Mirabile (10 page)

All it did was lean back on its tail and scratch the area with a forepaw, for all the world like a human slob.

Very slowly, I reeled in the sample. (I’ve startled too many creatures reeling in samples not to be aware of that problem.) Once I had it, I stashed it in my pack, reloaded, and popped a second roo, this time a male—all chest and shoulders, a good seven-footer. If the rexes got that big, I would be awfully hard put to convince anybody they should be kept.

Not that it looked menacing now. It was lying belly-up in the deep shade, with its feet in the air.

Just now, it looked like a stuffed toy some kid had dropped.

I knew better: Mike had gotten into an altercation with a red that size once, and it had taken 341

stitches to repair the damage.

Roos use their claws to dig for edible roots. They panic, those claws’ll do just as efficient a job digging holes in your face.

Two sampled. I figured the best thing to do was keep sampling as long as I could. I got eleven more without incident. Then I almost walked into the fourteenth.

Its head jerked up from the vie-sans-joie it and its joey were browsing. The joey dived headfirst into mama’s pouch.

I knew it was all over, so I shot the sampler at the mother point-blank, as the joey somersaulted within her pouch to stare at me wide-eyed between its own hind feet.

Mamma took off like a shot.

Next thing I knew, the chatterboxes were in the air, dead silent except for the sound of their wings, and every kangaroo was bounding every which way.

Janzen and Leo were on their feet in the same moment, dragging Sangster to hers as well. Less chance of being jumped on if the roos were stampeding away from you. Leo bellowed at them, just to make sure.

Trouble is, you can’t count on a roo to do anything but be the damn dumb creature it is—so three of them headed straight for Leo and company.

Janzen dived left. Still bellowing, Leo dived right. And there stood Sangster, right in the middle, unable to pick a direction. She took one step left, a second right—that little dance that people do in the street just before they bump into each other.

Striped Rump was still aimed straight for her.

I raised my shotgun and aimed for Striped Rump. “No, Annie!” Leo shouted. But I was thinking of Mike—I sighted.

Three things happened at once: Leo hooked a foot at Sangster’s ankle and jerked her out of the path of the roo, Janzen bellowed louder than ever I’d heard Leo manage, and I squeezed the trigger.

Striped Rump touched one toe to the ground and reversed direction in mid-leap.

My shot passed over its shoulder as it bounded away from Sangster. By the time the shot had finished echoing off the rocks, there wasn’t a roo to be seen anywhere.

I charged over to where Leo was picking Sangster up and dusting her off. Polite full-body-check, that was. From his nod, she was just fine, so I spared a glance for Janzen, who seemed likewise.

“Dammit, woman!” Leo said. “What happened to ‘Don’t shoot unless it’s absolutely necessary’?

That was your likeliest prospect.”

“The hell with you, Leo. You’ve never seen anybody mangled by a roo.” It came out tired. The adrenaline rush was gone and the heat was suddenly unbearable. “I’m not in the mood to be scolded right now. You can do it later, when I’m ready to thank you for saving old Striped Rump.”

I glared at Sangster. “If you’re fit to travel, I vote we get the hell out of this sun and let me process my samples.”

She opened her mouth, a little round “o” of a shape, as if to say something. Then she just nodded.

We slogged our way back across the sheep range. By the time we reached the shade of Janzen’s digs, I was unpissed enough to growl at Leo, “What’s a mint julep? Maybe I could use one.”

Leo shot a sidelong glance at Janzen, who grinned and said, “You know I keep the mixings. You also know you’re all welcome to stay at my place.” He cocked his head slightly to the side, “If you don’t tell Susan what an idiot I am.”

“We’ll let her find out on her own,” Leo said.

Which settled that—and us as well.

I was almost into the welcome shade of Janzen’s house when Sangster grabbed at my arm. I turned—the look on her face was downright ferocious. Here it comes again, I thought. Death to the kangaroo rex!

Instead, she demanded, “Why?” That ferocious look was still there.

I blinked. “Why what

, dammit?”

“Why did you shoot at that damned roo?”

Some people just don’t get it, ever. I shook my head and sighed. “Humans are the most endangered species on Mirabile,” I said, “and you want to know why I fired?”

