Beowulf's Children (33 page)

There was a moment of silence; then Big Chaka said, carefully and distinctly, "Second."

Trish relaxed, stretching unobtrusively, merely listening. Toshiro had taught her more about relaxation than she would ever have learned on her own. She was going to miss him terribly.

The vote was going Aaron's way. They'd be returning to the mainland with the blessings of the First... with obvious exceptions. Aaron himself looked relaxed, almost sleepy. What in hell did he have in mind? It was only for her own amusement that Trish had accused the First of murder. Then Aaron had reached behind Jessica's bent head and taken her by the wrist and, irresistibly, pulled her close enough to speak directly into her ear.

"Trish dear, I've got everything I want here. If you throw it away for me I'll kill you." And he smiled reassuringly and let go, let her settle back in her seat.

He means that. What does he think he has? Trish watched Edgar watching Aaron. They'd known each other since childhood, raised for some years by Joe Sikes, while Trish was bouncing from family to family... What was going through Edgar's head? Trish kicked a shoe off and reached under the table with agile toes. Edgar jumped, then grinned at her.

"... Weather," Zack said. "Aaron—Edgar—maybe you haven't seen what happened at Surf's Up? It looked like your movie hurricane turned real. Edgar, for twenty years Camelot got weather like California without the goddamned quakes and the rioters." Zack was pleading. "What's going on? I looked through your Fimbulchaos file—"

Aaron nodded at Edgar. Edgar stood up. He'd started to do that anyway, Trish noted, but the illusion would be that Edgar obeyed Aaron.

And Edgar let that notion stand. "Cassandra, give us Fimbulchaos." He didn't wait for the computer's response. "Citizens, for over a billion years, life on Earth has been studying the sun. Astronomers have six thousand years of records if you allow the Egyptians. Three hundred years ago, the sun had only been around for a few million years, because God hadn't invented fusion yet... "

Cassandra had two suns floating beneath the communal hall's high ceiling. As Edgar talked, the two shrank to stars; more stars blinked alongside.

"Two hundred and fifty years ago they found resonant shock-wave patterns in the sun. Sol is ringing like a great bell. About the same time, astrophysicists first detected a supernova by the neutrinos blasting from its core, so all the telescopes on Earth were pointed at the Large Magellanic Cloud before the light even reached Earth. It's two hundred and forty years since we sent our first probes over the poles of rotation of a star. The thing is, almost all of that study was of Sol. Sol! We had twenty, thirty years of close observation of other suns before Geographic left Sol. What we know about Tau Ceti is pitiful."

One bright star expanded to fill the dome. A wedge of the fiery globe disappeared, and a dissected star rotated for Edgar's audience.

There were little pockets of conversation all through the hall;

Cassandra was amplifying Edgar's voice above background noise. "Tau Ceti runs a fifty-year sunspot cycle, maybe. We've only seen about twenty years of that, so it's really just a guess. We can detect shock waves in Tau Ceti's interior. They're a lot like Sol's, but the cells are bigger, and the surface storms where the shock waves meet—Cassandra, my Fimbulchaos Sunspot Four—they're more violent than Sol's." Flame arced out from Tau Ceti, hundreds of thousands of miles before the stream bent back to kiss the surface. "They're getting more energetic as we near the peak of the sunspot cycle, but they don't reach as far out as Sol's would. Tau Ceti's got more powerful magnetic fields.

"What's happening to Avalon's weather is this. The sun is hotter, and the corona is way hotter, and it's reaching farther into space. It's heating Avalon's outer atmosphere. The atmosphere expands. That sets up jet streams going west, and turbulence pockets too. The Avalon ecology is trying to cope with the hurricanes, increased ultraviolet and some higher-energy radiation. Not everything has evolved to survive that. Some of what the Chakas have been finding just breed like mad and then die—"

He caught Trish's eye on him, pretended he hadn't, but she could see his belly flatten as he stretched to play with the cursor. Edgar was looking good. She grinned, waited... he glanced her way, and she casually crushed her plastic cup, flexing her arm muscles. He stuttered, just for a moment.

