"They mate like rabbits. Like we do sometimes." Mary Ann was wrestling with something, face wrinkled as if in agony, and Sylvia was only moments away from prescribing a sedative.
"Listen," Rachel said soothingly. "Stop trying so hard. Close your eyes for a moment. Stop being so serious."
"I can't help it."
"All right, what do you see with your eyes closed?"
"Joes and samlon and grendels chasing each other. I don't like it, Rachel."
"All right. Now pull back. See yourself watching that scene in a holo theater. Make the picture flatfilm. Black and white. Get some emotional distance."
Mary Ann's face calmed. "Better."
"Play circus music in the background."
Mary Ann laughed, clapping again. "That's it, it's perfect. Now they look like wooden animals on a merry-go-round. I hear a calliope in the background."
Sylvia sat back and grinned in admiration. She had never had a chance to watch Rachel work.
Rachel nodded. "Now. Open your eyes. Good. What did you have for breakfast this morning?"
"Juice and a chicken omelet. Cadmann made it. He's a good cook, good as me. I never knew."
"Good. Close your eyes again. What do you see?"
"Samlon and grendels and... frogs." Her eyes flew open. "That was really weird."
"Something Freudian, Rachel?" Marnie asked. "She might be telling you to jump in the lake."
"Maybe. Does that mean anything to you, Marnie? Any connection between Joes and frogs?"
"Behaviorally? Reproductively? Ecologically? It's probably some kind of pun."
"No, it's real," Mary Ann protested. "Something—diamonds?"
Marnie giggled.
"Oh, I just don't know." Mary Ann sat and stared at the wall.
"Sylvie—"
Sylvia's eyes were unfocused. "Damn," she said softly. "You're right. It strikes a chord. Frogs. There was a special kind of frog. Something I read once. Cassandra," she said. "String search—frogs. Cross reference: Joes, samlon, grendels."
"Ladies—" Rachel yawned—"Zack has nightmares without me to hold his, uh, hand. Ahem. I'm calling it a night."
"Make it two," Marnie added. "Sylvia, Mary Ann, till morning. Are you going back tomorrow?"
"Yes," Mary Ann said uncertainly. Her eyes were still fixed on the whirring space above the holo stage. "Now I want to stay with Sylvia. Cadmann will be back for me."
There were hugs all around, and Rachel and Marnie left the lab.
Sylvia watched the fluxing holos, occasionally freezing the images.
There were visions of tree frogs and giant African frogs powerful enough to knock a man down. Pictures of frogs as they fed and mated and were spread out under the dissection knife.
Sylvia felt something cold and nasty in the pit of her stomach. A frog with nasty habits. She hadn't believed it the first time! But it did work, it did make sense. Oh, shit!
"Mary Ann," she said hoarsely, "I want to talk to Cadmann. Would you find him, please? Bring him here."
Mary Ann backed away from her, eyes wide and frightened. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know yet. Maybe a chance in a hundred. I hope to God I'm wrong. Because if I'm right..."
With timing that was surreally precise, Jessica woke up, and began to scream.
Chapter 26
GONE FISHING
"Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales."
BOSWELL, Life of Johnson
Hendrick Sills took Skeeter Four south toward Mucking Great Mountain. His back and shoulders and mind ached from three solid weeks of work, and he was more than ready for a rest.
Catfish had been sighted down south of Mucking Great. And plentiful samlon.
The monsters were all dead. Ding dong! The work was well and fully done, and it was time for a rest in the hinterlands. Only two days, there was work to do; but two days. Just him and a German shepherd and a fishing pole. Just a forty-eight hour rest from troubleshooting the troubled Colony's many troubles. For a little while he didn't want to hear about flow rate and freshwater access, electricity, sewage and all the other little things. He didn't want to muck around doing brain surgery on Cassandra. He didn't want to oversee another team jury-rigging the veterinary clinic's ailing apparatus. "I'm tired of doing your job as well as mine, Carolyn McAndrews!" he shouted. The entire ordeal had been a drain, and now that the weeks and months of unrelieved tension were over, he was ready for some fun. Ding dong!
Company would have been nice. But Harry Siep had twisted an ankle. He wouldn't say how, but Hendrick suspected it involved back windows and the inopportune arrival of a husband. He'd be on his ass in the com shack for a week to come. And Phyllis, lovely Phyllis, was on duty.
Boogie Boy was tied to the passenger seat by a short leash. In the early days, they had tried longer cords, but one night an overexcited dog had leaped out at a pterodon. The poor creature had nearly lynched itself before the beleaguered chopper pilot could set the Skeeter down again. In the air, short leashes were s.o.p.
Hendrick peered out through the flowing, eternal mists. Cadmann's Bluff was down there somewhere. He couldn't see it. He dropped a little lower to get a better view.
The cultivated area of the plateau was beginning to bear fruit. From the air it now looked more like agricultural land than chicken scratches in the dirt.
And then there was the main house itself.
It had grown up the mountainside now. An underground house could be expanded far more readily than a traditional structure, and Cadmann had a dwelling that would do for a multigenerational homestead.
Deadfall boulders poised above the paths up either side. Naturally. Hendrick chuckled. And in a cleared strip at the bottom was the minefield that could be activated at the touch of a switch. "Can't blame him, maybe," Hendrick said aloud. Boogie Boy's tail thumped against the deck. "But damn it all, there's got to be a better way." The dog whined in sympathy.
Hendrick swerved up through the clouds and around the edge of Mucking Great Mountain. He headed south, picking up speed as he went. Two days. Then, perhaps, when he returned to camp, he would make a decision about Phyllis.
Baby fever! The contagion had infected the camp. Even Phyllis McAndrews, the eternal fiancee, had gotten gooey-eyed at the sight of Jessica Weyland. And last night, after an especially intense evening (God. Where did she get the energy? Or the flexibility?), Phyllis had hinted broadly of shooting the rapids. That the beautiful physicist might want a baby didn't surprise Hendrick: that she might want to be tied down to one tall, rawboned engineer did.
He laughed to himself. The tragedy that had befallen the Colony had an interesting side effect: ten surplus women in a community of fewer than two hundred. Hendrick was seriously tempted to remain a roving bachelor—yet he wondered if he could ever have claimed a prize like Phyllis back on Earth.
Decisions, decisions...
There was the strike camp. Overgrown now, but still clearer than the jungle that pressed in from all sides. Cadmann had singed the ground two months before, when the kill teams stalked the last grendels. The ground was flat, and a stream gurgled not thirty meters distant. Two months ago it had been choked with fat, flashing samlon.
The Skeeter settled with a bump. He unhooked Boogie Boy. The shepherd jumped down and sniffed the ground, bounded around in a circle and then set his paws back on the doorframe, begging Hendrick to come out and play.