Beowulf's Children

A deep blue line ran across the front of the Scribe at the level of the grass. It seemed to ripple. Lips, or just a lower lip... maybe.

Otherwise nothing about the beast was in motion. It slid along like a raft on a wide river. Any motion must be taking place beneath the shell. Others of its kind, Avalon crabs and bugs and birds, made do with four motive limbs and endless ingenuity in the shapes of their shells.

Katya rose from her seat, lifted a pair of war specs, and gave a low whistle. She nudged him, and passed them over.

The beast was even more impressive when seen through the glasses. As large as—"Cassandra, is this the largest animal we know of?"

"Negative. The blue whale is larger. This is comparable in size to the largest of the herbivorous dinosaurs."

"Thank you." The edge of the shell dipped to become skids or skis. A half-dozen snouters grazed placidly along one flank. The beast was as large as half the main colony, and flat. It must have nearly the mass of a blue whale, but it was flatter, and wider than it was long.

There: eyes. Justin had thought they'd be higher. They were bedded in the long blue lips, too low to give the Scribe a decent view. He zoomed on one eye, and it was looking back, examining Justin and Katya, utterly unconcerned.

It wasn't until Justin focused the lenses more carefully that he saw what Katya was excited about.

There were grendels hanging from the shell. Two... no, three distorted grendel-shapes hung from the front and side of the shell, like, hanks of hair. Mummies, not quite skeletons, but long dead, he judged.

Katya was saying, "Looks slow. Let's lake a closer look."

The Scribe continued on its placid way as they approached. Five pterodons rose to circle above them. Snouters scurried away around the curve of the stupendous beast. They didn't seem terribly worried. The little Scribe, if that was what it was, hadn't been afraid either. But those dried corpses were grendels!

"Cassandra," Justin said, "backtrack."

The trike's little holostage sprouted a relief map of the locality. Cassandra recreated the beast's path as it meandered among similar paths in the grasslands. There were other curves and loops of lighter grass on the flat prairie background, and they crossed only rarely.

"How close does it get to ru

Cassandra said, "Quite close, and frequently. The path often parallels waterways."

"Does it enter known grendel territory?"

"Affirmative."

"Thank you," Justin said. "Hallelujah."

"There are things that aren't afraid of grendels," Katya said.

"Obviously. Not this creature, not its young. Not the pterodons nesting on its back."

"And the snouters?"

"Don't know. Maybe they stay on the veldt when Momma Scribe drinks."

Justin stood up on the seat of the trike to watch the creature. It drifted like an island, placid and unconcerned, as if it had never been threatened in its life. Indeed, it was difficult to imagine what could harm such a beast.

He raised the binoculars and focused on one of the mummified grendels.

The four mummies looked about the same state, the same age. That might have been a coordinated attack, for all the good it had done them. Each was hanging by its tail.

"Its defenses seem to be passive," he said. "Its sheer size, and something about the shell that traps grendels."

Katya asked, "Some sort of mucilage?"

"More like Velcro. Maybe. I want to see." He levered himself off the trike and walked through the high grass toward the Scribe. He pulled his microphone aside and told Katya, "You could put a castle on this thing. Come, I will make you Queen of the Scribeveldt."

The shell was all pentagonal plates, like shields a couple of feet across. Shields, and white tails hanging between the edges, here and there. Bones?

Cadma

Katya said, "Not a castle. Tents. A pavilion, a summer palace. The serfs will have to wear special shoes."

"Yeah, wouldn't want to hurt the shell."

He was vaguely aware of a skeeter's buzz, far-off and insignificant, and almost didn't register it until he heard the voice in his earphone. "What in the hell are you doing?" Jessica asked.

"I'm getting closer," he said. "This thing could care less about me."

"You don't know that." Her voice was irritated.

"It's good to know somebody cares," he said.

Jessica brought the skeeter closer and watched Justin and Katya approach the mountainous Scribe. The lawn behind it stretched to the horizon. It was easy to imagine such a herbivore trolling the entire continent, perhaps looking for a mate, collecting a herd of animals who hid beneath its shell for safety.

It was impossible to imagine a carnivore of equivalent size. Even blue whales, while technically carnivores, were passive filtration feeders. The malevolent Moby Dick had been their little brother. So Justin was probably safe. Probably.

Still.

She was irritated. She wanted to be mad at him. He had sided with Cadma

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Only Justin and... and Aaron. Only the two of them could drive her this crazy.

He was twenty feet from the creature now. Its eye, a spheroid four feet across with a black iris, its tiny-seeming eye was on Justin and it just didn't care. To Jessica he looked so small. She could see his point. He was nothing in comparison to a beast such as this. Why should it pay him any mind whatsoever? And yet... and yet... Avalon Surprise.

The pig things snorted and ambled away. They were rooting around in the grass, moving when they had to stay ahead of the Scribe's long blue lip.

She brought the skeeter in for a closer look, and the snouter looked up, more alarmed by the whirring, flying thing in the sky than it ever was by Justin's presence.

"What are you doing now?" she demanded.

"Getting close-ups for the record. Jess, Chaka is going to absolutely love this! I'm looking at the bones of a grendel's tail, with a couple of vertebrae still attached. The rest of it could have fallen off years ago.

The spikes on the tail are caught between the edges of the plates of the shell. It catches their tail spikes and they can writhe themselves into a coma for all the good it does them. These bones, they're cracked—"

"Cassie!" Jessica howled. "Where are your safety overrides?"

"Working," Cassandra said, and went silent.

It came to Jessica that checking all of Cassandra's protective measures might be the work of months, or lifetimes. "Cancel that last question. You hear me, Cassie?"

"Canceled. Justin is safe by my current parameters," Cassandra said. "I have backtracked this creature over the past year. It is not an aggressor. Grendels do not survive in its domain. I find no other local predators thus far."

Current parameters. "When were your current safety parameters updated?"

"Eighty-seven days ago."

Three months ago. Edgar had been fiddling with Cassandra, likely at Aaron's instigation, giving the Second more freedom to explore.

"Might as well join the madness," she said, and brought the skeeter down a hundred meters away from the moving mountain. The Scribe didn't look able to move quickly, but she didn't want it accidentally changing course and crushing her skeeter.