Beowulf's Children Part 17

The trail led down and north along one of the mountain ridges framing Deadwood Pa.s.s. Twelve kilometers from the pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s. 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 spa.r.s.e here, but most of the bowl was covered with gra.s.ses 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 gra.s.s. Youngsters that age can be energetic, blurs one moment, motionless heaps the next. Another talent lost with age . . .

Two of them had discovered the insect life in the gra.s.s. 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 sh.e.l.l dangling from a transparent web.

d.a.m.n 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, a.s.sembled, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 gra.s.s 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 relations.h.i.+p to a sea crab was very clear. The rigid wings had been a bifurcated sh.e.l.l, 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 appet.i.te 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"Why?" Aaron asked curiously.

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