Mirabile (17 page)

A perfectly brilliant thought struck me. “Conditions like fire?” I suggested.

From the expression on Susan’s face, she thought it was a brilliant idea, too. “I’ll get you some,”

she said. She threw her arms around the ballyhoo’s trunk and tried to shinny up it. Her first start was a failure. “Gimme a boost, somebody.”

Pallab did, but the result was that Susan was Pallab’s height up the trunk when the bark shredded and sent her sliding down in a shower of fibers. “It thought it only did that after the bark had burned,” she said dourly.

I couldn’t help it. I pointed at the duff on the forest floor. Ninety percent of it had that same fibrous look.

“That’s some fire hazard,” she said, as she realized what was under her bottom.

“Makes a good pillow, though.” She got up, brushing herself off, and glared a bit more at the tree. “I’m still gonna get one of those seedpods,” she told it. “Mama Jason, I’m borrowing Jongshik, Pallab, and the hovercraft.”

Jongshik and Pallab looked at each other. Susan fixed them with a steely eye and added, “You can sit on opposite sides. I need you both to lean out the windows, anyway.” Again she looked at me.

“Be my guest,” I said.

She gave the ballyhoo tree one last hairy eyeball, then stomped off towards the hovercraft trailing Pallab and Jongshik.

Leo said, “Never volunteer.”

“If anybody can coax a hovercraft high enough to get those samples, it’s Susan.

You haven’t ridden with her lately, have you?”

“Just a few days ago. Hair raising—but I assumed that was due to the urgency of the situation.”

He frowned. “Is that a good idea?”

“Letting her try? Sure. She’ll be careful. She knows what I’d do to her if she weren’t.”

We took advantage of the opportunity to neck a bit, at least until we heard the hovercraft head in our direction. We broke our clinch just as Susan skimmed by us and shouted out the window,

“There’s smoke to the west, Mama Jason! About twenty miles!”

“Call it in and check it out!” I shouted back over the motor’s roar. The hovercraft dipped once—Susan’s way of nodding without risking her voice further—and headed off.

Leo squinted west. What with trees, neither of us could see anything much, but he was obviously getting an internal fix. “No towns in that area. If I remember correctly, there’s one farm. I don’t remember if they’re raising any of your specialty items…

Lady’s name was Ommanney?”

That did ring a bell. “Experimental farm. She’s trying to domesticate half a dozen kinds of Mirabilan animals. At least we won’t have to worry about getting them back into a suitable EC.”

Which was something of a relief.

I gave Leo’s shoulders a last hug and said, “Come on. Let’s get the rest of the sampling done, so we’re ready to go when Susan gets back. I’ve got a long night of gene-reads ahead of me.”

We got back to work. Couldn’t have been but ten minutes later, Leo called out, “Annie? Come tell me if I’m crazy…”

“I don’t have to,” I said, “I know you are.”

“Annie.”

The tone was different this time. I headed over to where he was bent over a sample. “I’ve got that one,” I said. It was the stubborn one with the runner.

“Feel it,” he said. The tone was still strange.

Puzzled, I bent down, held out a finger. Leo took my finger and laid it on the base of the plant.

It was warm. I thought for a moment that was only from his body heat, but then I realized it was warmer than body heat. I closed my palm around the base.

Yeah, definitely warmer than body heat—and the temperature was rising.

“You’re not crazy,” I said. “Grab a shovel. I want this one alive. We can put it in one of the soil sample cases. Selima will have a field day with it.“

Leo looked at me as if I were the crazy one. “Annie, that plant is warm! Either it’s not warm or it’s not a plant.”

“Wrong.” I couldn’t help grinning. “There are Earth-authentics that do that. Plants that put out heat. Thermogenic, they call ’em.”

We hacked through the runner and shoveled plant and soil into a case, Leo still casting a suspicious eye at me.

“Selima came across them in ships’ records,” I said. “They’re something of a hobby with her.

She’ll love this—she’s never had a live one to play with. Just the records.” I leaned on the end of the shovel, trying to pull the names out of memory.

“One was an arum, I remember. Earth-authentic. The other—hang on a minute—was a philodendron.”

“But why would a plant…?”

