Beowulf's Children

Carey Lou broke in, his thin, reedy voice excited. "Wait a minute. We learned it in school, we used Foo Foo gas on a grendel twenty years ago. Like napalm, right? We can hit ‘em with that, like in the movie ‘Them'. Drive ‘em down into the nest, pump more in the top, and just cook the sonsabitches!"

The group fell silent, awed by the purity of their youngest member's bloodlust. Aaron's face had darkened.

"We appreciate your sentiments," Cadma

"Oh, yeah," he said sheepishly. "Sorry."

The last skeeter settled near the others. Little Chaka eeled out, turned to help Big Chaka. "There is," said Big Chaka, "definitely another nest at the north end of this valley. Maybe three or four."

"Damn," Cadma

"Listen," Big Chaka began. "About your assault. Have you considered—"

"Freeze it. Consider this," Aaron snarled. He had a thermite grenade in hand, and twisted it atop his grendel gun.

Cadma

Aaron fired downslope.

His war specs spoke to Carlos in Cadma

"We're nearly back. What—"

Katya gaped down at the mound, her jaw dropping.

"Aaron fired an incendiary into the nest!"

"What? Why?"

Answer came there none. It was the kind of question that can cause strokes.

The beehive's peak erupted like a volcano. Puffs of flame, first, and then swarming points. Thousands of points of fire streaked away like rapid-fire tracer bullets, and exploded in tiny flashes.

Other parts of the mound erupted too. (Katya was sprinting, but Carlos couldn't do that and watch too. Cassandra's record depended on his war specs.) The peak of the beehive was 120 meters distant, but the hive had more exits, more showing every second as fireballs followed by swarms of tracers. One source was only fifty meters downslope, and that next was closer yet.

The terror wasn't the flaming bees, Carlos realized. Those made a hell of a light show, dying in vengeance for Linda Weyland and Joe Sikes. Carlos shifted his war specs to infrared.

The firepuffs were almost blinding. But there they were, the bees that weren't burning, flying in all directions, tens of thousands of bits of red-hot shrapnel looking for any enemy at all. A thousand abruptly converged in the air like an explosion in reverse, and that poor bloody pterodon wouldn't reach the ground as anything but bones. Carlos broke into a run, watching his feet and to hell with Cassandra, there were cameras on the skeeters.

Aaron was gri

Cadma

"Trish, no problems?" He laughed at his buzzing comm card, Trish attempting to chew him out. "Right. Cadma

With Katya were both Chakas, looking madder than hell. Aaron's buoyant mood began to deflate.

Big Chaka's voice was tight and angry. "What in the hell was that all about?"

Aaron explained. "I was getting revenge for Linda and Joe, and killing about ten thousand dangerous animals. And I'm going to kill fifty thousand more tomorrow, right, Cadma

Cadma

Little Chaka looked at Aaron with open irritation. "If this planet has taught us anything, it's the danger of mindlessly throwing an ecology out of balance. Under normal circumstances these things don't hurt human beings. But guess what? Two klicks from the north end of this valley is a river. For twenty klicks east and west, we have had unusually low grendel sightings. Doesn't that suggest something?"

Aaron looked as if he wanted to choke. "Suggest what?"

Little Chaka's voice was infuriatingly reasonable. "I think that the show is over for the evening. Let's go back to Shangri-La. We can go bee hunting again tomorrow, but this time, let's go to find things out. We can always kill them."

"They're the enemy," Aaron said.

"They may well be," Big Chaka said. "But they are also a largely unknown enemy."

"What my father is saying," Little Chaka continued, "is that we don't know enough, and until we do, leave the bees alone."

Aaron met Little Chaka's gaze for a blistering ten seconds; then something shifted between them, and Aaron was the one to nod acquiescence. "All right," he said finally. "All right."

Chapter 37

THUNDER

The best of men ca

The good die early, and the bad die late.

DANIEL DEFOE

Edgar looked up from his computer screen to find Trish glowering at him. He said, "I take it you got my note."

"Note. Yeah, note, I got your fucking note."

"Gotcha! Hey, I didn't intend it to make you that angry. I have to go back to the island. They need me. Ruth needs me."

"Ruth Moskowitz is a lame. What has she got that can even hold your attention?"

"Trish, look up a name. Pygmalion."

Trish sipped past the white foam on her cup. Toshiro had taught her calm. "Who was Pygmalion?"

"Greek sculptor. Made a statue of a woman, then fell in love with her. The gods brought her to life to stop his whining. Trish, what did you see in a lame like me?"

"Power, dammit, Edgar! I saw you make a hurricane!"

"You were already in my pants."

"Yeah. Well. Aaron needed you. Not just the hurricane, he needed you to shut up about how bad the weather's getting. Otherwise the Star Born might wait it out before they came back here. So he told me to distract you."

"Distract," Edgar said.

"Well, I don't think he... hah. He'd dumped me for Jessica, but he never stops screwing any woman. I was ticked. How I distracted you was the last thing he expected. After Toshiro died, he kind of hinted that I could kind of let you alone."

Edgar gri

"Yeah. Pygmalion, huh?"

"Yeah. You shaped me, Trish. Then you kind of lost interest because I didn't need you quite so much—"

"—And you'll drop Ruth!" Trish wrapped her hand around his wrist as he was about to speak. "When you've really put her back together, you'll know it. You'll lose interest. Then come brag to me, Soft One. I may have sculpted some Scouts by then, but I'm always open to a brag."

Perhaps a dozen pairs of human feet had passed this way before them: not enough to actually create a path, but enough for the broken twigs and turned earth to mark the way easily. Aaron or Little Chaka led, Cadma

Again, this was disorienting. How many times had he broken trail for these boys, while they tromped loyally behind? Too many to count.

He watched Chaka. The big shoulders, the broad hips worked steadily as they climbed the path. He felt perfectly comfortable with Little Chaka. He had seen Chaka angry, sad, happy... in the full spectrum of human emotion.

He watched Aaron more carefully. More carefully now than ever. Aaron was getting everything he had wanted.