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Mirabile

by Janet Kagan

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events

is purely coincidental.

portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

West 24th Street

New York, N.Y.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kagan, Janet.

Mirabile / Janet Kagan.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.” ISBN 0-312-85220-7 I. Title.

PS3561.A363M57 1991 . 813‘. 54—dc

-19691 CIP

Printed in the United States of America First edition: October

For MARY MEGSON,

who read me sf before I was old enough to read,

for FRED MEGSON,

who let me tell every other chapter of the bedtime cliff-hanger,

for SUSAN CASPER,

who knows why this particular book got written,

and for RICKY,

of course and as always…

May they never stop scandalizing the kids!

CONTENTS

•The Loch Moose Monster

•The Return of the Kangaroo Rex

•The Flowering Inferno

•Getting the Bugs Out

•Raising Cane

•Frankenswine

•Author’s Note

The Loch Moose Monster

^ »

This year the Ribeiro’s daffodils seeded early and they seeded cockroaches. Now,

ecologically speaking, even a cockroach has its place—but these suckers bit. That

didn’t sound Earth-authentic to me. Not that I care, mind you, all I ask is useful. I

wasn’t betting on that either.

As usual, we were shorthanded—most of the team was up-country trying to

stabilize a herd of Guernseys—which left me and Mike to throw a containment tent

around the Ribeiro place while we did the gene-reads on the roaches and the

daffodils that spawned ’em. Dragon’s Teeth, sure enough, and worse than useless. I

grabbed my gear and went in to clean them out, daffodils and all.

By the time I crawled back out of the containment tent, exhausted, cranky, and

thoroughly bitten, there wasn’t a daffodil left in town. Damn fools. If I’d told ’em

the roaches were Earth-authentic they’d have cheered ’em, no matter how obnoxious

they were.

I didn’t even have the good grace to say hi to Mike when I slammed into the lab.

The first thing out of my mouth was, “The red daffodils—in front of Sagdeev’s.”

“I got ’em,” he said. “Nick of time, but I got ’em. They’re in the greenhouse—”

We’d done a gene-read on that particular patch of daffodils the first year they’d

flowered red: they promised to produce a good strain of praying mantises, probably

Earth-authentic. We both knew how badly Mirabile needed insectivores. The other

possibility was something harmless but pretty that ships’ records called “fireflies.”

Either would have been welcome, and those idiots had been ready to consign both

to a fire.

“I used the same soil, Annie, so don’t give me that look.”

“Town’s full of fools,” I growled, to let him know that look wasn’t aimed at him.

“Same soil, fine, but can we match the rest of the environmental conditions those

praying mantises need in the goddamn greenhouse?”

“It’s the best we’ve got,” he said. He shrugged and his right hand came up

bandaged. I glared at it.

He dropped the bandaged hand behind the lab bench. “They were gonna burn

’em. I couldn’t—” He looked away, looked back. “Annie, it’s nothing to worry

about—”

I’d have done the same myself, true, but that was no reason to let him get into the

habit of taking fool risks.

I started across to check out his hand and give him pure hell from close up.

Halfway there the com blatted for attention. Yellow light on the console, meaning it

was no emergency, but I snatched it up to deal with the interruption before I dealt

with Mike. I snapped a “Yeah?” at the screen.

“Mama Jason?”

Nobody calls me that but Elly’s kids. I glowered at the face on screen: my age,

third-generation Mirabilan, and not so privileged. “Annie Jason Masmajean,” I

corrected, “Who wants to know?”

“Leonov Bellmaker Denness at this end,” he said. “I apologize for my improper

use of your nickname.” Ship’s manners—he ignored my rudeness completely.

The name struck me as vaguely familiar but I was in no mood to search my

memory; I’d lost my ship’s manners about three hours into the cockroach clean-out.

“State your business,” I said.

To his credit, he did: “Two of Elly’s lodgers claim there’s a monster in Loch

Moose. By their description, it’s a humdinger.”

I was all ears now. Elly runs the lodge at Loch Moose for fun—her profession’s

raising kids. (Elly Raiser Roget, like her father before her. Our population is still so

small we can’t afford to lose genes just because somebody’s not suited, one way or

another, for parenting.) A chimera anywhere near Loch Moose was a potential

disaster. Thing of it was, Denness didn’t sound right for that. “Then why aren’t they

making this call?”

He gave a deep-throated chuckle. “They’re in the dining room gorging themselves

on Chris’s shrimp. I doubt they’ll make you a formal call when they’re done. Their

names are Emile Pilot Stirzaker and Francois Cobbler Pastides and, right now, they

can’t spell either without dropping letters.”

