"Thank you for your incisive analysis. Is Fox okay? Are you?"
"Yeah. She was upset last night, but He shrugged, and grinned, awkward, pleased with himself. "I just sort of patted her till she fell asleep. I sat up with her all night. It was kind of "Romantic?"
Mitch started to answer. He stopped. He laughed with a high, delighted, nasal bark.
"It was cold, is what it was, and along around dawn it got kind of damp.
How come it's so cold at night and so hot during the day? I kept thinking I should wake her up and get her home. And then I wondered how come she could sleep and I couldn't."
"Maybe you should've waked her up long enough to ask to share her jacket." Stephen Thomas thought, It's still unrequited, but at least this is a little more promising for Mitch than it was before.
"I just hope . . ." Mitch's voice trailed off.
"That you won't get pneumonia?"
Mitch laughed again. "That from now on, she won't forget my name every time she sees me."
"I don't think you have to worry about that anymore," Stephen Thomas said.
Victoria jammed her shovel deep in the heavy, clayey dirt. Starfarer had not been in existence long enough to develop much good topsoil. Spring rain saturated the ground, and the abnormal heat of the day supersaturated the air with humidity. She turned over a spade full of dirt and broke it up into clumps.
She had promised to spend the morning working in one of the garden plots. Esther could give no estimate of how long it would take the field tiller to regrow its brain. For the last half hour, Gerald and Avvaiyar had been arguing the possibility of building a plow.
"There's nothing simpler than building, a plow," Gerald said. "Then the only difficulty is figuring out how to hitch it to one of the silver slugs."
Victoria leaned on her shovel. "Infinity said we should quit calling them in for anything that wasn't an emergency."
"I see," Gerald said. "Perhaps I should turn over coordination to our Mr. Mendez."
Victoria thought that might be a good idea, but Gerald was in such a foul mood, and so obviously irritated at Infinity, that she decided not to say so.
"I think we should catch some of the horses and get them to earn their keep for a change," Avvaiyar said.
"They're pets, " Victoria said. "Could they even pull a plow?"
"Why not? We could hitch them up in series like a dog team."
"I think you'd have better luck with a dog team."
"If we had any dogs."
"Clearly the silver slugs are the best choice," Gerald said. "Unless we propose to pull the plow ourselves."
"Forget it!" Victoria snapped. She jammed the shovel into the ground.
I'll dig up every square meter of Starfarer with a shovel, Victoria thought angrily. I'll catch fish to put in with the corn seeds. I'll stand up to my knees in water to set out rice plants. But I will not pull a plow!
Infinity headed for an access tunnel to the surface of Starfarer. fie needed to get outside for a while. At least out in space he would be safe from more of Gerald Hemminge's cold messages, like the one Arachne handed over this morning:
"Do not ever contradict my orders again."
So much for government by consensus.
The nearest hatch lay beyond a patch of temperate forest. The shade of the fast-growing trees and the green-gold coolness made Infinity happy.
A small creature squawked in terror. It struggled and fluttered, pummeling the ground.
Infinity sprinted toward the sound. Last year's fallen leaves deadened the thud of his boots.
He stopped.
A bird lay on the ground, a sparrow, its brown feathers blending in against the forest colors. Infinity knelt and touched it. The heat of its body radiated through its soft ruffled feathers, but it was dead. He turned it over. Its blood dripped to the ground, bright red, wet.
Whatever had killed it had disappeared. It left no footprints, only disturbed ground.
Infinity picked up the bird and took it off the path. He left it where Starfarer's scavengers would find it.
But what had killed it? Falcons and a pair of eagles lived on the wild side, but Alzena had not, as far as he knew, introduced predators into Starfarer's campus cylinder.
Maybe Alzena had let loose some small carnivore. She might even have reported it in the daily news. If she had, Arachne's crash had lost it. Curious, Infinity followed the scuffed-up leaves. He wondered if he was seeing a real trail, or a path his eyes and mind were making up. The dead leaves glistened,
black from winter, damp and rotting into the soil. Here and there the leaves rumpled, like a carpet pushed into folds by a scampering child.
Each step released the fertile, musty smell of leaf mould. The young forest basked in the hot spring sun, green and gold, the new leaves nearly full. A life cycle began above Infinity's head and circled beneath his feet.
Alzena had planned the ecosystem carefully. First she had prepared the soil and the free-living microbes. Then she had established the plants and the pollinating insects, the invertebrates, the scavengers. Then she added the smaller herbivores, the songbirds, the bats. When each branch of the environmental network made its connections, she added to its complexity.
She might have released a mammalian predator, a badger, a ferret, a fox. The time was right. Otherwise the forest's life cycle would overbalance. Had she had time to complete the network? Infinity did not know.
He reached the edge of the forest. The trees gave way to a meadow. Infinity blinked in the sudden brightness of hot sun. The stream's reflection dazzled him; water brushed past him with a musical sigh.
A piercing whistle cut the air.
Infinity barely caught the quick motion at the top of a tumble of stones. The black tail of a small furry animal vanished behind the rocks.
Infinity sprinted for the bank. He clambered up the slope, pebbles sliding beneath his feet.
When be reached the top, only the stream's humming disturbed the silence. A dragonfly hovered, vibrated the air, vanished, and reappeared five meters away as if it had teleported.
Infinity sank down, lying flat on the slope. The stones pressed the heat through his jeans and into his skin. He was glad of his leather vest.
For a long time, nothing moved.
Whatever it was, I lost it, Infinity thought. It ran off into the bushes, or along the stream bank out of sight. . . . And maybe it didn't have anything to do with the dead bird. Maybe it was just minding its own business when I jumped out and scared it. But what was it? The tail was wrong for a squirrel or a chipmunk, but it wasn't naked enough for a rat.
I hope. We're in trouble if the campus has rats.
The rocks beneath him had not had time to weather. They were sharp and raw.
Enough of this great native hunter business, he thought. I'll get Arachne to keep watch on the spot. . . .
Just before he moved, a creature scampered to the highest point of the bank. It moved with a smooth canny pacing gait. It rose on its hind legs, its back to him, counterbalanced by its tail. It gazed upward, watching for predators. Paws crossed on its belly, it turned to survey the land.
It saw Infinity. They stared at each other for a split second, each as surprised as the other, the creature peering with shiny black eyes through a black mask of fu r.
It cried out in warning; it dropped to all fours and fled, pacing quick-footed down the slope and between some rocks.
It was one of Europa's meerkats.
"Damn!" Infinity said softly. He rose from the sharp-edged stones, no longer trying to hide.
He supposed he should trap it, or even shoot it. It had no business here. It did not fit this environment. It was a creature of heat and deserts. Why'd Europa leave it here? he wondered. Or did she leave it? Maybe she just forgot how many she brought with her. Maybe this one got lost.
The arrival and departure of the alien humans had been abrupt and confused enough for the disappearance of one small critter to attract no notice.