Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  The water roared across the plain, and sank down into the nests, the bee nests that the Star Born had seen, but not understood. There were thousands of them across the southern portion of the continent. Each was home to tens of thousands of bees.

  There was chaos, and they responded by huddling, and then swarming up and out. The water beat them back. They collapsed their tunnel walls to seal them, and then retreated into their deepest tunnels.

  And waited.

  For months now, they had fed their special variety of speed-enhanced “royal jelly” to selected embryos within the nest. Now it began to pay off, and the first of the new queens were shaking the water from their motor wings.

  Edgar sheltered his head against the rain, walked out in the ankle-high mud, and sloshed across the encampment. The lights of the distant mess hall were dimmed by the intensity of the rain.

  He caught sight of a small shape huddled in the downpour against the wall of one of the dorms. Without knowing entirely why, he headed in that direction.

  It was Ruth, and when she saw him coming, she ran in the opposite direction, sloshing through the rain. It was probably impossible but he would have sworn he heard a sound through the downpour, a small, hopeless animal cry.

  He caught up with her, happy for his newfound stamina—it was damned difficult to make headway through mud this deep.

  He grabbed a shoulder and spun her around. The rain had streaked her hair across her face. Her eyes were wide and staring. She didn’t seem to recognize him. He guided her into one of the storerooms.

  She shivered. Her teeth clattered until he thought that she would crack the enamel.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  She looked at him, through him. And was silent. She stopped shuddering. Her skin looked very fine to him. Almost porcelain. Almost translucent. She looked so innocent. So lost.

  “You’re going to catch your death,” he said.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I . . . just don’t care.” She sounded so lost, so helpless.

  He sat her down on a barrel, peeled the cowl back from her head. “What’s the matter? Why don’t you care?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said.

  He started to speak, then realized how hard it was for her to say even that much, and kept silent.

  “I came for Aaron. I thought that maybe there was a way to be . . . with Aaron.” She lowered her face into her hands. “What am I doing? Why am I here?”

  Aaron didn’t want Ruth. Or anyone. All Aaron wanted was this continent.

  “What you did,” Edgar said finally, surprised to hear the words escape his lips, “was follow your heart. You had to try.”

  She looked up at him, and focused on him, as if she were seeing him for the first time. And then lowered her face into her hands, and began to sob. And finally, after a long time, he pulled a barrel next to her, and put his arm around her. She let him.

  After a while, she leaned her head against his shoulder, and she cried, and he listened to rain, for a long, long time.

  Two days later, the rains ceased. The waters began to recede, and the plains began to drain. The earth absorbed the waters, and finally the sun touched the earth again. Dark clouds still fringed the sky.

  The earth trembled. And then began to crumble. And from within the ground crawled first one, then ten, and then a hundred, and then a million bees.

  Tens of millions. Swarming. Hungry.

  The Death Wind had come.

  The second day after the rains ceased, Carlos was in Skeeter II, Evan Castaneda in Skeeter IV. They rose up over the mountain ridge, floating like insects on a breeze. Justin crouched next to him.

  “Are you all right, amigo?” he asked. The question was one of those existential absurdities that friends were obliged to ask each other. Justin looked at him bleakly.

  He didn’t answer directly. “Look at the grendel dam,” he said instead, pointing below them and to the east. “Utterly destroyed. They’re pretty harmless most of the time, I guess—but who knows how they behave in a disaster like this?”

  “Mmm.” Carlos swung around. There was a part of him that didn’t want to complete their stated mission, that would rather do anything in the world than find what they expected to find.

  “How is Jessica?” Carlos asked. His voice had grown quieter, much quieter. Justin could barely hear it above the hum of the rotors.

  “She’s made her choices,” Justin said. “She thinks she’s more use back at the camp.”

  There was something that he hadn’t said, of course: Caring for Aaron.

  Something had certainly happened to Aaron up there. There was some core of the man that was different. Exposed. Torn. Damaged. Something. Justin couldn’t quite believe Aaron’s account of what happened. Something was wrong. Had Aaron panicked and abandoned Cadmann and Chaka? What was Aaron hiding?

