Beowulf's Children Part 2

"Can you see it?" Evan yelled above the turbine whine.

The sunlight glinted off the stream. She thought she caught a slender shadow, but . . .

"Not yet."

"Try these." Coleen handed her a comm-link optical set: binoculars with cameras linked to the colony's central computer system. "Ca.s.sandra. I'm turning the war specs over to Jessica."

"Ready, Jessica," the computer responded.

She slipped on the war specs-they looked and felt like heavy sungla.s.ses-and was rewarded by an enhanced version of Ca.s.sandra's camera-eye perspective. She adjusted it so the right lens was transparent, and the left gave her the comm-link image.

She squinted her right eye.

Yesss . . .there be the dragon. s.h.i.+mmering in the fluorescent reds and blues of the thermal enhancement, the eel struggled its way upstream. "Ca.s.sandra, display best size data."

Length: 647 cm.

Estimated weight: 27 kg.

Ca.s.sandra gave them a glowing wiggling eel track.

Jessica whispered "Enlarge." The eel stopped, then wiggled forward and back. It expanded to fill her field of vision.

"Who sounded the alarm?"

"Little Chaka or his old man," Coleen said. "One of the Mubutus picked up the river alert. Nothing this big, not ever."

Not for the twenty years we've been here, and not for-She thought about the implications. When humans arrived, the island of Camelot had an incredibly simple ecology, samlon and green slime in the rivers, Joeys and pterodons in the high mountains, and a few th.o.r.n.y or poisonous plants scattered about the plains. Grendels had eaten everything else. But how long had it been that way? "You know what this means? The grendels didn't own this island for thousands of years. They couldn't, the eels wouldn't keep coming back-"

"Sure about that?"

"No, but it's something to think about. Don't lose it!"

"I'll give you another," Coleen said. "What triggered the return after all these years?"

"Now, that is one interesting question."

The tumbled granite majesty of Mucking Great Mountain rose up to greet them. The peaks were constantly swathed in fog. A few irritated pterodons swooped out of their nests to investigate Skeeter VI. Humans didn't hunt pterodons. Over the two decades that humanity had infested Avalon, the great leathery creatures had lost all fear, and now considered the skeeters worthy only of derision. The autogyros were fast but clumsy, barely capable of beating a pterodon on the straightaway, and zero compet.i.tion at aerobatics.

The eel continued to labor upstream. It humped painfully through the shallows, fighting as urgently as any Earth salmon ever did.

Salmon.

Samlon.

Jessica repressed a shudder.

This thing was almost certainly a carnivore-but would confine its hunting to water. It might be as dangerous as a moray eel, fully capable of taking a baseball-sized lump out of an unwary b.u.t.tock, but it shouldn't be able to do anything else. It couldn't come out of the water.

Still . . . "If it had speed it would have used it by now," Jessica dictated. "Ca.s.sandra, database search, match that image."

"No exact match. One similar life-form, two hundred ninety centimeters in length, observed in a stream on Black s.h.i.+p Island." A map flashed momentarily in her vision: Black s.h.i.+p Island was a smaller uninhabited island off the mainland coast.

"Evidence of speed?" she asked.

"None," Ca.s.sandra replied. "No visible speed sacs, no structures evolved for cooling. Probability low to nil."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Every skeeter carried a fully armed shock rifle, one of the tools developed in case the grendels ever came back. They never had, but everyone was trained to use the weapons anyway. Shock rifles could deliver numerous designer loads: chiefly a capacitor dart to stun, and an engineered biotoxin which triggered overload of its "speed" sacks. Speed was the superoxygenated hemoglobin that allowed the grendels to accelerate to over 110 km/hr in about three seconds. The toxin drove a grendel completely berserk, drunken on her own "adrenaline." A speed-drunken grendel produced enough heat to cook itself in about seventy seconds.

Evan tapped his ear. "Roger."

"What's the word?" Coleen shouted.

"Kill it. Standing Munic.i.p.al Order One-four-two. On file. Kill it first, decide whether it's harmful later."

"It's got no legs," Jessica said. "It can barely function on the land.

Ca.s.sandra says it doesn't use speed. Let's wait."

"Got my orders," Evan said ruefully.

"Is Skeeter Six still set up for dolphin transport?"

"Sure-we flew Quanda and Hipshot up yesterday."

"Great. Somebody was playing with a Ouija board."

The eel struggled up and up, blindly urgent, making surprisingly good time. Justin had kept up with it, although many of the children had dropped back by now. She patched herself through to Justin's comm link.

"Jessie here. What does it look like to you?"

"Ugly thing. Ignoring us, though. What's the word?"

"Kill it."

"What do you think?"

"Let's take it alive."

"I like the way you think. Zack's got ice on his mind."

There was a crackle of static and another voice came online. It was Zack Moskowitz, governor of Avalon. "I find that tasteless, young man. You listen to me, both of you-your father has standing orders-"

"Our father isn't here, Zack."

"I want you to kill that thing. We don't know-"

"That's right, we don't. I'll kill it when I'm ready."

"Dammit, Jessica!"

