Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  The chamels were wheeling like a flock of birds. Jessica spun around the outside to head off a move eastward. Chamel defensive strategy would keep the pups in the center, actually making them easier to herd.

  Hooves and wheels churned up clouds of yellowish dust dimming Tau Ceti. Jessica fell slightly behind the herd as they thundered now toward the northern horizon. She cleared her throat of dust and said, “On track, Justin.”

  “We’re ready for you.”

  The brush here was harsh and scraggly, unappetizingly brown except for tufts of tough purple grass. Even as she watched, the skin coloration of the beasts began to shift to match the sparse foliage.

  Beautiful.

  “Two klicks from target,” she yelled. “Keep it tight!”

  Justin wheeled the skeeter around the outside of the herd and drove a stray male back to the center. The chamels traversed a long stretch of brown gravel. They changed colors wildly as the terrain changed, and from his aerial perspective it seemed the ground itself was flowing like a river. It was easier to track the herd by dust cloud than by direct observation.

  Everything was right on schedule. “In position. Have visual contact with corral.”

  “Yippie-yi-oh-tie-yay.” Jessica’s voice. He knew she was grinning.

  Jessica dropped her plaid bandanna across her face as she cut toward the middle of the herd. They parted for her like the Red Sea. As the trike jolted through the grass, making almost sixty klicks an hour, she could reach out to either side to touch a chamel. Damn, they were beautiful beasts! Fast, strong, agile—and intelligent. The pups darted through the herd seeking pockets of adult protection. The trike’s roar blended with the steady rolling thunder of their hooves. They wheeled left to avoid a log, and she jerked her handlebars to follow.

  A commotion to the right: Aaron Tragon, mounted on Zwieback, the chamel Ruth had tamed for him. They burst out of the trees just ahead of the herd.

  The herd wheeled, confused for a moment . . . and then followed.

  Jessica yelped her pleasure. Damn. He had been right again. Chamels were extreme olfactory sensitives. Pouches on Aaron’s mount carried an overwhelming dose of chamel pheromones. Whammo—Zwieback became an instant alpha. Their herding instincts and trainability boded well. Chamels were an odd hybrid of horse and ostrich, with wide, fleshy mouths and thin, strong legs.

  The trike jounced savagely as they crossed the last rise. Ahead of them was the corral, seven feet tall and a quarter kilometer around.

  “All right. Let’s keep it tight, keep it tight—”

  It was hardly needed. The chamels followed Aaron through the open gate. Jessica turned aside at the last second and the chamels charged past her into the pen. Once inside, they realized they were trapped. They snorted and tossed their heads, but there was no way out but the gate, and Chaka was already swinging that shut before Jessica could dismount and dash over to help him.

  She ran up the short ramp leading to the edge of the corral.

  The new twelve had joined fifty chamels captured over the previous week. The new ones snorted restlessly, but even as they did, their skin changed color, matching the beaten ground beneath their hooves.

  Aaron swung off his mount, and grabbed for the ladder.

  He slipped, and fell back to the ground. Jessica’s fist went to her mouth. For a moment, fear locked her into immobility.

  The adult chamels reared back: unmasked, Man’s smell was very different from their own. Two of the adults turned their backs, and began to kick.

  She had seen this behavior before. A ring of chamels to protect a pup, the heavy, hard, sharp hooves striking out over and over again. It wouldn’t work against a grendel, but cameras had watched the creatures surround a bear-sized predator and literally kick it into pulp.

  Aaron scrambled up to the ladder, spun as one of the hooves caught him alongside the shoulder, and leaped upward. He got two rungs up before another hoof caught him in the thigh. He grunted but kept going, and was out of range a moment later, lips curled into a satisfied smile. She could see where his jeans were dusted and cut by the striking hoof.

  Chaka helped him up over the top, and he thumped down heavily. He swept Jessica up for a big, warm kiss, then gave a victory wave to the circling skeeters.

  Dust fluttered about them as the skeeters touched down, and the penned chamels brayed even louder.

