Free Mirabile by Janet Kagan Page A

but more than that I can’t tell you offhand. It’ll take the computer all night to search.”
    “Let me have a look first,” Chie-Hoon said. “Maybe I’ll recognize something. I have a vested interested in marsupials, after all.”
    Everybody’s got to have a hobby. Chie-Hoon’s is the Australian Guild, meaning Chie-Hoon knows more than anybody could ever want to about the customs and wildlife of Earth’s “Australia,” which includes about ninety percent of the marsupials found in ships’
    records.
    “Help yourself,” I said. I’d never found the time to join any of the Earth-authentic Guilds myself—if I were looking for a hobby I rather thought I’d make it Leo—but this was the sort of thing that came in handy. “Since Leo volunteers to come along, we’ll leave you to it.”
    Since I’d worked with Leo before, I knew he and I could handle just about anything that came up. As for Susan, well, Earth-authentic wild horses couldn’t have kept her away.
    Mike looked glum. “I get stuck with the fish, right?”
    “And Selima,” I pointed out, which brightened him up considerably. (I’m rather hoping those two will decide to help alleviate our underpopulation problem one of these fine days. I’m giving them every opportunity.) “We’ll be in touch.”
    “We’ll argue,” Mike assured me.
    We took my skimmer. Leo, being retired (hah!), no longer rates up-to-date equipment. We let Susan drive and scandalized her by necking in the back seat.
    When we’d caught up a bit on old times, we broke the clinch.
    “Why will you argue?” Leo asked.
    “You remember, Noisy. Mama Jason wanted to keep the kangaroo rexes the last time they Page 30

    cropped up. Mike and Chie-Hoon didn’t.”
    “A lot of people didn’t want them kept,” I said. “I lost that round.”
    “It’s not going to be any easier this time,” Leo said. “Both those herders were—if you’ll pardon the expression—hopping mad.”
    Susan giggled. So did I.
    “I know. But I’m older and meaner this time around.”
    “‘Meaner’?” That was Susan. “Mama Jason, last time one of the damn things almost chewed your foot off!”
    “D’you think I could forget something like that?” I leaned on the back of the seat and glared at her in the mirror. “That had nothing to do with it.”
    “‘You never know what might be useful in the long run.’ I know,” Susan said.
    “It’s not as if we’re going to pick up and go back to Earth if we run out of sheep, either.”
    I gave a sidelong glance at Leo. “Just what I needed: somebody who quotes my own words back at me…”
    “You’ve only yourself to blame,” he said.
    “Thanks,” said Susan, to let us both know she took this little routine as a compliment. “Now tell me who took what side last time around, and what you expect them to do this time.”
    “It was me against them,” I admitted. When Susan whistled, I stuck in, “I almost got Mike to go along with me, but in the end, that wouldn’t have made any difference. Mike didn’t have much pull then.”
    “Meaning he was about the same age I am now,” said Susan, “so my opinion won’t swing much weight either.”
    “I had intended to be tactful.”
    Leo raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s not like you, Annie. Do you need the allies that badly? It occurs to me that you swing a bit more weight these days yourself.”
    “Oh, considerably. But that won’t do me a lot of good unless I can convince people like Jarlskog and Yndurain that the rexes are worth keeping. For god’s sake, Leo! What’s to stop them from simply shooting down every one they see? We certainly haven’t the hands to police every bit of territory, especially not Last Edges or Gogol or the like.”
    Last Edges has a total population of fifty. That’s minute, but it’s five times the number of people I’ve got to work with.
    “Most people understand enough about ecological balance to follow the guidelines you folks set,” Leo said,