Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

“That’s the direction,” Chaka agreed. “Nice snouter.” If it hared offline, he zapped it, but softer this time, and it began going right where they wanted it.

  It stopped just short of the trees.

  “He’s making visual contact with the spiders,” he said. “Or vice versa. And there goes the music.” It was louder now, and pitched lower, almost echoing the snouter’s snorts.

  “What do you think?” Justin asked. “If an animal is raised or nurtured by its parents, what are the chances that it is conditioned to respond to something that sounds like its mommy’s voice?”

  “The spiders are singing it a lullaby,” Jessica laughed.

  “How quaint.”

  The snouter hardly needed prompting. Dazed, it wandered into the forest one halting step at a time. It stopped to nibble on something green, then took another couple of steps, and trotted happily into the forest.

  Justin’s war specs automatically followed the creature until it was swallowed by trees.

  “They’ll be focused on the kill,” he said quietly. “Let’s get a little closer.”

  The brush had a jungle flavor to it, fan-shaped trees and spiky bushes, a dense tangle of greens and yellows. They crawled forward to a new position, where they could see through the tangle of brush. Justin suddenly heard a snort of pain and betrayal, of sudden, massive fear.

  The snouter was caught in a web. It was thrashing and twisting frantically, to no avail at all.

  Justin focused in. The strands were green and white, and apparently quite strong. The snouter made a frantic, heroic effort and almost tore itself free before something dropped on it from above. Something broad and fibrous: a net, or a coarser version of the web.

  Helpless now, it rolled over onto its side and quivered.

  They moved in from the shadows. One, two, three, four, five . . . six black stick figures. Justin had wondered if they would be yet another Avalon crab, but they weren’t. In motion, the web spinners did look like great spiders, with small torsos, tiny heads, and four long, long limbs.

  “Perfect,” Chaka said.

  The things were closer now, and the snouter had ceased struggling. They sang, and the song was hypnotic, in perfect tune with the snouter’s own sounds. Calming. Dreamlike. Almost anesthetic.

  “Jesus,” Jessica said. “Kill it, will you?”

  Chaka laughed. “You have no sense of drama. Cassandra, trigger the implant.”

  The snouter heaved once, massively, crashed back down, and was utterly still.

  The largest spider devil came a little closer, probing. It didn’t seem to like the sudden stillness, but the nearness of fresh meat was too much for it. It descended, sank fangs, and went to work. The others followed, and the scene turned into a general feast. An entire colony of the spider devils was home for dinner.

  After five minutes, Chaka stood. “Let’s go,” he said. “Motion sensors?”

  “Nothing larger than ten kilos. No sudden shifts in wind.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  Rifles at the ready, they entered the forest in a modified wing formation.

  Spongy loam underfoot. Smells of camphor and lemon. Everything seemed to smell more vibrant than the colors that exploded around them. The forest canopy wasn’t particularly high here, but every tree limb was ripe and heavy with leaves, and vines, and fruit . . . or things that looked like fruit.

  Just out of Justin’s reach hung something purple and bulbous, like a cluster of fused grapes, or a blackberry. He reached out and prodded it with the tip of his rifle, and it dissolved into a colony of marble-sized purple leggy things that swarmed up the branch to reform a few feet farther away.

  He wondered what would have happened if he had touched it with his naked hand.

  That wouldn’t be possible right now. They wore lightweight membrane suits that covered their entire bodies with a thin, tough barrier impenetrable to all but the most determined attacker. An entirely reasonable precaution: Chaka had already categorized at least twelve deadly plants and identified three toxic species. Small things, with a biotoxin about a dozen times stronger than a wasp. Not lethal to an adult, they would still grant a few days of truly memorable sensation.

  A couple of lizard-like things perched on branches. Unclassified. Cute. Venomous or worse.

  They were in the clearing now. The light slanted down through the trees, giving a louvered effect.

  “Motion sensors?”

  Jessica checked a wrist sensor. “Nothing for a hundred meters.”

