Mirabile (37 page)

She leaned against me for a long minute. “Better if you didn’t hafta,” she said, from somewhere in my shoulder. Then she pushed back suddenly and hugged. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded! I meant, better you don’t hafta spend years stabilizing the red deer!”

“Yeah,” I said, hugging her back. “Wouldn’t that be nice—not having to spend years. Are you trying to put me out of a job?” I’d expected a giggle, but I didn’t get one.

Her eyes went huge. “Would it really?”

She was so clearly upset by the idea that I had to get serious. “No, of course not.

I was just teasing. Even if the red deer were stable, there’d be plenty for me to do. I could spend a lot of time with Leo, studying Mirabilan genes.” The thought was pleasant enough that I smiled.

“Oh. Okay, then.” She gave me one last hug, frowned once more and said, “I hafta talk to Susan and Ilanith.”

“Good. While you fill them in, I’ll go see what trouble Leo’s gotten into without me.”

“Noisy doesn’t get into trouble without you,” she said.

“Then I’d better find him, hadn’t I? Together, I’m sure we can think of some kind of trouble to get into.” That got me my giggle.

It wasn’t Leo I went looking for, though—it was Elly. I found her in her room at the back of the lodge, supervising Aklilu’s forays into the computer. Nobody else was around, which suited me just fine.

Aklilu crowed, exchanged grins with Elly, and said, “Look, Mama Jason! I found the cat!”

I looked. Sure enough, there was a cat gamboling on the monitor. “Looks Earth-authentic to me,” I told him.

For some reason known only to Aklilu that made it all the better.

“Earth-authentic!” he caroled. “Want to show Jen!”

He slithered off the chair and onto the floor. Elly made a move to catch him, but I gave her a quick shake of the head—no point discussing things in front of Aklilu I didn’t want discussed in public. He was too close to the parrot stage.

“Okay,” Elly told him, “you go show Jen.”

“

Earth-authentic

,” he said again and scooted off.

Elly waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to me and said, “What’s up, Annie?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you. Are these kids up to something I don’t know about again?”

She laughed. “Probably. They usually are.”

“Is it something I

ought to know about?”

“You’ll have to give me more of a hint, Annie. Which kids?”

I told her about Jen and all her haftas and threw in Susan’s grimness for good measure.

She shook her head. “Susan’s been grim ever since she got here. I thought it was because this is her first real emergency.”

It wasn’t. I shook my head, and Elly went on thoughtfully, “I can’t say that Ilanith’s been behaving differently than normal.”

I spread my hands. “Not that I noticed, either. But it would hafta be all three.” I’d heard the
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“hafta” on its way out of my mouth.

“Now she’s got you doing it.”

I grinned and nodded. “Come on, Elly. There must be something you can tell me.”

“Contrary to what the kids think, I’m not a mind reader. The only thing that strikes me is the amount of time they’ve put into ships’ files lately.” She propped her elbow on the table and laid her chin in her open palm. “That’s Jen and Ilanith. I can’t speak for Susan because she hasn’t been here often.”

“And what were they researching?”

“Nothing specific.” She raised her head and looked me straight in the eye. “Now that is odd—and it drops Ilanith right into the plot with the other two.”

“Give,” I said.

“For the life of me, I couldn’t spot any pattern to their research, so I asked Ilanith what they were looking for. And she said, ‘I’m not sure. I hope we know it when we see it.’”

Her eyes hadn’t left mine, but she was looking at Ilanith in her mind. When she saw me again, she said, “At the time, I took it for a joke and wished her luck. But it wasn’t a joke; she was quite serious. Should we worry, Annie?”

“No more than they do,” I said. Then I thought of Susan’s grim face and I added, “I’ll see what I can get out of Jen. Sounds like she knows what they’re looking for.”

At that, Elly sat straight up, for all the world as if somebody’d pinched her.

“They found it,” she said. “Whatever it was, they must have found it. They stopped looking about a month ago.”

“Maybe they gave up.”

She shook her head, smiling. “They wouldn’t have stopped unless they’d found what they were looking for—not those kids. They’re too stubborn.” She dimpled. “I think ‘stubborn’ is an inherited trait. I know exactly where Ilanith and Susan got theirs!” She pinned me with a finger.