She tried to catch him as he made his way out of the meeting hall. He was surrounded. Everyone wanted to talk to Edgar Sikes.

This was a drag. Even if Edgar was loving it. Trish thought it over, then went to Little Chaka and borrowed his code and key.

When Edgar got back to the Sikes house, Trish was in the bedroom, cross-legged on the waterbed. She turned off Disney's Aladdin as he came in.

He smiled, showing no surprise. "Are we granting wishes tonight?"

"There's always a catch, remember?" Trish stood as if levitating. She looked around and smiled. "You've been working."

He said, "Maybe a little," but it was pretty clear he had been doing a lot of work on the room that had once belonged to Joe and Linda. The big ornate bed Carlos had given them was gone, replaced by a classic waterbed. Linda's pictures were gone from the walls as her clothes were gone from the closet. The adjoining room had been Cadzie's nursery. Now it was filled with computers and workbenches. The open door to the bathroom showed that it too had undergone a transformation. The small living room was nearly empty, with some weights and rolled mats stowed along one wall.

The surprise was that except for the computer room everything was neat and clean. Was that for me? "I like it," Trish said. "You're looking pretty good yourself, Soft One. Drop your shoes. Let's do some sun salutations."

He followed her into the living room and took the Tree position, "attention" in military parlance.

In five minutes he was gasping. She made him slow down, stop to breathe when he needed to. He studied her stance and tried to correct her.

"Hold that pushup pose. Your ass comes up more, your spine exactly level. Now go down with your elbows back along your ribs."

"You can't do that."

"Hell no. But I can stand on my head," he said.

"Without a wall?"

His teaching amused her at first. Then she began to understand that he actually knew more than she did. Edgar was a fast learner.

He'd learned some self-control. When she'd first started coming here, he'd have leaped at her within seconds of getting her into a room with a bed. Now—He was antsy at first, but then, she hadn't been around for a week. She felt curiosity and anticipation. Edgar remained eager to please, and it was flattering to think she was probably the only human in the universe who could get Edgar's undivided attention even for a few minutes.

He was smirking at her upside down.

Edgar had a father. Trish could nearly imagine bonding to one human being, or two; never needing to guess the thoughts of a townful of people, each of them in control of a child's life. One human being, all-knowing at first, later his teacher, later nearly his equal. Now his father was dead, stripped to the bone, murderer unknown.

Had he loved Linda too? More likely worshipped her.

The First knew of his betrayal, and many would not forgive; and Edgar lived and worked among the First in Camelot.

Trish had wondered if he would survive at all.

Edgar's breath became uneven. He came out of the headstand slowly, one leg horizontal; toes touched the floor; he knelt.

Trish rolled out of her headstand. "That must have been two minutes.

Soft One, I'm impressed."

"Don't come down so fast. One leg straight out, then the other, then touch down. We done? Want some coffee?" Edgar asked.

"You've got coffee?"

He smiled.

"Later." She rolled to her feet and had her shoulder in his midsection before he could quite decide to evade. She stood up with Edgar over her shoulder. He was laughing. She rolled him, still laughing, onto the bed. "Now I'll show you why it's a good idea to warm up first. Get your heart pumping, your blood flowing. Soft One, do you really want to get on top?" She rolled them both. "Just one wish. Just one at a time."

Later she followed him into the electronics room and watched as he ground fresh coffee beans. "Smells different," she said.

"Darker roast," Edgar said. "Different beans, too, these are from higher up the mountain."

"Interesting. Who got them for you?" Under the omni-oven was a small terminal. The screen caught the corner of her eye.

Edgar's grin faded as he said, "Couple of Carolyn's kids. You know, the First were treating me like dog meat for a while. But Cassandra isn't nearly as, as agile without me plugged in, and they're starting to realize it. It wasn't me that whacked Carolyn—"

"It was me." RUTHFIX, said the top of the screen. Trish couldn't read the smaller print below, but there wasn't much.

"Ah? Anyway, with Dad gone they've got some interest in keeping me happy. Even if they don't trust me." Edgar poured boiling water into a glass cylinder, pushed a metallic filter grill steadily down from the top to strain out the grounds, and poured two cups of coffee.

