Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  It was utterly strange how clear that voice rang in Cadmann’s head. Strange how certain he was that that message passed from Aaron’s mind to his. Strange. It was an apology of some kind. And odder still, he found that he accepted it.

  They studied each other for almost a minute, and then, hesitantly, almost shyly, Aaron smiled. Then he stood, and held his hand out to Cadmann. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “If I don’t, I’ll stiffen up.” He dusted his pants off. “Don’t ever get old, Aaron. It’s no fun at all.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Aaron said, and again, they both laughed.

  The conversation ceased as they toiled up a mountain crest. Cadmann was beginning to enjoy himself. These kids were stronger and fitter, but he knew how to use what he had. Knew how to relax between steps, husband his resources.

  They stood up at the crest for a few minutes, sipping water, and breathing hard, looking down as if they were titans bestriding the world. All of Avalon seemed stretched out beneath them. They might have been balanced between worlds. To the east, grendel country, and the forests and savannahs that would eventually be crisscrossed by the roads and cities of an expanding human empire. To the west, desert and terra incognita.

  Who knew what existed out there? Sandworms on speed, maybe.

  Directly below them now, a branching curl of river, a ribbon of blue down at the base of the mountains. “We’re going to a little valley we’ve spotted from Geographic and mapped by skeeter,” Chaka said. “Nobody’s done it on foot, and we need to look around. There’s running water, but we won’t get close to it.”

  “Grendels?”

  “You bet. Lots of samlon. Last time through, it was fairly working with them. I think it’s getting to be that time again.”

  “Damned glad your bloody base camp isn’t near running water.”

  Aaron chuckled. “No. You wouldn’t have let us do that, Cadmann. The First would let us get away with anything at all, as long as we carry those great stinking stacks of Cadzie-blue blankets; but not that. And even when the weather changes, and the rivers swell, we’re not likely to get grendels. Too far from the water.”

  “Of course, if it’s raining hard, that will cool them just as well.”

  “This is true,” Chaka admitted, “but we’ve got our defenses, and our shelters. And there are no guarantees.”

  “No there aren’t. I’m not even sure I wish there were.”

  They descended the ridge, making their way down toward flatlands. A small valley was visible now, a verdant crease. Chaka guided the conversation as they walked.

  He pointed to the eastern horizon. “Storm clouds?”

  Chaka and Aaron studied the cloud patterns. The clouds were moving south, and unlikely to bring rain or grief to Shangri-la. But there had been small storms, little atmospheric disturbances almost constantly for the past month. What was coming was coming faster, that much was sure.

  “The weather’s never been like this,” Cadmann said.

  Aaron said, “I finally did get to Surf’s Up. Absolutely scoured by waves. They had to move all of the kids back to colony. Most of the beach houses are gone. Mine, too. There’s nothing but foundations left.”

  They talked broadly and companionably of weather and atmosphere, climate and crop conditions, blue skies and hailstorms, for almost an hour as they descended to a glade. Chaka pointed to an ancient, overgrown mound. “I saw this from my skeeter.”

  Cadmann approached it cautiously. “Beehive?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t certain from the air, but it looked abandoned. Weathered. Maybe they migrate. Maybe they raid an area for everything it has, and then die out. I don’t know.”

  Aaron nudged it with his toe, thoughtful. The mucilaged earth tower crumbled a little. He pushed against it some more and a chunk of it broke off. “It’s brittle. Resistant to most weather, though.”

  “How long abandoned?” Cadmann asked.

  “A year or two,” Aaron said.

  “Look! A cluster of Joey bones.” Chaka was up in one of the trees, peering around.

  Cadmann grunted and dropped his backpack, climbed three or four meters up the trunk, alarmed at how heavy and clumsy he felt.

  A trio of little Joey skeletons greeted him. They were snugged between branch and bole, dead in their own nest.

  “Definitely bee country,” Cadmann said soberly.

  They continued along, spotted several more abandoned bee nests and more caches of old skeletons. Often the bones lay as if carefully placed by some nitpicking archeologist. Bees didn’t leave enough on the bones for it to be worth any scavenger’s time to drag them away.