So he thought they’d both been smoking dumbweed. Fair enough. I simmered

down and reconsidered him. I’d’ve bet money he was the one who sidetracked

Pastides and Stirzaker into the eating binge.

Recognition struck at last: this was the guy Elly’s kids called “Noisy.” The first

thing he’d done on moving into the neighborhood was outshout every one of ’em in

one helluva contest. He was equally legendary for his stories, his bells, and his ability

to keep secrets. I hadn’t met him, but I’d sure as hell heard tell.

I must have said the nickname aloud, because Denness said, “Yes, ‘Noisy.’ Is

that enough to get me a hearing?”

“It is.” It was my turn to apologize. “Sorry. What more do you want me to hear?”

“You should, I think, hear Stirzaker imitate his monster’s bellow of rage.”

It took me a long moment to get his drift, but get it I did. “I’m on my way,” I

said. I snapped off and started repacking my gear.

Mike stared at me. “Annie? What did I miss?”

“You ever know anybody who got auditory hallucinations on dumbweed?”

“Shit,” he said. “No.” He scrambled for his own pack.

“Not you,” I said. “I need you here to coddle those daffodils, check the

environmental conditions that produced ’em, and call me if Dragon’s Teeth pop up

anywhere else.” I shouldered my pack and finished with a glare and a growl: “That

should be enough to keep you out of bonfires while I’m gone, shouldn’t it?”

By the time I grounded in the clearing next to Elly’s lodge, I’d decided I was on a

wild moose chase. Yeah, I know the Earth-authentic is wild goose, but “wild moose”

was Granddaddy Jason’s phrase. He’d known Jason—the original first generation

Jason—well before the Dragon’s Teeth had started popping up.

One look at the wilderness where Elly’s lodge is now and Jason knew she had the

perfect EC for moose. She hauled the embryos out of ships’ storage and set them

thawing. Built up a nice little herd of the things and turned ’em loose. Not a one of

them survived—damn foolish creatures died of a taste for a Mirabilan plant they

couldn’t metabolize.

Trying to establish a viable herd got to be an obsession with Jason. She must’ve

spent years at it, off and on. She never succeeded but somebody with a warped

sense of humor named the lake Loch Moose and it stuck, moose or no moose.

Loch Moose looked as serene as it always did this time of year. The water lilies

were in full bloom—patches of velvety red and green against the sparkles of sunlight

off the water. Here and there I saw a ripple of real trout, Earth-authentic.

On the bank to the far right, Susan’s troop of otters played tag, skidding down

the incline and hitting the water with a splash. They whistled encouragement to each

other like a pack of fans at a ballgame. Never saw a creature have more pure fun than

an otter—unless it was a dozen otters, like now.

The pines were that dusty gold that meant I’d timed it just right to see Loch

Moose smoke. There’s nothing quite so beautiful as that drift of pollen fog across

the loch. It would gild rocks and trees alike until the next rainfall.

Monster, my ass—but where better for a wild moose chase?

I clambered down the steps to Elly’s lodge, still gawking at the scenery, so I was

totally unprepared for the EC in the lobby. If that bright-eyed geneticist back on

Earth put the double whammy on any of the human genes in the cold banks they sent

along (swore they hadn’t, but after the kangaroo rex, damnify believe anything the

old records tell me), the pandemonium I found would have been enough to kick off

Dragon’s Teeth by the dozens.

Amid the chaos, Ilanith, Elly’s next-to-oldest-not-yet-grown, was handling the

oversized gilt ledger with great dignity. She lit up when she saw me and waved. Then

she bent down for whispered conversation. A second later Jen, the nine-year-old,

exploded from behind the desk, bellowing, “Elleeeeee! Noiseeeeee! Come quick!

Mama Jason’s here!” The kid’s lung power cut right through the chaos and startled

the room into a momentary hush. She charged through the door to the dining room,

still trying to shout the house down.

I took advantage of the distraction to elbow my way to the desk and Ilanith.

She squinted a little at me, purely Elly in manner, and said, “Bet you got hopped

on by a kangaroo rex this week. You’re real snarly.”

“Can’t do anything about my face,” I told her. “And it was biting cockroaches.” I

pushed up a sleeve to show her the bites.

“Bleeeeeh,” she said, with an inch or two of tongue for emphasis. “I hope they

weren’t keepers.”

“Just the six I saved to put in your bed. Wouldn’t want you to think I’d forgotten

you.”

