Fortunately they didn't have long to wait, because Geoffrey was right behind us in the truck with the goat projector.
That was Geoffrey's own invention. Before I came, he used to use live goats, but I put a stop to that. We raise the goats for food and I'm not sentimental about slaughtering them, but I made sure the ones we used for aversion training were dead already.
While he was setting up I gave myself a minute to enjoy the hippos. They're always fun, big ones the size of our van and little ones no bigger than a pig. They look to me like they're enjoying themselves, and how often do you see a really happy extended family? I'm sure the big ones were aware of our presence, and undoubtedly even more aware of the crocs on the bank, but they seemed carefree. They aren't particularly violent, either, unless you get in their way. Given a chance, I would have liked to swim with them someday—except for the crocs.
"Okay, Grace," Geoffrey called, hand already on the trigger of the launcher.
"You may fire when ready," I said to him, and to the Old Ones, "Watch!" They did, scared but fascinated, as the goat carcass soared out of the launcher and into the water, well downstream from the hippo families so there wouldn't be any accidents.
You wouldn't think a crocodile could run very fast, with those sprawly little legs and huge tail. You'd be wrong. Before the goat hit the water all three of the crocs were doing their high-speed waddle clown to the river's edge. When they hit the water they disappeared; a moment later all around the floating goat there were half a dozen little whirlpools of water, with an occasional lashing tail to show what was going on under the reddening surface. The show didn't last long. In a minute that goat was history.
I glanced at the hippos. They hadn't seemed to pay any attention, but I noticed that now all the big ones were on the downstream side of the herd and the babies were on the other side, away from the crocs.
"Show's over," I told the Old Ones. "Back in the van!"—pointing to make sure they understood what I said. They didn't delay. They were all shivering as they lined up to climb back in, one by one. I was just about to follow them in when I heard Geoffrey calling my name. I turned around, half in the van, and called, "What's the problem?"
He pointed to his communicator. "Shelly just called. You know that guy who claims he owns the Old Ones? He's back!"
All the way back I had one hand on the wheel and my other hand on my own communicator, checking with Shelly—yes, the son of a bitch did have a pass this time—and then with Nairobi to see why they'd allowed it. The headquarters guy who answered the call was Bertie ap Dora. He's my boss and he sounded really embarrassed. "Sure, Grace," he said, "we gave him a pass. We didn't have any choice, did we? He's Wan."
It took me a moment. Then, "Oh, my God," I said. "Really? Wan?" And when Bertie confirmed that Wan was who the mysterious stranger was, identity checked and correct, it all fell into place.
Since he was Wan, he had been telling the truth, almost. He wasn't really the owner of the Old Ones, but you could make an argument that he was something pretty close, because legally he was the man who had discovered them.
Well, that argument didn't actually make much sense in my book. If you stopped to think about it, Wan himself had been discovered by that Herter-Hall party as much as the Old Ones had. However, it didn't have to make sense. That was the way Gateway Corp had ruled—had given him a finder's share of property rights in the place where the Old Ones had been discovered and everything on it—and nobody argued with the findings of Gateway Corp.
The thing about the Old Ones was that they had been found on a far-out, Sun-orbiting Heechee artifact, and it was the Heechee themselves who had put them there, all those hundreds of thousands of years ago when the Heechee had come to check out Earth's solar system.
The Heechee were looking for intelligent races to be friends with. What they discovered was the ancestors of the Old Ones, the dumb, hairy little hominids called australopithecines. They weren't much, but they were the closest the Earth had to the intelligent race the Heechee were looking for at the time, so the Heechee had taken away some australopithecine breeding stock to study. And then, a little later, when the Heechee got so scared that they ran off and hid in the Core, all the billions of them, they left the australopithecines behind. They weren't exactly abandoned. The Heechee had left them the Food Factory they inhabited, so they never went hungry. And so they stayed there, generation after generation, for hundreds of thousands of years, until human beings finally got to Gateway and its abandoned Heechee spacecraft. And, the story went, one of those human beings on that huge old artifact, and the only one of them who had survived long enough to be rescued, was the kid named Wan.
As soon as I got to the compound I saw him. He wasn't a kid anymore, but he wasn't hard to recognize, either. His size picked him out. He wasn't all that much taller than some of the Old Ones, a dozen or so of whom had gathered around to regard him with tepid interest. He was dressed better than the Old Ones, though. In fact, he was dressed better than we were. He'd deep-sixed the fur collars, sensibly enough, and the outfit he was wearing now was one of those safari-jacket things with all the pockets, that tourists are so crazy about. His, however, was made of pure natural silk. And he was carrying a riding crop, although there wasn't a horse within five hundred kilometers of us. (Zebras don't count.)
As soon as he saw me he bustled over, hand outstretched and a big told-you-so grin on his face. "I'm Wan," he said. "I don't hold that thing yesterday against you."
I didn't feel any blame, but I let it go. I shook his hand. "Grace Nkroma," I said. "Head ranger. What do you want?"
The grin got bigger. "I guess you'd call it nostalgia. Is that the right word? I'm kind of sentimental about my Old Ones, since they sort of took care of me while I was growing up. I've been meaning to visit them ever since they were relocated here, but I've been so busy—" He gave a winsome little shrug, to show how busy he'd been.
Then he gazed benevolently around at the Old Ones. "Yes," he said, nodding, "I recognize several of them, I think. Do you see how happy they are to see me?" Well, maybe they were. The one we called Beautiful was jabbing a muddy thorn into the arm of her son, Gadget, to make one of their ugly tattoos. The rest of them were a fifty-fifty split, half looking at Beautiful, the other half at Wan. He didn't seem to mind. He told me, "I've brought thorn some wonderful gifts." He jerked a thumb at his vehicle. "You people better unload them. They've been in the car a while, and you need to get them into the ground as soon as possible." And then he linked arms with a couple of the Old Ones, seemingly unaware of how they smelled, and strolled off, leaving us to do his bidding.
III
There were about forty of the "gifts" that Wan had brought for his former family, and what they turned out to be were little green seedlings in pressed-soil pots. Carlo looked at them, and then at me. "What the hell are we supposed to do with those things?" he wanted to know.
"I'll ask," I said, and got on the line with Bertie ap Dora again.
"They're berry bushes," he told me, sounding defensive. "They're some kind of fruit the Old Ones had growing wild when they were out there. They're supposed to love the berries. Actually, it's quite a thoughtful gift, wouldn't you say?"