Beowulf's Children

"This is Skeeter Two. We have no contact at all."

"None?"

"Nothing grendel-sized is moving. No heat source. I don't like it."

"And the river is ru

"The ox was alive when we chained it in the river. We numbed it, sliced it, and let it bleed to death. I'm telling you, it should have done the job."

"Wait ten minutes," Aaron said.

Chaka wheeled around. This was a good life. There was beauty, and endless discovery and growth. But it required vigilance. His life had always required vigilance. Since the first time that he had become aware of the difference between himself and the other children, he had been vigilant.

Since the first time that he had formed the union with Aaron and Trish and the others, he had been vigilant. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Who said that? His father?

He pulled his mind back to the task at hand.

Chaka had been adopted, mentored by Big Chaka. Big Chaka was from America. Little Chaka's seed had come from New Guinea. Still, there was a co

He checked all of his meters. "Cassandra?"

"Negative, Chaka," she said.

Damn. There was just nothing warm and willing to move down there. At least—nothing that could be lured by blood. He had long thought that grendels were more intelligent than anyone gave them credit for.

"All right," he said finally. "Let's dump speed."

One of the other skeeters dropped speed pellets into the water. They dissolved almost instantly. The water seethed with scent.

"Let's see," Chaka said.

Old Grendel was in agony. The smells of blood and speed were overwhelming. She wanted to meet these strange creatures on their own ground, to learn.

There was so much that was new about them.

But she couldn't do that. Her whole self wanted to attack. If she came near them, she would tear them to pieces, or they would kill her. She would learn nothing. All she could do was fight against her own deepest instincts, feel the speed boiling within her, and lie buried in the mud and the silt and wait.

And dream.

She remembered a time when she had no dreams.

She remembered when the world had become so strange. When the colors and shapes and smells became patterns. Agony came with the change. She had suffered for a full cycle of seasons, and there were times when she was so sick and crazed that she completely forgot what it had ever been to feel well and whole. And then... and then her head felt heavy. Swollen. On the far side of agony came an awareness, a newness.

That was when she began to remember things. To think of the images that came at night, and wonder where they stopped and the world of food and fear began.

That was when she found she could tell the speed to stop, to go away. When she began to master the hidden essence of herself. That was the begi

She knew that something had happened. And she knew that she wanted to pass this something on, a gift for her own young.

Perhaps once a year, she would chase down one of her own swimmers. Quite a chase it would be, too. How was a swimmer to know that the ballistic shape swooping through the water didn't mean to eat it? Every similar memory ended in water clouded with gore. But once a year the jaws would close more gently.

A swimmer could survive out of the water for almost an hour, and she moved carefully through the dusk, briskly, but never hitting speed. If its skin grew too dry, she would vomit a little water over it to keep it comfortable, and continue.

The water tasted different to her here. When she came here, it felt better. And when she brought some of her young, when she made certain that they lingered in this watery place, it felt best of all.

And some of those swimmers that she brought to this place felt the same strange call.

One had died. Her head swelled, as with her sisters before her, but the pain never dwindled, and her thin scream stopped only with death. She was too old. Old Grendel decided. The bones in her head had gone rigid, and expansion below the skull had split it. Old Grendel didn't make that mistake again.

The ones who had not been to the headwater smelled different. They were stupid. They would challenge her for territory when they were not a third her size, when they hadn't even fully grown into speed. She tore them to pieces without a second thought.

The favored ones: she watched them grow, and presently chased them down the river. Most she never saw again.

But sometimes... when the weather was dry and the water levels dropped, when there weren't any ponds or marshes to support them, some of them came back to challenge her.

She remembered killing many—but allowing others to flee back downriver. She didn't know what happened to them, didn't really think about it in the way that a human being might understand memories, but she felt a distaste for killing them. Ordinarily, in killing there was pleasure.

The water was buzzing against her skin, pounding in her ears. Old Grendel came back to herself in a flash of terror. Then she recognized the vibration of approaching hooves.

The water was ru

The hoofbeats were upriver from her. She could hear everything. The smell reached her a few moments later. Puzzle beasts, the ones who could change their look and scent. A herd of them! She loved the taste of their meat, and the joy of solving the puzzle they posed; for the world was a pattern, and puzzle beasts could hide within it.

Again, her juices began to flow. It was almost too good to believe, too good to allow to pass.

But she could smell more than a score of weirds. Weirds were dangerous. She could hear it coming, rumble-roar-splash, and she smelled a stink of lightning and heat and volcanic chemicals: one of the dead things, the shells that the weirds grew so that they could run on speed.

The herd pounded through the river, until the thunder of hooves diminished. Then Old Grendel slowly, cautiously raised her head from the water, and looked. They were moving away, to the east, toward the larger encampment.

She could get closer, and would. The sun was past its zenith. The day was cooling. She could make it to another spring, one which she had discovered on a foray in the rain. It was a long way from her native grounds.

Chapter 29

CHILDREN OF THE DREAM

Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque.

(The Roman state stands by ancient customs, and its manhood.)

ENNIUS, A

Two rows of electrified fences greeted them as they drove the herd toward Shangri-La.

A sheer granite expanse of mountains rose behind the base camp to the north, solid and impassive. Steps and supply caverns had been cut into it. These could also serve as shelters in an emergency. There was no deep ru

The sights and smells of a healthy, active camp assailed them as they rode up, singing and enjoying themselves.

Justin waited for the first fence to shut down and the warning lights atop it to blink off. Two attendants swung the gate open, and welcomed them in.