Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  “Move it!” Justin was already clambering into the water. “We don’t want this thing to drown!”

  Coleen McAndrews was right after him. “It humped its way over rocks—we saw it out of the water for more than thirty seconds. I think we can make it.” The tarp was around the eel in a moment. The children started to plunge in with them. Jessica waved them back. “Watch out for the egg sac!” she yelled. “Stay ashore.”

  They rolled it out of the pond. Its skin was surprisingly spongy, and oozed water. It was the work of a moment to attach the eel and its roll of protective sheeting to one of the dolphin slings beneath Skeeter VI. Jessica clambered aboard.

  “We’ll get another skeeter up here,” she yelled above the growing whine of the turbines. “Get us an egg sample and meet me at Aquatics.”

  “There in ten minutes,” Justin promised. She whooped and raised her hand, and he slapped it hard. Their eyes shone.

  “Got one, dammit,” Jessica said.

  Ten seconds later Skeeter VI was up in the air and plunging toward Avalon Town.

  ♦ ChaptEr 2 ♦

  mother eel

  How cheerfully he seems to grin

  How neatly spreads his claws

  And welcomes little fishes in

  With gently smiling jaws!

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  The skeeter soared. Evan’s sure hands took it up so rapidly it seemed the world deflated beneath them. The acceleration was a little much for Jessica, but then, that was Evan. Damned if she’d let him know he’d upset her. She grabbed the horizontal hand bar set above the instrument panel, and hoped he wouldn’t notice her white knuckles.

  She patched through to Biomed, down at Avalon town. “Chaka. Got something for you. Get Hipshot and Quanda out of pen number three soonest.”

  “Is that the eel that everyone’s talking about?”

  “Betcha.”

  “I expected something like this. We’re draining the salt water out of the tank, and flooding it with the Miskatonic.”

  “I want to have your child. Can we have full diagnostics in five minutes?”

  “We aim to please.”

  The skeeter dove, nearing free fall as it plunged toward the camp. The arc of Avalon Town, twice its original size, spread out below them. All of its corrals and lodgings, shops and quilted fields screamed up at them at gut-wrenching speed.

  And there, near the Biomed dome, were the three saltwater tanks. Luckily, there were no sick animals at the moment, but Dr. Mubutu had flown Quanda and Hipshot in from the Surf’s Up lagoon, giving them some privacy in hopes that they might breed. Someone tall and black—it had to be Little Chaka—was below them at the pens, but she didn’t really have time to think. Evan was whooping as he dove in, thoroughly enjoying her no doubt pasty-faced reaction to his aerobatics.

  Just wait, Evan, she swore silently. I’ll get you for this.

  The saltwater tanks were raised five feet above the ground and sunk six feet beneath it. The pen was drained, and the Miskatonic was pumping in at the rate of three hundred liters a minute. Skeeter VI came to a hovering halt, its tail, rotors foaming the water.

  Little Chaka waited on the white-tiled lip of the tanks. Jessica untied the cargo line. The roll of foaming sheeting loosened, and twelve feet of eel splashed into the shallow water. She jumped down to stand beside Chaka and waved the skeeter away.

  The eel lay at the bottom of the tank, barely covered as the water level slowly climbed. “I think it’s just stunned,” Little Chaka yelled. He knelt next to the pen to examine the dark eel. “Looks to be moving water through the gills. Let’s add a little oxygen.” He whispered to his comm-card. There were more bubbles from the air inputs at the bottom of the tank. “That ought to take care of her.”

  Little Chaka Mubutu was almost six and a half feet tall, dark-skinned but with the narrow features more often found in whites. He looked quite unlike his adopted father, Dr. Mubutu—Big Chaka. Together they were the colony’s premier biologists. Dr. Mubutu was still at home, at the marine research facility west of Surf’s Up.

  “Nothing else to do,” he said. “We don’t know enough to help.”

  “I hope she lives,” Jessica said.

  “So do I. She looks tough. Leave it to Mother Nature. I’m going in. Coming?”

  “Let me get my kit.” Skeeter VI buzzed down to a hexagonal concrete landing pad next to Biomed. Jessica grabbed her belt pouch as it shut down. The still-turning rotors fluttered her hair in all directions, but she didn’t notice. She hurried into the building.

