Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  Little Chaka shrugged. “No data. Look, we’ve got a couple of hours before we go look at the beavers. Let us show you around here after breakfast.”

  Old Grendel was as close as she could come to happiness. Contentment, perhaps. She had found the water she sought, a pool fed by water that flowed down from the mountains. Cold water. Water that came from the ground. She dove in, and swam against the water, down into a passageway just wide enough for her thickness.

  As she wound through subterranean passages, through places she hadn’t been since she was a swimmer, she had to conserve her energy. There was no light here, and little heat.

  There was danger above, and the danger grew stronger daily. She could smell the changes, and if she didn’t respond to them, she was lost. She had lived long enough to have a vague abstract sense of her own mortality. She did not want to die. In the back of her mind, she perceived how this might be prevented.

  If only she could make contact.

  She swam until there was no air left in her lungs. In agony, she continued. The pain in her lungs eased, became something else, a familiar sensation usually perceived as rage and terror.

  There was another use for speed, one that the weirds had not dreamed of. It was an oxygenator, and her body could use speed where there was no air. It enabled her to stay underwater longer than the weirds would believe possible.

  She glided. There was no light, but she could smell the currents, feel the water flow from above her, and move through the caverns toward her destination. There were times when rock squeezed her hard, but Old Grendel was a lean one, and she could contract her body into a compact missile.

  Fire burned within her, a slow blaze of complete exhaustion. She had been underwater for almost twenty minutes now, crawling and swimming continuously, and moving steadily up and up. Moving. She knew that she might be crawling to her death, but she was driven to know more. The risks she took now might change everything. The weirds were intruders in a situation unchanged since the beginning of time. She had to know more about them. She had once thought of them as prey. They might still be that, but they were something more as well.

  Her fear was fading now . . . and when her fear was quite gone, she would be dead. She understood that she was Hearing the end of all limits, that only few seconds remained . . . and then . . .

  Light above her. She moved more quickly now, holding on to the last fading traces of her fear. She plunged up into the light, up into the wavery oval, through the water, out into the air, great lungs like bellows, gulping and expanding. Life was hers once again, and she might yet cheat the great mother, death.

  Time raved at her back, but she could do nothing now but breathe. There was no speed left in her. She couldn’t fight a snouter, now.

  Not long after dawn, they walked northwest from Shangri-la.

  A puff tree shook violently as they approached the strip of forest. Justin looked for what had done that, but there was nothing to be seen.

  Shangri-la was built on a flat area. To the east the land fell away to the river and grendel country. North and west were mountains. A thin strip of forest ran along the base of the mountains. The trees grew like green puffballs of varying size, shells of branches and orange-veined leaves, hollow inside. They’d spaced themselves, leaving room for man-sized creatures to squeeze between.

  “Every puff tree is a little ecology,” Little Chaka said. “Each one a little different. It’s better to have armor, but if you probe with a stick first you can avoid getting bitten. There’s a vicious little Joey that likes to lurk in here, and where the Joeys didn’t get to—Here, Dad—” He bent over one of the smaller trees and pulled the branches apart with his hands. Holding the hole open with his elbows, he poked his stick and flash inside, blocking the opening with his body.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Katya had a bigger tree open. She was ready to dodge away, but—“Nothing big. I can smell something ranker than Joeys. We scared them away.”

  Their nice little walk had turned into a mob scene. Aaron, Carlos, Big Chaka, Little Chaka, Jessica, Sylvia, Katya . . . Justin met his stepfather’s grimace with a helpless grin. Any living thing would flee the pounding of feet.

  Little Chaka was investigating another puff tree. He said, “I was going to say, don’t squeeze between two trees unless you’ve looked inside. We’d better do that anyway. It’s a symbiosis. The way the trees space themselves, they can force big animals into range of the things that live inside. I’ve found a carnivore Joey and two kinds of nesting birdies, both vicious—Hey!” His stick poked and probed as if he were fencing, there in the dark inside the puffball. He retreated, and a big flying-saucer crab buzzed out after him; and another; three, four. Chaka was tapping them lightly, knocking each off balance as it came near, and the birdies were furious. Suddenly they all veered off and away, downhill.

