The Legacy of Heorot (50 page)

"Yes, yes, tell us," Mary Ann said.

Carolyn looked at them, realized that they meant it and that they understood. "All right," she began tentatively. "Did I tell you I gave them names?"

"Yeah," Marnie said. "Cassandra record."

"No!" Carolyn protested.

"Cassandra. Record. File as dry run." Marnie grinned. "Surely you don't think of Cassie as an eavesdropper? She's your friend too."

"Yeah. Yes, I guess so." Carolyn straightened in her chair. "I named them all. I named the first one after Charlie Manson." Suddenly Carolyn was grinning like a grendel. She had presence. She'd been on camera before. "Charlie must have been suffering from Hibernation Instability. He came at me through water, dragging half a horse! I just stood up from behind a rock and shot him.

"That left me with three grendels after me and two harpoons to my name. I started being careful, but I was in a hurry too. I got the horses as far as the base of the glacier. By then I could see that the grendels had reached Charlie and what was left of Shank's Mare. One of them was too chicken to get close. That was Mareta—"

Sylvia shuddered. Teheran. The whole city. Omar lost cousins. Well, Mareta Lupoff certainly got the world's attention—

"—but Mareta stayed behind and ate the leavings when the other two went on. I kept going up the glacier, leaving the horses behind.

"I was fifty meters up when Khadafi went on speed and came for me. She hit ice. It surprised her, but she kept coming, legs churning, ice flying, getting slower and slower as the ice got steeper. She was running in place when I shot her.

"I thought I was in a good place, then, so I stayed. Nothing to eat, but plenty of water. Mareta and the Ayatollah stared at me for a while, but neither of them wanted to try it. I was almost hoping one would. But not both.

"After a while Joe Sikes found me. We managed to take ten of the horses down. The rest are still up there with two grendels. There's not much point in going after Mareta and the Ayatollah."

"Yes, that's right," Sylvia said. "There have to be lots of grendels in the hills, but they'll never lay fertile eggs. The samlon are the males. They have to come down for that."

"So. That's what happened," Carolyn said. "It was scary enough, but... it felt so damned good to sh-shoot those things I was so scared of."

"Cassandra end file," Marnie said.

"I think it's wonderful," Mary Ann said. "A really good story." "You? You killed a dozen with your bare hands—" Mary Ann laughed. "I don't know who you listen to." "And anyway, they won't give me my job back."

"No, they won't," Sylvia said. "Would you put Mary Ann in charge of anything?"

Carolyn gulped and was silent.

"I wouldn't," Mary Ann said. "I know I'm still smart, but there are things I don't know that I'm supposed to. I don't trust me."

"Cadmann does," Carolyn said.

"He trusts my instincts." Mary Ann kissed Jessica's ear.

"Besides, he's in love," Sylvia said. "Now. Let's solve Carolyn's problem."

"Look, it's a simple situation," Marnie said. "You want a baby. We all do. We have to. Genetic programming. Colony in danger, instinct and heredity and common sense all say we get pregnant and have babies." She patted her six-month bulge. "Babies need fathers. Some of us have husbands, but there are more women than men."

"Which makes Carlos happy enough," Carolyn said. "Only—" "He's responsible enough," Mary Ann said complacently.

Marnie giggled. "Godfather to half the unborn kids here. Well, maybe not half. Look, Carolyn, you're not in love with anyone. Right? Right. You want a man of your own, but you're not going to get one. There aren't enough to go around."

And even if there were, you'd last about a year, Sylvia thought. She knew that wasn't fair: Carolyn had been married for nine years to a hydraulics engineer who hadn't survived frozen sleep. But she's such a bitch, and maybe that's Hibernation Instability, and maybe she just had a bloody saint for a husband.

"So," Marnie continued, "you have some choices. You can try to seduce one of the seriously married men and hope that either his wife doesn't find out or that she won't kill you if she does." When Carolyn tried to say something, Marnie held up her hand. "There's celibacy. Doesn't appeal to you? Don't blame you. Choice three. Get in on one of the orgies, and have group sponsorship of your kid. Maybe you don't like that much, either. Choice four. Choose a father, have him provide you with a sperm sample. It's easy: he produces a rubber balloon, he and his wife make whoopie. You take your teaspoon of baby syrup and do-it-yourself.

"Or. Final choice. Sleep with anyone you want to, but get pregnant from the sperm banks. Anonymous father. Nobody to be jealous, in case romance blooms later."

The father doesn't have to be anonymous. Sylvia felt herself blush. They don't know. Cadmann doesn't even know. Terry, Terry, I kept the goddamn promise, Terry. I didn't sleep with him...

Mary Ann sat on the low wall, looking downhill.

She needed no binoculars to see that the new Colony was a fortress.

Curved concrete walls surrounded the living areas. Fences and mine fields enclosed the croplands. Inside the compound were naked scars, remains of the grendel attacks, but most of those were being built upon or plowed over. In a year there would be no traces.

Mits and Stu had found a grendel. Hah! Now that Cadmann and Zack and Rachel understood them, grendels were less a danger than a resource. With grendels came samlon, and feasting.

It wasn't always easy to remember. Grendels laid eggs, which hatched into samlon. But samlon were male grendels. They ate pond slime. Adult samlon were female grendels, and they ate everything, but if there wasn't anything else they ate samlon. If they could force grendels to eat all the samlon, there just wouldn't be any more grendels. So there had to be nothing else to eat in the streams and rivers.

