Beowulf's Children

He didn't really believe that, but invisible death had eaten two members of his family under Cassandra's very nose, and the only clue was traces of speed on the bones. Speed meant grendels, but how? A fascinating puzzle, if only it hadn't been real.

They made good time the rest of the way back to the mine. His father accepted little help, even when sweat beaded his brow and the breath whistled in his throat. Long before dusk they found themselves hiking up the final approach. The hum of machinery was clear at half a kilometer-repair and restoration were well under way. A thin stream of smoke and screams of tortured metal told that some large piece of equipment was being ripped out and refitted. His father was blowing a little on the upslope, but Chaka had released his son's arm and was stalking bravely up the side of the hill.

Little Chaka was bouncing like a balloon. Free at last! He had forgotten what it felt like to climb around in the mountains without that damned cook pot on his back.

Sylvia Weyland waved her arms as they came up over the rise. Smelting metal was a sharp tang in their noses. Cranes and scaffolding hovered about the new mine shack. A dozen workers hustled about, carrying, loading. Grafting. A new and stronger shed was being erected, and Sylvia, biologist turned engineer, was the week's gang chief, and would rotate back to the mainland with the arrival of Robor.

"How was the walk?" she yelled.

"Great!" They were a little closer now, and voices could be dropped. Sylvia looked tired and a little sweaty, but satisfied. She and her crew worked fast. Two new steel frames had been fitted into place on the structure that would house permanent, grendel-proof shelters for mines and miners. Atop it was an ante

"I'm not seeing as much of the local biology as I'd like," Big Chaka complained as she approached him for a hug. "My son is just too protective. I'm not a child."

"We're just taking the mountain back," Sylvia said. "Our resources are still split. Let's just say that we'll all feel a lot better when you've categorized more of the life around here, but there are unavoidable risks attached. You're the only father Little Chaka has; is it surprising he's a bit"-she gri

His father looked up at Little Chaka owlishly. "It wasn't so many years ago that I carried you up into the highlands on my shoulders. Now, you could carry me, and with less effort." Then he smiled. "I suppose that every man wants his son to grow up. Mine just grew up a little further than most."

Little Chaka glowed with pride, touched with only the slightest tinge of sadness. He was just begi

But until that time, he could give thanks that they had had so much time together. That they had been able to share so much.

The Robor misadventure had not damaged their relationship beyond repair. He wasn't certain how he would have withstood that. Even now, there was a slow coiling of anger and resentment and self-contempt surrounding the whole issue. Self-contempt for allowing himself to be talked into it. Resentment toward Aaron Tragon. Anger, unresolved and smoldering, over the death of Toshiro.

But if his relationship with his father had been damaged...

He didn't want to think about that. He would have felt far more self-contempt. Far more resentment.

Far more anger toward Aaron.

He wondered, somewhat darkly, what he might have done about that. But he had to get back to Shangri-La and plan the expedition to the Scribeveldt, and there was no time at all for such thoughts.

The Scribeveldt was a vast oval of highland plain that began at the foothills 350 kilometers northeast of Shangri-La Base Camp, and stretched for over two thousand kilometers to the north and east from there. A long, sluggish river that someone had dubbed the Zambezi ran from north to south a little to the west of the plain's centerline. It was a river with few tributaries, and effectively divided the Scribeveldt into two unequal portions. Both parts of the veldt were covered by thick grassy stalks that grew up to waist height, and were sometimes covered with tiny yellow flowers.

It was called the Scribeveldt because when they first examined it from orbit it appeared to be covered with cursive alien script written in broad lines with faded ink, close-mowed curving stripes that approached each other, merged, then diverged. They had to be animal tracks. For the past year the trails had hardly come together at all, as if they were deliberately avoiding each other.

The Scribeveldt ended in a forest that covered the foothills. A few year-round streams ran through the forest, none more than a few inches deep. The Scribeveldt and forest had been examined from orbit for years, and one thing was certain; there were a number of animals on the veldt and within the forest, but except for a narrow band near the big river, there were no grendels.

The hunting blind was at the edge of the forest. Jessica quietly pushed aside a wisp of brush that obscured her view and peered out at the peaceful herd of chamels grazing quietly a half-kilometer away. Her war specs magnified them until they seemed close enough to touch.

One of the male chamels raised its head and looked right at her. Clever little sucker, aren't you? You can't see me or hear me. Do you smell me?

He had a gazelle's grace and the thin, sensitive neck of a giraffe.

His feathery-gray, insectile ante

Jessica lay in her blind pit as Cassandra analyzed the image in the war specs and bounced data to Shangri-La 150 kilometers away.

"Do we want it?" she whispered.

"I'm drooling." Chaka's voice was eager. He was in one of the other blinds, probably out of direct sight of the herd, but his war specs could display Cassandra's downlink. "Protective coloration's almost perfect."

Jessica checked: naked eye, war specs, then naked eye again. Damned good. What did the chamels do? Scan the environment with their noses, and adjust the protective coloration for a potential predator's perspective? The creatures were less conspicuous than their own shadows, a perfect predator-proofing strategy.

Strange, Jessica thought. We aren't just thinking about grendels any longer. There are other things out there. We've got to lose a whole generation's worth of bogeybeast stories, or we'll never survive.

"These are wi

Chaka's voice was thoughtful. "The trick will be keeping the herd together. We want to protect the family dynamics, if we can."

"Cassandra," Jessica whispered. "Note the brush, and the type and quantity and maturity of the leaves being eaten. Special note of the grazing patterns of the little ones."

They'd had to add modules to Cassandra in order to keep up with the flow of data. That had sparked yet one more debate: should their computer power be used for information processing or manufacturing? It was settled only when Zack took the side of the Second. "We can live without more consumer goods, but we can't live without knowledge," he'd said, surprising many of the Second. Everything was so new, so rife with possibilities and problems. Love her as they might-Avalon had little tolerance for errors.