  They reached a lower shelf, even thicker with trees and brush and grass. Then took another steep decline, and reached another shelf.

  And more bones.

  It was Cadmann who first mentioned that the animal sounds had died away.

  “You noticed it too?” Chaka asked. “I was wondering if that was just my own morbid imagination.”

  “No, it’s not.” Cadmann looked back at Aaron, trailing slightly to their left, a thoughtful expression on his face. Whatever he thought, he was keeping to himself.

  The terrain was looking more and more . . . well, picked over. No pterodons. No birdies. No Joeys. Nothing. The back of Cadmann’s neck itched.

  “Look,” Chaka said soberly.

  Chaka pointed at a skeleton the size of a small deer, with short forelegs. It poked out of the ground. Chaka knelt and dug carefully with his knife, and unearthed the rest. Cadmann turned his head away.

  This creature had died digging into the ground. Its head still remained, and its shoulders, a sort of monkey-looking thing with sharp paws. The attempt to claw its way into the ground had failed. The mummy was hollowed out, its mouth still open, clotted with dirt. Its eyes were open. Staring into its own grave.

  Chaka made a blowing sound and stood, wiping his hands on his pants. He walked in a widening spiral, and found two more skeletons, of similar creatures that hadn’t been as successful at burrowing. “This is wrong,” Chaka said. He walked to the ridge. Below them was another flattened area, and then a cliff. Distantly, they heard rushing water.

  Cadmann said, “Lovecraftian, maybe. What are you thinking?”

  “Wrong.” Chaka ran down the slope, digging in his heels. He saw Aaron skid down after him. There was a tight, controlled expression on Aaron’s face, one that Cadmann hadn’t seen before. Some game was going on here, and he was one step behind the other players.

  He scrambled down the next decline, using roots and rocks to steady and slow his descent. He watched, increasingly disturbed, as Chaka poked about. This was a lushly wooded area, girdled with bushes and trees and grass. There were signs that it had been lusher still, but some of the vegetation had been badly chewed.

  Except for the distant mournful skaw of a pterodon, it was just too damned quiet.

  They found bones. Bones of creatures mouse-sized, rabbit-sized, and one as big as a wolf.

  Chaka pulled his belt knife and cut into the wolf-sized creature’s rear leg bone. He poked around in the dark interior. “Until we’ve got a better word, we can call this stuff marrow. This is still moist. I think that all of this death happened within the last seventy-two hours.”

  Chaka pushed himself up and walked out to the edge of the cliff, looking out over the valley beneath. His face was deeply troubled.

  “Weather’s getting bad,” he murmured, so low that Cadmann almost couldn’t hear him.

  Aaron had heard. “True enough.”

  “Ordinarily, the bees build nests, raze an area for maybe a decade, and then move on. Probably spawn a dozen queens each, or however they work it. But in times like this . . . ”

  “What?” Cadmann asked. He was afraid he wasn’t going to like the answer.

  Chaka looked back at Aaron, standing only a few feet behind him, and he shrugged. “The plains will flood. A lot of the nests will drown—no, they won’t. The be
es will have water traps built into them, for sure. And as soon as the first water recedes, the bees will migrate. Massively. Some of them are starting to expand westward now. See? The animals up here never evolved to deal with bees this way. A few Joeys are one thing—we’re talking about the eradication of square kilometers of wildlife. It’s been two hours since we’ve seen a single living animal, gentlemen. Those rain clouds? Those are the beginning. And the bees want the high ground. Probably this whole region belongs to them, every fifty years. Then the population pressure drives them back to the lowlands. But when the rains hit . . . ”

  Aaron’s voice was very flat. “What?”

  “The bees are spreading everywhere, breeding whole hordes of queens and seeding them on the wind. These are species that never evolved to deal with bees, because bees were never here. The grendels—I’ve figured that out. There are so many other animals breeding their hearts out that the grendels aren’t eating any of their samlon, so they’re all turning into grendels. Edgar’s been raving about the weird weather. We’ve seen it. Those bees are getting ready for the winds to scatter them everywhere!”

  Cadmann nodded. “Sounds right.”

