One of the male chamels raised its head and looked right at her. Clever little sucker, aren't you? You can't see me or hear me. Do you smell me?
He had a gazelle's grace and the thin, sensitive neck of a giraffe.
His feathery-gray, insectile antenna trembled in the still air, sniffing. Would it alert the other eleven? Human beings were new to the mainland, but chamels often reacted with fear-and-flight response to any new stimulus. So far neither the males nor the heavy, rhinolike females nor the three St. Bernard-sized "pups" had panicked.
Jessica lay in her blind pit as Cassandra analyzed the image in the war specs and bounced data to Shangri-La 150 kilometers away.
"Do we want it?" she whispered.
"I'm drooling." Chaka's voice was eager. He was in one of the other blinds, probably out of direct sight of the herd, but his war specs could display Cassandra's downlink. "Protective coloration's almost perfect."
Jessica checked: naked eye, war specs, then naked eye again. Damned good. What did the chamels do? Scan the environment with their noses, and adjust the protective coloration for a potential predator's perspective? The creatures were less conspicuous than their own shadows, a perfect predator-proofing strategy.
Strange, Jessica thought. We aren't just thinking about grendels any longer. There are other things out there. We've got to lose a whole generation's worth of bogeybeast stories, or we'll never survive.
"These are winners. Fast, and strong, and senses are sharp. Hungry, too. Haven't stopped munching leaves since they arrived."
Chaka's voice was thoughtful. "The trick will be keeping the herd together. We want to protect the family dynamics, if we can."
"Cassandra," Jessica whispered. "Note the brush, and the type and quantity and maturity of the leaves being eaten. Special note of the grazing patterns of the little ones."
They'd had to add modules to Cassandra in order to keep up with the flow of data. That had sparked yet one more debate: should their computer power be used for information processing or manufacturing? It was settled only when Zack took the side of the Second. "We can live without more consumer goods, but we can't live without knowledge," he'd said, surprising many of the Second. Everything was so new, so rife with possibilities and problems. Love her as they might-Avalon had little tolerance for errors.
Aaron's voice: "The net is ready. Repeat. The net is ready."
She grinned. This was going to be fun. A week of preparation. And now...
"On my count," she said. "Three... two... one... go!"
Four balloon-tired dirt trikes exploded from meticulously constructed blind pits. The twelve chamels whipped about, startled and outraged to find they weren't Avalon's only masters of camouflage.
The beasts took off toward the east. Jessica revved her trike, hit a mound of earth, and exploded up into the air. She slammed down with a spine-jarring bounce. The roar of the hydrogen engines, the exhilaration of the chase, her own adrenal flush all dizzied her deliciously.
The chamels were wheeling like a flock of birds. Jessica spun around the outside to head off a move eastward. Chamel defensive strategy would keep the pups in the center, actually making them easier to herd.
Hooves and wheels churned up clouds of yellowish dust dimming Tau Ceti. Jessica fell slightly behind the herd as they thundered now toward the northern horizon. She cleared her throat of dust and said, "On track, Justin."
"We ‘re ready for you."
The brush here was harsh and scraggly, unappetizingly brown except for tufts of tough purple grass. Even as she watched, the skin coloration of the beasts began to shift to match the sparse foliage.
Beautiful.
"Two klicks from target," she yelled. "Keep it tight!"
Justin wheeled the skeeter around the outside of the herd and drove a stray male back to the center. The chamels traversed a long stretch of brown gravel. They changed colors wildly as the terrain changed, and from his aerial perspective it seemed the ground itself was flowing like a river. It was easier to track the herd by dust cloud than by direct observation.
Everything was right on schedule. "In position. Have visual contact with corral."
"Yippie-yi-oh-tie-yay." Jessica's voice. He knew she was grinning.
Jessica dropped her plaid bandanna across her face as she cut toward the middle of the herd. They parted for her like the Red Sea. As the trike jolted through the grass, making almost sixty klicks an hour, she could reach out to either side to touch a chamel. Damn, they were beautiful beasts! Fast, strong, agile-and intelligent. The pups darted through the herd seeking pockets of adult protection. The trike's roar blended with the steady rolling thunder of their hooves. They wheeled left to avoid a log, and she jerked her handlebars to follow.
A commotion to the right: Aaron Tragon, mounted on Zwieback, the chamel Ruth had tamed for him. They burst out of the trees just ahead of the herd.
The herd wheeled, confused for a moment... and then followed.
Jessica yelped her pleasure. Damn. He had been right again. Chamels were extreme olfactory sensitives. Pouches on Aaron's mount carried an overwhelming dose of chamel pheromones. Whammo-Zwieback became an instant alpha. Their herding instincts and trainability boded well. Chamels were an odd hybrid of horse and ostrich, with wide, fleshy mouths and thin, strong legs.
The trike jounced savagely as they crossed the last rise. Ahead of them was the corral, seven feet tall and a quarter kilometer around.
"All right. Let's keep it tight, keep it tight-"
It was hardly needed. The chamels followed Aaron through the open gate. Jessica turned aside at the last second and the chamels charged past her into the pen. Once inside they realized they were trapped. They snorted and tossed their heads, but there was no way out but the gate, and Chaka was already swinging that shut before Jessica could dismount and dash over to help him.
She ran up the short ramp leading to the edge of the corral.
The new twelve had joined fifty chamels captured over the previous week. The new ones snorted restlessly, but even as they did, their skin changed color, matching the beaten ground beneath their hooves.
Aaron swung off his mount, and grabbed for the ladder.
He slipped, and fell back to the ground. Jessica's fist went to her mouth. For a moment, fear locked her into immobility.
The adult chamels reared back: unmasked, Man's smell was very different from their own. Two of the adults turned their backs, and began to kick.
She had seen this behavior before. A ring of chamels to protect a pup, the heavy, hard, sharp hooves striking out over and over again. It wouldn't work against a grendel, but cameras had watched the creatures surround a bear-sized predator and literally kick it into pulp.
Aaron scrambled up to the ladder, spun as one of the hooves caught him alongside the shoulder, and leaped upward. He got two rungs up before another hoof caught him in the thigh. He grunted but kept going, and was out of range a moment later, lips curled into a satisfied smile. She could see where his jeans were dusted and cut by the striking hoof.
Chaka helped him up over the top, and he thumped down heavily. He swept Jessica up for a big, warm kiss, then gave a victory wave to the circling skeeters.
Dust fluttered about them as the skeeters touched down, and the penned chamels brayed even louder.
Jessica climbed up the ramp to look down at them. "Get along little doggies," she sang to herself. "It's your misfortune... "
"All right!" Justin said, slapping his hands together. She jumped, startled-he had made his approach silently. "What's left on the chart for today?"
"We've done enough work for today." Her back still ached from digging trike pits, but she had to love him. What an eager beaver. It was getting easier to relate to Justin. The bad times, at least the really bad ones, seemed behind them.