Beowulf's Children (44 page)

"There is negligible probability that the crossings were caused by random walks," Cassandra said. "I record seven cases in which the paths altered to approach each other. This is from records of past decades. At present the probability that the paths will cross is under ten percent."

"They're avoiding each other now?"

"It would so appear."

"Son of a bitch," Justin said. "First they cross, now they don't. I betcha Ruth is right, the pterodons guide them, and now they're steering them away from each other."

"Why would that be?" Aaron demanded.

"Avalon Surprise!" Ruth shouted in glee. "Actually, I think it's got something to do with Edgar's variable star. The weather's changing, and the Scribes—"

Aaron wasn't listening. He was staring out at the Scribe beast.

Justin joined the group who were loading food on the tables. Cold snouter meat, turkey and turkey eggs, vegetables and heads of lettuce from Camelot. The mainland crops weren't in yet. A glass cauldron of water was beginning to boil. Katya and Little Chaka zipped open a bag that held water and three wriggling samlon, and tilted them into the pot. Chaka chopped rapidly with his wand of a chain saw at a stack of root vegetables, then threw them in in handfuls.

Aaron said, long and low, "Wow!"

The edge of Asia's shell was scraping the rocky outcropping at the foot of the hill. Aaron stood at the hill's crest, not eating. Justin, with a turkey leg in his hand, tried to guess what Aaron was seeing. He'd never before heard Aaron say Wow.

The rippling blue lip was nearly hidden. They caught glimpses...

"Wow," Justin repeated softly. He turned and shouted, "Hey!" Heads turned. "The lips!" Justin shouted. "The lips are the only soft part of the beast! Everything else is armored. Why don't the grendels tear into the lips?"

Little Chaka left his place at the soup pot and came trotting to look.

Justin cried, "Chaka, it's Cadzie blue!"

Aaron whooped and began running. Justin saw him snatch the chain saw from its place on a flat rock.

Chaka looked down, nodding. "Poison, likely enough. There are life forms on Earth that signal like that, with some distinctive color. Snakes and insects and such. ‘I'm poison, get away.' Sometimes it's a bluff. Yes, that would... that would do it. The baby's blanket."

Aaron slowed as he approached Zwieback. Zwieback didn't shy; Ruth had trained him well. He spoke to the beast, then swung up. Zwieback began to move, to run. As he did, he faded from view. Justin watched, shaking his head and grinning.

They all stood at the edge of the cliff. Ruth was horrified. Justin was trying to find admiration in himself for Aaron. Admiration was all around him, at any rate, for the flying man on the nearly invisible chamel. Aaron rode straight toward the leading edge of Asia, then turned sharply to ride along her endless prow. The great eye of Asia watched placidly.

Aaron reached out with the slender wand of the chain saw, and slashed, and leaned far forward and snatched. He rode away waving half a square meter of blue flag.

Chaka said to Justin, "Camelot has your photos, you know. Cassandra has the view through your war specs and Katya's. If that's Cadzie blue, it's a wonder Cassandra hasn't told us."

Justin shrugged. "Cassie's got ice on her mind too." The computer program had been damaged in the first grendel attack. Recovering most of its memory had been the task of years. Lost medical techniques were still killing people.

Asia was just beginning to react. Her eyes closed. Her prow dipped to the earth, closing her off to the world. Now she was all earth-colored shell, a shallow butte sparsely covered with nests.

Aaron pulled up whooping, just short of the dining table. The dead Scribeskin, taken with an edge of twenty-second-century sharpness, was only two or three millimeters thick. It was already beginning to wrinkle.

Aaron swung down, holding the swatch of blue high in one hand. Ruth was there. He swept her into his arms. And kissed her hard.

Ruth whispered in his ear.

Aaron froze. Then, "Wonderful!" he said cordially. "Your family will be so pleased!" He strode past her. Justin saw the shock on her face, and wondered for an instant, but he had to watch as Aaron let the slice of skin settle like a veil across a tree spread with Cadzie-blue blankets.

Justin turned away to hide the grin he couldn't stop.

Yes, it was Justin's idea. And if Aaron hadn't done something, Justin might have had the credit for solving Avalon's murder of Joe Sikes and Linda Weyland. But Aaron had stolen his thunder... and it had blown up in his hand.

