"Closer than I would have expected, though no one would recognize it. It is not worth your while to get it right, though. It will not matter in a few weeks."
I stopped chewing my own apple to look at him. "What's going to happen in a few weeks?*'
"I will take my fourth-instar name, of course. That will be, I think,——" And he made another of those sounds.
It was the first time I'd heard that leps changed their real names with each stage of development, and when he told me what his second-instar name had been, I thought I could detect a sort of a system.
"They get more complicated as you go along, but there are a lot of the same sounds, aren't there? What did you say your first-instar name was?"
"I did not say. There was none. We have no names in the first instar. We have none in the sixth, either, since no one in the sixth instar would be likely to recognize his name."
I tossed my apple core away, and then what he had said finally registered with me. "Hey! What do you mean it won't matter? Are you going to molt or something?"
"Indeed yes, Barrydihoa."
"Oh," I said, and stopped there, unsure of whether to follow it with "Too bad" or "Congratulations." "So then I won't be seeing you for awhile?"
"I will be cocooned for about twenty days. Provided the weather is satisfactory. Provided also that there are no accidents."
"I see," I said, and just as though the word "accidents" had been her cue, which it dramatically might have been if I had been making this into a screen show instead of just telling you all the things that happened, Theophan Sperlie came around the back of the car and greeted us.
I stood up to say hello, and she shook my hand. "How are you fellows doing?" she asked politely, helping herself to a wet apple.
"Just fine," I answered, though Geronimo didn't. He had already wriggled well out of earshot and was now ignoring us, putting all his attention into a bruise spot he'd found on his apple, rooting it out with his hard, rough tongue and spitting it away.
Theophan didn't seem to notice that he was avoiding her—well, she'd had plenty of opportunity to get used to that. "Barry," she said, "can you do me a favor?" I made a non-committal noise, waiting to hear what the favor was. "I'm having more troubles with that goddamn strain gauge we set out in the Rockies. With all the other uncertainties I need its data, and it isn't reporting. You didn't drop it or anything on the way up, did you?"
"Not me."
"Well, I need to have it working. If the weather clears tomorrow, we've got to get up there and fix it."
She surprised me with that. I couldn't resist a small dig. "Oh, really? What 'we' are we talking about, Theo, you and me? Why not you and Marcus? Is the work getting too heavy for him again?"
She glared at me. "No, the work is not too heavy for him. Anyway, it'll be pretty easy to go up there this time, actually. All we'll have to carry up the hill is tools. But I can't ask Marcus because he has his own work." She hesitated, then went on: "See, he's been talking to Becky Khaim-Novello, and he got some really fine material out of her for his novel—"
I gaped at her. "His what?"
She sounded impatient. "Oh, why do you think he signed up to come to Pava in the first place? It wasn't because he wanted to be some kind of pioneer. Marcus has been looking for suitable material to make into a novel for a long time. He wants it to be a big one, you see. One that'll make his reputation when he gets home. Now he's getting what he needs from Becky, and he says he has to get it all down in store while it's fresh. I don't know, I guess that's the way authors are."
It was the first I'd heard that Marcus Wendt was a novelist. As far as I was concerned that was just a synonym for "loafer," but I decided to be kind. I just shrugged. Theophan coaxed, "I need the data, Barry. It's in a critical area. Remember, I told you there's a fault segment up there that's coupled to the one by the dam? There's another segment that might be part of the same complex, and it hasn't moved for quite a while. I'm afraid it might be getting ready to pop."
"But that fault just did pop, didn't it? When the dam broke?"
Theophan took her patience in hand. I could see her remembering that, after all, I was still a novice and she had undertaken to teach me. All she said was, "That was long ago, Barry. When you get a slip in one place it just adds to the strain in other segments. Don't you remember anything I told you? We've been getting a lot of clusters of little temblors lately; they could be foreshocks." She looked up at me beseechingly, her face wet in the rain. "Will you do it for me?"
