Beowulf's Children

"That is so like you, Justin," he said in his calmest, clearest voice.

"Trying to arrest someone who isn't here."

Justin was dumbstruck. "What? What are you trying to pull now?

Whatever it is—"

"Aaron is dead," Aaron said. "Dead. Aaron is eaten." He smiled, and looked out at them as if what he had said made sense. Just exactly as if it had made sense. Justin wanted to laugh. But couldn't. And didn't like that at all.

Aaron looked at them as if they were his dearest friends, long-lost kin with whom be longed to share a deep and precious secret. It was damned strange. "I can give to you what you have always wanted," he said confidently.

Trish finally spoke. "And what the hell is that?"

"Peace," he said. "Peace with the beasts." He turned. "Come," he said.

And the grendel came, and sat by him. It made that cooing sound.

"Yes," Aaron said to it. "They are afraid. You are afraid. It is a place of fear."

Justin's head spun. Hatred and confusion and a strange excitement so intense it felt like nausea welled up strongly enough to cause vertigo. He turned to Chaka. "He's crazy. Just plain nuts!"

Chaka said, "Are you sure? And what difference does it make? Can you talk to grendels?"

Trish's arm trembled. Her rifle went up, but Chaka's hand closed on the barrel. "No!" Chaka said. "You have no right. If anyone has the right, it is Justin." He paused, that confusion entering his voice as if it were an emotional virus. "Justin—what do you say?"

Justin could barely move, couldn't think. An intelligent grendel. And a human being who could communicate with it. What would his father have given for this? He could blow this insane bastard's head off right now-

And betray everything that Cadma

"Goddammit, kill him!" Trish screamed. "Don't you realize it's just another of his con games? If you let him live, he'll own this planet in ten years!"

Aaron's smile was fond, but remote, the thin smile of one who sees more than anyone else and knows he will never be understood. "Trish, no one owns this planet," he said. "Neither human nor grendel. And least of all the man who was Aaron Tragon. But together... "

Nightmare, Justin thought. What would Colonel Weyland have done? We think we know so much more than they do, but—"Keep him safe," Justin said. "We need to ask Zack."

Trish and Edgar took Aaron's arms and led him away. He halted them when he came to Sylvia, and they stood and waited for him as if he were still the master. "I am sorry for what Aaron did," he said. "You will want to know that Cadma

Sylvia watched as the procession receded. Her shoulders slumped. Suddenly, unbidden and unstoppably, the tears she had not cried for two years streamed down her cheeks in a cleansing torrent. As if a dam within her had suddenly given way. As if in some ma

Chaka gingerly approached the grendel and knelt by it. She watched him in return. Amazed at his own daring, he actually reached out and ran his fingers over her pebbled skin, felt the living fire within, and marveled. "It is you, isn't it, Old Girl? Name of God," he whispered. "What are we going to do with you?"

Old Grendel felt peaceful. Working together, she and the Strongest Weird had survived the bad times. Now the dark one she had saved before would stand between her and the others. Would protect her as she had protected him.

This was strangeness. But these weirds worked together like dam builders. She knew things. Could show them, perhaps. And as she grew older, and not so able to hunt, perhaps they would help her in turn.

She wondered about the Strongest Weird. For two years they had lived together, and she had begun to understand some of the weird's sounds. The world of vocal communication was another explosion of strangeness. She wondered what they would do with that one. Strongest Weird was a God of some kind. Perhaps they were all Strongest Weird's children.

She didn't know. But the Death Wind was dwindling. More bad times would come, but they would find something new in the world.

Grendels. Weirds. Together.

THE END