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"Just about. Justin is a nice baby," she whispered, "but ours is going to be much prettier."
"Hush." Cadma
He raised his voice as Sylvia focused. "And these little darlings are called ‘Dopey Joes,' the only indigenous mammalians found on Camelot so far. They may hold the key to a treasure trove of—ow!"
Missy snapped her sharp little teeth into his glove, and Cadma
"Bad girl." Sylvia laughed. "No dessert for you. You can't just eat the meat and ignore your vegetables—"
"Hah hah. Fu
"Not exactly sheep, are they, Senora Weyland?"
"Baa baa." Mary A
There was a quick, clumsy exchange of burdens, and Mary A
"Carlos and Sylvia staying for di
Up at the top of the hill, Gregory Clifton's bronzed, corded body arched, swinging a pick to break up resistant soil.
As with Carlos, the violent action and backbreaking labor of the pasts months had burned out Greg's hatred and healed his emotional wounds. Cadma
"Are Carlos and Sylvia staying?"
"Sure."
Mary A
But false heroes wouldn't help. Especially if they were used as a blind for guilt and uncertainty.
"I'm worried too," Mary A
"I'm sorry. Am I upsetting you? It's nothing, really."
"You have your reasons, I have mine." He held her tummy and frowned.
"I think you think I'm a little crazy."
"Pregnant women are supposed to be a little crazy. What's my excuse?"
"Don't need an excuse, you've got reasons, silly. I just know that something still bothers me about... Cad, I look around and the picture's wrong,"
"It's an alien planet. Didn't anyone tell you? Two moons, bluer sunlight, critters and plants straight out of Oz—"
Sylvia moved up beside her, cradling Justin in her arms. His hair was pale straw, and he seemed to fit comfortably into a shoulder harness. He nursed contentedly at one discreetly covered nipple. "I know what you mean," she said. "We're still working on the corpses. I don't understand enough about grendels yet. I'd give anything to have one alive. If we'd known that they could burn themselves up like that, we might have cooled the last one off with water."
"It was that hot?"
Sylvia laughed. "It cooked itself."
"Heat. Fire," Mary A
"What?"
Mary A
"Shh... "
"I'm so glad you're here," she whispered. "I'm so glad you're mine. Don't let anything happen to you, Cadma
He was aware that Carlos and Sylvia were nearby, watching, and was also aware when they turned away to give the two of them privacy. For a moment Cadma
"Come on," he said soothingly. "Let's get di
The evening's meal was a simple affair, an open-air picnic around a roaring campfire. Decent-sized catfish and a huge samlon from the nets were the main course, cooked into a casserole with long-grain brown rice from the hydroponics garden down at the Colony. Carlos and Sylvia and Hendrick's four-man work team joined them.
Cadma
Her eyes sca
Carlos watched them for a while. "The natives are restless. Do they think they're going to be dessert?" A branch popped on the campfire, and a cloud of sparks and oily smoke drifted up.
The night was a continuation of the phenomenally clear afternoon. A faint salt breeze from the ocean five miles west made the air clean and crisp. The twin moons were bright and unshrouded.
It should have been a night for laughter and song, but Cadma
Carlos tickled Justin, held the child for a few minutes, while Sylvia fed herself. The three of them seemed pretty damned comfortable together, and for a moment Cadma
Then Mary A
"Kid's doing a half gainer in there."
"He loves you already, you know."
There was more sadness than joy in that conversation, and he didn't know why, didn't know how to deal with it. Crest of the Angeles Mountains. Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley spreading to opposite sides of a veranda. Carpets of light. Never again in my lifetime. Win something, lose something...
Hendrick Sills watched the four of them ruminatively. With his short, square-cut beard he looked every bit the Freudian analyst. "What's all the moping about?" he finally demanded. "We got a cracking good day's work under our belts."
"True enough," Greg said. His calm oval face was painted with the firelight. It was growing more difficult to remember him in that other time, on that other night, spewing jellied gasoline, the glow of madness in his eyes.
Carlos rose from the fireside. "I think that it's time for Sylvia and me to head back down."
"You could spend the—no, there's Justin."
Sylvia hugged Cadma
"Sure. Mary A
"I'm a little tired. You go ahead."
He pushed himself up, helped Sylvia to her feet. As they moved away toward the eastern edge of the bluff, Hendrick's rough voice broke into song:
Banish the use of the four-letter words
Whose meanings are never obscure
The Angles, the Saxons, those hardy old birds,
Were vulgar, obscene, and impure.
But cherish the use of the weaseling phrase
That never quite says what you mean
You'd better be known for your hypocrite ways
Than as vulgar, impure and obscene...
Another breeze stirred the foot-tall rows of corn as they walked. Cadma