Beowulf's Children (20 page)

Two of them had discovered the insect life in the grass. Jessica bent down next to them and peered between the yellowish purple blades. Something that looked like a red-orange beetle was caught in a sticky webbing, and thousands of blue mites, so small they resembled a powder, were swarming over him. They stripped the beetle and carried the parts away into the rocks.

The mites disappeared, leaving only an empty blue shell dangling from a transparent web.

Damn that was fast, she thought. Insects on speed?

She shook her head. "All right!" she called. "Campsite is down in the bowl. Let's get to it-we've got a lot of setup before dusk."

She hauled the kids up, complaining, and set them on their way, and followed after them. But she still couldn't quite get the memory of those mites out of her mind. If a Biter laid his sleeping bags in a nest of those...

Blankets and sleeping bags, tents and cookstoves were produced, assembled, spread about. The entire camp sprang into existence like magic, a bubbling, steaming, jostling cacophony filled with busy bodies and giggling children, Grendel Scouts scurrying about on secretive missions, and Grendel Biters channeled into busywork and told to mind their own business.

Carey Lou shucked off his backpack, and looked about for a place to call home. He wandered a little away from the main camp, toward the familiar shape of a horsemane tree.

The frozen-waterfall appearance entranced him. He had spent many nights back on Camelot in the shaded comfort of the local trees, and had stolen his first kiss in their shadow. He shucked off his backpack, perhaps nurturing romantic thoughts, and stepped toward the tree.

Jessica grabbed his shoulders, and marched him around. "No." Bad idea.

"Why?"

She brushed some of the hanging fronds aside. "Take a closer look," she said sternly.

He looked, and gulped. This wasn't at all like the friendly, sleepy trees on the island. From the root to as far up the trunk as they could see, and even in the strands of the mane itself, the entire tree was infested with symbiotes, parasites, things.

Near the base, the greenish brown mane had turned milky, and took on the appearance of a coarse spiderweb. Something was fluttering in one of those nearby. Maybe prey, maybe predator, maybe spider. Carey Lou didn't get close. He gulped again. "Maybe that one over there?"

"These things are notoriously hospitable to local life. Give it a try," she said.

Carey Lou walked cautiously to a second tree. He looked closely: no symbiotes. Relieved but still cautious, he pulled out his rolled tent. His thin arms snapped the roll outward and it unfurled into a triangle, then popped open further: a disk, then an open dome.

Four startled Avalon birds dropped out of the horsemane tree like so many dinner platters. They caught themselves, and wheeled around the tent as it settled to the grass like a big balloon. Two brushed wings, whirled to fight. One knocked the other spinning. It dropped toward a tree a dozen meters farther out, recovered too late. The tree had it.

Carey Lou stepped close, but not too close. Jessica was behind him, fingers resting on his shoulders. The bird: she could see details, now that it was trapped. Two big rigid wings, curved up at the tips into spiffy little vertical fins. Four little translucent oar blades, the motor wings, were still trying to thrash the bird loose.

The creature's relationship to a sea crab was very clear. The rigid wings had been a bifurcated shell, way long ago. That early crab hadn't been so specialized as today's crabs.

Jessica stepped forward, reached gingerly into the web. She was ready for something like a big spider. If anything had scuttled toward her hands she would have jerked back. Nothing did, and she pulled the bird loose, holding it by one wing. The motor wings buzzed, trying to pull it away. She held on until she had brushed webbing from the fixed wings. It was too rigid to bite her, but it shivered hard in her hand, trying to twist around to escape.

"I've seen these before," she said. "Have you? Where have you seen something like this?"

She waited expectantly.

Carey Lou studied it, knowing that she wanted him to get it right. His eyes suddenly opened wide. "Sea crabs!" he exclaimed.

"Right... go on."

"Split shell. You know, the wings are more like a beetle's than a bird's."

Jessica released the bird. It hovered for a moment. The four blurred motor wings were splayed like legs on a coffee table. Then they tilted aft and it zipped away. She said, "Very good. The grendels don't like salt water much-so there was a lot more variety in the life-forms just off the coast. All those crab things. Strange how often the pattern has repeated itself on the land, isn't it? We've seen leaf-cutting bee-things like little crabs, and birds like crabs... " "And crabs like crabs..."