Against the Cadzie-blue blanket, the thin piece of Scribeskin was conspicuously pale. The skin was the wrong color. Anyone could see it. Heads were shaking; Aaron was furious.

Ruth... Ruth handed Silver and Zwieback over to Katya, then spoke in low tones to Little Chaka. She pointed to Skeeter II, and then again toward distant Shangri-La. Chaka nodded. Ruth sat down next to him and stared at the ground.

It was a gorgeous, brilliant morning at Shangri-La. Clouds raced across the sky in streamers. The breeze was stiff and warm; still air would have made it an oven. The light... well. Dawn light had been different when Ruth was a child. Less dazzling, less... active? And Sol was even cooler than Tau Ceti, they said...

Less than two hours by Little Chaka's skeeter, and she was back at the base camp, back in a world where she didn't have to ache every time she looked at Aaron Tragon.

Horsemane trees stood huge and ancient along the eastern edge of the plateau that held their base camp. A ladder rose along the bare side of the biggest and oldest tree. Big Chaka held the ladder's foot. Little Chaka, at the top, reached around the bare side of the trunk and probed with a stick at the mane. A bit more than halfway up the tree, something hidden was nipping at his stick, shortening it in three-centimeter bites.

The Chakas might not have noticed a pair of long-armed crabs in the tree's peak. Three now, each as big as a small dog, leaned out of the brilliant green foliage as they peered down at the intruders. Ruth fished for her comm card without taking her eyes off the crabs.

Then she relaxed, because Edgar Sikes was on the far side of the tree with his face wrapped in war specs, and both Chakas were looking up. Edgar must have warned them. He was twitchy about top crabs, wasn't he? These might be related to the Camelot variety—

Something fell slantwise from the sky. It smacked into one of the top crabs and knocked it free.

Trees hid the rest of the action, and Ruth mewed in frustration. Her hand was on the phone now, and she put it to her mouth and ear and—

"Cassandra! Did you get that?" Edgar's voice.

"I have views through Chaka Junior's war specs and yours, Edgar.

Processing."

"Yah!" Edgar ran for the mess hall. Saw Ruth. Ran over, snatched her wrist, and continued running. Startled at first, Ruth let him pull her, then laughed and tried to pull ahead.

She was barely keeping up. And some masochistic part of her didn't want the exhilaration. She had earned her pain, dammit, and... oh, what the heck. It felt good to run. You couldn't mope when you were running.

They passed over the drawbridge, ran past the open gate of the electrified fence, guard dogs yipping their greeting. Past a happy maze of half—erected buildings: bare wooden beams, naked iron struts, plastic shells, drop-clothed wire frames.

The mess hall was a rounded half-cylinder on the main square. It was constructed of fabric on semicircular struts, sprayed with quick-setting foam. It was the first building erected, seven months before, and had served as both dormitory and cafeteria for weeks. Serving trays were an arc along the back. The big holostage was unfolded in its center, and Ruth made for that. Edgar was puffing, but heyyy, Edgar used to be a cripple!

Trish Chance, eating alone at the far end, stared at the intrusion.

Edgar sang, "Trish!"

"Don't have time, Edgar. Got to catch the Veldtbound skeeter in about fifteen minutes. Hi, Ruth."

"Make time, this time, just this once," Edgar said. "Cassandra, you done?"

"Twenty seconds."

Trish had lost interest.

It was hard to believe the rumors: that Edgar and Trish were lovers. Trish didn't act like it, and she was nothing like him. Ruth said with some diffidence, "Trish, he's really got something."

Trish smiled one-sided, finished her breakfast cereal in a leisurely fashion, and came over just as Cassandra turned down the lights. Then they were looking through a blur-edged window at a stand of horsemane trees.

The recording wasn't particularly sharp; a war specs headset wasn't that good. Top crabs leaned from the thickly grown treetop, waved menacing claws at the oblivious man below.

"Slow motion, Cassie," Edgar said.

It all slowed like a dream. Little Chaka looked up—

Even in slow motion, the predator was still falling like a grendel on speed. Cassandra paused it in flight: a triangular airfoil with sharp horns jutting from the forward corners; eyes on stalks just inboard of the horns; oversized oar-shaped motor fins aft.