She smiled faintly as, both naked, they sat down at the breakfast table. His cleaning project hadn't got this far. There wasn't a square centimeter of horizontal surface showing. Trish perched her cup on a stack of printout. "They'll have to trust you now, what with this expedition. For that matter so will we."

"We?"

"The expedition. Aaron."

"Oh. Of course you'll be going. Aayeee!"

"I'll be back once in a while. Or you could come with us—"

"No, that doesn't work," Edgar said. "Even with getting in better shape I wouldn't be much use camping out. Better I stay here and watch out for you."

"We'll have a base. Let us get set up, then come over." She grinned. Aaron will hate that. He doesn't like me having so much control over our wizard. But it's more than that, there's some real bad blood between those two. He just plain doesn't want Edgar happy. She let her grin spread into something else, a sultry smile copied from an old movie she'd seen. It had turned Robert Redford on, and it was having the same effect on Edgar.

"Who all's going?"

She kept her eyes fixed on his as she shook her head. "Not entirely sure. Aaron, of course. He'll be in charge. Me."

"Why you?"

"It's where the action will be," Trish said.

"Action. You mean power games."

She shrugged.

"War specs," Edgar said suddenly. "You won't have anything to hide from the First this trip—right?"

"I'd say so," Trish said cautiously. "Aaron might have something. So?"

"So you can give up binoculars and go back to using war specs. Get me over there and I'll maintain the links with Cassandra."

"There you go." Trish said. She stretched elaborately, as she did before she made love, and made sure Edgar saw her doing it. Now she was sure she had his full attention. She moved closer to him. "What's your interest in Ruth Moskowitz?"

Blindsided, it took him a moment to remember the terminal. He said, "Something Linda... no, never mind that. Have you noticed what Aaron's doing to Ruth?"

"Somewhat. He thinks we need her—"

"Nah. He wants her involved. Implicated. Because she's Zack Senior's daughter. He's going to hurt her. I wondered if there was a way to fix it."

"Why?"

"Linda once told me I... never get to know anyone. I guess I'm getting to know you, Trish, but you, you're bulletproof. It's hard to see you needing help. If Ruth keeps rubbing up against Aaron Tragon, she's damn well going to need something."

That was crazy. Edgar could barely help himself... Trish dismissed it. "You know Aaron better than I do, I bet. What was he like when he was a kid?"

SCRIBEVELDT AND EDEN HILL

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

all chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

all discord, harmony not understood;

all partial evil, universal good.

ALEXANDER POPE

THREE MONTHS LATER

Little Chaka watched, as his father took another careful step toward the winged creatures they called birdles. Cane first, then left foot, then right—all slow and smooth and deliberate.

Three birdles clustered about a low bush whose persimmon-sized fruit had turned from blue to red within the last two days. Only then did they begin to attract the flying crustacea. With the deepening of summer, bushes and leaves, plants and grasses all through the forests were changing color, ripening, exploding into a thousand hues of gold and red, and deep, fertile green. Horsemane trees infested with a hundred varieties of parasite and symbiote blossomed as if offering welcome to a hundred more.

The largest birdie-a big purple flying wing with spiffy little white wing tips-swiveled an independent eye toward Big Chaka, now only a dozen meters away. Big Chaka was a small man, barely cresting five feet in his tallest years. Time had crowded, shrunken, grayed him, spotted his dark face. His close-cropped, tightly coiled hair receded from his temples, and he needed corrective lenses to read and a cane to walk. A small, unwieldy pot belly swelled the front of his shirts, and his hands trembled when he wrote in the journals he had kept for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

But he could still move slowly and smoothly enough to approach animals more closely than Chaka would have believed possible. He was still Avalon's premier zoologist. And he was still Dad.

The birdie watching Big Chaka began vibrating its motor wings. Its foreclaws anchored it to a branch, and the branch began to quiver. A high-pitched whistling whine rose up. The other two birdles stopped eating and began rustling as well. They gripped branches with two forward claws, but the little paddle-shaped wings aft blurred with their vibration. The whine became louder and louder, until the trees rustled with it.