I couldn't think of any reason to say no. "If the rain stops," I promised.
She nodded. "Thanks," she said, and turned and left. I was looking after her, and didn't notice that Geronimo had come back until I heard his breathy voice from behind me.
"There will be chocolate cake tonight, Barrydihoa. Will you give me a piece?"
I turned and looked at him, his fur glistening in the wet, peacefully nibbling at bits of some ornamental shrubbery someone had planted nearby.
"Why not?" I asked. "Do you want to come along if we go up in the hills tomorrow?"
He took a moment to think that over. "I will come," he said finally, but he sounded reluctant.
I thought I knew why, so I tried him again on the unanswered question. "Geronimo? Do you want to tell me why you hate Theophan?"
He said, "No." I waited, but that was all there was to it. Just no.
"Please."
"No," he said again, but then he corrected himself. "Perhaps another time. First I need advice."
That sounded promising, if unexpected. "What kind of advice? Who from?"
But that one didn't even get a no. He didn't answer for a moment, while he finished mouthing and swallowing the bits of shrub. Then he reared up and looked at me. "I will come to see you when the dessert is served at supper, Barrydihoa. Good-bye." And that was that.
When supper was over Geronimo did come for his cake. He didn't stay, though. The reason for that was that as he was pulverizing the cake to swallow, Becky Khaim-Novello came up and took my arm. She squeezed it in a friendly way. "Going home now, Barry? Why don't we stop off in my place? I've got a surprise for you."
She sounded flirtatious. Whether Geronimo picked up on her tone or not I don't know, but he reared up at full height to study her, then turned and stretch-slid rapidly away without even saying good-bye.
So I let Becky lure me to her apartment, and when we were inside she produced her surprise with a wink. She'd been picking sushi fruit that afternoon. The surprise was a couple of fruits with the moldy stuff on them that Madeleine Hartly had told me about.
"I think," Becky said invitingly, slicing one of them into tiny pieces, "it's about time you and I got high together, Barry hon."
The woman was getting right to the point, I thought.
I've never been much for hallucinogenics, but the circumstances were special. Remember how long it had been since I'd had sex with anybody. It seemed clear that Becky was offering more than a little mind-expansion. The fact that I didn't even particularly like the woman just did not seem important at that moment.
So I took a nibble, and she did too, and we sat there, looking at each other and waiting for something to happen. She giggled. "God, I haven't done this since college. Do you feel anything yet?"
I explored the inside of my mind. "A little spacey, maybe," I ventured.
"Maybe we should eat a little more."
So we did. I didn't take very much. Then it occurred to me that we were sitting rather formally at her table, and that wasn't a good starting point for anything to develop. So I suggested we take the little plate of fruit and move over to her couch, and we did, and then I did begin to feel something. It wasn't a particularly pleasant feeling. It felt as though something warm and large was throbbing inside my chest. I thought it was as good a time as any to kiss her, and so I put my arm around her and did.
She eagerly kissed me back. Then she pulled away. "I've always admired you, Barry," she said.
r /> That struck me as an irrelevant remark, not to mention that it seemed an odd time to start a conversation anyway. "That's nice," I said, playing with the lobe of her ear—she hadn't moved so far away that my arm was not around her.
"I think everybody here on Pava does," she went on. "Do you know how much we're counting on you?"
I said, "Um."
She leaned forward and took another crumb of the fruit, then nestled back against me. "The thing is," she said, letting one hand come to rest on my knee, "you shouldn't let your personal feelings about Captain Tscharka get in the way of cooperating. For the good of everybody, I mean. He's really a fine man."
"So I'm told," I said. I was a little preoccupied with engineering details. Although she was cuddling close, her head was just under my chin. That left me nothing convenient to kiss but her hair. Also, although her left hand was on my knee, her right arm was thrown across her chest and there wasn't much of Becky that was available to caress.
