Mirabile (38 page)

The people with the probes occasionally glanced his way to make sure he was all they were hearing.

Mabob stopped dead, cocked his head at a sharper angle and began to stalk. I checked to make sure my gun was fully loaded then I made my way carefully toward him. Beate followed in my footsteps—where I didn’t sink, she wouldn’t either.

Mabob gave us a quick glance—to make sure he had backup, I think—then resumed his stalk. So did Beate and I. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Leo gesture to the rest to stay put. The less distraction Mabob had the better.

No doubt in my mind whatsoever: we’d missed one. It was burrowing away from the clearing as fast as its tusks and shovel feet could take it, which was pretty damn fast.

Burrowing deep, too. For all my watching, I never saw so much as a bulge in the ground. That meant my chances of killing it with a shotgun blast through the ground were practically nonexistent. But sooner or later it would come to rocky ground and, when it did, I was going to be there, gun pointed right up its ugly snoot.

We followed it into the brush and down the side of the hill at a good clip. We were out of sight to the rest of the posse when Mabob stopped dead.

He listened, then he listened some more. He looked up at me, orange eyes blazed, then he focused on the ground once more. He picked his way around a spot on the forest floor as if it were some kind of a trap, cocking his head first this way and then that.

Then he froze in place, body hunched as low to the ground as it would go.

The frankenswine had apparently stopped moving. Not a bad idea. Freeze in place and hope what’s stalking you gets bored and goes home in disgust. But the frankenswine hadn’t counted on Mabob—

he knew where he’d heard it last.

I was prepared to wait as long as it took, and I didn’t need a glance at Beate to know she felt the same way.

We hadn’t counted on Mabob either, though. He made a sort of snorting noise—first time I’d ever heard him do that—then he balled up a fistful of talons and thumped the ground hard, right over the frankenswine’s head.

Then he put his head down to the ground and gave out with his hundred-decibel challenge:

“GRONK!” And before the air around us had stopped vibrating, he’d started digging. It was one-footed digging, but it was fast and effective. Dirt flew every which way.

The frankenswine got the picture. It erupted from the ground like something shot from a cannon, and Beate put both barrels of her gun into it. It squealed in pain and rage and flailed at Mabob.

I couldn’t fire without hitting Mabob, but Mabob was holding his own. He balled up his talons again and slammed the frankenswine so hard on the snoot that it went flying. I put two more shots into it, and it was dead before it hit the ground.

I heard Beate’s gun snap closed and knew she’d reloaded. I took the hint and did the same before I joined Mabob, who was already standing over the carcass, appreciating his trophy.

He rattled his scales happily, ripped a good-sized chunk off the frankenswine, and gobbled it down.

“Yeah,” I said to him. “You deserve it. Just save me one chunk for the cell stores.

The rest is yours and to hell with Chris’s pork recipes.”

“GRONK!” he said, into my face. Frankenswine smelled as bad on Mabob’s breath as everything else did, but I scratched the soft hair on the top of his head into spikier spikes. He went back to eating, rattling as he ripped and gulped.

“We got it,” Beate called up the hill to the rest.

“Still checking here,” came a faint reply.

Beate gestured up the hill with the barrel of her gun. “Should we go back and help?”

“In a minute,” I said. “I need a sample…”

Mabob ripped off another good-sized chunk and, whistling softly in the back of his throat, he held it out to me. Mabob’s generous with his food. We share with him, he shares with us. If occasionally we don’t have the same tastes, no hard feelings on either side.

“Thanks,” I said. I scratched his head again and accepted the tasty bit he offered.

He looked a bit bemused when I stuck it in my pack instead of wolfing it down, so I said, “I’ll save it for later. Thanks, again,” and scratched his head once more.

Rattling, he offered a second chunk to Beate, who grinned and politely turned it down. She’d seen enough to scratch his head as a thanks but no thanks. Mabob went back to eating.

“What if he poisons himself, Annie?”

“Unlikely. He’s better at this than we are. He’s avoiding the fat, same as Chris did, so I have to assume it’s all right. I have no idea what he eats when I’m not looking.”

But he’d stopped eating. His head shot up to stare into the brush.

Beate and I both followed his eye-blaze and raised our guns simultaneously. I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I knew better than to ignore Mabob’s warnings.

