Beowulf's Children

They all looked at him as if he were crazy. Zack told him, "We kind of don't like that word."

"I kind of don't like f-f-soggy mysteries. Zack, you, the First were always so sure it was Cadzie blue that saved the baby. Why? I mean it's a neat answer, it turns out to be the color-coding for poison—"

"Elegant," Zack said. "You learned that word from the math classes, didn't you? Any solution that elegant has to be right. Except when it isn't." The old man laughed.

"Zack, Cadzie blue is darker than the color coding for poison."

"Is it really?"

"You saw it. Everyone on Camelot got videotapes of Asia through the war specs. We sent you photos. Aaron cut a great swath of Asia's lip and laid it across all those blankets. It's too pale." And why was he devilling an old man with ice on his mind? Edgar saw Ruth and Rachael listening and was embarrassed.

But Zack said, "Ah."

"What?"

"Edgar, when you get old enough, you get a feel for patterns. Being smart doesn't do it. Only experience works. That pattern-sense was all we had. What you just said, nobody had said that before, just that way, to me.

"Stretch a piece of Scribe's lip in sunlight, it's too pale. Take pictures with a flash camera, it's too pale. Watch a Scribe through war specs, and by the time Cassandra gets through with the pictures—"

"It's too pale. Ice me down now, Lord."

"See, Edgar, the Scribe's lip is always underneath that overhang of shell, always in shadow. The bees see it as darker. Aaron took it into daylight—"

"And the flash on the camera lights it up, and Cassandra thoughtfully corrected the color for us, but I can check that part right now, Zack. Cassandra!"

The reconquest of the mainland was two years in the pla

The Scribeveldt had been too wet for going on two years. Vast patches of grass had died. The Scribes were fewer, perhaps because they had stopped breeding; but some of those camouflaged trapezoids didn't move. The camera on Asia's back had rolled past one huge empty shell.

Now the Veldt was drying off, grass was spreading again, and the paths Cassandra could see from orbit were forming knots.

"Everything is breeding like mad," Edgar told the colonists in the assembly hall, and the greater number who were only in virtual attendance. "I can't see any reason not to begin the conquest of the mainland with the Scribeveldt. And I see no reason not to go now."

And the questions began.

"We'll establish dumps at Shangri-La and Eden both. They're close together, they can serve as alternate routes. We don't want any cities there the next time Tau Ceti goes into maximum, but they're safe now."

And continued.

"Sure, grendels. We'll want to stay clear of the river, but we can run pipes...

"There's no trace of bees, anywhere we've got cameras. Nobody thinks they're extinct, but they must have died back...

"Before we build anything permanent in the Scribeveldt, we've prepared some hardened cameras. I want to know what lives under the Scribes...

"Aaron? Well, something raided the stores at Shangri-La until they were almost gone. That was a year ago. Your guess...

"The blankets? Yeah, Uncle Zack figured that out two years ago, and he was right. Zack, you want to explain that? Remember to talk slow for these people."

EPILOGUE

THE SHAMAH

TWO YEARS LATER

Chaka sca

"We're clear," he said. With Trish and Carey Lou watching shotgun, he rappelled down the side of the cliff into the water. The samlon were young. There would only be one grendel in this area, and that one was.... well, curious.

They searched much of the day, and it was Chaka who found it, and called Justin.

A human skull, cracked and chewed, but human.

Justin took it from Chaka gently. He folded it to his chest and sank to his knees in the water, eyes half-closing. No one spoke. After almost a minute he slipped it lovingly into a plastic bag. Before Tau Ceti slipped below the horizon, they found part of a pelvis, and a few more bones, and that was all. Justin looked around the river, and then said, "All right. Let's go."

Chaka nodded, and they rode the winch up the cliff face, and didn't say anything more until they reached the skeeter.

Sylvia met them back at the camp. She was grayer now, but just as tall, her face more stem. Since Mary A

Carlos stood behind her, his left hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

It was almost dark, and the evening wind plucked at the edges of her coat as she waited for them to disembark. Justin stopped two feet away from her, his hands filled with the remains of his father, her husband, a plastic bag wrapped in black cloth.

Sylvia took the bag as if it were made of spun glass. "We'll bury him on the Bluff," she said.

Carlos nodded. "Exactly what he would have wanted." He squeezed her shoulder. "I have an urn," he said quietly. "I have worked on it for a year. I would like to show it to you."

Suddenly, her eyes burned. Sylvia closed her eyes hard. Now was not the time. Later perhaps. Now she would be strong for Carlos, as he had been strong for her. They had almost lost equally. Not quite. But almost.

"There is only one more thing to do, then I can go home," Little Chaka said. Big Chaka was back on Camelot Island, too infirm for travel now. He spent most of the time at Surf's Up, puttering, writing his memoirs and training the two new dolphins. Little Chaka didn't really like being away from his father for extended periods.

Edgar and Ruth were beside them. Scully followed her with a tight fist on her skirt. Ruth's son, and Edgar's. The genetics might have been Aaron's but Edgar had been there to help deliver Scully. As far as he was concerned, he was the father.

"How do we go about this?" Edgar said.

"We are going to find a skeleton, or we are going to find Aaron," Justin said. "One or the other. But I want to know that he is dead. It ends."

Chaka cocked his rifle. "It ends."

They searched all that day, and into the night, and found no trace. They knew Aaron had survived the bees. The storehouse in Shangri-La had been raided regularly for ca

On the third day, just as the hunting parties were quitting for the day, dogs barked and guards yelled at the southern end of the camp.

Two figures approached a rebuilt section of fence. One was human. One definitely was not.

Justin was barely aware of Chaka and Trish at his side, Sylvia behind him, as he ran to the fence. With every step, the hated face and form of his enemy grew clearer. All the world seemed to focus down to this one man, his entire life to this single moment.

Aaron walked with the help of a crutch. His right leg looked as if it had been broken and badly set. His once beautiful face was scarred and puckered with pink weals. His left eye was glazed and sightless.

The grendel... God, the grendel... walked alongside him.

Without thinking, Justin raised his rifle. Chaka pushed it aside.

"Wait," he said breathlessly. "Wait."

Aaron turned and spoke to the grendel in a clear, commanding voice:

"Stay."

And it did. It squatted, waiting. A whisper ran through those assembled. There was just no believing this.

"Aaron Tragon. I arrest you for murder—"

Aaron laughed in his face.