Beowulf's Children Part 12

It was alien to him.

There is a rhythm between human beings, as well. As steady and strong as a heartbeat is the rhythm that men and women find with one another.

And in a social service so willingly and pleasurably provided, in this brief mingling of flesh and fluids, this joining of warm moist membranes in the service of health and convenience . . .

There is a moment, near the peak of it all, when logic falls away, and breath grows sharp, when the eyes meet, and you can see through each other, through all the little social barriers . . .

Down, down to the place where a bit of hindbrain still thinks that this is about something.

Isn't this about making babies, it whispers.

Isn't this the continuation of life? And aren't children vulnerable things, helpless before the cold and the predators? And isn't this act really about the rest of your life? And your children's lives? And your children's children's . . . ?

Isn't there a part, a place, a tiny, lone voice somewhere deep inside that asks if this couldn't, shouldn't, can't mean something more? That looks into the eyes of each and every partner, and asks, in its own way .

Are you the one?

"Carolyn was taking care of me, not Mom. Mom wouldn't let anyone touch her. I saw her stop crying, and then she toppled out of the chair. A bunch of the grown-ups picked her up and ran her into the hospital, and I don't know what happened after that." Katya stirred in his arms. "I wasn't alone after that. They moved me right into Dad's place."

"I spent a lot of time there too."

"I remember."

"You were h.e.l.l's wrath with a grendel gun." She'd beaten him in the exercises, Justin remembered. "Did Carlos start you early?"

She laughed. "Yeah."

"That outhouse we all built when we were, what, twelve?"

"About then. Geometry lessons," Katya said.

"Don't remember what we had in school that year, but that's how I learned carpentry. Katya, I must be slow of thought. Why did anyone want a cla.s.sic outhouse?"

"Hendrick took a skeeter and lofted it to a peak in the mountains. Coffee pickers use it. There's not another outhouse in the universe with a view like that."

"What did it feel like? I grew up with two mothers-"

"I had a great many," Katya murmured. "Not just Dad's guests. Mary Ann and Sylvia, Carolyn, Rachael Moskowitz. Dad would skeeter off to find special rock, wood, crystals, bones; or he didn't want me underneath when he was welding. It must have been like that for the Bottle Babies, don't you think?"

"You're not like them."

"No." Katya shuddered. Why did she do that? But her drowsy voice trailed off.

He turned onto his side. She snuggled up behind him, his b.u.t.tocks tucked against the furred thatch of her groin, her hand reaching around to cup the recent instrument of her pleasure.

They had never spoken of a future together.

The moon was looking Justin in the face. Not Man's moon. He listened to the surf. His surf, but not his ancestors'. Shorter, quicker waves striking with more force in the stronger gravity . . .

But moon and surf belonged to his children, and his children's children, for generations to come.

The act of love so recently performed there, in that bed, carried its own rhythm, born in the eternal search for the Now. The search to end the lonely "I." The endless search, conducted eternally, by every human being, throughout each isolated lifetime.

That rhythm was perhaps the only thing born of earth remaining to them. And when those rhythms changed to match the moons and tides of Avalon . . .

As perhaps they had already begun to do . . .

What then would remain of them?

Jessica . . . he thought one last time. Before his thoughts devolved to mist, and sleep claimed him.

When Justin woke, Katya was gone. He could hear sounds of construction on the beach. He showered in cold water, pulled his pants on, and wandered out.

The vast Chinese-dragon shape of Robor was undergoing a full diagnostic over the Surf's Up beach. The hundreds of separate, flame-and heatproof hydrogen pods providing her lift were individually listed for leaks, and superstructure was inspected . . .

Robor was as large as a football field and as tall as a twelve-story building, the largest vehicle on Avalon. He could lift forty tons of cargo. The Minerva shuttles could land anywhere near a water source (although the discovery of Grendels had made that a nervous proposition), and also travel to orbit. The skeeters had more versatility and speed and maneuverability, but minuscule range. Only Robor could travel to the mainland and bring back the booty.

Robor was constructed mostly of molded plastics. The satellites that originally surveyed Avalon had revealed oil in large quant.i.ties. When Geographic took its hundred-year jaunt across the sky at one-tenth light speed, she brought with her three prefabricated factories to manufacture the kind of high-tensile plastics that only zero-gee processing made possible.

Robor had no independent motors. Instead, three skeeters were anch.o.r.ed to the upper frame in triangular formation, and hooked into the dirigible's main bank of batteries and Begley-cloth solar collectors. Their engines became Robor's engines.

Robor was a favorite target of the Merry Pranksters. He had been painted with huge cartoon-whale eyes, been transformed into a gargantuan eighteenth-century Venetian gondola, and had once been transformed by a half ton of lightweight building foam into a remarkably lifelike phallus. When Little Chaka pointed out that Robor couldn't lift in that state, the decorations disappeared quick, but the dirigible's p.r.o.noun remained he.

His most recent incarnation was more innocuous, colorful . . . and oddly appropriate.

In red and green and electric blue, with snaky white mustache and huge, crimson-lipped leer, Robor was currently the living image of a Ming-dynasty dragon G.o.d.

The dragon hovered above the colony of Surf's Up, and in his shadow a working celebration of a kind was under way.

Justin spotted Cadmann's broad shoulders and graying hair through the crowd, and sought him out.

"Morning, father figure." He grinned. They shared a hug. "I wasn't expecting to see you."