  Little Chaka spoke very carefully. “I have to tell Father. Do you realize that we’re going to have to evacuate the mainland? And I mean right now—”

  Cadmann caught a motion out of the corner of his eye, and it was a fatal half a second before he realized what was happening. Aaron, incredibly, was unshouldering his rifle. Chaka’s rifle was in his hands. He was raising it, even as Cadmann felt his mouth form the word: “No!”

  Chaka was closest to Aaron, and Aaron shot him first. The biologist had only begun to react when the bullet snapped his head back. Chaka’s entire body straightened. He tumbled back over the cliff, the entire left half of his head a wet red ruin.

  Cadmann had already leveled his grendel gun as the sound of the first explosion hit his ears. Chaka had not yet fallen. As Cadmann fired, Aaron dropped to one knee. The grendel charge went over Aaron’s head. Cadmann corrected his aim and fired again.

  He had aimed for the center of mass, and the center of mass for Aaron Tragon was covered by the rifle. Aaron flew back, hands splaying, hair flying out with the electrical shock. His mouth spread in a wide O as the dart released its charge. Aaron landed on his butt, three feet away. He shook himself like a big, sick dog.

  Cadmann thumbed another dart into the breech and realized that it would take five seconds for it to charge. Grendel guns were backup weapons, used as part of a team effort.

  Five seconds would be too late.

  Chaka’s gun. Cadmann dove for it, but Aaron was closer. Aaron screamed, scrambled up, and dove, and both pairs of hands closed on it at the same time.

  For a second, they tugged at it, their faces only inches apart. Then Cadmann released it and swung his right fist, connecting with Aaron’s jaw just below the ear. Aaron’s head snapped back, and his grip on the gun loosened, but as he went back his right leg whipped around, and the foot connected with Cadmann’s face. Cadmann lost control of the gun, and rolled back, screaming as his shoulder thumped against the ground. His bad shoulder. Shakily, he got to his feet at the same time that Aaron did.

  Aaron’s hands were curled loosely, spread roughly shoulder distance apart. Ready to chop, or punch, or grasp. His right shoulder was leading, about thirty percent of his weight on the front foot.

  Cadmann felt sad, and tired, and old. Christ. Of course. Aaron was one of Toshiro’s karate students. Probably his prize student, excelling at hand-to-hand combat as he did at everything else. Aaron was probably stronger than him, faster than him, fresher than him. Cadmann would be dead in about twenty seconds.

  Cadmann reached to his belt sheath and drew the Gerber Australian Bowie knife. Nine and a half inches of steel. He had carried it since Africa, a present from one of the NCOs he had lost in Mozambique. It felt heavy in his hand.

  “Come on, boy,” Cadmann said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Aaron looked at the knife, looked at Cadmann’s face, and back at the knife. He dropped his hands. “I . . . I can’t fight you,” he said.

  “You don’t have a lot of choice here,” Cadmann hissed. He slid in a little closer. “Why’d you do it, Aaron?”

  “They would have listened to you.” He held his wrists up, hands together. This boy was surrendering! What the hell was he supposed to do?

  “They would have returned to the island. Everything would have been over.”

  “That’s no reason to kill.” But in the back of his mind, a voice whispered: For Aaron Tragon, maybe it is.

  “Kneel down,” Cadmann said.

  Aaron obeyed. His lower lip trembled. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

  “Cross your ankles and sit on them.” That was a satisfactory unready position. “Take off your belt.”

  Aaron’s hands went to his belt, slid it out of its loops.

  “Make a noose on the end, and put your wrists through it. Tighten it with your teeth.” Aaron did, and then, unsolicited, wrapped the belt around again. Tears were streaming down his face. He looked up into Cadmann’s face, and his face had softened. Damn it, he looked too much like the boy that Cadmann had taught to swim, had taken for hikes.

  God. How had it all gone so wrong so fast? Cadmann switched the knife to his left hand, and reached down to pick up the rifle.

  Aaron’s palms flat on the ground. Aaron’s body uncoiled, spun. Aaron’s legs lashed out, caught Cadmann in the side. The knife spun out of his hand. Aaron moved in, a leg whipping out. Cadmann barely got his hands up in time, caught the shock of it on his shoulder and jaw. Pain. Blackness and the taste of blood in his mouth.