  They knelt, and examined their take. The snouter was both withered and half-devoured. The spider devils had first sucked his juice, then ripped him apart.

  They lay on their sides, motionless. Their faces were tiny but manlike, lips slightly parted. One, the largest, lay on its back. Its legs closed feebly on Chaka’s tongs when he prodded it.

  “Alive.” He picked it up and examined it. The four legs quivered. Legs and torso were covered with straight black hair. These were mammaloids, Joeys, though evolved in a drastically different direction. Wet-looking lips drooled something thin and milky.

  “Close your mouth while you chew,” Chaka said, and unfolded his basket to drop them in one at a time.

  “All of them?” Justin asked.

  “Sure. They might be some kind of hive mind. Might not even be able to survive separated. I’ll get them ready to ship back to Father.” He grinned. “Of course, they may have ice on their minds.”

  Jessica and Justin examined the web. She was scraping goo from what seemed to be an enormous mat of thin vines, and putting a bit of it into a sample bottle.

  “What the hell is it?” Justin asked, scratching his head.

  “It looks like a lattice of leaves,” she said. “They chewed up the connective fibers, leaving just this heavy venous stuff. Then they coated it with something sticky, probably a biological exudate.”

  “So it’s not a true web.”

  “No. They’re interacting with the environment.”

  “A bit chancy. They’re vulnerable to the quality of the materials.”

  “No more than a beaver,” Chaka said.

  “Why would a tree want to make something useful to a spider devil?”

  “Maybe they furnish the tree with high-energy droppings.”

  Her sample bottle had everything that it needed, and she snapped it shut. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t feel all that comfortable here.”

  “Come now. The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”

  “Yeah, right. But I have promises to keep.”

  “Right.” They unclipped a rod from the side of the basket, extended it, and threaded it through loops at the top. Chaka hoisted it over one shoulder, and Jessica took the other end. Justin kept his rifle at the ready, movement and thermal sensors tuned.

  And they encountered no problems at all, all the way back to the trikes.

  The NickNack was a much smaller version of Robor, a cargo mover ballasted by hydrogen sacks, large enough to carry a dozen people and small enough to be powered by a single skeeter. It was reliable so long as they didn’t run into bad weather.

  Cigar-shaped, it hovered above the animal pens. The spider devils were frozen, the dozens of plant and insect specimens neatly and safely stowed away. They would easily survive the eight-hour trip.

  Eight hours as the pterodon flies. On the other hand, to paraphrase the old joke, if the pterodon had to walk and herd a group of recalcitrant chamels, it would take twelve times as long.

  “Aaron will be back by morning,” Jessica said. “Then we can start them moving. Cassandra? Map.”

  A contour map showing a quarter of the continent opened in the air before them.

  “Close on our position, Cassie. Good enough. Group, we need to water the chamels daily. We need to clear the water holes of grendels before we get to them. Trikes, horses, and skeeters are the ticket. We leapfrog ahead. Should take four days. Any questions?”

  Jessica leaned back against the log. She cou
ld hear the chamels snorting in their pens. The males bonded readily to horses doused in chamel scent, and the larger females would follow the males. Her stomach buzzed with adrenaline. A new adventure. What they had fought for, bargained for . . .

  Died for . . .

  She sloshed her coffee down on the ground, and stood. “Let’s get a good night’s sleep tonight, and get started early.”

  “Aye.”

  “Aye.”

  The fences, the generators, the shelters, and a cache of weapons would be left behind. Eventually, there would be supply stations all over the southern tip of the continent. Forty-eight hours of juice in the fences, and enough weapons to make a hell of a stand before help arrived, with help never more than twelve hours away.

  She high-fived Chaka. “Good job.”

  He grinned broadly. Chaka was just happy to be totally swamped with specimens. He wandered off to search for new fronds to tag.

  Jessica and Justin remained by the fireside. Silences between them were strained these days, ever since . . . what had happened. But that was the chance they had taken. If anything, he seemed more uncomfortable about it than she did. And that, she decided, was appropriate.

