Beowulf's Children Part 49

"I would certainly like to see that," Big Chaka said. "I want to give my report on the snow grendels-"

"Yeah, what did you find?" Aaron asked. "We paid high for that head."

"I believe my findings are significant," Big Chaka said. "Possibly even worth that price. But I would like to observe the beaver dam before I draw my final conclusions. Has anyone taken water samples from that 'beaver's lake?"

"No, that would be dangerous," Little Chaka said. "Is it important?"

"It may be."

"Well, we can try," Little Chaka said. "But first you should see them. They'll be most active just about lunchtime. We'll go look, and you can give your lecture at dinner time."

"Good."

Cadmann said, "Sylvia complained about lack of exercise last night.

She may not want to spend the day in a skeeter looking at grendels."

"That's all right," Aaron said. "There's lots around here to look at. But that dam is in grendel country, rules say to take two skeeters. Jess, how about you and Justin go as backup for the Chakas. Cadmann, if Sylvia doesn't want to go to the grendel dam, we can hike up to the lake this afternoon."

"Lake?" Cadmann asked. "How far is this lake?"

"About ten kilometers," Aaron said. "Don't worry, it's not a grendel lake."

"We thought that about half the lakes on Camelot Island," Big Chaka said. "But there was always a grendel. Always."

"Not here, though," Little Chaka said. "Guaranteed. No grendel, no samlon, and plenty of other wildlife around the lake. Snouters. And some spider devils." He grinned. "We caught you some alive, but you killed them."

"They certainly died," Big Chaka said. "Something missing in the artificial ecology we set up for them. Possibly we didn't give them enough meat, or the wrong kind. We'll have to set up cameras to observe them in the wild."

"Sure," Little Chaka said. "One of these days."

"You don't sound very interested."

Little Chaka shrugged. "Dad, there's so much to learn here, and those are just bigger editions of the clothesline Joeys we have back at Eden Oasis. We've watched those for years."

Jessica came over. "The ones at Eden are interesting, though. Their mating rituals are a little odd-I wonder if these do the same things?"

"Carnivorous Joeys?" Cadmann asked. "I haven't been following this."

"Well, they're related to Joeys," Big Chaka said. "Some structural differences, but yes, they're Joeys."

Jessica nodded. "The ones at Eden use those webs to catch the local equivalent of bees and insects. And birdles. I've seen them catch birdles."

"But these are larger and go after bigger prey," Aaron said. "Their bite is poisonous."

"Not quite," Big Chaka said. "That turned out to be a symbiotic bacterium that lives in their mouths."

"I wonder if they're related to the bear?" Little Chaka said.

"Bears? Son, you haven't told me about bears."

"We've never seen one, Dad. Not up close. Ca.s.sandra caught a film of a herd of chamels kicking a critter that was maybe a meter and half long, but it was in the forest and we didn't see the end of the fight. We think they killed it."

"It was about the size of an Earth black bear, so we called it a bear," Jessica said. "But they must be rare. We've never found one."

"They can't be all that rare," Aaron said. "They influenced the behavior patterns of the chamels. But we sure can't find one anywhere."

"Little herbivorous Joeys," Big Chaka mused. "On Camelot and on the mainland. Then at Eden there are larger clothesline Joeys that string out sticky ropes and catch bees and birdles to eat. Here there are even larger spider devil Joeys that can eat a small snouter. And now there's a bear? Is it related to the Joeys too?"

Little Chaka shrugged. "No data. Look, we've got a couple of hours before we go look at the beavers. Let us show you around here after breakfast."

Old Grendel was as close as she could come to happiness. Contentment, perhaps. She had found the water she sought, a pool fed by water that flowed down from the mountains. Cold water. Water that came from the ground. She dove in, and swam against the water, down into a pa.s.sageway just wide enough for her thickness.

As she wound through subterranean pa.s.sages, through places she hadn't been since she was a swimmer, she had to conserve her energy. There was no light here, and little heat.

There was danger above, and the danger grew stronger daily. She could smell the changes, and if she didn't respond to them, she was lost. She had lived long enough to have a vague abstract sense of her own mortality. She did not want to die. In the back of her mind, she perceived how this might be prevented.

