Mirabile (7 page)

Aklilu crawled out from under the covers and bounced once on the edge of the bed. “Now tell me another story, Mama Jason,”

he said.

“Another? You want another?”

I gave a sidelong glance at Elly

.

“Another!” shouted Aklilu. “Another!” The bed squealed in time as his bounce got insistent.

“Come on, Nikolai,” he coaxed.

“You ask her, too!”

Good thing all the furniture at Loch Moose Lodge is childproof or there wouldn’t be any. Of course, if he managed to get Nikolai to join in, there’d be nothing left of anything.

Nikolai looked from me to Elly, then laughed and swept Aklilu into his lap. “Settle down, kiddo,” he said. “I want to hear another story.”

“Go ahead, Annie,” Elly said. “I know the symptoms.”

And I know when I’m licked. “Back under the covers with you,” I told Aklilu and, to my surprise, he burrowed back into bed on the spot. “Which one?”

“You pick,” Nikolai said to Aklilu.

Aklilu just grinned and cocked his head at me. “You know, Mama Jason.…”

“

Yeah,” I said, grinning back. “Same one you always want to hear. But, since Nikolai hasn’t heard it, I guess I could stand to tell it one more time.”

The Return of the Kangaroo Rex

« ^ »

I’d been staring at the monitor so long all the genes were beginning to look alike to me. They shouldn’t have, of course—this gene-read was native Mirabilan, so it was a whole new kettle of fish.

That’s an American Guild expression, but it’s the right one. At a casual look, had the critter been Earth-based, we’d have classed it as fish and left it at that. The problem was that it had taken a liking to our rice crop, and, if we didn’t do something quick, nobody on Mirabile’d see a chow fun noodle ever again. So I went back to staring, trying to force those genes into patterns the team and I could cope with.

Moving the rice fields didn’t guarantee we’d find a place free of them. In the first place, it encysted in dry ground, meaning you never knew where it’d pop up until you flooded the area.

In the second place, it could leap like a salmon from the first place to the second place. It had already demonstrated its ability to spread from one field to the next. Susan had measured a twelve-foot leap.

The prospect got dimmer when Chie-Hoon caught them making that same leap from dry ground. Their limit was some five or six leaps until they hit water again, but that gave them quite a range.

It was as pretty a piece of native bioengineering as I’ve seen, one I could appreciate even if the rice growers couldn’t. Wiping ‘em out wholesale was not an option on my list, but I knew the farmers would be thinking along those lines if we didn’t come up with something by next growing season.

I don’t mess with the Mirabilan ecology any more than I have to. We don’t know enough about it to know what we’re getting into. Even if I thought we could do it, we’d be fools to try to wipe out any native species. The Earth-authentic species we’ve imported have played havoc enough with the Mirabilan ecology.

I wasn’t paying much attention to anything but the problem at hand, so when Susan exclaimed, “Noisy! You look awful

,” I practically jumped out of my skin and busted my elbow turning my chair.

She wasn’t kidding. Leo did look awful. His white hair looked like something had nested in it; he was bleeding—no, had bled profusely—across the cheek; his shirt hung in tatters from the shoulder and there were raking claw marks along his upper arms. Mike went scrambling for the emergency kit.

The only thing that spoiled the impact of all this disaster was that Leo was grinning from ear to ear. “Now, is that any way to greet an old friend?” he said to Susan. “Especially one who’s come courting?”

He turned the grin on me and it got broader and brighter. Then he made me a deep formal bow and started in: “Annie Jason Masmajean, I, Leonov Bellmaker Denness, beg you to hear my petition.”

I got to my feet and bowed back, just as deeply and formally, to let him know I’d be glad to hear him out. He made a second bow, deeper than the first, and went on:

“I have brought you a gift in symbol of my intentions…”

Mike had the medical kit but he stood frozen. Chances were neither he nor Susan had ever seen a ship’s-formal proposal except in the old films. The novelty of it kept either from interrupting.

Just as well. I was enjoying the performance: Leo has flair.

Besides, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting a man in the process of cataloguing my virtues, even if some of those “virtues” would have raised eyebrows in a lot of other people. I especially liked being called “reasonably stubborn.”