  “Looking forward to the week?”

  “We’ll see a lot of territory,” he said.

  “Good find,” she said. “The females make good meat, and are decent beasts of burden. The males are as fast as racehorses. Good stock.

  “Imagine a hunt,” she said. “Some kind of camo shirts and pants, and riding one of these beauties. Sneak up on anything.”

  “I’ve thought about it for weeks.” Justin stretched. “Well, I think it’s that time. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Big day.”

  He left without a backward glance. Jessica hunched her knees and stared into the fire. For all of her life, she had treasured countless long, intimate conversations with Justin. She missed them more than she could have dreamed.

  And yet . . . what she had done . . . what they had done was right. The only thing she regretted was Toshiro. He of the gifted hands and strong, golden body . . .

  He had made his choice. As Justin had made his.

  As her father had made his. And the colony theirs.

  The fire crackled, grew higher and warmer, and then slowly began to die. It was well after midnight before she felt sleepiness to match her fatigue.

  Justin woke at the stirring of the horses. For a bare moment, he was disoriented, unable to remember where he was. In his father’s house? He sat up in his bedroll and washed his face from a canteen. On the mainland every camp away from a base would be a dry camp. Tau Ceti was showing a bare sliver of red to the east, and the air was pleasantly chill. The prairie was silent, and the creatures that took the place of insects on Avalon were quiet.

  The path ahead was clear. Three days’ ride to the foot of the mountains, some through grendel country, but they had the technology to deal with those. Grendels wouldn’t dictate their route. “First one up makes breakfast,” someone called. Justin grinned and poured powdered eggs and water into a pan. Others were stirring. Chaka came over to watch the dawn with him. “Morning, cowboy.”

  “Yippie-yi-o-tie-yay,” Justin said.

  “Do you see any problems in working with Jessica for the next three days?”

  Justin glared at him.

  “I know that there have been some—”

  Justin interrupted him. “Listen. She made her choice. It wasn’t totally right—but it wasn’t totally wrong, either. I made my choice. We have problems. But she’s still my . . . ”

  He thought about it. A dozen possibilities flashed through his mind. “Family,” he decided. “She’s my family. We’ll work it out.”

  An hour later, a skeeter buzzed in from the south. Justin frowned when he saw Aaron climb out of the cabin. He felt a flash of unreasoning dislike, even hatred burning at the back of his brain.

  Aaron. Everything that is good here would have happened anyway. Eventually. And everything bad—you brought. You always knew how to make the games come out your way, didn’t you?

  Jessica, still tousled but beautiful, went to meet him. Aaron embraced her, then cast a radiant smile in Justin’s direction. “Top of the morning, sir.”

  “Love sleeping on the ground,” he said. Aaron roared as if it was the funniest thing that he’d ever heard, and slapped Justin’s shoulder. “All ready to go?”

  There was a chorus of ayes.

  I’m not being fair, Justin thought. Sour grapes. Selfish. And part of his mind whispered, You could have been the leader if you’d wanted to be. But you wouldn’t do it, and now Aaron has that and Jessica too.

  NickNack was already out of sight. Skeeters went along to assist in herding the chamels. Two hundred chamels, and ten horsemen to keep them under control. Shock prods and tranquilizers for the uncooperative.

  Aaron grinned widely. “Head ’em up! Move ’em out!” he shouted.

  Someone answered, “Rawhide!”

  The chamel pen was made of nylon netting strung from poles. Two electric lines kept both chamels and predators away from it. Chaka opened the gate as Justin mounted a roan mare from the remount pool. They call it the ramada, he thought. The word, like most everything else they knew about cattle drives, came from recordings of Earth television shows.

  Aaron stood in his stirrups. “All right, we have thirty klicks that’s never been explored on foot,” he shouted. “The skeeters will scout it for us, but stay in threes! Stay together, stay alive. Nobody gets hurt, right? All right, let’s move.”

  “Heeyah!” Katya had ducked under the pen’s netting. She waved her arms and shouted to drive the chamels out.

