“Sorry, honey,” I said. “I know you and your friends are bored.”
“No kidding,” Zo? said. “We all knew colonization was supposed to be difficult, but no one told us it was going to be boring.”
“If you’re looking for something to do, we could start up a school,” I said.
“We’re bored, so you suggest school?” Zo? said. “Who are you? Also, not likely, since you’ve confiscated all our PDAs. It’s going to be hard to teach us anything when we don’t have lessons.”
“The Mennonites have books,” I said. “Old-fashioned ones. With pages and everything.”
“I know,” Zo? said. “They’re the only ones not going completely insane with boredom, too. God, I miss my PDA.”
“The irony must be crushing,” I said.
“I’m going to leave you now,” Zo? said. “Before I throw a rock at you.” Despite the threat, she gave me and Savitri a quick hug before she left. Babar walked off with her; she was more fun.
“I know how she feels,” Savitri said, as we resumed walking.
“You want to throw a rock at me, too?” I said.
“Sometimes,” Savitri said. “Not right now. No, about missing her PDA. I miss mine, too. Look at this.” Savitri reached into her back pants pocket and pulled out a spiral notebook, a small stack of which had been made a gift to her by Hiram Yoder and the Mennonites. “This is what I’m reduced to.”
“Savage,” I said.
“Joke all you want,” Savitri said, and she put the notebook back. “Going from a PDA to a notepad is hard.”
I didn’t argue with this. Instead, we walked out the north gate of the village, where we found Jane with Hickory and Dickory, and two members of the Magellan’s security complement whom she had deputized. “Come look at this,” she said, and walked over to one of the storage containers on the perimeter.
“What am I looking for?” I asked.
“These,” Jane said, and pointed at the container, near the top, about three meters up.
I squinted. “Those are scratches,” I said.
“Yes. We’ve found them on other containers, too. And there’s more,” Jane said, and walked over to two other containers. “Something’s been digging here,” she said. “It looks like something’s been trying to dig under these containers.”
“Good luck with that,” I said. The containers were more than two meters in width.
“We found one hole on the other side of the perimeter that was nearly a meter in length,” Jane said. “Something’s trying to get in at night. It can’t jump over the containers, so it’s trying to go under instead. And it’s not just one. We’ve got lots of vegetation tramped down around here, and lots of different-sized paw prints on the containers. Whatever they are, they’re in a pack.”
“Are these the big animals folks have seen in the brush?” I asked.
Jane shrugged. “No one’s seen any of them close up, and nothing comes around here during the day. Normally, we’d post infrared cameras up at the top of the containers, but we can’t here.” Jane didn’t have to explain why; the sentry cameras, like almost every other piece of technology we owned, communicated wirelessly, and wireless was a security risk. “And whatever they are, they’re avoiding being seen by the night sentry. But the night sentry isn’t using nightscopes, either.”
“Whatever they are, you think they’re dangerous,” I said.
Jane nodded. “I don’t see herbivores being this dedicated to getting inside. Whatever’s out here sees us and smells us and wants to get in to see what we’re like. We need to find out what they are and how many of them there are.”
“If they’re predators, their numbers are limited,” I said. “Too many predators will deplete the stock of prey.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “But that still doesn’t tell us how many there are or what sort of threat they are. All we know is that they’re out here at night, and they’re big enough to almost be able to jump the containers, and smart enough to try tunneling under. We can’t let people begin to homestead until we know what sort of threat they represent.”
“Our people are armed,” I said. Among the supplies was a store of ancient, simple rifles and non-nanobotic ammunition.
“Our people have firearms,” Jane said. “But most of them haven’t the slightest idea how to use them. They’re going to end up shooting themselves before they shoot anything else. And it’s not only humans at risk. I’m more concerned about our livestock. We can’t really afford to lose many of them to predators. Not this early.”