Plastic stars and pterodons dangled above his crib. They would circle at the slightest touch of a breeze. For now, they, like Justin, were still.
Terry was in the front room clearing away the debris of the evening meal.
Her hands shook. She couldn't let Terry see that. She forced herself to calm down, and thrust them beneath her arms until they started to feel warm.
Terry stacked the last dishes in the cabinet beneath the sink. One hand gripping the wheelchair arm, muscles in his arm and back standing prominent as he leaned far forward to reach. Done, and he smiled in satisfaction. His wheelchair purred as he glided it over to her. "Justin asleep?"
"For now," she said, honestly relieved. She waved at the sink area.
"You're getting good at that. Making order out of chaos."
"Yeah. What I am. I'm good at. I never had arms this strong. Which reminds me—"
"The expedition."
"Yeah. Time to turn the plans over to Zack. It could be five or ten years before anyone actually goes to the mainland, but hell, our resources won't have changed much. The plans'll still be good. I'm afraid to tell Cadmann. He'd want to go now."
"Yeah... I've expressed enough milk to keep Justin happy if he wakes up. I'll only be gone a couple of hours." She stretched, forcing a mild yawn. "We have to get the tapes edited and off. We're overdue on our broadcast."
"You've been busy," Terry said.
His face, always slender, seemed unhealthily gaunt despite his smile.
She knelt by the wheelchair. "You'll be all right?"
"Oh, I'm fine." His quick smile faded slightly, and he was looking past her. His gaze lingered on diplomas and plaques, a photo album, a pair of crystal goblets: the things they had brought from Earth.
"What are you thinking of, love?"
His smile saddened. "It's been a long time since you've called me that."
"I've thought of it every day."
"Have you?"
"Yes, of course—"
"You can't know how much I want to believe that. It's a trite old story, isn't it? Arranged marriage that results in love. Love on one side, anyway."
"Terry—"
"And then I found it was mutual. Marry, then fall in love. It really works. It wouldn't surprise our Hindu friends. They've known it all along. Go get your work done and ask Carlos to drop around once in a while. I don't see him enough."
She slipped on her shawl. It was a web of gold and umber yarn, every strand turned by the hand of her mother, over a century before. Its touch stimulated tactile memories: warmth, closeness, softness. It was one of her little pieces of home.
The click as the door latched behind her was uncomfortably loud.
After a few days of clear weather, the fog had descended upon Avalon with a vengeance, thicker and soupier than any night since the first grendel assault. It penetrated through the shawl as if she were naked, chilled right to the bone.
The searchlights atop the guard towers rotated tirelessly. Their beams stabbed out through the mist like silver fingers. The fog dampened sound as it did vision. After a few steps she looked back toward her house and her child and her husband. All were gone, vanished into the mist.
She drew the shawl tighter across her shoulders, and went on.
The electronics shack was in the rear of the camp, perched on the edge of the bluff. A single line of light burned through the shades. She paused a moment, listening to the muted rush of the Miskatonic, then rapped once and entered.
Carlos sat at the editing bench, absorbed in his work. She shut and latched the door.
"How is it going?"
"Just waiting for you, senora."
The shack seemed warmer than the house she had left behind. Terribly warm. Even with Carlos on the far side of the room, with the holo stage between them, he was stiflingly close.
"Coffee?"
"Maybe later."
"Let me know. We've got most of the video portion together. Just need you to look over your notes again. Take another look at the footage we did from the autopsy and the summation. Anything left to say? This is the last chance before we send it off."
Sylvia doffed her shawl and sat, enjoying her ease of movement. A month and a half before, she'd had to use her arms just to sit down. There's the miracle fat cure. Lose twenty-six pounds in twenty-four hours. Have a baby. Her joints no longer hurt, and her muscles were alive. She walked and moved like a new woman. Her body was ready for anything. Especially...
Oh, God... I hope I'm doing the right thing.
She focused on the holo, took a hand remote and fast-scanned. "This material on the increasing samlon size should be cross-referenced with their eating pattern. Joes and samlon are vegetarians, pterodons and grendels are carnivores. Good."
She flashed through the images and text, fighting to concentrate, almost overcome by the essential maleness of Carlos. She glanced over at him. He leaned back and sipped from his mug. She was dying to know what was on his mind. Why didn't he touch her? Or at least say something?
An image from the most recent Town Hall appeared. She remembered this vividly: the debate on whether to unfreeze the remaining embryos.
Zack, for the first time since Ernst's death, seemed rested and totally controlled. "The vote is close to even on this point, and I don't want to make a judgment until more of us agree. Final arguments?"
Terry appeared, and her heart leaped. In close-up it was easy to forget that he was crippled. "Cadmann isn't here to argue his own point," Terry began, "but I'll take the opposing view anyway."
There was scattered laughter. "I think that Cadmann is, as usual, being a conservative old maid. Avalon is safe at last. Let's put all of our eggs in one big basket. The odds are good; let's gamble with our children's lives. What the hell!" He paused; he was smiling, sort of. "The last time I said anything like this was the last time I ever stood up. And thirteen of us died."
Everyone laughed, sort of, but the vote that followed showed that Terry had made his point. Only a third of the remaining embryos would be thawed and revived.
She felt pride for Terry at that, pride that made some of her other thoughts dark and dirty. For a few seconds she considered simply telling Carlos that everything was fine, and leaving the shack while there was still time.
But this did have to be reviewed. She thumbed the scan into play. Images whizzed by, and through their transparency, she watched Carlos at his console. In one instant he seemed frighteningly strong and competent, and in the next like a little boy who needed comfort.
My body can't make up its mind!
She stopped the tape of her own image, part of a roundtable discussion of grendels that had been held three weeks before.
"—salt water isn't toxic to grendels," Marnie maintained. Sylvia had grown so used to Marnie's speech that she never noticed the lisp except in a tape. "Monsters can't drink salt water, but it won't kill them. I'd say that it irritates their nasal passages, and that is about all—" Sylvia froze the picture.
"I want a note here."
"Then slip it in. Tracks siete and nueve are free."
"Thanks. Subnote to preceding: Freshwater status of grendels established by evaluating salt content of tissues. Cross-reference autopsy."
Carlos nodded. "Everyone in the Colony has had a chance to add their own comments on Grendel."
"What was yours?"
"I think the bitch was smart enough to build a raft and float over from the mainland. I wouldn't put anything at all past them."
"That may be giving them too much credit."
"Better too much than too little."
Sylvia scanned through the rest of the tape, then signed off.
"I guess that's it," she said quietly.