Beowulf's Children (2 page)

"Up to now you've lived by Earth Born rules. Now it's time for you to learn why they make rules, and why we live by them.

"Time to go to the mainland, time to learn why the Earth Born act so strange, and—it's time to learn what eats grendels. Now, off to sleep."

The children reluctantly headed toward sleeping bags and bedrolls. A few of the candidates tried to ask questions, but the Grendel Scouts wouldn't answer. "Bedtime. You'll learn, but not tonight."

"Why not tonight?"

"You'll learn it all. Now scoot!"

"Can Rascal sleep in my bed tonight?"

"Sure, your dog can sleep with you."

The children tumbled off to bed, pleasantly tired, utterly ready for sleep.

Jessica winced as Justin wiped the slaughterhouse blood from her face.

"Yerch. Tomato juice would have been just as good."

"Such a thought offends my creative soul."

"I did like the wasabi in the beef heart, Toshiro. Nice little touch.

You didn't do that last year."

"Musashi said to ‘pay attention even to little things.' " Toshiro stretched until his back crackled, and poked his bare feet close to the embers.

"I thought it went well," Jessica said. "Just the right balance.

Justin, you brought Sharon McAndrews. She's not twelve yet."

"She's bright, she's curious, and she's been asking questions about her mother," Justin said. "We have to tell her."

"Zack isn't going to like it."

"Freeze ‘im."

"We have agreed to the rules," Toshiro said. "We don't interfere until the Grendel Biters are twelve—"

"Wouldn't work," Justin said. "Either we tell Sharon now, or in a year she'll tease the whole damn story out of Cassandra, and then she'll tell the rest of the Grendel Biters. No preparation, just bang!, they know. This isn't the last time this is going to come up, either. Sharon won't be the only one to ask the right questions." He grinned. "And what's Zack going to do to me?"

"The Earth Born aren't always wrong," Toshiro said. His forefinger traced the scar on Jessica's neck. It was years old, almost faded, and most of it was hidden under her hair; but it trailed down her neck to her left shoulder. She snatched his hand, and kept it.

"I'd be more interested in what Dad thinks," Jessica said. "How does Coleen feel about this?"

"She thinks she can't go on fooling her little sister much longer," Justin said. "And I agree. You know their mother."

Toshiro nodded gravely. "Oh, well. Here, I brought some real food."

They moved closer to the fire to roast chunks of turkey breast over the dying coals, and they sat talking of and laughing over small or important things: the season's fish yield; skiing on the southern peaks; a review of the previous week's hysterical debate between Aaron Tragon and Hendrick Sills. (Postulated: Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was actually a misinterpreted satirical essay.) Modifications in the huge dirigible, Robor. The odds on next month's surf-off. The conversation went on for hours, until the laughter finally died down, and yawning took its place.

They were the Star Born. Their electronic servants could bring them all of Mankind's knowledge: history, science, drama, the great literature of a dozen cultures, and a hundred soap operas; but they lived in a primitive paradise, utterly safe, inoculated against every disease. There was more than enough to eat, meaningful work to do, and few dangers. They were a strong, clean-limbed clan. Their parents had been chosen after tests that made the old astronaut selection procedures look like child's play. Physically perfect and bright-eyed, they radiated the kind of relaxed familiarity that only those raised in an insular community can ever really know.

There were a few minutes of intense quiet, during which eyes met across the ember light, and nods preceded gentle touches of offer and acceptance. Two at a time they linked arms and drifted off into the shadows.

And then at last there were only four left: Jessica, Justin, Toshiro, and a young redhead named Gloria.

"Success?" Jessica yawned, a question that was not a question.

"Success," Justin agreed. Another round of chuckles.

"Now it's time for the chicken run," Jessica said.

Toshiro yawned. "Ruth still wants to try it."

Justin and Jessica locked gazes, and both laughed simultaneously. "Ruth?" Justin said incredulously. Then both said at the same time, in the same little-girl singsong: "But what will Daddy say?"