  Little Chaka had the holos up and running by the time she entered Aquatics. The station’s west wall disappeared as the cameras and tank sensors displayed data from the churning, foaming tank. Chaka sat in an oversized swivel chair, the keyboard on his lap. He waved toward a more normal sized chair. “What do we have here?” Chaka asked.

  “You should know better than me.”

  “File name?”

  “Mother Eel.”

  “Cassandra?” Chaka said softly. “Let’s see what we know about Mother Eel.”

  “Integrating files. Done. Records now available,” the computer’s cool, familiar voice answered. Chaka’s version of Cassandra’s neutral voice had been given a lyrical New Guinea lilt.

  The holo divided into two images. One remained with the eel, and the other replayed the skeeter’s-eye view of its heroic spawning odyssey.

  “What do we have . . . ?” Chaka whispered. He watched the tail drop off, and chuckled.

  “What happened there?” Jessica asked.

  “The Amazon is glacier water, poor in minerals. Mama Eel is making sure her babies have food.”

  “Cannibals?”

  “No, this is a salmon trick, Jessica. The salmon of Earth swam upstream and died. Mama here only leaves her tail, but it’s the same trick. Tail will rot. Parasites in the tail will multiply drastically as tissue decomposes. Insects come to dine. Water boils with insects and worms and such. Hatchlings have their dinner, won’t they, Mama?”

  Outside, the clouded sky cleared for a moment, and Tau Ceti glared through the Aquatics building’s domed ceiling, dimming the holos. The ceiling polarized, and the holos brightened.

  Slowly, the eel began to twitch again.

  “Let’s get a closer look,” Little Chaka murmured.

  The eel ballooned up before them. Its skin disappeared as Cassandra obligingly bounced ultrasound through the water, and then adjusted the scans. “Ah-ha—”

  The door burst open, and Zack Moskowitz stormed in.

  Avalon’s chairman was about fifty-five Earth years old, thirty-eight Avalon, and a slightly heavier gravity hadn’t been kind to him. His shoulders stooped, and his face was deeply lined. The mustache and eyebrows that gave him an unfortunate resemblance to Groucho Marx were thinner now, speckled with white. Care and woe, stress and responsibility had bent him as if physical burdens.

  “Jessica!” he roared. “I gave you a direct order to kill that thing.”

  “Why?” she asked mildly. “And by the way: hi, Zack.”

  “Standing Order Municipal Rule One-Four-Two. ‘Until adjudged otherwise, all new species are to be considered hostile.’ This is the first time something this large has returned to the island. It has pronounced amphibious tendencies.”

  “So does my niece, but that doesn’t make her a grendel.”

  “Look at this.” Chaka slid into a swivel chair, lacing his thick dark fingers behind his head. The eel’s head became orca-sized, revealing a mouthful of tiny, even, sharp-looking teeth. “Mama eats small fish. She might take a chomp out of your leg if you tromped on her. Sorry to disillusion you, Zack, but you wouldn’t be her idea of lunch.”

  Zack grunted, then turned back to Jessica. “I don’t care,” he said. “An order is an order.”

  “I know,” Jessica said, her voice still extremely even. “Rules are rules, because we can’t trust individual judgment. You can’t trust your individual judgment.”
And I was never frozen. I don’t have ice on my mind. “Zack, my father wrote most of the Standing Orders, remember?”

  “You’re taking advantage,” Zack said. “Cadmann will be back tomorrow.”

  Jessica leaned forward. “What makes you think that I care? The Grendel Scouts are controlled by Second Generation. Biomed is controlled by Second Generation. This is for Star Born, not Earth Born.”

  “At the moment.”

  “The eel was spotted by—”

  “—sensors created and monitored by adults. First Generation. We set up the alert and sent out the skeeter. You commandeered it, and directly countermanded my order—”

  Jessica’s blue eyes narrowed hotly. “Cadmann’s Bluff is not incorporated into the township of Avalon Town, never has been, never will be, and you damned well know why. The eel was captured there. My father is incommunicado. Justin and I are in command of the Bluff until he returns. I made my decision based upon my authority on the Bluff and my control of the Grendel Scouts. Chaka?”

  Chaka spun in his swivel chair. “Mother Eel is secure, Zack. We can put a net over the tank, if you want.”

