Zenn Scarlett Part 6

"Katie," Hild exclaimed. "I hate when she pops out of nowhere like that."

"She's just looking out for me. Aren't you, Katie-Kate?"

"Well, it's alarming," Hild said, but she was smiling in spite of herself. "Now then, you stay close to Otha out at Gil's."

"I will."

At her feet, Katie sat up and signed: "Katie hungry still. Hungry now to eat."

"Oh, right. Uma" Zenn looked from Katie to Hild.

"Yes, I'll feed the little imp. You go."

"Thanks. There's a bag of dried gra.s.shoppers in the bread box."

"Next to my fresh-baked rolls?" Hild said, not pleased. But Zenn was already in motion. Grabbing her work gloves from the desk, she hurried into the hall and bounded down the steps, taking them two at a time.

SEVEN.

Outside, Zenn jogged across the cloister's outer courtyard to where Otha waited in his cherished Mistuchev. The worn, old pickup truck had been wired up, welded together, and jerry-rigged so many times it looked less like a truck than a prehistoric beast with a bad case of mange. Slung over one shoulder, Zenn carried the battered leather backpack that used to serve as Otha's field kit. Now it was Zenn's, and it was one of her most prized possessions. Searching through the supply shed, she'd stocked the kit with an array of the clinic's second-hand equipment, unused bandages, older medicines and anything else she thought a reasonably equipped exovet should have while out on a call.

"I don't think we need your little a.s.sistant on this job," Otha said dryly, pointing behind Zenn. She turned to see Katie skittering across the drive, tail held high.

"No, Katie," Zenn signed and spoke, trying to make her voice sound firm even though Katie couldn't hear her. The little rikkaset was acutely perceptive; so much so that Zenn had been working on lip-reading with her lately. She was picking it up quickly. "You stay here with Hild. Stay." Katie sat down, but just barely. "Good girl."

Zenn pulled open the pa.s.senger side door.

"That rear tire still holding air?" Otha nodded his head toward the back of the truck. Zenn dropped her pack on the ground and walked around to check.

"Looks good to me," she said, coming back to the front, tossing her pack behind the seat and climbing in. She slammed the door three times before it finally latched and settled back as they pulled ahead.

Hamish was waiting for them at the gate. He'd already opened the two big, metal doors that guarded the compound's east entrance.

"Do I have your approval for now shutting tight these gates?" Hamish called as they drove past him. Otha stopped the truck.

"Yes, s.e.xton, you may close the gates now." Her uncle spoke as if addressing a young child.

"Hamish," Zenn said, "You don't always have to ask for approval, you know. Not for every little thing. Sometimes, it's a good idea just to think for yourself, right? Take the initiative."

"Very well. If this is your wish," he said. But from the way he said it, Zenn didn't think he really thought much of the idea. Zenn wondered again about Hamish's species, and the rigid coleopt social order on Siren. Did anyone there do anything without getting clearance from the Queen Sp.a.w.n-Mother herself? They drove on and Hamish dutifully shut the gates behind them.

"Gil should've learned the lesson those first two hogs tried to teach him," Otha muttered as they accelerated down the road. He shifted gears irritably, not really awake yet, sipping bitter chicory coffee from his chipped mug. "Breakfast," he said, nodding at the small wicker basket on the seat between them.

Zenn opened the basket and helped herself to one of the still-warm amaranth griddlecakes as the truck topped a low ridge and the terrain opened up ahead of them. She looked out across the patchwork of irrigated fields, barren ground and decaying farmsteads where settlers had given up and left. Bathed in the ruddy light of the rising sun, the few fields still being cropped glowed an improbable shade of green between the battlements of red rock.

Farther along the valley she could see the farmhouses and outbuildings of the neighboring families who still stubbornly clung to their land. The Swansons, with their vast lichen barn. The permafrost well operated by widower Carl Dawkins and his five sons. The Zetian place, where she was just able to see the tiny, stooped figures of Cai-Lun and Wu working their way along the tidy rows of kipfruit saplings. And farthest away, just visible at the mouth of Huxlee's Canyon, the eroded hillsides of the LeClerc spread, most of the land's scant vegetation long ago gnawed to ground-level by the ranch's ravenous goats.