At last Leo got to the wrap-up. “It is my hope that you will accept my gift and consider my
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suit.” He finished off with yet another bow.

Seeing he was done spurred Mike and Susan into action. Susan held Leo down while Mike worked him over with alcohol swabs. “No respect for ritual,” Leo complained. “Back ’em off, Annie, can’t you? I’m not senile yet! I did clean the wounds.”

Leo had spent years as a scout, so I didn’t doubt his good sense. He’d hardly have lived to the ripe old age he had if he hadn’t been cautious about infection in the bush.

To the two of them, he protested, “The lady hasn’t answered yet.”

“Back off,” I told the kids.

They didn’t until I advanced on them. Mike took two steps away from Leo, put his hands behind his back, and said to Susan, “Now he’s going to get it.” Susan nodded.

Leo just kept grinning, so I gave him a huge hug hello to make sure nothing was broken. The rest of him looked just fine, so I stepped back and bowed once more to meet the requirements of the ritual. “Leo Bellmaker Denness, I, Annie Jason

Masmajean, am sufficiently intrigued to view your gift.”

He crooked a finger and led me outside, Mike and Susan right behind. “In the back of the truck.

Don’t open that door until you’ve had a good look!”

So we climbed the back bumper and all crowded to the window for a good look.

We didn’t get one at first. Whatever it was was mad as all hell, and launched itself at the door hard enough to rattle the window and make the three of us jump back en masse. The door held.

Leo said, “It’s been doing that all the way from Last Edges. Hasn’t gotten through the door yet, but I’m a little worried it might hurt itself.”

“It’s not itself it wants to hurt,” Susan said.

“You’d be pissed, too, if somebody wrestled you away from your mama and shoved you into the back of a truck headed god-knows-where,” Leo said.

The door stopped rattling. I got a foot on the back bumper and hoisted myself up for a second try. Leo’s present glared at me through the window and snarled. I snarled back in the same tone.

Since it was a youngster and I was an unknown, it backed off with a hop, letting me get a good look. In overall shape, it was kangaroo, but it had the loveliest set of stripes across the hips I’d ever seen—and the jaw! Oh, the jaw! It opened that jaw to warn me to keep back, and the head split almost to the ear, to show me the sharpest set of carnivore teeth in history.

“Oh, Leo,” I murmured, stepping down from my perch. “That’s the nicest present anybody’s ever brought me.” I gave him another big hug and a thorough kiss for good measure. “Leonov Bellmaker Denness, I accept both your gift and your suit.”

He beamed. “I knew I got it right.”

“Oh, shit!” said Mike, from behind me. “Susan! It’s a goddam kangaroo rex!” He stared at Leo in disbelief. “Are you telling me this man brought you a kangaroo rex as a courting present?”

Susan, in turn, looked at

Mike in disbelief. “It’s perfect, you idiot! It means Noisy knows exactly what kind of person she is, and how to please her. Don’t you understand anything?”

That would have developed into a squabble—that’s the usual outcome when those two get going—but the kangaroo rex slammed against the door of the trunk again and brought them both back to their senses.

“Leo,” I said, “go on over to my house and get yourself cleaned up. We’ll wrestle the thing into a cage. Then I want to hear all about it.”

He nodded. “Sure. Two things first, though. Pick the right cage—I saw that thing jump a six-foot fence—then contact Moustafa Herder Kozlev or Janzen Herder Lizhi in Last Edges.

I told Moustafa I’d make the official report on his Dragon’s Tooth but I doubt he believes me.“

He examined a set of skinned knuckles. ”Not when I punched him to keep him from shooting it.“

“My hero,” I said, meaning it.

He kissed my hand and vanished in the direction of my house. I turned to my available team members and said, “Don’t just stand there with your eyes hanging out of your heads. Let’s get to work.”

By the time we’d gotten an enclosure ready for the creature, Chie-Hoon and Selima had returned from up-country, where they’d been watching those damned hopping fish in the act. Just as well, because it took all five of us to maneuver the kangaroo rex safely out of the truck and into captivity.

Most of us wound up with bruises. It was still mad as all hell. It slammed each side on the fence in turn (didn’t take it but two hops to cross the enclosure either) and once shot up and cracked its head on the overhead wire. That settled it down a bit. I sent Selima to get it some meat.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing. I hadn’t seen one for nine years.