  “You know damned well that isn’t the issue. The issue is that you exceeded your authority. I am responsible for the security of this colony—”

  Jessica’s smile was hard, but her voice remained even and untempered. “And although I had no hand in giving you that authority, I have abided by the decision. Until now. But I think we can learn more about Avalon from a live creature—and we have eggs coming down the mountain—”

  “Eggs?” Zack was furious. “I want them destroyed—”

  “You are the civilian authority, and as such have control of ordinary emergencies. But this isn’t one of them, it’s no emergency at all. It is the normal functioning of the planet, Zack. The ecology is returning. The signs have been there for eight years. Plants. Fairy-brollies, and look what they grew into! No birds, but we have new fish, new insects—Zack, this is important, this is the way this island used to be. This is for a joint council, Earth Born and Star Born—”

  “Adults and Second Generation,” Zack said absently.

  “All right, but this is for the joint council, First and Second Generations, together. Or the biology board. But it’s not something for rules, or a panicked, autocratic decision.”

  “But—”

  “Our world, Zack,” Jessica said. “Ours, not just yours.”

  “It was my impression, Zack, that this was a republic—not a principality.” Chaka’s tone was mocking, but gentle. “And it is our world too.”

  Zack closed his eyes for a moment, and finally nodded. “Right, right. You’re right. All right. I want a cover on the tank. As soon as your father links in, I want him informed. And we’ll have a special meeting when he gets back.” Zack placed a fatherly hand on her arm. She let it remain there.

  “You don’t remember, you can’t.” Zack said it with a kind of resignation, and she knew two things: first, she was about to get a dose of Grendel Angst, and second, this was as close to an apology as Zack could come.

  “Things have been peaceful for a long time. We want them to stay that way.”

  It’s for your own good, children.

  He patted her, then took another long, hard look at the eel. It was beginning to swish to and fro around the tank. As if seeking a way out. “Put a cover on that tank.” Zack shook his head, and left the room.

  “Ice on his mind,” Chaka said. “You know what Ruth said?”

  “What?”

  “She said Zack sleeps in his own room. Wakes Rachael up in the middle of the night, screaming.”

  “Hell, I think that half of the First have nightmares. Freezing Grendel Wars.” Jessica shook her head. “Dead and gone, man, dead and gone. Just like the grendels.”

  “Gone here,” Chaka said. “Plenty of them over there. We’ll have to deal with them someday.”

  “Or our kids will,” Jessica said. “We won’t have to settle the mainland for generations.”

  “Yes we will,” Chaka said. “I’d better get the cover on that tank.”

  “Do you want one?”

  Chaka shrugged. “It will be inconvenient.”

  “Freeze it, then. Don’t bother.”

  Chaka looked at her. Before he could say anything they were interrupted by the whir of an approaching skeeter. “That should be baby bro, with the egg samples,” Jessica said.

  “Right. Cassandra,” Chaka said briskly. “I want a life-cycle simulation.”

  “Where do you think this thing lives?”

  “The Deeps north of Surf’s Up, maybe.”

  Justin slammed the door open. A jar half-filled with murky water sloshed in his hands. Within floated a sample of the jellied egg sac. “Merry Christmas,” he said cheerily. “Are we set up?”

  “All but.” Chaka took the jar carefully. He drew a few drops of cloudy fluid and placed them into an analyzer. Cassandra worked. Presently a stream of filtered, designer water began to splash into a small tank on the workbench. When it was filled, Chaka emptied the jar into the tank.

  Jessica sat down next to Justin, winked at him. “Caught hell from Zack about our slippery friend.”

  Chaka was big, the strongest of the Star Born, but you didn’t notice that when he was at work. “We’ll just dissect one of the eggs so Cassandra can have a look. There. Window, please.” A flood of biological and mathematical symbols reeled past them in a small holographic window, a peek into Cassandra’s mind. She was comparing the eel with other Avalonian life-forms, including the dreaded grendel. And she was scanning the eggs down to their DNA. And although it was understood to be no more than thirty-percent accurate, Cassandra would devise a best-guess life-cycle for the beast, including preferred foods at varied points in its development.

  Before their eyes the eel transformed: now its holographic image was covered with skin, now it was a network of muscles, now it was a mere skeleton whipping eerily through the water. Now it was a jelly sac crowded with internal organs, and in the next second it was merely a nervous system, each branching node outlined in blue.