  Or perhaps it was just seeing death, so stark and violent. Justin remembered watching Stu die in the snow. The image was locked away from him where the pain couldn’t reach. Where he didn’t feel it. That way, he didn’t have to think about barbecues at Stu’s house, or playing five-card stud, or skeeter racing with a friend and brother. If was just too painful to think about those things.

  And maybe that was what was killing Aaron. No one can ever quite live up to his own self-image. Maybe Aaron just got a dose of reality.

  Justin ground his palms against his eyes. Father. Cadmann. God, I’ll miss you.

  They were maybe twenty minutes from the coordinates when the nightmare began.

  The wind had shifted. He looked out of the main window, and saw a huge dark cloud billowing across their path.

  “Hey, Justin. Any idea what this is? Where in the world would a dust cloud that size come from, after a rain like this?”

  The question was hardly out of his mouth before the radio clattered in a burst of static. Evan. His voice was taut with fear.

  “It’s not a dust cloud. Mayday, Mayday—”

  Justin saw the edge of the dark cloud touch Skeeter IV. Above the skeeter was a sparkling; the skeeter lurched. The blades were sparkling, little bright flashes in the smoke . . . and in that moment, Justin knew the face of their enemy. He screamed to Carlos, “Get us the hell out of here! It’s bees!”

  Carlos’s hands were lightning at the controls. The skeeter tilted far over, away from the approaching swarm.

  “Bees in the rotor blades. They’re exploding. Vicious little flying cherry bombs—”

  Death was coming. Death was almost here.

  Jessica and Aaron crossed Shangri-la’s main square. The buildings had all stood up under the assault of the elements. When the tarps were dragged down, the new timbers were unwarped and sun-dried. There was repair work to be done, but it would be completed within the week. They walked out to the horse pen, next to the chamel pen on the outskirts of the camp, near the double electrified fences.

  The chamels were muddied and streaked; in fact, they rolled happily in the mud. She let it touch her heart, bleakly. There was death here, but wonders too in a world that could produce creatures as beautiful as these.

  A crowd gathered around them to hear the speech Aaron had promised them. Carey Lou gaped worshipfully. Beside him, little Heather McKennie held his arm. Trish and Edgar were among the throng, but she noticed that they weren’t bonded as they had been only a week before. Edgar was holding hands with Ruth. They had spent a lot of time together over the last few days. There was no sexual heat between them, just gentle touches and a lot of quiet conversation.

  Just holding hands. Almost innocently. Here stood a pregnant girl, and this young man, newly awakening to the hungers of the flesh. And the two of them had forged a bond of . . . innocence. There was no other word for it. Aaron had tried to separate him from Trish, and it hadn’t worked . . . Trish had performed some kind of miracle on Edgar, saving him after Toshiro’s death . . . but then didn’t want him for herself. But seemed to have infected
him with the Pygmalion bug.

  Jessica was confused. And not a little jealous, and wasn’t entirely certain why. She had all the sex she wanted. Why the hell would she covet . . . holding hands with Edgar!

  “We have to rebuild,” Aaron said. The sun burned down between the clouds, as if trying to make up for the burst of rain. It was lying to them: Geographic promised another downburst within a day or two. “We have paid too high a price. We must claim this continent for our own.” His voice quavered. She had never seen him like this, never seen him quite so honest, so close to the bone. This was a new Aaron. Her father was dead, and into that vacuum had stepped a new leader.

  She scanned the faces of the gathered. Family. Friends. Lovers. Standing in the muddied streets, contemplating the work to be done before the camp could come to life again.

  But in the end, there would be Aaron. Aaron, who had led them back to the mainland. Aaron, who had risked his life in vain, to save the one man he loved more than any other.

  She could see it in their faces. This tragedy would finally knit the entire colony together.

  Dogs barked anxiously at the periphery of the camp. Jessica peered out over the crowd to see . . .

  The impossible.