  Cadmann charged in like a bull. He was mindless of the whipcrack kicks, or of Aaron’s bound wrists chopping at his lowered neck. He smashed Aaron back, hammering with both hands. No karate. No judo. Just short, devastating hooks to the body, trying to break him in half one-two, one-two, one-two.

  Grabbed belt. Wheeled, pivoted, threw Aaron by the bound wrists. Perfect leverage and timing. Aaron wheeled though the air, hit hard, rolled over groggily, and his hands—

  Found Chaka’s rifle. Braced butt against chest. Fingers found trigger. Cadmann froze in place.

  Aaron’s face twisted in anguish.

  A single, tormented word:

  “Father.”

  And then thunder.

  ♦ ChaptEr 38 ♦

  the gathering storm

  But evil is wrought by want of thought

  As well as want of heart.

  —Thomas Hood, The Lady’s Dream

  Edgar and Trish were alone in the communications shack. Because he had chosen this time to show her how to build weather models, they were the first to hear the choked and frantic words.

  “Mayday . . . Mayday . . . ” Unmistakably, Aaron Tragon’s voice. The voice of a man very near the edge.

  Edgar was more curious than anything else. He leaned over Trish. “Wasn’t Aaron out with Cadmann and Little Chaka?”

  “As far as I know,” she said. She stabbed at virtual buttons with a single forefinger. “Go ahead, Aaron. We read you.”

  “In Skeeter Twelve. Coming over the ridge now. My God. Grendels. Grendels everywhere.”

  Edgar sat bolt upright. “What?” He slammed the general alarm circuit, and across the entire camp, klaxons began to scream.

  Justin heard the alarm and shot a look at Jessica, who narrowed her eyes. There was a paired series of electronic screams, not the dreaded single bleats that would have indicated visual sighting by guards at the periphery. Still, it was enough to raise the hair at the back of his neck.

  Grendel guns, never far away, were snatched up by eager hands. The entire population of Shangri-la emptied into the square. Eyes alert, heads swiveling, voices raised in alarm.

  Trish appeared in the door of the communications shed, and searched the crowd until she found Jessica. She headed straight for her friend. Justin watched the two of them
huddle. When Jessica turned around, the blood had drained from her face.

  Justin scanned the crowd quickly. Sylvia Weyland was nowhere to be seen. He remembered that she was up at the mining site, supervising.

  The faint burr of a skeeter worked its way into his consciousness. Before he could fully register it, Jessica turned toward him, took a halting step, and then froze. Her face tilted to the ground. It tilted back up. Her eyes streamed.

  They met in the middle of the press, and she leaned sobbing into his arms.

  Skeeter Twelve landed four minutes later. Four dozen anxious Star Born surrounded the skeeter pad, silent as Aaron Tragon emerged.

  He was muddy, and bleeding, and bruised. His shirt was torn almost completely away. He looked like a man utterly lost. Justin was the first to his side, and said, “Tell me.” Aaron looked at him. “I tried. I tried, Justin.” Justin grabbed Aaron’s shoulder. “Tell me, goddamn it!” The autogyro’s rotors slowed, then stopped. Aaron leaned back against the cab.

  “We were heading back along ridge twelve. The clouds were looking bad, and we wanted to make better time. There is a cliff there above the river. Chaka stopped, told us to look down. God.” Aaron’s shook as he wiped his brow. “The grendels were spawning. The samlon. They boiled in the river. It was . . . it was spectacular. They were so far down, I thought we were safe. Then the ledge gave way under our combined weight. Cadmann and I jumped back in time, but Chaka went over.”

  He paused, and during that pause, Big Chaka pushed his way through the crowd and came to stand before Aaron, looking up at him with an expression Justin found unreadable. Justin started to speak, but Big Chaka put a hand on his arm, imploring silence.

  “He slid halfway down before he caught himself. He twisted something. He was too close to the river. Cadmann and I went after him. There were roots poking out. We used those.

  “It had been raining up there. The bank was unstable. Cadmann got to Chaka, helped him up. They slid. Cadmann stopped their slide, and I got down closer. Then the grendels had us spotted.”