  Big Chaka was sitting against a puffball, laughing. It was clear he didn’t have the strength for anything else. Sylvia and Katya were snerkling behind their hands, and Cadmann was suddenly into a rolling belly laugh, and what the hell. The others sat down to take a break.

  Uphill from the fringe of puff tree forest was rock and low scrubby bush like things with thorns. This was serious climbing. Cadmann would have been slowing the rest if Big Chaka hadn’t slowed them further. But Big Chaka was seeing things: wildflowers, an abandoned birdie nest, old and fading tracks of something bear-sized.

  They’d gone less than two kilometers in the hour since they left the puff trees.

  Thirty meters away, Aaron said, “Ouch!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Something bit me.” Aaron hopped to his feet, and slapped his chest. “Three of the darned things,” he said. “Not a sting, a bite.” Something that looked like a tiny crab or a big flea lay crushed on the ground. A second crawled away slowly.

  Carlos picked the crushed life-form up on the end of a foot-long twig. Enough of its insides bulged out that it adhered to the twig easily. It was thumb sized, with a sharp-looking pair of mandibles. Suddenly, its shell unfolded, and crumpled wings began to blur the air.

  “Whoa!” Carlos said. The little wings beat so violently that the whole twig shook. The twig jerked and trembled, and then was quiet.

  Cadmann peered at the thing more carefully. “Damn,” he said, “but that was fast.”

  “Energetic, too,” Dr. Mubutu said. “It looks a lot like speed, doesn’t it?”‘

  The others gathered around. “Where did you find this?” Cadmann asked. “Where were you sitting?”

  They looked at a patch of ground near Aaron’s feet, and found no more of the little creatures.

  From a few feet away Carlos called, “Over here!”

  He poked under a bush dotted with light purple, somewhat fleshy flowers that reminded him of orchids. Several of the insect-like creatures hovered around the blossoms like hummingbirds.

  “Nectar?” Katya asked.

  “Nope. Something stinks.”

  They brushed blossoms aside, and uncovered the decomposed body of a creature the size of a woodchuck. It seethed with little crabs.

  “Jesus,” Cadmann grunted. “Are these the local substitute for flies?”

  “Bite like a bitch,” Aaron said.

  Sylvia took out her first-aid kit. “Let me see.”

  “It’s just—”

  “Let me see,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Aaron unfastened his shirt.

  Sylvia swabbed the wounds clean, then poured on peroxide. It foamed as if it would eat him alive. “There. It looks clean enough but—Dr. Mubutu, may I borrow your portable unit?”

  Little Chaka was carrying for both Chakas. He shrugged off his backpack and unzipped it, pulling out a metallic boxy contraption as big as both his hands: a portable analyzer. Sylvia took the twig from Cadmann, teased the dead bug off the end, and dropped it into the box. She touched an oblong button on the side, and it began to hum. In a moment the bug would be flash burned, and
the results relayed to the main camp and uplinked to Cassandra. With luck she would then report that there were no toxic substances—

  Blam.

  The miniature unit jarred in her hand. Seams popped.

  They all jumped. Then Big Chaka quickly leaned forward and sniffed. Black smoke rose from the mined analyzer.

  “Dear God,” Sylvia said shakily. “What was that all about?”

  The device’s shattered components barely clung together. Carlos said, “Pranksters?”

  For a moment, the glade crackled with tension.

  “Pranksters?” Sylvia demanded, still shaken. “What idiot would sabotage your analyzer?”

  “Calm,” Carlos said. “I’m sorry. I thought it was obvious. I see that Dr. Mubutu understands.”