  Just beyond the double electrified fence, a torpedo shape crawled through the mud. Slowly. Gradually. Tentatively.

  The entire camp was utterly silent. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aaron’s face, and it was ashen. Whatever he had been about to say had simply died on his lips.

  A grendel. A huge grendel. It approached slowly. And it was . . . dragging something.

  Unmistakably, its barbed tail was hooked through the pant leg of a . . . a man. A black man. Trish’s rifle went up to her shoulder, and Big Chaka Mubutu standing beside her, said, “No.”

  “Oh, my God,” someone said. “It’s little Chaka.”

  Little Chaka???

  “He’s alive,” Big Chaka said. Jessica felt frozen in place, unable to move. How . . . ?

  She looked back up at Aaron, and his eyes were wide. Too wide, and she felt as if she were falling into them.

  Aaron had seen Little Chaka die! Had seen him torn to pieces by . . . by grendels. Her world spun, and her eyes locked again on the enormous shape that had paused just at the outer ring of buildings, and made a kind of cooing sound.

  Oh, my God. It was trying to speak to them.

  “The fuck you don’t—”

  That was Edgar’s voice. A slapping sound. Jessica heard a gunshot, loud enough to stun her hearing, blasting right next to her ear. Mud kicked up a few feet in front of her.

  The grendel’s head cocked. It watched them.

  Edgar’s hand was on the barrel of the gun. Aaron tugged at it. He was in such shock that he couldn’t harness his strength, couldn’t pull it away from Edgar for a critical second.

  “It killed Cadmann!” he huffed. “It killed Cadmann. Let me—”

  Big Chaka spoke quietly. “I thought you said that it was a raft of small ones. It was spawning samlon killed Cadmann. Killed my boy.”

  Aaron was silent. Trish looked at Aaron, eyes murderously cold. It was a community of guns, and guns were turning toward Aaron.

  “Jessica,” Aaron whispered. “It isn’t what it looks like.”

  And in that moment, she knew. She couldn’t make the part of her that knew talk to the part of her that could act. She couldn’t. But she knew for an instant, she felt the shields slide back and looked into the core of herself and knew, and felt herself falling into the abyss, and sealed it back up, teetering. Heard her own voice quavering, heard the lie as she spoke it to herself. “Of course. I don’t know what they’re—”

  Big Chaka took a step forward. The grendel shook its tail, detaching it from Little Chaka’s leg, and then backed up a few feet.

  “My God,” someone said. “It’s smart.”

  “It brought Chaka back.” Big Chaka punched a code into his comm-card, and the fence power died. He swung the gate open. The crowd moved forward, the grendel retreating as they did. It backed up a dozen feet, and watched them carefully.

  Big Chaka’s yelled. “No one touches that animal. NO ONE.” It was the first time that she had ever heard him raise his voice. Jessica stood with Aaron. Edgar’s hand was on the rifle. Somehow, Trish had moved over behind Aaron. Her hand was on Aaron’s other arm. Tight.

  Aaron was frozen. His tongue dipped pinkly out of his mouth, moistening his lips. His hair hung down to his shoulders stringily. There was no life in his face.

  “No,” Trish said quietly, and her eyes met his squarely. “If you raise that rifle, I swear to God I’ll kill you. Or Edgar will.”

  Aaron looked to Jessica for support. She was numb. This was all happening too damned quickly. Her chest felt like a skeeter had landed on it.

  “My boy . . . ?” Big Chaka wept. “My boy.”

  The small man cuddled his son’s body in his arms. They stayed like that for a long time. There was a stillness to the world, something that penetrated deeply, and Jessica couldn’t bring herself to move.

  Under Big Chaka’s direction, three of the crowd picked Little Chaka up and carried him back into the camp. They swung the gate closed behind them. Outside, the grendel watched them. Big Chaka’s eyes were on fire. He walked toward them, one hesitant step at a time. Then she realized that he struggled to keep from running, as if something connected him to Aaron Tragon that wanted to pull him faster and faster, as if he were a man out of control.

