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"Plus the fact that you'll give him pure holy hell for weeks," Mary A
"And if I seduce Cadma
"I'll kill you." Mary A
"What?" Carolyn was jolted.
"I could use a junior wife," Mary A
"It's all right," Sylvia said. Terry, you bastard, you could have relieved me of that promise. You could have. "What's the matter, Carolyn? Don't want to join the commune?"
"Meow," Mary A
"Sorry. But not very. Look, we have five monogamous marriages plus chaos. There's no point in being delicate about it. Especially among ourselves." Five monogamous marriages, except I could make that four plus another bigamy, and Mary A
"We're getting off the subject," Marnie said. "Carolyn, this next broadcast is probably our last chance to change anything back in Sol system. By the time they get this message, it will have been twenty years since their interstellar program was proxmired. They're probably bored to tears, ready to hang on our every word. Did we survive the grendels? The suspense must be killing them.
"This isn't just for the Geographic Society. The whole solar system will be listening! Billions of people who watched while they didn't build the interstellar ships will be still alive. A little nostalgic. Getting older, wondering where the excitement went. So we want to make all our points while we've got them hooked! Sylvia, what have you got onscreen?"
"Terry's mainland expedition. We'll send them that, of course. Adventure calls, even on Avalon! We're short one Skeeter now, and the mission has changed a little because we're hungry. We'll want to anchor a Minerva in a bay, then take the Skeeters halfway up some mountain, above where the grendels can reach. Collect some Joes, if nothing else, and reseed the island."
"Any way we can put visuals in that lecture?"
"Visuals of what? They've seen the equipment. We've improved the orbital maps. I guess we can put in Joes... "
"Summon up those notes for the broadcast."
"Yeah." Sylvia tapped. She read off the list:
"Full details on grendel attack. Bored on Earth? Come to romantic Avalon and find adventure. Emphasize that we won. We control the grendels. Nail it down by showing us hunting out a grendel pond. I sent Sikes down with a camera; he'll get that today.
"De-emphasize hunger. De-emphasize fatalities. But we can talk about the taste of local life, Joes and samlon. We can't show another harvest because nothing's come up yet—"
"They've seen a harvest," Marnie said.
"Joes are cute," Mary A
"I suppose. Anyway—set ‘em up for the foray to the mainland. I'll bet my ass we find something weird and interesting there. What eats grendels?"
"Shudder," Carolyn said; and she did shudder. Sylvia chose not to notice. For a moment Carolyn was somewhere else. For a few seconds she wasn't Carolyn, she was Phyllis, dying under the claws of a grendel.
Rachel had worked especially hard with Carolyn. They had all worked to pull her back into the community, caring for her as they never had when her twin was alive. She needed them now, probably more than any of them could understand.
"We can't avoid it," Sylvia said, deliberately raising her voice to cut into Carolyn's train of thought. "We have to tell Earth how many of us died, but we can just send a bald list. And we'll give ‘em a list of what we need. It's short. Ruined equipment. They're bound to have fancier computers than Cassandra. We lost some life forms too. I want just enough of a list to let them know visitors would be welcome.
"But we have to hammer hard on how we beat the grendels. We took on one and two and six and then ten thousand, and we're mopping them up in detail. Carolyn, you have to tell your story for the broadcast back to Earth!"
"That's what Carlos says," Carolyn admitted. "But damn all, I don't want to."
"Why not?" Marnie asked.
Carolyn looked down at her hands.
She was sliding away again, and Mary A
I bet she is, anyway."
Carolyn's smile was weak. "It was such a little story compared to the last stand at Cadma
Sylvia shook her head violently. "Jeez, here Marnie and I are all jealous of you—"
"Jealous?"
"Sure. We were up there in Geographic, all safe, and you were out slaying grendels!"
"You don't mean that. You're just being—"
"I was never more serious."
"But Mary A
"You saved the horses," Marnie said. "Which is a very lot more than I did. Tell them a story, Carolyn! It's not little, it's compact! Tell—tell us. Now. Then it'll be easier when you tell it for Earth."
"Yes, yes, tell us," Mary A
Carolyn looked at them, realized that they meant it and that they understood. "All right," she began tentatively. "Did I tell you I gave them names?"
"Yeah," Marnie said. "Cassandra record."
"No!" Carolyn protested.
"Cassandra. Record. File as dry run." Marnie gri
"Yeah. Yes, I guess so." Carolyn straightened in her chair. "I named them all. I named the first one after Charlie Manson." Suddenly Carolyn was gri
"That left me with three grendels after me and two harpoons to my name. I started being careful, but I was in a hurry too. I got the horses as far as the base of the glacier. By then I could see that the grendels had reached Charlie and what was left of Shank's Mare. One of them was too chicken to get close. That was Mareta—"
Sylvia shuddered. Teheran. The whole city. Omar lost cousins. Well, Mareta Lupoff certainly got the world's attention—
"—but Mareta stayed behind and ate the leavings when the other two went on. I kept going up the glacier, leaving the horses behind.
"I was fifty meters up when Khadafi went on speed and came for me. She hit ice. It surprised her, but she kept coming, legs churning, ice flying, getting slower and slower as the ice got steeper. She was ru
"I thought I was in a good place, then, so I stayed. Nothing to eat, but plenty of water. Mareta and the Ayatollah stared at me for a while, but neither of them wanted to try it. I was almost hoping one would. But not both.
"After a while Joe Sikes found me. We managed to take ten of the horses down. The rest are still up there with two grendels. There's not much point in going after Mareta and the Ayatollah."
"Yes, that's right," Sylvia said. "There have to be lots of grendels in the hills, but they'll never lay fertile eggs. The samlon are the males. They have to come down for that."
"So. That's what happened," Carolyn said. "It was scary enough, but... it felt so damned good to sh-shoot those things I was so scared of."
"Cassandra end file," Marnie said.
"I think it's wonderful," Mary A
"No, they won't," Sylvia said. "Would you put Mary A
Carolyn gulped and was silent.
"I wouldn't," Mary A