“Selima couldn’t come up with an answer either. Ships’ records suggested the heat was a way of attracting pollinators. One of them was supposed to smell like rotten meat.” Leo bent for a sniff of our potted sample, shook his head. I had to laugh. “Leo, how would you know what smells good to a Mirabilan pollinator?” He grinned and shrugged.

“As I say, Selima will have a field day with a live specimen to play with. One of the
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Earth-authentics supposedly had the metabolism rate of a hummingbird.”

“I believe that,” Leo said. He held the flat of his hand a few inches from the plant.

“This one’s certainly working overtime. I can feel the heat from here now!”

I felt my brow knit. I don’t remember thinking at all, I just remember reacting—I shoved Leo back from the plant, hard enough that he sprawled.

“Hey!” he said, then “Hey! Holy sh—!” as the pot burst into flames.

I laid into it with the flat of the shovel. Beating the flames out wasn’t easy. Half the soil we’d potted it with was duff and at least two inches of that was shredded bark from the ballyhoos.

Leo kept busy making sure none of the sparks reached the ground around the pot.

When we were sure it was out, I remembered to apologize for the shove. Along with the apology, I gave him the full-body check. He returned the favor.

Then I dug through the samples looking for the other specimens of that little goodie I’d collected. “Leo, call for a pickup, will you? This is not a safe place to hang around.”

He overlapped. He was already on the hand unit doing just that. “Susan’s on her way back,” he said.

The uprooted specimens showed no change in temperature. “At least my backpack isn’t about to go up,” I said. “Jongshik’s not our arsonist. And he was close to right when he claimed he saw a plant burst into flames.”

I went back for another look at what was left in the pot. “The plant set fire to the duff. Easy to mistake that for the plant itself bursting into flame.” I poked around at the remains. “I wonder if the plant survives the fires it sets. I can’t tell for sure. I wish I hadn’t hit it so enthusiastically. There’s not much left.” “

That’s our arsonist?”

“If it’s not, one of us is a pyrotic. Have you been setting fires telepathically?”

“Not since I got religion. Which was about five minutes ago.” He contemplated the smashed remains of the plant. “Annie? What say we chop down the rest of those while we’re waiting for Susan? The one in your pack isn’t hot…”

I got the gist. I didn’t know if leaving the root left us vulnerable, but it was something to do and it was revenge of a sort, so it felt satisfying.

“Oh, good, there’s the hover,” said Leo, straightening and turning toward the sound. Only the sound wasn’t the sound of a hovercraft. A moment later, I knew he knew that as well as I did—from the look in his eyes.

It was the sound of fire, headed our way. “We’ve got a fire headed our way,”

Leo said into the hand unit. “Marking our position now. Get somebody in to pick us up fast!

We’ll leave the transponder on permanent mark and we’ll head for the hills.“

“Hills?” I said.

Leo pointed north. “I opened this territory, remember? Rocky hills that way.

Nothing on them to burn.”

I couldn’t see the fire, but I could smell smoke now. “Let’s go,” I said. I dropped my pack, and we both lit out in a run.

Seemed like we ran forever. The roar of the fire was good incentive but neither one of us is young and—adrenaline or no adrenaline—our flat-out run wasn’t good enough.

The dense undergrowth had given way to more-or-less grassland. It might have made the running easier, but it meant we could see what we were up against—at least, those rare moments when the gusting wind cleared the smoke from our eyes.

We crested a small rise and suddenly got a clear view of the way ahead. Leo was waiting for me at the top, which made me realize I was lagging behind, holding him back.

He flung out a hand to show me where we were headed, a chunk of rock sitting in the middle of the savannah. He was right: it would have been a good refuge from the flames. Dozens of
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animals had already sought its safety.

But in that moment I saw we weren’t going to make it. The wind was even now blowing the fire across our path. If we’d been thirty years younger, we still couldn’t have made it across that plain before the fire swept it.

Leo turned to me and I could see by the look in his eyes that he knew it just as well as I did.

“Next suggestion?” I said.

He took me in his arms and kissed me, putting just about everything into that kiss.

Then he leaned me back just a little, just to seeing and talking distance. “Annie, I love you. Marry me.”