Then we heard it too. Pounding feet and a faint rustle in the brush some fifty yards from us.

Then forty yards from us. I still couldn’t see a thing. All I knew was it was moving too fast for a clashing or for the Loch Moose monster. That left only one possibility—wild boar.

It burst from the brush and froze, snorting angrily at us. Face on, it was twice as ugly as its mate—and twice as furious. It fixed its savage eyes on me, and I knew it was seeing the thing that was killing its children.

Beate gave it both barrels, face and chest. Instead of stopping it, that only made it madder.

It charged—straight at me.

Mabob let loose a challenging gronk, but the boar ignored him completely and pounded on.

I fired once. I know I hit it, but that shot had no effect either. Then time slowed down. I could hear Beate fumbling to reload. I hoped she’d make it in enough time for her. I knew it wouldn’t be soon enough for me.

Still coming at me in slow motion, the boar clicked its teeth. It was an eerie sound, too quiet for the force of the attack. The sound of a clock ticking off last seconds. I raised my gun for one last shot.

It was ten yards and closing… when one hind foot went suddenly out from under it, and it foundered and went down on its side. As it scrambled to regain its footing, it slipped ever so slightly sideways to me.

With one shot left—and thinking, “You’d better be right about this, Annie Jason Masmajean”—I aimed just behind its foreleg and pulled the trigger.

The boar spasmed and went limp. Beate put a shot into its throat while I reloaded.

When I snapped my gun shut, there was a sudden very loud silence.

“God, they’re fast,” said Beate, after a long moment. I let out a long breath and nodded—wasn’t sure my voice would work just then. She took a single hesitant step toward the huge carcass and stopped.

Mabob had no such hesitation. He strutted over to the beast, bashed it once, ringingly, on the skull. “GRONK!” he proclaimed.

That was enough to rouse us both from our awed stupor. We walked the three steps necessary to stand beside him.

As we stood looking down at the wild boar, Beate said, “Sorry I didn’t pick my shots better, Annie. I know where you told us it was most vulnerable—but, it came at us so fast, I shot without thinking.”

I shook my head. “If it hadn’t tripped, it’d still be coming, and you’d have had a chance to avenge me. I wasn’t sure what would stop it either, all I had was an educated guess. And I wouldn’t have had a chance to guess if the slip hadn’t thrown it sideways.”

She knelt beside the carcass. Mabob stopped pounding it with his balled talons and peered to see what she was looking at. When she started to laugh, I stooped to have a look for myself.

Then I was laughing too, partly out of relief and partly out of the irony of it. The same thing that tripped me up had tripped up the wild boar: it had put its foot right through one of the frankenswine burrows.

When the rest of the posse skittered down the hill to make sure we were all right, they found us clinging to each other, still laughing, while Mabob rattled like a dozen maracas and kept time by thumping a foot on the wild boar’s ribs.

As far as I was concerned, I’d had enough excitement for one day. (Not Beate—she grabbed two others to fill in for me and Leo and went out to scour the countryside looking for wild boar or frankenswine we’d missed. To the relief of my eardrums, she took Mabob with her.) I got down to the more mundane business of gene-reading the ones we’d killed.

The results came as a considerable relief. All of the franken-swine had come from a single litter, and we’d killed both parents.

“So, no more frankenswine,” said Leo, looking as relieved as I felt.

I tilted a hand back and forth. “Maybe—maybe not. Now I need the gene-reads, forward and back, on the three wild boar we’ve got so far.”

As I’d expected, Mike had left the gene-read for his boar on file for me. I laid all three side by side on the monitor, put my elbows on the desk, my chin in my hands, and gave them a good long study.

When I turned back to Leo, he was smiling. “Tell me if I’m reading this right, Annie… All three of the wild boar came from the same two red deer. If we eat those two, our troubles are over.”

He tipped his chair back with a satisfied air and added, “I’ve always liked venison, especially the way Chris cooks it.”

“Some of our troubles are over if we eat venison.” I tapped the screen. “You are reading it right, but you’re not reading between the lines.”

“What am I missing?”