They broke up again, the laughter subsiding to hiccups. " ‘Pon my word," Justin said finally. "Zack ruined that child."

"She's asked to become a Grendel Scout," Gloria said. "And asking why we won't let her in."

The others shook their heads in unison. "No mainland for Camelot's eldest virgin," Jessica agreed. "Not until she breaks the leash."

Justin stirred lazily. "You have to admit she's a hell of a chamel trainer, though."

She nodded. "Chamels are fun. Justin, the Earth Born used to explore! I remember when they brought the first chamels back from the mainland."

"And lost Josef Smeds to a grendel catching them," Toshiro said carefully.

"Yes, but—" Her eyes were locked on the northern horizon. "I won't say it was worth that, but you can't explore without risks. And every trip teaches us more. Teaches me more about myself."

"I just wish... "

"I know," she said quietly. Jessica intertwined fingers with Toshiro, and gave his hand a squeeze. She affected a huge yawn. "I think... that it's time to turn in."

They rose, and retreated from the firelight. From out in the darkness there came a gasp, followed by a prolonged and girlish giggle.

Justin watched her go, and then, belatedly, became aware of the weight of a feminine head on his shoulder. "Behind us," Gloria said. "Geographic, just rising."

He turned; Gloria turned with him. Geographic was a silver line with a dot at one end. No details showed, but it looked huge, just above the line of the ocean.

Twenty-four years ago... God. "Ten times the mass, back when it went into orbit. Interstellar brakes! I wish we had photos. Can you imagine how bright that drive flame must have been?"

"No humans to see it from down here. Maybe it blinded a few grendels." Gloria was almost behind him, her hands toying with his hair. "Is that really your wish?"

To see it myself! "I wish... that tonight was Fantasy Night," he lied.

"It's any night you want," she whispered. She reached up, turned his face with her fingertips, and kissed him blisteringly.

His hands found the warm, soft places on her body, and they sank down together by the firelight. There was no fumbling; latches and straps unbuckled as if by magic.

If anyone saw them there, no one commented. There were no gawkers as their bodies, gilded by the light of embers and twin moons, entwined for almost an hour before release finally calmed them both.

They cuddled for a time, whispering, then, suddenly freezing, scrambled for a thermal sleeping bag.

Then there was silence, save for the distant sound of water, and the call of some far-off night creature. No one heard. The fire consumed its last morsels of fuel, and began to fade. No one saw.

The only eyes that remained open were grendel eyes. Open, staring, glass eyes.

Dead eyes.

Eyes that saw everything, and felt nothing at all.

Twenty-four years before...

It should have been dead of night. Her body knew that, even though the whole world glared silver-blue in the light overhead. The grendel had tried looking near it, and had been blind for most of a day. Blind with the agony in her head, eyes that saw only at the edges; blind long enough to die, but the lake monster hadn't killed her.

Since then she had not looked up, though she would wonder about that spear of fire in the sky for the rest of her life.

For a long, long time there had been nothing but the hideous pain in her head. Now the agony in her head was receding. Now she could remember that she was hungry. Feeble with hunger. How could she feed herself if she was too feeble to fight?

And how was it that she had never had such a notion until now? She had never fought the lake monster, but hunger would never have stopped her. Only fear.

At the southern end of a vast lake, where the water emptied out into a sluggish muddy river, there the grendel had lived as a swimmer. There she had first drawn breath, and killed a sibling for food. She began to remember, now, how hungry she had always been. She and her sibs had fought for room to swim and room to run, for space to hold their own swimmers, and had eaten what they killed, until only three or four remained. She remembered the sister who had challenged the monster of the lake, and died almost before the grendel could turn to see.

The lake monster lurked along the west side of the lake, where pebbly mudflat gave way to horsemane trees. Farther south the forest was different, a tangled mass of vines and hives and trees that grew like puzzles and snares. The lake monster lurked sometimes in the horsemanes, but never in the tangle forest. And south of the tangle forest was where the grendel and her sisters lived, and a myriad of their spawn.

