Beowulf's Children (35 page)

Strange, Jessica thought. We aren't just thinking about grendels any longer. There are other things out there. We've got to lose a whole generation's worth of bogeybeast stories, or we'll never survive.

"These are winners. Fast, and strong, and senses are sharp. Hungry, too. Haven't stopped munching leaves since they arrived."

Chaka's voice was thoughtful. "The trick will be keeping the herd together. We want to protect the family dynamics, if we can."

"Cassandra," Jessica whispered. "Note the brush, and the type and quantity and maturity of the leaves being eaten. Special note of the grazing patterns of the little ones."

They'd had to add modules to Cassandra in order to keep up with the flow of data. That had sparked yet one more debate: should their computer power be used for information processing or manufacturing? It was settled only when Zack took the side of the Second. "We can live without more consumer goods, but we can't live without knowledge," he'd said, surprising many of the Second. Everything was so new, so rife with possibilities and problems. Love her as they might-Avalon had little tolerance for errors.

Aaron's voice: "The net is ready. Repeat. The net is ready."

She grinned. This was going to be fun. A week of preparation. And now...

"On my count," she said. "Three... two... one... go!"

Four balloon-tired dirt trikes exploded from meticulously constructed blind pits. The twelve chamels whipped about, startled and outraged to find they weren't Avalon's only masters of camouflage.

The beasts took off toward the east. Jessica revved her trike, hit a mound of earth, and exploded up into the air. She slammed down with a spine-jarring bounce. The roar of the hydrogen engines, the exhilaration of the chase, her own adrenal flush all dizzied her deliciously.

The chamels were wheeling like a flock of birds. Jessica spun around the outside to head off a move eastward. Chamel defensive strategy would keep the pups in the center, actually making them easier to herd.

Hooves and wheels churned up clouds of yellowish dust dimming Tau Ceti. Jessica fell slightly behind the herd as they thundered now toward the northern horizon. She cleared her throat of dust and said, "On track, Justin."

"We ‘re ready for you."

The brush here was harsh and scraggly, unappetizingly brown except for tufts of tough purple grass. Even as she watched, the skin coloration of the beasts began to shift to match the sparse foliage.

Beautiful.

"Two klicks from target," she yelled. "Keep it tight!"

Justin wheeled the skeeter around the outside of the herd and drove a stray male back to the center. The chamels traversed a long stretch of brown gravel. They changed colors wildly as the terrain changed, and from his aerial perspective it seemed the ground itself was flowing like a river. It was easier to track the herd by dust cloud than by direct observation.

Everything was right on schedule. "In position. Have visual contact with corral."

"Yippie-yi-oh-tie-yay." Jessica's voice. He knew she was grinning.

Jessica dropped her plaid bandanna across her face as she cut toward the middle of the herd. They parted for her like the Red Sea. As the trike jolted through the grass, making almost sixty klicks an hour, she could reach out to either side to touch a chamel. Damn, they were beautiful beasts! Fast, strong, agile-and intelligent. The pups darted through the herd seeking pockets of adult protection. The trike's roar blended with the steady rolling thunder of their hooves. They wheeled left to avoid a log, and she jerked her handlebars to follow.

A commotion to the right: Aaron Tragon, mounted on Zwieback, the chamel Ruth had tamed for him. They burst out of the trees just ahead of the herd.

The herd wheeled, confused for a moment... and then followed.

Jessica yelped her pleasure. Damn. He had been right again. Chamels were extreme olfactory sensitives. Pouches on Aaron's mount carried an overwhelming dose of chamel pheromones. Whammo-Zwieback became an instant alpha. Their herding instincts and trainability boded well. Chamels were an odd hybrid of horse and ostrich, with wide, fleshy mouths and thin, strong legs.

The trike jounced savagely as they crossed the last rise. Ahead of them was the corral, seven feet tall and a quarter kilometer around.

"All right. Let's keep it tight, keep it tight-"

It was hardly needed. The chamels followed Aaron through the open gate. Jessica turned aside at the last second and the chamels charged past her into the pen. Once inside they realized they were trapped. They snorted and tossed their heads, but there was no way out but the gate, and Chaka was already swinging that shut before Jessica could dismount and dash over to help him.

