Free Building Harlequin’s Moon by Larry Niven, Brenda Cooper

more his size.
    He pushed her back from him, frowning. “You’d better go on up to the grove.”
    “What? Why?”
    “I think you’ll need to see for yourself.”
    Gabriel stood by her final project. She ran up to him, then stopped, drew her breath in sharply. A broad swath of trees had been mowed down, driven over. Broken trunks littered the ground, dried and twisted, the life gone from them. It must have happened right after they left.
    Almost half of Rachel’s project and a snippet of Ursula’s plot destroyed. Clearly someone had driven a work tractor through the grove. Tire tracks ran straight through, and in one place it looked like a blade had been let down and actually dug below ground. Pods and dirt and snapped seedlings mixed in a pile.
    She knelt in the carnage, sweeping her hands back and forth through the dry dirt, picking out dead twigs and breathing in little gulps.
    “Andrew,” she said, narrowing her eyes, fighting at the anger rising in her.
    “Yes.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “You didn’t need the distraction. We’ve taken care of the problem.”
    The distinct snap of wings sounded over her head. Nick landed at the edge of the plot and quickly folded his gear away. He walked up to them with the harness still attached. His brow was creased and he looked down, watching the ground.
    “I’m sorry. Gabriel said to leave it for you to see. But we kept the rest of your trees alive. We did okay, didn’t we?”
    He looked so earnest she smiled a little. “Yes, Nick. Th . . . Thank you.”
    Nick nodded.
    “What . . . why? Why would he do this?” Rachel asked, turning back to Gabriel.
    Gabriel looked off at the horizon. “I suspect he was angry with me.”
    “Where is he?”
    “He’s safe. And Selene is safe from him for the moment. He’s been stripped of his data rights.”
    “Data rights?”
    “We’re keeping him busy. His pad is locked out of the system, except for warnings. All he gets is one-way data.”
    To lose net access? How would Andrew learn anything new? She shuddered. “You really cut him off?”
    “It’s not your problem, or your fault. Still, you will have to clean up.” Gabriel turned toward Nick. “Show me what you’ve done on the meadow grass,” he suggested, walking away with Nick in tow.
    Rachel glared at Gabriel’s receding back. Her fists balled at her side. Andrew wasn’t there, and she might as well be angry at a rock as at Gabriel. She paced around her plot, kicking at clods of disturbed dirt.
    She gathered a pile of dead sticks, then sat at the edge of the ruin and simply stared at it for a long time, turning dry twigs in her hands. They were rough and sharp against her fingers, their torn edges scratching her palms.
    Gabriel had no right to hide this until she got here. It wasn’t carelessness: he’d taken pains to be in the grove when she saw it. Another lesson? Another test?
    She didn’t understand Council. But why had Andrew done this? To her? Why was she always his target?
    Rachel spent the next two days replanting and tending. After carefully looking at how the remaining plants had grown, Rachel worked out some changes to her original placement. Seeing improvements raised her spirits some. She carefully set up a communications net from her plot to her wrist pad. Now she’d have real-time flows; she’d know about any new damage.
    The next morning Rachel’s dad walked up to her plot with her. He’d never looked closely at her work before, contenting himself with her stories. She squeezed his hand and pointed to a wide border of young plants. “See—that’s where the worst damage was. I lined the path with heliconias. I wanted the bright reds.”
    Her dad smiled softly and ruffled her short hair. “I think it will look great. Sometimes bad things turn out okay.”
    She didn’t answer.
    He helped her weed and rake until nearly dark, and they walked back down the path together holding hands.
    Rachel and Ursula worked together for days.