Beowulf's Children

"But Deadwood's a wreck!"

Aaron didn't look to see who had spoken. "Yes, but not a hopeless wreck. There's a lot of machinery there. We could have it back up to production in a few months."

"How do you know that?" Hendrick Sills asked.

"Edgar Sikes helped me direct Cassandra to do a study," Aaron said.

"Edgar?"

Edgar Sikes stood, "The minebit mommy isn't that badly damaged. It's not at the tu

"I've looked at much of it," Zack said from the podium. "I think he's right about that. I'm not sure I share his conclusions, but even if we picked another mining site, we'd have to move that entire minebit factory—"

Katya leaned close to Justin. "He's got it all worked out, hasn't he?"

"Pretty much," Justin said.

"Which makes it more important than ever to understand what happened at Deadwood Pass," Aaron said. "But we will never understand that in isolation. Whatever killed Joe and Linda doesn't live up there. We won't know what it is until we understand far more of Avalon's ecology than we know." He turned to face Big Chaka, who sat with his son down among the First. "Sir, don't you agree?"

Big Chaka stood. Standing, his eyes were at a level with Little Chaka's. "I do agree." He and Little Chaka nodded in unison.

"Everyone in this room regrets what happened to Toshiro," Aaron said. "Death by misadventure. The misadventure was this senseless distrust between First and Second, Earth Born and Star Born. If Toshiro's death has any meaning at all, it's to serve as the end of that! Mr. Chairman, I move that volunteers go back to the mainland, to reclaim the mines and more, to claim what is our own. Let us honor Toshiro's memory by completing the work we should all be doing together. I so move."

There was a moment of silence; then Big Chaka said, carefully and distinctly, "Second."

Trish relaxed, stretching unobtrusively, merely listening. Toshiro had taught her more about relaxation than she would ever have learned on her own. She was going to miss him terribly.

The vote was going Aaron's way. They'd be returning to the mainland with the blessings of the First... with obvious exceptions. Aaron himself looked relaxed, almost sleepy. What in hell did he have in mind? It was only for her own amusement that Trish had accused the First of murder. Then Aaron had reached behind Jessica's bent head and taken her by the wrist and, irresistibly, pulled her close enough to speak directly into her ear.

"Trish dear, I've got everything I want here. If you throw it away for me I'll kill you." And he smiled reassuringly and let go, let her settle back in her seat.

He means that. What does he think he has? Trish watched Edgar watching Aaron. They'd known each other since childhood, raised for some years by Joe Sikes, while Trish was bouncing from family to family... What was going through Edgar's head? Trish kicked a shoe off and reached under the table with agile toes. Edgar jumped, then gri

"... Weather," Zack said. "Aaron—Edgar—maybe you haven't seen what happened at Surf's Up? It looked like your movie hurricane turned real. Edgar, for twenty years Camelot got weather like California without the goddamned quakes and the rioters." Zack was pleading. "What's going on? I looked through your Fimbulchaos file—"

Aaron nodded at Edgar. Edgar stood up. He'd started to do that anyway, Trish noted, but the illusion would be that Edgar obeyed Aaron.

And Edgar let that notion stand. "Cassandra, give us Fimbulchaos." He didn't wait for the computer's response. "Citizens, for over a billion years, life on Earth has been studying the sun. Astronomers have six thousand years of records if you allow the Egyptians. Three hundred years ago, the sun had only been around for a few million years, because God hadn't invented fusion yet... "

Cassandra had two suns floating beneath the communal hall's high ceiling. As Edgar talked, the two shrank to stars; more stars blinked alongside.

"Two hundred and fifty years ago they found resonant shock-wave patterns in the sun. Sol is ringing like a great bell. About the same time, astrophysicists first detected a supernova by the neutrinos blasting from its core, so all the telescopes on Earth were pointed at the Large Magellanic Cloud before the light even reached Earth. It's two hundred and forty years since we sent our first probes over the poles of rotation of a star. The thing is, almost all of that study was of Sol. Sol! We had twenty, thirty years of close observation of other suns before Geographic left Sol. What we know about Tau Ceti is pitiful."

One bright star expanded to fill the dome. A wedge of the fiery globe disappeared, and a dissected star rotated for Edgar's audience.

There were little pockets of conversation all through the hall;

Cassandra was amplifying Edgar's voice above background noise. "Tau Ceti runs a fifty-year sunspot cycle, maybe. We've only seen about twenty years of that, so it's really just a guess. We can detect shock waves in Tau Ceti's interior. They're a lot like Sol's, but the cells are bigger, and the surface storms where the shock waves meet—Cassandra, my Fimbulchaos Sunspot Four—they're more violent than Sol's." Flame arced out from Tau Ceti, hundreds of thousands of miles before the stream bent back to kiss the surface. "They're getting more energetic as we near the peak of the sunspot cycle, but they don't reach as far out as Sol's would. Tau Ceti's got more powerful magnetic fields.

"What's happening to Avalon's weather is this. The sun is hotter, and the corona is way hotter, and it's reaching farther into space. It's heating Avalon's outer atmosphere. The atmosphere expands. That sets up jet streams going west, and turbulence pockets too. The Avalon ecology is trying to cope with the hurricanes, increased ultraviolet and some higher-energy radiation. Not everything has evolved to survive that. Some of what the Chakas have been finding just breed like mad and then die—"

He caught Trish's eye on him, pretended he hadn't, but she could see his belly flatten as he stretched to play with the cursor. Edgar was looking good. She gri

She tried to catch him as he made his way out of the meeting hall. He was surrounded. Everyone wanted to talk to Edgar Sikes.

This was a drag. Even if Edgar was loving it. Trish thought it over, then went to Little Chaka and borrowed his code and key.

When Edgar got back to the Sikes house, Trish was in the bedroom, cross-legged on the waterbed. She turned off Disney's Aladdin as he came in.

He smiled, showing no surprise. "Are we granting wishes tonight?"

"There's always a catch, remember?" Trish stood as if levitating. She looked around and smiled. "You've been working."

He said, "Maybe a little," but it was pretty clear he had been doing a lot of work on the room that had once belonged to Joe and Linda. The big ornate bed Carlos had given them was gone, replaced by a classic waterbed. Linda's pictures were gone from the walls as her clothes were gone from the closet. The adjoining room had been Cadzie's nursery. Now it was filled with computers and workbenches. The open door to the bathroom showed that it too had undergone a transformation. The small living room was nearly empty, with some weights and rolled mats stowed along one wall.

The surprise was that except for the computer room everything was neat and clean. Was that for me? "I like it," Trish said. "You're looking pretty good yourself, Soft One. Drop your shoes. Let's do some sun salutations."