"I would have expected a comment like that out of Terry."
"No—this isn't a putdown. As far as Cad is concerned, somebody has to play Devil's Advocate."
The program purred on quietly and efficiently by itself. "Cadmann. What are we going to do about him?" The room lights dimmed again. "Shit! Cassandra Save!"
The power didn't come back for fifteen minutes. Enough, Sylvia thought. "I quit, Jerry. You should too. ‘Bye." She didn't wait for his answer.
Early dawn, but the camp was a hive of activity. The wreckage had been cleared away. New buildings sprouted, bare skeletons rising into the chill morning air. Three work crews in overlapping ten-hour shifts kept the jobs humming along smoothly. Everyone got just enough time to sleep, but not enough to grouse.
One monster did this. How many are there?
Dinosaur Killer. It just could be. The idea was exciting. She was already too tired to relax. She chose to walk the long way home. A chill breeze came from Spaceport Lake, and she wrapped her coat more tightly as she neared the power plant.
The engineers were rebuilding without tearing down the original structure. At this stage it had no shape or symmetry, only a chaos of crumbled walls and hastily erected scaffolding.
The power plant was one of the first buildings on Avalon. About half a year ago, she thought idly, and nodded to herself in satisfaction because she'd thought of it as half a year, not just over one Earth Standard. Avalon was home whether they liked it or not. Better learn to think so.
The power plant had flown down on a solidly packed one-shot cargo vehicle. A small solid-fuel rocket had dropped it from orbit to glide down on triangular wings. The engine was Minerva-compatible; in fact the whole package had looked a lot like one of the shuttles, with a Minerva's wing and belly. Motor, wings, hull, all were spare parts for the shuttles. And damned near all we have, too. What's left?
A Skeeter hovered over the power plant. A thin girder dangled from its underbelly. Omar Isfahan waved a handlamp, guiding the pilot, until the girder clicked down, was fitted and epoxied into place. Omar, tallest man in camp by three inches, looked tired. His fleshy cheeks drooped, his tight khaki shirt was dappled with sweat. Elsewhere in the structure men were soldering electric cables. When the Skeeter lifted away again someone yelled "Now!" and the lights flared back to life all over the camp. The glare stole the faint stars from their twinkling positions in the morning mist, but one of the twin moons still glimmered, a tiny dim crescent above the horizon.
She felt suddenly, unaccountably lonely. She wanted to go back to her hut and curl up next to her husband. Knowing that Terry would respond, would hold her with what strength he had. Knowing that if she began to cry he would say what comforting things he could.
If only... if only his new depth of understanding weren't accompanied by a complete failure of his lower body.
But she was pregnant, and he was sick, crippled, and her need for lovemaking seemed both selfish and unworthy. It didn't help that she still thought of Cadmann—not his face, and nothing so crude as a sexual image, only a memory of the breadth of his shoulders. The curve of his upper arm, where the muscle showed most clearly, the unmistakably male smell of his body and breath...
She held herself, watching the construction on the power plant, barely noticing when Zack emerged from the shadows.
"Sylvia."
He seemed about ten years older, but there was strength in that maturity. In the faces and manners of so many of them, now. "How are you?"
"Tired, but making progress, I think."
He nodded without speaking. He was staring out toward Mucking Great
Mountain, and she didn't need to ask what he was thinking. If a camp vote had been taken the day after the disaster, Zack would have been ousted and Cadmann elected to the post in a moment. Take the vote soon enough after the disaster, and Zack himself might have led the electoral parade. Not now. Now he'd fight.
"We're surviving," he said. "We're going to keep surviving. We paid our price for this goddamned planet. It's all we're going to pay."
"I hope you're right, but how can you say that? Anyway, we all made our decision when we left Earth. We knew the risk—"
"What happened just shouldn't have happened." There was absolutely nothing of the old Zack in his tone. She wanted to back away from him. The flash of the arcs and welding lasers cast hard shadows on his face. His eyes were bright.
"We don't know if there are any more of those things on the island," she said, as gently as she could. "It's going to take time."
"We have time. Those things don't have any time." He turned the collar of his coat up. "You're going to hear talk, Sylvia. Maybe you've heard it already." His breath came in short white puffs when he spoke. "They say that I'm too soft. That this wouldn't have happened if... someone else was in charge. Had been in charge. I can't say about that. Whatever's fair is fair. I can tell you this, though. It isn't happening again. Whether I'm in charge or not."
Sylvia remembered the image of shadow whipping through the courtyard to leave unbelievable carnage and stinking blood slicks on the tarmac. The Avalonian equivalent of tiny, flying insects still hovered in the courtyard, picking sustenance out of the cracks although they hosed it clean again and again.
"Keep looking," he said. "Harry Siep's calibrating Geographic's telescope. Coordinating the satellites. All three will be monitoring the island and the strait. We're going to train a second team to do the evaluations you and Jerry have been running, so that we'll have continuous coverage until Cassandra is up to full strength again. I'm working out a new security program. Every foot of this island is going to be re-photographed—" He looked at her suddenly. "Have you seen the latest pictures?"
"No. You've found something!"
"Not what you're thinking, not more of the damn monsters. We found Cadmann."
A great sigh ran through her, as if she had been waiting to hear that for a week, unable to admit how important it was. "Thank God. Where?"
"Halfway up MGM mesa. Campfire traces three days running. He won't answer any radio signals, but it's him all right."
She paused, waiting for him to go on. When he didn't, she said it.
"Are we going after him?"
"Why? He obviously doesn't want anything to do with us. He didn't take anything that wasn't his—regardless of what a couple of assholes said."
There was real confusion in Zack's voice. Muddied, mixed emotions. Sure. He knows what he owes Cad. He also knows that right now Cadmann could snatch the Colony from him.
"What do you want to do?"
Zack thrust his hands deeply into his pockets. "I don't feel that an official delegation would be welcome. A few of his friends, on the other hand—people who cared about him and just wanted to make sure that he was all right—that might be appropriate. Can you think of anyone who might fit that description?"
She nodded silently.
"Good. I was hoping. Well. I've got things to do. Good night, Sylvia."
Zack walked off the way she had come, toward the rebuilt veterinary clinic.
There aren't any heroes here, she reminded herself. Just survivors.
The heroes died two weeks ago. Or were crippled. Or broken.
Except for one man who we've shamed and betrayed. We owe him something.
Terry was awake when she came to bed. What medical skill could do had been done. There was no need for him to be in the infirmary—the hut was like a personal hospital room, and since the accident, he seemed to need her more than ever before.