In the hot season the water would be bland again, carrying only spoor of flyers and swimmers and another of her own race.

Mama's taste was discriminating. One of her kind lived upstream. Another lived even farther upstream, and that one was a weakling. It lived where game was so scarce that Mama could taste starvation in its spoor. Not worth killing, that one, or her nearer rival would have taken her domain.

In winter there was something strange in the water, something she couldn't identify. Not life; not interesting.

The world began to warm again... and something new was on the island. Something she had never tasted, something weirdly different, was leaving spoor in the water. It was as yet too faint to identify. Mama began to think about moving.

If she followed that spoor she would have to fight, and that was no step to be taken lightly.

By summer she could taste several varieties of prey! The things weren't merely leaving feces in the water; she tasted strange blood too. Her rival was eating well. Was it time?

Her rival was youthful (Mama could taste that) but large. The faintness of her scent placed her many days' journey upstream. She would be rested and fed when Mama arrived... and Mama settled back into her pool. She had not lived two scores of cycles by being reckless.

If her rival sickened, she would taste it.

Days flickered past. The time of cold had come. Ordinarily Mama scarcely noticed passing time, for the taste of swimmer meat was always the same. Nothing attacked. Her curiosity lay dormant... but it was active now, for living things were leaving spoor even in dead of winter, and blood ran down the river now and again.

Oh, the variety! Here was blood from something vaguely like a flyer. This one must have been big, a plant-eater; she had to dig far into her memory to find anything similar. That horrible chemical stench was entirely mysterious: hot metal and belly acid and thoroughly rotted grass. This unfamiliar scent, judging by its components, would be the urine of a meat-eater not of her own kind. Hunger and curiosity warred with discretion, for Mama had never tasted anything like that, nor seen one either.

Once there was a living thing in the water. She snapped it up and chewed contemplatively, trying to learn of it. A swimming thing, primitive, built a little like a swimmer...

The world was warming when the river gifted her with two larger members of the same species. Bottom feeders tasting of mud, they must be breeding despite the presence of her rival upstream.

And that, one bright hungry morning, was the burnt blood of her own kind!

Taste of fear and speed and killing rage, taste of chemicals, taste of burning. If lightning or a forest fire had killed her rival, then an empty territory lay waiting for her upstream. If another rival, then Mama would face a formidable foe.

The swimmers were startled when Mama came forth in an eating frenzy. Swimmers were nothing; the taste did not engage her curiosity at all. But Mama's rival would be fat now, and hyperkinetic from impact of sensory stimuli, and Mama dared not come upon her as a desperate starveling. She had not fought a serious rival in many years.

REUNION

Alas how easily things go wrong!

A sigh too much, or a kiss too long.

And there follows, a mist and a weeping rain,

And life is never the same again.

GEORGE MACDONALD, "Phantasies"

They sang as they strode downhill.

Tweedledee bounded around Cadmann's feet. She was leaner, stronger now than she had been only eight weeks before. She was acclimated to the heights and rigors of Mucking Great Mountain, but still seemed happy to be coming back to the Colony.

Even here, only a few meters past the firebreak, the distant grind of machinery assaulted Cadmann's ears.

That sound, a constant background hum down on the flatlands, never reached his home in the mountains. A thin line of dust marked the bass rumble of a tractor tilling the fields.

Mary Ann walked next to him, her blond hair barely rising to his shoulder. Her presence was a comfort in ways that would have been difficult to imagine just a few short weeks before.

How long ago had he walked this path with Ernst and Sylvia? Back before any of the grief. Back when he could reasonably expect a quiet slide into old age amidst herds of children. And he'd wished for Kodiak bears.

The view had changed. The fields had expanded; there were more buildings. The wreckage left by the monster's assault was not visible from here. With twelve adult casualties out of a hundred and ninety-two, the Colony felt pressure to work. There was healing to be done.

Now Cadmann had his home, and something new... something very new with the only person in the camp who had believed in him. He put his arm around her waist and pulled Mary Ann in closer to him. She had lost some weight, much like Tweedledee, but her curves were still rounded, and now...

Now...

His arm wound all the way around her shoulder, down to her belly, which was firmer than it had been—the work and the life up on MGM was not conducive to softening. Soon her figure would be filling out. And out! And then... He looked at her almost surreptitiously. The nine-mile walk hadn't tired her. All downhill, half a mile altitude change—the walk had strained his own healing wounds, and if someone offered them a ride back he'd take it.

He smiled, utterly content.

The machine stutter was more distinct now, and when Cadmann looked up, the tractor was rumbling up the glazed earth road toward them, and someone atop it waving his hands semaphore style.

Cadmann cupped his hands to his mouth. "Yo!" Tweedledee galloped off down the road, kicking her hindquarters up into the air with every lope.

In his backpack he carried skins and dried meat and samples of all of the plants near their camp, carefully bundled and labeled. Cadmann Weyland, first of the mountain men! Much better than Great White Abo.

The tractor was close enough to make out the driver. It was Stu Ellington taking his rotation in the fields. "Hey, hey! If you'd waited another two days, I would have won the pool."

Cadmann laughed, yelling back, "If you'll split it with me I'll vanish for another forty-eight hours. Who wins?"

Stu stopped the tractor in front of them and put the engine into neutral. Hot air curled from the engine in waves.

"One of the twins. Phyllis, I think. Not sure. Hell with it. It's great to see you. Cad. Mary Ann. Back to stay?"

"'Fraid not. Opening negotiations. Somebody had to break away from the Colony first."

Stu looked down at them from his seat, his grin cutting through the dust and sweat, and shook his head. "Just glad you're both back, man." His expression grew somber. "I'm so sorry for what happened."

"Yeah." Cadmann looked decidedly uncomfortable; then Mary Ann hugged him and patted her stomach.

"Stu! Think I've got a piglet in the pen!"

"Oh! Whoa! Well, this is an occasion. M'lady!" Stu swung down from the tractor and offered a hand to Mary Ann. She looked back at Cadmann, who just picked her up by the armpits and hoisted her aboard the tractor.

"You know how to drive one of these things, I believe?"

"Betcha," she said happily, and swung up into the seat. She gunned the engine. The tractor made a great, lazy circle. The two men followed it at a short distance.

For a while there was companionable silence, and then Stu broke it. "We've done a lot of rebuilding since you've been gone. Not just buildings, Cad. We've got the defenses up, and stronger. Stupidity. Just stupidity." He seemed to need to hear something in return. "We got blind-sided once, but it's not going to happen again, I can guarantee it."