Beowulf's Children

Cute. Venomous or worse.

They were in the clearing now. The light slanted down through the trees, giving a louvered effect.

"Motion sensors?"

Jessica checked a wrist sensor. "Nothing for a hundred meters."

They knelt, and examined their take. The snouter was both withered and half-devoured. The spider devils had first sucked his juice, then ripped him apart.

They lay on their sides, motionless. Their faces were tiny but manlike, lips slightly parted. One, the largest, lay on its back. Its legs closed feebly on Chaka's tongs when he prodded it.

"Alive." He picked it up and examined it. The four legs quivered. Legs and torso were covered with straight black hair. These were mammaloids, Joeys, though evolved in a drastically different direction. Wet-looking lips drooled something thin and milky.

"Close your mouth while you chew," Chaka said, and unfolded his basket to drop them in one at a time.

"All of them?" Justin asked.

"Sure. They might be some kind of hive mind. Might not even be able to survive separated. I'll get them ready to ship back to Father." He gri

Jessica and Justin examined the web. She was scraping goo from what seemed to be an enormous mat of thin vines, and putting a bit of it into a sample bottle.

"What the hell is it?" Justin asked, scratching his head.

"It looks like a lattice of leaves," she said. "They chewed up the co

"So it's not a true web."

"No. They're interacting with the environment."

"A bit chancy. They're vulnerable to the quality of the materials."

"No more than a beaver," Chaka said.

"Why would a tree want to make something useful to a spider devil?"

"Maybe they furnish the tree with high-energy droppings."

Her sample bottle had everything that it needed, and she snapped it shut. "Let's get out of here. I don't feel all that comfortable here."

"Come now. The woods are lovely, dark and deep."

"Yeah, right. But I have promises to keep."

"Right." They unclipped a rod from the side of the basket, extended it, and threaded it through loops at the top. Chaka hoisted it over one shoulder, and Jessica took the other end. Justin kept his rifle at the ready, movement and thermal sensors tuned.

And they encountered no problems at all, all the way back to the trikes.

The NickNack was a much smaller version of Robor, a cargo mover ballasted by hydrogen sacks, large enough to carry a dozen people and small enough to be powered by a single skeeter. It was reliable so long as they didn't run into bad weather.

Cigar-shaped, it hovered above the animal pens. The spider devils were frozen, the dozens of plant and insect specimens neatly and safely stowed away. They would easily survive the eight-hour trip.

Eight hours as the pterodon flies. On the other hand, to paraphrase the old joke, if the pterodon had to walk and herd a group of recalcitrant chamels, it would take twelve times as long.

"Aaron will be back by morning," Jessica said. "Then we can start them moving. Cassandra? Map."

A contour map showing a quarter of the continent opened in the air before them.

"Close on our position, Cassie. Good enough. Group, we need to water the chamels daily. We need to clear the water holes of grendels before we get to them. Trikes, horses, and skeeters are the ticket. We leapfrog ahead. Should take four days. Any questions?"

Jessica leaned back against the log. She could hear the chamels snorting in their pens. The males bonded readily to horses doused in chamel scent, and the larger females would follow the males. Her stomach buzzed with adrenaline. A new adventure. What they had fought for, bargained for...

Died for...

She sloshed her coffee down on the ground, and stood. "Let's get a good night's sleep tonight, and get started early."

"Aye."

"Aye."

The fences, the generators, the shelters, and a cache of weapons would be left behind. Eventually, there would be supply stations all over the southern tip of the continent. Forty-eight hours of juice in the fences, and enough weapons to make a hell of a stand before help arrived, with help never more than twelve hours away.

She high-fived Chaka. "Good job."

He gri

Jessica and Justin remained by the fireside. Silences between them were strained these days, ever since... what had happened. But that was the chance they had taken. If anything he seemed more uncomfortable about it than she did. And that, she decided, was appropriate.

"Looking forward to the week?"

"We'll see a lot of territory," he said.

"Good find," she said. "The females make good meat, and are decent beasts of burden. The males are as fast as racehorses. Good stock.

"Imagine a hunt," she said. "Some kind of camo shirts and pants, and riding one of these beauties. Sneak up on anything."

"I've thought about it for weeks." Justin stretched. "Well, I think it's that time. Big day tomorrow."

"Big day."

He left without a backward glance. Jessica hunched her knees and stared into the fire. For all of her life she had treasured countless long, intimate conversations with Justin. She missed them more than she could have dreamed.

And yet... what she had done... what they had done was right. The only thing she regretted was Toshiro. He of the gifted hands and strong, golden body...

He had made his choice. As Justin had made his.

As her father had made his. And the colony theirs.

The fire crackled, grew higher and warmer, and then slowly began to die. It was well after midnight before she felt sleepiness to match her fatigue.

Justin woke at the stirring of the horses. For a bare moment he was disoriented, unable to remember where he was. In his father's house? He sat up in his bedroll and washed his face from a canteen. On the mainland every camp away from a base would be a dry camp. Tau Ceti was showing a bare sliver of red to the east, and the air was pleasantly chill. The prairie was silent, and the creatures that took the place of insects on Avalon were quiet.

The path ahead was clear. Three days' ride to the foot of the mountains, some through grendel country, but they had the technology to deal with those. Grendels wouldn't dictate their route. "First one up makes breakfast," someone called. Justin gri

"Yippie-yi-o-tie-yay," Justin said.

"Do you see any problems in working with Jessica for the next three days?"

Justin glared at him.

"I know that there have been some—"

Justin interrupted him. "Listen. She made her choice. It wasn't totally right—but it wasn't totally wrong, either. I made my choice. We have problems. But she's still my..."

He thought about it. A dozen possibilities flashed through his mind.

"Family," he decided. "She's my family. We'll work it out."

An hour later a skeeter buzzed in from the south. Justin frowned when he saw Aaron climb out of the cabin. He felt a flash of unreasoning dislike, even hatred burning at the back of his brain.

Aaron. Everything that is good here would have happened anyway. Eventually. And everything bad—you brought. You always knew how to make the games come out your way, didn't you?

Jessica, still tousled but beautiful, went to meet him. Aaron embraced her, then cast a radiant smile in Justin's direction. "Top of the morning, sir."