  Jessica climbed up the ramp to look down at them. “Get along little doggies,” she sang to herself. “It’s your misfortune . . . ”

  “All right!” Justin said, slapping his hands together. She jumped, startled—he had made his approach silently. “What’s left on the chart for today?”

  “We’ve done enough work for today.” Her back still ached from digging trike pits, but she had to love him. What an eager beaver. It was getting easier to relate to Justin. The bad times, at least the really bad ones, seemed behind them.

  “I think we’ve got time to lay for the spider devils. What do you say?”

  She peered up into the sky. Tau Ceti was still bright and high. “We’ve got five hours of daylight. Have a spot in mind?”

  Chaka raised a huge finger. “How ’bout the heavy patch, about two klicks from where we trapped the chamels?”

  “Some folks would say we were too close to water,” Justin reminded him.

  Jessica laughed. “Older folks, I’d bet.”

  “Yup.”

  Chaka waved nonchalantly. “We’ll use motion sensors and a backup team. Thermal, if you want them, Justin.”

  “Well . . . the spider devils seem to like the area. Grendels would eat them if they could catch them.” He pitched a rock off across the horizon. “I guess we can handle it.”

  Jessica slapped him on the back. That’s my unbrother. “Sounds like a plan.”

  As Justin and Jessica ate lunch, a pair of skeeters rose and swept away toward the east. Another came in with a load of chamel chow.

  “Quite an operation,” he said.

  The fences were already sealed again. Unlike the main camp, here there were no passive boundaries—but they did have an electrified fence, twenty-four-hour guards, movement sensors, and a fortified, grendel-proof shelter.

  The shelter was Quonset-hut-shaped, and certified grendel-proof by Colonel Cadmann Weyland. Jessica felt an odd mixture of security and disgust when she remembered the way he had tested the crystal-filament-reinforced plastic constructions . . .

  Memory: Blackship Island was gray and rocky, just a spur, really. It held one of the relay stations constructed between Camelot and the mainland. A skeeter pad. Emergency supplies. A stormproof shelter.

  The waves shot foam high into the air where they slapped up against the rocks that day. Jessica looked up at her father where he sat beside her. His face seemed as gray as the rock, as gray as the sky.

  They had said little to each other since the day she planted the disrupter in his home. The day she had betrayed their relationship.

  Two skeeters flew in from the north, their flight patterns carefully timed and synchronized, one flown by Evan Castaneda and the other by Aaron. Cargo hoists with specimen slings hung beneath each skeeter.

  Jessica’s heartbeat accelerated at the thought of what was about to happen.

  Cadmann spoke casually. “Let’s have Skeeter Seven first.” Aaron’s craft hovered overhead, and winched down its load.

  Eleven feet of fang and gray scales and claws and spiked tail lay in that sling. A grendel. Type 6 was the color of gray mud; otherwise not very different from the now-extinct Camelot grendels, but with a down-turned double hook at the tail . . . and a solemn, brooding mouth, where holos of the Camelot horrors showed a demon’s grin. Chaka strode up to it, hunkered down, and peered into its eyes.

  They were open, staring, sightless.

  Or were they? Could anyone really say what was happening in the depths of its quasi-reptilian mind? They knew enough to be certain that a few volts of electricity trickling through its sleep centers would keep
it quiescent.

  “The jaw,” Chaka said. “The hinges. See what I meant? Its bite gets more powerful leverage than the Camelot grendel, but it takes a smaller bite.”

  Her father was holding his breath as he examined the grendel. Given any excuse, he would kick the grendel, shoot it, inflict some indignity upon it that would be one one-millionth as devastating as what had happened to him all those years ago.

  But it wouldn’t happen—her father was not a man for futile gestures. The grendel slumbered on.

  Chaka nodded, and Cadmann waved the motionless cargo back into the air. Aaron raised it, and then dropped the bundle down through a hatch in the prefabricated dome. If this test went well, these domes would eventually dot the mainland.

  This dome was twenty feet in diameter and seven feet high, made of prefabricated sections that slotted together in minutes. They had spiked and chained it into the rock.

