Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  Jessica linked with Chaka, so that she could get the same visuals. A holographic window opened in the middle of their windscreen.

  “Beautiful,” Big Chaka repeated. “Just what I thought.”

  There was no doubt about it. There were at least six shapes in the water. A scale running at the lower edge of the screen said that they were about two meters in length. Two of them carried chunks of tree limb. Two were wedging mud into the cracks of their dam. A grendel’s work is never done.

  “Social cooperation,” Big Chaka breathed. “We wouldn’t have believed it back in the old days, but I knew that something like this might exist. Now take us upriver, and set us down about a klick or so above the dam.”

  The two skeeters wheeled northward. “Cassandra,” Justin said. “Safety scan, please.”

  “I see nothing in your area. The lake grendels are concerned with their dam.”

  “Is this the only dam?” Big Chaka asked.

  “Negative,” Cassandra answered. “Prior to the recent flooding there were seven between here and the sea, and I can identify four more upstream. The nearest downstream from here is fifty-seven kilometers to the southwest.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Should we land?” Justin asked.

  “I see no obvious danger,” the computer answered. “I cannot answer the question as asked.”

  “Cancel,” Justin said. “All right, it looks safe. Let’s do it.”

  They landed on a mound of rock fifty meters from the river. Jessica was out first, grendel gun at the ready. Big Chaka had already shouldered his backpack. He darted toward the river. “I need water samples.”

  “Are you sure about that?” his son asked, anxiously.

  “Absolutely. You don’t think that these creatures would go through all the trouble to build a dam like this if they could hunt, do you?”

  “I don’t know. But if they can cooperate with each other, why can’t they cooperate with hunters?” Justin demanded. “Oh, well.” Justin swung down out of the pilot’s seat and checked his rifle.

  “Cassandra, what observation capability do you have?”

  “Satellite Four will remain in observing range for twelve minutes, resolution one meter,” the computer answered. “There are grendels in the water six hundred meters downstream. I detect no large land animals near you.”

  “Keep looking.” The river looked peaceful. Maybe fifteen kilometers northwest, snowcapped mountain peaks stood out with startling clarity. There was another range visible to the northeast, and behind that range the Veldt stretched north and east for a thousand kilometers.

  “Come on,” Big Chaka called out. Little Chaka carried a handheld scanner, and a rifle slung over his right shoulder.

  Justin caught up with Little Chaka. “He lives for this, doesn’t he?” Justin scanned the river. His head swept slowly from left to right. He knew, without looking, that Jessica was doing the same.

  The riverbed clay was yellowish, sun-blasted and cracked in rivulets. The warped and twisted trees along the banks suggested-alternate periods of flood and drought.

  “What are you looking for?” Little Chaka asked.

  “Samples. The usual,” his adopted father said, but there was something about his voice that said: I’m not ready to talk about it yet.

  “Does this have anything to do with the grendel autopsy?” Jessica asked. “Or the deaths?”

  “Everything on Avalon has to do with grendels.” Big Chaka smiled faintly. “Maybe one day that won’t be true. But for now . . . ”

  He knelt down and took a flask from his pocket. He scooped a small sample of mud into it. “Is this where Tonya was swimming when she picked up the fluke?”

  “No, of course not,” Little Chaka said. “We don’t swim here. There are grendels out there!”

  “Ah. Well, it will have to do,” Big Chaka said.

  Little Chaka looked at his scanner. “I really don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to.”

  Big Chaka nodded regretfully. He looked down to the south. Six hundred meters away, grendels were operating within a social contract. He would have to see that phenomenon, and study it at length.

  “Maybe tomorrow, Dad,” Little Chaka said softly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Big Chaka nodded. “Yes, I must prepare for my presentation this evening.”

  “Need us?” Justin asked.

  “Thank you, but my son will be more than sufficient help.”

