Pol snorted. “That’s why,” he said absently, riffling through the notes on the undecipherable clipboard. “What I don’t understand is why he chose the large felines?”
“Well why don’t we ask Petey? He helped his father in the compound, didn’t he?”
“You are the essence of rationality, my dear,” Pol said. Pushing himself out of the chair, he went over and laid an affectionate kiss on her cheek, ruffling her hair. She was admonishing him when he punched the comm-code for Mary Tubberman’s quarters. Both he and Bay had been visiting her daily to help her settle back into the community. “Mary is Peter available?”
When Peter answered, his tone was not particularly encouraging. “Yeah?”
“Those large cats your father was breeding? Did they have spots or stripes?” Pol asked in a conversational tone.
“Spots.” Peter was surprised by the unexpected question.
“Ah, the cheetah. Is that what he called them?”
“Yeah, cheetahs.”
“Why cheetahs, Peter? I know they’re fast, but they wouldn’t be any good hunting wherries.”
“They were great going after the big tunnel snakes.” Peter’s voice became animated. “And they’d come to heel and do everything Dad told them – ” he broke off.
“I expect they did, Petey. Several ancient cultures on Earth bred them to hunt all manner of game. Speediest things on four legs!
“Did they turn on him?” Peter asked after a moment’s silence.
“I don’t know, Petey. Are you coming to the bonfire tonight?” Pol asked brightly, feeling that he could not leave the conversation on such a sour note. “You promised me a rematch. Can’t have you winning every chess game.” He received a promise for that evening and disconnected. “From what Petey said, it would appear that he used mentasynth on cheetahs to enhance their obedience. He used them to hunt tunnel snakes.”
“They turned on him?”
“That seems likely. Only why? I wish we knew how many ova he took from vet. I wish we could decipher these notes and discover if he only used mentasynth or if he implemented any part of Kitti’s program. Be that as it may – ” Pol exhaled in frustration. “We have an unknown number of predatory animals loose in Calusa. Loose in Calusa!” Pol let out a derisory snort for his inadvertent rhyming. I wonder if Phas Radamanth has had any luck deciphering the notes on those grubs. They could be useful.”
Patrice de Broglie burst into Emily’s office. “Garben’s getting set to blow. We’ve got to evacuate. Now!”
“What!” Emily rose to her feet, the flimsies she was studying slipping out of her hands to scatter on the floor.
“I’ve just been to the peaks. There’s a change in the sulfur-to-chlorine ratio. It’s Garben that’s going to blow.” He slapped his hand to his forehead in a self-accusatory blow. “Right before my eyes, and I didn’t see it.”
Alerted by Emily’s cry, Paul came through from the adjoining office. “Garben?”
“You’ve got to evacuate immediately,” Patrice cried, his expression contorted. “There’ve even been significant increases in mercury and radon from the damned crater. And we thought it was leaking from Picchu.”
“But it’s Picchu that’s smoking!” Stunned, Paul struggled to keep his cool. He reached for the comm unit just as Emily did. She grabbed it first, and he jerked his fingers back and let her contact Ongola.
“That Garben is as sly a mountain as the man we named it for. Volcanology still isn’t a precise science,” Patrice said, rolling his eyes in frustration as he paced up and down the small office. “I’ve sent a skimmer up with the correlation spectrometer to check on the content of the fumarole emissions that just started in the Garben crater,” Patrice went on. “I brought down samples of the latest ash. But that rising sulfur-to-chlorine ratio means the magma is rising.”
“Ongola.” Emily said. “Sound the klaxon. Volcano alert. Recall all sleds and skimmers immediately. Yes, I know there’s Threadfall today, but we’ve got to evacuate Landing now, not later. “How long do we have, Patrice?”
He shrugged in exasperation. “I cannot give you the precise moment of catastrophe, my friends, nor which way it will spew, but the wind is a strong nor’easterly. Already the ash increases. Had you not noticed?”
Startled, governor and admiral glanced out the window and saw that the sky was gray with ash that obscured the sunlight, and that Picchu’s smoking yellow plume was broader than usual. A similar halo was beginning to grow about Garben’s peak.
One can even become accustomed to living beneath a volcano,” Paul remarked with dry humor.
Patrice shrugged again and managed a grin. “But let’s not, my friends. Even if the pyroclastic flow is minimal, Landing will soon be covered with ash at the rate it’s now falling. As soon as we’ve decided possible lava flow paths, I’ll inform you, so you can clear the most vulnerable areas first.”
“How fortunate we already have an evacuation plan,” Emily remarked, selecting a file and bringing it up on the terminal. “There!” She ran the sequence to all printers, on emergency priority. “That’s going to all department heads. Evacuation is officially under way, gentlemen. What a nuisance to have to do it at speed. Something is bound to be forgotten no matter how carefully you plan ahead.
Trained by repeated drills, the population of Landing reacted promptly to the klaxon alert by going to their department heads for orders. A brief flurry of panic was suppressed, and the exercise went into high gear.
The sky continued to darken as thick black clouds of ash rolled up, covering the peaks of the now active volcanoes that had once appeared so benign. White plumes rose from Garben’s awakened fumaroles and from crevasses down its eastern side. Morning became twilight as the air pollution spread. Handlamps and breathing masks were issued.
In charge of the actual evacuation, Joel Lilienkamp supervised from one of the fast sleds, keeping the canopy open so that he could bawl orders and encouragement to the various details and make on-the-spot decisions. The laboratories and warehouses nearest the simmering volcano were being cleared first, along with the infirmary, with the exception of emergency first aid and burn control. The donks trundled everywhere, depositing their burdens at the grid or carrying them on down to temporary shelter in the Catherine Caves.
Patrice’s group had already calculated areas of high and low pyroclastic hazard. Warnings had been sent as far east as Cardiff, west to Bordeaux, and south to Cambridge. Already favored with a heavy fall of ash, Monaco was also in range of moderate pyroclastic missile danger. Every boat, ship, and barge was mobilized in the bay, to be loaded and sent off to stand beyond the first Kahrain peninsula.
The last sacs of fuel were emptied into the tanks of the two remaining shuttles. Most of the dragonriders were put to herding the livestock toward the harbor. For the first time, no one assembled to fight Thread at Maori Lake – a more deadly fall threatened.
No one had time to cheer as Drake Bonneau lifted the old Swallow with its cargo of children and equipment, just as daylight receded from the plateau. The technicians moved immediately to the Parrakeet. Ongola and Jake, monitoring in the tower, took advantage of the respite to eat the hot food that had been sent up to them. The communications equipment had been placed on trolleys and could be quickly shifted if the tower was threatened.
“Swallow looks good,” Ezra called in from the interface chamber where he was monitoring the flight. He had spent much of that day erecting a shield of heat proof material around the chamber, not quite ready to accept Patrice’s hurried assurance that the room’s location did not intersect any channels of previous lava flows. Unfortunately the interface with the orbiting Yokohama could not be disconnected, relying as it did on a fixed beacon to the receiver on the Yoko. Since the setting on the Yoko could no longer be altered to a new direction there was no point in taking the interface and reassembling it.