Beowulf's Children Part 37

Justin saw Katya's skeeter come in low, circle, come back even lower. The sound and pressure of its rotors bore down on them and swelled until they filled the entire world. Suddenly it was only a few feet over his head. "Sleet!" he yelled, reflexively flinging his hands up in a doomed attempt to ward off disaster.

Katya was already trying to correct. The skeeter headed out into grendel territory, and began to rise.

"G.o.d," Derik said. "They're going to make it-"

The skeeter struggled to gain alt.i.tude against the wind and snow. The low power light winked on as she threw full power to the engines, but the skeeter tipped downward and fell. "Stu-we're going in," she had time to say.

Snow exploded, a white cloud against the winds.h.i.+eld. The skeeter didn't want to respond to the controls, and a pale shape was coming at her eyes. She screamed and crossed her arms in front of her face as jaws came across the s.h.i.+p's nose. The grendel smashed through the front viewscreen. The skeeter banked violently to the left, and she lost all control. The skeeter fell into the s...o...b..nk. She had time to hope that the fall would crush the grendel, but then the rotor caught and threw up a shower of snow and dirt, and they cartwheeled forward and over, cras.h.i.+ng down nose first. Her harness straps dug into her flesh but they held.

"Stu-" she shouted. "Stu, it's not dead!"

Stu wiped blood from his eyes. He'd lost his grendel gun in the crash. Up forward the slim torpedo head and much of its body were halfway through the shattered left-hand windscreen. The Jaws opened and closed. Snow heated by the internal heat of its speed steamed up from its snout and jaws. Those jaws snapped closed no more than a meter from Katya's face.

The grendel had been stunned by the fall but now it was coming awake. It was like a scene from one of their recorded Halloween movies, a serpentine ogre coming back from the dead. A long strip of the winds.h.i.+eld's frame had torn loose and partly eviscerated the grendel. It left a trail of hot blood and steaming intestines as it inched toward Stu. The stench of its dragon breath was nearly overpowering.

Katya screamed. The thing whipped its head around and stared at her as if affronted by her noise, her motion, her very mortal fear. Stu saw the grendel, impaled, dying, work its way in through the window, saw its jaws close on her head. He closed his eyes, and wished that he could have closed his ears as well, the terrible cracking-ice wet crunching sound, the sudden explosive stench of blood and brains . . .

He blinked, hard. Katya was still alive, the grendel hadn't reached her yet. He threw off the quick-release buckles and dived forward. He screamed "Hey!" and swung his fist, connecting solidly on the side of its head. He felt his knuckle break against its armor, cursed and swung again, at its eye.

It roared, deafening in the confined s.p.a.ce, and turned to snap at him.

Stu screamed, suddenly registering the insanity of what he had done, and jerked his safety webbing loose. He rolled out of the skeeter, spilling into the snow, and kicked the door shut behind him. The enraged grendel was coming through the Plexiglas windscreen. Ignoring the hysterical Katya, it pounded its way through the Plexiglas of the door and flowed after Stu like a shark through water.

How could the dying beast move at all? Stu staggered flailing through the snow. He'd left his gun . . . he never would have had time to reach it, but how could it still move? It flashed into speed and was on him. He'd gone no more than a dozen meters.

Justin was moving even before the skeeter struck the ground. The snow was driving now, a sudden flurry that blinded, but it would confuse the grendels as well.

"Justin!" Derik yelled behind him. He didn't care. Katya was in mortal danger, and there was no way that he could leave her to die.

He pitched forward into the snow and peered out through his goggles.

Feasting, near the skeeter. He recognized Stu's jacket.

Justin clamped his mind down on nausea and fear and grief. Business now. Mourn later. Think.

That grendel was busy. It looked to be dying, ripped open, for that matter. It might even warn others away: its natural territoriality would protect Katya for a few moments.

He heard Katya whimper, and almost lost his resolve. Almost. There was a plea, a cry of "Justin! Help me!" He felt it reach right under his logic, and twist.

He remembered what Carlos said about his bride, up on the cliff. That he had never forgiven himself. That he had learned something about himself at that moment.

Justin could pull back to the safety of his encampment, and let whatever happened happen. Wait for the storm to abate, or for the grendel to finish its meal, and decide what to do about the whimpering woman.

And find out whether or not he could live with it, later.

Closer.

"Justin-" Katya screamed.

And- Grendel flash.

Memory: the Learning Center, the domed building in the very center of the colony. Cadmann sets four-year-old Justin in a bucket seat in the hollow of something that looks like a big half-eggsh.e.l.l. Cadmann sits down next to him, touches a b.u.t.ton.

Now they're next to a river. It's a cartoon, not real at all, and everything is moving slowly.

Suddenly, something ugly pokes its head out of the water. Not real ugly: comic book ugly, exaggeration ugly, with pop-eyes and blacked-out broken teeth and an idiot expression. If a grendel had been in Dumbo's circus, this would be it.

Cadmann pushes a b.u.t.ton, and a green ray shoots the ugly thing. It rolls over, thrashes, and kicks its legs. It holds a daffodil between its stubby paws.

Justin claps, delighted.