  Justin and Jessica followed the Chakas back to Shangri-la and watched them land safely. Tau Ceti beat on them through the windshield. The air whipping through the vents seemed to have flowed over a blast furnace first. Jessica wiped her sleeve across her forehead. “Polite, wasn’t he?” Jessica said. “My son will be more than sufficient—” she giggled.

  “I noticed that,” Justin said. “Imagine, he’s embarrassed to say he wants some time alone with his son. So what do we do now?”

  “We could go find Carlos and Katya,” Jessica said with amiable malice.

  “Dad and Sylvia. Aaron’s taking them up to the lake.” He banked and headed off northwest.

  “I’m roasting,” Jessica said. She uncorked a thermos and gulped water, then handed it over to Justin.

  He drank gratefully. Even the water was warm. “Pretty fierce,” he said.

  She nodded, and looked back down at the terrain below them. It was broken by rock and trees, sloping up toward the mountains still to the west.

  “You know what we could do?” she asked. Suddenly, her voice sparkled.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go to the swimming hole for a dip.”

  “If we can find it.” He thought for a moment. “Cassandra, did we tell you to label any place near Shangri-la as a swimming hole?”

  “Yes. A meadow in the woods eleven kilometers northwest of your present position is designated ‘The Old Swimming Hole.’ ” A red circle appeared on the skeeter’s map display.

  “That’s it. Scan the area—”

  “Done,” Cassandra said. “No dangers detected. The area is designated safe from grendels. You are reminded to scan the meadow before landing.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Justin said.

  The meadow was an oval a hundred meters by sixty. A sluggish stream ran through it, deep as a shoe top, in the exact center was a circular pond ten meters in diameter.

  They flew around the perimeter of the meadow. “Nothing there,” Justin said. “Cassandra, you agree?”

  “Affirmative.”

  He dropped the skeeter onto the thick grass about twenty meters from the pond that was all that remained of the lake from which the meadow formed. The meadow grass was about knee high, and not very thick.

  “Race you!”

  “Last one in is a rotten Scribe belch!”

  Justin reached the hole only two steps ahead of Jessica, but his momentum belly-flopped him into the water.

  He glared down at the dripping muck on his shirt.

  “Yerch,” he said. Jessica could hardly restrain herself, and finally collapsed to the shore, holding her sides and bellowing with laughter.

  “You should . . . see yourself,” she gasped, red-faced.

  “Hah hah,” he said.

  He began to shuck himself out of the clothes. Wrung his shirt put and tossed it up onto the dry ground. Followed with his shorts. “This is great,” he called out to her. “Come on in.”

  She hesitated for a moment, and then said a silent what-the-hell, and shucked herself out of her clothes and dove in.

  Justin hurled a shoe, then another, then his balled-up underwear. Nice grouping.

  Jessica swam with powerful strokes. The hole was only ten meters across, two meters deep at its deepest. The water was crystal clear, right down to the rocky floor. No nasty surprises lurked in the darkness.

  With an uncomfortable bit of self-awareness, Justin noted that Jessica’s strokes were actually more masculine than his. He tended to be more fluid, almost elegant. Aaro
n had both qualities, and it was one of the things that let him swim rings around—

  Dammit, he refused to let things get complicated. Right now life was good. The sky was very blue, and the clouds were very white. The twisted trees framed the swimming hole beautifully. “Race you,” she said. “Ten laps.”

  He sighed, but gritted his teeth. All right. He was faster on the land, but swimming was a toss-up.

  Justin bore down, blanked his mind, and began to cleave the water. In the effort, in the struggle, both of them forgot everything but the effort, and it was a glorious day. Jessica slid up next to him in the water, and shoveled a wave into his face. He splashed back, the race completely forgotten.

  For the moment, both of them were completely content.

  They swam twice more, and on the last attempt, he beat her. She gasped for one more race, and he declined. He was completely drained. His breath came in great sobbing gulps, but he dragged himself up onto a rock, and looked down at her.

