Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

  Justin’s hands gripped the rail in front of him, squeezed. He had cut his hand on something. The blood ran in a thin stream, drooling down his wrists.

  Carlos swung clear of the cloud of bees, heading back to the camp.

  In the instant, the crowd’s attention went to the approaching swarm. Aaron took sudden, violent action. He stamped Trish’s instep, and wrenched himself free of her grip. He turned and drove his fist as hard as he could into Edgar’s face, breaking his nose and sending blood squirting down his cheek. Trish threw herself on him, screaming, biting, striking.

  Jessica still couldn’t move, as if trapped in a slow-motion universe of overloaded emotions.

  Trish had Aaron down, a long bloody furrow along his cheek. Her knee pounded into his groin over and over again. Blinded by the blood in his eyes, Edgar kicked wildly. Screaming, Aaron got his foot into Trish’s chest and push-kicked her away. She flew five feet and slapped into the mud. Edgar got a kick in at Aaron’s head, then screamed as the first of the bees reached him and bit, tearing a little wedge of flesh from his cheek.

  He forgot about Aaron and ran toward the nearest dorm.

  Trish fled toward the rec hall. Beneath it was a Kevlar-reinforced shelter. Grendel-proof. Bee-proof? A mesh metal curtain hung across the doorway. Trish slipped through its folds. “Jessica!” she screamed from safety. A bee spattered against it, crawled, searching for a way in. She held her side, her face. They bled, where bees had bitten.

  Jessica ran for the shelter. Aaron screamed, “Help me—”

  And Jessica turned for a fatal moment. Aaron staggered up, and their eyes met. His arms went out to her—

  A dark wind blew across her and covered Jessica in bees. Hair to ankles, all of her right side was twinkling black. She screamed, thrashed, tried to brush them away, tried to spit them out, tried to run. Aaron took two steps toward her, but it was too late.

  Trish couldn’t watch anymore. She closed the door. Bees were clawing through the curtain.

  Aaron took a step toward Jessica, out of his mind with pain, but . . . but he felt something, something that he had never felt before. He just couldn’t let her die. He just couldn’t—she was down in a mass of crawling black shapes. Her arm stretched out to him, scintillating black. She screamed. Bees crawled into her mouth. One burrowed out of her cheek. They were at her eyes. Aaron lurched away.

  There were a few human shapes on the ground. Lucky ones were in Kevlar safety sacks, or wrapped in blankets. A few bee-ridden Star Born crawled blindly, being eaten alive. He slapped at his face as a bee went for his eyes. It bit his hand instead, nearly tearing off a finger joint. He had only seconds to live—

  He saw the chamels. They were burying themselves deep in the mud and dung that filled their pen. Their exposed haunches shone Cadzie blue.

  He dove for the mud pit, burrowing through the filth until he came up next to one of the chamels. Rolling in the muck, covering himself. Gouged in a hundred places, Aaron shuddered as chamel shit oozed into his wounds. His arm snaked up, grabbed the creature around the neck, held it close. This wasn’t perfect. But the bees had other targets, horses and pigs and human beings. They might not find him. They couldn’t find him. Oh, God, he hurt so much.

  Jessica.

  Jessica.

  Wrapped in a blue blanket, Katya hammered on the mess hall’s shelter door. The sound of the swarm was overwhelmingly loud, loud enough to drive rational thought from her mind. She had only been bitten twice, but the fear almost paralyzed her.

  No response. She ran to a sheltered nook—a toolshed next to one of the dorms. In the mess hall, she saw a torch waving. Some idiot was trying to use fire to keep the bees at bay.

  There was a sudden crackle, and five thousand bees just exploded. Fire and a machine-gun flashing pop-pop-pop and shredded crustaceans showered flame everywhere. Half of the camp was rain-drenched, and invulnerable. But half was unfinished, naked wood protected by tarps and then sundried for two days. That burned.

  The acrid smoke stench wound its way into her nostrils, and she shut the door as tightly as she could. She pressed her hands against the wood. It was still damp. Oh, God. She hoped that was enough.

  The door shuddered as bees rapped against it. Wood splintered.

