Beowulf's Children Part 16

"All right, all right . . ."

Jessica paused at the door, and then said back over her shoulder-"Zack Moskowitz."

"Hah! His mustache tickles."

Without admitting defeat, Jessica affected a slouch, leaving the room.

Jessica climbed down a narrow spiral staircase into the cargo bay. It was vast and almost empty now, thrumming with engine vibration as they neared the ground. There were six great bay doors of molded high-impact plastic. Four were already open. She took a door next to Justin, who already had the cable attached to his belt-buckle carabiner.

"Race you!" he said merrily.

"What stakes?"

"You make pan biscuits tonight."

"Fine-or you hunt up tubers."

"You're on."

She unlatched and flung her door open. The breeze ruffled her hair, cooled her face. They were fifty feet above the low, bluish gra.s.s. Even from here it looked scraggly, surviving where the heavier brush had died for lack of moisture. She tied the line through her carabiner and braced it at her hip, right hand taking the high grip, and threw the rest of the line out over the side. Before it had completely unreeled she launched herself. She looked back up, shadowed by Robor's bulk, its Chinese-dragon facade dropping away from her toward the morning sky, and laughed.

She hadn't been the first out. That was Aaron, as usual, his hours of mountain climbing serving him well. But Justin was coming down fast, and then Katya and Trish and Toshiro, the six of them like a small colony of spiders spiraling to earth. The ropes still dangled sixteen feet above the ground when Aaron reached the bottom of his line. He paused a fatal instant, and she paused watching him, and Justin snapped free and dropped the rest of the way down, hitting and rolling like a paratrooper. He came back to his feet lightly, sporting a bruised face, a shoulder stained with dirt, and a grin of evil triumphant.

Jessica didn't jump. The five of them jumping in concert could wobble Robor's descent.

When it finally came within reach Justin grabbed his line and anch.o.r.ed it to one of the steel loops set into the ground. Katya was next down. She grunted, trying to get her cable into a ring. It wouldn't quite reach as a gust of wind took Robor sideways a few feet. Aaron grabbed the end of his line with his left hand and stretched out to grasp a steel ring with his right. His mouth gaped into an O of strain, and she heard his shoulders creak. But will and muscle and a shift of wind brought the line close enough to the ring for him to attach the mooring clip, and from there on it was easy.

Robor's undercarriage brushed the ground, and secondary lines tied it into place. As Justin walked past her, Jessica slapped him a casual high-five.

"Let's take a look at the processor," he said. She nodded.

The flat was four hundred meters across, rocky and mostly barren. Up a short incline was a second terrace. They scrambled up the lip of the rise, and paused. Geodesic dome. A dozen yards away, a corrugated shed housed the automated processor. Other than those, nothing for two hundred meters in either direction. Nothing . . . then a rise of mountain, crested with bushes with purple-green, roughly triangular leaves. The dirt beneath their feet was scarred, tread-marked where mini-tractors had carried their loads of plastic bricks back to Robor.

Ordinarily the mining equipment, sheltered beneath its dome of pipes, churned merrily away. But all was silent now.

Jessica turned and looked below her. Robor's dragon shape stirred in the wind, seemed almost to breathe. Its red and green stubby wings struggled to break from bondage. The lower cargo doors were opening, ramps descending. One of the mini-tractors was exiting smoothly.

Below Robor, and beyond, stretched Grendel Valley. Green, wild, twisted with vegetation. And through the very middle of it ran a river. The Styx. Death.

Higher up were plateaus where children of Earth could play. North and east she could see three mountain ranges. The farthest high peaks were lost in the mist. In winter even the lowest would be snow-crested, but today the air was warm and moist, the light and heat of Tau Ceti steady upon them.

Pterodons glided silkily through the peaks, more plentiful here than on Camelot. On the island they ate fish, or darted into the isolated horsemane trees to s.n.a.t.c.h eggs from a variety of Avalon crab that lived in their tops. She could see other birdlike things. Huge insects, perhaps, dragonflyish things that darted. At half a kilometer she couldn't make out details.

The air was heavy, moist and . . . well, green.

It smelled alive. It buzzed and hummed and crackled. The very sounds here were different, a low, heavy thrum of life. The area immediately surrounding the Styx was relatively clear, but back a kilometer or so the forest began in earnest, dense enough to satisfy any dreams of childhood discovery.

Joe Sikes trudged up the hill while Linda followed with the tractor.

Cadzie, stretching and looking about, bounced in a sling across her chest.