  She looked up at him, and laughed, and suddenly something in her eyes changed. “Justin,” she said. “Look at your side.”

  Something nestled against his ribs that looked like a mass of plastic blood. It was pale, almost transparent, but was shot through with veiny structures. As he watched, the veins pulsed and engorged with blood.

  “Jesus,” he moaned. “More of these jellyfish things?”

  She climbed out of the water. “Stop complaining. At least they’re not toxic. They just want a little blood. You’re being childish and inhospitable.”

  “Hah hah. Why don’t you come up here and help me be even more inhospitable still?”

  “At your service,” she said, and climbed up.

  The leech-things were fairly harmless, transparent, not much thicker than leaves. They only became visible when engorged with blood. Many of the rivers and lakes had them—in fact, the entire continent was generously supplied with parasites—but none had transmitted any amoeboids or other bacteria. They just stole blood.

  Jessica went for her backpack, opened it, and took out a saltshaker. She sprinkled salt on the leech.

  There was no pain, and Justin had time to look at her. Dammit, he wished his mind would stop that. Somehow, it just seemed as if her face had changed, or as if he hadn’t ever really looked at her before.

  She tucked her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them.

  “Now we wait for a minute,” she said.

  They had been close like this many times before, ever since childhood. Nudity was nothing new or unusual for them. But now . . .

  Now the curve of her back, the shape of her smile, even the dampness of her hair seemed so inviting, so . . .

  Before he knew exactly what he was doing, he leaned over and kissed her. He held it for a moment. Her eyes went very wide, and then she drew back, startled.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What was that for?”

  “Just a passing thought.”

  “Uh-huh.” He couldn’t tell, but he thought that her mouth, that tanned, pouting mouth, had curled into the slightest of smiles.

  The silence between them grew strained. Justin’s body had several map-shaped red splotches where the parasites had fallen away. Antiseptic was swabbed on, and he felt fine now. But somehow, neither of them had remembered to put their clothes back on.

  “You need to take better care of yourself,” Jessica said. She ran her finger along the horseshoe ridge of muscle on his upper arm, and then, as if a sudden thought had interrupted the first, she leaned back, and turned away.

  Justin leaned forward, and kissed her shoulder. Then softly, he rubbed his cheek against it. A day’s stubble gave a sandpapery edge to the motion.

  Then he kissed it again, and pulled back.

  Their eyes met, and it was one of those moments where the rest of the world drops away into nothing, where the rest of the sights and sounds and smells of the universe simply vanish. There was nothing in the entire world but her eyes, and then her lips, and the fresh, salty taste of her mouth, and her hands whisper-soft upon his shoulders.

  It was a vortex. Innocent, and light, but hypnotic. The kiss lasted for perhaps twenty seconds; then she pulled back, and there was something in her eyes that he had never seen in them before. Yearning, perhaps. And sadness. She leaned forward and kissed him back, softly, and then more urgently.

  The heat was just beginning to grow when she placed her hands, her palms flat against his chest, and pushed him firmly away.

  She laughed, and stood, tossed her hair, and ran into the woods.

  It was a challenge as old as time, as old as the man-woman thing that drove all human life. It wasn’t a race. It was the race. And the grand prize was . . .

  He jumped off his seat and ran, laughing, into the woods, the tangled, knotted vine-hung woods that grew here on the far side of the mountains, and he saw that he could catch her. There were three reasons—one, he was a little faster, except over long distances. Second, she had to break the trail. All he had to do was follow.

  Third, and most importantly—she wanted him to win.

  He lost sight of her for a moment and—

  There she was, just ahead of him. She turned her head around to see him, gave a little squeak, and . . .

  Collided with a spider devil nest.

  ♦ ChaptEr 33 ♦

  love and fear

  Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear

  To be we know not what, we know not where.