  Katya wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket, staring into darkness.

  Flaming bees slammed against the metal walls of the communications shed. Metal wouldn’t burn, but it was still a terrifying din. “Where’s Edgar?” Ruth screamed.

  Carey Lou gaped at her. Shock? Remembered, and said, “I saw him outside. Just before we sealed the door.”

  Ruth screamed again, but then fought her way back to calm. The radio behind her crackled. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

  Ruth twitched it on, and cried into it. “Edgar?”

  “Ruth? Yeah, it’s me. I don’t know for how much longer. The bees are taking the building apart. They’re eating the wood. I managed to get here, but I don’t know if I can get out.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ankle. Twisted it pretty bad. I think that maybe I broke it. I’m in dorm number four.”

  She looked around the room. Under them in the shelter, there were a dozen Second. Here there was only Carey Lou. Bees batted against windows, which so far remained secure. “You don’t think that you can get over here? Do you have a blanket?”

  “It isn’t that. The door is jammed. I can’t get it open. They’re going to take the whole damned building apart. I can feel it.”

  Ruth bit her lip. She opened the hailing frequency. “Is there anyone who can help? We’ve got problems. Edgar is in trouble.”

  There was no answer for several long seconds, and then, “We can’t get out of the shelter, Ruth. I’m sorry. Maybe when the bees go away. They’re bound to at dark. Or if it starts raining again. He’ll be all right.”

  Ruth spun. “Give me your blanket, Carey Lou,” she said. “I need two of them.”

  Carey Lou said, “What?”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe right here. Keep trying to get through to the mine. We need them to bring down Robor. We have to get out of here.”

  “In the middle of the bees?”

  “Don’t you get it?” she said fiercely. “This could go on for months. Everyone will die unless we get out.”

  Carey Lou nodded, and handed her the blanket. She wrapped the first one around herself, and draped the second as a cowl. “Good-bye, Carey Lou,” she whispered.

  “Ruth, do you have to go?”

  She nodded. She paused at the door, wedged it open a few inches, and then slipped out, into the storm.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” Carey Lou bleated into the microphone. “We need Robor. We need to evacuate—”

  Hendrick Sills scanned the communal living room of Deadwood Pass’s dormitory. His eyes passed the overstuffed chair twice before spotting Sylvia Weyland, sunken deep within. She was peering out of the slit window set in the reinforced concrete wall, warmed by the crackling fire at her side. She seemed utterly lost in thought.

  She was staring out across the complex. The mine was still perking along smoothly, producing its quota of plastic briquettes. At this point, it barely needed human supervision anymore. Analyzing units built into the bore head sampled the strata as it dug. There would be no more fossilized bee surprises.

  Sylvia looked up at him, face placid. “How is the loading?” she asked. “Any problems?” Robor was scheduled to make a half-loaded mercy run back to the island. “I need to get home.” She stopped, and seemed to consider her next words carefully. “I need to be with Mary Ann.”

  “We have an urgent message from Shangri-la,” Hendrick said. “It’s bad.”

  The placidity vanished from her face.

  “Emergency at Shangri-la. They’ve got a swarm of those damned carnivorous bees. Most of them made it to shelters, but they need to evacuate. Now.”

  She was out of her chair in an instant. “Evacuate Deadwood. I want everyone on boa
rd Robor in five minutes. I want weather charts, and a route to Shangri-la mapped by the time I’m on board. We’re gone in ten.” She paused. “And get every goddamned blanket in the camp.”

  Carlos lost control of the skeeter only ten feet from the landing pad. “We’re going down!” he screamed above the roar of exploding bees. The ground looming up at them told the rest of the story. They bounced, hard, too hard. The door buckled in its frame, leaving an inch gap. Justin used his feet to jam a Kevlar survival sack into it.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” Carlos said with calmness that he really didn’t feel. “Is there anyone out there?”

  The air was so thick with bees that it was hard to see. Then the swarm lifted, and Shangri-la appeared through the haze. Bodies lay strewn in the streets, dotted with black shapes. Bees.