She ran up the short ramp leading to the edge of the corral.

The new twelve had joined fifty chamels captured over the previous week. The new ones snorted restlessly, but even as they did, their skin changed color, matching the beaten ground beneath their hooves.

Aaron swung off his mount, and grabbed for the ladder.

He slipped, and fell back to the ground. Jessica's fist went to her mouth. For a moment, fear locked her into immobility.

The adult chamels reared back: unmasked, Man's smell was very different from their own. Two of the adults turned their backs, and began to kick.

She had seen this behavior before. A ring of chamels to protect a pup, the heavy, hard, sharp hooves striking out over and over again. It wouldn't work against a grendel, but cameras had watched the creatures surround a bear-sized predator and literally kick it into pulp.

Aaron scrambled up to the ladder, spun as one of the hooves caught him alongside the shoulder, and leaped upward. He got two rungs up before another hoof caught him in the thigh. He grunted but kept going, and was out of range a moment later, lips curled into a satisfied smile. She could see where his jeans were dusted and cut by the striking hoof.

Chaka helped him up over the top, and he thumped down heavily. He swept Jessica up for a big, warm kiss, then gave a victory wave to the circling skeeters.

Dust fluttered about them as the skeeters touched down, and the penned chamels brayed even louder.

Jessica climbed up the ramp to look down at them. "Get along little doggies," she sang to herself. "It's your misfortune... "

"All right!" Justin said, slapping his hands together. She jumped, startled-he had made his approach silently. "What's left on the chart for today?"

"We've done enough work for today." Her back still ached from digging trike pits, but she had to love him. What an eager beaver. It was getting easier to relate to Justin. The bad times, at least the really bad ones, seemed behind them.

"I think we've got time to lay for the spider devils. What do you say?"

She peered up into the sky. Tau Ceti was still bright and high. "We've got five hours of daylight. Have a spot in mind?"

Chaka raised a huge finger. "How ‘bout the heavy patch, about two klicks from where we trapped the chamels?"

"Some folks would say we were too close to water," Justin reminded him.

Jessica laughed. "Older folks. I'd bet."

"Yup."

Chaka waved nonchalantly. "We'll use motion sensors and a backup team.

Thermal, if you want them, Justin."

"Well... the spider devils seem to like the area. Grendels would eat them if they could catch them." He pitched a rock off across the horizon. "I guess we can handle it."

Jessica slapped him on the back. That's my unbrother. "Sounds like a plan."

As Justin and Jessica ate lunch a pair of skeeters rose and swept away toward the east. Another came in with a load of chamel chow.

"Quite an operation," he said.

The fences were already sealed again. Unlike the main camp, here there were no passive boundaries-but they did have an electrified fence, twenty-four-hour guards, movement sensors, and a fortified, grendel-proof shelter.

The shelter was Quonset-hut-shaped, and certified grendel-proof by Colonel Cadmann Weyland. Jessica felt an odd mixture of security and disgust when she remembered the way he had tested the crystal-filament-reinforced plastic constructions...

Memory: Blackship Island was gray and rocky, just a spur, really. It held one of the relay stations constructed between Camelot and the mainland. A skeeter pad. Emergency supplies. A stormproof shelter.

The waves shot foam high into the air where they slapped up against the rocks that day. Jessica looked up at her father where he sat beside her. His face seemed as gray as the rock, as gray as the sky.

They had said little to each other since the day she planted the disrupter in his home. The day she had betrayed their relationship.

Two skeeters flew in from the north, their flight patterns carefully timed and synchronized, one flown by Evan Castaneda and the other by Aaron. Cargo hoists with specimen slings hung beneath each skeeter.

Jessica's heartbeat accelerated at the thought of what was about to happen.

Cadmann spoke casually. "Let's have Skeeter Seven first." Aaron's craft hovered overhead, and wenched down its load.