"What's the schedule?" she asked Joe when he was close enough.

Joe was laughing. "Jess, Chaka just went past me with a kind of a gla.s.s sh.e.l.l on his back. It must weigh a tonne. He looks like a giant turtle!"

"It's just the cook pot, Joe."

"He could get something a lot lighter. Is he just showing off his muscles?"

She chuckled.

"Star Born Secrets? Well, never mind. Business first," he said. "We want to take a good look at the processor."

Now the Biters were streaming down Robor's pa.s.senger ramps. Twenty kids, the youngest just eleven, bright healthy kids on their first trip to the mainland.

"Stay close together," Jessica called down. "Patrol leaders check packs." She turned back to Joe. "Justin will check and if all's clear, we'll hike in and sleep at the oasis."

"The usual communication arrangements?" Joe was smiling a little, even through his concern.

"Joe. You wound me. It's a sheer accident that those transmitters get switched off every time."

"Yeah, yeah."

Justin was climbing up atop Robor, and had unhooked one of the three slave skeeters. He revved its engine, then whipped it up into the air and down toward the mining complex.

"We want to get down to Paradise," Jessica said, "get things set up.

If we're lucky, we can get a Run in tonight. You can handle things here?"

"Sure," Joe said. "Straightforward diagnostic and repair. We've got the tools, and some replacement parts. Everything we need to repair-the problem is: what the h.e.l.l happened, and will it happen again?"

Chapter 9.

PARADISE.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

HENRY DAVID Th.o.r.eAU, Walden

"Fall in. Count off," Justin said.

The youngsters formed a line, oldest and largest to Justin's left, a stair step down of heads off to the right until at the end was Sharon McAndrews, not quite the youngest but certainly the shortest. Beyond Sharon, Jessica, Carey Lou, and Heather McKennie formed a small group.

"One. Two." They counted down the line to Sharon, then the older Scouts, finally Jessica.

"Remember your number," Justin said. "Now let's do it again. Count off. Okay. Remember your number, and remember who's on each side of you. Okay, go wander around."

The kids scattered. Justin waited a moment, then blew a whistle.

"Count off!"

There was a moment's hesitation, then they began, "One. Two."

"Twenty-six." Jessica finished the count.

"Right. We'll be doing that a lot," Justin said. "Now the rules-"

"We don't need no stinking rules." Carey Lou giggled. "Rules are for Earth Born."

Justin saw that Joe Sikes was recording everything. "Not quite," he said. "There are times when you need rules, and this is one of them. Now listen: "Groups of three. Never less than three," he said. "One to break his leg, one to stay with him, and one to go for help. Groups of three or more. Okay? Good.

"The trail is marked, orange paint splotches on the rocks. If you see red splotches you're off trail to the left side as we go out. Green is off trail to the right side going out. Everyone got that?"

"Red right returning," one of the smaller ones said gravely.

"Right-uh, correct. And Jessica is Tail End Charlie. n.o.body gets behind Jessica. No one. When I look back and see Jessica I want to be sure everyone is ahead of her.

"When either Jessica or I call 'Count off' you count off, right then, and n.o.body ever answers for anyone else. This isn't Camelot! There are grendels out here."

Some of the Grendel Biters exchanged knowing looks.

"Okay." Justin turned to Joe Sikes. "Latest reports?"

"All clear to Paradise," Sikes said. He didn't sound happy. "You're cleared to trek. Good luck."

"Thanks. Okay, let's move out."

Chaka lifted his pack-minimal gear, plus the gla.s.s cauldron that was big enough to serve them all-and swung it into place with a grunt. He hadn't done that a moment early. Joe Sikes shook his head and turned toward the minehead.

Justin unslung his rifle and checked the loads, then led off down the side of the pa.s.s, down north and eastward toward the green valley and the grendels. There wasn't any danger up this high. Everything they knew about grendels said they couldn't go far from water. Still, he looked everywhere, ahead, to the sides. It was his fourth trip, the third as leader, and every time there was that feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The first time Justin had come down this trail his father had been leader, and Joe Sikes had been Tail End Charlie. There had been a big fight in the council, with Zack adamant that no children would go to the mainland.

"Think again, Zack," Cadmann had said. "You have to let go sometime."

"No."

"Speak for yourself, Zack. You can give orders down here, but my family hasn't been part of your jurisdiction since a year after we came here."

"That's not fair."

