Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  She felt her face drop, her entire body freeze with disappointment.

  Then he added: “First.”

  They spread the picnic blanket. Aaron handed her his backpack.

  Her hands were shaking. She was trying so hard to do everything perfectly, to bring a dancer’s grace to every tiny motion. But every part of her was too aware that he was watching, every inch of her skin was too sensitive, felt his touch even though they were separated by feet. She kept speeding up, and he, with infinite patience, kept reminding her to slow down.

  “We have all the time in the world,” he said.

  She set out the carefully packed plates, and the carefully wrapped food, and the carefully wrapped utensils. “Slowly,” he said. “You have to make sure that everything is in its place. Everything is exactly where it needs to be.”

  She nodded, feeling feverishly hot.

  They ate. There was no moment when his eyes met hers, and she wanted to scream, wanted to throw the food down and throw herself into his arms, wanted to feel his lips and hands and tongue all over her body, just like she’d read in the books, seen in the holos. She longed to do the same for him. Please God, please, let this be the time, now, here . . .

  But her silent pleas went unheard. He continued to concentrate on his food, eating as slowly and carefully as if it were a tea party.

  She watched his hands. So large and strong. They moved with such certainty. Such strength. Hands like that could do anything, could take anything that they wanted.

  She thought she was going to die.

  Please . . .

  “Excuse me.” He broke the silence for the first time in five agonizing minutes.

  touch . . .

  “Would you hand me the butter?”

  me. I love you so . . .

  She nodded silently, and grasped the small platter, extending it to him. His hand reached out, and their fingers met.

  And their eyes. And she was falling forward.

  And then their lips.

  And then it was everything, every moment she had hoped for, so exhilarating that even the brief, sharp pain as he eased into her only increased the impact as dream crossed over into reality. A fierce, tender, laughing, tearful, all-consuming experience.

  His lips and tongue. And God, his hands. So gentle. So strong.

  Hands like his could do anything. Take anything they wanted.

  She thought she was going to die.

  Trish Chance was bored. Aaron had a plan, sure he did, but right now his plan was to do nothing . . . and meanwhile they were trapped on the island, unable to go to the mainland, under suspicion but forced to be polite to the First.

  Trish left the comm shack wearing a wide grin. Smile and smile and be a villain, she thought. She didn’t have to spend all her hours sulking. Edgar was an eager student—and so grateful, too. And everyone was so surprised! The comm shack was centrally located, which meant it was near everyone’s place, and if Trish kept visiting Edgar everyone on the island was going to know it.

  Her grin faded when she saw Carolyn McAndrews approaching with a purposeful look. Carolyn had tried to adopt Trish in the early days, when no one was quite sure how to raise the Bottle Babies. Trish had been ten years old, and eager to have a permanent home rather than the communal nursery. But not that eager, not in that home.

  Now Carolyn was coming at her. “Trish!” she called.

  Trish slowed, hoisted a smile into place. “Hi, Carolyn.”

  “Have you got a minute to talk?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  Carolyn quieted as Julia Hortha and Manny Halperin strolled past in deep conversation. When they were out of earshot, she said, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for us, earlier—”

  “It was a long time ago, Carolyn, and you had your own children to take care of. I can’t blame you for putting them first.”

  “Did I? I suppose I did,” Carolyn said. “It comes of—of living alone. Trish, I think you’ve fallen into a—well, a kind of role.”

  “A role?” Trish was genuinely puzzled. “What kind of role?”

  “You and Edgar. And before that, Derik, and Terry—you were their first, sort of the Initiator.”

  Trish giggled. “I guess I kind of fell into that, yes. Edgar too.” Her smile went exotic and mysterious. She assumed a thick and flagrantly faux accent. “I like to teach the young ones zee acts of love.”

  She laughed, then let it die when Carolyn didn’t join in. “I did that, Trish. I slept with any man who didn’t have a partner. None who did, at least not that I knew of, but a lot of men. And look what it got me.”

  Trish shrugged, genuinely missing the point.

  “I’m alone, Trish.”