She laughed. "Anyway-our lesson for the night-camp only in the open, and back with everyone else. Now scoot." She swatted his behind, sending him back toward the others.

She waited there in the clearing for a moment, smelling the forest. This was good. There was nothing around here that could hurt someone Carey Lou's size... but it wasn't a bad idea to put the fear of God in him.

A little healthy fear could keep you alive.

One of Old Grendel's daughters held the river hereabouts. Old Grendel moved up a tributary. Why fight her own blood, when far more interesting prey were about? She had a score of crabs trapped here. They hadn't tried to crawl past her; they were crawling upstream, and Old Grendel followed at her leisure.

She was following the weirds.

Far above her, the daughters of God had settled out of sight. They had come from the drylands, a place Old Grendel never expected to see close up, but now they had landed much closer. Those flattish shapes with their blurred wings reminded her of the near-universal shape of the Avalon crabs. But the huge grinning Grendel God was of a different shape entirely. Perhaps the "daughters" were parasites.

And the little ones, could they be parasites on the parasites?

She could see three, four of the little ones at the edge of the cliff, looking about them, then withdrawing one by one. Now others moved downslope, slowly, clumsily. Would they come to her?

No, they were gone before they came that far. Old Grendel observed patiently. The sky was darkening before she saw them again. Five, six weirds moving back up the rocky slope.

Old Grendel believed she could reach them.

She could see the tip of a tree up there. Likely there was water.

She would have to drink until she could barely move. If her daughter caught her then, she would die. With a belly like a drum, she would have to crawl two miles uphill without ever going on speed. At the top she would have used up every erg of energy; she would be dry as an old bone.

If there was no water, she would die.

If anything attacked her, she would die.

Watch them move, slow and clumsy, easy prey. It was like watching hunter-climbers. Old Grendel flashed underwater and crunched down on a bite-sized crab. She would see where else the weirds led her.

At suppertime there were baked potatoes, and Cajun-style greens, and a Grendel Scout favorite, a rolled biscuit-bread baked in the campfire.

And as they settled down to enjoy the feast, the kids were treated to another specialty.

With great ceremony, Aaron and Chaka tramped back in from the shadows, carrying a steaming cauldron between them. "This," Chaka announced, "is the specialty of the house. This is the real reason that we like to come over here. There's never enough of it to take back to the island." He paused, and then said smilingly: "There really isn't enough for you guys, either, but if there's any left, you can divvy it up."

The kids looked suspicious, but when the older Scouts didn't even invite them to eat, and promptly served themselves, Carey Lou shouldered his way over, poked a spoon in, and tasted.

He pronounced it delicious, and they dove in.

It was like a thick jambalaya, served over crumbled biscuit. Delicious. It was filled with things that chewed like mussel and tasted like clams or fish. Several times someone asked what it was composed of, and received only an evasive smile in return.

"Secret recipe," Aaron said, and everyone broke up laughing.

There was only a tiny helping for each of the kids, enough to whet their appetite for burgers. "Mainland Stew," they were told, was for full Scouts only.

After a little wait, Jessica inquired innocently, "Who'd like some for lunch tomorrow?"

All hands went up.

"Well," she said. "I guess we have to respect the public demand, now, don't we?"

Carey Lou belched with satisfaction. "So tonight," he said. "Tonight we get to find out more about grendels?"

"Tonight," Aaron said.

Heather McKennie leaned forward, her dark eyes intense. "They were like a feeding frenzy coming after our parents, huh? Like sharks on earth?"

One of the other kids chimed in: "Or like piranhas! I saw that James Bond movie, and they ate that woman right up!"

"Blood-crazed monsters... "

Justin laughed. "I read up on piranhas. It wasn't really blood that triggered them. There was this guy who went down to the Amazon. Zoologist named Bellamy. Went down there and studied the little bastards."

"Why?" Aaron asked curiously.

"Well, their behavior didn't make sense to him. The stupid little buggers rip each other to pieces. Dinnertime isn't a friendly affair at all."

