Behind him Carlos sighed. "With men like you, who can wonder that romance is dying in the world?" The rest of his monologue was drowned out as the saw revved up again.
Cadmann groped out to find the curtain cord and drew it to let in a spray of sunshine. It might be a month before Tau Ceti Four saw such a bright day again, and he was loath to waste it. The sun was already low in the sky. Preparations for the barbecue would begin when twilight fell. The colonists who were working the day shift would put aside their farming and building and repair work and gather on the beach for good food and good fellowship.
He wanted to grab his toolbox and go out to the fence, but his solitary bed, nestled beneath a sheltering bough of drip-dried underwear, called to him in a voice that his suddenly heavy muscles couldn't ignore.
I'll just sit for a moment, he told himself. The water mattress sloshed pleasantly under his buttocks as he settled his weight into it. He rarely noticed until he was tired, but Avalon's gravity put an extra ten pounds on him every second of his life.
The waning sunlight cast deep shadows in the room, here and there glinting on the shelves and boxes that held the last remnants of another life. Everything he had been was in this room. The hundred and sixty people who made up the crew and passengers of the Geographic were his only family and friends.
It wasn't much, but it was enough. Enough, because the behaviorists and sociologists and colony planners said it was enough. Because they, in their infinite wisdom, had calculated exactly how many pressed flower petals and class-album videodisks were required to stave off depression: just enough to stimulate the fond memories, not enough to create an incurable homesickness.
His world. The silver-gilt college trophies, reminders of victories in Debate and Track and Wrestling, were holograms. Hologram images of smiling women whose warm lips and smooth bodies left frustratingly little impression on his memory. How long had they been dead? Thirty years? Forty?
They'd been planning another colony even before Geographic launched. A statuesque New Yorker named Heidi had talked about riding the next starship to build a colony at Epsilon Eridani. Maybe she had. It would have launched twenty years after Geographic. She might even now be wondering which of her old beaus was still alive.
There were disks of favorite movies—his personal collection, though in principle they were part of the camp library. There, a shifting hologram of his command post in Central Africa. A peacekeeping force, nothing more, until the revolutions. "Sergeant Major Mvubi! We're moving out!"
"Sir!"
We were needed. Then.
His clothing was all nonsynthetics that might take a generation to replace. How long would it be until they thawed out the silkworms and the mulberry bushes for them to feed on? Not exactly a high priority item...
He didn't remember closing his eyes, but when he opened them he was lying down, and the sun had set. Cadman grabbed his toolbox and a folding stool and hustled from the room. Getting old is one thing, dammit! Senility will just have to wait.
Chapter 2
ON THE BEACH
Glory to Man in the Highest! For Man is the master of things.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, "Hymn to Man"
A jeep roared by, full of colonists who were full of beer. "Grab some wheels and we'll race you to the beach!" Cadmann waved and pointed to his toolbox. They razzed him and careened out of the compound, singing.
Electric lights were wavering to life around the camp as workers changed shifts. The party atmosphere was infectious. Avalon's inadequate twin moons would smile on a beachful of frolicking spacefarers.
The folding stool's seat was several centimeters too small, but as he bent to the task of repairing and refastening the wire, he forgot the discomfort.
Avalon's moons cast double, divergent shadows with their bluish glow, and the stars were brilliantly sharp and clear. No crickets. And along about evening the nightbirds aren't beginning to call because the things they use for birds here don't sing. And maybe we'll fix that, with bluebirds and mockingbirds if the goddam ecology people want them. I wonder if they brought crickets?
Cadmann unwound two meters of wire and scraped at the clotted dust surrounding the loose connection, then clipped the old wire free and attached the new. He fired the soldering torch.
Do they still stand retreat at the Academy? Cadets in archaic uniforms standing in rigid rows, plebes telling jokes in hopes of making upperclassmen laugh and be seen by the officers... sunset guns, bands, the Anthem, the flag lowered slowly to the beat of drums... He attached the leads from the voltmeter. The needle jumped into the red. Done.
Mist had rolled in from the sea. The stars were gone; the moons were wavery blobs. Cadmann felt pinpricks of moisture on his face.
A calf on the far side of the wire grunted longingly and shuffled over, looking at him with huge, liquid eyes. Cadmann reached through and petted it, and it licked his hand.
"No mother, eh, girl? Must be tough not to have a mommy cow to love you." Its tongue was rough and warm, and it moved more urgently now as it tried to suckle at his hand.
Cadmann laughed and pulled his fingers away. The calf shivered. "Aw, come now, you can't suckle my fingers... " Then he saw fear in the calf's eyes. Its head jerked to and fro, then stopped abruptly as it stared toward the stream.
The other animals moved toward him. They stood together in clumps. A filly whinnied with fear, and Cadmann came to his feet.
"What's bothering you, girl?"
The feeding stalls were enclosed by the electric fences and narrow walkways. Cadmann carefully stowed the tools and went into the compound. What's bothering them? The filly was to his right. Instead of trotting over to him she bucked. Cadmann opened the gate to her pen. "Heidi. Here, girl." She moved warily. "Here." He ruffled her mane. "Shhh. Heidi, Heidi," he crooned. "Quiet, girl."
Night came suddenly. Both moons were at half stage: bright enough, but they left pools of dark shadows through the barnyard, some of them back by the dog pen. There were ten young German shepherds in the pen, and their ears were flattened against their heads. They growled deep in their throats, teeth bared in the moonlight.
"Hello?" There was no answer. "Who the hell is out there?" There was nothing, in the pens or beyond in the deep shadows leading to the bluff. The sound of the panicked animals was a rattling cacophony. Cadmann stood still and listened. Nothing. Carefully he took out the Walther Model Seven pistol and checked the loads. Silly. Nothing here. If Moscowitz sees me with this he'll take my pistol away. He slipped off the safety, then put it in his pocket and left his hand there.
What in the hell was going on? He looked back at the animal pens. The German shepherds, dogs bred for their loyalty and intelligence, were going berserk. The wildest of them was also the eldest, a nearly full-sized bitch who was actually biting at the electrified fence, touching it and recoiling, returning again and again.
Cadmann ran to the pen's gate and gave a low whistle. "Sheena. Come, girl. What's out there? What is it?" She came to him slowly, and stood trembling, panting, eyes fixed and staring out into the darkness. He opened the gate, careful of the other dogs. "Back. Come, Sheena."
He left the gate open long enough for Sheena to get out, then grabbed the fur at the scruff of her neck when she tried to run ahead. These dogs need training. It's time. She growled low in her throat. The others barked furiously. Sheena strained ahead.