  “What do you mean, alone? Everybody likes you.” Nobody listens to you, she thought, but who would? Smile and smile—“You’re one of the heroes of the Grendel Wars. Carolyn and the horses.”

  “Trish, every man would sleep with me, but none of them wanted to take me down the rapids. Now I’m getting old, and no one wants to live with me.” Sudden understanding. She must think she’s my mother. “Oh, that. That’s not what I’m looking for, Carolyn.”

  Carolyn grasped her arm. Trish looked at the hand, and decided to let it remain there.

  “Trish, it’s a bad thing to be alone. Don’t you want to belong to someone? To have someone who belongs to you? You have nothing but casual relationships—”

  She laughed in Carolyn’s face. “In a world with less than five hundred people, there is no such thing as a casual relationship. We’re all family.”

  “Imagine yourself alone, with no defenders, at my age,” said Carolyn.

  Trish was incredulous. “Defenders? Defend from what? Do you think I’m going to starve in the snow without a man to protect me? Nobody starves on Avalon. Nobody goes without. And I’m tougher than I look, lady. I’m stronger than almost any man here—and men aren’t any better at hunting, or producing, or anything, else than women are. Didn’t you get the word? There was this thing called the Industrial Revolution. That made us equals, that and Zack Moskowitz’s grendel guns. And then there was birth control. Maybe your mother forgot to mention it to you.”

  Carolyn smiled, not a thin smile but with genuine warmth. “You might be surprised at what my mother taught me. And Trish, dear, my sister and I did win places on this expedition, and we didn’t owe a damn thing to any man for that, either!”

  “That’s the spirit. I have to go now.”

  “No, wait, this is important. Trish—it’s a terrible thing to be alone—”

  “It’s also a terrible thing to have ice on your mind,” Trish said, and made as if to leave. Carolyn blocked her path, but Trish knew that she had scored a direct hit, and for the first time felt a tiny trace of remorse. She wiped it from her mind. Who gave her the right to lecture me on morals?

  “I don’t seem to be explaining this very well,” Carolyn said. “I know they call me a hysteric, but there’s more to this than you think.” Carolyn struggled for words. “Sometimes hysterics has nothing to do with ice crystals in the brain.”

  Change in conversational direction, or change in tactics? “Sure, you can be scared into it. What was it that got you, Carolyn? Grendel fever? Seems to have done it for everyone else.”

  “No, not grendels. That was awful, but . . . it was earlier, Trish. When Ernst came out of cold sleep and he was a m-moron, and he barely remembered m-me. And old friends were dropping dead all around me. It turned out half of us were damaged and we couldn’t be sure of the rest . . . It was Hibernation Instability. Ice on our minds, we said. We were trying to be polite!” Her eyes defocused, as if she had forgotten she was talking to another person. “We were trying to be polite . . . ”

  Trish had heard it before, too many times. This wasn’t insulting, it was pitiful, and just plain boring. “Excuse me, Carolyn,” she pushed past the older woman. “I’m almost sure I have something to do, somewhere else.”

  “I’m tryin
g to help you,” Carolyn said. “You’re playing with something you don’t understand.”

  “And you do?”

  “I understand more than you do.”

  “Carolyn, I doubt that.”

  “I know you do. When I was your age I was sure I knew everything, too.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But that was back on Earth. I’ve watched some of the old Earth dramas. I once did sixty hours straight of ‘General Hospital’! That was Earth, Carolyn, and this is Avalon, and life isn’t like that anymore!”

  Carolyn laughed. “It never was like that, but never mind. Trish, I know this much. Men and women don’t see sex the same way, and that’s wired into our brains. It’s not something you can ignore just because you want to. Trish, I know.”

  “Then I guess I’ll just have to find out, won’t I? Excuse me—” She brushed past and walked at a fast pace, too fast for Carolyn to catch up without running.

  Behind her Carolyn was still talking to herself. “We’d jumped light-years between stars, the whole universe was ours for the taking, and it was all going wrong. Ice on our minds . . . ”

  “More greens?” Mary Ann said, too briskly. A bright and terrible smile had glazed her face during the entire visit. Only when she kept herself busy did it fall away, did a genuine mask of concentration replace it.

