Mirabile (28 page)

To her, at least.

“Nope,” I said. “It’s not. That one’s purely Mirabilan. Which is why I brought my Mirabilan expert along.” I nodded at Leo and got back to my stew.

“But, Annie, it can’t be Mirabilan,” Lalique said.

So I asked Leo’s question for him. “Why not?”

“Because it wasn’t here before we settled here, that’s why not.” She pushed away from the table and darted into the next room. Over her shoulder, she called, “I can prove it.”

Leo raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged and took the opportunity to finish my stew. If Lalique had a bee in her bonnet, it sure as hell wasn’t an Earth-authentic one.

When she came back, she was struggling under the weight of three enormous books. Leo hastily shoved the stew bowls aside and made a place for her to thump them down between us.

“Granddaddy Renzo’s ‘botanizing’ books,” she said. “See for yourself.”

I was impressed already. The volumes were hand bound. You could see the love that had gone into the work. I was almost afraid to breathe on them, let alone touch them. Lalique must have seen that in my expression, because she chuckled and said, “Built to last, Annie. Go ahead.

They’re not fragile.”

Even so, I couldn’t help but treat ’em with the respect they deserved. I opened the top one at random and found myself face to face with a sketch of a stick-me-quick plant, from the highest burr to most delicate bits of its root system. A

smaller sketch to the right showed the flower, from three different angles. To the left, another sketch showed a cutaway of one of the burrs and a cutaway of one of the flowers. The drawing was so meticulous that anyone could have identified a living example from its sketch without the slightest doubt or hesitation.

I whistled my admiration and turned the page. Handwritten, this one was—neat and clear—and the text was as meticulous as the sketches had been.

“STICK-ME-QUICK,” it read, “called ‘the nasties’ in the town of Gogol. Grows only in areas with a great deal of sunlight.”

It went on for a full page about the habits (time of year it flowered, time of year it seeded) and needs (sunlight, speculation on lime in soil) of the stick-me-quick, even to including a list of the animals (Mirabilan and

Gaian) Lalique’s granddaddy had seen carrying the burrs. Last on the list was “Humans.” Right all the way. I’d picked enough of the damn things out of my hide to sympathize. Bet Renzo had found that out the same way the rest of us had.

I turned another page. The next sketch was a small flowering plant I’d never seen.

The text on the following page included a note that crushed leaves from this one were a very effective salve for burns.

I’d’ve been just as happy to spend the rest of the evening leafing through the volumes. Luckily, there were more than one so I didn’t have to fight Leo for possession.

“I’ve got seventy-five years’ worth of botanizing books, Annie,” Lalique said.

“Renzo was a completist. Orlando took up the hobby as well and, between them, they covered the island. They even included any Earth-authentics that showed up.”

She pulled out the bottom volume to show me some of Orlando’s work. It was a slightly different style but just as meticulous.

She closed the book and slapped the cover. “That’s why the canes have got to be Dragon’s Teeth. There isn’t a sign of one until after we started raising cattle here.”

Opening the volume again, she scanned the index, then displayed a page. There was the cane.

The sketch was Renzo’s work. “First I’ve seen,” read the notes. “I looked for more but haven’t found any.” It was dated some twenty-five years back.

While Leo and I read the rest of it (it included five pages of sketches of the various things granddaddy had found stuck to the canes), Lalique opened yet another of the volumes.

“Twenty-five years ago,” she said, “there was one cane. Twenty years ago, there were four.” She thrust the open volume at us for proof. “Now, they’re all over the place. And the only other new thing on Haffenhaff is the Guernseys!”

“Doesn’t mean they’re related.” I laid the volumes aside— would have done so grudgingly if Leo hadn’t been so eager to get them all to himself—and went to the computer. “Give a look at the gene-read. See for yourself.”

While I called up the gene-read I’d done on the canes, the household was starting to revive around us. Brehani and Villamil peered over my shoulder at the monitor until Lalique shooed them off to eat. It was Orlando who said it though—he took one look at the gene-read on the screen and said, “Well, that’s not Earth-authentic…

whatever it is.”

“That’s your canebrake,” I said.

“Damn! So how’d they get here—swim? And why hasn’t anybody else I’ve asked seen one?”