“Inherited or not,” I said, “stubborn improves with practice, which gives me half a chance to find out what ‘it’ is that they’ve found.”

Elly’s smile broadened. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“About what?”

“Susan’s grown and flown now. I never feel quite comfortable unless I’ve half a dozen kids around the place, and I’m short one child. Why don’t you and Leo fill the gap for me? I can’t think of a kid I’d rather raise—even if it would mean double the stubborn.”

I guess my jaw dropped. I know I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not every day you get a compliment like that. And Elly doesn’t issue that sort of invitation lightly.

“You think about it.” She rose lightly to her feet and gave me a hug. “I’d better see what Aklilu’s up to. I should have had complaints from Jen by now.” She paused at the door. “I’ll mention the subject to Leo, if you’d prefer.”

I’m not that shy, but the invitation should by all rights come from Elly herself.

“Yes, you tell him,” I said. “He’ll be as honored as I am. Thanks, Elly.”

She went off smiling, leaving me to stand there with grin spreading all over my face.

When I finally went back out to the porch, I found Leo, sitting with his feet up on the banister.

The mere sight of him made the grin spread even wider.

He gave me an answering grin. “You figured out a way to keep them?”

Susan, standing guard beside him, said, “No!” The grim expression on her face wiped the grin from mine.

“Simmer down,” I said. “No, Leo. Not this generation, anyhow. I’ve called a hunt.”

“Oh, well,” said Leo. He gave an easy shrug of his shoulders and stood. “Maybe Susan will figure out a way, one of these days.”

Susan caught his arm. “I’m joining the hunt.” Her eyes were dark and angry.

Leo said what I was thinking: “Sounds to me like you’ve a personal grudge against the frankenswine.”

Susan stared at him and some of the grimness went away. “They gnawed Jen,”

she said—then she turned her stare back on the undergrowth, daring any wild boar to come charging out.

She wanted to join the hunt, all right. With or without the rest of us.

But I’d seen enough to recognize that she hadn’t suddenly remembered her job.

She’d turned those angry eyes on the undergrowth to avoid Leo’s. And I could tell from Leo’s expression that her explanation wasn’t good enough for him either.

He gave me a thoughtful look, then stretched. “I’ll go raise a posse,” he said. “Up to you, Annie, whether Susan’s included or not.”

Susan’s stare came back to me hard.

“We could use somebody with her reflexes,” I said. Besides, maybe I’d get a clue if we took her along. “If we leave her out, she’ll only get stroppier.”

Leo nodded and grinned, with a twist for Susan. Another thing I like about Leo is that he thinks the way I do. I could see him studying her already. With a little luck, maybe he’d turn up what I couldn’t.

He turned up the posse first: half a dozen folks, armed to the teeth and as ready to kill frankenswine as Susan, from the looks of them. But he’d chosen them for good sense as much as for their readiness.

Beate Opener Valladin proved as much. Despite her very personal grudge against the frankenswine, she made it clear that she’d go along with sample-taking. “Though I vote we do the killing first and the sample-taking after,” she added. “It isn’t just the frankenswine we have to deal with. We hafta keep our eyes out for the other wild boar, if there is one. That’s the more dangerous of the two beasts.”

At least now I knew where some of those haftas of Jen’s had come from. The others still wanted investigation—after we saw to the frankenswine.

One of the onlookers said, “What about the Loch Moose monster?”

“Hey!” said Jen, from somewhere at the back of the crowd. “You leave our monster alone!”

Beate, who’d also recognized the voice, smiled and said to the hunters, “Leave the Loch Moose monster alone. If you don’t bother it, it won’t bother you.”

“Which is not at all true for the wild boar,” I said. I took the floor and told them what we knew about both frankenswine and boar. Then I said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

We left Elly and two others to oversee the caged frankenswine from the porch.

No matter how mad papa boar was about what we’d done to his kids, he’d be no match for Elly protecting hers. With that worry off my mind, I concentrated on keeping my ass intact as we stalked on tiptoe into the wood.

Mabob led the way. If he’d had any bird or any dog in him, he’d have been the ultimate bird dog that ships’ files made such a big deal of. As it was, he was better at this than even the best of us.

