Beowulf's Children

"She does not. I asked her."

"You didn't ask in the right way," Edgar said.

"What is the right way?"

He shook his head. "I too know the ancient magical words. I can find out. I can keep anyone else from finding out, too. Anyone but the colonel, or Zack; they can override anything I put in if they know my block's there."

"Joe thought you could do something like that. You locked him out of some of your files, didn't you?"

Edgar didn't answer at first. "Privacy is a right—"

"When you were eleven years old?"

"Well, yes, dammit! What's age got to do with it?"

She smiled. "Not a lot."

"So do you want to know? I can stop anywhere," he said. "File accesses are easy to track, anyone can do it, and you spent a lot of time looking into blood typing and paternity and estral cycles just after Cadzie was born."

"Oh. Edgar, sometimes you scare me."

"Just sometimes?"

"Yes, just sometimes. Let me think about this, okay?"

"Are you worried about who it is? Look, would you like me to cover your tracks so no one else can find out you were interested?"

"Oh my God, I never thought—Edgar, if someone else was—tracking my file accesses—would you know?"

"Yes. Especially if he asked me to do it for him."

"Did—who asked you?"

"Aaron. Hey, it's all right, I didn't tell him anything!" He studied her. "You think it was Aaron, don't you? You were together a lot last year. Like him and your sister now."

She didn't say anything.

"Why don't you like him?" Edgar demanded.

"Why do you hate him?"

"I don't hate him. I'm scared of him," Edgar said.

"So am I. So. Why?"

Edgar bent over as if to touch his toes. "Pretty good," he said.

"Toshiro's a miracle worker. You know what Aaron did to my back."

"Edgar, Joe says you fell out of a horsemane!"

"I did," Edgar said. "It was a long time ago, when we were eleven, Aaron was living here then. Dad thought the Bottle Babies ought to have some family stability. He was even thinking of adopting Aaron."

"You must have liked that!"

"Actually I didn't hate it as much as you'd think. Not at first. Dad was pretty rough on Aaron. Said he had to teach him some ma

She waited.

"So one day we went for a hike, just Aaron and me. You know Strumbleberry? High and dry, with horsemane trees on top. We camped up there overnight. Next morning we saw a pterodon dive into the topknot and come out. Aaron climbed up to see what was up there. He came down. Panting. Said he could beat me to the top.

"Aaron was ten and I was eleven, but he could generally beat me at anything. But he'd just tired himself out. So I said ‘You're on!' and slapped his ass and swarmed up that tree. Near the top I looked and he was right below me, but I knew I could beat him.

"I pulled myself into that mass at the top and something snapped at my eyes, a claw big enough to take my head off. I reared back and half a dozen claws like big scissors were trying to take my face off, and then there wasn't anything under me. Next thing I knew I was falling. And I remember the look on Aaron's face as I dropped past him.

"I landed flat on my back. I couldn't move anything below my arms. It hurt like I was dying. It felt like I was killing myself to fish out my comm-link card. I was sure it would be broken, but it wasn't—"

"Edgar! Aaron didn't call?"

"He called. He called after I did. Maybe he would have anyway. Maybe.

But he didn't until I got mine out and called for Dad."

"Jesus. That's awful. But you never told anyone."

Edgar said, "I told Dad. I don't know if he believed me."

"I think he did. He doesn't like Aaron," Linda said.

"So I spent a couple of years recovering. Missed out on growing up with the rest of you. Damn near missed out on getting into the Grendel Scouts. It was me who nailed down what's wrong with the Earth Born. And now I can't get laid."

"And you blame that on Aaron?"

"Shouldn't I? Why are you afraid of him?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. He reminds me of my father, and that ought to be good. I'm not afraid of Dad, but—Edgar, I don't know. Let's leave it at that."

"Sure. And you're afraid Aaron's the father," Edgar said. "So you don't want to know."

"I didn't say that."

"No, you didn't say that."

"Edgar, has Aaron—has he been tracking my computer accesses?"

She was getting to know that grin. Edgar said, "Linda, he's tried, but he hasn't been able to, because I blocked access to those files, only it doesn't look like I did it, it looks like it was the colonel."

"That was a nice thing to do. You say he has tried to—to track my file accesses? And asked you to help?"

Edgar nodded. "I told him I didn't have time just then. Then he tried on his own, but I'd been there first."

"Thank you." She stood. "I think I better go look at Cadzie, and we've got to get ready to go to the mines. Let me think about this. Maybe it really is time to find out, whatever the answer is. Thank you."

His answering smile caught her turning. His proud smile. "Wups.

Edgar?"

"Yeah?"

"I've got your attention now? You listen. You think about what I'm saying. You even work out ways to do things for me."

Edgar gri

"Edgar, I can remember you losing interest in the middle of saying hello! We used to talk about it, the way you'd get bored and walk off in the middle of something. You'd be off into something else with someone else, programming, going back to the stars, what's with Earth, mainland ecology. Remember that T-shirt?"

Edgar remembered. Linda had cut a scarlet T-shirt to ribbons, so that it fell like lace across her body, dropping to her upper thighs, concealing and revealing.

She was watching him. "Got your attention, did it? I just had to know I could."

How would Dad answer? Edgar said, "I hope you sent that to Medical when you were through with it. Useful for restarting a stopped heart."

"Edgar, is there a girl you could do something for? Something nobody else has thought of?"

His face went slack. She remembered that look: Edgar, withdrawing into his own mind. "Maybe... I see what you mean, anyway. Linda? Thanks."

Justin stopped short of Robor's top foredeck. The whiff of coffee was faint, but it touched his brain from underneath. It came to Justin that Aaron Tragon was ruining the smell of coffee for him.

Before the grendels came, before the First seeded the rivers with trout and catfish, the First had scattered coffee beans over the mountain ridges. Coffee was easy to grow. It was a bitch to harvest. Coffee kept the First healthy! They had to hike into the mountains with backpacks or do without. They'd come back with as much as they wanted, plus a little more for trading. That was why Carlos always had coffee, because someone always wanted a table or bureau or carved doorway.

Aaron always had coffee because he sent someone to get it. Justin had done that when he was younger. The backpack groups always had fun, but they carried back smoked bear meat once instead of coffee, on Justin's suggestion. He hadn't gone again.

There was an i

Justin had dropped out. Others haunted the fringes, trying to find lives, but always ready to display a cup of coffee.

Coffee smelled like dominance games. Justin was begi

Aaron squeezed his shoulder and slipped past him, and Justin realized he was blocking a door. He shrugged and followed.