Beowulf's Children

"Maybe coming back," Justin said. His pack would be lighter and roomier too.

"Okay. Kids, pass the word back, it's on your left and don't miss it. The centerpiece crab evolves those shells as a mating display. He wouldn't do that if he had to see to his defenses. You see an animal get that gaudy, or a bird, you know it's because he's been threat-free for a long time."

Carrying that mucking great pot, why wasn't Chaka puffing? Nobody else could do that, barring Aaron.

Behind Justin, Katya Martinez had her binoculars out. "Ha."

"Ha?"

"Joeys. Off trail to the left, about three hundred meters ahead."

"Ah. Good. If there's Joeys there aren't grendels. Okay, kids, let's go." Justin led them onward, through the dry rocky ground. The air seemed even drier than usual, a hot dry wind blowing through the pass from behind them.

"Devil wind," Katya said.

"Devil, you say?"

"They called it a Santa Ana back in California. Air mass flows down a mountain range, you get a foehn wind. Sirocco in Europe. Hot, dry compressive beating, tots of positive ions. Makes people nervous. You feel it, don't you?"

"Guess so. You read much about it?"

"Some."

"Anything I ought to know?"

"Do you think I wouldn't tell you? Ha. See, it's getting to me, too."

The trail led down and north along one of the mountain ridges framing Deadwood Pass. Twelve kilometers from the pass there was a saddle. Their dusty trail led to the right, then steeply uphill. Dimly above they could see green trees, bushes, tall but straggly grass. Justin called a halt.

"Fall in. Count off." He waited for the responses. "Okay, listen up." He pointed up the hill. "That's where we're going. Chaka, Katya, and I'll go up first. The rest of you follow along, but stay together. Jessica will tell you when it's safe to come up." He unslung his rifle and again checked the loads, then waited until Little Chaka and Katya had done the same. He carried the rifle at the ready as he led them up the hill.

"Are there grendels up there?" Sharon MacAndrews asked solemnly.

"Not there," one of the older Grendel Biters answered. There were snickers.

"Never been any so far," Justin said. "Not so far."

Eight years before he'd followed Cadma

"Caves. The second grendel lived in a river cave," Cadma

They'd gone up slowly, while two armed skeeters flitted about watchfully.

"We lost good men hunting that grendel."

"Looks quiet." Chaka's words brought Justin out of his reverie.

Paradise was a garden mount in a desert of dusty volcanic rock. It thrust upward from the side of the mountain range, a rocky slope that rose steeply for nearly two thousand feet. The gentle bowl at the top was a five-hundred-foot circle no more than fifty feet deep at the center. Some trick of nature had placed a spring at one lip of the dish. Water gushed up and ran down into the dish. At the bottom of the dish the water vanished into the ground, never to reappear. Paradise was a high oasis with no streams leading in or out.

They circled the mound until they came up over the lip on the side opposite the spring. Vegetation was sparse here, but most of the bowl was covered with grasses and horsemane trees. Insects flitted among the plants. One flew closer to have a look at them.

It was smaller than a hummingbird, but larger than the insects of Earth. There were two large wings as rigid as the wings on an airplane, and a blur beneath it from its motor wings. It hovered near and didn't seem afraid of them at all. After a while it lost interest and flew back down into the bowl.

At the bottom of the bowl was a tree that seemed covered with webbing.

Something moved in there.

Justin sca

"Roger. Geographic reports nothing unusual," Joe Sikes said. "You're cleared to take the kids in. Only this time try to keep the radios working."

"Sure thing." Justin flicked the cha

Dusk.

"It's getting late," Jessica said. "You sure you want to do this?"

"Part of the job," Justin said. "And it won't get any earlier. Chaka?

Coming?"

"Sure."

"Me too," Katya said.

"I think I should go," Jessica said.

"Nope. Someone's got to be in charge here, and that's you. Let's do it." Justin looked over his rifle. "Check your loads. Right. Here we go."

He led the way out of the bowl, over the lip, and down toward the river far below.

Jessica stood at the rim and watched them until they were out of sight among the volcanic rocks. "I've got a bad feeling about this," she told herself, but she gri

She went back to the kids. They were sprawled on the grass. Youngsters that age can be energetic, blurs one moment, motionless heaps the next. Another talent lost with age...

Two of them had discovered the insect life in the grass. Jessica bent down next to them and peered between the yellowish purple blades. Something that looked like a red-orange beetle was caught in a sticky webbing, and thousands of blue mites, so small they resembled a powder, were swarming over him. They stripped the beetle and carried the parts away into the rocks.

The mites disappeared, leaving only an empty blue shell dangling from a transparent web.

Damn that was fast, she thought. Insects on speed?

She shook her head. "All right!" she called. "Campsite is down in the bowl. Let's get to it-we've got a lot of setup before dusk."

She hauled the kids up, complaining, and set them on their way, and followed after them. But she still couldn't quite get the memory of those mites out of her mind. If a Biter laid his sleeping bags in a nest of those...

Blankets and sleeping bags, tents and cookstoves were produced, assembled, spread about. The entire camp sprang into existence like magic, a bubbling, steaming, jostling cacophony filled with busy bodies and giggling children, Grendel Scouts scurrying about on secretive missions, and Grendel Biters cha

Carey Lou shucked off his backpack, and looked about for a place to call home. He wandered a little away from the main camp, toward the familiar shape of a horsemane tree.

The frozen-waterfall appearance entranced him. He had spent many nights back on Camelot in the shaded comfort of the local trees, and had stolen his first kiss in their shadow. He shucked off his backpack, perhaps nurturing romantic thoughts, and stepped toward the tree.

Jessica grabbed his shoulders, and marched him around. "No." Bad idea.

"Why?"

She brushed some of the hanging fronds aside. "Take a closer look," she said sternly.

He looked, and gulped. This wasn't at all like the friendly, sleepy trees on the island. From the root to as far up the trunk as they could see, and even in the strands of the mane itself, the entire tree was infested with symbiotes, parasites, things.

Near the base, the greenish brown mane had turned milky, and took on the appearance of a coarse spiderweb. Something was fluttering in one of those nearby. Maybe prey, maybe predator, maybe spider. Carey Lou didn't get close. He gulped again. "Maybe that one over there?"