“The man was insane,” Sean said, poking a rod into the dung pats in one enclosure. “Developing big predators. We’ve enough trouble with wherries and snakes!”
“I’ll go tell Mary,” Kathy murmured.
Sean caught her arm as she went by. “Tell her he died quickly.” She nodded and left.
“Hey!” Peter Semling picked up a covered clipboard from the littered floor of the laboratory. “Looks like notes,” he exclaimed, examining the thin sheets of film covered with notations in a cramped hand. “This is botanical stuff.” He shrugged, held it out to Kathy, and picked up another. “This is . . . biological? Humph.”
“Let’s collect any notes,” Sean said. “Anything that would tell us what kind of creature killed him.”
“Hey!” Peter said again. He flipped the cover back on a portable bio-scan, complete with monitor and keyboard. “This looks like the one that went missing from the vet lab a while back, along with some AI samples.”
Meticulously they gathered up every scrap of material, even taking an engraved plate with the cryptic message Eureka, Mycorrhiza! which had been nailed to the splashboard of the sink unit. Dave carried out several sacks to be brought back to Landing. Then Sean and Peter collected enough flammable materials to make a pyre that could be lit once Mary and the children had gone.
“Sean!” David Catarel called. He was hunkered down by a wide green swath that was the only living thing in the raddled and ash-littered plot, though its color was dimmed by the pervasive black ash. “How many Falls has this area had?” he asked, glancing about. He ran his hand over the grass, a tough hybrid that agro had developed for residence landscaping before Thread had fallen.
“Enough to clear this!” Sean knelt beside him and pulled up a hefty tuft. The dirt around the roots contained a variety of soil denizens, including several furry-looking grubs.
“Never seen that sort before,” David remarked, catching three deftly as they dropped. He felt in his jacket pocket, extracted a wad of fabric, and carefully wrapped the grubs. “Ned Tubberman was yakking about a new kind of grass surviving Fall down here. I’ll just take these back to the agro lab.”
Just then, Sorka, Pol, Bay, and Peter, each loaded with bundles, came out of the main house. Sean and Dave began to load the eight dragons.
“We can make another run for you, Mary,” Sorka suggested tactfully when the woman joined them with two stuffed bedsacks.
“I don’t have much besides clothes,” Mary said, her glance flicking to the compound. “Kathy said it was quick?” Her anxious eyes begged confirmation.
“Kathy’s the medic,” Sean assured her smoothly. “Up you go now. David and Polenth will take you. Mount up. You kids ever ridden a dragon before?”
Sean made a game of it for them and passed quickly over the awkwardness of the moment. He saw them all off before he and Pol ignited the funeral pyre. Then they took off in yet another shower of the volcanic dust which would eventually bury Landing.
“I can’t break Ted’s personal code!” Pol exclaimed in exasperation, throwing the stylus down to a worktop littered with clipboards and piles of flimsies. “Wretched, foolish man!”
“Ezra loves codes, Pol,” Bay suggested.
“Judging by the DNA/RNA, he was experimenting with felines, but I cannot imagine why. There’re already enough running wild here at Landing. Unless—” Pol broke off and pinched his lower lip nervously, grimacing as his thoughts followed uneasy paths. “We know—” He paused to bang the table in emphasis. “—that felines do not take mentasynth well. He knew that, too. Why would he repeat mistakes?”
“What about that other batch of notes?” Bay asked, gesturing to the clipboard lying precariously on the edge.
“Unfortunately, all I can read of them are quotations from Kitti’s dragon program.”
“Oh!” Bay cocked her jaw sideways for a moment. “He had to play creator as well as anarchist!”
“Why else would he refer to the Eridani genetic equations?” Pol slapped the worktop with his hand, frustrated and anxious, his expression rebellious. “And what did he hope to achieve?”
“I think we can be grateful that he hadn’t tried to manipulate the fire-dragonets, though I suspect he was practicing on the ova he appropriated from the vet frozen storage.”
Pol rubbed the heels of his hands into his tired eyes. “We can be grateful for small mercies there. Especially when you consider what Blossom has done. I shouldn’t have said that, my dear. Forget it.”
Bay permitted herself a scornful sniff. “At least Blossom has the good sense to keep those wretched photophobes of hers chained. I cannot think why she persists with them. She’s the only one they like.” Bay gave a shudder of revulsion. “They positively fawn on her.”
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 commcode 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 Ted 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 Emilie’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.”