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At first she was able to do little but help him haul dirt, and cook the meals and clean the camp. But it was too easy for her to remember a time when she had been one of the most competent women on the expedition, and there was no way that she could remain satisfied with this new role.
She learned to set snares. Nets in the stream that ran past the site of the house from the heights of Mucking Great Mountain, a tiny ice-melt stream Cadma
The snares were set near any of the half dozen or so bushes and plants that showed the characteristic gnawed parallel toothmarks. One patch of plants interested her. They were green and broad-leaved, with thick yellow veins branching from a central stem. The flowers were delicate pink with tiny red berries clustered in the center. None of its flowers were chewed or gnawed, but the roots and leaves were the favorite food of some local creature. When she took a closer look at the flowers, she noted a dusting of dried insect segments, and more dead, delicately winged husks on the ground beneath the blossoms. The word "poison" flashed through her mind, and she was pleased with herself for making the co
Something was rustling behind the bush, and she carefully pulled the branches aside.
There, its neck caught in a chew-proof nylon spring loop, was eighteen inches of furred frustration. The Joe had huge orange eyes almost too large for its face. The eyes were imploring, terrified, confused. They reminded her of... what was it?
What... ?
She stomped her foot in frustration and forgot about it. The creature was in one of the snares, bleeding from the throat, twisting and spitting at her. Tweedledee barked, and the little Joe almost broke its own neck trying to escape.
She poked it into the basket and then cut it lose from the snare. It chattered at her. "Well, Missy," Mary A
Tarsier. That was the word she had searched for. An equatorial primate, the owner of the largest eyes of any mammal. Found in the forests of Malaysia and the Philippines.
She laughed in relief. It was still there. Some of the information was still in her mind, she just couldn't call it up on command as once she had. Maybe she could restructure the way she thought...
She shook the cage and held it up close to her face. "Are you a good-luck charm, Missy?"
Missy spat at her and tried to hide in a corner of the basket. She was more slender than a tarsier, almost like a thick, furred lizard. She lay on her back, claws out and scrabbling blindly.
On their way back down, Tweedledee suddenly strained at the leash, tugging so hard that Mary almost dropped the basket. Tweedledee yipped hysterically, struggling to climb up into the rocks. Missy went absolutely apeshit, squealing and clawing in the wire cage.
"'Dee Dee, get back here!" Mary A
Her ears were rewarded before her eyes. She heard a thin, mewling sound that reminded her of nothing so much as the cry of kittens starving for milk. There were six of them, curled up around each other like a tangle of hairy rope. They were just babies, barely able to wiggle. One lay still; it seemed dead. The others looked up at her with curiosity untainted by fear.
Mary A
Missy was climbing up the sides of the basket, and Mary A
Then she carried the basket up the defile to the rocks. Missy chattered even more frantically now. Down below her, Tweedledee leaped and danced, yipping enthusiastically.
Mary A
Mary A
One at a time, Mary A
The mother chattered up at-her vilely, then continued to tie her children into a ball for maximum warmth and protection. Mary A
"Time to head back to camp. Dee," she said, unleashing the dog. She stood with small fists on hips, looking around the area. What did these things eat? The adults, anyway? The Joes looked close enough to mammalian; there would be some sort of milk gland for the young.
There were several types of plants: a kind of lichen or moss seemed to be breaking down some of the rocks, and a viny thing that resembled a colony of long-legged spiders. It grew out of the rocks in symbiotic relationship with the moss. There were shrubs up here, and flowering plants, which she had noticed from the helicopter.
Which would the Joe family prefer? She took a chance: the broadleafed plant that had concealed the snare. She tore loose a cluster of red berries and dropped them into the cage.
Nothing. Momma Joe ignored them.
Still following the hunch, she tore loose a clutch of leaves, sorted through them for the tenderest, and dropped them in.
Missy sprang on them. After careful sniffing, she began to chew.
Well, that answered that.
Feeling absurdly proud of herself, Mary A
The sun was unusually warm, and the air sweet, and her mind was already buzzing with ideas for cages.
There was something... something bothering her about the enclave she had found. What was it? It was beautiful. More beautiful, more lush, than anything she had seen down on the flatlands.
Down on the flatlands there was little in the way of tender shrubs.
Only the gnarled thorn bushes seemed to thrive down there.
More variation of plant life at a higher altitude? And come to think of it, animal life, too. That implied something, but what? What? Her mind wasn't quite clear enough, and she cursed softly.
Damn it. Why wouldn't it come into focus? Suddenly all the pleasure she had felt disappeared in a welter of frustration. Why wouldn't her mind work for her?
Hibernation Instability. There. Say it. Accept it. Don't try to pretend that it didn't affect you, as some of the others do. Don't try to pretend you still have capacities that have fled. That kind of egotistical nonsense gets you laughed at or killed. Work within your limits, and learn the steps you always pitied ‘tweens for having to take.
Where a Bright can lead, a ‘Tween can follow. There used to be such smugness in that saying. A genius can take huge leaps, wearing intuitive seven-league boots. Then a corps of engineers and technicians can turn the theories into inventions and principles. A competently trained repairman can fix something that it took a genius to devise in the first place.