  She served her family, bustling about as if work were the only thing that stood between herself and damnation. The very constancy of her motion was an irritant to Jessica. “Mom,” she said. “Please. Let me help you.”

  Mary Ann turned and her expression was diamond-clear and hard, and just as emotionless. “No. No dear. I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”

  Cadmann sat next to Justin. Without anyone saying anything explicit, a line had been drawn in the house.

  “I was in the Arboretum earlier,” Cadmann said. “I noticed that some of the cacti stems are broken.”

  Jessica shrugged.

  “Do you know anything about that?”

  “Not particularly.” She avoided his eyes.

  “I’ve been told that a powerful hallucinogen can be produced from its leaves.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Katya said that once. I believe that Aaron is the real expert.”

  Justin felt his stomach knot. The subject had been approached from a dozen different directions over the past weeks.

  Sylvia was very quiet. Mary Ann had politely but firmly excluded her from most of the kitchen duties. She smiled and whirled, bringing pans of biscuits and rolls and an entire wild turkey to the table. She had worked since morning to prepare everything, and she would probably be clearing the table, washing dishes and cleaning up until after midnight. Then, perhaps, she could fall exhausted into her queen-size bed, and cry herself to sleep. Justin wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t. No one could. Cadmann hadn’t slept in her room since the funeral.

  After steaming wedges of French apple pie, Jessica excused herself, and went into the guest bathroom.

  “It’s been good to have you here,” Cadmann smiled.

  “That goes for both of us,” Sylvia said. She paused. “Has it put any strain . . .?”

  Justin gave a long, sour exhalation. “Surf’s Up is pretty well split right now,” he said. “Aaron’s kaffeeklatsch has pulled pretty tight. A lot of grumbling.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Cadmann said.

  “They think I’m consorting with the enemy.”

  Cadmann laughed. He tamped his pipe down, lit it, and took a long draw. Then he slowly exhaled aromatic smoke. “Everyone makes his own choices.”

  “Except in the sense that Aaron suggested: we didn’t decide to come here, and there’s no place for us to go. So John Locke’s implicit social contract doesn’t really apply to us, does it?”

  Cadmann chuckled. “You’ve been studying again. Damn nuisance, an educated son.” He tapped his pipe against the ashtray, and his big sun-browned face wrinkled in exasperation. “Where is that girl?”

  Almost on cue, Jessica reappeared. She smiled uncertainly.

  “Well—it’s been lovely. If I’m not mistaken, I hear Aaron’s skeeter.”

  Mary Ann appeared in the kitchen doorway, apron flapping. “It’s a good surprise, seeing you. We’d like it more often.”

  “You’re always welcome,” Sylvia chimed in.

  Mary Ann looked out the dining-room window, a vast northern expanse of clear, seamlessly cemented plastic rectangles. The clouds were darker now, and the first drops of rain spattered against the plastic. “Are you sure that you won’t stay the night? The storm looks serious.”

  Cadmann nodded. “Cassandra says that it’s a big one. The first of the season. There’s always a free room. The bunkhouse is available if you and Aaron would like your privacy.”

  “No, thank you.” She wrapped a woolen shawl around her shoulders. “Justin—are you sure you’re staying?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  A decided coolness there. Cadmann thought that she was about to say something, but at the last moment, just smiled.

  The door opened, and big Aaron stood framed by the darkening, cloudy sky.

  He had aged since the return from the mainland. The last of his boyish qualities were gone, replaced by a rangy, impenetrable quality. “Cadmann,” he said.

  “Aaron.” They shook hands, hard. Aaron’s eyes were frozen. Before now, Cadmann had always had a sense of who lived in there, back behind the blue eyes. Now he didn’t know. From time to time he wondered if he had ever known.

  “Are you ready to go?”

  Jessica nodded.

  Aaron kissed Mary Ann’s hand, and held it for an extra moment, gazing into her eyes as if trying to make a connection of some kind.

  Then they were gone.

  The skeeter rose up into the orange-black sky. Tau Ceti was near the horizon, and night would be upon them within minutes.

  “Did you plant it?” Aaron asked. His big square hands were calm and certain upon the controls.