She wrinkled her nose at me and flung herself across the desk to plant a big

sloppy kiss on my cheek. “Mama Jason, you are the world’s biggest tease. But I’m

gonna give you your favorite room anyhow”—she wrinkled her nose in a very

different fashion at the couple to my right—“since those two just checked out of it.”

One of the those two peered at me like a myopic crane. I saw recognition strike,

then he said, “We’ve changed our minds. We’ll keep the room.”

“Too late,” said Ilanith—and she was smug about it. “But, if you want to stay, I

can give you one on the other side of the lodge. No view.” Score one for the good

guys, I thought.

“See, Elly?” It was Jen, back at a trot beside Elly and dragging Noisy behind her.

“See?” Jen said again. “If Mama Jason’s here, I won’t have to go away, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Oh, Jen!” Elly dropped to one knee to pull Jen into one of her full-body-check

hugs. “Is that what’s been worrying you? Leo already explained to your mom.

There’s no monster. Nobody’s going to send you away from Loch Moose!”

Jen, who’d been looking relieved, suddenly looked suspicious. “If there’s no

monster, why’s Mama Jason here?”

“Need a break,” I said, realizing I meant it. Seeing Elly and the kids was break

enough all by itself. “Stomped enough Dragon’s Teeth this week. I’m not about to

go running after monsters that vanish at the first breath of fresh air.”

Elly gave me a smile that would have thawed a glacier and my shoulders relaxed

for the first time in what seemed like months.

I grinned back. “Have your two monster-sighters sobered up yet?”

“Sobered up,” reported Ilanith, “and checked out.” She giggled. “You should

have seen how red-faced they were, Mama Jason.”

I glowered at no one in particular. “Just as well. After the day I had, they’d have

been twice as red if I’d had to deal with ’em.”

Elly rose to her feet, bringing Jen with her. The two of them looked me over, Jen

imitating Elly’s keen-eyed inspection. “We’d better get Mama Jason to her room.

She needs a shower and a nap worse than any kid in the household.”

Ilanith shook her head. “Let her eat first, Elly. By the time she’s done, we’ll have

her room ready.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, “if the kids waiting tables can take it.”

“We raise a sturdy bunch around here. Go eat, Annie.” Elly gave me a kiss on the

cheek—I got a bonus kiss from Jen—and the two of them bustled off to get my

room ready. I frowned after them: Jen still seemed worried and I wondered why.

Ilanith rounded the desk to grab my pack. Standing between me and Leo, she

suddenly jammed her fists into her hips. “Oh, nuts. Ship’s manners. Honestly,

Mama Jason—how did people ever get acquainted in the old days?” With an

expression of tried patience, she formally introduced the two of us.

I looked him over, this time giving him a fair shake. The face was as good as the

reputation, all laugh lines etched deep. In return, I got inspected just as hard.

When nobody said anything for a full half second, Ilanith said, “More? You need

more? Didn’t I get it right?”

Leo gave a smile that was a match for Elly’s. Definitely the EC, I thought. Then

he thrust out a huge welcoming hand and said, “That’s Leo to you, as I don’t

imagine I could outshout you.”

That assessment visibly impressed Ilanith.

“Annie,” I said. I took the hand. Not many people have hands the size of mine. In

Denness I’d met my match for once. Surprised me how good that felt. He didn’t let

go immediately and I wasn’t all that anxious for him to do so.

Ilanith eyed him severely. “Leo, there’s no need to be grabby!” She tapped his

hand, trying to make him let go.

“Shows how much you know about ship’s manners,” Leo said. “I was about to

offer the lady my arm, to escort her into the dining room.”

“Perfectly good old-time ritual,” I said. “I can stand it if he can.”

Leo held out his arm, ship’s formal; I took it. We went off rather grandly, leaving

Ilanith all the more suspicious that we’d made it up for her benefit.

Leo chuckled as we passed beyond her earshot. “She won’t believe that until she

double-checks with Elly.”

“I know. Good for ’em—check it out for yourself, I always say. Have you heard

any bellowing off the loch?”

“Yes,” he said, “I have heard a couple of unusual sounds off the loch lately. I’ve

no way of knowing if they’re all made by the same creature. But I’ve lived here long

enough to know that these are new. One is a kind of sucking gurgle. Then there’s

something related to a cow’s lowing”—he held up a hand—“not cow and not red

deer either. I know both. And there’s a bellow that’ll bring you out of a sound sleep

faster than a shotgun blast.”

His lips flattened a bit. “I can’t vouch for that one. I’ve only heard it awakening

from sleep. It might have been a dream, but it never feels like dream—and the bellow

Stirzaker gave was a fair approximation of it.”

