Beowulf's Children Part 32

Little Chaka wasn't alarmed, not even when the call was taken up distantly by first one, and then a chorus. Communicating threat? Summoning help?

Big Chaka retreated a foot, and then another foot, and the birdles began to calm again. They returned to their meal. The distant droning died away. Silence returned to the forest.

An almost boyish grin wreathed Big Chaka's face as he slumped back to his son "Not exactly a colony, too much independent action for that. More like small family cl.u.s.ters-maybe three to six. Possibly three s.e.xes, or two fertile and one neuter to watch the nest while the others forage, like Avalon Type Six sea crabs. We'll get samples later."

He linked arms with his son as they walked back uphill. "And you call this Eden?"

Little Chaka nodded. "It's where we take the Grendel Biters. There are things they need to learn about this planet, and this is a good place for it."

"I can hear running water. Are there grendels?"

"Always a.s.sume grendels. Trust me. We don't take chances. But there is a good overhang between us and the river here. The clearest path for a grendel to reach us is over a kilometer of bone-dry upgrade. We have motion sensors strung every twenty meters-nothing larger than a Joey can get up here without alerting us, and we have good people on the grendel guns. They're death. It's safe." He frowned. "Of course, we thought Deadwood was safe, too. But nothing bad has ever happened here."

Big Chaka nodded. "Things are changing, though." He squinted up at Tau Ceti, a fuzzy ball through high clouds. "Things are changing." He walked carefully along the path. Every few feet he stopped to inspect a leaf, to study a scavenger insectoid hauling away a carca.s.s five times its size, to sc.r.a.pe away a sample of fungus and deposit it in a gla.s.sine envelope. Then he made notes in his log, and photographed the sample lying on the open pages of the logbook, with the place he'd found it as background.

"You know," he said, thoughtfully, "I wish that you could have been on Earth. Then you would understand the wealth spread out in front of you. Everywhere you look, all you have to do is reach out your hand, and there is a new creature, a new plant. Something new, something new." With that faraway expression on his face Little Chaka thought he resembled a wrinkled black Buddha. "Earth had . . . run out of new."

He smiled crookedly. The smile broadened as he spotted a tiny corkscrew tree growing in the shadow of its parent. "Oh!" he cooed. "A perfect duplicate of its parent-except see, it's a lefty, its trunk spirals in the opposite direction . . . "

He was that way as they headed back up to the mine, hobbling here and there, studying this, commenting on that-never complaining about the distance or the grade, although some of it must have been exhausting. Chaka's emotions were torn. On the one hand, he was still nervous about the entire area. On the other hand, it was wonderful to see his father every day, exploring with him, and hearing him lecture, just as he had day after wonderful day when he was a child.

They were three kilometers from the mine, far enough around the first bend in the trail that they couldn't be seen. Big Chaka sat down on a rock and loosed one of his shoes.

"Tired, Father?"

"No, I think I have something in my shoe. Son, tell me about this base camp you're setting up."

"Well, it's not so much me setting it up-"

"I know. Aaron seems to be in charge, and I have noticed that he needs no advice from my generation." He inspected the inside of his left shoe. "Of course, he wasn't offered much advice by Colonel Weyland."

"I noticed that."

"You and everyone else." Big Chaka sighed. "Inevitable, I suppose."

"Dad, it's no big deal."

"Not to you. Of course not. But to us-Son, when we first came here we ignored Cadmann Weyland's warnings, and we were very nearly wiped out. Since then we've got in the habit of consulting him."

"Your talisman," Little Chaka said.

"Talisman, wizard-of course he is none of these things. But I am told you have decided on a location for your base camp. Indulge me by telling me of it."

"Sure. It's something over three hundred and twenty kilometers north of here, in the mountains but there's a large flat area. No big streams but a lot of springs and little streams. The flat is a meadow."

"Yes, I know the area," Big Chaka said.

"Sir?"

"From the maps. It looks dangerous. There is a forest nearby."

"Only a small forest, but it's a forest. Tender leaves. Very edible. Dad, there are Joeys in the rocks, and ground animals in the forest. I don't think a grendel has ever been there."

"It will put you right at the edge of skeeter range."

"Until we get the solar collectors set up," Little Chaka said. "But it faces south, and we've got big rolls of Begley cloth. We'll get it spread out, and there's sunlight most days. It won't be long before we generate enough power to recharge the skeeters there." He rubbed his hands together. "Then we can do some real exploring. Another hundred and fifty kilometers and we're at the edge of the Scribeveldt!"

"That I envy," Big Chaka said.

"Well, you could come with us-"

Big Chaka laughed gently. "You know better. I would not be welcome among your friends." He put his shoe back on and fastened it. "Be careful, son. We don't know what killed Joe Sikes and Linda Weyland, but we are very sure of what killed nearly every one of us during the Grendel Wars. Don't be so concerned about an unknown danger that you ignore a known one.

Now we ought to be getting back-" He stopped to look at a colorful lichen.

"In a moment."

Little Chaka was still a little nervous about these side trips. They were too far from Deadwood's reinforced Kevlar shelters for his comfort. But Big Chaka won that argument, as his father usually did.

