Mirabile (30 page)

I pushed my way through the now quiet herd (I wanted to step on a few feet myself by way of revenge, but I resisted the temptation) to the edge of the canebrake. Sure enough, those cows weren’t all that stupid. And the canebrake was

having a feast. The canes were black from top to bottom with the swarming horrors, all stuck and all on the way to being trace elements in the canes’ diet.

I was betting the hole Jibril and Lalique had made in the brake would be filled with new growth in two weeks’ time or less.

We stayed long enough to make sure none of the calves got themselves stuck, then we slowly made our way back to the house.

Savitri was in the common room, using her free time to load Renzo’s notebooks into ships’ files.

Boundless energy, these kids. Made her happy enough to do it that she was whistling to herself as she went from page to page. Mabob perked up, strutted over and whistled back.

Surprised her. She looked up, grinning, then her mouth made a little tiny “o.”

“Hi, Mabob. I thought you were Orlando—he always whistles back at me, too.”

Which earned her another whistle from Mabob. Any minute, they’d work up to flute duos.

I decided to get my question in while they were still tuning up. “Savitri, what’s egg-dropping time like around this neck of the woods?”

“I dunno, Annie. I’ve never seen one.”

“We saw a fuzzwilly down by the canebrake—”

“Oh, yeah. Lots of fuzzwillies down there. They nest in the canes. I meant I’ve never seen a fuzzwilly drop its eggs. I’ve never even seen one nest in a tree. Orlando and Lalique warned us all about egg-rolling time but”—she looked a little bit embarrassed—“I don’t see why they worry.”

That was better confirmation than I’d hoped. “Good,” I said.

Startled her, I guess, because her eyes got huge. “Why good? That’s mean, Annie.”

So I’m an idiot. Doesn’t usually take me that long to figure out why a kid should be embarrassed about a fuzzwilly’s nesting habits. “Hey, kiddo! I didn’t mean Orlando and Lalique were wrong. I think your fuzzwillies are different from everybody else’s.”

I laid a hand on the shoulder Leo’d been rubbing. “And if you want to hear about the hazards of egg-dropping time, just ask Leo. He got himself clobbered by one!”

If Leo’d been egged, that made it okay, to judge from Savitri’s relief. That meant her parents still knew everything. And why should I be the one to tell her different?

She was coming up on the age where she’d find out soon enough for herself.

“Would you tell me about getting egged, Leo?” Savitri said. “And would you check my gene-reads to see I did them right?”

“You go ahead,” I told him. “I’m going to hunt up some of the older members of the troop and get myself a little historical perspective.”

Easy enough to do, all right. And it fit my theory like a glove. In Lalique’s childhood, egg-dropping time had been so hazardous you didn’t dare walk in the woods without carrying a board to protect your head. “Even that wasn’t enough,”

Lalique said. She held up a little finger. I’d never noticed before—it was as crooked as a griffbramble twig. “I was holding a board over my head, so the egg hit my hand and busted up my finger. It hurt like hell just about forever. I still get twinges when the weather’s about to change.”

“And now?” I asked.

Lalique and Orlando looked at each other, suddenly puzzled as all hell.

It was Jibril that answered. “Now the fuzzwillies nest in the canebrake, Annie.

That’s why nobody gets egged anymore.”

Trust the kids to investigate a menace more thoroughly than the adults. I grinned at him. “Okay, Jibril—when was the last time you saw a fuzzwilly nest in a tree and what was the first year you saw them nest in the canes?”

“I never saw them nest in a tree. Orlando and Lalique are always talking about it but… you know how grown-ups worry.”

After that, it didn’t take me long to establish that the canes and the fuzzwillies went together. It had taken the fuzzwillies a couple of years to relearn ground-nesting but, once they had, you couldn’t get ‘em back in a tree for love or money.

Lalique eyed her crooked finger. “Maybe I don’t want those canes done away with, after all.”

“Maybe not,” I agreed. “Cows use ’em to shelter from the swarming horrors.”

“They do?” said Orlando. “I was going to ask you for some of those bats. It’s not just about the swarming horrors, Annie. We’ve got a lot of biting insects that bother the Guernseys. Some kind of black fly that drives them nuts.”

Which I’d also seen stuck to one of the canes, if he meant the kind I thought he did. “I’ll put you on the list for bats,” I said, “but meantime you ought to have a look at those canes. They’re already doing some of the job for you.”