Her sisters died, and there were only the grendel and her own spawn. And still it was not enough. She'd grown too large. Eating her own spawn felt wrong, repulsive, and that wasn't the worst of it. She and they didn't have the room. If they tried to spread out, the lake monster took them. No room to feed, not enough moss and insects for the spawn, meant that they never grew large enough to feed their mother. She had to move.

Here the muddy river flowed into the lake. By the silver-blue light of a thing in the sky that fit no pattern at all, she looked south. The patterns linking in her mind now showed her how strange it was that she had ever come here alive. She hadn't had the sight, then. Wherever she looked, then, was only fear, no patterns at all.

She'd seen how fast the lake monster was in the water.

And on land... but not the southwest shore. Something so peculiar had happened there that the images remained even now...

It had only been a little time since the change, for her and for the sister she must drive away. Her sister, beaten, had retreated to land. She had crossed that patch of pebbly mud and into the tangled forest beyond. No web of plants could stop the juggernaut that was a grendel. Her sister might find new turf.

The grendel watched her from the southern shore. Food was scarce, and there was the lake monster too.

Her sister was in the tangled trees, and into some kind of dust or mist. She screamed once, and burst out of the trees in a spray of wood and vines. Even the lake monster had never moved that fast. The grendel watched her streak down the pebbly mudflat at the head of a dust-cloud comet.

The lake monster lifted her terrible head—and let her pass.

She was nearly out of sight when she tumbled to a stop. She seemed little more than a heap of bones. The grendel had never dared go for a closer look.

And beyond that place was the lake monster's favorite lurk.

No, the west shore was impossible even to the senseless being that the grendel had once been. The route around the east shore was twice as far, twice the distance in which the lake monster could find her...

She must have had just a trace of pattern-making ability, even then.

She had waited for a hard rain, then gone wide around the east shore. Prey was fast and wary. On speed it could be caught. When the rain stopped she must enter the lake to shed the heat, and out of the water before the lake monster could come—

And so she had lived until she reached the river inlet.

The river was what she sought. She had arrived starving, but bottom feeders had fed her for many days. Then came a sickness in her guts, that moved into her head and inflated. For days she had known nothing but the pain in her head.

And now she felt cold and weird, and her bones were stretching her skin taut, and her mind was making patterns.

Way down there in silver-blue light: her own patch of water and land, with too little food for herself or her spawn. Probably the lake monster had already cleaned them out. Only one thing had been desirable about that place. There she could taste the lake monster in the water, and gain some sense of where she was.

Closer: the lake to her left, and on her right the pebbly mud, and the tangled wood where her sister had turned to fog at a speed-enhanced run.

Closer yet: more pebbly mud and horsemanes behind, and one huge old horsemane very near the water. The lake monster spent most of her time in the water offshore, but when the woods were wet they could shield her too. Grendel spawn could turn to grendels anywhere in the lake, and their surprise could be brief and intense when the lake monster burst from the trees.

Here: she could see muddy river and know the food beneath. The river would bring bottom feeders. She could eat now... and the lake monster would taste her anywhere in the lake, and know she was here. If she had seen patterns then, she would not have come here.

But she saw another pattern now.

The grendel bore her hunger. She watched the woods and the water. Of prey she saw no sign, and no sign of the lake monster. The silver spear of light failed to rise, but the strangeness of her world did not go away.

And so a day passed, and a night.

At midmorning of the following day, the grendel began to walk toward one great horsemane isolated on the mud.

No sign of the lake monster.

At a moment that was nothing but guesswork, the grendel began to run.

This was the first puzzle she had ever solved, and she had no faith in it at all. She ran, but she was not on speed. When a wave moved where no wave should be, terror and vindication surged and then she was on speed. She was skating on slick mud, her legs a blur, homing on the one isolated tree in a plume of mud and gravel.