"So what I was thinking," she said, sounding peacefully warm and relaxed, "is that I'd like to get you and Reverend Tuchman together one of these days, so the two of you could straighten out this little difference of opinion—"
Dawn broke. I sat up straight.
"Oh, hell," I said. "He put you up to this, didn't he?"
She untangled herself. "Don't be silly, Barry. It's just that I'm fond of you both and—"
I didn't let her finish. I was suddenly furious. Maybe part of it was the drug. Not most of it, though; mostly it was one more kind of frustration, the kind a man feels when he has every reason to believe that within the next few minutes he's going to be making love, and without warning something gets in the way.
I didn't want to get up. I wanted to carry on as planned, right into her bed. But I did it. "Thanks for the party," I said. "Sorry I can't stay longer."
And I left—horny, mad, disappointed and thoroughly disgruntled.
Halfway up the stairs I thought I could hear her crying again, but I didn't stop. I really wanted to get laid . . . but not on Friar Tuck's orders. I don't know if you can understand that. I'm not sure I do myself. But I'd never wished more that I'd never been taken away from the Lederman colony, and from my comfortable life there, and from my Alma.
20
WHY do you suppose that is not understood? You are not as different from us as you believe, Barrydihoa. Leps of the sixth instar also are driven by the biological mating imperative. Although, to be sure, they are not known to regret their actions afterwards.
Maybe that's just because they don't have any intelligence left by then, do they? I did. At least I thought I did, and yet my balls kept pushing me into places where my head knew perfectly well I didn't belong.
I suppose that "biological mating imperative" of yours is why I showed up for my date with Theophan Sperlie the next morning, even though I didn't have any real expectation of making it with her anymore, and wasn't all that sure I really wanted to. I didn't feel much like making the trip. I woke up with a bad attitude, crotchety, pissed off, resentful of the way things were going; I snapped at poor Jacky Schottke for asking me if anything was the matter, when obviously everything was the matter.
But when I'd eaten my lousy breakfast and forced down my second cup of mess-hall coffee—the awfulness about which Becky Khaim-Novello was perfectly right—I dutifully marched over to the car where Theo was waiting.
The only bright spot was that Geronimo was there, too. I hadn't really expected him to show up. With the light loads we'd be carrying we didn't really need any help, and he knew Theophan would be there. All the same, there he was. He hopped into the backseat of the car without saying a word.
Theophan, on the other hand, was cheerfully talkative. "Morning, Barry. Morning, Geronimo. Looks like we've got a nice day for a change. What's the matter, you guys get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?"
Neither of us answered. It didn't stop her. She didn't seem to care whether Geronimo and I felt conversational or not—well, maybe she was making allowances for the fact that she knew perfectly well Geronimo wouldn't talk to her at all. All the way down to the river and across and up into the hills on the other side she kept talking seismology to me. I was barely listening—I was replaying in my mind my scene with Becky Khaim-Novello from the night before, and not enjoying it any more the second time around—and Geronimo was in the backseat, resolutely staring at the road behind us. She kept right on with her lecture on basic principles: "The thing is, I'm pretty sure Pava's in the Pangaea phase. Do you know what that is? See, a planet like this, or like Earth, goes through a half-billion-year cycle as the land masses slosh back and forth. First there's a single giant continent like the one we're on. Then it breaks up. Then you get interior oceans developing inside the continent and they push the land masses apart until they're spread out as far as they can get. Then the mid-ocean ridges that drive the ocean growth dry up. By then the interior oceans aren't interior anymore—they're huge—but they begin to shrink again. Subduction starts. As the ocean floors get colder and denser and descend into the asthenosphere the spread-out continents are all pulled back to join together in one big one again . . . and then the whole cycle starts all over again."
She looked at me as though she was expecting a question. I took my mind off Becky long enough to oblige her. "It keeps on doing that over and over forever?"
"Close enough to forever. At least until the radioactive elements in the planet's core all wear out and there isn't enough interior heat to make it go, and it turns into a lump of solid rock." She paused there, glancing over at me. "How'd you do with the widow lady last night?"