"Which way did you mean that?" Sylvia demanded. There'd been a buzz of conversation and whispers as everyone remembered those times. Cadmann had predicted danger. No one had believed him. No one believed there were any dangers on the island at all. They were all sure it was pranks, or something worse, an old military man's desperate efforts to be needed. Until the first grendel attack. Then Colonel Weyland had taken his share of tools and equipment and gone up to build the Stronghold, and if he hadn't done that, when the samlon changed the grendels would have killed everyone on the planet. No one liked to think about that, not then and not now. Colonel Cadmann Weyland, warrior and Ca.s.sandra. And now Zack kept seeing dangers.

The trail was dry and dusty, which made Justin feel better. Grendels didn't like dry and dusty. After fifteen minutes he stopped. The two youngsters who'd been trying to keep up with him gratefully leaned against boulders. Behind him the Grendel Biters were strung out along the steeply rising trail. No sign of Jessica, but the trail threaded among boulders. "Count off!"

"One. Two." The count moved back along the trail until he couldn't hear any longer. There was a pause, then more shouts pa.s.sed back up the trail. "All present."

He took a moment to raise his binoculars. They hadn't had good binoculars the first time, just the increasingly rare and valuable war specs. Those had come all the way from Earth. Once there had been fifty pairs of the computer-enhanced optical systems. Now only eight remained.

But a year ago they'd been able to schedule the time for Ca.s.sandra to build optical grinding equipment, and now they had binoculars in a variety of strengths and fields. These were 10 X 60, really too heavy for backpacking, but he could see a long way, and they worked well into twilight.

War specs were Ca.s.sandra's eyes. The First could see through those; but they couldn't see through binoculars.

Justin scanned the area below. Far down in the valley something moved among the gra.s.s at the river's edge. Almost certainly a grendel. Not much else lived that close to a river. But sometimes-sometimes there were large things that didn't look much like grendels. They never stayed still or visible long. What were they? Another kind of grendel? They didn't know, and that ate at Justin.

This was their planet but all they really knew was that anywhere there was water there were grendels. All kinds of grendels. Some made dams, some hunted farther from the river. Some lived in shallow mud, some couldn't live without submerging themselves in river water, but if there was water, there were grendels.

The river was low. The lakes formed by grendel dams were not much more than ponds, and where there had been gra.s.sland and bushes last year there was nothing but caked mud with vast cracks. And above that were dry rock and horseman trees. Grendels couldn't live in the rocky ground above the river, but Justin scanned the rocks and sand ahead anyway. Nothing there but swirls of dust kicked up by the rising wind behind him. On Earth there would be snakes. He'd seen them in films. Avalon didn't seem to have evolved the snake, and so far they hadn't encountered anything particularly venomous, at least not to humans.

"Watch your feet," Chaka sang out. He was rolling along like a juggernaut, ignoring the way the ground rose. "Justin, Carlos will want that sh.e.l.l if you've got room."

Now Justin saw it too, an empty sh.e.l.l with a golden iridescence, curled and fluted, lying in the mud like a dinner platter lost from the Sun King's palace. Centerpiece crabs were big enough to catch Joeys, the largest thing that lived in these dusty areas. Their jaws held crud and corruption but they weren't dangerous to anyone with boots on. Carlos made wonderful things from their sh.e.l.ls.

"Maybe coming back," Justin said. His pack would be lighter and roomier too.

"Okay. Kids, pa.s.s the word back, it's on your left and don't miss it. The centerpiece crab evolves those sh.e.l.ls as a mating display. He wouldn't do that if he had to see to his defenses. You see an animal get that gaudy, or a bird, you know it's because he's been threat-free for a long time."

Carrying that mucking great pot, why wasn't Chaka puffing? n.o.body else could do that, barring Aaron.

Behind Justin, Katya Martinez had her binoculars out. "Ha."

"Ha?"

"Joeys. Off trail to the left, about three hundred meters ahead."

"Ah. Good. If there's Joeys there aren't grendels. Okay, kids, let's go." Justin led them onward, through the dry rocky ground. The air seemed even drier than usual, a hot dry wind blowing through the pa.s.s from behind them.

"Devil wind," Katya said.

"Devil, you say?"

"They called it a Santa Ana back in California. Air ma.s.s flows down a mountain range, you get a foehn wind. Sirocco in Europe. Hot, dry compressive beating, tots of positive ions. Makes people nervous. You feel it, don't you?"

"Guess so. You read much about it?"

"Some."

"Anything I ought to know?"

"Do you think I wouldn't tell you? Ha. See, it's getting to me, too."