Clayton stopped in Sven’s driveway. He got out, then, inexplicably, stepped on the metal-grate bumper and hauled himself on top of the vehicle. Colding looked up at the roof for a moment, then leaned out the passenger window to ask Clayton just what the hell he was doing.
As he leaned out, he caught a blur of movement coming from the right. He turned in time to see a wide-eyed black shape flying through the air, teeth flashing inside a gaping mouth. The assaulting animal sailed cleanly through the open passenger window and hit Colding full speed, knocking him flat on the seat.
A dog. A wet dog. Colding’s adrenaline burst of panic dissipated as a tongue furiously licked at his face. He tried to push the dog away, but it dove at him as if its life depended on it. Despite the animal’s loud whines of joy, Colding heard Clayton’s loud, sandpaper laugh.
“Oh my God,” Sara said from the backseat, “he’s adorable!”
“She’s adorable,” another man called out. “Mookie! You get off that man and out of that car, eh?”
The wide-eyed, black-furred cattle dog managed one last sloppy lick, then turned and dove back out the window as gracefully as a leaping gazelle.
“What a little sweetheart,” Sara said.
Colding sat up, using his jacket sleeve to wipe dog spit from his face. “Oh, for crying out loud. I’ve been slimed.”
Sven Ballantine walked up and stopped about five feet from the Bv206. Mookie sat next to him, head forward and big eyes open wide, as motionless as a statue except for the long-haired tail that swish-swished quietly in the snow.
Clayton was still standing on the hood, and still laughing.
And then, Colding smelled it.
“Oh God,” Sara said from the backseat. Her laugh gave her words a staccato sound. “What… stinks?”
The horrible odor, it seemed, was coming from Colding’s hands and clothes. His nose wrinkled involuntarily.
“You’ll want to clean up,” Sven said. “Mookie found something dead this morning. She likes to roll in stuff like that. Sorry.”
Clayton’s laugh came even louder.
“It’s okay,” Colding said. “Jesus, this stinks, what the hell is this?”
“Dead… squir… rel!” Clayton called out from the roof. His laugh had turned into a hysterical, wheezing cough. “Gonna… piss myself… that’s why I was late. Found… dead… squirrel, knew that damn dog would roll in it… jump on you… so funny!”
“Sorry,” Sven said. “Really sorry you stink so bad and all. Mookie has a knack for getting into trouble. She’s a real pain in da ass.”
Colding noticed that despite Sven’s words, his big hand was absently scratching the black dog’s stinky head. Either Sven loved the dog unconditionally, or the old man couldn’t smell a thing. Mookie looked up at Sven with blissful reverence.
Colding banged on the inside of the Bv’s roof. “Let’s go!” He managed a smile at Sven. Sven just nodded. Mookie’s mouth opened and her tongue hung out the side, the big smile of a happy dog.
Clayton climbed down. No sooner had his feet hit the ground than Mookie took off like a shot. Damn, that dog could move. Clayton slid through the driver’s door with surprising agility, shutting the door just before the smelly dog could follow him in. Mookie jumped at the high window, showing amazing air-time. Her slobber streaked the glass. She barked and whined, desperate to say hello.
“Not today, you stinky girl,” Clayton said, still chuckling lightly. “I’ll come see ya after your daddy gives you a bath, eh?”
“Back to the mansion,” Colding said.
Clayton laughed some more, a sound that would have been infectious if Colding weren’t the butt of the joke.
“What’s da matter, doll?” Clayton said. “I thought you wanted to see da old town.”
“Tomorrow,” Colding said. “You got me good, now get me back to the friggin’ mansion so I can shower and burn these clothes.”
Clayton put the Nuge in gear, then headed back down the road. When Colding stepped out of the vehicle and walked up the mansion’s front steps, the old man was still laughing.
NOVEMBER 11: TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE
Implantation +2 Days
INSIDE THE C-5’S lower deck, Jian watched Tim move the handheld transducer across Cow 34’s belly. An overhead harness looped under the cow’s legs, hips and chest, holding her off the ground and supporting all of her weight.
The transducer fed data into the portable ultrasound workstation positioned just outside Cow 34’s stall. Doctor Rhumkorrf sat in front of the workstation, his small behind parked on a wooden stool, his hands toying with buttons and absently caressing a black trackball.
Above those controls sat a video monitor that showed nothing but a blue progress bar, just over half full, with words above it that read 52 PERCENT.
In her career, Jian had seen ultrasound evolve from grainy, two-dimensional, black-and-white images to three-dimensional representations showing depth from a top-down perspective, then to what they had now: full, rotatable 3-D models with animated images showing the natural movements of an in utero animal.
75 PERCENT
No mistaking the electricity in the air, the satisfaction at seeing years of work move steadily closer to the final product.
82 PERCENT
“Let’s not get excited,” Rhumkorrf said, even though he was the only one talking. He absently swayed a bit from side to side as he waited for the image to process. “When Erika… I mean, when Doctor Hoel and I brought the quagga back from extinction, it took fifty-two implantation cycles before we corrected the genome enough to produce a live birth.”
88 PERCENT
Jian felt relieved, invigorated… even light. She’d lost some weight in the past few weeks, partly from forgetting to eat, partly from the haunting stress that kept her stomach pinched all the time. Just two days after implantation, a normal mammalian embryo would be nothing but a tiny red dot jutting from the uterine wall. Kind of like a big wet pimple. But according to her calculations, and the astronomical growth rate they’d seen in the in vitro embryos, what lay inside Cow 34’s womb would be much bigger.
94 PERCENT
Tim’s hand continued to move the transducer across the suspended cow’s belly. He looked sleepy. Maybe a little drunk. Again. He hadn’t smiled since they had landed. Back on Baffin, Tim was always smiling.
100 PERCENT… PROCESSING…
The progress bar filled up, then a golden-hued image flared to life.
She stared at the screen.
Tim walked out of the stall, saw the screen and stopped cold. “Oh, fuck me running,” he said quietly.
Jian slowly shook her head in disbelief. She’d known they would grow fast, she’d coded for it, but this?
“Jian,” Rhumkorrf said. “You are even more talented than I imagined.”
The ultrasound image revealed two fetuses pushed into a tight face-to-face embrace. Rhumkorrf slowly moved his right hand over the trackball, turning the 3-D image to examine the tiny fetal features. Oversized heads had already formed, each bigger than the rest of their respective bodies. Big black spots showed developing eyes. Tiny limb buds sprouted from the bodies. She saw the ghostly shape of forming internal organs.