“Uh, Annie?” That was Lalique again. “If the fuzzwillies prefer to live in the canes, maybe they brought the seeds.”

“Nice try,” I said, “but we’ve got fuzzwillies all over the place and nobody’s seen canes like yours. You said so yourself.”

“Besides,” said Jibril, “the fuzzwillies don’t eat the cane seeds.”

“What does?” I asked him.

“The Guernseys.” He laughed. “You can’t keep them away from the canebrake at seeding time.”

He glanced at Orlando. “It doesn’t seem to give us Dragon’s Teeth, anymore than the fact they eat the cane leaves does.”

Orlando nodded agreement.

“So what else eats cane seeds?”

The whole troop went at it, and I wound up with a list of maybe twenty critters, all Mirabilan, that did. With that many, the canes ought to have been able to spread themselves far and wide. Only they hadn’t—and the fuzzwillies that didn’t live on Haffenhaff were still dropping eggs on heads, hands and shoulders as a late-spring ritual.

“I think that’s all of them, Annie,” said Lalique, “but you could check the botanizing books to see if anybody spotted anything else eating the cane seeds.”

“And I’ll have to stop by next time they seed. I’ll want a look at the seeds for myself.”

“Oh, that you can do now. Get Savitri to show you where the samples are.”

“Samples?”

“The ones that go with the books,” Orlando explained. “Renzo and I kept a sample of everything we sketched. I never could figure out how to press a sample of the cane itself. It stuck to everything I tried. But there’s a pressed leaf and a boxful of seeds.”

Hopeless, I tell you. No point asking him why he hadn’t mentioned it last night—he hadn’t mentioned it last night because I hadn’t asked him. Besides, it was a hobby, so how could it be
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important?

“I’ll go look,” I snarled. Stomped out before I took up a hobby of my own—wringing necks.

As I headed back to the house, I met up with Mabob. He was stalking something in the grass again, so I stopped to watch. Didn’t want to interrupt his snack. Turned out it was another rat, so it was just as well I hadn’t.

After he’d finished gobbling it down, he spotted me and gronked a greeting that sent me staggering back a step.

“Hello to you, too,” I said. This time he whistled back at me, which was a pleasant change because whistling didn’t involve a blast of rat breath. I unlatched the door and held it open, waiting. “Want in?”

Nope. He whistled, at length and earnestly, then he strutted off toward the barn.

When he got about a hundred yards away, he turned back and gronked.

I laughed. “Okay,” I called back. “Have a good gronk!”

“Hi, Annie,” said Leo. “Is Mabob with you?”

“Last I saw, he was headed for the barn, or at least for space to gronk in. Leo?

You telling me you didn’t let him out?”

He shook his head. “Savitri? Did you let Mabob out?” He had to ask a second time before Savitri looked up from her task and shook her head as well.

“Door unlatched?” he suggested.

I thought back. Shook my head the same way they’d both done a moment before.

Lot of that going around.

Leo went over to the door and pushed it. It didn’t unlatch. Then he turned the handle, opened the door and let it swing. Out, in—I heard the snick of the latch as it closed.

“Aha!” said Leo. “That solves that.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Certainly enough Earth-authentic critters learn how to open doors. Keep your eye on him, though. If he can, I want to know about it.”

Leo flashed me that best grin of his. “You’re not the only one. I like a little privacy myself every once in a while.”

I grinned back. Then I turned to Savitri and said, “Where do you keep the samples that go with the botanizing books? I need some seeds from the canes.”

Leo gave me a wondering look. “Samples, too?”

I snarled in the affirmative.

Leo chuckled. “It’s times like these that I understand your disposition.”

Which was quite enough to make me chuckle back at him. Took me a minute to realize that Savitri was waiting politely at my elbow to show me the stores of samples. “Sorry, kiddo,” I said. “Leo’s always distracting me.”

She giggled. “That’s what Orlando says about Lalique. He says some day I’ll get distracted too.”

She gave me a thoughtful look. “I hope so; it looks like fun.”

“That it is,” I assured her. “Now, let’s go see those samples before it gets out of hand.”

She giggled again and led the way into the bedroom Lalique and Orlando shared.