Orlando turned and said to Mabob, “Good god! You’re real! I thought I’d dreamed you!”

Mabob whistled and rattled; it was a lot like static in the background.

“Maybe they floated,” I said. “Or they might have been spread by, oh, chatterboxes. We’ll have to take a closer look at their seeding habits before we can make any kind of a guess.” I reached out to show Orlando where to scratch Mabob for best results. “It is odd that nobody’s seen one before—did you mean that?”

Orlando took over scratching Mabob. “Maybe it’s not so odd, Annie. I’ve never seen one of him before either.”

“Lots of them—huge flocks of them—out by Roaring Falls,” said Leo. Then he added, “But, you know, Annie, I’ve never seen canes like those before either. And I’ve probably seen more of Mirabile than most people will ever expect to.”

“Except maybe me,” said Nikolai. He was heaping stew into his bowl. “Tell you the truth, Leo: I’ve never seen any of those canes before either. I’d’ve bet anything they were Earth imports.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, of course, just that they’re certainly not common. They’re not the sort of thing you’d forget—not after they’ve stripped hide off you, anyhow.”

That reminded me. “Speaking of stripping hide off—Lalique, Orlando, somebody, tell me: Why in hell aren’t these botanizing books in ships’ files?”

Orlando blinked at me. “It’s just a hobby, Annie. Granddaddy Renzo taught me when I was a
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kid. It’s just something we do for the fun of it.”

Hopeless. I shook my head, wishing I could get Mabob to give him one good gronk, rotten breath and all. “Right. It’s a hobby. You do for fun what Leo gets paid to do—”

“Also for fun,” Leo put in. “But Annie’s right, Orlando. Every one of these books is worth its weight in gold to me. All this information ought to be in ships’

records.” He glanced at me. “Think we can get funds from Sabah for him?”

“Wait a minute!” That was Orlando again. “No, Leo. No, Annie. You want to turn it into a job.

I won’t have that. Take the information, fine. Load it into ships’ files, also fine, but I won’t have my hobby spoiled.”

Savitri, who was all of eleven, and consequently already recovered from the ordeal of calving, said, “I could load them into ships’ files.” She looked up at Orlando. “I can’t draw like you and great-granddaddy Renzo—loading your pictures in could be my hobby. I’d like that!”

Orlando laid a hand on Savitri’s shoulder and smiled big. “It’s settled then, Annie. My hobby is sketching, and Savitri’s is loading.”

“I take it,” I said to Savitri, “that getting paid for the work would spoil your hobby too?”

She nodded solemnly.

“Expected as much,” I said. “Like father, like daughter.” That got me a matched set of smiles.

“But there’s something else I need done as well—and since it’s not part of the hobby, you might consider asking a piece-work fee. If you’re willing to do it.”

“Tell me what it is.”

Sensible kid. Find out what’s up before you commit yourself. “I also need a gene-read for each and every plant in the botanizing books. Means you’d have to collect a sample of each one and run it through the analyzer and add that to ships’

files as well.”

Her eyes went wide. “You mean, be a jason? Like you?”

“An assistant jason, for a start. Leo can show you how to use the analyzer. If it turns out you’re good at it, I can always use another jason on the team.”

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she plucked at Orlando’s sleeve. He leaned over and the two of them held a whispered conversation. I tried to keep deadpan, but with everybody else in the room grinning I didn’t stand a chance.

A moment later, they broke the huddle, grinning themselves.

“Okay,” said Savitri. “I’ve decided. It’s a hobby for now. But if I’m good at it, Annie, then I get to be a jason and you get to pay me.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “Shake on the deal.” We did. I turned to Leo and said, “You just got yourself seventy-five years worth of research and an assistant, to boot.”

“It’s about time,” said Leo. “You can’t expect me to handle the whole planet by myself.”

He could handle teaching Savitri how to use the analyzer, though, and he was clearly loving every minute of it, too. Nothing beats the feeling of having learned a thing so well you can pass it on.

Unless it’s maybe watching somebody you’ve taught teach the next one—too bad Susan wasn’t around to see him.

Meanwhile, I got the grand tour of the fossil collection. Made me start grumbling about hopelessness all over again. To Nikolai, I said, “And why isn’t all this in ships’ files? Do I have to hold everybody’s hand around here?”

