The Leagacy of Heorot

Her life during those vital hours was consumed with the wounded—the burns, the bites and punctures, the broken bones and ruptured internal organs, the cuts, nervous exhaustion, fatigue, shell shock and even a bullet wound.

But Zack had to pore over Andy's reports as the engineer corps examined the damage. The biology lab was almost totally destroyed. The power plant looked wounded, but was in fact dead. The plasma toroid was punctured; the only replacements within ten light-years were in the motors of the Minerva vehicles.

And in three days, after the worst had passed—after all the fences were mended, the first tentative inventory taken and all the medical cases stabilized—it was Zack who performed the service at the mass burial.

No preachers. We didn't want any. No preachers, no rabbi, no priests.

We are the scientists, rational, thoughtful—was that wise?

"They died that we might live," Zack began.

She thought of the last funeral she'd attended, the last time when she had felt grief gnawing at her like a living thing—the day they buried her father, only six months after her mother was laid to rest. The day she had turned from the rolling green expanse, the endless rows of white markers at Arlington National Cemetery and flown home without a word to anyone. And upon returning home made her final decision to accept the offered berth aboard Geographic. That day, and its decision, and the accompanying grief were like a wood-grain finish buried under layers of cheap, cloudy shellac. It only came to mind when she thought of how very much her mother would have wanted to touch her stomach, to hold her and cry happily with her as women cry, rejoicing in the torch of life being passed from one generation to the next.

No, today was worse. One hundred and seventy-four survivors were here for the ceremony, all those who could be moved from their beds.

Sylvia held Terry's hand as he sat in his wheelchair. The word wasn't final on his spinal damage yet, but the irony was crushing.

We've got good news and bad news.

The good news is that we won't have to amputate his left leg!

The bad news is that his spinal cord was severed, and he'll never walk again anyway.

There were twelve graves and a thirteenth marker. April, Alicia's baby, the first child born on this new world, had never been found.

Greg stood near them, and there was a quality in his face that she had associated with Ernst since the Hibernation Instability. His face was empty.

It fit. Everything fit together, a mosaic that began with the endless expanse of dappled gray clouds and the thin stream of smoke rising from the smoldering tip of a volcano just the far side of the horizon.

Perhaps most of all, what fit was Cadma

Cadma

But Terry's hand gripped hers, and Zack's voice called her from her reverie.

"... that we might live. All of us knew the risks, but these—these few paid the price for our mistake. With time, all of us will lie beneath this soil. Let these... thirteen... be the last to die by violence. Let our loss merely strengthen our resolve, deepen our commitment."

He cleared his throat. Usually he reminded Sylvia of Groucho Marx.

There was no hint of comedy now. He looked old and tired and frightened.

"Does anyone want to speak?"

There was a moment's silence, then Greg spoke in a voice that was pure venom. "Why didn't we listen? Why couldn't we have listened? Did Cadma

"Greg..." Zack's voice was soft. "This isn't the time."

"Piss on you!" Spittle flew from the corner of his mouth. "We combed this goddamned island from one end to the other, and we didn't find a fucking thing. Now we can't find anything, and people are already starting to say that that must have been the only monster. That it swam over from the mainland. That's bullshit..."

"Greg—"

"Fuck you, Zack. I trusted you. We all trusted you. You were supposed to be the one with the big view. Alicia trusted you. And now she's... she..."

Tears streamed from his eyes and he collapsed to his knees at Alicia's grave, his fingers clawing at the earth, all the pent-up emotion exploding out of him at once. It was a trigger. Others were crying now, quietly or with great wracking sobs.

From the corner of her eye, Sylvia saw Cadma

In time Sylvia lost herself in the work, and in greater time the flow of the work itself began to slow. Nobody was unaffected by the grief, and in a way it turned into a bond stronger than the original heigh-ho Manifest Destiny enthusiasm that had built an interstellar expedition.

Repairs were underway around the clock. In the middle of the mistiest night, the sparkle of laser and plasma torches lit the gloom like dazzling fireflies.

Within another week, what had happened had become a symbol almost as much as a reality. The electric wire around the periphery of the camp had been reinforced, reestablishment of full power given the highest priority. Guard shifts were doubled. Every night, several times a night, Sylvia awoke from troubled slumber, to be lulled back to sleep by the silent bob and swivel of the searchlights.

The minefield had been reactivated, providing the first dark moment of humor since the tragedy.

At just after three in the morning, a hollow explosion had shaken the camp. Frightened, hastily dressed colonists had joined guards outside the gates to find a storm of feathers still drifting down: a prodigal turkey had returned.

Grim jokes about turkey bombe and flambe had circulated for the next two days, and had helped the healing begin.

Sylvia ceased her efforts to write a new voice-recognition program into Cassandra as a familiar, disturbing figure limped past her window.

Cadma

He spoke to no one, taking his meals and medication in his hut. No one challenged him. No one dared to tell him that he should not hate them for what had been done. In her mind Sylvia could see that thing squatting atop Cadma

For a warrior of Cadma

Two weeks later, the door to her lab opened without warning. Zack Moscowitz came in.

"Well, he's gone."

"Hi, Zack."

"That Skeeter you heard. Cadma

"Stole—"

"Or borrowed. He didn't say. We tried the radio. He isn't answering, and he's disco

"You know why," Sylvia said. "He's telling us all to go to hell. And maybe we deserve it."

"Yeah." Moscowitz sighed heavily. "Yeah, I know. Some idiot suggested we go after him and get the Skeeter back. I didn't bother to ask for volunteers."

"So he's gone."

"Him, and he damn near dismantled his hut. He's also got two dogs, a rifle, ammunition and a case of liquor."

"It's his rifle. He'll have tools, too," Sylvia said thoughtfully.

"And if you add it all up, it won't come to more than his share."

"The Skeeter's a lot more than his share."