Centered in the middle distance beyond them, the lights of Arsia City were blinking off one by one as the morning brightened. A handful of campfires flickered amid the squalid shantytown that had grown up around Arsia's outskirts. This sad collection of converted shipping containers and makeshift shacks was where the poor and homeless in this end of the canyon sought shelter from the steadily worsening situation on Mars. It had been several weeks since Zenn had accompanied Otha on a trip into Arsia to barter for supplies. But even from this distance, she could see that since that last visit a dozen new shelters had been hastily thrown together on the north edge of town. Zenn thought of the families driven off their failing farms and into the crowded jumble of shanties. They'd shed their role as brave, independent settlers taming a wild frontier. Now, they would a.s.sume the unfamiliar, new role of refugee, the dreams gone, the future uncertain.

The sun had cleared the horizon, and Zenn folded down the visor to shade her eyes. She tried to imagine the Martian landscape before the bary-gens stretched their protective membranes of invisible, charged molecules across the valleys, before the first colonists arrived a" a time of no green fields, no farmsteads or villages. Just dry rock and sand and an atmosphere so paltry it didn't deserve the name.

"It must have looked soa harsh at first," she said. "You know, before settlers came."

"More than harsh. Downright lethal. At least here in the deep end of the Valleys there was some kind of atmospheric pressure. Enough to keep water from boiling off into the sky anyway."

"But at first the people had help, right, from Earth?"

"Not like now, you mean?" Otha snorted a soft laugh at the thought. "Sure they did. I'll tell you this, though: the Rift was a blessing in disguise. Well, half a blessing. Made us self-reliant. Made us dig down and get serious about what it meant to be a Ciscan. What it meant to be Martian." Otha sipped at his coffee, and then wedged the mug on the dash so it wouldn't spill. "I remember the day we finally heard the news. Word got pa.s.sed down from Zubrin a" the last radio link with Earth had gone dead. Nothing but static. I told your father, *This is what we're meant for, Warra. This is what the Ciscan Order was designed to do: survive.'"

He paused, eyes on the road ahead. "Of course, it was a double-edged sword. It was before your time. Before the Rift, the scriptorium was full, teeming with novices and acolytes. We had three s.e.xtons then. You wouldn't have recognized the place."

Zenn could see it in his face: he was back in the glory days, when the cloister training program was in full flower, the clinic school filled with eager would-be exovets from all across the Accord. After the Rift, even the cloister's reputation as one of the premiere training clinics of the Accord couldn't prevent the disastrous decline in enrollments. There was one advantage, though. With Earth closed to all off-worlders, the cloister on Mars became the only facility in nearby s.p.a.ce for the treatment and boarding of alien animals. That had kept clients coming, money flowing. Not a lot, but enough. Now, though, with more Indra ships going missing, and fewer coming to Mars, even that meager source of cloister income no longer seemed secure. "Pretty quiet these days, eh?" Otha said, giving her a wry grin. "I suppose you're the sole beneficiary now."

"Yes, I think you've mentioned that once or twice," Zenn said. "And I do get lots of one-on-one attention from the instructors. Both of you. That part's great. But even with Hamish's help, it just seems like there's never enough time to do everything."

"Oh, is the life of a novice so pitiful and cruel?" Otha gave her a look of simulated concern. "It's enough to make a rikkaset howl at both moons."

Zenn wasn't at all sure Otha really knew how much she did around the cloister. She was about to remind him when he turned the truck into the Bodine drive.

Gil must have heard them coming. He was standing at the heavy, sheet-metal security gate that guarded the entrance to his farmyard compound. He was a wide-load of a man, dressed in bib overalls and wearing a sweat-stained seed cap. Though a few years younger than Otha, Gil's open, friendly face had been prematurely aged to a sun-and-wind cured surface, brown and creased as the stony land he farmed.

Otha drove into the yard, and Gil swung the gate shut behind them.

"He was in here!" Gil shouted at them, pointing toward the pole barn at the far side of the yard.

"Was?" Otha said as they got out of the truck. "I see. And where is our big boy now?"

EIGHT.

Gil motioned for them to follow him toward the barn. Inside, Zenn's eyes slowly adapted to the chilly, animal-scented darkness. Ahead of them, Gil had stopped. He was staring into a penned area surrounded by a fence of heavy, salvaged synthwood boards. The only thing visible in the pen was a large mound of earth and a gaping hole in the metal floor panels.