  Big Chaka nodded. He turned to Cadmann and said, “Tell me . . . if you put a chunk . . . say a chunk the size of your fingernail . . . of speed into an analyzer, what would it do?”

  “Bang?”

  “We need to find another of these things. Don’t disturb those on the corpses. We may not want to irritate them.”

  They had the crushed bug on the end of a stick. Justin and Katya had built a small, busy fire of sticks and bits of moss. Chaka Mubutu held the bug out over the fire. Its legs curled, its shell peeled up and—

  Blam.

  The sharp sound was as loud as a firecracker, and about as powerful. The tip of the stick flew into bits, and they jumped back a foot or two.

  “Freeze me blind,” Cadmann said.

  Dr. Mubutu spoke gravely. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I think that we can state, officially and for the record, that we have discovered a second life-form on this planet that uses speed.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Sylvia asked.

  “I want to think on it before I say.” Big Chaka looked thoughtful. “We have a lot to talk about tonight when I give my report,” he said. “But now I want to see the beavers.” Carlos looked thoughtfully eastward. “I think I will follow those bees,” he said. “Katya can show me the beavers another time.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 32 ♦

  the beavers

  Bees accomplish nothing save as they work together,

  and neither do men.

  —Elbert Hubbard

  “So,” Carlos said, climbing steadily. Dios mío—he was glad for the regular fitness sessions with Cadmann. It felt as if his muscles would burst free of the bones. Torture! “How are things with young Weyland?”

  Katya laughed, and held a branch aside for her father. She paused, stopping to search for the trace of a trail. She held her hand up, and whispered, “Stop. Listen.”

  He did, and heard the sounds of wind in the trees, and a far-off animal burr. And something else.

  An insect sound. A slight buzzing.

  “Look,” she said. Another dead animal lay before them, this one picked to the bone. A couple of the weird bee-crabs picked over the bones. She whispered into her collar. “Cassandra, we have a visual bee sighting. Small carcass. Six or seven bugs.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  She wiped her forehead with her bandanna, and leaned back against a tree. “Well. I guess you were asking about my love life?”

  “Prying,” Carlos said distinctly. “I was prying.”

  “Yes. Well, I think that we’re getting along fine. We’ve had some genuine moments here. I like what’s happening.” She smiled at her father shrewdly. “Why? Why are you so concerned about me? You’ve done quite well all these years, and you’ve never had a real relationship.”

  “None permanent, but some were very intense.”

  “But none permanent. Bobbie?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I just never got that close again. Parlor psychoanalysis might say that I don’t think I’m worthy.”

  “And you think that I should? Isn’t that a bit of a double standard?”

  “You’re worthy.”

  “Well, hey,” Katya said, and blushed. She’d been watching the bees come and go from the carcass. Now she pointed. “The nest must be over there, beyond that ridge. Shall we go look?”

  Cadmann felt most comfortable after he began to perspire. It felt as if the rust were working out of his muscles.

  They had climbed high enough above the forest that he could see over it and down into Shangri-la, see and feel the pulse of life within. It reminded him of a time long before, when he had looked down on Avalon Town. That was in the colony’s early days. He was a younger man. A stronger man. A man with far fewer doubts and aches. He was with his best friends, Ernst Cohen and Sylvia Faulkner.

  She was pregnant then, pregnant with Justin. She had struggled to keep up. Not admitting her weakness, the . . .

  Very real differences between men and women.

  He and Ernst. How much he had loved Ernst. And how much of that love was the sort of love you feel for a faithful animal? One who never questions, never rebels, who follows you without question? Dr. Ernst with ice on his mind. Dr. Ernst, once one of the most brilliant humans alive, and now with the mind of a twelve-year-old. If that.

  How much is our humanity measured in terms of our relationships? Every man feels more . . . human in the presence of a faithful animal. Or slave?

  God. He hated these thoughts. And here was Aaron, so much like Ernst had been. Strong. And tall. And brilliant. But Aaron had his mind. All of his mind.

  What he had never really had was a family.

