Her eyes scanned from the edge of the bluff to the notebook at her side. From there to the Joe cages. Tonight the furry creatures chewed frantically at the wire and threw themselves against the wooden walls of their prisons.
Carlos watched them for a while. "The natives are restless. Do they think they're going to be dessert?" A branch popped on the campfire, and a cloud of sparks and oily smoke drifted up.
The night was a continuation of the phenomenally clear afternoon. A faint salt breeze from the ocean five miles west made the air clean and crisp. The twin moons were bright and unshrouded.
It should have been a night for laughter and song, but Cadmann felt another of his morose moods fall over him like a blanket. He couldn't seem to fight it.
Carlos tickled Justin, held the child for a few minutes, while Sylvia fed herself. The three of them seemed pretty damned comfortable together, and for a moment Cadmann indulged in pointless speculation.
Then Mary Ann took his hand and placed it over her swollen stomach, smiling wistfully as their unborn child thumped and bumped. "Floop floop."
"Kid's doing a half gainer in there."
"He loves you already, you know."
There was more sadness than joy in that conversation, and he didn't know why, didn't know how to deal with it. Crest of the Angeles Mountains. Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley spreading to opposite sides of a veranda. Carpets of light. Never again in my lifetime. Win something, lose something...
Hendrick Sills watched the four of them ruminatively. With his short, square-cut beard he looked every bit the Freudian analyst. "What's all the moping about?" he finally demanded. "We got a cracking good day's work under our belts."
"True enough," Greg said. His calm oval face was painted with the firelight. It was growing more difficult to remember him in that other time, on that other night, spewing jellied gasoline, the glow of madness in his eyes.
Carlos rose from the fireside. "I think that it's time for Sylvia and me to head back down."
"You could spend the—no, there's Justin."
Sylvia hugged Cadmann briefly. "Walk us to the Skeeter?"
"Sure. Mary Ann?"
"I'm a little tired. You go ahead."
He pushed himself up, helped Sylvia to her feet. As they moved away toward the eastern edge of the bluff, Hendrick's rough voice broke into song:
Banish the use of the four-letter words
Whose meanings are never obscure
The Angles, the Saxons, those hardy old birds,
Were vulgar, obscene, and impure.
But cherish the use of the weaseling phrase
That never quite says what you mean
You'd better be known for your hypocrite ways
Than as vulgar, impure and obscene...
Another breeze stirred the foot-tall rows of corn as they walked. Cadmann found himself humming with the song, and he linked arms with his two friends.
"It's not so bad, is it, Cadzie?"
"It's like Carlos said a couple of months ago: ‘It's been a whole lot worse.' " He dug at the ground with the toe of his boot, making a mental note to get some of the soil lichens started soon. "I just wanted to have this to get away from everything, and I seem to have brought a bit of the Colony up here with me."
"You can't get away from—" Sylvia started to say, but Carlos quieted her.
"Amigo, if you really don't want us up here, any of us, just say the word. We love you. We're grateful to you. We're still embarrassed about the... fiasco. Hendrick, Greg, the others, they're just responding to you the way men have responded to leaders since Alley Oop."
"I never wanted to be a leader."
"Some of us don't have choices. Just let them do a little more work—hell, you can use it, you know that's the truth—and then send them back. You'll be alone, and Greg will have had his therapy."
It was true, all true, but dammit, why was it so hard for a man to just be alone?
When Nature is calling, plain speaking is out
When the ladies, God bless ‘em, are milling about;
You may wee-wee, make water or empty the glass
You can powder your nose, even Johnny can pass.
Shake the dew off the lily, see a man about a dog
When everyone's drunk, it's condensing the fog.
But please to remember if you would know bliss
That only in Shakespeare do characters—
"What the hell. Hendrick's right. It's been a good day. Listen, you two have a safe flight back. I'm going to go sing dirty ditties."
He shook Carlos's hand, kissed Justin and helped Sylvia buckle herself in.
Then Cadmann stood back, shielding his eyes as Carlos expertly lifted the Skeeter from the ground and spun it up into the sky. His friend flashed the landing lights in farewell and vanished over the lip of the plateau.
Feeling unseasonably warm, Cadmann-walked back to the fireside, voice already rising in the next bawdy verse.
"I think he's going to make it," Carlos said.
"I never really doubted it." Sylvia looked at him. "How about you? I haven't really seen the old Carlos much lately."
"Has he been missed?"
"Muchly. Avalon's unmarried lovelies mourn almost nightly."
Carlos skimmed the Skeeter sideways, riding out a gust of wind. "What, in formal ceremonies? Perhaps it is time I began making my rounds again."
He paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Only the unmarried ones?"
"Discretion, Carlos. Please."
"I'm nothing if not discreet." Carlos could have begun the descent then, but he kept the Skeeter hovering. "And what about you?" he asked soberly. "Terry's problem is hardly a secret. I know how you and Cadmann feel about each other..."
"I promised Terry. Anyone but Cadmann." She sighed. "I couldn't anyway. It would destroy Mary Ann. Cadzie and I just... had bad timing."
Slowly, Carlos began to dip toward the landing pad. He chose his next words carefully. "And where does that leave Senora Faulkner?"
Her answering voice was small. "Looking for a friend?"
Carlos reached out his hand, covering hers. Her fingers seemed so small, so warm. "Since Bobbi, I think that is what has stopped me. I haven't been looking for a relationship. Or just a palomita. I think I, too, need a friend. Perhaps..."
"... we could both stop looking?" Sylvia squeezed Carlos's fingers, then pulled away and hugged Justin to her.
I hope so, Carlos said to himself, surprised by the intensity of his response. Warmth and cheerfully lecherous optimism spread through him like a brushfire.
Carlos hummed happily as he brought the Skeeter in for a landing.
Chapter 24
REMITTANCE MAN
I strongly wish for what I faintly hope;
Like the daydreams of melancholy men,
I think and think in things impossible,
Yet love to wander in that golden maze.
JOHN DRYDEN, "Rival Ladies"
Sylvia touched her lips to Justin's brow. She savored his baby smell of powder and clean linen. Her hands were cold, and she was careful not to touch him as she tucked the edges of the blanket around him. Seven weeks old today. I should remind Terry.
Justin had begun to lose the newborn's wrinkly look, to cease being a generic baby and take on a personality of his own. He could focus his eyes, reach and grab with coordination, make sounds that often seemed appropriate to the situation. Terry had read Kistakovsy's classic revisions of the Gesell studies and pronounced Justin well ahead of normal development.
Those things mattered, but there was a way that they didn't. Genius or idiot, she loved the tiny, helpless child as she had never loved anything in her life, as if he were still a part of her own body.