Mirabile (27 page)

“I was hooked on them when I was a kid,” Leo admitted. “Those cows were big!

These cows are no bigger than sheep.” He gestured at the mother of the calf we were taking the cell sample from. “The lady there barely comes up to hip high.”

“But they are Earth-authentic, Leo—as much as anything on Mirabile is, anyhow.”

We moved on to the next stall to check on its newcomer. Mabob was getting on remarkably well with the cows, now that he seemed to understand he wasn’t to bully them.

“They were breeding miniature cows back on Earth well before the Bad Years,” I said. “Early transgenic work—some of the earliest, I think. The idea was to breed a cow that needed very little grazing space but still produced a lot of milk. That’s the idea here too.

Sorry—”

The calf had bawled a complaint—I hadn’t hurt it, it was just complaining—and its mother glared and snorted, threatening me with a bruised thigh if I didn’t leave her pride and joy alone.

Mabob stepped over and gave her a ferocious eye-blaze. I was surprised to note she didn’t rate a bristle, but Mabob had judged it right. The eye-blaze was quite enough to quiet her down. I shooed the calf toward her and she settled for washing it head to toe.

“Thanks, Mabob. You could be useful.” I gave Leo a speculative glance.

He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

Mabob preened, making a quiet little whistling noise somewhere in the back of his throat. All of a sudden the noise cut off. He looked anxiously from me to Leo and back again. Not the slightest doubt in my mind what that was about.

“That’s okay, Mabob. I don’t mind if you whistle.” I reached out and scratched him where he liked to be scratched, just to let him know I meant it. He rattled and went back to the quiet whistling.

We moved on to the next stall. “Those cattle you saw in the westerns—they needed acres and acres of range. Couldn’t feed ’em otherwise. Not only were they expensive but they were damn hard on any EC you put them into. These

Guernseys—well, you could keep one in your yard. There’d be enough milk for the baby and for cheese besides. Once we get the herd stable enough, we’ll hand them out to whatever town wants one or two.”

“I like most goat cheeses,” Leo said. “What’s cow cheese taste like?”

“Ask Brehani. He’s been experimenting with different kinds. He’s probably the Mirabilan expert on the subject of cheese molds. Selima’s been getting him a few new ones out of ships’ stock every time she makes the trek into RightHere. So far he hasn’t poisoned himself—or anybody else.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I thought so.” I gave him my best grin. Must have been good enough, because we got to necking for a bit. This time we didn’t have an audience, unless you count momma cow and her baby. Mabob, if my ears were any judge, was rummaging in a corner of the stall.

A minute later there was a hideous squeaking from the same direction. Sort of broke the mood, so we broke the clinch.

Mabob had a good-sized rat by the tail. The squealing was pure fury—flail as it might, that rat was not going to escape Mabob. He brought it, dangling and shrilling, over to where Leo and I stood arm in arm. I’d never seen a kid look prouder of a catch.

With an arch of the neck and a rattle of scales, he offered it to me. If I’d had gloves, I’d’ve accepted the damn thing on the spot and happily. Rats are a major problem. Some idiot geneticist back on Earth must have liked ’em—stuck genes for

’em in too damn many other things. They’re forever popping up. If it weren’t for the fact that most of their offsprings are nonviable Dragon’s Teeth, the whole of Mirabile would be overrun by now.

I made enthusiastic noises at Mabob, told him what a good thing he was, scratched him even more—did my best to encourage his newfound skill. Finally I did my best to convince him I wasn’t hungry, but that I’d be honored if he’d eat it for me.

Leo looked doubtful. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Leo, I don’t know what he can eat safely. But if he brought it as a present, he must consider it edible.”

He considered it edible. He didn’t let go of its tail, just bent his neck until the rat could scrabble at the ground, where he clubbed it neatly to death. Then he ripped it up and gobbled it down with obvious relish. When he was done, he preened smugly for a few moments, then stalked the corner of the stall—head down, eyes big as saucers—looking for seconds.

“Take him with you when you feed the preemies,” I told Leo.

While Leo and Mabob made the rest of the rounds, I hunted up the analyzer to check out the cell samples I’d taken from the latest of the calves. Fed what I got into the computer, then linked up with the computer back at the lab to check out the few I didn’t recognize off-hand. Not a dandelion among ’em, I was glad to see. And all of ’em were as stable as could be expected for Mirabile—more so, since we’d been working our asses off to keep them that way.

