Beowulf's Children (19 page)

She chuckled.

"Star Born Secrets? Well, never mind. Business first," he said. "We want to take a good look at the processor."

Now the Biters were streaming down Robor's passenger ramps. Twenty kids, the youngest just eleven, bright healthy kids on their first trip to the mainland.

"Stay close together," Jessica called down. "Patrol leaders check packs." She turned back to Joe. "Justin will check and if all's clear, we'll hike in and sleep at the oasis."

"The usual communication arrangements?" Joe was smiling a little, even through his concern.

"Joe. You wound me. It's a sheer accident that those transmitters get switched off every time."

"Yeah, yeah."

Justin was climbing up atop Robor, and had unhooked one of the three slave skeeters. He revved its engine, then whipped it up into the air and down toward the mining complex.

"We want to get down to Paradise," Jessica said, "get things set up.

If we're lucky, we can get a Run in tonight. You can handle things here?"

"Sure," Joe said. "Straightforward diagnostic and repair. We've got the tools, and some replacement parts. Everything we need to repair—the problem is: what the hell happened, and will it happen again?"

PARADISE

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden

"Fall in. Count off," Justin said.

The youngsters formed a line, oldest and largest to Justin's left, a stair step down of heads off to the right until at the end was Sharon McAndrews, not quite the youngest but certainly the shortest. Beyond Sharon, Jessica, Carey Lou, and Heather McKennie formed a small group.

"One. Two." They counted down the line to Sharon, then the older Scouts, finally Jessica.

"Remember your number," Justin said. "Now let's do it again. Count off. Okay. Remember your number, and remember who's on each side of you. Okay, go wander around."

The kids scattered. Justin waited a moment, then blew a whistle.

"Count off!"

There was a moment's hesitation, then they began, "One. Two."

"Twenty-six." Jessica finished the count.

"Right. We'll be doing that a lot," Justin said. "Now the rules-"

"We don't need no stinking rules." Carey Lou giggled. "Rules are for Earth Born."

Justin saw that Joe Sikes was recording everything. "Not quite," he said. "There are times when you need rules, and this is one of them. Now listen:

"Groups of three. Never less than three," he said. "One to break his leg, one to stay with him, and one to go for help. Groups of three or more. Okay? Good.

"The trail is marked, orange paint splotches on the rocks. If you see red splotches you're off trail to the left side as we go out. Green is off trail to the right side going out. Everyone got that?"

"Red right returning," one of the smaller ones said gravely.

"Right-uh, correct. And Jessica is Tail End Charlie. Nobody gets behind Jessica. No one. When I look back and see Jessica I want to be sure everyone is ahead of her.

"When either Jessica or I call ‘Count off' you count off, right then, and nobody ever answers for anyone else. This isn't Camelot! There are grendels out here."

Some of the Grendel Biters exchanged knowing looks.

"Okay." Justin turned to Joe Sikes. "Latest reports?"

"All clear to Paradise," Sikes said. He didn't sound happy. "You're cleared to trek. Good luck."

"Thanks. Okay, let's move out."

Chaka lifted his pack-minimal gear, plus the glass cauldron that was big enough to serve them all-and swung it into place with a grunt. He hadn't done that a moment early. Joe Sikes shook his head and turned toward the minehead.

Justin unslung his rifle and checked the loads, then led off down the side of the pass, down north and eastward toward the green valley and the grendels. There wasn't any danger up this high. Everything they knew about grendels said they couldn't go far from water. Still, he looked everywhere, ahead, to the sides. It was his fourth trip, the third as leader, and every time there was that feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The first time Justin had come down this trail his father had been leader, and Joe Sikes had been Tail End Charlie. There had been a big fight in the council, with Zack adamant that no children would go to the mainland.

"Think again, Zack," Cadmann had said. "You have to let go sometime."

"No."

"Speak for yourself, Zack. You can give orders down here, but my family hasn't been part of your jurisdiction since a year after we came here."

"That's not fair."