"Found him missing this morning," Gil said. "He chewed clean through my floor! Look'it this." He went to a breaker box on the wall of the barn. "Power to the floor panels was cut." Gil poked at several frayed wires sticking out from the box. "Something musta ate through the wires. Just my luck."

Otha inclined his head toward Zenn, giving her a "told you so" look.

"Uh huha well, what's the matter with your hog, Gil, when he's at home?"

Gil sat heavily on a bale of bedding straw, tugged his cap off and wiped at his balding head with a grimy bandana.

"Off his feed, moanin' and bellowin'. Bad belly, I guess. All bloated up, colicky like. I got no idea what was wrong with him. The two sows didn't act nothing like this."

"But they got out, too, Gil. Maybe your fences need a little beefing up."

"Yeah, Ren said the same thing when he came by yesterday."

"So, what's your feed mix been?"

"Silica and heavy H, just like the others," Gil answered. Sand and modified water. Not Zenn's idea of gourmet dining, but standard fare for these dirt-eaters. "That Tucker boy did the feedings the last few days. But I showed him how to mix it up. It weren't rocket science or nuthin'."

"You should have sent for me last night, Gil," Otha said, laying his duffle bag field kit on top of a water barrel and zipping it open.

"Otha, you wouldna been any happier being out here at two in the morning than ya are now," Gil responded. Correctly, Zenn thought. Following Otha's lead, she set her own pack down on a bale of straw, the very act of having a field kit making her feel very official.

"Let's see if we can tell which way he went. Novice, you have an episcope in your kit?"

"Yes, I do," she said, smiling, feeling useful. It was a good thing she'd brought her pack, after all.

She opened her kit and reached in a" felt something furry and moving and jerked her hand back out. A second later, a pair of lynx-tufted ears rose up out of the pack. Katie trilled at her.

"You little vermin," Otha said, scowling at the rikkaset. "I think you and Katie need to work on your discipline."

"Sorry," Zenn said, picking the little animal up. "Bad Katie." The rikkaset trilled louder and nuzzled against Zenn's arm.

Returning to her pack, Zenn found the episcope and sheepishly handed it over. Otha inserted the ear-buds and placed the receiver on the ground near the pen. He twirled the volume dial. Apparently hearing nothing, he thumped the receiver against the palm of his hand and listened again.

"No sign of him nearby, if this thing can be trusted," Otha said, frowning at the episcope. "Where do you graze him?"

"East dune-pasture, mostly. I was hoping to get a crop of sorghum planted out there this year. That's what I bought the dang animal for, to get those acres turned fertile and put into production. But if he spends all his time running off instead of eating my dirt, it's never gonna get done."

"How long has he been off his feed?"

"Don't know exact. A daya day and a half?" Gil eyed the empty pen. "This is my last hog, mark my words. I'll switch back to enzymes to convert my fields, cost be danged."

"Might be a good thing, too," Otha muttered to Zenn under his breath. He took the portable seda-field generator from his kit, folded out the small transmit dish and pulled its tripod legs from underneath. He set the unit on the ground and handed the remote to Zenn. She set Katie down at her feet.

"I doubt we'll need this," Otha indicated the dish, "but hogs can be unpredictable. So, just in case he's in the areaa set the level to intermediate, weight at twelve-hundred pounds a" no, better make it fifteen hundred, to be safe. And if you do have to use it, keep the beam tight. You want to sedate the animal, not me, alright?"

"I think I can tell one from the other," Zenn said, shaking her head at him. She'd never been trusted with using the seda-field dish in the field before. This was good. Especially after what had happened with the hound.

Otha opened the gate and entered the pen. Stooping near the mangled metal floor panel where the sandhog exited, he scooped up a handful of dirt and sniffed it, but turned his head quickly and threw down the soil.

"Whew! That's fresh."

On the ground next to Zenn, Katie's ears twitched. Then, she lowered her body and vanished from sight. That's odd, Zenn thought, wondering what triggered the rikkaset's camouflage mode.

Otha turned to proffer the handful of soil for Gil to smell. Gil declined the offer.

"It's as if that hog was justa"

But before Otha finished his sentence, the ground in the pen trembled, swelled under his feet, then erupted in a shower of dirt and straw as the sandhog burst up out of the floor. Thrown into the air, Otha landed hard at the far side of the pen.