She thumped her headset. "Brzztfplt. Gee, Zack, you're breaking up! Over." And switched her comm link off as Evan was bringing the skeeter around for a landing next to a large pond.

The skeeter thumped down on rocks. Jessica s.n.a.t.c.hed up the rifle, and hopped off.

The eel humped itself over a rock break, looked at her without seeing her, and wiggled into the center of the pond.

Coleen moved a little closer, her holocamera recording the entire event. Every time the eel moved, a staccato series of computer-enhanced afterimages, flashed before Jessica's left eye. Ca.s.sandra's exobiology study program was having a field day.

"Get in closer, Coleen," she said.

The eel swished back and forth through the pond's crystal-clear water.

Jessica clambered up a rock to get a better view.

Beside her, Coleen whispered, "Ca.s.sandra: M-D Coleen EELTALK," opening a personal file, and began to speak.

"Eel-like. Probably carnivore. Five meters long. Estimate top speed of twenty knots. This is no infant. Cross-hatching indicates healed scars. Minimum of a year old, probably more like ten years, possibly a lot more than that. This is a mature animal seeking a sp.a.w.ning ground."

Justin was the second up over the rocks. The children and others of the teens were behind him. It had been an uphill jog, and despite his superb physical condition he was blowing hard.

Coleen nodded acknowledgment, and kept talking. "We can bet that it didn't sp.a.w.n here. We haven't seen anything like this. Probably genetic memory. Likes the taste of the water."

"That water's glacial. It won't have much taste," Justin said.

"This is great," Evan said. "The first. The first returning land animal-oceanic?"

"Aside from a couple of the bird-thingies," Coleen said, "you're right."

The eel began to move in diminis.h.i.+ng circles, as if claiming the pond for its own. Then it was still. The children gathered around the edge. An expectant hush settled over them.

Jessica antic.i.p.ated Justin's first request, and handed her comm card to him before the words left his mouth. He sighed with pleasure.

This was something new, something that would occupy conversation for weeks-no mean contribution to their lives. For this alone, she owed the eel a chance to live.

The First would have to allow more frequent visits to the mainland.

Have to!

After all-the local ecology was returning. Evidence of it was everywhere. There were three times the flora to be categorized now. The wind carried puffb.a.l.l.s and tiny fairy-brollies and fertilized seeds, and the Earth-native crops of Avalon were experiencing their first real compet.i.tion. Weeds were a universal fact of life.

Two dozen children ringed the pool. The eel was still, then rippled, then was still again. Justin adjusted his face gear, zooming in on the minor miracle.

Something was happening, but Jessica had to get down on her knees and elbows to see it. A jellied ma.s.s began to emerge from a gland two-thirds of the way back along the eel's dorsal surface. It squirted out like whipped cream, milky with reddish dots within.

Egg sac. Thousands upon thousands of little eels. Jessica's earphone was sizzling. Zack. "Jessica? Why haven't you killed it yet?"

"Sacrilege," she said distantly. "The miracle of childbirth. It's an ovary thing-you wouldn't understand."

"You don't know what the h.e.l.l that creature is."

"Oh, and you do, right, Zack?"

The squirting seemed to have stopped. Once again, the pool was still.

Jessica selected a load for the shock rifle. "Thirty kilos, close enough," she said softly, and turned the dial on the capacitor dart. A green light blinked on the rifle dart; the batteries in the stock held sufficient charge. Reluctantly she thumbed the arming switch.

Justin's long face was peaceful. "Now?"

"Not yet. Let's see if it's supposed to die here."

He nodded. The eel was almost, motionless, merely shuddering. The rippling became regular, as if it were straining at some mighty task. Its black wet muscularity swelled and released.

Then, about one-quarter up from the tail, a puff of black appeared.

"s.e.m.e.n?" Jessica whispered. "Bifertile hermaphroditic?"

"Why extrasomatic?" Evan asked.

"Think about it," Justin said quietly. "In the old days, this pool might have just boiled with eels. They release their egg sacs. Then they release their s.e.m.e.n. The s.e.m.e.n spreads through the pond, perhaps preferentially fertilizing other egg cl.u.s.ters. Instant exogenesis."

Coleen whistled. "Wrong. I think it's blood."

"Blood?"

The eel had begun to shed its tail. A chunk of meat was separated from the main ma.s.s of the body, and blood was more plentiful now.

"All that blood in the water," Justin said. "Best evidence I've seen that grendels weren't native to this island."

Coleen ran to the skeeter, unloaded a roll of absorbent rubber sheeting, and lugged it back to the pond. She took off her shoes and socks and rolled up her pants. "I'd bet minerals in the blood are a clue to Mommy's home territory, her mating ground."

"Mating ground?" Justin asked.

"I say she's not hermaphroditic. Mated before she came up here. Stored up the s.e.m.e.n, dumped it here."

"Bet."

The tail had worked its way almost completely loose now, clouding the water with blood. Only a few sc.r.a.ps of tissue held the tail on. They watched as those fibers tore away.

The eel swam in a lazy circle, shedding its former torpor.

"Doesn't look moribund to me," Justin said.

It seemed to notice them for the first time. It dove, wiggling fiercely beneath the surface of the water, and left the pond.