That was all I had the patience for. I turned on my heel, yanked away from her, and fairly dived into the coolness of Janzen’s house, letting the door slam behind me as my final word on the subject.

The mint julep improved my outlook no end, so I keyed into Janzen’s computer (rank hath its privileges) and entered the samples I’d picked up. While I was waiting for my readout, I checked my office files to see what the rest of the team had come up with.

First thing I got was a real pretty schematic of my kangaroo rex. It was an even neater bit of engineering than I’d thought at first—the teeth at the side of the jaws (they were two inches long!) worked across each other, like butchers’ shears. What with the 180-degree jaw span, that would give it an awesome ability to shear bone.

Sheep bone was well within its capabilities.

That still didn’t mean it ate sheep, but it didn’t help the cause any.

Next I got the gene-reads on the secondary helices. Didn’t recognize either worth a damn.

Neither had Chie-Hoon, because there was a note appended that said simply, “Annie: Sorry, neither of these looks familiar to me. We’re checking them against ships’ records now. Let you know what we find.”

That’d be sometime the next day. A search and match takes entirely too much time, always assuming that there is a match. Lord only knew what was in those portions of ships’ records we’d lost in transit.

The gene-read on Striped Rump was about what I’d expected, just a few twists off normal red kangaroo.

“Roo stew?” said a voice behind me.

“Sure,” I said, without looking up, “still perfectly edible, despite those.” I tapped the offending genes on the monitor.

“Janzen,” said Leo’s voice, “No point talking to her when she’s reading genes.

She’s not talking about the same thing you are.”

That was enough to make me turn away from the screen. I looked at Janzen.

“Sorry,” I said, “What was it you wanted to know?”

“I just asked if you’d mind having roo stew for dinner. I intend to eat a lot of roo while I still have the option.”

“Say yes, Annie.” That was Leo again. “Janzen and Moustafa make the best roo stew I’ve ever had. Even Chris couldn’t beat their recipe.”

“That’s some recommendation! Can I get in on this?” That was Susan. “I put the sheep samples in the truck, Mama Jason; all set for in vitro in case we need them. Is that your rex breeder?

Sangster won’t talk about what you guys found. What did you do to her? Threaten her with a corn crop that sprouts cockroaches?”

“One thing at a time,” I said. “Janzen, yes, thank you. I’m extremely fond of roo myself. Will there be enough for Susan too, or shall I make her eat rations?”

Susan threatened to punch me. Janzen grinned at her and said, “Plenty enough, Susan. Now I know why Leo wants to hook up with Annie. Just his type.”

To change the subject, I tapped the monitor again and said, “That’s our most likely candidate for rex breeder. I was just about to check for secondary helices.

You can watch over my shoulder, unless you want to watch how Janzen and Moustafa make stew. The recipe’d make a good birthday present for Chris…?”

Susan looked horribly torn for a brief moment. Janzen grinned at her again and said, “I’ll write out our recipe for you, Susan. You stick here and tell me what I need to know about the kangaroo rexes.” The kid had a lot in common with his granddad.

While Susan pulled up a chair, I turned back to the monitor and started reading genes again.

Yup, there was a secondary helix, all right. I split the screen, called up the gene-read on my kangaroo rex, and compared the two. No doubt about it.

“Thanks for saving old Striped Rump, Leo. She’s it.”

I stored that to send back to the lab and called up the next sample. “Let’s see how many other rex breeders we’ve got.”

By the time Moustafa dished out the roo stew, I’d found two more rex breeders in the sample of thirteen. And they were all remarkably consistent about it. “Hell,” said Leo.

“Not exactly, Noisy,” Susan said. “That means most likely the kangaroo rex is an intermediate for an Earth-authentic.”

I was momentarily more interested in the stew than in anything else. It lived up to
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Leo’s billing. I was still trying to place the spices Janzen and Moustafa used when Leo laid a hand on my arm to get my attention. “Mmmph?” I said, through a mouthful.

“You’ve got to train your assistants to use less jargon,” he said.

I scooped up another forkful of stew and simply eyed Susan.

“Ooops,” she said. “Sorry, Noisy. A true Dragon’s Tooth is usually a chimera—bits and pieces of the genetic material of two very different species. Even a plant-animal combination’s possible.

But it’s not consistent.