  —John Dryden, Aureng-Zebe

  They had crossed the ridge and were back in the forest. Sylvia stepped out to pass Cadmann, who was taking a little extra time to study the trees and the paths. She watched Aaron carefully. He was so tall, so well formed. His muscles slid smoothly under his tanned skin, and he moved with such confidence. Almost like some kind of machine, and her heart went out to him. She had never been a mother to him, had never offered him any of the comforts that might have made his life easier. And she yearned to do something . . . anything . . . to bridge the chasm between them.

  “So . . . you come up here often?” she asked lamely, surprised that she was able to get that much out between labored breaths.

  He smiled down at her. “I try to get up into the hills as often as possible,” he said. “It gives me a chance to feel in synch with the land.”

  “This . . . is really, what you wanted all along.”

  He nodded. A small, warm smile creased his lips. “Isn’t it what you wanted? All of you?”

  “I suppose so.” She walked along with him for a time, wondering how to broach the one question that burned in her mind. “Aaron . . . you and I have never had much time to talk.”

  “A couple of wonderful dinners, though,” he laughed. “I can still remember the menu. Corn bread, turnip greens, prime rib.”

  She knew that she had invited him to the house, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what had been said, or eaten, or done. And that was a terrible pity. Her child, but she couldn’t be completely certain of any single interaction. She was struck by a wave of remorse so powerful it shocked her.

  “Did it . . . bother you?” she asked. “That you never had parents?”

  He laughed. “What are you talking about? The whole colony was my family, remember?”

  The next question was unspoken. Did you ever wonder who your parents were? If either or both of them were here on Avalon? Did you ever look into the faces of the Earth Born, and wonder if one of us was The One? Did you ever look at me and wonder, Aaron? Did you ever cry at night because no one would take the final responsibility for you? No one would give the final damn?

  But she couldn’t ask those questions. Not yet. Maybe later. Later, when she had the opportunity to get him by himself. Later, when maybe they could both get a little drunk. That might be the best choice after all. It might be the only choice.

  There were more bees here.

  Cadmann adjusted his binoculars, and watched as a cloud of Avalon insects fed on the corpse of some kind of
marsupial. “What do you think?” he asked Aaron. “Did the bees attack it?”

  “We’ve never seen attack behavior from Avalon bees,” Aaron said irritably. “Scavenging, yes, a lot of that. I would bet you that poor critter fell out of the tree and broke its neck. The body began to decompose, and the scent attracted the bees. I don’t think those are killers.”

  There was a steady line of bees arriving, eating, circling in a little lazy pattern abuzz with other bees (as if they were having a little community hoedown, Cadmann thought), then heading back off into the distance.

  “Cassandra, note the direction of the bee travel.”

  “Noted. Combined with data supplied by Carlos it is now reasonable to conclude that the nest is some twelve kilometers to your northeast.”

  “Probability?” Cadmann asked automatically.

  “Numerical estimate impossible.”

  “That’s interesting,” Cadmann said. “Your fuzzy-logic program used to give numerical estimates. What happened?”

  “My exactness criteria were changed.”

  “Oh? By whom?”

  “I do not know,” Cassandra said.

  “Edgar,” Cadmann muttered. “One of these days, I’ll kill him, so help me—You said data supplied by Carlos. He’s found bees too?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “How far is this lake now?” Cadmann asked.

  Aaron said, “Maybe another hour. Mostly level from here.”

  “And downhill coming back,” Cadmann said. “Okay. I wouldn’t want to miss Chaka’s lecture. I—think it may be important.”

  “What about the bees?” Sylvia asked. “Chaka seemed very interested in them.”

  Cadmann nodded. “He sure did. But they’ll keep until tomorrow. Here, need a hand over that rock?”

  “Yes, thank you. It’s strange,” she said. “It’s hard to believe he’s the same boy you used to take on Grendel Scout overnighters. Eight years old? Nine?”

  “When what?”

  “The swimming competition. Remember that?”

  “Where Justin nearly drowned?”

  She nodded her head. “He always pushed himself so hard against Aaron.”