The Master awakened. But for weeks there was no outward change. The antenna still pointed skyward and small robots continued to come and go through tunnels beneath the mother ship, mining for minerals beneath the ice. Then like a maturing fungus ready to reproduce the colony nestled in the ice suddenly spouted a flurry of drones.
They rose into the air, circled, and then sped off in all different directions. Some flew to the deep forests at the edge of the mighty ices, some flew beyond to the grasslands and marshes at the southern edge of the continent, a few traveled to the other more distant land masses. When they arrived at their destinations the drones landed silently and buried themselves. They were not spores and they did not attempt to reproduce. They just lay quietly where they had landed, and waited.
They were soon forgotten by the local fauna but they had not forgotten their mission. One by one and in various ways they caught and trapped specimens of plant and animal life. One by one as their holds filled they flew back to the mother colony in the north waste.
The Master now had his clay to mold, a wide assortment of the planet’s flora and fauna. He could now proceed with the next phase.
~~~~~~~~~~~
When Mary and Tarna finally made it back up the hill, they stopped on the road at the edge of the yard and caught their breath. The house they were looking at was neat, and at first glance, rather exceptional in its unexceptionality. It was a restored four-room house in Victorian gingerbread style painted white with black shutters, surrounded by a well tended lawn and beds of various summer flowers. The house itself was set back from the road and heavily shaded by the surrounding deep pine forest. And sitting in the driveway was a rather battered red two-seat 1968 MG sports car with the top down.
“Well?” said Tarna. “What’s so unusual about this?”
“I don’t know exactly. It’s just not what I remembered here at all,” replied Mary with a frown. She kept looking around, feeling that something was just not quite right.
“Tarna, what period were the Victorian houses built in?”
“Around 1900. Why?”
“Then how come this house has a concrete block foundation, a practice that didn’t become popular until the 1920s?”
Tarna blushed slightly when she recalled that technology was her own specialty; but then again, Mary had been looking for reasons why this house was different. Now they both began to silently catalog other apparent incongruities.
Mary spoke again first. “The guy that built this must have been quite an eccentric.”
Tarna nodded in agreement. “This thing can’t be any older than that paint job—and that’s fresh!”
They were about to shrug it off as an uninteresting neo-Victorian concoction when the front door opened. Out of the house came a tall, strikingly handsome man in his mid-twenties. Following him was a lanky boy of twelve or thirteen. The man saw them watching, smiled, and waved. The sisters waved back.
“Oooh, he’s cute,” whispered Tarna.
The two hopped in the MG and backed out of the driveway. The women waited and smiled sunnily. The car stopped next to them and Mr. Right flashed them a wide toothy grin around the pipe he had slid into his mouth while he pulled up. Gracefully, he took it out again.
“Coming to the rally tonight, ladies?” The voice was deep and resonant, matching the looks. Mary instantly wished she was.
“Well, we hadn’t planned on it. … Do you own this house? … What rally?” Tarna finally managed to fumble out.
The man laughed a hearty laugh. The boy next to him scowled in a boyish way as if he’d been through this scene before but never understood it.
“Let me start with introductions. I’m Ned Steed. This is Toby. No, I don’t own the house, I’m renting it for the summer from Toby’s aunt. I do own this MG, though. And the rally tonight is to protest the power plant. I’m one of the organizers and I’d be delighted to see you ladies there. I don’t believe I caught your names.…”
“I’m Mary Threshmore and this is my sister Tarna.”
“Professor Threshmore’s daughters? Is the professor here to join us in the cause?” Ned looked at them with a gleam of great expectation in his eyes.
It was the sisters’ turn to giggle.
“Yes we’re his daughters, but no he’s not here,” Tarna responded.
“He’s out in the bay, digging,” Mary added. “You’ll just have to settle for us.”
He sighed mightily, then beamed his flashing smile at them again, “Then I can expect you tonight?”
“We’ll try to get there,” Tarna answered coyly. “How long has this house been here?”
The boy interrupted sharply, “Why do you want to know? It’s my aunt’s house.”
He was either very defensive or he wanted to butt into this conversation. Mary assumed the latter.
“It’s just such an odd collection of techniques. At first glance it seems like typical Victorian period work that’s been restored, but the more we looked at it, the more we saw that wasn’t the case. We were just wondering who built it and when.”
“That’s none of your business!” was the boy’s sharper reply, “Come on, Uncle Ned, we’ll be late for the rally.”
Ned frowned at the boy, beamed at the young women, bid them adieu, and drove off for Clamsport.
The sisters started home again. As they coasted into town they agreed the kid was a jerk but Ned was definitely okay. They started conspiring about how to meet him again.