The hog thrust himself up out of the hole and reared to his full, twelve-foot height, a ma.s.s of rippling muscle and hairless, pink-beige skin. With no time to stand, Otha kicked his legs frantically to push himself away. Roaring, the sandhog whirled to follow him, the huge maw gaping above mole-like claws the size of backhoe buckets.

Otha half-rose to his feet, fell again, his shoulder banging against the fence. There was no chance he could climb out before the furious animal was on him. Gil rushed up to the pen, waving his arm and yelling to distract the animal, but it ignored him. Instead, the sandhog dropped forward, its body toppling like an unstable building. Otha twisted away reflexively, body tensed for the impact, arms thrown up across his face.

NINE.

"No!" Zenn opened her mouth to scream, but produced only an anguished, fearful whisper, her hands stretched before her as if to stop the looming disaster by force of will. To her astonishment, it seemed to work. The sandhog stopped its strike in mid-air, body tilted forward, jaws straining wide. A string of drool oozed from the animal's mouth to drape itself on Otha's still-upraised arms.

No, she thought, but strangely felt no need to speak the word. The sandhog settled back on its thick, armor-plated tail. The only sound was the animal's ragged breathing as it swayed slightly, holding itself upright in the middle of the pen. It swung its head to where Zenn stood outside the pen behind Otha. It was only now she noticed it: the familiar warming sensation and dizziness, pulsing through her head and body, strong enough now to make her feel queasy, to make her knees threaten to buckle. She struggled to focus, and saw that the sandhog's tiny, almost-useless eyes fixed on hers. Yes. She was certain of it. The hog wasn't just looking at her, it was looking into her eyes. It wasn't simply scanning another creature; it was seeing her a" her mind, her intentions. It was the same look she'd seen in the whalehound's eye. The hog blinked at her, confused.

As if waking from a dream, Zenn remembered the seda-field. She knelt to where the unit sat at her feet and punched the activation pad and the small dish hummed to life.

In the pen the sandhog wavered on its tail, and then slowly slumped over onto its side as the sedation took hold. The strange feeling gripping her evaporated, leaving her body trembling, the barn's dank smell in her nostrils, the air cool on her face.

Otha was already moving. A few seconds later, he was out of the pen. He slammed the gate behind him, shoved the latch into place and leaned against the planks, breathing deep and fast.

Half an hour later, she, Otha and Gil sat on the steps of the second-hand military Quonset hut that Gil had refurbished into a semblance of a farmhouse, drinking the chicory coffee he'd brought out. After using Gil's skiploader to move the animal to a reinforced grain silo, Otha's exam produced a diagnosis of intestinal blockage. He quickly dissolved the concretion with a sonic purge, leaving the animal understandably annoyed, but otherwise no worse for wear.

"Something's off with that feed mix, Gil," Otha said, sipping his coffee. "That beast was plugged up tight as a bad drain."

"Almost plugged up with our local vetrin'ry, too," Gil said. But his words were accompanied by a nervous laugh and furtive glance at Zenn. "That was something, Otha," he said. "That hog just stopping like that."

Had Gil seen what happened? Had Otha?

Stroking Katie, dozing now in her lap, Zenn watched Otha for his reaction, but he appeared not to hear, his mind somewhere else.

"Just kinda froze in his tracks," Gil said, giving his nervous chuckle again. "Sorta likea he was hyp-natized."

Zenn sipped the bittersweet chicory, and the cup shook in her hands. She looked at Otha to see if he'd noticed. He hadn't, and she lowered her hands to her lap to steady them.

"Well, one thing's sure," Otha said to Gil, "You need to tell the co-op to be more careful with their feed ratios. Silica poisoning could've been bad news."

"Well, it weren't the co-op. Traded for the feed with Vic LeClerc. Graad dropped it by. But it don't matter anyways." He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm done. That hog's gettin' shipped right back to the Parcher vermin I bought him from. He claimed the thing was pen-trained. I can't afford this sorta downtime with an animal that won't stay put. Not to mention watchin' him almost chew you in half. Nope. Done and done."

"Can't say I blame you," Otha said. "Sandhogs can be more trouble than they're worth. Might be pricey, though, sending him back."

"Otha, what you take me for? Got a guarantee. Six months, full satisfaction or money back, shipping included. The Helen of Troy is due in here soon. I'll haul him over to the port at Pavonis and be shed of him."

"The Helen of Troy?" Zenn said. "She does the Enchara run, doesn't she?"