Dragons Dawn

“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 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 yaking 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 ride on 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 ca

“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 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 ca

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 tu

“I expect they did, Petey. Several ancient cultures on Earth bred them to hunt all ma

“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 wi

“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!” Stu

“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.”