Every wall had a storage cabinet shoved up against it. The cabinets they’d made for Nikolai’s fossils were a simple variation on the theme. Damned if the entire household hadn’t been a museum of natural history long before their pet paleontologist had gotten into the act!

Savitri stuck a finger to her lips. “Canes,” she said, pondering the rows and rows of small drawers. “They’d be… here!” Triumphantly, she pulled open a drawer, scooped out a handful of seeds and held them out to me.

Each was about half an inch long, wrinkled brownish red. The actual seed, I was betting, was inside the wrinkled skin of the berry. “You didn’t give me all of them, did you?”

“Course not,” said Savitri. “Do you need all of them? I could ask Orlando if it’s okay.”

I shook my head. “No need. I was just making sure you left enough for the collection.”

“Absolutely. Always.” She said it with that utter solemnity only a kid that age is capable of.

Couldn’t help but grin at her. “I think you’ve got the makings of a very good jason,” I told her, and got a grin in return.

“Then I better get back to work,” she said—and did.

“Corrupting the young again, I see,” Leo said.

“Ha! In a family with some seventy years of ‘botanizing’ books?

Who needs to corrupt? I’d put the whole bunch of them on the payroll tomorrow if they’d let me.“

“I’m on the payroll, Annie. And you’re hogging my seed samples.”

I gave him half. Wasn’t about to turn over the entire puzzle to him and he very well knew it. It was that or dandelions—and I wasn’t ready to go back to the dandelions just yet.

After a bit of necking, we sauntered back into the common room, pulled chairs up to the dining table and started poking at the cane seeds to see how they poked back.

Interesting results. Inside the fruit, the cane seed was every bit as hard as a fuzzwilly’s egg.

“That makes sense,” said Leo. “If the seed drops on the ground, the cane will eat through it the same way. Once it’s been etched, the sprout should have no trouble germinating, even through that thick a seed.”

“Only one problem with that,” I said. “The damn thing’s got fruit, which means it’s meant to attract animals to eat the fruit and spread the seed by elimination. And it can’t expect the animal to eliminate all the seeds where it or another cane could do the necessary etching.”

“Maybe that explains why the canes are so few and far between.”

“Maybe. But not why they’ve suddenly become common enough to be a nuisance—if they are a nuisance, taken on balance.”

“Mmmm.” Leo put one of the seeds on the floor, stood and put his foot on the seed. He bent to look at the result. “Mmmm,” he said again. This time, he raised his foot and stomped it a good one. He winced and drew in his breath. Then he retrieved the seed and gave it a good going over.

“Nope,” he said. “Takes more than a stomping on to crack that thing. Obviously it’s not the Imbamba kids spreading them.”

That reminded me. I didn’t want Savitri suffering burnout at all of eleven, and she’d been working her eyeballs out for the past few hours. I went over to her. I waited until she’d finished the plant she was currently loading and then I loomed.

“Take a break,” I said.

“But, Annie,” she said. Sounded just like Elly’s kids, and in the same circumstances, too.

“No buts,” I said. “I need the computer for a bit. You can have it back after lunch.”

Leo caught on instantly. “Savitri? Could you do me a favor and see that Mabob isn’t getting into trouble? He’s not familiar with farms or cows and there’s no telling what he’s up to. Especially if he’s bored.”

“Sure, Leo. Uh, if he’s bored, I could play with him.”

“That’d help a lot, Savitri. Thanks.”

She darted out, pausing only to make sure the door latched behind her.

I jerked a thumbs-up at Leo. “Good move.”

“I learned some mothering tricks, too—and not just from Elly. In fact, I may be ahead of you on points.”

He wasn’t going to get an argument from me on that count. I nodded and settled at the computer to gene-read the cane leaves I’d picked earlier.

Got another surprise out of that. “I lose my bet,” I said.

“What?” said Leo. There was more than a little amazement in his tone. A moment later he was looking over my shoulder.

“About the canes,” I said. “Have a look at this. I thought we were dealing with a stand of clones—but these are all different plants.”

“Why should that be surprising?”

“Because it means they’re altruists, which isn’t all that common where I come from.”

I could see by his expression that he didn’t get it. “Look, Leo—one plant catches the critter, holds it till it drops dead. But when it drops, it lands on the etching runners of one of the other plants, so that plant gets the benefit, not the one that did the actual catching.”