"Sure."
She busied herself at the cryosleep carrier console.
"You don't trust the computer?" Cadmann asked.
"Not anymore. Not since Ernst. Not since eight of us never woke up. Barney says it's fine, but I'm a woman of little faith these days."
"Good thinking."
She typed in the last commands. "There. So we lost one of the dogs.
We've got over a hundred more."
"And thousands of chickens, I suppose?" His voice was too flat, too distanced from his feelings.
"Look, Cad-I don't care what anyone says, it's not your fault. Sheena got loose a week ago. So-she came back last night and broke into one of the chicken cages. Fine. We'll either catch her or kill her. Nothing to worry about."
He heard her words, but his mind was still on the chicken cage as they had found it that morning, its wire mesh ripped out and mangled, the wooden frame shattered, blood and feathers and little clotted chunks of raw chicken littering the ground like the aftermath of a ghoulish picnic.
"That is what you're worried about, isn't it?"
Annoyed with himself, Cadmann derailed the morbid train of thought.
"Sure. That's it."
Although he had worked the biolab before, she gave him the grand tour. There was a complete assortment of dairy and work animals, as well as millions of earthworms, ladybugs and "friendly" insect eggs. "We have to have quadruplication of any needed form. There are going to be failures," Sylvia said bluntly. "The alfalfa crop, for instance. We don't know why yet." Her eyes glittered, and the sudden determination in her face cubed her attractiveness. Cadmann's chest tightened.
"But I guarantee you we'll know. And soon. We're going to lose more animals, and we've got to be ready for that, too. That's where you'll come in. Routine checks. Cad-any emergencies, and we'll hustle up Marnie or her husband, Jerry. We've got to be ready for anything."
She darkened the panels and took his hand, leading him to the other side of the room. The vaults were identical to those opposite, but he could feel her increased excitement. "Look," she whispered, and illumined the panels. "Our children."
They hung in rows, lost in endless dream. (Cadmann was startled at the thought. Were there dreams in cryosleep? The neurologists said no, but his memory said yes. Perhaps it was only that before the drugs took hold and the blood chilled there was one final thought that remained locked in a frozen brain, a thought that unthawed along with the body. Just a wisp of dream at the beginning of sleep and one at the end, linked by decades of silence and darkness.)
One of Sylvia's hands strayed unconsciously to her own belly, its roundness barely noticeable beneath her jumpsuit.
There were hundreds of the embryos, frozen at ten weeks of age. They were thumb-sized and milky pale, heads as large as their bodies, with their fluid-filled amniotic sacs billowing about them.
Cadmann came up close to the glass, counting the tiny fingers and toes, gazing at the gently lowered eyelids, the amber umbilicals attached to artificial placentas.
"They're all perfect," Sylvia said. "Every one of them certified perfect, genetically and structurally."
His breath had fogged the glass. He patted her stomach. "Not like Jumbo here, who has to take his chances."
Sylvia drew away from him, face troubled. She shut off the light in the embryo bank. "Cad... if you'd try to be a little nicer to Jumbo's father, things would be easier for all of us."
There was nothing in her face he could feel angry with. His hand still tingled from the contact. "I knew it. A nice trip for old Weyland. Find him a useful job. Then try to civilize him a little, before he gets sent to the outback where he belongs. Cadmann Weyland. First of the Great White Abos."
She shook her head and gave him a hug. "We know things aren't easy for you-but at least you know why you've got problems. Terry just knows that when he thawed out he wasn't quite the same anymore. Terry and Ernst... Carolyn... Alicia... Mary Ann..."
"What? Mary Ann Eisenhower?"
"Well, she's not one of the bad ones."
"She seems-"
"Sure, she's normal. Cad, she lost some brain cells in frozen sleep.
She isn't stupid, but she used to be brilliant, and she remembers, Cad. She and Hendrick Sills were the top bridge players, and they shared a bed too, before we put the colonists to sleep. Tom Eisenhower woke up dead, and Hendrick gets very uncomfortable if he's in the same room with her. He remembers. So Hendrick is with Phyllis now, and Mary Ann cries on Rachel's couch."
Cadmann touched her hand.
"But she's a normal, healthy, sexy woman if you didn't know her before. These changes can be very subtle, Cad. Carolyn McAndrews was second in command to Zack. Nobody wants to work with her now. She didn't turn stupid, but she goes into hysterics."
"And maybe there's a dead place in old Cadmann's brain too."
"Not that we can tell-like I said, you've got reasons to feel out of place. The others just know that the cryogenics weren't perfect. That the nightmares are a little darker. Maybe it isn't quite as easy to remember a favorite poem, or extract a cube root, or run the Twelve-Fourteen Convention in bridge." She paused, and her voice dropped. "Or make love. We don't know what it is yet. It'll be twenty years before we get any answers from Earth. In the meantime, there are mood stabilizers, and make-work projects. And there's hope. Most of us are fine. Our genes are good. We'll do everything humanly possible to keep you on the team. Can you blame us?"
He took her shoulders, gazing down into her eyes. The air was tart with disinfectant and dehumidifier; her perfume was a wisp of citrus and crushed rose petal, the only thing in the ship that smelled alive. "What 'us'? What about-?"
The intercom crackled, and Stu Ellington said, "We've got a message for you, Weyland. Development landside. Something about some chickens."
Sylvia disengaged herself from him gently, triggering the nearest intercom phone with an unsteady finger. Her eyes were still locked to Cadmann's. "D-don't worry. We'll be bringing down more embryos."
"It's not that." It was Bobbi who spoke this time, and her voice was excited. "Mits Kokubun found some tracks." She paused. "They might be tracks, anyway."
"Paw prints?" Sylvia frowned.
"Don't know. Zack said that they just didn't look like anything he'd seen. Wants Cadmann to take a look at them. Soonest."
"Pipe it in."
"They didn't send pictures."
"Think you two can cut your snuggle session down so Stu can give us a ride home?"
Stu groaned massively. "Oh, if I must-"' and dropped off the line.
Cadmann cleared his throat, backing up a half step. "Was there anything else you wanted to show me?"
She retrieved her backpack, fumbled out a handful of dark plastic cartridges and held them before her like a shield. "You've used the computer. You'll be running some programs for me, and I..." Her eyes dropped. "Oh, hell, Cad. I don't know what I wanted. We... I just want everything to work out for you. We don't want you closing up, Cad. I don't want to lose you." Suddenly she seemed very small and awkward. "I love you. You're my friend."
The moment that followed was uncomfortably long and painfully silent. Then Cadmann's lips curled in a smile. "Tell you what. Let's go roust Stu's ass and get a lift home. How's that?"
"Perfect."
The chicken coops were nestled next to the single-story sheet-metal structure of the machine shop, and the ground around them was well trodden. It had never been plowed, and was the same burnt, packed earth that lay beneath most of the Colony.