Eleven feet of fang and gray scales and claws and spiked tail lay in that sling. A grendel. Type 6 was the color of gray mud; otherwise not very different from the now extinct Camelot grendels, but with a down-turned double hook at the tail... and a solemn, brooding mouth, where holos of the Camelot horrors showed a demon's grin. Chaka strode up to it, hunkered down, and peered into its eyes.

They were open, staring, sightless.

Or were they? Could anyone really say what was happening in the depths of its quasi-reptilian mind? They knew enough to be certain that a few volts of electricity trickling through its sleep centers would keep it quiescent.

"The jaw," Chaka said. "The hinges. See what I meant? Its bite gets more powerful leverage than the Camelot grendel, but it takes a smaller bite."

Her father was holding his breath as he examined the grendel. Given any excuse, he would kick the grendel, shoot it, inflict some indignity upon it that would be one one-millionth as devastating as what had happened to him all those years ago.

But it wouldn't happen-her father was not a man for futile gestures.

The grendel slumbered on.

Chaka nodded, and Cadmann waved the motionless cargo back into the air. Aaron raised it, and then dropped the bundle down through a hatch in the prefabricated dome. If this test went well, these domes would eventually dot the mainland.

This dome was twenty feet in diameter and seven feet high, made of prefabricated sections that slotted together in minutes. They had spiked and chained it into the rock.

Cadmann cut the line. Skeeter VII spun away and landed on its triple size pad. Aaron bounded out, his long, tanned face intense.

"Any problems?" Cadmann asked.

"No. Not really," Aaron replied. A slight edge of anxiety belied his words. "She's been on ice for seven hours, waiting for your call. Cassandra identified the grendel hole, and then we just trapped the bitch."

Bitch? Jessica thought. He's never called a grendel bitch before. He said that for Dad.

Cadmann nodded. "All right. Let's do this."

Skeeter II swung into position. Its winch distended, to lower a second grendel into the shelter. They detached the wire.

They sealed the shelter, closed the door, and bolted it shut. Skeeter II landed.

Jessica noticed Cadmann's expression. No doubt about it, he was enjoying this. "Shall we go?" he asked.

There was no hesitation. Chaka climbed in with Evan. Cadmann and Jessica chose Aaron's skeeter. The autogyros retired to a prudent distance.

"Cassandra," Cadmann said. "Visual."

A square of holographic window opened. Suddenly, they were peering into the dome.

The two sleeping grendels were curled in their nets, looking almost peaceful. The larger one was gray, the smaller a mossy greenish brown. That one was a Type 3. Her tail was a crown of spikes. Her long toes were built for climbing trees. Unusual: most grendels couldn't climb.

She looked to be easy meat for the gray.

Cadmann cleared his throat. "Cassandra," he said. "Please record all angles."

"Yes, Cadmann." It seemed to Jessica that Cassandra's voice sounded just a little like her mother's.

"Terminate current."

"Yes, Cadmann," Cassandra said.

Cadmann took a deep breath. He seemed very peaceful.

"Trigger speed," he said.

A small aerosol can on the inside of the dome began to spray a pink mist.

Speed was the grendel secret. It was an oxygenating agent rivaling rocket fuel in potency, a chemical secreted in sacs in the grendel's back. Grendels running on speed burned energy faster than any creature born of Earth.

And the smell of speed was the smell of a challenger. It triggered a territorial response, a hyperexcited combat readiness more powerful than any mere hunting mode. It drove grendels insane.

The can hissed as its contents were released.

Above the dome, the humans hovered in their skeeters. Waiting.

The smaller grendel woke first.

They watched its eyes widen. Its tongue darted in and out twice.

"It should have flashed." Cadmann sounded puzzled.

The green grendel should have flown instantly to the attack. Instead, the first thing it did was retreat, banging into the wall, thrashing and hissing. It scrabbled, seeking a way out, finding none. Finally, it turned and faced the larger beast, its spiked tail raised a little from the ground almost, like a scorpion's.

"That's very odd," Aaron said quietly. "It almost seems to be thinking, doesn't it? Judging the odds?"

"It knew it couldn't win," Jessica said.