If only she could make contact.

She swam until there was no air left in her lungs. In agony, she continued. The pain in her lungs eased, became something else, a familiar sensation usually perceived as rage and terror.

There was another use for speed, one that the weirds had not dreamed of. It was an oxygenator, and her body could use speed where there was no air. It enabled her to stay underwater longer than the weirds would believe possible.

She glided. There was no light, but she could smell the currents, feel the water flow from above her, and move through the caverns toward her destination. There were times when rock squeezed her hard, but Old Grendel was a lean one, and she could contract her body into a compact missile.

Fire burned within her, a slow blaze of complete exhaustion. She had been underwater for almost twenty minutes now, crawling and swimming continuously, and moving steadily up and up. Moving. She knew that she might be crawling to her death, but she was driven to know more. The risks she took now might change everything. The weirds were intruders in a situation unchanged since the beginning of time. She had to know more about them. She had once thought of them as prey. They might still be that, but they were something more as well.

Her fear was fading now . . . and when her fear was quite gone, she would be dead. She understood that she was nearing the end of all limits, that only few seconds remained . . . and then . . .

Light above her. She moved more quickly now, holding on to the last fading traces of her fear. She plunged up into the light, up into the wavery oval, through the water, out into the air, great lungs like bellows, gulping and expanding. Life was hers once again, and she might yet cheat the great mother, death.

Time raved at her back, but she could do nothing now but breathe.

There was no speed left in her. She couldn't fight a snouter, now.

Not long after dawn, they walked northwest from Shangri-La.

A pufftree shook violently as they approached the strip of forest.

Justin looked for what had done that, but there was nothing to be seen.

Shangri-La was built on a flat area. To the east the land fell away to the river and grendel country. North and west were mountains. A thin strip of forest ran along the base of the mountains. The trees grew like green puffb.a.l.l.s of varying size, sh.e.l.ls of branches and orange-veined leaves, hollow inside. They'd s.p.a.ced themselves, leaving room for man-sized creatures to squeeze between.

"Every pufftree is a little ecology," Little Chaka said. "Each one a little different. It's better to have armor, but if you probe with a stick first you can avoid getting bitten. There's a vicious little Joey that likes to lurk in here, and where the Joeys didn't get to-Here, Dad-" He bent over one of the smaller trees and pulled the branches apart with his hands. Holding the hole open with his elbows, he poked his stick and flash inside, blocking the opening with his body.

"Nothing," he said.

Katya had a bigger tree open. She was ready to dodge away, but-"Nothing big. I can smell something ranker than Joeys. We scared them away."

Their nice little walk had turned into a mob scene. Aaron, Carlos, Big Chaka, Little Chaka, Jessica, Sylvia, Katya . . . Justin met his stepfather's grimace with a helpless grin. Any living thing would flee the pounding of feet.

Little Chaka was investigating another pufftree. He said, "I was going to say, don't squeeze between two trees unless you've looked inside. We'd better do that anyway. It's a symbiosis. The way the trees s.p.a.ce themselves, they can force big animals into range of the things that live inside. I've found a carnivore Joey and two kinds of nesting birdles, both vicious-Hey!" His stick poked and probed as if he were fencing, there in the dark inside the puffball. He retreated, and a big flying-saucer crab buzzed out after him; and another; three, four. Chaka was tapping them lightly, knocking each off balance as it came near, and the birdles were furious. Suddenly they all veered off and away, downhill.

Big Chaka was sitting against a puffball, laughing. It was clear he didn't have the strength for anything else. Sylvia and Katya were snerkling behind their hands, and Cadmann was suddenly into a rolling belly laugh, and what the h.e.l.l. The others sat down to take a break.

Uphill from the fringe of pufftree forest was rock and low scrubby bush like things with thorns. This was serious climbing. Cadmann would have been slowing the rest if Big Chaka hadn't slowed them further. But Big Chaka was seeing things: wildflowers, an abandoned birdie nest, old and fading tracks of something bear-sized.

They'd gone less than two kilometers in the hour since they left the pufftrees.

Thirty meters away, Aaron said, "Ouch!"

"What's going on?"

