Jane plopped the thing down on the floor of the Council meeting. It looked vaguely like a large coyote, if coyotes had four eyes and paws with opposable thumbs. “Dickory found this one inside one of the excavations. There were two others with it but they ran off. Dickory killed this one as it was trying to get away.”
“He shot it?” asked Marta Piro.
“He killed it with a knife,” Jane said. This caused some uneasy muttering; most of the Council and colonists were still deeply uncomfortable with the Obin.
“Do you think this is one of the predators you were concerned about?” Manfred Trujillo asked.
“It might be,” Jane said.
“Might be,” Trujillo said.
“The paws are the right shape for the marks we’ve seen,” Jane said. “But it seems small to me.”
“But small or not, something like this could have made the marks,” Trujillo said.
“It’s possible,” Jane said.
“Have you seen any larger ones?” asked Lee Chen.
“No,” Jane said, and looked over to me. “I’ve been out on the night watch on the last three days and last night was the first time we’ve seen anything approach the barrier at all.”
“Hiram, you’ve been out past the barrier almost every day,” Trujillo said. “Have you seen anything like this?”
“I’ve seen some animals,” Hiram said. “But they’ve been plant eaters, as far as I could see. I haven’t seen anything that looks like this thing. But then I’ve not been out past the barrier at night, either, and Administrator Sagan here thinks these are active during the night.”
“But she hasn’t seen any more of them,” Marie Black said. “We’re holding off settling because of phantoms.”
“The scratches and holes were real enough,” I said.
“I’m not arguing that,” Black said. “But maybe they were isolated incidents. Perhaps a pack of these animals was just passing through several days ago and was curious about the barrier. Once they couldn’t get through, they moved on.”
“It’s possible,” Jane said again. From her tone I could tell she didn’t think much of Black’s theory.
“How much longer are we going to hold off on settling because of this?” Paulo Gutierrez asked. “I’ve got people who are going insane waiting for us to stop farting around. The last few days people have started getting in each other’s faces about idiotic things. And we’re running against time now, aren’t we? It’s spring here now, and we’ve got to start planting crops and readying grazing fields for the livestock. We’ve already eaten through two weeks of food. If we don’t start colonizing, we’re going to be in deep shit.”
“We haven’t been farting around,” I said. “We’ve been dropped onto a planet about which we know nothing. We had to take the time to make sure it wasn’t going to flat-out kill us.”
“We’re not dead yet,” Trujillo said, interjecting himself. “So that’s a good sign. Paolo, step back for a minute. Perry is absolutely right. We couldn’t have just wandered out into this planet and started setting up farms. But Paolo’s right, too, Perry. We’re at a point where we can’t stay stuck behind a barricade. Sagan’s had three days to find more evidence of these creatures, and we’ve killed one of them. We need to be cautious, yes. And we need to keep studying Roanoke. But we need to get colonizing, too.”
The entire Council was staring at me, waiting to hear what I would say. I glanced over at Jane, who gave one of her nearly imperceptible shrugs. She wasn’t entirely convinced that there wasn’t a real threat out there, but aside from the one dead creature, she had nothing definitive. And Trujillo was right; it was time to get colonizing.
“Agreed,” I said.
“You let Trujillo take that meeting away from you,” Jane said, as we got ready for bed. She kept her voice low; Zo? was already asleep. Hickory and Dickory were standing impassively on the other side of our screen in the administrative tent. They were wearing full body suits made from the first bolt of the newly produced nanobotic mesh. The suits locked in the wireless signals; they also turned the Obin into walking shadows. They might have been asleep as well; it was hard to tell.
“I suppose I did,” I said. “Trujillo’s a professional politician. He’ll do that sometimes. Especially when he’s right. We do need to move on getting people out of the village.”
“I want to make sure each wave of homesteaders has some weapons training,” Jane said.
“I think that’s a fine idea,” I said. “You’re not likely to convince the Mennonites, however.”
“I have concerns about that,” Jane said.
“You’re just going to have to be concerned, then,” I said.