Mirabile (18 page)

Leo caught my eye and said, “A nice quiet ride into town. Just what I needed.”

We had to skirt the fire, but I’d bet the trip took less time than the straight route would have had anybody else been driving.

When we put down (right in the middle of main street—Susan didn’t care how much ash she raised), there was an astonishing amount of chaos. The whole team was there, it turned out—

Mike, Selima, Chie-Hoon, everybody. We got a cheer as we eased our sore bones out of the hovercraft. I only realized how many burns I had when somebody (if I ever find out who, he’s not long for this world) clapped me on the shoulder to congratulate me on my survival.

There was an undercurrent from the townsfolk I couldn’t place and didn’t like.

Luckily, Irizarry had the good sense to back ’em all off. It took Susan’s help to do it, but pretty soon we were bandaged, fed, and resting comfortably—a little drowsy from the painkillers the local medic had pumped into us.

Irizarry sat himself down beside us and said, “Ready to talk yet, Annie? I can hold ’em a little longer, but I’d rather not.”

“Talk?” I said. “Yeah, I should turn the team loose on it, shouldn’t I?”

Irizarry surprised the hell out of me. “Talk,” he repeated. “Name the culprit!” He pointed with his gun—“Pallab or Jongshik?”

Now I knew I’d been in shock. Leo, too, or he’d have spoken up sooner. I hadn’t noticed that Irizarry had them both in his sights.

“Neither!” Susan said. “They were both with me at the time!” From the sound of her voice,
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Irizarry would’ve had a second barrel of rock salt in his butt if she’d had the persuader to hand.

“Neither,” I said to Irizarry, a lot more calmly. I was too tired to get excited, especially when I know Irizarry won’t jump the gun. “I could name the culprit for you but I promised Jongshik that privilege, since he was the first to spot it in the act.”

Yes, turn the team loose. That was the next step. “Selima, crank up a computer and pull all your files on those thermogenic plants of yours. I’ve got a Mirabilan analogue that you’re just gonna love!”

“All right!” said Selima and turned to do it.

That’s what I like about the younger generation—boundless enthusiasm.

“Susan, check the sample boxes you loaded into the hovercraft. I had to leave the second round behind. I’m hoping the cell sample from the pyromaniac plant made it in in the first load. If not, somebody’s gonna have to get more—very carefully!”

Irizarry and Jongshik both shouted at me at once. When I sorted it out, the questions were, “A plant set the fires?” and “You mean I really did see a plant burst into flame?”

“Yes and yes,” I said, then Leo and I took turns telling them what we’d seen. You could have sorted out who in the room was a jason and who wasn’t just by the expressions on their faces.

Everybody in the team was intensely interested;

everybody who wasn’t had a look of such disbelief you’d‘ve thought I’d told them I’d found evidence of previous human life on Mirabile.

Selima took over from there, waving her

Arum maculatum and her

Philodrendron selloum at them. “Earth-authentic,” she kept saying over their protests,

“Earth-authentic!”—as if it were a magic word for believability. “Look, this one hits 114

degrees no matter what the ambient temperature is!”

The rest of the team helped Susan unload the specimen boxes and sorted through for the Mirabilan sample. They not only found the cell sample, but also a few limp leaves from one of the culprits. Susan had collected a specimen too, it seemed.

There was a minor altercation over who got to do the gene-read but Selima won.

Irizarry shook his head. “That sorry-looking thing is the arsonist?”

“It looks much meaner when it’s not wilted,” Leo told him. “You can see the mad glitter in its eyes.”

Irizarry got a bit of a mad glitter in his own eyes. “We should be out rooting them up,” he said,

“shouldn’t we? I’m not sure I’d recognize it from this.”

“I can draw it for you,” Jongshik said. “I know what it looks like in the wild.”

Without waiting for an answer, he snatched up a sheet of printer paper and went to work.

“I’m not sure we should be out uprooting them,” I said. “I want that gene-read first. Pulling them out may set them off.” I gave Leo’s hand an apologetic squeeze.

“Sorry,” I said to him. “This hasn’t been one of my better days. Pulling them up seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

“This one didn’t burn,” Irizarry pointed out.

“Long root,” I explained. “Maybe we set off others at the other end of the root.

And the plant didn’t actually go up—it just set fire to the ballyhoo bark it was growing in. For all I know, the plant’s fireproof.”