  The males moved with light, bird-like, fast-twitch motion, scenting the air and looking for an opportunity to escape. One made a dash eastward. Justin kicked at his horse and again wished for spurs. They weren’t needed, but there was something about boots and spurs. He laughed and dashed after the stray, caught up and swatted it with a stun wand. The effect was astonishing. It dropped exactly where it was, quivered, and changed colors twice. Its huge eyes blinked three times, and an enormous tear rolled out of one. Then it scrabbled up onto its haunches, and it looked at him accusingly, as if to say, “You beast!”

  He prodded it back toward the herd. It returned slowly, damn near dusting itself off first, its dignity untouched. It humphed like a society matron.

  Jessica reined up next to him. “Shut your mouth,” she said. “You’ll draw flies. Well. You certainly made a fan there, didn’t you?”

  He rolled his eyes, chucked his mount, and kept them moving.

  Tau Ceti rose steadily in the sky, but the air remained cool. They were close to the equator, but heading into the high country, and this was winter in Avalon’s northern hemisphere. In summer the high desert might be a blasted heath, but it was tolerable for now.

  In fact, it was downright pleasant. There were vast beds of poppylike flowers, and twice he hopped off his mount to snag samples for Cassandra’s information banks. Her major task was cataloging and analysis of all data on mainland animal, vegetable, and mineral forms.

  This is the way to tame a continent. You have to let it take its crack at you. Some die and merge with the new world. More are born to take their part of the future.

  But all this would have happened, in time. Toshiro died because Aaron was in a hurry.

  The way was lazy and long, the sun and the dust and the cool breezes were intoxicants. The chamels sang songs of sadness and loss. He tried to whistle their repetitive rhythm.

  Chaka rode up next to him. He rode double with Wendy Powers, who often shared his bed.

  “This is the life, eh?”

  “No worries, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Right. Hakuna matata,” Chaka said.

  They rode together for a while, in silence. The chamels lowed and sang. The rumble of their hooves on the hard-packed dirt was a music all its own.

  Wendy shaded her eyes with one hand, and
with the other pointed at an irregular mound, man-high, a hundred meters to the north. “Another one of those bug hills,” she said.

  Chaka nodded. “I’ve counted a dozen so far. Little flying crab things. Industrious buggers. God, Dad would love it out here. So much to see.”

  They passed another klick or so before Wendy spoke again.

  “Do you ever wonder what’s happening on Earth?”

  “Sure. I guess. No way to know, though.”

  “They just forgot about us. That’s what I think.”

  “Probably a bookkeeping error,” said Justin.

  Chaka snorted and pulled his horse away. Before he did, Wendy swung athletically onto Justin’s mount, and wrapped her powerful arms around his waist.

  They rode silently for a while, and then she said, “Just like Clint Eastwood in Rawhide.”

  “Yeah. But the Indians didn’t eat you.”

  “You wouldn’t know that from watching the movies, that’s for sure.”

  She was quiet for a while, and then said, “When are you and Jessica going to forgive each other?”

  “Taking up Julia Hortha’s habits?”

  “No, I’m really worried about you two. And don’t change the subject.”

  He shook his head. “She made a fool out of my father. And then made him a killer. Not easy for him to forget something like that.”

  “Not easy,” she repeated. “But hasn’t there been enough trouble?”

  “Are you trying to make peace?”

  She kissed his ear, and blew in it warmly. “Would you accept a peace offering?”

  “How do you spell that?”

  “Any way you want.”

  He laughed.

  “You know,” she said, “I’m not that different from you. You have a foster father, who you love. I love a dream—that’s what I have instead of a family.”

  “The whole colony is your family,” he said gently.

  “That’s the same as having no family at all. Aaron is my family. Aaron’s dream. If mistakes were made, they were made on all sides. We’ve got to let them go.”

  “You guys. In some ways, you Bottle Babies seem like . . . one big body with two dozen legs and a dozen heads. Sometimes it seems as if you don’t care about anything but each other.”