"Something bit me." Aaron hopped to his feet, and slapped his chest. "Three of the darned things," he said. "Not a sting, a bite." Something that looked like a tiny crab or a big flea lay crushed on the ground. A second crawled away slowly.

Carlos picked the crushed life form up on the end of a foot-long twig. Enough of its insides bulged out that it adhered to the twig easily. It was thumb sized, with a sharp-looking pair of mandibles. Suddenly, its sh.e.l.l unfolded, and crumpled wings began to blur the air.

"Whoa!" Carlos said. The little wings beat so violently that the whole twig shook. The twig jerked and trembled, and then was quiet.

Cadmann peered at the thing more carefully. "d.a.m.n," he said, "but that was fast."

"Energetic, too," Dr. Mubutu said. "It looks a lot like speed, doesn't it?"

The others gathered around. "Where did you find this?" Cadmann asked.

"Where were you sitting?"

They looked at a patch of ground near Aaron's feet, and found no more of the little creatures.

From a few feet away Carlos called, "Over here!"

He poked under a bush dotted with light purple, somewhat fleshy flowers that reminded him of orchids. Several of the insect-like creatures hovered around the blossoms like hummingbirds.

"Nectar?" Katya asked.

"Nope. Something stinks."

They brushed blossoms aside, and uncovered the decomposed body of a creature the size of a woodchuck. It seethed with little crabs.

"Jesus," Cadmann grunted. "Are these the local subst.i.tute for flies?"

"Bite like a b.i.t.c.h," Aaron said.

Sylvia took out her first-aid kit. "Let me see."

"It's just-"

"Let me see," she said.

"Yes, ma'am." Aaron unfastened his s.h.i.+rt.

Sylvia swabbed the wounds clean, then poured on peroxide. It foamed as if it would eat him alive. "There. It looks clean enough but-Dr. Mubutu, may I borrow your portable unit?"

Little Chaka was carrying for both Chakas. He shrugged off his backpack and unzipped it, pulling out a metallic boxy contraption as big as both his hands: a portable a.n.a.lyzer. Sylvia took the twig from Cadmann, teased the dead bug off the end, and dropped it into the box. She touched an oblong b.u.t.ton on the side, and it began to hum. In a moment the bug would be flash burned, and the results relayed to the main camp and uplinked to Ca.s.sandra. With luck she would then report that there were no toxic substances- Blam.

The miniature unit jarred in her hand. Seams popped.

They all jumped. Then Big Chaka quickly leaned forward and sniffed.

Black smoke rose from the ruined a.n.a.lyzer.

"Dear G.o.d," Sylvia said shakily. "What was that all about?"

The device's shattered components barely clung together. Carlos said, "Pranksters?"

For a moment, the glade crackled with tension.

"Pranksters?" Sylvia demanded, still shaken. "What idiot would sabotage your a.n.a.lyzer?"

"Calm," Carlos said. "I'm sorry. I thought it was obvious. I see that Dr. Mubutu understands."

Big Chaka nodded. He turned to Cadmann and said, "Tell me . . . if you put a chunk . . . say a chunk the size of your fingernail . . . of speed into an a.n.a.lyzer, what would it do?"

"Bang?"

"We need to find another of these things. Don't disturb those on the corpses. We may not want to irritate them."

They had the crushed bug on the end of a stick. Justin and Katya had built a small, busy fire of sticks and bits of moss. Chaka Mubutu held the bug out over the fire. Its legs curled, its sh.e.l.l peeled up and- Blam.

The sharp sound was as loud as a firecracker, and about as powerful.

The tip of the stick flew into bits, and they jumped back a foot or two.

"Freeze me blind," Cadmann said.

Dr. Mubutu spoke gravely. "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I think that we can state, officially and for the record, that we have discovered a second life-form on this planet that uses speed."

"What exactly does that mean?" Sylvia asked.

"I want to think on it before I say." Big Chaka looked thoughtful. "We have a lot to talk about tonight when I give my report," he said. "But now I want to see the beavers."

Carlos looked thoughtfully eastward. "I think I will follow those bees," he said. "Katya can show me the beavers another time."

Chapter 32.