Beowulf's Children

Carey Lou's voice crackled over the intercom. "Watch out for bees in the skeeter rotors. Evan blew up. Can you hear me?" He sounded desperate.

The corner of Sylvia's eye caught lights flashing red in front of Hendrick, just before a muffled whump shuddered through the ship. Too late? Sylvia felt like an idiot. "Of course! We read you, Carey."

"What the hell do we do?" Hendrick watched a new rush of bees crash against the window leaving blood and slime behind.

"Kill the motors!"

"Done. Sylvia, I think Skeeter Three is a deader."

A shower of tiny comets was drifting past the windows, exploding as they fell. Robor lurched sideways, then began a slow, ugly spin. Sylvia fought to stay calm. "They're thicker near the ground," she said. "Kill the skeeters, pump more gas into the bags, and climb."

Two skeeters still lived. Their rotors slowed within rings of fire.

Stopped. Flaming bees spiraled past the front window like dying stars.

Hendrick flinched back. "They can't get in," Sylvia said. "Another fifteen minutes, and we'll be above them. Then we can start the skeeters again."

"Gauges say we lost our tail engine," he said pessimistically. "I don't know... "

"We've got two left," she said. "And they'll just have to be enough. Three hours, maybe four... I just hope the kids can survive that long."

Ruth was covered in blankets from head to foot. She knew where she was going, and didn't need to lift her head. She had walked this path a thousand times.

The chamel pen.

Something was going on behind her. A sputtering of flame. She could hear it, but she didn't dare look. Her toe stubbed something. Bones. She couldn't look, couldn't let her fear overwhelm her. It would have been entirely too easy.

Her hands, swathed in blankets, touched the chamel pen. "Tarzan?" she called, and then raised her voice more, hoping that the blankets didn't muffle it too much. "Tarzan!"

She had seen the chamels changing color, and guessed that they would be alive and safe. When she heard a tentative pawing to her call, she knew that her favorite was alive. More to the point, even in the midst of this horror, Tarzan still responded to her.

Something was nuzzling her hand. She didn't dare look. She was terrified at the thought of what bees could do to her eyes. Behind her, fire flared like a lightning strike. Bits of flaming bee spattered her blankets. She groaned in terror, then recovered and climbed across the fence. Tarzan let her mount him, then moved toward the locked gate. She reached out and felt her way to the gate, undid the latch, and Tarzan nudged it open.

Instantly the chamel tried to gallop for open space. She turned him around by wrenching with all of her strength, and started him back into the camp.

She was disoriented, and had to risk a peek now, no matter how much she loathed the idea. With one blanket-swathed hand she peeled up a slit in the blanket, just barely enough to admit light. Good. There was the mess hall, and there the quad... and there was the shack where Edgar would be.

Tarzan, camouflaged in blue, made his way slowly across the encampment. Around him bees flew, panicked now. One of the buildings had finally managed to catch fire. When wind blew bees through the flames they exploded, carrying the destruction farther. The only thing that saved them was the dampness of the wood. Flaming bits of bee landed in the moist wooden slats and smoldered or sputtered to greater, more dangerous life.

When Ruth reached Edgar's storage shed, she turned Tarzan, and climbed carefully off his back. She pulled down on his reins, and jerked. The chamel bucked up in the air once, twice. His heels slammed back into the door, chipping and then splintering wood. The door ripped free from the jamb.

Ruth heard Edgar scream. She hurried to him with the second blanket. He wrapped himself in it, and she helped him to his feet. Then she helped him onto Tarzan, and climbed on after him. She risked a peek to orient herself. The radio shack. They had to make it that far. Something crawled into her makeshift cowl, and she struck at it, felt it bite her. She grabbed it with her fist and squeezed as hard as she could. It wriggled and popped.

Tarzan was ru

Edgar helped her to her feet, still swathed in his blanket. Together, they limped through the street, and up the ramp to the radio room, and the two of them staggered through the door.

They slammed it behind them and collapsed to the floor, screaming.

Something was hitting her, striking her, swatting at her. And Edgar. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw Carey Lou and Heather McKe

The two kids were shaking. She looked at her hands. Streaked and torn. Edgar looked worse, but it was mostly cosmetic, except for a ru

"Robor is coming," Carey Lou said. "I got Sylvia on the phone."

An hour later, the rain began. As swiftly as they appeared, the bees seemed to disappear, going to ground or taking to the trees.

Edgar was recovered enough to take control of the communications. He managed to reestablish a link with Geographic.

"Robor," he said. "It looks like the safest way for you to make it down is through the western defile, follow the ridge." He had collapsed into one of the command chairs. His face was swollen until only one eye was functional. They were ru

The door to the communications room opened, and Justin, Carlos, and Katya crowded in. They were followed by the others, survivors, looking utterly bedraggled.

"Robor, this is Shangri-La... "

Robor was almost two thousand feet above his normal cruising altitude.

Here there was no fear of bees, and the skeeter engines roared once again.

They managed to lash down about half the cargo in the dirigible's holds before the first of the winds struck them. It grew almost u

Then the rain hit like a solid wall of air. The stabilizers groaned, and Robor lurched and wobbled as he moved north on his mercy mission. The engines cried out, the wind slamming against him so brutally that it seemed that their entire world was coming to pieces.

But a kilometer at a time, Robor fought his way down from Deadwood Pass. Robor was coming.

Justin walked out slowly into the rain, to examine the bodies. He counted a dozen Star Born who hadn't reached shelter in time. Who hadn't had Kevlar sacks or Cadzie-blue blankets. What was it with those blankets?

He kept searching until he found what he was looking for.

There wasn't much left, but he recognized the clothes. He would have known her even if there were less left.

Katya was somewhere behind him. Perhaps she thought of speaking, then thought better of it. Justin knelt in the rain, and took his coat off. Slowly, he draped it over what was left of his sister, his love.

Then he gathered the bundle of red bones gently into his arms, and carried it out of the rain.

The weather had died to a slight drizzle when Robor finally appeared. The camp—what was left of it—was almost silent. Sixty-three survivors waited, faces upturned in the rain.