“The fact that any red deer in the forest may well be prepared to give birth to wild boar next time around. And since nobody’s reported any tulip-red red deer, we won’t get any warning beforehand. Most does simply abandon offspring that far off normal, which cuts down on the problem, but we will have to take care of the mother of our three.” I pointed with my chin at the screen. “She’s obviously raising them.”

“So the next hunt will be to sample the red deer.”

“Sample and tag, I think. That way we can keep an eye on any other potential problems.”

He stood. “That’s decided, then. Let’s eat.”

“Let’s neck,” I said, rising to my feet beside him. “That was a helluva close call this afternoon, and I could use the reassurance.”

He grinned. “How about both?”

“Done,” I said, and we did.

After dinner, he did me the favor of checking to make sure all the parts were still there and in good working order. (It was his considered opinion they were.) And then we eased down deep into the bedding for a well-deserved rest.

Loch Moose Lodge being the sort of place it is, we didn’t get it, of course. For the second time in as many nights, I got dragged out of sleep by whispers just outside the door.

“It was my fault you got chewed, Jen. I’m telling her and that’s all there is to it.”

It was Susan’s voice.

“You don’t hafta. I got chewed because I got chewed. It’s not as if you bit my leg. We decided before—”

“Before doesn’t count,” Susan said.

“Why not?” said a third voice. “Just because Jen got bit doesn’t change things any more than the Kinyamarios’ cat did.”

I sighed and nudged Leo awake. Then I got out of bed and opened the door.

Caught in the act, all three of my suspicious characters—Susan, Ilanith and Jen—started and blinked at me.

“After the ear strain Mabob gave me this afternoon,” I said, “I’m having a helluva time eavesdropping. Why don’t you all continue this discussion inside and save me the trouble?”

Reluctantly, they all trooped in. “Light coming,” I said to Leo. To the kids, I said, “Sit down and tell me what’s to tell.”

There was a long silence; all of them looked at their feet. At last, Ilanith heaved a sigh of pure exasperation and said, “Too late now. Either we tell her the truth or we make something up real quick.”

Jen brightened momentarily, as if she were on the verge of making something up real quick.

Then she looked at me and shook her head, resigned. “Okay,” she said.

“Tell her, I guess. After all, if something happened to you, Susan, it’d get lost all over again.”

“You tell,” said Susan. “You started it.”

Leo groaned and rearranged pillows until he’d propped himself up to look at the three of them.

“Could we compromise on this?

Somebody tell us so we can go back to sleep.” He gave me a sidelong glance with smile. “Maybe it’s just a dream?”

“If it is, it’s one of those frustration dreams.” I nudged him over so I could sit on the edge of the bed, then I held out my hand, palm up, to the three. “Come on—spit it out in Mama Jason’s hand. Susan?”

“It’s my fault Jen got bit,” Susan said.

Ilanith made a rude noise in contradiction.

“Was not,” said Jen. “Tell her she’s wrong, Mama Jason!”

“You’re wrong, Susan,” I said. Anything to oblige. “Now, could we get to the heart of the problem?”

“It’s not a problem,” said Ilanith. “It’s a solution.”

“It’s a solution that makes problems,” said Susan. Her face had gone back to being grim.

“Then we’ll have to find a solution to the problem caused by the solution,” I said.

To Leo, I added, “I’m not sure I’m awake. Did that make any sense to you?”

“As much as anything they’ve said,” he answered. He fixed an eye on Susan and said, “Let’s have it.”

“From the beginning,” I added.

“It was Jen’s idea,” Susan said. Jen glowered, but Susan went on. “We all thought the geneticists back on Earth forgot to tell us how to stop the encrypted genes from activating. Or maybe we’d lost that part of ships’ files where they did tell us…”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said, growling despite my best intentions.

Ilanith said, “You tell, Jen. It was your idea. And it was a really good one, too, Mama Jason.”

This time around Jen was proud of her idea. “Okay, I will. My idea was maybe they didn’t forget to tell us how to stop red deer from chaining up to wild boar.

Maybe it just wasn’t indexed! And, if it’s not indexed, you only think it’s not there.”

I’m pretty damn sure I heard my jaw hit my chest. “Good god, I’m an idiot!” I said. (Me and three generations of jasons—but I’m the only one I can hold personally responsible.) “Never occurred to me…”