"Ghastly business." Katya's "upper-class" English accent was terrible.

"Not a black-tie occasion?"

"They'd eat the tie too. Now, our barmy zoologist began wondering: what's in it for the fish?"

He dropped his voice. "So they went to the village where it happens. Where the natives throw pigs into the water, for the entertainment of the tourists. And they'd throw one of these terrified creatures in the water, and it would thrash-and the water would churn with blood. Piranhas ripped it to ribbons in a couple of minutes. Just like in the movies."

Justin was getting into it now. "And he wondered: Was it the blood?

Was it? And he took a bloody knife, and slipped it into the water... "

They held their assembled breath.

"And nothing happened. Nothing. And then... he slipped his foot into the water."

"Jesus. What happened?"

"Nothing. And then he slipped his hand into the water-"

"Christ! Did he stick his dick in the water too?"

"I have no idea," Justin said haughtily. "I did hear that he later requested an audition with the Vienna Boy's Choir, but that was likely a coincidence." Justin gave the speaker a nasty look.

"At any rate-then he slapped the water with an oar, and they went crazy." He leaned back. "It was the splash that did it, all along. Drives 'em nuts."

Aaron nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "I bet you have trees overhanging.

Monkeys or something fall in occasionally... "

"Yeah. Instant piranha chow."

"Well, but there aren't many trees that overhang the water, and monkeys aren't that stupid," Chaka said. "Not enough critters fall in the water, certainly not enough to affect evolution of the fish."

"So why?" Aaron asked. "What is in it for the fish?"

"Absolutely nothing," Chaka said. "It's extra behavior."

"Extra?"

"Extra. Extraneous. Useless. Something that got genetically coded with a real survival characteristic. Happens all the time."

"We haven't found anything like that here," Justin said.

"How do you know? We haven't had the chance to look," Katya said. "Not over here. We understand Camelot, but really, the grendels didn't leave much to understand. Here there's a real ecology, but they won't let us come look at it."

"They," Heather said solemnly. "The First."

"They're just trying to take care of us," Sharon McAndrews said.

"Aren't they?"

"Jailers take care of their charges, too," Aaron said. "You can't be a prison warder without a prisoner-"

Sharon McAndrews frowned. "You told us that you would tell us some things. About our parents." The other kids echoed her enthusiastically, but she sounded a little nervous.

Justin, Jessica and Aaron looked at each other. "Not tonight," Aaron said softly. "Tomorrow night. But not tonight."

"Why then? Why not now?"

"Because-" Justin began.

"You sound like a First," Heather said.

"Maybe I do. But we do have reasons," Justin said. "These are things you have to learn first. You'll know before we leave here."

"Is that a promise?" Sharon McAndrews sounded younger than her twelve years.

"Sure, it's a promise," Aaron said.

They sipped their coffee, and watched each other without speaking. Unspoken was the thought: First, Carey Lou has an appointment. He won the lottery.

Carey Lou had been asleep for no more than an hour when they came for him. They said nothing. Blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back. Thrust a rope between his teeth. Someone spoke, in a voice too gruff for recognition: "Hold on to this, and follow us. If you drop it, we leave you for the grendels."

Thank God they slipped shoes onto his feet before leading him away from the camp, out into the woods.

He had no idea how long he walked, or what time it was.

He lost track of the distance. He could see nothing, but felt every slap of brush, heard every night sound. He kept telling himself that this was calculated. This was all planned. They wouldn't really leave him for the grendels...

Still, his teeth bore down on that half-inch hemp until he was certain that it would break off in his mouth.

"Shhh," Justin whispered. He adjusted his night glasses, binoculars with big lenses to gather as much light as possible, and focused in. Fourteen-year-old Carey Lou was about twenty-five yards from the edge of the water, and looked ready to soil his pants. Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing pants. Or shirt, or socks-anything, in fact, but an expression of stark terror. The boy stared back at them beseechingly. His hands were strangling the grendel gun. He knew that somewhere back in those shadows was Heather McKennie, she of the cutoff jeans, freckles, tanned hide, and raunchy sense of humor. Heather, a whole enormous two years older than Carey. Heather would be his prize...