Beowulf's Children (60 page)

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. Aaron 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.

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."

"Grendels," Big Chaka said.

Aaron nodded with infinite regret. "They boiled up out of the water. Six, seven, eight of them. Little ones, but a flood, once they realized that there was food. Cadmann screamed at me to get back. I ignored him and tried to get to them. There wasn't enough to hang on to. I shot one with the grendel gun. Cadmann shot two more with his rifle, and then one with his pistol. They got to Chaka first..."

He buried his head in his hands. "They screamed. They screamed. Oh, God, I never want to hear anything like that again. They were screaming curses, and killing grendels. For every one they killed, two more appeared. And they both slid down into the water, and then there was nothing but blood.

"I don't know how long I hung there, watching the water. Then I climbed back up. I was numb." He held up his hands. They were torn and bloody. "I lost my grip a few times, but I made it back to the top. I'd . ...'d torn my shirt. Lost my comm card. By the time I got back to the skeeter, the weather was turning bad. I called in a Mayday. I couldn't think straight anymore. I flew back."

He met Jessica's eyes. Then Justin's. Then Big Chaka's. Jessica moved up to hold him.

The group was silent. Justin was shaking.

Big Chaka looked up at the sky. It was massed high with dark, angry clouds. "How long before the storm?"

Almost in answer, drops began to fall.

He hung his head. "When it is over, we must go out, and see what we can recover of my son." He looked at Aaron again. Something—not anger, not grief—stole across his dark face, and then was gone.

There was pain. Pain in his back, his head, a great tearing, burning ache that threatened to consume all of his thoughts, all of his life. It was just too large, bigger than anything he had ever experienced in his life. More than all of his previous pains combined.

There was cold. Wet. There was water around him. Near him. Flowing over him.

Little Chaka awoke.

Is my back broken? It was a natural question, one that he couldn't answer at the moment. In his entire universe, nothing existed but agony. Such questions would come later—if there was a later.

His eyes wouldn't focus. All he got were patterns of shadow and light.

What was there to remember? What had happened?

He remembered...

He remembered.

Aaron. Oh, God. Aaron had shot him. Was that memory correct? And if it was, why wasn't he dead?

He struggled to move. What could move? He remembered a flash of light, the struggle to get his own gun up to the aim, Aaron's rifle coming up . .

.

No, he was thinking backward, now. From the last thing he remembered to the beginning.

Calm. Try to remember. Aaron shot him. And then--? And then Cadmann would have shot Aaron. Chaka went quite calm on thinking this. He might be dead. (Was he already dead? Was this what death felt like? Just a slow sinking into the earth? Was there pain and wetness? Certainly he had been shot in the head. Certainly he was dead now.)

He had no hope of truly being alive... did he?

But he knew that he had been avenged. In fact, if Cadmann had killed Aaron, and if he, Chaka, was still alive (as he began to suspect that he might in fact be), then there was the chance that he would be rescued. Cadmann would burn in hell before he would allow one of his own to—

Chaka's eyes finally cleared.

He managed to catch the whimper in his throat before it escaped, but that didn't make his world a better a place to be.

There, in the water before him, was Cadmann.

He looked so like he always did, except his tanned face seemed pale. Cadmann's blue-green eyes stared at him, almost as if he were about to speak. Almost. The hole in his throat said that there would never be another word from him. Chaka squeezed his eyes shut. It took all of his strength, but he had to do it. He had no choice. He couldn't cope with this. It was worse than death.

He opened his eyes again, praying that it was a hallucination. It could be, couldn't it? It would change when he opened his eyes again, the way objects in a dream change if you look away and then look back again.