"We're putting a rush on it. I think the eel in the Amazon and the bomb in the mine shook some of us up just because they came so close together. Inquiring minds want to know. Like, why now?"

"Just a moment, Dad." Justin shouted to Tos.h.i.+ro Tanaka. "Hey, Tos.h.i.+ro-san, can you go over this checklist and make sure we're not forgetting something? Thanks, owe you one. Dad, what's the report from Geographic?"

"Weather's fine," Cadmann said. "They're doing a critter check on the highlands and Xanadu, nothing so far. I take it you're going on this trip?"

"Sure, I'm in charge of the candidate Scouts-after all, their overnighter was kind of disrupted by all of this."

Justin led Cadmann to the main hall. Surf's Up's meeting hall was a 1960s Hollywood set decorator's fantasy of a South Seas beach hut, built of thornwood and foamed plastic struts. The roof would have been convincing, but the fronds were all from one mold, all identical.

Cadmann spread a roll of paper out on the table. "I think better on paper," he said, but he had computer files as well. "Ca.s.sandra, give me last night's notes, construction mode, freelance."

He spread out the paper. "Here," he pointed, "is the mainland. Eight hundred miles from here, and a good two days by Robor. You'll have some decent wind behind you. Coming back will be slower, but you can charge up off the mine's collectors."

"We'll hook up for recharging as soon as we land."

A small crowd had gathered to listen. Aaron slipped through the press. When he stood beside Cadmann they were almost exactly shoulder to shoulder. Aaron was larger, but time has a tempering effect available from no other source. Aaron Tragon might be a Cadmann Weyland one day. He wasn't yet.

"Yes, there's plenty of charge," Linda said from the door. "The mine hasn't used any for a while. Hi, Dad."

Cadmann looked a little startled. "You certainly made good time," he said.

She colored a little. "Take after my dad, I guess."

Justin grinned to himself. Stu Ellington held the record for speed through that pa.s.s. She'd have been taking it easy with Cadzie aboard. Justin had already put money on her for the next Landing Day race.

Little Cad was nursing, or sleeping, or both. The cloth covering Linda's bosom made it difficult to tell which. "Dad, we've found two more maybe-type explosions in the mine record."

"Grendel guano! Are the dates significant?"

She stared. Cadmann said, "I meant, did they happen when someone might have wanted-skip it. Tell me more."

"Recent explosions, twenty weeks ago and fourteen. Low energy, like gunpowder again, way tamer than dynamite. But they didn't happen where boring was going on, they happened in the secondary processors. That machinery is very forgiving, and it just went on chugging."

Cadmann thought carefully. If sabotage, then . . . test explosions before the real thing? But the real thing had been something quite different. "Got any ideas, small bright one?"

"Some defect in the thermal unit at the secondary processor. Some contamination in the coal itself? There's a mushy look to one of the spikes, like . . . less like a single grenade than a bushel of cherry bombs."

"Coal dust?" someone said from the door.

She shook her head. "Coal dust can explode, but we thought of that in the design. If air is mixing with the dust there' d have to be something wrong in the machinery, something Ca.s.sandra doesn't see. Even something deliberate."

"Sabotage?"

She shrugged.

"Have you done a spectroscopic on the coal?"

"Yes, of course, months ago-"

"No, I mean recent."

"Joe says we can't, the instrumentation is gone. We've got to go there."

"I was thinking dynamite at the bit, but what if air was getting in?"

Cadmann was looking about him, not obviously, trying to read faces.

"Possible, but tricky. We'll look when we get there," Linda said.

"All right. Bluff Two. Good moorage for Robor, and it's the right place for the Scouts. Make it the base, and we'll check the other mine areas by skeeter."

"What about the lowlands expeditions. Dad?"

"Remember, this is a dry run. Take three days, check everything, do your overnight with the Scouts, then you can look for a good place for a base camp. Stay alert, and pull back fast if anything unexpected crops up."

"Reconnaissance in force," Linda said.

Cadmann grinned faintly. His fingers moved across the map. "Once you're through with the Scout stuff, you can do geology with one skeeter and use another for mapping. While you do that, the Grendel Scouts stay on the Mesa with somebody steady in charge. Usual rules there. Stay high, no lowlands at all. Any variation from this order will be cause for mainland privileges to be revoked. Do we understand each other?"

For a moment Justin wondered if Aaron would give an argument, or say something provocative-he had been known to do that. But he wanted this trip too badly. Justin could almost see him sitting on his emotions, holding his tongue for dear life. Instead of smart-mouthing, he nodded.

Linda sighed. "I'm sure that whatever is wrong, we can handle it. Nothing to worry about. Otherwise," she said, "I'd never take Cadzie with us. Never in a thousand years."

Chapter 7.

THE MAINLAND.

Its horror and its beauty are divine.

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lY, The "Medusa" of Leonardo da Vinci

"Can we talk?"

Linda looked up with faint annoyance. Linda had learned what all mothers learn. Sleep when the baby sleeps, stupid! She'd just got Cadzie down for a nap.

"Please."

Edgar looked desperate. Joe had been worried about him lately, worried that Edgar had problems he wouldn't talk about. Joe would want to know. She sighed and pointed to the sleeping baby. "In your work room, then. Ca.s.sie, Cadzie is asleep. Listen for Cadzie. We will be in Edgar's workroom. Call if he wakes up."

"Understood, Linda," Ca.s.sandra said softly.

Edgar led the way. "Coffee?"