  Jesus. You could watch the bodies melting.

  “Mayday—”

  “D-daddy?” They heard it. Katya’s voice.

  “Baby? Where are you?”

  “I’m in the toolshed next to the rec room.”

  “Isn’t there anyone in the rec room?”

  “No one that close,” she said. “I can’t get out. I don’t have a blanket. Daddy, the blankets work! They keep off the bees!”

  “I see. Shh. Stay put, darling,” he said.

  Justin looked at him. “How are we going to get her?”

  “In this,” Carlos said. He started his engine again. The skeeter screeched as it lifted from the ground, and listed sideways, counterrotating slowly. It weaved, barely in control. The tail swatted against another skeeter, and Carlos cursed as he worked them clear. They climbed to rooftop level, fighting for control every inch of the way. Fire blossomed below them, smoke and flaming bees filled the air. The drumming sound above him was bees exploding in the rotors.

  “We’re going down again,” he muttered. He aimed the autogyro at the rec room. When they crashed through the wall, Justin jolted forward, smacked his head against the Plexiglas window. He groaned, seeing stars brighter than burning bees. They spun and the sheet metal rec hall wall buckled. The tail of the autogyro sheared and the battery ripped free. Wires from the rec hall frame ripped across the battery, and sparks showered. Bees exploded in midair, and the swarm lifted for a moment as thousands of them caught fire, popped, showered sparks and flaming speed everywhere.

  Carlos’s door popped open. He grabbed a Cadzie-blue blanket and wrapped himself in it. Justin grabbed one of the Kevlar safety sacks, and smashed his way out of his side of the skeeter.

  They had to cover their faces with blankets, but they groped their way around the rec hall—smoldering now, as flaming bees sped this way and that, zipping like meteorites.

  And this was a blessing in disguise. The bees had dealt with fire before, and had evolved a tactic to deal with it. They spread out, made it more difficult for the flames to spread from one to the other . . .

  “Freeze it!” Justin cried. “Get Katya out. I’ll be right behind you!”

  They made it to the toolshed door. Carlos pried it open, and Katya shrank against the wall. She was sobbing, but seemed unhurt. Carlos threw a safety sack to her. “Hurry! Get into this.”

  She crawled into the sack, and as she did, Justin hurriedly inventoried the shed. And there it was—a weed burner. Its nozzle would spray liquid fuel in a thin blazing line. He sloshed the tank, and found it only half-empty.

  “Get her the hell out!” he screamed. “Communications should be secure!”

  Carlos didn’t argue, just slung his daughter over his shoulder. “We’ll never make it!” The bees were thick over there.

  “Yes, we will.” Justin lit the pilot on the weed burner. He pumped fuel through it.

  He spun, sweeping the air with fire. Bees exploded, setting their neighbors aflame. Carlos had to turn his head away from the shower of flaming pseudocrustacea.

  The bees thinned in instinctive response to flame.

  “Come on!”

  Robor had only been airborne for ten minutes when the first bees hit them. They batted against the metal struts, and chewed harmlessly at Robor’s external skin. Sylvia watched them slap against the main windows. Some bees cracked open, leaving a smear of green and red. Most just bounced away, spiraling stunned into the void.

  Carey Lou’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Watch out for bees in the skeeter rotors. Evan blew up. Can you hear me?” He sounded desperate.

  The corner of Sylvia’s eye caught lights flashing red in front of Hendrick, just before a muffled whump shuddered through the ship. Too late? Sylvia felt like an idiot. “Of course! We read you, Carey.”

  “What the hell do we do?” Hendrick watched a new rush of bees crash against the window leaving blood and slime behind.

  “Kill the motors!”

  “Done. Sylvia, I think Skeeter Three is a deader.”

  A shower of tiny comets was drifting past the windows, exploding as they fell. Robor lurched sideways, then began a slow, ugly spin. Sylvia fought to stay calm. “They’re thicker near the ground,” she said. “Kill the skeeters, pump more gas into the bags, and climb.”

  Two skeeters still lived. Their rotors slowed within rings of fire. Stopped. Flaming bees spiraled past the front window like dying stars.