"Now your turn," Cadmann says. And he's laughing, but little Justin wonders at a queerness in the sound. Daddy wants something out of this.

The thought pa.s.ses. Little Justin takes the control. This is fun.

At twelve, the virtual game is a regular thing. Every week Cadmann takes him. Every boy and girl in Camelot competes in the Game. It is simple. There are hunting simulations. Climbing scenarios, mining expeditions. Simulations all. They form teams or play alone.

And at some point in the Game (and there might be a dozen other objectives within a game) there will be a grendel flash.

Every week for years, a different component of skill has been nurtured. Instant response. Aim. Relax under pressure. Multiple targets. Automatic scanning for a second, third, fourth predator. On and on.

The intent is to groove one neurological response pattern. Cadmann has told him: The grendel depends upon its speed. But unless you have been foolish indeed, you will have a second or two before it is on you. We will train you to respond in less than two-fifths of a second. We will train you to bring your weapon to bear, to evaluate risk, to fire twice in precisely the correct pattern, it will be a reflex, completely unconscious. We can give you this gift.

You will survive.

Pale death came at him in a whorl of snowspray. Justin's hands moved faster than his brain could follow, lining up with perfect coordination. The thing accelerated to over 120 klicks an hour in the time it would have taken him to blink. If he had blinked. But that was training too. Calm breath. Don't blink. Fire twice.

The first bullet tore into the grendel's throat, carrying enough shock to drive it sideways, off line, so that he wouldn't be bowled over by its charge. The second was an incendiary round, heat for the heated, to jolt the beast across an invisible metabolic line.

It reeled back, torn, bleeding, dying. Its eyes locked with his, its feet splayed, bright red blood staining the snow which whirled and pelted between them.

Grendel flash, left! He shot it again, between its eyes, and tore off the top of its head. He spun left- The grendel above Stu was gone. Not gone: he caught its madly whipping tail following it into a s...o...b..nk.

Someone fired from behind him, twice. Derik. Justin said, "Hold off."

"Why?"

"All the other grendels are hamburger." Justin was still taking it in.

A mistake in judgment here could be terribly embarra.s.sing.

Stu's ravaged corpse lay in a pit in the snow. The grendel had been terribly injured; he'd seen its intestines hanging in coils. Its spraying blood, nearly boiling, had melted cubic meters of snow. Three or four more dark pits led to the s...o...b..nk: more splashed blood. The grendel had disappeared into snow there, and Stu's two exploding bullets were interlocked pocks right in the middle of that; but Justin had seen snow s.h.i.+ft to the right, and now he saw it s.h.i.+ft again. The grendel wasn't moving now-huddling, he thought-but the heaped snow was melting.

Justin said, "I'd like to give Chaka an intact corpse."

"It's still dangerous."

"Sure, we have to kill it, not study it. Do I hear the voice of Zack Moskowitz? Cover me."

Rifle at the ready, he ran to the skeeter as Derik covered him. Katya was cowering in the back, somehow wedged behind the seat. Her arms were wrapped around her chest, and a rictus of terror distorted her face.

She looked at him without seeing. He put his hand across hers. "Come on," he said. "You're safe."

She clutched at his hand. He bent to the floor of the wrecked skeeter, picked up Stu's grendel gun, and wrapped her hands around it.

And that settled that. The weirds did cooperate.

Speed was seeping into Old Grendel's blood despite all she could do. In all her life she'd never seen anything like this. The Cold Ones too could cooperate, it seemed, when there was prey enough to feed all. But against the weirds- The last of them had fled. The smallest, she hadn't even tried to kill anything. The small Cold One had watched, and now, steaming with speed, was fleeing up toward the highest s...o...b..nk on the hill. Toward Old Grendel, buried in snow but for snorkel and eyes.

Old Grendel smashed into her flank, sank teeth just ahead of her hind leg, and ripped flesh away. The snow grendel, turning with the impact, smacked sideways into the s...o...b..nk. In a blur of snow she clawed her way out, but Old Grendel was a blurred hot streak, receding.

She went straight downhill in the shadow of a gully. The weirds would not see her. Dying snow grendels and their own wounded would hold their attention. She was running over heaped snow, but the snow stopped at the trees.

Short of that point. Old Grendel turned and rolled. Snow was not enough-she really wanted water-but this would do. She spun across the snow, exhilarated, boiling with speed. Her roll stopped in a s...o...b..nk. As the snow began to melt, she looked back for the first time. The snow grendel was far above her. It lurched toward her, on speed but terribly clumsy, spraying blood from her flank.

All grendels had that in common: on speed their hearts churned like the motor wings of an Avalon birdie. They lost blood fast. Old Grendel let the speed seep from her blood. She crawled backward now, over snow that melted at her touch, backward and into the shadowed forest. The snow grendel floundered after her, slowing; obscuring her track.

Would the weirds bother to track the last snow grendel? They might. Weirds left no question unanswered. If they looked, they would not find Old Grendel; only her prey. If they did not, a day from now the snow grendel would make fine eating.

Old Grendel was beginning to believe. G.o.d had not trained her parasites. The answer was madder yet.

As meat the weirds were no longer interesting. The weirds had enslaved G.o.d. Old Grendel intended to learn how to do that.

