Beowulf's Children (64 page)

"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 the 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.

Edgar was recovered enough to take control of the communications. He managed to reestablish a link with Geographic.

"Robor," he said. "It looks like the safest way for you to make it down is through the western defile, follow the ridge." He had collapsed into one of the command chairs. His face was swollen until only one eye was functional. They were running out of time. When this rain stopped, the bees would be back. And back. And back.

The door to the communications room opened, and Justin, Carlos, and Katya crowded in. They were followed by the others, survivors, looking utterly bedraggled.

"Robor, this is Shangri-La... "

Robor was almost two thousand feet above his normal cruising altitude.

Here there was no fear of bees, and the skeeter engines roared once again.

They managed to lash down about half the cargo in the dirigible's holds before the first of the winds struck them. It grew almost unnoticeably, a slow swell of rhythm, an interruption of the steady burr of the skeeter engines.

Then the rain hit like a solid wall of air. The stabilizers groaned, and Robor lurched and wobbled as he moved north on his mercy mission. The engines cried out, the wind slamming against him so brutally that it seemed that their entire world was coming to pieces.

But a kilometer at a time, Robor fought his way down from Deadwood Pass. Robor was coming.

Justin walked out slowly into the rain, to examine the bodies. He counted a dozen Star Born who hadn't reached shelter in time. Who hadn't had Kevlar sacks or Cadzie-blue blankets. What was it with those blankets?

He kept searching until he found what he was looking for.

There wasn't much left, but he recognized the clothes. He would have known her even if there were less left.

Katya was somewhere behind him. Perhaps she thought of speaking, then thought better of it. Justin knelt in the rain, and took his coat off. Slowly, he draped it over what was left of his sister, his love.

Then he gathered the bundle of red bones gently into his arms, and carried it out of the rain.

The weather had died to a slight drizzle when Robor finally appeared. The camp—what was left of it—was almost silent. Sixty-three survivors waited, faces upturned in the rain.

Robor was moored, and the exodus began. They handed the bodies—what was left of them—hand over hand.

And when the last of them was aboard, the rain had almost ceased. They could hear the buzz as the bees awakened.

Sylvia stood beside him, holding his arm. Her son seemed almost like a stranger, so intense was his focus.

"He's out there," Justin said.

"Who?"

"Aaron. He's out there."

"He's dead," she said.

Justin shook his head. "He's not lucky enough to be dead. Yet." He screamed out of Robor's door: "I'll be back, you bastard! I swear to God I'll be back, and I'll kill you!"

She pried him carefully away from the door, and closed it on the camp, the shattered shell of Avalon's dreams. And then they lifted away.

The rain started again, and the bees still huddled in the forest, awaiting their time. The chamels had been set free, and were returning to the plains. The horses and other livestock were all dead.

For a few moments there was no sound, no movement, and then the mud stirred.

Aaron Tragon rolled half free of the mud. His eyes were wild and staring, almost sightless. He wasn't certain where he was. The chamels had trampled him on their way out, and he was badly concussed. His eyes wouldn't focus. He had to move. Had to hide. The bees would come back.

Soon. They would.

But his eyes wouldn't focus.

He flopped over onto his stomach, and tried to crawl away. There was something coming. Death was coming. He couldn't think. He couldn't move. But it was there.

Cadmann. Jessica. Toshiro. More. More. So much death. He hadn't meant for this. Chaka. Wait, Chaka wasn't dead. Was he?

His mind wouldn't work. So much death. He stood, bent far over around broken ribs. He staggered through the streets of Shangri-La, the camp that he had schemed and stolen and killed to build. It was destroyed. Empty. Robor was retiring in the distance, grinning like some vast grendel, floating away.

He heard a noise behind him. He was too tired, too confused to turn.

It was the grendel. The grendel god. He felt a wave of fear, of freedom approaching. His judgment. His salvation. He spread his arms and exposed his throat.

And then the grendel came to him. And she said Cadmann...

And the grendel took him by the throat, and she said... Chaka.

And the grendel devoured him, saying... Jessica.

And in the grendel he saw her heart, and the heart beat, saying...

Toshiro.

And he passed into darkness and into death, and the grendel spake unto him, and she said...

Aaron.

We are one...

CHOICES

But there's a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone:

The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of

Early Childhood

It was a beautiful day for a memorial, Justin thought. Tau Ceti shone down on the bluff, on the land that Cadmann Weyland had cleared, planted, tilled by hand... on the house that he had built with the sweat of his back.

And if he turned around, Justin could gaze down on the colony itself. See the crosshatch of roads that Cadmann had burned into the ground. The maze of homes he had helped erect. It was a place of love and life, crowded with babies to whom Cadmann Weyland was godfather, or guardian, or honorary uncle.