Mirabile (24 page)

“Who’s proposing to this man, you or me?” I said, at last. Took me a minute to catch my breath, but while I did, they settled down to a dull roar.

“Because I like necking with you better than any other sport known on Mirabile or on Earth, and because you can reasonably out-stubborn me any day,” I said, “I hope you will accept my gift and consider my suit.”

We went through another round of bows and Leo said, “Ann Jason Masmajean, I, Leonov Bellmaker Denness, am sufficiently intrigued to view your gift.”

A cheer went up, followed by shouts of “What is it?” and “Let’s see!” and “

Where is it?” I had to wave them into silence. “It’s not a thing you can put in a pocket,” I said to Aklilu, who was patting at my hip in an exploratory fashion.

“It’s this, Leo: I’m offering to take you on as my apprentice.”

Leo’s jaw dropped practically to his chest. For one horrible moment I thought I’d gotten it wrong, then he said, “Me? You’d let me be a jason?”

“Only if you want. We could use you, Leo. You’ve got expertise we haven’t.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “You’re serious?”

Helluva thing to ask. “As serious as your kangaroo rex courting gift was,“ I said.

”I need somebody to specialize in Mirabilan wildlife. I’ve got the funds for it—ask Chie-Hoon if you doubt me!—all I need is the body.“

Leo spread his arms wide. “This body is all yours.”

That was a load off my mind. I stepped into his embrace.

Behind me, I heard Susan say, “Yup. She got it right,” and I heard Elly’s answering chuckle.

Not everything works out as neatly as you’d like—at least, bats don’t. We took the second batch to RightHere, but it was Bethany we took them to, in private.

“You’ve got a choice to make,” I told her. “You can have Leo’s bell or you can have the bats. You can’t have both in your belfry.”

It was Ilanith who’d discovered it—in her supplementary reading. Despite the guild’s enthusiasm, “bats in the belfry” was not, by Earth-authentic standards, a particularly good thing.

It certainly wasn’t the compliment they’d taken it for. Bats are associated with disused belfries only. Good reason for that: Leo’s bell would deafen the poor things and next thing you know they’d be flying into walls.

“Why are you asking me?” she said. “Seems to me the whole guild—”

“You’re the artist,” I said. “A flock of real bats would, for one thing, cover up the bats you carved into the belfry’s ceiling. If the choice were mine, I’d suggest you build bat boxes all around the town and leave the bell where it is.”

Leo raised an eyebrow at me. “If they’re so set on the bats, the bell can just as well come down.

Or we could take the clapper out.” To Bethany, he added, “I can’t make out whether she’s more
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interested in saving my bell or your carvings. Probably both, if I know her.”

He took my hands in his. “Let’s get the priorities straight. We need the bats. We don’t need the bell.”

“Or the carvings,” Bethany put in. “I’ll put it to the guilds, Annie, but I can tell you right now what the decision will be: bats in the belfry.”

She was right. The only thing made me feel better about it was that they moved Leo’s bell—right to the middle of the town square. There, at least, everybody could—and did—appreciate the work Leo’d put into the design. Leo seemed pleased by it all.

Then we saw the second round of bats settled in their new home. I was still sorry they covered Bethany’s carvings.

Bethany had the damndest expression on her face, though, as if she might break into giggles at any moment. Half an hour later, once we’d gotten away from the guild, she leaned close and said, “Annie, what the hell kind of bats are those? I thought you were bringing us mouse-eared bats.”

I hadn’t expected that from anybody but another jason. As deadpan as I could, I said, “Red bats and yellow bats.”

“Right,” she said, and then she did burst into laughter. “You can’t con me, Annie. I did my research for the bat carvings. Red bats are brown. Yellow bats are brown.

These red bats are poppy red and these yellow bats are dandelion yellow.

And I won’t even bring up the pumpkin orange bats.”

Not bringing up “pumpkin orange” set her to laughing all over again.

When it simmered down a bit, I said, “I had to do something to make them look unappetizing to the stickytoes.”

“Oh!” Bethany’s eyes lit up. “I get it. Nothing in its right mind would mess with a killquick, so you made them killquick colors.”

I nodded. “I won’t tell if you won’t. Other than that, they’re Earth-authentic.”

Leo put an arm around my shoulders. “They’re not Earth-authentic. They’re Mirabilan, like Bethany’s cathedral.”

