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Her bed was big. They'd moved it into a storage room; the bed nearly filled it. At least she was alone. Few of her guests could say as much. She had the bed to herself because Cadma
Damn you, Cadma
Maybe he did. Maybe we had to try to defend the Colony, and if we lost the Colony, and he wasn't there, he'd blame himself forever. But damn him, he didn't have to be the last man out. Let someone else be a hero. For once.
The diverted stream ran into and through the house, across the veranda, down a series of small falls, and rejoined the Amazon lower down. It was no more than knee-deep anywhere. The Amazon might have been armpit deep in spots. Ru
The Minerva roared out of the clouds at a forty-five-degree angle. Mary A
No explosion. No grendels in the intakes after all. And the Minerva was gone.
No power now, no fences. He had to come out now. Should have left when the Minerva did. Before the Minerva. He should be here now. Where are you, big guy--?
The clouds stirred and she saw the Skeeter emerge.
She climbed up to the veranda. She asked the first person she saw, "Is he alive?"
It was Joe Sikes. "I've got Carlos. He says they lost Greg. Nobody else."
"Greg..." She shook her head. She couldn't say. Good. Greg. Lost how? His new wife was in Minerva. Who? All she could remember was Alicia. Alicia and the baby. So much death. The new name was gone. Doesn't matter.
She'll know soon enough. "It's over then. Thank God." She went off to bed.
Carolyn watched the sun rise below. Noon yesterday she had ridden out of the closing mist, moving southwest, uphill and toward the glacier, riding until nightfall. She'd led the horses all night. It was a mistake. While trudging uphill and trying to report her position she'd dropped the comcard and stepped on it. The horse she led stepped on it as well. Now it didn't work. No one knew where she was. Maybe they'd send a Skeeter to look for her. Maybe they wouldn't. She couldn't go back to the Colony—
Southwest and uphill. He's said southwest and uphill. They'd look for her there, and it was the safest place she could find.
Again the sun rose in blue brilliance, but today it rose over a sea of mist. Clouds had rolled in from the sea; they covered the Colony like a lid, with a great contoured thunderhead for a handle.
Carolyn and the horses were well to the north and west of Cadma
The land had flattened out like a tilted table. A line of horses trotted uphill with White Lightnin' at their head.
The horses were all yearlings or younger. Even White Lightnin' wasn't all that big; but Carolyn was small. The horse carried her easily.
She fumed as she rode. They didn't want me with them! Cadma
Anger held back the fear.
Carolyn had never been on a horse until long after she reached Avalon.
She'd tended the colts, and grown used to them, and learned that they were skittish, balky, untrustworthy. If Carolyn lost control of herself, if she screamed at a colt or swatted it, it remembered; it shied from her next time. She had learned to control herself around horses.
Around people... well, people were more complex, and they talked to each other. Word had spread.
Once she had known how to steer people where she wanted them. Once she had been Zack's second in command. Without Rachel behind him, Zack would have been working for Carolyn! Though he would still have been part of Geographic's crew, the best of the best.
Hibernation Instability had merely touched Carolyn, but it had left Zack alone.
And of course Phyllis. Nothing ever stuck to Phyllis. She had Hendrick, she could have had Cadma
I'm still smart. Smarter than she is! But I get scared. And that thought was frightening too. She took deep breaths and looked back—
The mist was coming after her in a cloud like a breaking wave, and there were grendels in the mist. She could see lightning flashes in the tops of the clouds. Rain. The grendels love it. Maybe they won't come out.
The Colony might have vanished already in a sea of ravening miniature grendels. For all Carolyn could tell, the only earthly life on Avalon was herself and twenty horses. She found herself hoping with savage fervor that that irresponsible butterfly Carlos had made her pregnant before Sylvia took him.
The Geographic Society sent no woman who didn't want babies, she thought. I'm locked into that. Preprogrammed. Hibernation Instability should have taken that too.
Thus far she had avoided water. She couldn't do that forever. Horses could go a long way without food, but not without water. It shouldn't be a problem. She was taking them toward the glacier that ran down the slope of Mucking Great Mountain. There would be streams and springs.
She looked down toward the edge of cloud...
She knew what it was as she reached for the binocular case. She was almost relieved. At this distance it looked like a black tadpole. Through the binoculars there was not much more detail: a mini-grendel, plump and streamlined, moving on quick, stubby legs. A meter long, she thought; not one of the big ones. Eyes. Watching her. How well could it see? It looked at her—
Binoculars. They're lenses. The lenses in the dead grendels are strange. Distortable. Big. It could be seeing me as well as I see it.
"Charlie," she said, as if naming a thing were the same as understanding it, controlling it. Her lips twitched toward a snarl. She lifted the harpoon gun high in the air. "Charlie, is it too late to negotiate?" The grendel watched.
She decided (working against her own well-understood tendency to hysteria) that there was no point in urging the horses to greater speed. Moving uphill, that trot was all they could manage. They hadn't smelled anything yet.
The grendel seemed in no hurry.
It was out of the rain, with no water immediately ahead. There was every chance that it would give up.
She had been given a harpoon gun and four explosive harpoons. There were boulders on the plain, some huge. Carolyn thought of climbing a rock, sending the horses ahead, waiting for the grendel to pass. Her mind worked well enough unless she was pushed. But... to wait and wait, while the grendel watched her and considered... she would crack. She knew it.
Keep the horses moving. See what happened.
Mary A