"Which way did you mean that?" Sylvia demanded. There'd been a buzz of conversation and whispers as everyone remembered those times. Cadmann had predicted danger. No one had believed him. No one believed there were any dangers on the island at all. They were all sure it was pranks, or something worse, an old military man's desperate efforts to be needed. Until the first grendel attack. Then Colonel Weyland had taken his share of tools and equipment and gone up to build the Stronghold, and if he hadn't done that, when the samlon changed the grendels would have killed everyone on the planet. No one liked to think about that, not then and not now. Colonel Cadmann Weyland, warrior and Cassandra. And now Zack kept seeing dangers.

The trail was dry and dusty, which made Justin feel better. Grendels didn't like dry and dusty. After fifteen minutes he stopped. The two youngsters who'd been trying to keep up with him gratefully leaned against boulders. Behind him the Grendel Biters were strung out along the steeply rising trail. No sign of Jessica, but the trail threaded among boulders. "Count off!"

"One. Two." The count moved back along the trail until he couldn't hear any longer. There was a pause, then more shouts passed back up the trail. "All present."

He took a moment to raise his binoculars. They hadn't had good binoculars the first time, just the increasingly rare and valuable war specs. Those had come all the way from Earth. Once there had been fifty pairs of the computer-enhanced optical systems. Now only eight remained.

But a year ago they'd been able to schedule the time for Cassandra to build optical grinding equipment, and now they had binoculars in a variety of strengths and fields. These were 10 X 60, really too heavy for backpacking, but he could see a long way, and they worked well into twilight.

War specs were Cassandra's eyes. The First could see through those; but they couldn't see through binoculars.

Justin scanned the area below. Far down in the valley something moved among the grass at the river's edge. Almost certainly a grendel. Not much else lived that close to a river. But sometimes-sometimes there were large things that didn't look much like grendels. They never stayed still or visible long. What were they? Another kind of grendel? They didn't know, and that ate at Justin.

This was their planet but all they really knew was that anywhere there was water there were grendels. All kinds of grendels. Some made dams, some hunted farther from the river. Some lived in shallow mud, some couldn't live without submerging themselves in river water, but if there was water, there were grendels.

The river was low. The lakes formed by grendel dams were not much more than ponds, and where there had been grassland and bushes last year there was nothing but caked mud with vast cracks. And above that were dry rock and horseman trees. Grendels couldn't live in the rocky ground above the river, but Justin scanned the rocks and sand ahead anyway. Nothing there but swirls of dust kicked up by the rising wind behind him. On Earth there would be snakes. He'd seen them in films. Avalon didn't seem to have evolved the snake, and so far they hadn't encountered anything particularly venomous, at least not to humans.

"Watch your feet," Chaka sang out. He was rolling along like a juggernaut, ignoring the way the ground rose. "Justin, Carlos will want that shell if you've got room."

Now Justin saw it too, an empty shell with a golden iridescence, curled and fluted, lying in the mud like a dinner platter lost from the Sun King's palace. Centerpiece crabs were big enough to catch Joeys, the largest thing that lived in these dusty areas. Their jaws held crud and corruption but they weren't dangerous to anyone with boots on. Carlos made wonderful things from their shells.

"Maybe coming back," Justin said. His pack would be lighter and roomier too.

"Okay. Kids, pass the word back, it's on your left and don't miss it. The centerpiece crab evolves those shells as a mating display. He wouldn't do that if he had to see to his defenses. You see an animal get that gaudy, or a bird, you know it's because he's been threat-free for a long time."

Carrying that mucking great pot, why wasn't Chaka puffing? Nobody else could do that, barring Aaron.

Behind Justin, Katya Martinez had her binoculars out. "Ha."

"Ha?"

"Joeys. Off trail to the left, about three hundred meters ahead."

"Ah. Good. If there's Joeys there aren't grendels. Okay, kids, let's go." Justin led them onward, through the dry rocky ground. The air seemed even drier than usual, a hot dry wind blowing through the pass from behind them.

"Devil wind," Katya said.