“Lord, Annie, I won’t say a word,” said Bethany. “They really brighten up the belfry. All that gray stone was a little grim before we moved the bats in. I think your Mirabilan bats are a work of art!”

Better than that, I couldn’t ask for.

Sabah managed to keep his mouth shut too, even though it took some effort.

With only a hint of smile, he (and the rest of his team) admired our Mirabilan bats and stuck to the term despite an occasional outburst of chuckles.

It was Vassily who named them, though. He stared up at the clusters of bats hanging from his mother’s carvings and said, “Oh, wow! Tulip bats!” And from then on nobody called them anything but.

And Leo and I got the privilege of being the first couple to join hands in the new cathedral. So much to-do was made about it that it took us three days at Leo’s cabin out on Loch Moose to recuperate. Elly restricted the kids to the other side of the lake for the duration, bless her, and there was nary a crisis to interfere with our pleasure, though we both suspected that the team had strict instructions not to call us even if there was one.

We were out on the loch at dusk, snuggled together at one end of Leo’s boat, breathing in the night air and simply appreciating the sounds around us in the flickering shadows made by the nova light. And watching the lightning bugs twinkle.

The lightning bugs had been our wedding gift from the team. They’d worked like dogs, and all in secret too, to have some fifty of them to release the night we arrived at Leo’s. Sweetest present.

“There’s one,” said Leo and lifted a hand to point it out to me. The lightning bug blinked closer
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and closer to the boat in its characteristic erratic flight pattern. Real pretty—just like the descriptions I’d read in ships’ records. That was just about all it took to make Loch Moose perfect, as far as I was concerned.

Then I heard a soft flutter of wings, felt a rush of air ruffle my hair and the lightning bug was gone. I sat up, rocking the boat.

“Annie? What—?”

“Damn bat!” I said. “A damn bat ate our lightning bug!”

Leo started to laugh. “You are never satisfied. You wanted something that would eat insects; you got something that would eat insects!”

Well, it was funny when he put it that way. I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. But—“As for never satisfied, you’re wrong about that!” And then to clarify my meaning I kissed him—a lot. Let the damn bats eat the damn lightning bugs. Leo and I had better things to do than worry about the wildlife.

“Tell a scary one tonight, Mama Jason,” Jen commanded,

“How scary?”

She thought it over. “Not too. Not the one—you know.” She drew a finger up her ankle. “Gives me nightmares.” She thought a bit longer, then she said, “Tell the one about how you met Nikolai

.”

“Go ahead, Annie,” said Nikolai. “I haven’t heard your version of that”

Ilanith grinned at him. “Yeah, then Nikolai can tell us how much of it is really true.”

I did my best to look injured. “Would I lie to you?”

“No,” said Ilanith, “but you’d tell us stories.”

“Well,” I said, “every word of this one’s true.”

Raising Cane

« ^ »

So far, it looked like spring as usual. The Cornish hens were hatching everything from chickadees to lizards—with the occasional frog on the side. Two of the ewes at Last Edges had given birth to angora goats. (Susan had taken the lambing off my hands this year. Gave her an excuse to see Janzen. I hadn’t warned her lambing would leave her too exhausted to do more than wave to him in passing, on the way to the next birthing. She’d get me for that when she got back, no doubt.)

Three new stands of forsythia had flowered tulip red. Likewise, an entire field of dandelions had gone red on us, which meant we had to check every one to see what it had in store for us when it seeded.

If they hadn’t been so eye-catching, I doubt a single plant would have lasted out the first flowering.

So it didn’t surprise me much when Lalique Cowboy Imbamba called. Lalique’s in charge of that Guernsey herd we’ve been trying to stabilize for the last thirty years or so. Once we get a decent-sized breeding pool built up, we can parcel them out around the colony for milk and cheese production, not to mention the occasional chop. We want to parcel out cows that pretty consistently produce calves, though, rather than goats or musk oxen or, worst case, Dragon’s Teeth.

The look on Lalique’s face said Dragon’s Teeth. Well, at least it’d be a change from grubbing in the dandelion genes. I’d gotten to the point where I was doing gene-reads in my sleep—and they
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were all dandelion.

“Give me the worst,” I said. “I could use the change.”

“Uh, Annie? It’s complicated. Let me tell you the calving results first, okay?”