  Hendrick flinched back. “They can’t get in,” Sylvia said. “Another fifteen minutes, and we’ll be above them. Then we can start the skeeters again.”

  “Gauges say we lost our tail engine,” he said pessimistically. “I don’t know . . . ”

  “We’ve got two left,” she said. “And they’ll just have to be enough. Three hours, maybe four . . . I just hope the kids can survive that long.”

  Ruth was covered in blankets from head to foot. She knew where she was going, and didn’t need to lift her head. She had walked this path a thousand times.

  The chamel pen.

  Something was going on behind her. A sputtering of flame. She could hear it, but she didn’t dare look. Her toe stubbed something. Bones. She couldn’t look, couldn’t let her fear overwhelm her. It would have been entirely too easy.

  Her hands, swathed in blankets, touched the chamel pen. “Tarzan?” she called, and then raised her voice more, hoping that the blankets didn’t muffle it too much. “Tarzan!”

  She had seen the chamels changing color, and guessed that they would be alive and safe. When she heard a tentative pawing to her call, she knew that her favorite was alive. More to the point, even in the midst of this horror, Tarzan still responded to her.

  Something was nuzzling her hand. She didn’t dare look. She was terrified at the thought of what bees could do to her eyes. Behind her, fire flared like a lightning strike. Bits of flaming bee spattered her blankets. She groaned in terror, then recovered and climbed across the fence. Tarzan let her mount him, then moved toward the locked gate. She reached out and felt her way to the gate, undid the latch, and Tarzan nudged it open.

  Instantly, the chamel tried to gallop for open space. She turned him around by wrenching with all of her strength, and started him back into the camp.

  She was disoriented, and had to risk a peek now, no matter how much she loathed the idea. With one blanket-swathed hand, she peeled up a slit in the blanket, just barely enough to admit light. Good. There was the mess hall, and there the quad . . . and there was the shack where Edgar would be.

  Tarzan, camouflaged in blue, made his way slowly across the encampment. Around him bees flew, panicked now. One of the buildings had finally managed to catch fire. When wind blew bees through the flames they exploded, carrying the destruction farther. The only thing that saved them was the dampness of the wood. Flaming bits of bee landed in the moist wooden slats and smoldered or sputtered to greater, more dangerous life.

  When Ruth reached Edgar’s storage shed, she turned Tarzan, and climbed carefully off his back. She pulled down on his reins, and jerked. The chamel bucked up in the air once, twice. His heels slammed back into the door, chipping and then splintering wood. The door ripped free from t
he jamb.

  Ruth heard Edgar scream. She hurried to him with the second blanket. He wrapped himself in it, and she helped him to his feet. Then she helped him onto Tarzan, and climbed on after him. She risked a peek to orient herself. The radio shack. They had to make it that far. Something crawled into her makeshift cowl, and she struck at it, felt it bite her. She grabbed it with her fist and squeezed as hard as she could. It wriggled and popped.

  Tarzan was running now, screaming in pain. She peered down. He was fading! Stress, fatigue and fear had combined to rob him of his protective coloration. There were bees all over him, and she watched with dismay as they tore at his flesh. They pitched headlong into the street, driving the breath from her lungs, tangling her up with Edgar. Bees swarmed in on the helpless Tarzan, now reverting to his native tan color. And then he was streaked with red.

  Edgar helped her to her feet, still swathed in his blanket. Together, they limped through the street, and up the ramp to the radio room, and the two of them staggered through the door.

  They slammed it behind them and collapsed to the floor, screaming.

  Something was hitting her, striking her, swatting at her. And Edgar. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw Carey Lou and Heather McKennie dancing, dancing. The floor was littered with dead bees.

  The two kids were shaking. She looked at her hands. Streaked and torn. Edgar looked worse, but it was mostly cosmetic, except for a runnel along his upper thigh that oozed blood steadily. But they were alive.

  “Robor is coming,” Carey Lou said. “I got Sylvia on the phone.”

  An hour later, the rain began. As swiftly as they appeared, the bees seemed to disappear, going to ground or taking to the trees.