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 Yup. I grinned at Leo.  But tell him to  hush before you let him in. I
think that ll save your hearing.
She did, and Mabob instantly simmered down to a quiet whistle. He was happy as
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a lark (though I ve never seen anything in ships files that would explain why
larks
are happier than anything else) with a whole new house to explore.
Lalique said,  So what s the verdict on the preemies, Annie?
 One of  em s veal.
 I thought as much. Well, at least we get a couple of good meals out of it.
How about the other?
.  The funny-looking fuzzy one s a bison. Ask the Sioux Guild if they re in
the market for a mascot. On the clear understanding that one is all they
get they re not breeding up to a herd.
 Hey! I can use that! Thanks, Annie.
She ushered us into the main room and saw us settled around the huge old
dining table and dished out stew from the steaming pot in its center.
Her great-grandmother d made that table the first year on Haffenhaff, and
Lalique s family made things to last. I expect her
seven-times-great-granddaughters will be eating around the same table. One of
the reasons I like Lalique s family so much a lot of respect for continuity.
That s what made me stop in mid-bite and look all around the room. For the
first time in all the time I d been coming out to Haffenhaff for calving,
something had changed. Once I d noticed the change consciously it wasn t hard
to pick out just what. Against every wall, there was now a cabinet with a
glass front. Must have been twenty of them, all made of the same warm
silver-gray wood as the table ballyhoo wood, practically fireproof. Thing is,
every one of  em was filled with what looked for all the world like rocks.
I swallowed. The stew was good, so I gave it a moment s proper attention
before
I waved my spoon at one of the cabinets and said,  Somebody take up geology?
Lalique grinned.  Wrong field, Annie. Those aren t rocks, those are fossils
that
Nikolai and the kids dug out of the shale end of the island. The grin got
wider.
 And we re the Franz Nopcsa Museum of Natural History at least, that s what
the kids tell me. Of all the paleontologists they found in ships files, they
liked him best.
I worked on my stew while I thought about that. When I opened my mouth, what
came out was exactly what I d been thinking.  I m a damned idiot. Never
occurred to me that Mirabile would have fossils, too. The things you don t
think of! Any planet with life would have fossils. Which explained Nikolai s
comment about digging bones.  What sort of things have you found? I was
halfway out of my chair.
Lalique motioned me back down.  Wait for Nikolai. He s  curator. He ll give
you the grand tour. She looked across the table at Leo.  Do you know? I think
this has all the makings of a new guild: the folks who are interested in it
are fanatical, it has a separate history with its own heroes, and it even has
its own language.
 Curator  that s guild tongue for  the guy that keeps track of it all. What
more do you need for a guild?
Leo smiled and raised his hands to shrug. That was enough to bring Mabob to
his side.
 Oh! said Lalique.  I don t have any social graces. Should I offer your
friend a bowl of stew?
Leo had already fished a bit of meat out of his bowl to offer
Mabob a taste. Mabob accepted with a delicacy I d never have expected, given
the ferocious aspects of that beak. He whistled quietly for what would have
been several sentences worth in a human tongue, then he laid the tidbit just
as delicately beside Leo s bowl.
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Leo scratched Mabob s eye rims.   Thank you, but I m not hungry right now, 
he translated for Lalique, though it couldn t have been plainer if Mabob had
used a human tongue. Mabob went back to his exploring and Leo went back to his
stew.
 Wouldn t be important to you, Annie, Leo said.  That s why you didn t think
of it. You ve got live Dragon s Teeth to worry about what s a fossil to you?
 You never know, I said.  I ve got the interaction between Mirabilan life and
Gaian life to worry about. Seems to me I ve got a use for anybody who studies
Mirabilan life, even if it s the rock solid kind. Besides, you know how nosy I
am.
 Dragon s Tooth, said Lalique, changing the subject back to one of more
immediate interest. To her, at least.
 Nope, I said.  It s not. That one s purely Mirabilan. Which is why I brought
my Mirabilan expert along. I nodded at Leo and got back to my stew.
 But, Annie, it can t be Mirabilan, Lalique said.
So I asked Leo s question for him.  Why not?
 Because it wasn t here before we settled here, that s why not. She pushed
away from the table and darted into the next room. Over her shoulder, she
called,  I can prove it.
Leo raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged and took the opportunity to finish my
stew. If Lalique had a bee in her bonnet, it sure as hell wasn t an
Earth-authentic one.
When she came back, she was struggling under the weight of three enormous
books. Leo hastily shoved the stew bowls aside and made a place for her to
thump them down between us.  Granddaddy Renzo s  botanizing books, she said.
 See for yourself.
I was impressed already. The volumes were hand bound. You could see the love
that had gone into the work. I was almost afraid to breathe on them, let alone
touch them. Lalique must have seen that in my expression, because she chuckled
and said,  Built to last, Annie. Go ahead. They re not fragile.
Even so, I couldn t help but treat  em with the respect they deserved. I
opened the top one at random and found myself face to face with a sketch of a
stick-me-quick plant, from the highest burr to most delicate bits of its root
system. A
smaller sketch to the right showed the flower, from three different angles. To
the left,
another sketch showed a cutaway of one of the burrs and a cutaway of one of
the flowers. The drawing was so meticulous that anyone could have identified a
living example from its sketch without the slightest doubt or hesitation.
I whistled my admiration and turned the page. Handwritten, this one was neat
and clear and the text was as meticulous as the sketches had been.
 STICK-ME-QUICK, it read,  called  the nasties in the town of Gogol. Grows
only in areas with a great deal of sunlight.
It went on for a full page about the habits (time of year it flowered, time of
year it seeded) and needs (sunlight, speculation on lime in soil) of the
stick-me-quick, even to including a list of the animals (Mirabilan and
Gaian) Lalique s granddaddy had seen carrying the burrs. Last on the list was
 Humans. Right all the way. I d picked enough of the damn things out of my
hide to sympathize. Bet Renzo had found that out the same way the rest of us
had.
I turned another page. The next sketch was a small flowering plant I d never
seen.
The text on the following page included a note that crushed leaves from this
one were a very effective salve for burns.
I d ve been just as happy to spend the rest of the evening leafing through the
volumes. Luckily, there were more than one so I didn t have to fight Leo for
possession.
 I ve got seventy-five years worth of botanizing books, Annie, Lalique said.
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 Renzo was a completist. Orlando took up the hobby as well and, between them,
they covered the island. They even included any Earth-authentics that showed
up.
She pulled out the bottom volume to show me some of Orlando s work. It was a
slightly different style but just as meticulous.
She closed the book and slapped the cover.  That s why the canes have got to
be Dragon s Teeth. There isn t a sign of one until after we started raising
cattle here.
Opening the volume again, she scanned the index, then displayed a page. There [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]