If the cows had been eating leaves from the canes, it hadn’t hurt ’em any. Didn’t poison ’em and didn’t change the EC

enough to encourage those hidden genes to produce something other than Guernsey.

Our problem with the Guernseys was that any EC good enough for Guernsey was likewise good enough for Holstein or longhorn. The Holstein would have satisfied Leo’s idea of “cow,” being the huge kind, and the longhorn was the actual article he’d seen in the westerns. We couldn’t afford either kind, ecologically speaking.

So I checked the gene-reads on the preemies. One was the predictable Holstein.

The other wasn’t—predictable, I mean. Took me about five minutes to find a match in ships’

records: bison. Like the Holstein, it needed more range than we could afford to give it. At least, we couldn’t afford an entire herd.

I did a little scouting around ships’ files, this time outside the genetics file. Only took me a
Page 107

minute to find out my memory served me correctly. If the bison lived, might be Lalique had a good trade item.

Then I got down to the most interesting item on the agenda: the canes. By the time I had a gene-read on the screen, Leo was back. He took one look over my shoulder and said,

“One of mine, then. Not yours.”

It was native Mirabilan, all right. No doubt about that. “You mean you’re not even willing to share

? I’ll trade you half my dandelions.”

“I’d share anything with you, Annie, including the dandelions. Let me get a chair and you can tell me what the gene-read tells you. I’m nowhere near as good at reading them as you are. Not yet, at least.”

While Leo got a chair, Mabob paused for a look at the screen. Obviously, he wasn’t impressed.

A moment later, he was back to hunting rats.

“He’s good at that,” Leo said. “He’s caught five already.”

“Deserves a medal for that, Leo. Watch out, or Lalique’ll want to keep him.”

A frown of concern crossed his face. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I’d better not tell her how efficient he is.”

“Don’t worry. He’s your project. Furthermore, I don’t want anybody else raising one until you’ve cleared it. When I put you in charge of Mirabilan wildlife, I meant just that.”

The frown vanished. “Good. Now tell me what you can about these canes.”

“They’re carnivorous, for starters.”

“Great planet. Not only have we got plants that commit arson, we’ve got meat eaters as well.”

“Mirabile’s as Earth-like as they come,” I said. “I grant you the vegetable life is a bit more enthusiastic here… The canes don’t restrict themselves to insects. They’ll actually go for bigger game. But I’m betting they don’t really mean to catch calves.”

“They did.”

“Sure, but even something that size might eventually struggle free. And damage the plants a good deal in the process. No, there’s something we’re missing here.”

I waited for the horrible squeals in the background to die. Literally. Mabob had clubbed himself another rat.

That reminded me how quickly Mabob had learned to avoid touching the canes.

“Maybe most of the Mirabilan wildlife knows enough to avoid the trap. The cows don’t.”

“The older cows do. They didn’t go in after the calf—not even the calf’s mother was willing to do that.”

“Hmmm. But they eat the leaves off the canes, according to Jibril.” I stared at the gene-read again, then I said, “I think staring at the gene-read isn’t going to help us much on this one. We should be staring at the canes, to see what works in practice.”

He nodded. “I wonder why Lalique was so sure they were Dragon’s Teeth.”

“Probably just because anything anybody on Mirabile doesn’t appreciate must be.”

The door opened. It was Roland. “Hi, Annie, Lalique says for me to take over and for you to come on up to dinner.” He stared at Mabob, who downed a last bit of rat and then stared back.

“Leo and—Mabob?—too, she says.”

Mabob whistled and rattled and trotted over to offer him the tail end of the rat.

“Uh,” said Roland, “is that what I think it is?”

I grinned. “Yup, and if you want him to keep hunting ’em, you’d better thank him for the present—and mean it.”

Turned out trapping rats was practically a full-time job in this neck of the woods—and Roland was the full-timer. So he did an all-out job of thanking Mabob.

Mabob was still whistling and rattling as we left the barn and headed for the main house.

Once the door was closed behind us, though, Mabob charged ahead and let out three gronks in a row. Then he charged back to whistle at me, anxiously.