He’d figured out exactly what we were after, too, because when he came to an abrupt halt halfway up the hill, even I could see evidence of the frankenswine’s presence. More dead trees—

popcorn trees, this time.

I remembered sitting under these very trees one summer evening with Elly and the whole passel of kids. At dusk, the blossoms opened with audible pops and the sound brought humming nudgems to pollinate the flowers. We’d had fun that night.

Jen imitated the pop and got a nudgem to fly right up and nose her
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.

I wondered if Aklilu had been old enough that he’d remember that night… he’d never hear these trees pop again.

Mabob had found the frankenswine’s tunnel. We followed, trying to be quieter than we had before. My face was probably as grim as Susan’s by now. I was looking forward to getting even for the popcorn trees, and getting the specific frankenswine responsible would be a lot more satisfying than shooting frankenswine at random.

No such luck. Mabob was leading us straight to the communal burrows. Once that was clear, all the safeties came off all the guns, and we got so quiet you’d have thought not a one of us was even breathing.

The smoking pines looked deader than before.

Either we were so quiet the frankenswine didn’t hear us coming—which I doubt—or they’d already learned to keep their heads down around people with guns. As we stepped into the dead grove and circled the burrows, nothing moved in all that expanse of subterranean workings—not so much as a ripple of earth.

For all of a moment, I wondered if they’d moved elsewhere. Then I looked at Mabob. He was sure they were there, and I was willing to take his word for it. If we couldn’t get

’em to come out, it was gonna be hell trying to kill ’em, though.

I looked at Leo; Leo looked at me. Then he grinned and made a gesture that said, clear as day, You aim and I’ll bring ’em out for you

. I aimed my gun at the holes in the ground.

Leo whistled a tune and did a dance step, a rhythmic thump and pound sort of thing. Mabob caught on and danced, too. His thump and pound wasn’t in the same time, but his whistle came pretty damn close to matching Leo’s. Under other circumstances, I’d’ve laughed aloud. I’d heard of ferrets dancing to bring a rabbit

out of its hole, and I guess Leo’d heard the same story. He was counting on curiosity to bring the frankenswine to the surface.

Whistle, thump… Thump, thump, whistle…

Beate stared at them both, aghast. I punched her in the shoulder and indicated the ground.

I was just in time. One more thump and pound and the ground was alive with frankenswine. The volley of shots was almost as deafening as one of Mabob’s gronks. Even with my ears ringing, I could hear the screams and grunts of the ones we’d injured. A second scatter of shots put an end to most of that.

Squinting through the flying dirt, I saw one duck back into its burrow. I watched until I saw the ground bulge ever so slightly, then I put my gun to the bulge and fired into the ground. Wasn’t sure that would get it, but it was worth a try.

I reloaded as fast as my hands could work and, meaning to follow if it moved again, I stepped into the burrowed-out area. The ground sank under my feet and I went down. Lucky for all concerned, my reflexes are still good enough: I kept the gun from going off.

Lucky for me, Beate’s reflexes were even better. The ground bulged again—an inch from my buried ankle—and Beate put her gun to the bulge and fired. This time the shower of dirt came up wet with blood. She fired again, reloaded, then reached out a hand to pull me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t take your eyes off the ground,” she said.

She hadn’t.

Everybody else had learned from my experience. We picked our way gingerly across the clearing. It was like walking on a sponge. Mabob was doing better than we were. Either he was light enough to walk on top of the burrows or he had a better sense of where they were.

Another shot rang out and the last of the squealing stopped. “Cover me,” I said to Beate and I reached down and dug until I pulled out what was left of the frankenswine her shots had dispatched. I tossed it to one side, onto what looked more like solid ground.

Leo flung a second onto that. Somebody fired again and, when I looked, that frankenswine had stopped moving. It, too, got tossed onto the heap.

There were five carcasses when we counted up. Problem was, I had no way of telling if that was all of them. “Okay,” I said. “Everybody freeze and listen for more.”

Three people jammed probes into the ground and listened, but it was Mabob I was watching. He was picking his way delicately over the clearing, crisscross and then crisscross again, watching the ground with those huge orange eyes and cocking his head every now and again.