Okay by me. I told the lab computer to save the rest of the dandelion gene-reads for later and nodded to Lalique’s image. Then I hauled up a chair and settled in to listen.

“We’ve had thirty-four live births so far. Only three stillbirths. Of the three stillbirths, two were genuine calves, the third was a Dragon’s Tooth.”

“Not a viable Dragon’s Tooth, then,” I said. “What’s the tally on the live births?”

“Calves—every last one of them. Except—”

Here it comes, I thought. Tell you the truth, I was looking forward to it.

“Except two of them were so underdeveloped that we’re bottle-feeding them.

When I did the gene-read on them, it turned out they were some kind of cow other than Guernsey. Both mothers birthed them prematurely, even though they were the same size as the rest of the calves.”

Could have been worse. I had her shoot me copies of the gene-reads for the new batch of calves so far. Printed ‘em up hard copy for the luxury of it. (Paper—now that’s one we owe to the thoughtfulness of whoever back on Earth included kudzu genes in the honeysuckle.) At first glance, there was nothing on paper worth the frown she’d been frowning.

When I looked back at Lalique’s image to see if the frown was still that bad it went from bad to worse.

Her finger all but jabbed out of the screen, pointing somewhere behind me, and she shouted,

“Annie, look out!”

I dodged and turned at the same time. Neither action saved me from a blast of foul breath in the face and a “GRONK!” in both ears that nearly deafened me.

“Gronk to you, too,” I said, when I’d gotten my breath back. It was only Mabob.

Mabob was so pleased I’d talked its language that it rattled its scales all over and let out a second airhorn gronk

!

A faint “Annie?” from the screen reminded me that Lalique didn’t know it was

“only” Mabob. I turned back. “Nothing to worry about, Lalique,” I said, then I bellowed for Leo.

“What the hell is it?” Lalique wanted to know.

I took a look at “it” from her point of view. It was over three feet tall and had a beak that could probably take your hand off at a snap. If you’ve seen parrots in ships’ records, think of it as an oversized parrot without the wings. Or better still, a dodo—same outsized head on a stubby body. And then forget all about birds, because it isn’t.

Its scales (which are actually fur fused hard as chiton, like a pangolin’s) were striped—that they were all shades of green didn’t keep them from clashing with each other. On the top of its head the fur was unfused and actually fur-like to the touch, but it stood out in spikes, as if the thing had just stuck one of its talons into the electric wiring. The eyes (and I mean the whole eye, not just the pupil) were pumpkin orange, which didn’t help its looks any.

Come to think of it, nothing would help its looks any— probably Lalique was seeing the Giant Killer Bird, straight out of her granddaddy’s scariest tale.

At the moment, it was peering around my shoulder, both orange eyeballs popped and fixed on Lalique’s image in utter fascination.

“It’s not a bird,” I said. “Lalique, meet Mabob. That’s short for Thingamabob.

You know Leo hired on with us to study the Mirabilan wildlife? Well, he brought this one home
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as an egg. Mabob, this is Lalique.”

“Uh,” said Lalique. “Hi, Mabob.”

“GRONK!” said Mabob, rattling his scales happily. The image may not have smelled human, but being talked to was good enough for Mabob.

“Leo!” I bellowed again, with Mabob taking up the call for Leo enthusiastically.

“Come collect this damn thing! You promised me you’d keep it out of the lab,” I finished, as Leo opened the door.

“I didn’t let him in,” Leo said. “Somebody must have left the door unlatched.

Sorry. I’ll get him out of your hair.” Leo let out a gronk that pretty much lived up to Mabob’s decibel level, and Mabob charged out to greet him at the same level.

“Annie,” said Lalique, “that’s weird!”

I couldn’t help but grin at her. “Any weirder than a cow?”

She grinned back. “Not when you stop to think about it, no.”

I nodded to her. “Now, tell me what the problem is. I don’t see anything unusual in this,” I said, flapping the hard copy at her.

“Is it possible for cows to, uh, give birth to seeds that grow plants?”

“Technically, yes.” I looked at the hard copy again. She’d only given me the gene-reads on the calves, not the cows that had birthed them. “I’d need the gene-reads on the cows in question to say for sure.”

Before she could volunteer to get the cell samples and analyze them herself, I added, “Tell you what—I’ll come up for a look-see.”