Beowulf's Children

"What's bothering you?"

"Suppose a grendel could control itself. Not go on speed until it got up here. I think one could make it."

"They don't, though," Jessica said. "They didn't back at the Grendel Scout camp, and that was a much better place for one to do that."

"I expect you're right."

"But we thought of that too," she said. "We have motion and IR detectors out there." She took a deep breath. "You said—we did it the wrong way, but it was the right thing. Did you mean that?"

He laughed. "I think that it's too damned easy to forget why we came. Lots of reasons, but all of us had a dream. We believed we could make a future."

"Dad—"

"Yeah, I know. You do too. And the ones we left behind thought we were crazy, just like some think that about you. Jess, what's done is done. You're here, you've got a dream. You have to follow it, just as we did."

"I don't think I ever heard you talk this way before."

"Sure you did, you just weren't ready to listen yet." He looked out at the distant, mist-shrouded peaks, and stretched elaborately.

"Want to climb them?"

"Reading my mind without permission again? We left a lot behind, you know. Not like you, here. We really left. We'd never go home, and there wasn't much chance anyone we'd ever known would join us."

"And no one has—"

"And no one has," Cadma

"I know. Zack thought you might have killed your friend—"

"Not just Zack. Everyone." He paused to stare into the distance, and she knew that he was once again strapped to a table, drugged and helpless as the grendel toyed with him. It had happened many times before, but now Jessica felt as if he was someone she didn't know at all. He was angry, hurt, disappointed... and yet somehow, under and aside of all of that, there was still profound hope, and a level of trust that she wasn't certain she deserved. It hurt to look at him, and she opted to change the subject. "Are you ever sorry that you came?"

He shook his head slowly. "Not me. There weren't any wars. I have no political savvy. I wasn't going anywhere in the UN military bureaucracy."

"And what about your marriage?" she asked carefully.

Her father looked at her, smiled sadly, and lowered his eyes. "Sie

"Did you love her?"

"Very much."

"As much as you love Mom?"

For a moment she wasn't certain that he would answer; then he said, "Yes."

"As much as you love Sylvia?"

He looked at her sharply, and she didn't look away. He smiled, and the smile wavered and was gone. "No," he said. She nodded. He put his arm around her. "And not as much as I love you, either."

She leaned her head against him. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Did I do wrong. Daddy?" Knowing that for her, the Stronghold was now on another planet.

"We all do, sometimes," he said. "But very few of us have the chance to do something great, to make up for it. You kids have that chance. I expect to watch you soar." She nodded silently. And together, they watched Tau Ceti dip toward the mountains, and darkness fall across the land.

Old Grendel waited, and saw God return to the flat above the river. She wanted a closer look, but there were too many of the weirds, and they were alert. They had strung metal lace for barriers. She had seen animals touch those fences and recoil as if bitten or burned. She didn't understand such things, but was prepared to learn quickly.

She might be able to approach them from the rear. And dimly, she remembered a path.

She wriggled backward, retreating from her position. Careful. There wasn't enough water to cool her if her body went on speed. She had territory to cover.

Chapter 31

FIRECRACKERS

Nature is but a name for an effect

Whose cause is God.

WILLIAM COWPER, The Task

Cadma

He dressed quietly and went to the mess hall to find coffee. The main room had an eastern view and he left the lights low, and sca

"Hello."

Cadma

"No, but I went to bed early," Chaka said.

"We all did. I've found coffee makings. Want some?"

"Please."

"Like old times. We don't go camping much now."

"Not since the children grew up," Chaka agreed.

An indifferent breeze blew down from the mountains behind them. Not warming, not cooling, just enough to ruffle the grass of the main compound, a slight ruffling of the grass in the glare of the safety floodlamps. There was a hint of light in the eastern sky. Cadma

"So," Cadma

"The children have done well," he said. "They have built a real community here."

"Yes. I'm impressed."

"And none too soon, I think. Avalon hasn't even begun to share her secrets," Chaka's voice was utterly content.

"This is what you came for, isn't it?"

"If you're an exobiologist, you go where the exobiology is," he said reasonably. "You know, we're probably the most interesting life-form on this planet."

"How so?"

"We should really study ourselves. Every single one of us came here because we had nothing—or not enough to hold us on Earth. I find that fairly telling, don't you?"

"You lost your family, didn't you?" Cadma

"Yes." Chaka's toe drew a lazy circle on the wooden floor beneath him. "It was my fault. Food poisoning, in the middle Amazon. My family and I were there for the year conducting piranha research. There was a village celebration. They used some ca

His face tightened, but his voice was still steady. "Half the village died before we could get medical help. My wife and my daughter were among them."

"A good reason to get away."

Chaka took another deep sip. "I think that we had all just about used Earth up. I think that we all told ourselves different stories about it, but there were reasons. You were put out to pasture. Carlos is the remittance man of all time."

Cadma

"How did you come to adopt Little Chaka?"

"You didn't know?"

"I never asked. One day we just noticed that he wasn't rotating out of your house."

"An accident, really." Chaka said. "We just gravitated toward each other. You know... it's odd, but Little Chaka might have been better suited to ectogynic birth than any of the other children."

"How so?"