I had to laugh. “It’s okay, Mabob. Outside, it’s not so bad.” So he beat us to the house, gronking all the way.

Lalique met us at the door. She’d had a few hours more sleep than the rest of them—that the rest were able to sleep through Mabob’s gronking said it all about spring calving.

“Uh,” said Lalique, “is he housebroken?”

“Yup.” I grinned at Leo. “But tell him to ’hush’ before you let him in. I think that’ll save your hearing.”

She did, and Mabob instantly simmered down to a quiet whistle. He was happy as a lark (though I’ve never seen anything in ships’ files that would explain why larks are happier than anything else) with a whole new house to explore.

Lalique said, “So what’s the verdict on the preemies, Annie?”

“One of ’em’s veal.”

“I thought as much. Well, at least we get a couple of good meals out of it. How about the other?”

. “The funny-looking fuzzy one’s a bison. Ask the Sioux Guild if they’re in the market for a mascot. On the clear understanding that one is all they get—they’re not breeding up to a herd.”

“Hey! I can use that! Thanks, Annie.”

She ushered us into the main room and saw us settled around the huge old dining table and dished out stew from the steaming pot in its center.

Her great-grandmother’d made that table the first year on Haffenhaff, and Lalique’s family made things to last. I expect her seven-times-great-granddaughters will be eating around the same table. One of the reasons I like Lalique’s family so much—a lot of respect for continuity.

That’s what made me stop in mid-bite and look all around the room. For the first time in all the time I’d been coming out to Haffenhaff for calving, something had changed. Once I’d noticed the change consciously it wasn’t hard to pick out just what. Against every wall, there was now a cabinet with a glass front. Must have been twenty of them, all made of the same warm silver-gray wood as the table—ballyhoo wood, practically fireproof. Thing is, every one of ’em was filled with what looked for all the world like rocks.

I swallowed. The stew was good, so I gave it a moment’s proper attention before I waved my spoon at one of the cabinets and said, “Somebody take up geology?”

Lalique grinned. “Wrong field, Annie. Those aren’t rocks, those are fossils that Nikolai and the kids dug out of the shale end of the island.” The grin got wider.

“And we’re the Franz Nopcsa Museum of Natural History—at least, that’s what the kids tell me.

Of all the paleontologists they found in ships’ files, they liked him best.”

I worked on my stew while I thought about that. When I opened my mouth, what came out was exactly what I’d been thinking. “I’m a damned idiot. Never occurred to me that Mirabile would have fossils, too. The things you don’t think of! Any planet with life would have fossils.” Which explained Nikolai’s comment about digging bones. “What sort of things have you found?” I was halfway out of my chair.

Lalique motioned me back down. “Wait for Nikolai. He’s ’curator.’ He’ll give you the grand tour.” She looked across the table at Leo. “Do you know? I think this has all the makings of a new guild: the folks who are interested in it are fanatical, it has a separate history with its own heroes, and it even has its own language.

‘Curator’—that’s guild tongue for ‘the guy that keeps track of it all.’ What more do you need for a guild?”

Leo smiled and raised his hands to shrug. That was enough to bring Mabob to his side.

“Oh!” said Lalique. “I don’t have any social graces. Should I offer your friend a bowl of stew?”

Leo had already fished a bit of meat out of his bowl to offer Mabob a taste. Mabob accepted with a delicacy I’d never have expected, given the ferocious aspects of that beak. He whistled quietly for what would have been several sentences’ worth in a human tongue, then he laid the tidbit just as delicately beside Leo’s bowl.

Leo scratched Mabob’s eye rims. “‘Thank you, but I’m not hungry right now,’”

he translated for Lalique, though it couldn’t have been plainer if Mabob had used a human tongue. Mabob went back to his exploring and Leo went back to his stew.

“Wouldn’t be important to you, Annie,” Leo said. “That’s why you didn’t think of it. You’ve got live Dragon’s Teeth to worry about—what’s a fossil to you?”

“You never know,” I said. “I’ve got the interaction between Mirabilan life and Gaian life to worry about. Seems to me I’ve got a use for anybody who studies Mirabilan life, even if it’s the rock solid kind. Besides, you know how nosy I am.”

“Dragon’s Tooth,” said Lalique, changing the subject back to one of more immediate interest.