Beowulf's Children

Mary A

"Bet you're right," he said. His hands were locked surely on the controls now. At eighteen hundred feet they hit low cloud cover, rocked for fifteen seconds, and then climbed up into relative stillness.

Tau Ceti transmuted the clouds into banks of gold-white fluff. The air was crisp and clear. The window didn't quite seal on his side, and a bright, Arctic thread of air whistled through, stinging and invigorating.

This was good, one of those moments that made the rest of it all worthwhile. He felt the calm descend upon Sylvia and Mary A

There had been less of that for the past year. He thought... he hoped... they had weathered the last true storm in their triad. There were too few Western precedents for three-way relationships.

There was nothing standard about relationships on Avalon. The naked truth was that, in an almost exclusively heterosexual community, there were more women than men to bond with them. There was also no venereal disease. There was one hundred percent employment. Someone would care for the children, whatever the mother's interests and temperament. As a result, no woman need consider anything except who might make the most interesting father. There was no stigma at all for the unwed mother.

But some institutions die hard, and marriage, even such free-form versions of it as existed in Avalon Town, was one of them.

Cadma

Cadma

They were probably two hours from the Bluff, and Mary A

God. Where had the years gone? When was the last time he had awakened without his back flaming at him? He was... he counted rapidly. Sixty-three Earth years old? There was little he could do to avoid the fact that his body was trying to shut down on him. Oh, growth-hormone stimulation, and exercise, and a strict nutritional regimen, and regeneration treatments kept the machine functioning better than he probably deserved, but the aches and pains of a life nowise tame had definitely caught up with him. There were bullet wounds, a bayonet scar . ...ven a goddamn crocodile bite.

All trivial next to the wounds from the Grendel Wars. Bones smashed. The regrown leg. The pale angry tattoo left by serrated grendel teeth. And the memories that would never completely fade.

And perhaps, after all, it was best that they didn't. The grendels were gone, but there were other dangers.

"Good trip," Sylvia said. She could always sense his mood. She was forty-seven now, still beautiful, although daily exposure to the sun had roughened her skin. The mask of youth was begi

Mary A

She was still important as Cadma

Home, Cadma

"I think I want to break out the east wall of the house, expand it again."

"You've got my permission, God knows."

She gazed out the window at the clear sky, and then peered down at the clouds. "So peaceful up here."

"I need these trips from time to time. Just get away with my ladies."

She reached across Mary A

Cadma

As the skeeter scooted over the gargantuan sheet of rock and ice, Sylvia began to chuckle. Then they both broke out hooting. Mary A

Geographic had spotted it first, almost a year before. The general hilarity and grudging admiration was balanced by alarm. How had they done it? And who? Well, the Merry Pranksters, of course, but who were they? Justin and Jessica knew, Cadma

"If we knew..." he said finally, hovering at approximately anus-level with the second buttock on the left. A flat, petal-shaped protrusion marred the surface just below the right cheek. "... whether that was just an irregularity in the rock, or a birthmark, it might be possible to figure out just whose buttocks these were... "

"But..." Sylvia choked, "and that's a big but... that still wouldn't establish whether the owner of said birthmarked buttocks was in fact the perpetrator."

"How true," Cadma