  Big Chaka whispered something. When he got closer, she could hear what it was. “He was shot,” Chaka was saying over and over again. “He was shot.”

  “I told . . . I told you,” Aaron said, trying to find words, trying to find anything to fill the void of silence that had suddenly opened all around him. “I tried to help. I fired at the grendels . . . ” There was spittle on his chin.

  “You had a grendel gun!” Chaka screamed. “My son was shot with a bullet!”

  “I . . . I . . . ”

  “Do you want to know what my boy said?”

  Aaron shook his head numbly. A vast buzzing filled Jessica’s head.

  “He said: ‘Aaron shot us.’ That’s what he said.”

  Suddenly, without any warning, Trish’s belt knife was at Aaron’s throat. “You incredible bastard,” she hissed.

  The center of Jessica’s world was falling away. Aaron was crumbling in front of her. She didn’t know what she was doing. Trish pulled the rifle from his hands. Limp hands.

  Trish on one side, Edgar on the other. Aaron too shocked to fight, still staring at the grendel as if looking into the face of Judgment.

  “You will stand trial,” Big Chaka said. “And my son will testify against you.”

  Aaron struggled to find an answer, but before he could voice it, they were interrupted by a scream:

  “Bees!”

  ♦ ChaptEr 40 ♦

  death

  In War, whichever side may call itself the victor,

  there are no winners, but all are losers.

  —Neville Chamberlain

  It was all coming together, again. She had brought the weirds a gift, and they had accepted it.

  She had wondered if their strongest would challenge her; she had wondered how. Even the dam builders did not cooperate like weirds, and no grendel was so feeble. But their strongest, the killer, was being restrained and led away.

  And now they gathered round her at a respectful distance, making the sounds they always made. The injured one had spoken to her in such a fashion. It was their way of passing their thoughts from one mind to another. Old Grendel knew she couldn’t do that. She must find another way.

  And now another sound was rising. For a moment, she took it for the sound of their flyers. Then . . . her heart’s desire was snatched from her again.

  Not for a moment did she pause to regret. Old Grendel had marked the nest’s water source when it came within her sight and scent. It was an elevated structure at the hub of a web o
f streets. She was in motion before any weird had noticed the sound of the Death Wind. With speed raging through her blood, she wove a path among the weirds, brushing one and another but hurting none. She ran straight to the tower and up one of the legs.

  The water was covered with something rigid.

  The Death Wind was a darkness across half the sky. She would never mistake that for storm clouds. A dark tendril was reaching down, in the fashion of a tornado, toward where the puzzle beasts laired.

  She smashed through the cover and was into Shangri-la’s cistern. She settled in, lifted her snorkel, and let the heat and speed seep from her blood. The water was humming, bathing her in the sound of the Death Wind.

  Carlos swung Skeeter II around in a circle, calculating wind and the direction of the bee mass, and swung around back south. The wind blew northwest. Unless the bees were heading to a particular destination, they would drift with the wind. So it made sense to figure that they wanted the mountains—and that was north. They were heading away from the plains, away from the flooding. Fine. Justin had the cowl locked down tight. A few bees spattered against it, but these bees weren’t on speed. They weren’t in an emergency state. On speed, they couldn’t cover the distance to get their queens to safety. They could be counting on a few dry hours. The rhythm of this damned planet had to be as deeply ingrained as breathing.

  He watched Skeeter IV emerge from the cloud for a minute. Justin said, “Evan’s going to make it! He’s—” Then the cloud closed around Skeeter Four, and the sparkling pinwheel of its rotor flared outward. Something—a cloud of bees ignited.

  “Holy Mary mother of God—” Skeeter IV was the edge of a fireball. Bees exploded in a pop-pop-popping that they could hear even over the whip of their own rotors, a machine-gun crackle, their carapaced speed sacs igniting as if they were a swarm of flying firecrackers. Evan’s skeeter juddered sideways as if slapped by a giant hand. Then it was entirely enshrouded in flame. All that rang through the radio was Evan’s anguished scream as his doomed skeeter spiraled and plunged and smashed into the rock below.