The lines across his forehead deepened. “There’s something else you should

know, Annie. Jen’s been acting spooked, and neither Elly nor I can make any sense

of it.”

“I saw. I thought she was still keyed up over the monster business.”

He shook his head. “This started weeks ago, long before Stirzaker and Pastides

got everybody stirred up. ”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Anything I can do to help,” he said. He swung his free hand to tell me how

extensive that “anything” actually was. “On either count. ”

“Right now, you watch me eat a big plate of my shrimp with Chris’s barbecue

sauce on ’em.”

Loch Moose was the only source of freshwater shrimp on Mirabile, and they were

one of my triumphs. Not just the way they tasted when Chris got done with them,

but because I’d brought the water lilies they came from myself and planted them

down in Loch Moose on the chance they’d throw off something good. Spent three

years making sure they stabilized. Got some pretty dragonflies out of that

redundancy, too. Elly’s kids use ’em for catching rock lobsters, which is another

thing Chris cooks to perfection.

By the time I’d finished my shrimp, the dining room was empty except for a

couple of people I knew to be locals like Leo. I blinked my surprise, I guess.

Leo said, “Most of the guests checked out this morning. Let’s take advantage of

it.” He picked up my glass and his own and bowed me toward one of the empty

booths.

I followed and sank, sighing, into overstuffed comfort. “Now,” I said, “tell me

what you heard from Stirzaker and Pastides.”

He obliged in detail, playing both roles. When he was done, I appreciated his

reputation for story telling, but I knew as well he’d given me an accurate account,

right down to the two of them tripping over each other’s words in their excitement.

Their description of the chimera would have scared the daylights out of me— if

they’d been able to agree on any given part of it aside from the size. Stirzaker had

seen the thing reach for him with two great clawlike hands. Pastides had seen the

loops of a water snake, grown to unbelievable lengths, undulate past him. They

agreed again only when it came to the creature’s bellow.

When all was said, I had to laugh. “I bet their granddaddy told them scary

bedtime stories too!”

“Good God,” said Leo, grinning suddenly. “The Loch Ness monster! I should

have recognized it!”

“From which description?” I grinned back. Luckily the question didn’t require an

answer.

“Mama Jason!”

That was all the warning I got. Susan—all hundred pounds of her—pounced into

my lap.

“They were dumbstruck, both of them,” she said, her manner making it clear that

this was the most important news of the century. “You should have seen them eat!

Tell her, Noisy—you saw!”

“Hello to you too,” I said, “and I just got the full story, complete with sound

effects.”

That settled her down a bit, but not much. At sixteen, nothing settles them down.

Sliding into the seat beside me, she said, “Now you tell—about the biting

cockroaches.”

Well, I’d have had to tell that one sooner or later, so I told it for two, ending with

Mike’s heroic attempt to rescue the red daffodils.

Susan’s eyes went dreamy. “Fireflies,” she said. “Think how pretty they’d be

around the lake at night!”

“I was,” I said, all too curtly. “Sorry,” I amended, “I’m still pissed off about

them.”

“I’ve got another one for you,” Susan said, matching my scowl. “Rowena who

lives about twenty miles that way”—she pointed, glanced at Leo (who nudged her

finger about 5 degrees left), then went on—“that way, claims that the only way to

keep from raising Dragon’s Teeth is to spit tobacco on your plants whenever you go

past them.” She gave another glance at Leo, this one a different sort of query. “I

think she believes that. I know she does it!”

“‘Fraid so,” Leo said.

“Well, we’ll know just what EC to check when something unusual pops out of

Rowena’s plants, won’t we?” I sighed. The superstitions really were adding to our

problems.

“Mama Jason,” said Susan—with a look that accused me of making a joke much

too low for her age level—“How many authentics need tobacco-spit ECs to pop

up?”

“No joke, honey. It’s not authentic species I’d expect under conditions like that.

It’d be Dragon’s Teeth plain and probably not so simple.” I looked from one to the

other. “Keep an eye on those plants for me. Anything suddenly flowers in a different

color or a slightly different form, snag a sample and send it to me fast!”

They nodded, Susan looking pleased with the assignment, Leo slightly puzzled.

At last Leo said, “I’m afraid I’ve never understood this business of Dragon’s

Teeth…” He broke off, suddenly embarrassed.

“Fine,” I said, “as long as you don’t spit tobacco on the ragweed or piss on the

petunias or toss the soapy wash water on the lettuce patch.”