“Not likely,” Selima said. “But I’d bet money the seeds are. Now why”—she handed me the printout of the plant’s genetic map—“why would it want to set fires?”

“And why every fifteen years?” I added.

“I like that question, too,” Selima said. “It must get something out of a fire.”

“Nutrients,” said Susan. “From the ash. For its seeds to thrive in.”

“Maybe fire wipes out a scale or a fungus that attacks it,” Mike suggested. “Fire does that for my
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pine trees.”

“Maybe both. Hey, Mike? Do the hopfish eat this the way they eat our rice?”

“I don’t know. But I’m gonna find out.” Mike shoved through the crowd. “I’m going to commandeer another computer. Keep me posted.”

“Here’s the sketch.” Jongshik handed it over. It was better than good. Anybody could have picked the plant out from his work. To the best of my memory, it was entirely accurate. I handed it to Leo, who confirmed it.

Irizarry snatched the paper from Leo’s hand. “Now I’ve got something to work with. I don’t need to know the why of it, Annie. All I need to know is, does uprooting one set off others?”

“Sorry,” I said, “but you’re wrong there. That’s not all you need to know.”

“I’ve got my suspect, Annie. If we don’t wipe it out, Milo’s Ford will go up in smoke sooner or later. Once every fifteen years, if you’re right about those tree rings.”

“I’m right about those tree rings. We’re looking at an ecological cycle. Uprooting the pyromaniacs isn’t going to put an end to the cycle, either. Milo’s Ford will still go up in flames every fifteen years.”

“Still? Why?”

“Because the ballyhoo trees make the entire area a fire hazard. Because they’re doing it deliberately. Do you think you can police every inch of forest for pyromaniac plants? Even if you could, what about sparks from our equipment?

What about lightning? Sooner or later, this whole area will catch, and the later the worse. The longer the ballyhoos shed bark, the higher the hazard.”

Irizarry looked as tired as I felt. “Then we can’t build towns in this EC. We’ll have to relocate Milo’s Ford.”

“Oh, hell, Mama Jason,” Susan said. “What about the Cornish fowl?”

“Chances are the ash from the fire across the river has already done ’em in. You know as well as I do, the EC here has changed enough that the Cornish hens will start hatching Dragon’s Teeth.

Besides, when it comes down to a conflict between

Earth-authentic species and Mirabilan species, we’ve got to get on with the Mirabilan species or we won’t make it on this world.”

Even Irizarry, to judge from his expression, could see the truth in that. “So we relocate everybody from Milo’s Ford,” he said.

“At least temporarily. You want my advice, you get it. Here’s what we do…”

IT TOOK A WEEK to relocate everybody from Milo’s Ford, along with everything they owned. The fire fighters kept a firewatch going the entire time, of course—that EC made it absolutely necessary. While everybody else moved furniture, we put in twenty-eight-hour days finding out everything we could about our pyromaniac and its partners in crime, the ballyhoo trees.

Susan’s piloting got us the seed samples we needed. Leo did a little experimenting with ballyhoo branches and seeds. Clelie supervised, I’m glad to say, because the first thing he learned was the damn things actually explode—highly inflammatory oil in the seed pods—to send their seeds as far afield as possible. Lovely piece of bioengineering.

And, as it turned out, the hopfish did devastate the tender young shoots of the pyromaniac…

unless there was a fire to cut back on the hopfish population at seeding time.

The pyromaniac plants saw to it there was, of course. The grumblers took care of the hopfish that didn’t asphyxiate. Wonderful the way these these things work.

You can’t help but admire nature.

At least, I can’t. That’s what I was doing when Irizarry stuck his head into the lab. “Annie, this was your idea. You’re coming with me.”

“Everybody’s out of Milo’s Ford?”

“Lock, stock, and barrel.”

“Let me call Leo. He won’t want to miss this.”

“He’s waiting in the hover.”

Thoughtful man, Irizarry. He wasn’t nearly as scandalized as Susan usually was when Leo and I spent the trip necking in the back seat.

“Heads up, folks,” Irizarry said at last. “We’re here.” He brought the craft to a standstill, hovering just outside the edge of Milo’s Ford. The forest around it was still green, but you could see the swollen seeds on the ballyhoos just waiting for their chance. The only thing that’d be left standing after fire swept this area would be the ballyhoos—and the pretty little frame houses in Milo’s Ford, all made of that same fireproof ballyhoo wood.