Under the circumstances, I couldn’t think of much to say to that. The wind was ferocious; I could feel the heat of the fire.

Since I didn’t answer, he gave me a second kiss, as if that might convince me.

Then he pulled the hand unit out of his pocket and said into it, “I want a witness to a marriage agreement. I want a witness now!”

“You’re on, Leo. Go,” said the hand unit. I could barely make out the words over the sound of the fire, but it was enough to turn me stubborn.

“Marry you!” I said, “I haven’t even given you a courting present yet!”

“Under the circumstances,” said Leo, with a nod at the flames some two hundred yards from us,

“I’ll pass on the courting present.”

“Well, dammit, I

won’t

. I’m too old-fashioned to change my ways at this point.”

The wind had changed again. The head fire was aimed straight at us. The slope of the crest gave us a view of the devastation behind the rush of flames.

“I get married,” I said, “I’m gonna do it proper, you damn fool. Now, come on.

I’ll race you. Last one through buys the wine for the wedding.”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him back into a run. I’d challenged him to a race but I had no intention of leaving him behind. As long as I held his hand, I knew he’d stick with me.

Down the slope we charged, hand in hand, directly into the smoke and into the flames. I’d made out the head fire to be some twenty yards across—it was the longest twenty yards I’ve ever done in my life.

. Neither of us could see; we were running as straight a line as Leo or I ever could. Couldn’t breathe worth a damn because every time I opened my mouth I got a lungful of searing heat.

Burning brands struck us on all sides. I could tell my hair was on fire but I wasn’t about to stop to put it out.

Once Leo stumbled, but I grabbed with my free hand and kept him up and running.

And then, miraculously, I was running on cooling ash. I couldn’t slow yet. I beat at my hair.

Burned my hand some, but got my hair put out.

It was Leo who pulled us both to a halt. “Annie,” he said, gasping, “we made it through. We can stop now.”

The words flicked a switch. My knees gave way and I hit the ground hard. Leo dropped beside me on one hand.

“Ouch!” He lifted the hand and knelt instead. “Watch out, Annie. The ground’s littered with embers.”

“Find yourself a cool spot and sit,” I said.

He did. The cool spot he found was close enough that I could lean against him, so I did.

We sat like that for a long time, simply appreciating each other’s company. Once in a while, we had to fling a burning brand away from us, but it was otherwise peaceful. Even the roar of the fire seemed like so much white noise.

A pack of grumblers, maybe the same one for all I knew, foraged in the burned ground behind us. Must have been a river somewhere nearby, for they were coming up with what looked like hopfish cysts. I watched them for a while. What we’d always taken for ornamental whiskers seemed to be much more than that—some kind of heat-sensing organ. They didn’t burn themselves once. That would be an interesting thing to look into— later, when I’d caught my breath.

The sound of the fire gradually receded into the distance. The wind swirled hot ash around us, but all things considered we had a peaceful spot to rest our aching bones.

Then Leo said, “Listen!”

For one horrible moment, I thought there was another fire behind us. But there was nothing left to burn. It was the sound of a hovercraft.

Leo cursed. “I dropped the hand unit,” he said. “They don’t know where to find us.” He cursed quite a bit more.

Finally I couldn’t stand it. I gave him a big kiss to shut him up and said, “You’re the scout, Leo.

You can walk us out of here if need be. What the hell are you so irate about?”

I got to my feet and started waving my hands. Leo, no longer cursing, but grinning through a crust of grit and grime, stood up and did likewise.

Minutes after we spotted the hovercraft, the hovercraft spotted us. It put down in a great cloud of ash and ember. A second after that Susan nearly bowled me over in her rush to a hug.

Tears were pouring down her cheeks. I don’t know as I’ve ever seen her in such a state, not even when she was a small child. “Oh, Mama Jason! We all thought you were dead. You were right in the middle of the fire… and the hand unit stopped transmitting… We all thought you were dead! Oh, Noisy!” With that wail, she gave

Leo just as bowl-over a hug as she’d given me.

Jongshik broke up the party. “Let’s get them back to town. Those burns need treating.”

Susan burst into tears all over again, but that didn’t stop her from hustling us into the hovercraft and heading back to town at well beyond the speed I’d have thought possible from a hovercraft.