Spring had come to Avalon.
"Allemande left to your corner gal—"
Zack wore a blindingly bright pair of red suspenders over hand-stitched overalls. A fiddle was tucked tightly under his chin, and Cadmann was damned if he didn't actually coax music from it. Zack was playing the hayseed image to the hilt as he stomped and sang on the low stage, guiding the flux and flow of the square dancers with a theatrically midwestern twang in his voice. His voice was flat but lively: the colonists followed his lead in an explosion of joyous energy.
The music itself was an odd mixture of synthesizer keyboard, traditional woodwind and string. Some of the instruments had been shipped aboard Geographic, justified as vital cultural treasures. Some had been cobbled together after landing.
And now all promenade,
A-with that sweet corner maid,
Singing "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny Oh..."
Cadmann leaned against the wall, halfway through his third mug of beer. The last cold knot of tension in his stomach was coming unsnarled; his head began to buzz politely. He hated lines. He had waited until the music blared from the hall and the dancers returned to their marks before tapping the cold kegs of beer.
On the far side of the crowd Mary Ann danced, swirling her bangled green skirt, throwing her head back to laugh deeply. The smooth white expanse of her throat flashed above a red kerchief. She caught Cadmann's eye and crooked a challenging finger, blowing him a kiss, silently mouthing Come on before Elliot Falkland caught her hands and swung her around to the opposite corner of her square.
Cadmann stretched. Tight spots, wounds not quite healed? Yeah, he could find the pain in chest and left arm and hip and knee, if he needed an excuse not to dance. It was more fun to watch.
Carlos bowed out of the dance, pecking Ida van Don on the cheek as he released her hands. She looked around uncertainly, with almost a touch of panic, then spotted Omar's huge frame and pulled him from his seat, tugging him into the patterned chaos, whooping with glee. The glee was not entirely spontaneous. Her smile seemed too rigid. Cadmann wondered if her dreams still rang with Jon's dying screams.
Carlos mopped sweat from his dark brow, fanned the dark circles staining the armpits of his red flannel shirt. "Ah, amigo. I am getting old. The senoritas are too much for me."
"Then don't get married."
"Vertical and horizontal dancing are much different." He smiled evilly. "Bobbi lets me lead." He took a sip of Cadmann's beer, smacked approvingly and drew himself a glass. He downed a third of the mug before coming up for air. He followed Cadmann's gaze to Mary Ann. "Your senorita—she also likes the dance, yes?" He paused, considering. "I think one can tell much from the way a woman moves to music. The hips, the hands, the way she holds—"
"Don't you think about anything but sex?"
"Life is short. One must find one's great gift, and practice it—how do you say?--assiduously."
Cadmann sputtered out a noseful of suds.
Together they strolled around the outside to the quad, where Bobbi Kanagawa worked at a food booth. Her long black hair twisted and pinned beneath a white paper cap, Bobbi was oblivious to the music piped out from the hall and didn't notice her fiance's approach.
With a long, thin knife, she carefully pared strips from one of three samlon on her cutting board. Movements almost mechanically precise, she sliced those strips into thinner pieces, then positioned them atop formed and pressed blocks of rice.
Although not in full production yet, the rice fields were healthy enough for Zack to authorize the release of some of the grain stored aboard Geographic.
Carlos leaned across the counter and kissed her wetly. Startled at first, she smooched back, then rubbed noses with him. "Leave me alone for fifteen minutes, then do with me what you will."
"I'll hold you to that, chiquita."
"You had better." She squeezed his hands, and there was enough heat in her emerald eyes to scorch stone. That's what it would take to nail Carlos... "I'm taking you down the rapids, mister."
Carlos grabbed a strip of samlon before she could protest and popped it into his mouth. Bobbi waved her knife at him as he skated away, chortling over his mouthful.
"What a woman. Don't you think we'll make beautiful babies?"
Cadmann reflected for a moment. "The loveliest woman I ever knew was half Japanese and half Jamaican. Assuming the kids take after their mother, they've got a chance."
The square dance ended with cheers and a thunderous round of applause, and the hall emptied into the quad.
Mary Ann worked her way to him through the press, holding a foaming mug. She panted, face glowing and sticky with perspiration. "Cad, you're such a stick. Why won't you dance?"
"War wound. Both legs blown off. Medics screwed up, sewed two left feet on."
She stuck her tongue out.
"Look on the bright side: somewhere out there is a guy with two right feet, killing ‘em at the Waldorf."
"You're just ashamed of me. You don't want anyone to see us together."
Carlos nodded sagely. "It is true. Many times he has told of how he likes to hide you away in the dark, covering you with his own body if need be—"
"Carlos—"
Martinez took the hint. "I've got to get ready for the rapids."
"Turning into a tradition, isn't it?"
"Around here, anything that happens twice is a tradition."
Carlos disappeared into the crowd.
The day just felt so damn good.
Contests and exhibitions had been running since breakfast. Cadmann had watched the archery and wrestling, cheering but not competing. Soon would begin the three-day boat race between the honeymooning couples. That he would enjoy! Then the dance contest... silliness, that was really all it was, but he had to admit that he was catching the bug.
True, he was pleasantly drunk. (Who had brewed the beer? If he could work out a private deal with that worthy—say, fresh melon cactus every month in exchange for a keg?) He felt more comfortable around the camp than he had in months. But something was pulling him back from wholehearted participation. A voice that was weakening by the minute. Or the mug. Whatever.
He politely squelched a burp.
Watching Mary Ann dance was good for him. He hadn't had a chance to really compare her with the other women.
There was no question that they were a couple: she had fixed the judges, bribed his cornermen and K.O.'d him before he even knew the fight was on. But it warmed him to feel a healthy physical tug when a twirl or gust of wind raised her skirts. Her hard work up at Cadmann's Bluff had trimmed away fat and added healthy muscle. The pregnancy didn't show yet, but there was something special about her. She did glow...
She squashed her lips against his in a beery kiss. "Cad—when are you going to—" her face changed in the middle of the question, became more mischievous—"dance with me?"
Shoot the rapids with me?
The real question was behind the smile, behind the laugh. It lived in the way she leaned against him, letting him feel the muted fire in her belly.
What the hell. It's just a formalization. Why not? But not now. Not on holotape, for God and the whole world to see.
"Later," he promised. "You'll see."
The stands on the north edge of the quad displayed a mosaic of the
Colony's artistic craftsmanship. Cadmann was startled and gratified by the breadth and reach of the work on display. These people had not been chosen for artistic talent. They had hidden depths.
Here was a kinetic sculpture, a globe filled with clear fluid, holding iron flakes spiraling in a slow nebula of magnetic flux.
There, a painting of Avalon's twin moons setting over the bramble bushes. The artist had precisely captured the mauve sunset.