Nikolai chuckled. If I hadn’t seen him do it, I’d have misheard it for Leo’s chuckle and I just about forgave him right there. But not quite.

“I haven’t had the time, Annie. I scarcely get enough time off to dig for them, let alone—”

“Right. You get savaged by a pack of grumblers your next trip out and all that
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information in that thick skull”—I tapped him, none to gently, just behind the ear—“is gone forever. Now, what kind of notes have you got on all this?”

“Private file on the computer. Sketchy notes.”

I must’ve growled. He held up both hands, just like Leo does when I give him the same look.

“Okay. I’ll dump my private file to ships’ files first thing in the morning.”

“And…?” I got a look for that. Seems like I’ve got to spell everything out for this crowd. “And you will also read through the notes, adding explanatory glosses wherever they’re needed.”

“Oh,” he said. “‘And.’ Yes, that too. Far be it from me to ruin our friendship before it gets off the ground. Leo’d have my ears.”

“Only one,” I told him. “I’d get the other. We share.”

He chuckled again, and I had to grin back at him. Leo’s got great genes. I like

’em wherever they turn up.

“Come on,” he said. “Let me show you our best find so far.”

He snatched up a flashlight (not that he really needed one, it being a nova-lit night) and led me out to what the Imbambas dubbed “the Behind House.” When the family’d overflowed the house that Granddaddy Renzo built, he built a second.

Pretty soon now, they’d need a third. Since I appreciate the Imbamba genes too, the sooner the better. The cheerups singing their nightly question-and-answer sounded as if they agreed with me, which is one reason I like to listen to the cheerups sing.

I took my time following Nikolai. You can’t be in a hurry when the cheerups are singing and when every breath brings you the smell of roses. Lalique’s farm is the only place on Mirabile I get to smell the roses. It almost made me sorry I’d missed the calving this year.

Could be Leo’s patience is something he came by later on in life, because you’d have thought Nikolai didn’t know the meaning of the word. By the time we reached Behind House, he was fairly bouncing with anticipation.

The Behind House had grown as many fossil cabinets as the main house had—all the more reason for a third, I thought. Nikolai didn’t stop at the common room, though. He marched me on down to the room where he was guesting. No, I realized, Nikolai was a permanent member of the family. The room was purely his.

Smack-dab in the middle of the floor stood a—well, it was an eight-foot-high skeleton. Nikolai swung out an arm toward it and said, “There!” As if I might have missed something that size if he hadn’t pointed it out to me.

I got in close to look. Took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. It was fossil bones—all strung together on a wire armature—as if he meant to bring the critter back to life. Took me another full minute to realize Nikolai’s critter was some long-dead relative of Mabob’s. Or near enough.

“Now I know why Leo wanted you to meet Mabob,” I said. I kept looking at Mabob’s thousand-times-great granddaddy. Something was wrong. Could have been a change in skeletal structure between then and now but…

“Yeah,” said Nikolai. “I’d give just about anything for a look at Mabob’s skeleton.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said. “Lay a finger on Mabob and—”

He raised his hands again. “I meant: I’ll ask somebody in that neighborhood to save me the skeleton if they come across a dead one.”

Good thing we understood each other. I went back to my puzzle. It needed closer examination, so I dropped to one knee to look at its. “You’ve got it mounted wrong,” I said, pointing to the knee joint.

He dropped to a knee beside me so fast it was worth a bruise. “What?”

“Look here. Mirabilan animals, at least the ones I’ve seen the carcasses of, have ligaments the way we do. This is clear enough that these”—I stuck a finger on the most obvious of them—“must be where the ligaments attach. Follow that to here and you’ve got a critter that stands exactly like Mabob. No hunch, no pigeon toes.

See what I mean?”

That made it even taller than before and the head wasn’t nearly as large as Mabob’s, but on the whole it would look even more Mabob-like than it did now.

“Yes! You’re right! Annie, I could kiss you.”

“Sorry, you’re too young for me.”

He chuckled again. “Here,” he said, “hold this a minute.”

He meant to take the damn thing apart and put it back together again that very moment.

Last thing I wanted to do was spend all night holding bits of bone together. I stuck my hands behind my back and said, “Not a chance.”