  If there were problems in that young head, well, for God’s sake! The kid was only nineteen years old. What would he be doing if he were on Earth? In his second year of college? Perhaps a grad student. Or maybe he would have taken a year or two off and backpacked through Europe. Or spent a year on an engineering scholarship on one of the energy satellites?

  Maybe he would have lucked out. The lunar colony. Or maybe he would have done what Cadmann himself did, and take a commission. At nineteen, Cadmann was at West Point, preparing for his first command.

  But no Terrestrial option would have placed Aaron in the kind of situation he faced on Avalon. He was making decisions that might well influence the whole future of humanity, here, a thousand billion miles from the cradle of mankind. Too much stress. Too much isolation. Too little support.

  It was his job to reach out to Aaron. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to be friends. He had to try.

  Just after local noon, Justin and Jessica flew barely thirty meters above the river and followed it south toward the fork. It was an old river with many twists and turns, but it ran fairly straight here as it fell four hundred meters in less than twenty klicks. Tau Ceti burned brightly through thin high clouds, and Justin watched Skeeter I’s shadow as it was overtaken by Little Chaka’s craft. He resisted the urge to turn their trip into a race: Big Chaka was Skeeter IV’s passenger, and Big Chaka hated speed.

  Their radio crackled. “How close have you been?” Big Chaka asked.

  “We’ve scouted by air many times,” Jessica answered. “Haven’t had time to organize a trip on foot. That’s grendel country, and we try to stay out, because the only way we know to deal with a grendel is to flush it out and shoot it.”

  “And that tends to disrupt the ecology,” Justin said. “Aaron doesn’t like that.”

  “Nor should he,” Chaka said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, this is a genuine Avalon Surprise. We seem to find a new one every week.”

  They were approaching the fork where two rivers combined to become the big river that ran south past Deadwood and on to the sea. They turned to follow the northwest branch, and just beyond the fork Little Chaka slowed and hovered his skeeter. They were above a wide rough oval of blue water. At the far downstream end the hills on either side of the stream came together to form a narrows. A line of boulders stood in the water there, and behind the boulders a matted webbing of tree trunks and branches formed a dam. Broad, powerful dark shapes swam in the lake.

  Justin held his breath. This was something that they hadn’t even videoed for Cassand
ra. Little Chaka wanted it as a surprise for his father. There was a long pause. Skeeter IV hovered only twenty meters or so above the water. The water surface rippled in waves. A broad, powerful shape glared up at them. Its oddly flattened body reminded Justin of an aquatic ankylosaurus. Broad, powerful tail, triangular head. He wondered if it had feet, or flippers. One thing was certain: despite the surface differences, they were looking at a variety of grendel.

  “Like a beaver dam,” Big Chaka finally said, wonderingly. “It’s beautiful.”

  Jessica and Justin exchanged smiles. “Have you ever actually seen one, Dr. Mubutu?” she asked.

  “You bet. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I grew up.”

  “And there—” Little Chaka said. “Do you see?”

  “I sure do, son.” Big Chaka’s voice held deep contentment, as if he were listening to a new music composition, or enjoying a good meal. “Two grendels are pushing that log into place, and another is watching us watch them. Take us closer to that spillway, please. The one on our right.”

  “Sure—”

  “As I thought,” Big Chaka said. “Note the branches placed at the spillway. They’re straining the water there, but—now look at the other spillway area. A different structure.”

  Justin steered the skeeter to the downstream end of the lake and hovered above the dam. “I never noticed that,” he said. “But look, they strain the water over there, here there’s that series of pools. Reminds me of—Cassandra, what does that remind me of?”

  “Searching—”

  “Salmon ladders,” Big Chaka said.

  “Fish ladders,” Cassandra said at almost the same time. “Structures to allow fish to swim upstream at dam sites. Used extensively on the North American continent on Earth.”

  “Cassandra. Enlarge those animals,” Little Chaka said.