By then I was getting used to the fact that I didn't have any secrets in this place. That didn't stop me from resenting her inquisitiveness. "Fine," I said flatly. "Why don't you keep your eyes on the road?"
She stopped talking then—for a while—but she was grinning to herself.
Although the rains had finally moved away, as promised, they had left the soil soft and slippery. After the big-wheeled car had taken us as far as it could, we walked. It was a long climb, and a real struggle to get back up that slick, wet hillside. Even with the light load I'd been carrying I was sweating. I threw my pack of tools down next to the one Geronimo had been dragging and sat, while Theo rummaged through all the packs for what she needed.
It didn't take long to help Theophan get the housing off the strain gauge. After that the job was all hers. I went back to sit on my wet rock and watched, Geronimo next to me, while she pulled out one component, put in another, poked her test probes in here and there for half an hour or so and then, doubtfully, pursed her lips.
She straightened up. "Ought to do it," she said. "Let's put the cover back on, Barry." When it was all dogged down she rubbed some of the wet off another rock and sat down, resting up for the return trip.
I remembered I had some sweet trail bars in my pack. I pulled them out and passed them around. Geronimo lopped dainty segments off his with the cutting edges around his mouthpart in silence. In silence Theophan ate hers, though she was watching him carefully.
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. I wasn't any more cheerful; the bad mood persisted; but the pregnant silences were just making me feel worse. I tried to get some kind of a conversation going. "Looks like the weather will be nice for a while, don't you think, Geronimo?"
He finished his trail bar and darted that snaky, quick tongue around his mouthpart to find crumbs before he answered, "Yes, Barrydihoa."
"I do too," Theophan said. Her tone sounded as though she were trying to be pleasant. Not very hard, though. And not very long. A moment later she stood up. "Well, hell," she said irritably. "Let's get out of here."
But as soon as we turned to start down that slippery, nasty hill again, Geronimo stretch-slid quickly between us. He planted himself in our path and put his face up close to mine, breathing his warm, wet, vegetable smells at me.
"Barrydihoa," he said, "the sun is still high. You need not go
quickly back across the river,"
Theophan gave me a nettled look, and I gave one to Geronimo. "Have you got some other idea?" I asked.
"Yes. I do. You have never seen our nests, Barrydihoa. I have been advised that if you wish I may take you there."
That was an unexpected offer. "Advised by who?" I asked.
He didn't answer that, just waited, swaying back and forth at full extension and watching me. I looked at Theophan to see if she had anything to say on the subject. She did, but she said it—eagerly—to Geronimo. "Does the invitation include me?"
He kept those eyes on me. "No one will prevent a conspecific coming with you, Barrydihoa," he told me, "if that is not avoidable."
It certainly was not the most openhearted invitation I'd ever heard, but Theophan settled for it.
We weren't far from the lep nests, Geronimo promised me that. I was glad of it. It was certainly far enough to suit me. It took us nearly two hours of climbing and sliding and pushing our way through heavy brush, down a slope, across an icy little stream, up another. . . . Those light backpacks were getting really heavy long before we were there.
Geronimo, of course, had no problem at all. He humped right along ahead of us, knowing exactly where he was going and singing screechily under his breath as he went. Theophan didn't sing. She swore a time or two, though, when she slipped in the mud or a branch swept back and caught her in the face. I didn't even do that much, not having the wind to spare for it.
In half an hour I was completely lost. I doubted I could find my way back to the strain gauge, much less to the car we had come in, and Theophan was looking worried herself.
Then, without warning, something big and bright came fluttering through the air toward us. It had a body the size of a collie's, and it also had lacy, bright-colored wings bigger than an eagle's. It hovered overhead for a moment, gazing benignly and emptily at the three of us.
"That is the sixth-instar person once named Marcanthony," Geronimo called over what would have been his shoulder if he'd had one. "He is newly fledged. He has left the nest just this day."