Then motion again. The eyestalks retracted; the marauder slewed sideways in the moment before it impacted one of the treetop crabs. One horn smashed directly into the shell, piercing it. The impact flung the top crab into space, threw it free of the horn.

The top crab hit the ground hard. The predator corrected its spin, pulled up, skimmed the dirt, wheeled around and was on the dying crab. It flipped the crab over, ripped away the ventral shell and began to feed.

"That was from your POV, Edgar. From Chaka—"

Big Chaka made his slow way into the mess hall with his son alongside.

"Hello, Ruth. Trish. Edgar, you get that too?"

"Yessir. You show me yours, I'll show you mine."

"Cassandra, if you will oblige."

"Chaka Junior, your view was from underneath." Close view of a horsemane tree's bare trunk, a stick probing the green mane. Something small and mammaloid was snapping at the stick with long mini-hyena jaws, glaring through Cassandra's magic window with murderous eyes. Suddenly the view swung straight up. A variety of Avalon crab was studying them, its arms waving restlessly, claws snapping.

Pause. "Observe the claws," Cassandra said. A cursor arrow indicated the top crab. "Here they're much longer than on our two Camelot varieties.

Chaka, shall we designate this—"

"Sikes's Top Crab Number One," Big Chaka said firmly. Edgar looked around with an unbelieving grin. Ruth smiled to see it.

"As you wish."

Motion resumed. Something smashed into the crab, knocked it into space, clung for a moment, then separated... and it all froze. The cursor arrow moved to the predator, which from underneath was nearly featureless. "Here the claws are recessed, almost invisible, and the mouth likewise. The eyes were retracted. Now—" Motion: the predator was spinning out of control. Eyes emerged, then paddle-shaped fins adjusted: its spin stopped in an instant. Paddles played as the creature dropped. Canards emerged in front. It actually brushed the grass pulling up, swung back like a guided missile, and-braked.

Its claws were airfoils, canards. Retracted, they fit recesses that faired the crab shell into a smooth hull. Its mouth was startling: huge and square, not just a mouth but an air brake too. The thing hovered for an instant, with claws extended and mouth wide, then dropped onto the dying top crab. It was the claws that did the work of ripping the shell open and tearing the meat into gobbets.

The view shifted: Cassandra was running Edgar's view again. A reincarnated top crab chittered from a treetop. Something dived from the sky in slow motion...

Trish Chance said, "Ruthie, when you do talk, you're worth hearing.

Guys, that was fun, but I'm off to see the Scribe."

Ruth glowed. And didn't notice Trish's overdone wink, nor Edgar's nod.

"The Scribe. I've only seen it on the holostage," Edgar said. "Is it as awesome--?"

"More. They're calling it ‘Asia.' "

But the enthusiasm had leaked out of her, and Edgar noticed. "Aaron's still out there?"

"Yeah. Did you hear? Aaron thought he'd solved the killings, Linda and Joe. He didn't, and he's furious... "

"He's there, and you're here. Anything happen?"

She paused awkwardly. Then: "I told him I was pregnant."

Edgar stared. Gently he asked, "How long?"

"I've only known for about two weeks. It was that long before I got up the nerve to ask Cassandra."

"What's he think?"

"He said, ‘Your parents will be so pleased.' Then changed the subject."

"He'll never be Father of the Year, but he'll try to keep your dad happy. There were too many close votes on personnel," Edgar said. "Lord knows Zack would rather French-kiss a grendel than trust me. Camelot got hit with one of those weird flash-typhoons last week. Zack walked into the comm shack drenched. I said. ‘It seems to be raining,' and he went for a second opinion."

"Is that why Aaron keeps me around? Some of the time? Nobody talks to me but you, Edgar. I know I don't own him, but when Jessica's around it's like I don't even exist."

He nodded. "No. You don't own him. But that's no reason for him to treat you like sleet, either. Ruth, I'll shut up any time I'm told to."

"Oh, no, Edgar."

"Okay. Do you really think you were needed to distract Carolyn McAndrews?"

She looked away. "No." And began moving away.

" ‘Course not. Carolyn would have let Trish walk right up to her." Edgar followed. "So it follows that Aaron didn't have to seduce you just to get your help stealing Robor."

She seemed astonished. "No!" Then suddenly grinned. "But he sent Trish to you."

"Sent Trish Chance to distract me. Then I think he told her to stop.