Irizarry handed a box over the seat back. “They’re on five-minute timers, Annie. I wanted to make sure we could get safely clear. I’m going to make a long pass all around the town. Clelie will give us the go-ahead when the ground personnel decide the wind is right,” He nodded vaguely in the direction of the comunit. He had the damndest look on his face.

“Why are you handing them to me?” I asked.

“Because I don’t want to do it. It feels wrong to me. This was your idea—you do it.”

“Okay.” I glanced at Leo. “Is this going to bother you?”

“Only if you don’t share,” he said.

So I divvied them up between us, we opened windows on opposite sides of the hovercraft, and we waited. After what seemed like forever, Clelie’s voice came over the comunit, “Everybody’s clear and the wind is right, Tomas—go!”

He did—and Leo and I dropped incendiaries the length of the run. By the time we reached the river, the first of them had gone up and caught with a vengeance. Irizarry goosed the hovercraft and moved!

At the top of the rise, he brought it to an abrupt halt and swung us around to face the town. He whistled. “Annie, I didn’t believe you. I didn’t think it would catch that easily.”

“Now you know,” I said. “This way the hazard gets cleared and townsfolk can move back in safely. At least for another fifteen years or thereabouts. This time a controlled burn was the best solution for everybody and everything concerned. Next time… well, next time we’ll have to think about it all over again.” I leaned back against Leo and watched the fire spread. All around Milo’s Ford, the last of the ballyhoos were going up like fireworks.

“You know,” I said, surprised at myself, “I think I’m admiring my handiwork.”

Leo laughed. “You’re my favorite force of nature, Annie.”

Leo was back from his survival training trek with Jen and Ilanith, and the three of them wanted nothing so much as to sit on the porch with their feet up and watch nova-rise over Loch

Moose. I had a lap-full of Aklilu, who was sleepy and, for the moment, quiet. Elly brought the baby, and Nikolai and Chris came out bearing gifts—molasses snaps and a pitcher of iced tea.

For a while, the only sounds were the singing of the cheerups and the munching of cookies

.

“Too bad Susan isn’t here,” I said. “Molasses snaps are her favorite.”

“Second only to Janzen.” Elly laughed.

“They’re pretty mushy, Mama Jason,” Ilanith said. “Probably they’d bug the hell out of you. Too busy to talk and all.”

“Wait till it’s your turn, kiddo,” I told her. “Take notes, Jen.

You’re the one gets to tease Ilanith when the time comes.”

“Right,” said Jen, smugly.

Ilanith gave her a sideways look and said, “How ’bout a story, Mama Jason?”

That was pure diversionary tactic, but Aklilu roused enough to say, “Story!” So, story it was…

Getting the Bugs Out

« ^ »

We were doing a little contemplative fishing out in the middle of Loch Moose. At least, I was.

Ilanith had her hook baited, but she was having about the same luck I was without bait or hook, which is to say nothing disturbed the serenity of the loch except the odders.

“Mama Jason?” Ilanith said. “I’m sorry I distracted Noisy. That’s the biggest bell I’ve ever seen him make. I couldn’t help hovering.”

“Neither could I.” I moved enough to pat her hand. “You weren’t distracting Leo, kiddo—I was.”

She made a scoffing noise loud enough to attract the attention of Pushy, the current head of the pack of odders. He rippled over and lifted his head to bellow at her.

Poor Pushy, he’s all grace in the water, but that face is a howler. Looks like an old boot with big warm eyes.

The boat rocked. This time I had to move to compensate as Pushy tried to climb aboard. Ilanith giggled and bought him off with a chunk of stale bread. “Seriously, Mama Jason,” she said, as Pushy slithered back into the loch.

“Seriously,” I said. “I’m a hot old broad and I can distract Leo from just about anything he’s doing. So says Leo—and nice of him to say so, too.” I felt the same way about him and if I couldn’t think of the right courting present for the man soon I’d start to get cranky on the subject. That was one of the reasons for the vacation (the other being I needed one) and for the contemplative fishing.

I could tell from Ilanith’s expression that she didn’t believe a word of this. Like most other adults, I took the easy way out. “Wait until you’re a little bit older, then you’ll understand.”

Sensible kid that she is, Ilanith said, “I’ll ask Elly.”

I thought that over. Elly would find a way to explain it to her—which is why Elly raises kids and I don’t. “Do that,” I said. “Meanwhile, if you want me to drop you off on shore so you can watch Leo cast the bell, I will. I mean what I say: you’re welcome, I’m not.”