Mirabile (39 page)

Ilanith picked up the story from there. “So we figured, if we just kept looking, we’d maybe find it.”

“Ah,” I said. “That explains the random computer searches Elly was wondering about!”

“They weren’t random,” Susan said. “We did the popular science magazines—every article on genetics we could find and—”

And then it hit me. Elly said they’d stopped looking. “You found it!” I came up off the edge of the bed and tried to gather all three into one massive hug. “You found it!”

I backed off, grinning like a fool.

When I turned the grin on Leo, I knew he’d gotten the implications of it, too. He grinned even wider and said to Jen, “I guess it’s not genes that make the jason good.

Think maybe it’s something in the water at Loch Moose?”

Jen giggled. “Yeah,” she said, “probably the Loch Moose monster.”

Susan grunted and scowled at her feet.

“Light is beginning to dawn,” I said. “Susan, if you must have the world’s worst case of the guilts, at least have them over something you actually did—like eating the last of the molasses snaps.”

“Susan, you didn’t!” said Jen, but it was clear from the look on Susan’s face I’d gotten that right.

“I thought it was Ilanith!”

“I never,” said Ilanith. “I thought Mama Jason ate ’em. She likes ’em as much as we do.”

“Now you have something real to feel guilty about, Susan,” I said. “I do like molasses snaps as much as they do. And you can’t blame yourself for what the red deer gave birth to three, maybe four, years before you found out how to stop them from breeding Dragon’s Teeth.”

I cocked an eye at Jen. “What say we forgive her for the frankenswine but not for the molasses snaps?”

“Right.” Jen gave Susan a single definitive nod. “You owe me a bunch of molasses snaps.”

Susan put an arm around her. “Yeah,” she said, “I owe you molasses snaps.”

The smile still wasn’t up to its normal standards.

“But?” I said.

“But,” Susan said, “what’s been born in the last month that’ll come jumping out at Jen—or you, maybe—five years from now?”

I shrugged and grinned. “I’ll let you know in five years.”

She and Ilanith exchanged a dark look—then Ilanith gave a huge sigh. “I don’t think we can win,
Page 155

Susan. Either the problem is a problem or the solution is a problem.”

Behind me, Leo gave a sigh that outdid Ilanith‘ . “They’ve gone strange again,”

s he said.

“All right, then,” I said. “What’s the problem with the solution?”

Another dark look passed between the two older girls, then Susan said, “Sit down, Mama Jason.

This is hard to explain and I want to get it right.”

I sat.

“It’s not hard to explain,” said Jen. “Mama Jason, the Kinyamarios’ cat had another litter of stillborn kittens, and I asked Susan why she couldn’t fix it up so the cat would breed true and then we could have our kitten next time. And Susan showed me in ships’ files about an island where there were so many cats—

imported cats, like an Earth-authentic cat is on Mirabile— that they were wiping out all the native birds. Susan says—”

“Susan says,” said Susan for herself, “that if our Earth-authentic imports bred true, they’d mean total disaster for the native Mirabilan species. Look at the wild boar, Mama Jason. You saw Jen’s probability study yourself. You should see what it looks like if all the wild boar breed more wild boar.”

“And the rats,” said Ilanith. “If the rats bred true we’d be overrun.”

“If the damn dogs hadn’t had encrypted rat genes,” I pointed out, “we wouldn’t have had the rats in the first place.”

“True,” said Susan, “but we wouldn’t have had the odders or the Loch Moose monster either.”

“We might need something,” Jen said. “Don’t you see? And if we got rid of all those things hidden inside—hidden inside the Kinyamarios’ cat—well, who knows what we might lose? Maybe something we need tomorrow.”

I nudged Leo further over in the bed, put my feet up and leaned back with a happy sigh. “Think I’ll retire, Leo. I could use the sleep.”

“Mama Jason, you can’t,” said Jen, and that was an order.

“I can’t,” I admitted, “and I won’t—but I

am going to leave this decision up to you.”

Jen made a little squeak sound somewhere back in her throat. The three of them locked eyes for a moment, then Susan turned back to me and said, “Let me get this straight, Mama Jason. You want us to decide whether to get rid of the encrypted genes in all the plants and animals we brought with us from Earth?”

“Yup,” I said. “Or decide which of them we can safely let breed true. You’ve got it straight, Susan. That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

I pulled the quilt over me and snuggled deeper into bed. “I suggest you sleep on it. Lemme know—tomorrow, next week, whenever. And I need a good-night hug from each one of you on the way out.”

I got three of the best good-night hugs going, and a fourth that topped them from Leo after I’d turned out the light.

“Annie,” said Leo, from somewhere in the nape of my neck, “that’s an awful lot of weight to lay on those youngsters.”

“No,” I said, “I know exactly what they’ll decide: they’ll file the information so it can’t be lost again, and they may even tell me where to find it, but only one female red deer will get her genes clipped.”

“The one that’s been raising her wild boar offspring to maturity, right?”

“Right, and only the one. Like Jen said, we don’t know what we might need tomorrow, and those kids are wise enough to recognize that fact. They’ll keep all the options open.”

I kissed the bit of his ear nearest to reach and couldn’t help but add, “Elly sure raises some
Page 156

terrific kids!”

“Uh, Annie… speaking of which… Elly paid us the highest compliment in her book today…”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning into the dark. “What do you say we take her up on it?”

“I say, I’d be delighted.”

“That’s settled, then,” I said. “Next question: boy or girl?”

He laughed. It made the best kind of tickle along the side of my neck. “Annie,” he said,

“surprise me.”

“I’ll do my best.”

From somewhere off in the distance, the mating bellow of the Loch Moose monster drifted faintly across the water.

This year, there was an answer.

Author’s Note

« ^

One of the joys of writing science fiction is that the writer can read anything that appeals to her and claim she’s doing research. If you enjoyed this novel, try the following books. They’re all

“keepers” and I plan to reread them for the sheer fun of it.

Wily Violets and Underground Orchids:

Revelations of a Botanist

, by Peter Bernhardt

William Morrow & Co., New York, 1989

In Search of Lost Roses

, by Thomas Christopher

Summit Books, New York, 1989

Their Blood Runs Cold

, by Whit Gibbons

The University of Alabama Press, Alabama, 1983

Wonderful Life

, by Stephen Jay Gould

W. W. Norton & Co., New York, (and anything else you find by Stephen Jay Gould) A Book of Bees

, by Sue Hubbell

Ballantine Books, New York, 1989

Carnivorous Plants

, by Adrian Slack

The MIT Press, Massachusetts, If you want to build a bat box of your own, America’s Neighborhood Bats

, by Merlin D. Tuttle (University of Texas

Press, Texas, 1988), will tell you how.

Also, for the fun of it, I recommend you take the lifetime subscription to New Scientist and that you snaffle copies of

The

Wall Street Journal from a yuppie friend (read the middle column on the front page).

Cheers, Janet Kagan

P. S. Some of these will answer the age-old question, “Where do you get your crazy ideas?”

Surely you don’t think I’m making this stuff up, do you?