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.The food service staff came around, took their orders, and brought sustenance.Cadmann relaxed into his meal, enjoying the spirited debate which surrounded him.Carlos shook his head.“What do you think, Cadmann?”“Frankenstein as a crypto-feminist tract? Not on purpose.Nobody writes a tract that good.that close to immortal.How did Stevens do?”“His Exordium was pathetic.The Narratio was barely adequate, and his Refutatio was booed off the stage.Aside from that, just fine.”Around them, Cadmann noticed that women’s voices were climbing a bit higher than the men’s.As Tragon left the stage he joined Jessica.They embraced and kissed lustily.They make a good pair, Cadmann thought.Aaron Tragon was brawny, handsome, fiercely intelligent, and possessed a magnetic presence.My successor here.Zack’s too? End this silly division between administration and security?In any tribe, there is an alpha.There had been a time when Cadmann thought Mickey would be his heir.He often wondered if he had pushed his son too hard.Whatever happened, Mickey wasn’t interested in leadership.Aaron and Linda were paired for a while.A good combination, but then something happened and Linda attached herself to Joe Sikes.An unlikely arrangement, and one that Cadmann didn’t quite understand.Joe Sikes had been Mary Ann’s lover before the grendel attacks, before Mary Ann had come to the Bluff to reclaim Cadmann from drunken despair.There had been nothing after that-then suddenly Joe and Mary Ann’s daughter were paired, not merely paired but monogamously bonded.Ruth Moskowitz moved toward Aaron, then back away.She had the faintly shell-shocked grin he’d expected.Good sport.Hey, if he likes Jessica, all right.The fingers of her right hand were twisting painfully tight ringlets in her hair.Probably pulling out a few strands.Rachael put an arm around her, and held her daughter close.And that’s another situation I don’t understand, but I don’t think I have to.Surf’s Up provided dessert.A deliciously spiced crushed ice, its taste and aroma resurrected long-buried memories of childhood.The audience decided, quite vociferously, that Aaron Tragon had triumphed in the week’s debate.After a thunderous round of applause, Linda Weyland took the podium.Cadzie was bundled in a sling across her chest, and nursed contentedly as she spoke.“Unfortunately,” she began, “that concludes the evening’s entertainment.What I have to say now is more sobering-and far more educational.Cassandra, bang.”A glowing anthill filled the hall; it brightened as the hall lights dimmed.Neon vermilion tunnels, dozens of them.Hundreds of bright green dots chewed at the tips, extending the tunnels, then flowed back up to the trunk of the beast.Cadmann remembered an ant farm his brother had built when both were small.These tunnels had more of a fractal look.Despite irregularities in the topography of this mainland mountain range, the automated widgets were following a plan; you saw a symmetry, large patterns repeated in diminishing scale.In the tip of a tunnel, light flared.A conspicuous shock wave, confined, flowed upward to a main trunk.Refining machinery flared red, then pulsed red-black, red-black.The crowd’s whispered reaction was immediate, and ugly.Linda raised her voice above, the sound of that evil wind.“Something exploded.Not high explosive, something more like gunpowder.How it got down there.well.All we know is that the refinery has shut down, and we can’t correct the damage from here.”Toshiro raised a hand.“Couldn’t this be any sort of normal equipment failure?”Linda said, “Toshiro, these bore collectors are just drills and a bucket for the ore.They run on solar cells and fuel cells, the fuel cells are just high-tech batteries, they can’t explode, and there aren’t any fuel cells where we’re having the problem anyway.”“Of course you thought about this before.Sorry.”“It’s okay.But people, it really was an explosion, and it really did come roaring up from the tip of a bore tube.Cassandra, show us the interference waves.”Which wasn’t a lot of help, Cadmann thought.And there was Mary Ann, delighted, proud of their daughter, and knowing damned well he couldn’t read the patterns now flowing across the wall either.Mickey probably could, but he wasn’t saying anything.Cadmann leaned over to Carlos.“Did you know about this? Anything at all?”“News to me, amigo.And I don’t like the sound of it.” Carlos stood and thrust his hand aggressively into the air.“Request to be recognized.”“Sure,” Linda said.Carlos cleared his throat.“There is a word which hasn’t been spoken, but which I sense may be on many minds.The word is sabotage, and there are a thousand reasons to believe that no one here would do such a thing.This is no prank.It’s the wrong style.It profits no one and it isn’t funny.Before we form any opinions, I assume that arrangements are being made for an on-site inspection?”Linda petted the baby, looked out to her husband for a moment, and nodded.“Why would it be sabotage? How could anyone have put an explosive there? A gnat couldn’t get into those tunnels.Of course we’ll go look at the machinery.We’ll look, and we’ll find out it was something weird.Avalon Surprise!”Tip of a tunnel.No Merry Prankster could have crawled down a tunnel, Cadmann thought.Too narrow, and the central processing plant was a metal plug massing hundreds of tons.The mine was all nanotechnology; it had been growing in place for seventeen years.The tunnels led to it, not past it.Cadmann leaned toward his son.“Mickey? You know mines.Any suggestions?”Mickey frowned and shook his head.“Avalon Weird,” he muttered, but not loud enough for anyone but Cadmann, to hear.As good as any other theory, Cadmann thought.You couldn’t even.hmm.Cause a bore collector to deposit a charge of dynamite or gunpowder? Acquired how? From the fuel cell dump? A bore collector had been at work when the explosion happened.It would have been a hell of a difficult prank.Would it be enough for the Merry Pranksters that it was impossible? There didn’t seem to be any other motive.The mine was the colony’s mineral source.Why choke that off?Joe Sikes limped up to the platform.“Linda’s right, it’s Avalon Weird.Something else about this planet we don’t know.Something that happens on the mainland and not here.”“And it’s time to take the Grendel Scout candidates over to the mainland anyway,” Linda finished for him.“I just wanted everyone to see how much trouble this was causing.“She thinks it’s sabotage, Cadmann thought.I guess I do too.“Impossible” is a challenge to the Surf’s Up crowd.“So what should we do?” someone asked.“Can we fix it?”“We have to go look,” Linda said.“There’s no point in fixing it until we know what happened.”There’s that tone again.She really does believe it’s the pranksters.They get their joke and the mainland expedition they want all at once.Linda hates this, and she’s talked Joe into leaving it lay
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