Chapter 23.

CONQUEST.

Now what about those incidents in which some person seems to go beyond what we supposed were the normal bounds of endurance, strength, or tolerance of pain? We like to believe this demonstrates that the force of will can overrule the physical laws that govern the world. But a person's ability to persist in circ.u.mstances we hadn't thought were tolerable need not indicate anything supernatural. Since our feelings of pain, depression, exhaustion, and discouragement are themselves mere products of our minds' activities-and ones that are engineered to warn us before we reach our ultimate limits-we need no extraordinary power of mind over matter to overcome them. It is merely a matter of finding ways to rearrange our priorities.

In any case what hurts-and even what is "felt" at all-may, in the end, be more dependent on culture than biology. Ask anyone who runs a marathon, or ask your favorite Amazon.

MARVIN MINSKY, The Society of Mind

The storm blew out and the sky cleared. In those two hours Aaron had used the remaining skeeters to round up the male chamels, while Justin established a defensive perimeter complete with motion detectors.

That work kept them busy for hours. When it was over, when the last reluctant chamel was restored to the herd, the Star Born returned to the grim reality of torn, b.l.o.o.d.y snow, and the tarp-shrouded body of their friend.

Justin knelt beside the tan shroud, brooding. "I know you, Stu. You'd want us to remember that our defenses worked."

Aaron nodded agreement. "When the Earth Born first encountered a grendel, it was a ma.s.sacre. This was just war. We only lost one of ours."

"One too many." Jessica's left boot toe dug at a bit of dark, gummy snow. The head-shape beneath the tarp was misshapen. Even draped, the body seemed . . . broken. Shrunken.

"Does anyone want to say something?" Justin asked.

Katya nodded, and bowed her head slightly. "Stu." Her breath plumed from her mouth like a whisper of steam. "You died for me." Justin rose and put his arm around her shoulder. She clung to him.

There was a long pause, everyone expecting someone else to speak first. There was no sound but the wind, the distant skeeters, and the lowing of the chamel herd.

"Do we send him back to Camelot?" Jessica finally asked.

"No." Aaron's reply was unexpectedly fierce. "He came to take the continent. Let him be buried here, where he fell. We'll mark the spot with stones, and let Ca.s.sandra record it. Send him to wind and sky and sun."

"But-"

Aaron wasn't listening. "His real monument will be at Shangri-La, the place he helped to build. This is our land now. All of this. Not Camelot, not Surf's Up. This is our land."

The midday sun melted enough snow to expose an eviscerated grendel corpse-Stu's killer. Aaron fired a biotoxin load into it, and it didn't twitch. Then Skeeter V set down carrying Jasper Doheny and the expedition's chain saw, Chaka moved in with the deadly humming wand. He began his autopsy with a beheading.

Now he pulled at torn skin, measured teeth and tail, jotting everything down in a little notebook. "You know," he said quietly, "the interesting thing is that they didn't just tolerate each other's presence. That would have been remarkable enough-but they actually seemed to cooperate."

"That's a pretty depressing thought," Jessica said.

"Alarming is more like it." Chaka wiggled the broken jaw, then ran his hands over the misshapen, not quite symmetrical skull. "The ability of grendels to organize . . . at all . . . implies a level of intelligence or social organization which we haven't experienced before. That's going to take a lot of thought."

Justin squeezed Katya's hand. She had clung to him almost continuously for the past hour. "What do you suggest?"

"Let the snow cool the head a bit more, then get it back to Shangri-La and freeze it. Then back to Camelot on the next transport. I want my father's opinion of the brain."

Aaron nodded. "The kind of thing that they'll love. A puzzle." He ran a hand over his long face. "I've had enough of this place," he said grimly. "Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here."

Old Grendel had seen them taking a snow grendel apart, treating each part in some different way. They had eaten none of it. Uneasy, she had moved downhill.

The snow grendels had frightened the weirds, and they were far too likely to investigate what they feared. Old Grendel didn't consider it safe to spy on them. She stopped and buried herself above the corpse of the snow grendel she had killed. Watching that should be safe.

The daughters of G.o.d rose into the air and flew east.

The puzzle beasts moved west in a great ma.s.s, with weirds all around them.

The weirds were going . . . were gone. They hadn't found the last snow grendel. Old Grendel circled wide, looking for traps and spies. There were several of the little boxes the weirds sometimes posted where the view would serve a spy, and Old Grendel would not pa.s.s in front of those.

Presently she settled in to feed.

The weirds didn't know everything. Old Grendel was oddly rea.s.sured.

The herd was moving again, and they were making good time. Justin could see an edge to the plateau. Beyond, never yet seen by the naked eye, was a savannah covering a third of the continent. They were as far as any human had been from Camelot without actually achieving orbit.

After the skeeters had buzzed in to take away grendels and human casualties, Katya swore that she was steady enough to drive a trike. Twice now she'd spun up next to Justin to blow him kisses. A bandage covered half her face, with a blue slash and st.i.tches underneath, twisting her laugh into something wild.

She can hardly wait for nightfall, he mused. All of that my hero stuff. Should be . . . interesting.