had already been lit and tended down to a low roar, and the other colonists waved in greeting.

Minerva One was ass-on to the beach. A team had anchored a winch in the rock so that the shuttle could be pulled up after landing. Nice design there. Land on water, take off on water, never worry about finding an airport. Its desalinization plant was a box floating alongside, with membranes inside to filter the seawater. The shuttle would be flying up to the mother ship tomorrow, one of Sylvia's monthly jaunts. She wouldn't be able to take it next month. Regardless of her protests, no one was going to allow an obviously pregnant biologist to undergo unnecessary g-stresses.

As soon as the jeep slewed to a halt, Cadmann and the others piled out. A cooler lay open on the beach. Cadmann fished out a pouch of cold beer. "Zack! I knew you were the right man to head up this trip."

"Damn straight. You have no idea how hard I fought for that beer." He dipped into the cooler and extracted a pouch. "We'll have our brewery next year."

"Thirty months?" Hendrick Sills shouted, his arm tight around Phyllis's admirably trim waist.

"Earth year," Zack answered. The Avalon year was two point six times as long as Earth's.

Cadmann was crowded away from the cooler by three enthusiastic partygoers. Cadmann grabbed a spare pouch, then took one of the young women by the shoulder. "Mary Ann. Juniper berries."

"Eh?" Mary Ann Eisenhower looked wary. Her blond hair was plastered down with ocean spray. "What?"

"Juniper berries. You're in agriculture. Did we bring the seeds?"

Mary Ann wrapped her towel around her shoulders more tightly, brushed a few grains of sand away from her cleavage. "Cadmann, I don't know! Why?"

"I want to make the first drinkable martini on Tau Ceti Four. That will earn me a statue."

She frowned, then grinned widely. "You're on. I'll look!" She reached toward him shyly. "Uh, want to swim?" Like many of the others, she had stripped down to shorts.

"Cold, isn't it?"

"Sure! But it's nice when you get out." She reached toward him.

"Mary Ann! Come on!" Joe Sikes called. Cadmann didn't like him. His wife had had a baby only a week before, and he was already running after other women.

Mary Ann turned, mouth set in a line. "If you're in such a hurry, why don't you just go find Evvie?"