"Devil, you say?"

"They called it a Santa Ana back in California. Air mass flows down a mountain range, you get a foehn wind. Sirocco in Europe. Hot, dry compressive beating, tots of positive ions. Makes people nervous. You feel it, don't you?"

"Guess so. You read much about it?"

"Some."

"Anything I ought to know?"

"Do you think I wouldn't tell you? Ha. See, it's getting to me, too."

The trail led down and north along one of the mountain ridges framing Deadwood Pass. Twelve kilometers from the pass there was a saddle. Their dusty trail led to the right, then steeply uphill. Dimly above they could see green trees, bushes, tall but straggly grass. Justin called a halt.

"Fall in. Count off." He waited for the responses. "Okay, listen up." He pointed up the hill. "That's where we're going. Chaka, Katya, and I'll go up first. The rest of you follow along, but stay together. Jessica will tell you when it's safe to come up." He unslung his rifle and again checked the loads, then waited until Little Chaka and Katya had done the same. He carried the rifle at the ready as he led them up the hill.

"Are there grendels up there?" Sharon MacAndrews asked solemnly.

"Not there," one of the older Grendel Biters answered. There were snickers.

"Never been any so far," Justin said. "Not so far."

Eight years before he'd followed Cadmann up that trail. Aerial surveys showed there wasn't anything large up there, and Geographic's IR sensors had never seen anything. "So what are we worried about, sir?" he'd asked.

"Caves. The second grendel lived in a river cave," Cadmann had said, limping along on a stick carved by Carlos and a skinny new regrown leg. "We went in after it. Stupid of us, we didn't know what grendels were."

They'd gone up slowly, while two armed skeeters flitted about watchfully.

"We lost good men hunting that grendel."

"Looks quiet." Chaka's words brought Justin out of his reverie.

Paradise was a garden mount in a desert of dusty volcanic rock. It thrust upward from the side of the mountain range, a rocky slope that rose steeply for nearly two thousand feet. The gentle bowl at the top was a five-hundred-foot circle no more than fifty feet deep at the center. Some trick of nature had placed a spring at one lip of the dish. Water gushed up and ran down into the dish. At the bottom of the dish the water vanished into the ground, never to reappear. Paradise was a high oasis with no streams leading in or out.

They circled the mound until they came up over the lip on the side opposite the spring. Vegetation was sparse here, but most of the bowl was covered with grasses and horsemane trees. Insects flitted among the plants. One flew closer to have a look at them.

It was smaller than a hummingbird, but larger than the insects of Earth. There were two large wings as rigid as the wings on an airplane, and a blur beneath it from its motor wings. It hovered near and didn't seem afraid of them at all. After a while it lost interest and flew back down into the bowl.

At the bottom of the bowl was a tree that seemed covered with webbing.

Something moved in there.

Justin scanned the bowl, first unaided, then with his binoculars. Finally he opened his communicator. "We're here. I see nothing unusual," he said.

"Roger. Geographic reports nothing unusual," Joe Sikes said. "You're cleared to take the kids in. Only this time try to keep the radios working."

"Sure thing." Justin flicked the channel switch. "Bring them up, Jessica. All clear."

Dusk.

"It's getting late," Jessica said. "You sure you want to do this?"

"Part of the job," Justin said. "And it won't get any earlier. Chaka?

Coming?"

"Sure."

"Me too," Katya said.

"I think I should go," Jessica said.

"Nope. Someone's got to be in charge here, and that's you. Let's do it." Justin looked over his rifle. "Check your loads. Right. Here we go."

He led the way out of the bowl, over the lip, and down toward the river far below.

Jessica stood at the rim and watched them until they were out of sight among the volcanic rocks. "I've got a bad feeling about this," she told herself, but she grinned, because she'd had the same feeling last year, and the year before, and it hadn't meant anything. Mostly I just want to go with them...

She went back to the kids. They were sprawled on the grass. Youngsters that age can be energetic, blurs one moment, motionless heaps the next. Another talent lost with age...