  Cadmann cut the line. Skeeter VII spun away and landed on its triple size pad. Aaron bounded out, his long, tanned face intense.

  “Any problems?” Cadmann asked.

  “No. Not really,” Aaron replied. A slight edge of anxiety belied his words. “She’s been on ice for seven hours, waiting for your call. Cassandra identified the grendel hole, and then we just trapped the bitch.”

  Bitch? Jessica thought. He’s never called a grendel bitch before. He said that for Dad.

  Cadmann nodded. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  Skeeter II swung into position. Its winch distended, to lower a second grendel into the shelter. They detached the wire.

  They sealed the shelter, closed the door, and bolted it shut. Skeeter II landed.

  Jessica noticed Cadmann’s expression. No doubt about it, he was enjoying this. “Shall we go?” he asked.

  There was no hesitation. Chaka climbed in with Evan. Cadmann and Jessica chose Aaron’s skeeter. The autogyros retired to a prudent distance.

  “Cassandra,” Cadmann said. “Visual.”

  A square of holographic window opened. Suddenly, they were peering into the dome.

  The two sleeping grendels were curled in their nets, looking almost peaceful. The larger one was gray, the smaller a mossy greenish brown. That one was a Type 3. Her tail was a crown of spikes. Her long toes were built for climbing trees. Unusual: most grendels couldn’t climb.

  She looked to be easy meat for the gray.

  Cadmann cleared his throat. “Cassandra,” he said. “Please record all angles.”

  “Yes, Cadmann.” It seemed to Jessica that Cassandra’s voice sounded just a little like her mother’s.

  “Terminate current.”

  “Yes, Cadmann,” Cassandra said.

  Cadmann took a deep breath. He seemed very peaceful.

  “Trigger speed,” he said.

  A small aerosol can on the inside of the dome began to spray a pink mist.

  Speed was the grendel secret. It was an oxygenating agent rivaling rocket fuel in potency, a chemical secreted in sacs in the grendel’s back. Grendels running on speed burned energy faster than any creature born of Earth.

  And the smell of speed was the smell of a challenger. It triggered a territorial response, a hyperexcited combat readiness more powerful than any mere hunting mode. It drove grendels insane.

  The can hissed as its contents were released.

  Above the dome, the humans hovered in their skeeters. Waiting.

  The smaller grendel woke first.

  They watched its eyes widen. Its tongue darted in and out twice.

  “It should have flashed.” Cadmann sounded puzzled.

  The green grendel should have flown instantly to the attack. Instead, the first thing it did was retreat, banging into the wall, thrashing and hissing. It scrabbled, seeking a way out, finding none. Finally, it turned and faced the larger beast, its spiked tail raised a little from the ground almost, like a scorpion’s.

  “That’s very odd,” Aaron said quietly. “It almost seems to be thinking, doesn’t it? Judging the odds?”

  “It knew it couldn’t win,” Jessica said.

  Cadmann looked at them from the corner of his eye, but said nothing.

  Then the gray grendel woke.

  Its eyes snapped onto the green one, and in that moment the smaller grendel sprang.

  The screen became a blur of blood and fang. Blood clotted the camera. They could see nothing.

  “Cassandra. Aerial view.” From above, the walls shuddered and shook, but held.

  “Take us down,” Cadmann said.

  By the time that they touched down, the screams from within the shelter were almost as loud as the rotor.

  Cadmann took his rifle down from the side rack, and examined the charge. Lethal.

  The noises from the shelter were dying down now. One last sobbing roar rose to a hissing crescendo. Then there was a crack, followed by a series of wet crunching sounds. Then a single, dying hiss.

  Jessica stared at the holographic image. “Good God,”

  “When two tigers fight,” Cadmann said, “one dies, and the other is crippled. Chinese proverb.” The raw satisfaction in his voice frightened her.

  Aaron nodded. “What now?”

  “Open the gate,” Cadmann said.

  Aaron approached the dome. Scarlet oozed from between the cracks at the bottom of the dome. Something within the dome made a rhythmic wheezing sound.