“Another outbreak of kangaroo rexes,” said Chie-Hoon. “Just what we needed. I assume it sprang from the kangaroos around Gogol?”

“Last Edges,” I said. That didn’t surprise me, the EC around Last Edges being almost identical to that around Gogol. “Contact Herders Kozlev and Lizhi up there.

Tell them we’ve been notified. Find out if they’ve seen any more—”

“The usual drill,” said Chie-Hoon.

“The usual drill.”

Selima came back. She’d brought one of the snaggers Mike invented and let him do the honors of getting the cell sample while she distracted it with the meat. Or tried to. The snagger doesn’t do more than pinprick, but that was enough to rile the rex into slamming against the fence again, trying to get at Mike while he reeled the sample through the chain link.

Mike jerked back but the sample came with him. He held it out to me. “Hardly necessary,” he said. “I know what we’re gonna •

find.”

So did I. There was no doubt in my mind that the sample would match those from the last outbreak gene for gene. The kangaroo rex had settled down, wolfing at the meat Selima had tossed it. “It eats gladrats,” said Selima, looking surprised. “It can’t be all bad.”

Not as far as I was concerned, it couldn’t be all bad. If it was a Dragon’s Tooth, it was a beautifully constructed one— completely viable.

It was possible that the kangaroo rex was just an intermediate, a middle step between a kangaroo and anything from a gerbil to a water buffalo. Right now, however, it was a kangaroo rex, and impressive as all hell.

“You watch it, Mama Jason,” Susan said. “I’ll do the gene-read.” She reached for the sample as if she had a vested interest in the beast herself. She figured she did, at least. Must have been all the times she’d made me tell the story of the first outbreak.

I handed the sample over.

Then I just stood there quietly and appreciated it. About three feet tall (not counting the tail, of course), it was already quite capable of surviving on its own.

Which meant, more than likely, that its mama would very shortly move its sibling out of storage and into development. Chances were pretty good that one would be a kangaroo rex, too. Since the mama hadn’t abandoned this one, it seemed unlikely she’d abandon another. I wondered if there were enough of them for a reliable gene pool.

The rex had calmed down now that it had eaten, now that most of the excitement was over. It
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was quietly investigating the enclosure, moving slowly on all fours.

Hunched like that, it looked a lot like a mythological linebacker about to receive.

With those small front legs, you never expect the thing (even a regulation kangaroo) to have the shoulders it does.

As it neared the side of the fence that I was gaping through, it yawned—the way a cat does, just to let you know it has weapons. I stayed quiet and still. It didn’t come any closer and it didn’t threaten any further.

That was a good sign, as far as I was concerned. Either it was full or it didn’t consider me prey. I was betting it didn’t consider me prey. Still, it was nasty-looking, which wasn’t going to help its case, and it was still a baby. Adult, if it were a true kangaroo rex, it would stand as high as its kangaroo mother—six or seven feet.

In the outbreak of them we’d had nine years back near Gogol, they’d been herd animals. There had been some twenty-odd, with more on the way, of course.

Chie-Hoon tells me kangaroos come in “mobs,” which seemed appropriate for the kangaroo rexes as well, if a little weak-sounding. And we’d wiped out the last group wholesale.

Oh, I’d yelled and screamed a lot. At the very least, I’d hoped we could stash the genes so we could pull them out if we ever needed the creature for some reason. I got voted down, and I got voted down, and finally I got shouted down.

This time would be different.

The kangaroo rex sat back on its tail and began to wash, using its tongue and paws as prettily as any cat. In the midst of cleaning its whiskers, it froze, glanced up briefly, then went back to preening.

That was the only warning I had that Leo was back. He hadn’t lost the ability to move softly with the passage of years. He put his arms around me and I leaned into him, feeling a little more than cat-smug myself, though I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Maybe because I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

“Pretty thing,” Leo said softly, so as not to startle it. “Now I understand why you wanted to keep them.”

“This time we are keeping them,” I said.

There was a clatter of the door behind me. The kangaroo rex bounced to the furthest side of the enclosure, hit the fence on the second bounce, and froze, jaws agape and threatening.