  His hands were always sure, she reflected. Always calm and strong.

  “Yes. It will trigger in—” She looked at her watch. “Eighteen minutes.”

  “I love it when a plan comes together, don’t you?”

  Jessica was silent.

  They swooped down toward the colony.

  Chaka saw the way Edgar’s face lit up when he saw Trish Chance. It fell as he saw Chaka in her shadow. Little Chaka smiled and held up a satchel. “Coffee too,” he said.

  “Excellent,” Edgar said, and ushered them in with wobbly grace. When his head turned away, Trish mimed Chaka a shrug. Did Edgar delude himself that he and Trish would be making the beast with two backs during this critical period?

  Not likely. Aaron had ordered a storm and put it in Edgar’s charge. Chaka said, “I’m here in case you run into a glitch. If ‘Dragonsnatch’ has to be aborted, I’m one of the not-many who can do that. Got an outlet?”

  “There.”

  Chaka pulled out fine-ground dark-roasted coffee, a flask of milk, mugs, and an espresso-and-steamer device, which he plugged in. He measured water and coffee and set the thing running. Edgar Sikes wasn’t in the kaffeeklatsch, any more than Ruth Moskowitz was, but both had tasted coffee. Ancient tradition spoke that a nerd must have caffeine. Aaron might sometimes follow an ancient tradition, if it amused him.

  And Trish was rubbing Edgar’s neck and shoulders, flirting, maybe, but doing a damn good massage too. Chaka had felt her magic touch. She stepped back as Edgar stretched, yoga fashion.

  “Looks good,” she said.

  Chaka asked, “Didn’t you used to have a bad back?”

  “Broken. It’s healed pretty well. Toshiro’s taught me some yoga.” Edgar sat down and summoned up a hologram, an abstraction, it seemed . . . no, it was a hurricane in infrared, as seen from Geographic. They’d beamed it to the National Geographic Society on Earth, a complete recording of another
world’s major storm. “This was from last year. I’m going to jazz it up a little. Chaka, I’m ready for that magic fluid any time.”

  The coffee was beginning to flow. Chaka filled the cups with milk. He was thinking, Toshiro’s a good man. He’s teaching me karate—But Chaka shouldn’t say that even to Edgar, and if he said it in front of Trish, Trish would tell Aaron.

  Many things involving Aaron went unsaid. Nobody on the planet is stronger than Aaron, except Little Chaka Mubutu. So when we go to the mainland, I carry the cook pot. If a grendel came among us, the last man to use a weapon would be Little Chaka. Someone would have to protect me . . . someone like Aaron Tragon. Little Chaka doesn’t compete.

  Little Chaka doesn’t know how to fight.

  The steam jet howled like a fighter jet. Trish jumped: her back was suddenly plated like an armadillo, and she turned with her eyes bugged. Chaka loved doing that . . . but Edgar never even twitched. When Chaka had the chance to look up, Edgar was moving a whirlpool of cloud over a map of Avalon.

  “We want it where people can’t see it,” he said. “Or can’t see it ain’t there. So. But the fringe, here, that’ll raise hell around Robor. This arm we’ll taper off a little . . . there . . . matches what Cassandra’s predicting. Now here’s how it looks from Surf’s Up.”

  Surf’s Up was being torn to pieces. Anything lighter than a blockhouse was already gone, fragments floating in the huge waves, or flying through the air.

  “Like it? Here’s the view from Cadmann’s Folly . . . Nope, they’ll see it isn’t there. Okay, watch this.” He had the whirlpool, the view from orbit. It bent east a bit, and shrank. Back to Cadmann’s Folly—“And that matches the Cassandra prediction, which she based on my data. Aaron’s too antsy, Chaka. This is the easy part.”

  “Damn,” Trish said. “You’re really good.”

  Edgar preened. He was, and everyone knew it, but he had something else going here.

  Trish likely hadn’t found Edgar Sikes impressive. Chaka knew her style, and it was domination. But here and now, Edgar Sikes was no schmuck, no mere decoration for a woman. This was Aaron Tragon’s wizard, and a wizard makes a risky servant.