“If we’ve got three roos that are going to at some time produce rexes, all of which are close enough genetically to interbreed, then most likely it’s not a Dragon’s Tooth. Most likely it’s the first visible step on the chain up to another Earth-authentic.” She waited anxiously to see if he’d gotten it this time. When he nodded, she dived back into her own dinner. “Great stew, Moustafa, Janzen. I’d sure hate it if we have to kill off the roos.”

“Any idea just how big the roo population is?” I asked the two local kids.

They exchanged a glance. Moustafa said, “Couple hundred, maybe. It never occurred to me to count.”

Janzen shook his head, meaning it hadn’t occurred to him either, then he said, “You can get some idea after dinner. Once the sun goes down, most of them will be out in the pasture, browsing. If it were crops we were raising instead of sheep, they’d be a much bigger nuisance than they are now.”

Susan raised a querying brow at him.

“Given any kind of a choice, the roos prefer their food tender, which means they go for young shoots. That’d play havoc with any food crop. Sheep will browse tough stuff that’s inedible to most Earth-authentics, and they’ll do it right down to the ground.”

“Yeah,” said Moustafa, “and they’re too stupid to know what’s poisonous and what isn’t.”

That reminded me. “Excuse me a minute,” I said, but I took my bowl of stew with me while I went to the computer to call up the home team.

I got Mike, which was good luck, and there were no emergencies in the offing, which was better.

“I need an EC workup on Gogol. Can you get me one by tomorrow evening?” At his look, I said, “It doesn’t have to be complete. Just a preliminary. Quick and dirty is fine. We’ll do a complete if anything interesting shows up.” His look hadn’t improved, so I added, “Take Selima. With two of you, it’ll go faster and won’t be quite as dirty.”

That fixed the look right up. Ah, young love… ain’t it handy? “Anything new I should know about?”

“Yeah.” This time he grinned. “Your kangaroo rex didn’t recognize lamb as edible.”

Behind me, someone said, “All right!” on a note of triumph. I ignored that to eye Mike suspiciously. When he said nothing further, I voiced his implied, “But…?”

“But it could learn that trick. Right now its idea of superb cuisine is chatterboxes, grubroots, and gladrats.”

Interesting. Those were all Mirabilan, and all pests from our point of view.

“That’s certainly in its favor,” I said. “They’re all of a size too—nowhere near the size of sheep.”

“Means nothing. There’s only one rex on the premises. Who knows what size prey a mob of them will take on.”

“I know,” I said, “but that gives me more breathing space here.” I thought about it a moment then got an inspiration. “Mike? Try it on those damn jumping fish next time it looks hungry.”

That brought a grin from Mike. “Annie,” he said, “our luck’s not that good this summer.

Besides, the rexes wouldn’t do well in that EC.”

“Just try it. And shoot me that EC report as soon as you can.” I broke the connection, picked up my bowl, and—still thinking about it—headed back for the dinner table. I almost ran Leo down.

I looked around me. The whole troop had been looking over my shoulder. “Sit,” I said, “my apologies. We will now give the stew the attention it deserves.”

Which we did, and when we were done, it was time for Janzen and Moustafa to see to their sheep for the evening… and for me and Leo to place ourselves strategically in the fields to see how many roos showed up to browse—and how many of them were breeding rexes.

We ran into half a dozen of the locals and enlisted three. Susan dug out two more samplers, but those went to Leo and Susan herself. (We’re short on equipment. I put that on the docket for winter, making more samplers or finding somebody who wanted the job.)

Sangster was nowhere to be seen. Despite Susan’s earlier comment, I had no doubt she was off somewhere raising the level of hysteria. I could have kicked myself for not dragging Sangster in with us that afternoon, just to keep her out of trouble.

It would have been a lovely evening for hanky-panky. Too bad Leo was on the opposite edge of the field. With the sun going down, there was a bit of nip in the air.

Dew had started to condense and I was wet to the knees, but I laid out a bit of tarp to sit on and to drag around my shoulders and settled down to count roos.

They weren’t much worried about humans, as it turned out. At the moment, that was a plus. If the rexes had the same inclination, though, it would be just one more thing to worry about.

Susan I’d stationed roughly in eyeshot—at least, with the help of a good flashlight. But pretty soon I was so busy taking samples, that I had no time for more than an occasional check on her.