  “Open it, dammit.”

  Aaron unbolted the door, and swung it open.

  The air thickened with the blended stench of speed and scorched alien blood.

  The interior of the dome was smeared with viscera. The smaller grendel was reduced almost to chunks. The larger had been ripped open. Her intestines spilled out in gray coils. She bit at them, snapping and chewing with a blunt, bloodied snout. She made crying sounds.

  The grendel raised its head unsteadily, staring directly at Jessica.

  Jessica raised her rifle and shot it once in the head with an explosive dart. With a short, sharp, ugly sound the grendel’s head splashed open, spattering blood and brains for meters in every direction. The ruined body quivered once, and then was still.

  Cadmann peered inside, and nodded in satisfaction. He slapped the outside of the dome.

  “Every joint held,” he said calmly. “This dome is officially pronounced grendel-proof.”

  Jessica bent over and vomited.

  ♦ ChaptEr 21 ♦

  the roundup

  Nature is often hidden,

  sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

  —Francis Bacon, “Of Nature in Men,” Essays

  Justin sometimes felt as if he were tap-dancing through a minefield when he talked with Jessica. There were subjects that were simply taboo: her relationship with Aaron, her relationship with Cadmann, her relationship with Justin.

  Ouch.

  Katya had come over with a plate of beans. She pinched him again.

  He let his pensive mood fade. “Hi, Kat.”

  She bowed, and sat next to him. Her flannel shirt rubbed against his shoulder. Tau Ceti was particularly fierce, and the distant mountains wavered in the heat.

  But this was safe—at least from grendels. Their distance from water guaranteed that. Whatever other dangers lurked out there . . . well, that was another question.

  He drew a little horseshoe in the dust with his toe. “All right,” he said. “Twenty-five klicks west. Jungle starts there, but it’s mostly fed by underground streams. The closest surface water is still eight kilometers distant. Lots of slow-moving ground animals, so we figure it’s a grendel-free zone. We’re going to find the spider devils. The question is the proper means of capture. Any suggestions?”

  All three of them stared at the crude map for a few minutes, then shook their heads.

  Little Chaka strolled over. He looked larger than life, and dusty, and extremely happy. No question why; in the last month, he had begun the generations-long process of categorizing the life-forms on the mainland, shipping samples back t
o Camelot a dirigible-load at a time. A labor of love, the beginning of a life’s work.

  He said, “Father has some ideas about the spider devils. The first thing is . . . we’re going to have to lose one of the piglets . . . ”

  “Ahhh.”

  “And I was just getting attached to the ugly little bastards,” Justin said.

  “Well, go find the ugliest one and say your good-byes. By this time tomorrow, it will be an ex-piglet.”

  Jessica bounced up to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Rest time is over. Let’s go and take a look at this.”

  “They’re up there,” Chaka said.

  The sound sensors picked up the web spinners as they chattered to each other. Jessica, Justin, and Chaka were eighty meters to the east, as close as they could get without scaring the creatures away. It was plenty close enough to let them pick up the chittering and constant, oddly sensual singing.

  “All right,” Chaka whispered. “Let the piglet go.” The snouter looked confused. It carried enough tranquilizer in its belly to stupefy a battalion of grendels; but the membrane holding the toxin had not ruptured. It also wore a collar of Chaka’s design. A needle ran from it into an extremely sensitive cluster of nerve endings in its snout.

  When the cage door lifted, the snouter sniffed freedom and set off running. It got five steps when the first jolt of pain clobbered it. It flopped over onto its side, and wobbled back up as if it couldn’t quite believe what had happened to it. It tried running north again, and got another shock.

  Down it went.

  “Meanie,” Jessica whispered.

  “That’s me,” Chaka agreed heartily.

  The snouter turned and ran south. It got another eight paces before Chaka zapped it again. It fell over as if pole-axed.

  Now one very confused little snouter, this time it tried to walk west, toward the trees. It got six paces, and then stopped—sniffed as if asking the air a question.