"Terry's mainland expedition. We'll send them that, of course. Adventure calls, even on Avalon! We're short one Skeeter now, and the mission has changed a little because we're hungry. We'll want to anchor a Minerva in a bay, then take the Skeeters halfway up some mountain, above where the grendels can reach. Collect some Joes, if nothing else, and reseed the island."
"Any way we can put visuals in that lecture?"
"Visuals of what? They've seen the equipment. We've improved the orbital maps. I guess we can put in Joes... "
"Summon up those notes for the broadcast."
"Yeah." Sylvia tapped. She read off the list:
"Full details on grendel attack. Bored on Earth? Come to romantic Avalon and find adventure. Emphasize that we won. We control the grendels. Nail it down by showing us hunting out a grendel pond. I sent Sikes down with a camera; he'll get that today.
"De-emphasize hunger. De-emphasize fatalities. But we can talk about the taste of local life, Joes and samlon. We can't show another harvest because nothing's come up yet—"
"They've seen a harvest," Marnie said.
"Joes are cute," Mary Ann said. "Don't say we eat them... "
"I suppose. Anyway—set ‘em up for the foray to the mainland. I'll bet my ass we find something weird and interesting there. What eats grendels?"
"Shudder," Carolyn said; and she did shudder. Sylvia chose not to notice. For a moment Carolyn was somewhere else. For a few seconds she wasn't Carolyn, she was Phyllis, dying under the claws of a grendel.
Rachel had worked especially hard with Carolyn. They had all worked to pull her back into the community, caring for her as they never had when her twin was alive. She needed them now, probably more than any of them could understand.
"We can't avoid it," Sylvia said, deliberately raising her voice to cut into Carolyn's train of thought. "We have to tell Earth how many of us died, but we can just send a bald list. And we'll give ‘em a list of what we need. It's short. Ruined equipment. They're bound to have fancier computers than Cassandra. We lost some life forms too. I want just enough of a list to let them know visitors would be welcome.
"But we have to hammer hard on how we beat the grendels. We took on one and two and six and then ten thousand, and we're mopping them up in detail. Carolyn, you have to tell your story for the broadcast back to Earth!"
"That's what Carlos says," Carolyn admitted. "But damn all, I don't want to."
"Why not?" Marnie asked.
Carolyn looked down at her hands.
She was sliding away again, and Mary Ann caught it. "We care. Earth will care." She lowered her voice. ."And Phyllis would be so proud of you.
I bet she is, anyway."
Carolyn's smile was weak. "It was such a little story compared to the last stand at Cadmann's Bluff."
Sylvia shook her head violently. "Jeez, here Marnie and I are all jealous of you—"
"Jealous?"
"Sure. We were up there in Geographic, all safe, and you were out slaying grendels!"
"You don't mean that. You're just being—"
"I was never more serious."
"But Mary Ann—"
"You saved the horses," Marnie said. "Which is a very lot more than I did. Tell them a story, Carolyn! It's not little, it's compact! Tell—tell us. Now. Then it'll be easier when you tell it for Earth."
"Yes, yes, tell us," Mary Ann said.
Carolyn looked at them, realized that they meant it and that they understood. "All right," she began tentatively. "Did I tell you I gave them names?"
"Yeah," Marnie said. "Cassandra record."
"No!" Carolyn protested.
"Cassandra. Record. File as dry run." Marnie grinned. "Surely you don't think of Cassie as an eavesdropper? She's your friend too."
"Yeah. Yes, I guess so." Carolyn straightened in her chair. "I named them all. I named the first one after Charlie Manson." Suddenly Carolyn was grinning like a grendel. She had presence. She'd been on camera before. "Charlie must have been suffering from Hibernation Instability. He came at me through water, dragging half a horse! I just stood up from behind a rock and shot him.
"That left me with three grendels after me and two harpoons to my name. I started being careful, but I was in a hurry too. I got the horses as far as the base of the glacier. By then I could see that the grendels had reached Charlie and what was left of Shank's Mare. One of them was too chicken to get close. That was Mareta—"
Sylvia shuddered. Teheran. The whole city. Omar lost cousins. Well, Mareta Lupoff certainly got the world's attention—
"—but Mareta stayed behind and ate the leavings when the other two went on. I kept going up the glacier, leaving the horses behind.
"I was fifty meters up when Khadafi went on speed and came for me. She hit ice. It surprised her, but she kept coming, legs churning, ice flying, getting slower and slower as the ice got steeper. She was running in place when I shot her.
"I thought I was in a good place, then, so I stayed. Nothing to eat, but plenty of water. Mareta and the Ayatollah stared at me for a while, but neither of them wanted to try it. I was almost hoping one would. But not both.
"After a while Joe Sikes found me. We managed to take ten of the horses down. The rest are still up there with two grendels. There's not much point in going after Mareta and the Ayatollah."
"Yes, that's right," Sylvia said. "There have to be lots of grendels in the hills, but they'll never lay fertile eggs. The samlon are the males. They have to come down for that."
"So. That's what happened," Carolyn said. "It was scary enough, but... it felt so damned good to sh-shoot those things I was so scared of."
"Cassandra end file," Marnie said.
"I think it's wonderful," Mary Ann said. "A really good story." "You? You killed a dozen with your bare hands—" Mary Ann laughed. "I don't know who you listen to." "And anyway, they won't give me my job back."
"No, they won't," Sylvia said. "Would you put Mary Ann in charge of anything?"
Carolyn gulped and was silent.
"I wouldn't," Mary Ann said. "I know I'm still smart, but there are things I don't know that I'm supposed to. I don't trust me."
"Cadmann does," Carolyn said.
"He trusts my instincts." Mary Ann kissed Jessica's ear.
"Besides, he's in love," Sylvia said. "Now. Let's solve Carolyn's problem."
"Look, it's a simple situation," Marnie said. "You want a baby. We all do. We have to. Genetic programming. Colony in danger, instinct and heredity and common sense all say we get pregnant and have babies." She patted her six-month bulge. "Babies need fathers. Some of us have husbands, but there are more women than men."
"Which makes Carlos happy enough," Carolyn said. "Only—" "He's responsible enough," Mary Ann said complacently.
Marnie giggled. "Godfather to half the unborn kids here. Well, maybe not half. Look, Carolyn, you're not in love with anyone. Right? Right. You want a man of your own, but you're not going to get one. There aren't enough to go around."
And even if there were, you'd last about a year, Sylvia thought. She knew that wasn't fair: Carolyn had been married for nine years to a hydraulics engineer who hadn't survived frozen sleep. But she's such a bitch, and maybe that's Hibernation Instability, and maybe she just had a bloody saint for a husband.
"So," Marnie continued, "you have some choices. You can try to seduce one of the seriously married men and hope that either his wife doesn't find out or that she won't kill you if she does." When Carolyn tried to say something, Marnie held up her hand. "There's celibacy. Doesn't appeal to you? Don't blame you. Choice three. Get in on one of the orgies, and have group sponsorship of your kid. Maybe you don't like that much, either. Choice four. Choose a father, have him provide you with a sperm sample. It's easy: he produces a rubber balloon, he and his wife make whoopie. You take your teaspoon of baby syrup and do-it-yourself.