And when she asked why they couldn't plant more catfish in the streams, that's what they told her.

I'm sure it all makes sense. But I used to like catfish.

The mist was light enough today for her to make out the rows of crops, the animal pens where the horses and young cattle grazed. The Colony was to be rebuilt, and that was fine; but Cadmann would never live there. This is his home. Our home. Cadmann's Bluff. She patted Jessica. Our home, and yours. We live in the high places.

She turned as the rhythmic thump of Cadmann's jog-stride became louder. He was stripped to the waist, and his muscular body gleamed with sweat. He no longer winced when his left leg hit the ground.

The artificial limb was sound enough, strong enough for him to take his laps around the plateau. Tweedledum ran with him, gently urging him with tail-wagging enthusiasm.

One day. Someday he'll trust them enough to go to the new hospital and let them grow him a new leg. Someday.

A thought came up unbidden. When he's whole again, he won't need me. But he's never needed me, not really. Maybe all I have is promises. His promises have to be enough.

She heard the burr of the Skeeter before it rose into view.

It juddered up over the western lip of the plateau, spun once and touched down on the concrete landing pad Hendrick had installed a week before. Cadmann jogged in place for a minute, then wiped his face and walked over.

Sylvia climbed out of the cabin, then lifted Justin out and set him on the ground. The toddler wobbled, then caught his balance and ran to them.

Mary Ann saw in Cadmann's eyes a flash of sadness, immediately masked.

He hugged Justin fiercely.

"Amigo," Carlos said, and embraced Cadmann. "The leg is working well?"

"Oh, for a widget. I'll get it regrown when they get the hospital running. We'll have that expedition yet. But tonight—you came to give us a ride?"

"But of course!"

Sylvia held Justin's hand. Her slender figure was slightly swollen with yet more life. Carlos's child? Sylvia had never said, but Mary Ann thought so.

Cadmann's eye found the swelling, and he smiled. "You better take good care of that, now."

She rubbed her tummy affectionately. "Boy or girl, I'm naming it Terry."

Carlos nodded approval.

Sylvia looked to Cadmann and waited.

"Terry. Right."

"Right," she said. She smiled and suddenly reached up to pull the combs from her hair. It tumbled down, much longer than it had ever been before.

Would look great spread out on a pillow. Mary Ann smiled softly. That would turn Cadmann on, and—Her thoughts were a jumble. I love Cadmann and I love Sylvia, and Cadmann loves Sylvia only Sylvia won't sleep with Cadmann, and I'm glad she won't but I wish she would so he can stop wanting to and this is silly.

There were new lines on Sylvia's face. She's still beautiful. Cadmann will never get over her. And so what? He's mine. Not hers. Mine.

"You've done a lot of work here," Sylvia said. She swept her hand in a broad arc to indicate the new walls, Joe cages, cattle pens, fortifications, even a new deadfall: he'd found a building-sized rock, higher up, and dug under it, and laid a new mine field below it. She put her hand on Mary Ann's shoulder and smiled wryly. "Well, lady, you won the grand prize."

Mary Ann tried to smile but couldn't. "Sylvia—Oh dammit, what can I say? I'd never be jealous of you!"

"I think I believe you. Doesn't matter. Mary Ann, don't you understand? The man adores you! Oh, sure, get him drunk enough and he'll probably try to seduce a grendel—but he won't make them any promises."

"Hey," Cadmann said.

"Keep out of this," Sylvia said. "We're discussing you, not inviting contributions."

"Always after my bod, never my mind."

"Something like that. Can I change the subject?"

"Please!"

The four of them faced each other, and suddenly, as if with a single sigh, they came together in a group hug.

"I still can't quite believe we're safe."

"Maybe that's good," Cadmann said seriously. "Maybe we're only safe as long as we're a little afraid."

"Beowulf killed Grendel after all." Carlos laughed, trying to lighten the mood. "Of course, the dragon got Beowulf in the end..."

Sylvia glared at him. "You have no sense of timing."

"That's not what you said—" She hit him with her elbow. "Ouch.

Anyway, that story's already been written. This one we create as we go. Come on. Let's go down to dinner. Hey, amigo—I think that leg might be enough of a handicap. Race?"

Cadmann bent into a sprinter's crouch. "Loser cleans samlon. With his teeth." Cadmann took advantage of Carlos's burst of laughter to dash off.

"Hey—"

Sylvia and Mary Ann watched the two friends sprinting through the deactivated mine field, shoulder to shoulder as they hit the hill.

"They look so strong," Sylvia said softly. "Sometimes it's hard to believe how fragile life is. How precious."

Who knows what we'll find on the mainland...?

Beowulf killed Grendel after all.

"Beowulf was killed by the dragon," Mary Ann murmured.

"What?"

A moment's chill went through her, and she wanted to cry out, to call him back, to end his thoughts of a new quest, a new frontier. "Why can't he stay here? Haven't we paid enough?"

Through her tears she watched him. Tall and strong, the gray more pronounced in his hair now. Her heart nearly broke.

She felt Sylvia's touch on her arm. "Love, what will be will be. We all came to die here. What matters is how we live."

Mary Ann picked Jessica up and held her in the air, kissed her soundly. Together she and Sylvia followed the men they loved up to the house.

It was too late for any of them to change.

And perhaps, just perhaps, there was no dragon after all.

THE END