Feeling absurdly proud of herself, Mary Ann carried the cage back down to the camp.
The sun was unusually warm, and the air sweet, and her mind was already buzzing with ideas for cages.
There was something... something bothering her about the enclave she had found. What was it? It was beautiful. More beautiful, more lush, than anything she had seen down on the flatlands.
Down on the flatlands there was little in the way of tender shrubs.
Only the gnarled thorn bushes seemed to thrive down there.
More variation of plant life at a higher altitude? And come to think of it, animal life, too. That implied something, but what? What? Her mind wasn't quite clear enough, and she cursed softly.
Damn it. Why wouldn't it come into focus? Suddenly all the pleasure she had felt disappeared in a welter of frustration. Why wouldn't her mind work for her?
Hibernation Instability. There. Say it. Accept it. Don't try to pretend that it didn't affect you, as some of the others do. Don't try to pretend you still have capacities that have fled. That kind of egotistical nonsense gets you laughed at or killed. Work within your limits, and learn the steps you always pitied ‘tweens for having to take.
Where a Bright can lead, a ‘Tween can follow. There used to be such smugness in that saying. A genius can take huge leaps, wearing intuitive seven-league boots. Then a corps of engineers and technicians can turn the theories into inventions and principles. A competently trained repairman can fix something that it took a genius to devise in the first place.
I lost my seven-league boots. But the germ plasm is still mine! We can make good kids...
All right. There was something wrong here. But if she had the time and the patience, she could reconstruct the thought processes that once came to her so easily. And it was important for her to reconstruct these. Very important.
With the basket in hand, she traveled back down the hill.
Mary Ann found it amazing.
In three weeks, using a constant, unvarying work schedule, Cadmann had carved the patio and shoring, tamped down the floor of his new house and covered it with layers of polyethylene sheeting. He had set the corner posts using the lightweight foam-steel braces ferried down from the zerograv smelting facility aboard Geographic, and lined the walls with more of the polyethylene.
The roof girders and additional support beams were finally in place. Cadmann disassembled their tent and laid it across the top in a makeshift roof, and they spent their first night in the new home. The northern wall was earth, but the southern, uphill side was open to the broad, high steps that Cadmann had cut into the mountainside.
Their stove warmed the makeshift dwelling beautifully, and there was plenty of headroom and walking space, more than in some of the 1800s pioneer cabins she had visited in Kentucky museums.
They sat cross-legged in the shelter. The stove and the body heat of the two dogs were quite enough to keep her warm as she wrote. Two sheets of paper were spread out, and on one she was listing every plant Missy had accepted as food. So far, there were six varieties.
The other sheet was blank. I ought to be recording something, but I don't know what it is. Damn. But—I am useful. Cadmann built it, but it's our house.
The earth that surrounded them on three sides was terrific insulation, and there was something womb-like about it. So I'm missing some brain cells. I had billions to spare.
She heard Missy's angry chattering in the distance. Four of the youngsters had survived with her and were old enough to run around the cage. If they could be bred...
"A garden there," Cadmann said with vast contentment, pointing back at the series of deep, rising steps cut into the mountain behind the house. "Hanging garden... climbing... I forget what you call it. Walk path cut in the middle. We'll be able to mount mirrors at the top. We already get full sunlight as it crosses east to west—we can do even better. Roof next, and we'll top it with soil." He laughed lazily. "We could plant on our roof if we wanted to."
"It would be nice to have a little more natural light." Mary Ann folded the sheet of paper and tucked it in with her backpack.
He sipped at his coffee, then put an arm around her. It still sent a shiver of pleasure through her to feel it.
They hadn't slept together for the first week, and when he had finally taken her into his bedroll and made love to her it had been an angry, demanding, selfish kind of love—and she had not demanded in return. She was happy to be able to give. But now, as his house was taking form, as the Joes and turkeys filled their cages and makeshift pens, as the plot of worked land doubled and trebled, and the mesa became Cadmann's Bluff, his personality and signature scrawled more boldly upon it hour by hour...
He was softer with her at the end of the day, and spoke of "us" and "we." And she was happy, despite her frequently aching muscles.
In the weeks since the attack on the camp, Cadmann seemed to have purged his anger. It had taken useful work, done his way, in his time, to his ends. And the fruits of that labor were his. She moved closer to him, and kissed his shoulder gently.
"I'll dig the channel tomorrow," he said. "I need the channel before I can blast. Mary Ann, I think I can run the channel through the house, through the living room."
"For what? Oh, the Amazon," she remembered. He wanted to divert water for the vegetable garden. Something ticked at her memory...
"F-F-Falling Water."
"What?"
"I remembered! Falling Water, a house by F-F-Frank Lloyd Wright, and the water ran right through the living room!"
"That's what I was trying to remember. You're amazing!"
I've never felt like this, she thought to herself. And I've been married, and in love before, and have had... enough lovers to know the difference.
There was something about the darkness and the warmth. About being next to a man who had built his dwelling by the strength of his back and his wits. Something about watching Cadmann rediscovering himself, and her, that made her feel warm and small and protected.
Protected... A competent, civilized human being didn't need a protector. Mary Ann Eisenhower, Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences, had been quite capable of taking care of herself, thank you. She remembered the doctor... she remembered. Now she was the dependant of a brawny, self-sufficient warrior.
And yet there was no cruelty in this man, no demand for her subservience or helplessness: she was sure that he had accepted her because she could do certain things, she could take care of herself. She could go when she wished, and he made that clear. Yet he had accepted with pleasure her suggestions about breeding the Joes. She wanted to do anything for him, be everything to him—but if he ever abused her, that urge would vanish.
How strange, and how wonderful. How natural to be here, in the earth, huddled with the man she loved, who she hoped would one day love her in return.
So there, Sylvia. She grinned fiercely, briefly, and kissed his shoulder, her lips parting slightly, tongue flickering out to taste the salt dried on his skin.
He pulled her to him, and there, in their home, made love to her on the packed earth of the floor. And they rejoiced together until both were exhausted, until sleep stole the thoughts from her mind as she curled against his side. The two of them, surrounded by their home, their dogs, the whispering wind and the small night sounds. Together.
Cadmann had finished digging the French drain—the rock-filled slit, a foot wide, five feet long and three deep, at the uphill mouth of their home. It would trap rain or snow melt before it could flood their home, and was just another of the little things, the thousand little things that Cadmann had done to their home—
Their home! to make it safe, and warm, and ideal for her. For them.
Their home was roofed now, and planted with grass seed. Rows of strawberries and lettuce and carrots and corn stretched across the mesa wherever there was enough soil to give anything a chance. Much of it would be lost. She expected the strawberries and the hybrid melon-cactus to do the best. Two pens of captured turkeys and their cage of Joes were thriving, and as she fed the Joes their morning leaves, they were actually happy to see her. The kittens had sprouted into twelve-inch furred lovelies, only slightly less beautiful, and better tempered, than young foxes. The furs would be useful, and the flesh...