Susan eyed me askance. I said, “Last year the whole town of Misty Valley

decided that pissing on the petunias was the only way to stabilize them.” I threw up

my hands to stave off the question that was already on the tip of Susan’s tongue. “I

don’t know how that got started, so don’t ask me. I’m not even sure I want to

know! The end result, of course, was that the petunias seeded ladybugs.”

“Authentic?” Susan asked.

“No, but close enough to be valuable. Nice little insectivores and surprisingly

well-suited for doing in ragmites.” The ragmites are native and a bloody nuisance.

“And before you ask,” I added, “the things they might have gotten in the same EC

included a very nasty species of poisonous ant and two different grain-eaters, one of

which would chain up to a salamander with a taste for quail eggs.”

“Oh, my!” said Susan. “Misty Valley’s where we get our quail eggs!

“So does everybody on Mirabile,” I said. “Nobody’s gotten the quail to thrive

anywhere else yet.” For Leo’s benefit, I added, “So many of our Earth-authentic

species are on rocky ground, we can’t afford to lose a lot of individuals to a

Dragon’s Tooth.”

Leo still looked puzzled. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’ve never

understood this business. Maybe for once I could get a simple explanation, suitable

for a bellmaker…?”

I gestured to Susan. “My assistant will be glad to give you the short course.”

Susan gave one of those award-winning grins. “It goes all the way back to before

we left Earth, Leo.” Leo arched an eyebrow: “‘We’?” Susan punched

him—lightly—on the arm and said, “You know what I mean! Humans!”

She heaved a dramatic sigh and went on in spite of it all. “They wanted to make

sure we’d have everything we might possibly need.”

“I thought that’s why they sent along the embryo and gene banks,” Leo said.

Susan nodded. “It was. But at the time there was a fad for redundancy—every

system doubled, tripled, even quadrupled—so just to make sure we couldn’t lose a

species we might need, they built all that redundancy into the gene pool too.”

She glanced at me. She was doing fine, so I nodded for her to go on.

“Look, Noisy. They took the genes for, say, sunflowers and they tucked ’em into

a twist in wheat helices. Purely recessive, but when the environmental conditions are

right, maybe one one-hundredth of your wheat seeds will turn out to sprout

sunflowers.”

She leaned closer, all earnestness. “And one one-hundredth of the sunflowers,

given the right EC, will seed bumblebees, and so on and so forth. That’s what Mama

Jason calls ‘chaining up.’ Eventually you might get red deer.”

Leo frowned. “I don’t see how you can go from plant to animal…”

“There’s usually an intermediate stage—a plant that comes out all wrong for that

plant but perfect for an incubator for whatever’s in the next twist.” She paused

dramatically, then finished, “As you can see, it was a perfectly dumb idea.”

I decided to add my two bits here. “The idea wasn’t as dumb as you make out,

kiddo. They just hadn’t worked the bugs out before they stuck us with it.”

“When she says bugs,” Susan confided grimly to Leo, “she means Dragon’s

Teeth.”

I stepped in again. “Two things went wrong, Leo. First, there was supposed to be

an easy way to turn anything other than the primary helix off and on at will. The

problem is that information was in the chunk of ships’ records we lost, and it was

such new knowledge at the time that it didn’t get passed to anyone on the ship.

“The second problem was the result of pure goof. They forgot that, in the long

run, all plants and animals change to suit their environment. A new mutation may be

just the thing for our wheat, but who knows what it’s done to those hidden

sunflowers? Those—and the chimerae—are the real Dragon’s Teeth.”

Leo turned to Susan. “Want to explain the chimerae as long as you’re at it?”

“A chimera is something that’s, well, sort of patched together from two, maybe

three, different genetic sources. Ordinarily it’s nothing striking—you’d probably

only notice if you did a full gene-read. But with all those hidden sets of genes, just

about anything can happen.”

“Kangaroo rex, for example,” I said. “That one was a true chimera: a wolf in

kangaroo’s clothing.”

“I remember the news films,” Leo said. “Nasty.”

“Viable, too,” I said. “That was a tough fight. I’m still sorry I lost.” It still

rankled, I discovered.

Leo looked startled.

“I wanted to save ’em, Leo, but I got voted down. We really couldn’t afford a

new predator in that area.”

“Don’t look so shocked, Noisy,” Susan said. “You never know what might be

useful some day. Just suppose we get an overpopulation of rabbits or something and

we need a predator to balance them out before they eat all our crops. That’s why

Mama Jason wanted to keep them.”

Leo looked unconvinced, Susan looked hurt suddenly. “Just because it’s ugly,

Janet Kagan - Mirabile

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