  Jessica lit a cigarette. It was machine-rolled but unfiltered. The tobacco field covered less than ten acres of the twelve thousand acres of cultivated land surrounding Camelot. There had been discussion as to whether the seeds should be grown at all. Most of the Earth Born didn’t smoke and hated tobacco. Some were astonished to find there were tobacco seeds aboard Geographic. The same debate had preceded the hemp planting.

  Mankind’s vices had accompanied him to the stars. Alcohol, nicotine, and marijuana existed on Avalon, likewise poppy fields and coca plants. The mountain ridges had been seeded with coffee. Pharmaceutical cocaine and morphine were too valuable medicinally. Hemp too hardy and useful a plant fiber. Tobacco . . . well, tobacco was tobacco.

  Jessica allowed herself a cigarette or two a day. You’d have to quadruple that level of consumption to find clinical deterioration of lung tissue, and it had been a century since anyone died of cancer anyway. As for the other drugs . . . well, they were a part of Man’s history.

  “Terrible habit,” Justin said. She nodded, and shook him out a butt.

  The pumps made small, moist rhythmic sounds, swishing murky water about in the egg tank.

  Chaka was totally absorbed: the rest of the world might as well have disappeared. Jessica said, “Listen, we’ll check back with you, all right?”

  Ruth Moskowitz waited right outside the door for them, a bemused look on her round and pleasant face. She was five foot seven of clean-featured brunette. Attractive, but not pretty. Rounded, but not chubby. Competent, but not particularly bright as far as anyone could tell. Ruth was on the edge of everything, and not remarkable for anything but being Zack’s daughter. She stripped off her work gloves. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “What’s beautiful?” Justin asked.

  “The eel! Tell me about it.”

  “Not much to tell,” Jessica said. “It swam up the Am
azon this morning, you know, right through the living room—Oh. The Amazon is a stream.”

  “I’ve been to your house,” Ruth said. “It must have been going to the pools above the Keep.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What would it want?” Ruth mused. “There’s nothing up there, just glacier.”

  “Right again. Got to the headwaters and laid eggs.”

  “Ooh. Wish I’d been there,” Ruth said. “It’s safe, then?”

  “Looks harmless enough. Chaka is looking into it.”

  “I bet Daddy had a tizzy,” Ruth said. “Municipal Standing Order 142.” She looked puzzled. “He must have ordered you to kill it, but I can see it’s still alive.”

  “That’s right,” Jessica said.

  “Wish I’d been here,” Ruth said again. Her comm-card chirped. She lifted it, listened a moment, and said, “Yes, sir. I’ll ask him.” She smiled uncertainly at Jessica. “Got to ask Chaka something—”

  “Right. See you.”

  Ruth went into the Biomed building. Justin and Jessica looked at each other and grinned. “Wish I’d been here,” Justin said, his voice mocking Ruth’s.

  “You’re unkind,” Jessica said, but she laughed. It was easy to laugh at Ruth.

  “You’re the one who forgot she’d been to the Keep. She was there more than once, actually.”

  “Years ago,” Jessica said. “Look, you decided she couldn’t be a Grendel Scout—”

  “We all did. You know she’d go straight to Zack if she learned what we do.” Justin climbed the ladder to the top of pen number two, and sloshed his hand in the water until Hipshot, the small dark male of the dolphin pair, approached and rubbed against it. He stroked the dolphin carefully. “What do you think, boy? Think you’ll give Quanda a tumble?”

  Jessica sat next to him. They looked down on Avalon Town.

  The main colony boasted almost three hundred separate dwellings now, and another went up every month or so.

  A hundred and thirty-seven of the original two hundred remained alive. Most of them lived here, in the expanded grounds of the original encampment. A few had imitated Colonel Cadmann Weyland and built permanent dwellings elsewhere on the island. More had hunting lodges and second homes near the snows. The fishing colony at Surf’s Up was the unofficial domain of the Star Born, not quite a separate city, not quite permanent, a perpetual summer camp linked to the main colony by skeeters. If the comm-cards were the nervous system of the colony, the skeeter autogyros, built on Earth and assembled on Avalon, were its blood vessels. There were never enough skeeters. Building more would require fuel cells, and fuel cells required palladium and platinum for catalysts; those required mines and prospecting, which required access to the mainland, but the skeeters didn’t have enough range for routine operations to the mainland, and there wasn’t any facility there to recharge their fuel cells anyway. But if we had a power station and more fuel cells that could be charging over there . . .