On their first day at the mine site, he had wandered far afield, to the very edge of the tree line. "Chaka," he had said. "Look at the density, only five hundred meters from the death site. Nothing has razed this. There are Joeys in the trees, and birdles, and these little insect fellows. Whatever killed Joe and Linda also ate the dogs. Ate all of the organic material in their clothes. It was a freak occurrence. In truth, this is probably the safest place on the planet now-this particular lightning won't strike here again for quite a while." When his son seemed unconvinced, he added, "If you're worried, carry a couple of Cadmann's survival sacks with you."

"I'm worried. Grendels can't bite through the Kevlar, but a bite could still crush a bone-"

"You have grendels on the brain. You studied those skeletons as carefully as I did. No pressure had been applied. No broken bones. No tooth marks. Sc.r.a.pes, yes, something sc.r.a.ped the meat from the bones, but it was small, not the teeth of a grendel. Whatever killed Joe and Linda was no grendel-unless that grendel had cooked them for hours and then sucked the meat off the bones."

Chaka grimaced at his father's morbid imagery. So what was the danger? The Kevlar sacks should theoretically protect from an acid cloud, or . . . or whatever the h.e.l.l it was that had killed their friends. The current guess was something biological rather than chemical. A memory stirred in his mind, something from an old science-fiction novel about giant protozoans lurching out of the swamps of Venus to digest unwary s.p.a.ce folk. There were movies of large bloodsucking monsters among the stars.

He didn't really believe that, but invisible death had eaten two members of his family under Ca.s.sandra's very nose, and the only clue was traces of speed on the bones. Speed meant grendels, but how? A fascinating puzzle, if only it hadn't been real.

They made good time the rest of the way back to the mine. His father accepted little help, even when sweat beaded his brow and the breath whistled in his throat. Long before dusk they found themselves hiking up the final approach. The hum of machinery was clear at half a kilometer-repair and restoration were well under way. A thin stream of smoke and screams of tortured metal told that some large piece of equipment was being ripped out and refitted. His father was blowing a little on the upslope, but Chaka had released his son's arm and was stalking bravely up the side of the hill.

Little Chaka was bouncing like a balloon. Free at last! He had forgotten what it felt like to climb around in the mountains without that d.a.m.ned cook pot on his back.

Sylvia Weyland waved her arms as they came up over the rise. Smelting metal was a sharp tang in their noses. Cranes and scaffolding hovered about the new mine shack. A dozen workers hustled about, carrying, loading. Grafting. A new and stronger shed was being erected, and Sylvia, biologist turned engineer, was the week's gang chief, and would rotate back to the mainland with the arrival of Robor.

"How was the walk?" she yelled.

"Great!" They were a little closer now, and voices could be dropped. Sylvia looked tired and a little sweaty, but satisfied. She and her crew worked fast. Two new steel frames had been fitted into place on the structure that would house permanent, grendel-proof shelters for mines and miners. Atop it was an antenna to serve as a backup relay for communications between the mainland and the base camp Aaron called Shangri-La, now under construction three hundred and twenty kilometers away.

"I'm not seeing as much of the local biology as I'd like," Big Chaka complained as she approached him for a hug. "My son is just too protective. I'm not a child."

"We're just taking the mountain back," Sylvia said. "Our resources are still split. Let's just say that we'll all feel a lot better when you've categorized more of the life around here, but there are unavoidable risks attached. You're the only father Little Chaka has; is it surprising he's a bit"-she grinned-"possessive?"

His father looked up at Little Chaka owlishly. "It wasn't so many years ago that I carried you up into the highlands on my shoulders. Now, you could carry me, and with less effort." Then he smiled. "I suppose that every man wants his son to grow up. Mine just grew up a little further than most."

Little Chaka glowed with pride, touched with only the slightest tinge of sadness. He was just beginning to really understand that one day his father would no longer be there to talk to, to share with.

But until that time, he could give thanks that they had had so much time together. That they had been able to share so much.

The Robor misadventure had not damaged their relationship beyond repair. He wasn't certain how he would have withstood that. Even now, there was a slow coiling of anger and resentment and self-contempt surrounding the whole issue. Self-contempt for allowing himself to be talked into it. Resentment toward Aaron Tragon. Anger, unresolved and smoldering, over the death of Toshiro.

But if his relationship with his father had been damaged . . .

He didn't want to think about that. He would have felt far more self-contempt. Far more resentment.

Far more anger toward Aaron.

He wondered, somewhat darkly, what he might have done about that. But he had to get back to Shangri-La and plan the expedition to the Scribeveldt, and there was no time at all for such thoughts.

The Scribeveldt was a vast oval of highland plain that began at the foothills 350 kilometers northeast of Shangri-La Base Camp, and stretched for over two thousand kilometers to the north and east from there. A long, sluggish river that someone had dubbed the Zambezi ran from north to south a little to the west of the plain's centerline. It was a river with few tributaries, and effectively divided the Scribeveldt into two unequal portions. Both parts of the veldt were covered by thick gra.s.sy stalks that grew up to waist height, and were sometimes covered with tiny yellow flowers.

It was called the Scribeveldt because when they first examined it from orbit it appeared to be covered with cursive alien script written in broad lines with faded ink, close-mowed curving stripes that approached each other, merged, then diverged. They had to be animal tracks. For the past year the trails had hardly come together at all, as if they were deliberately avoiding each other.

The Scribeveldt ended in a forest that covered the foothills. A few year-round streams ran through the forest, none more than a few inches deep. The Scribeveldt and forest had been examined from orbit for years, and one thing was certain; there were a number of animals on the veldt and within the forest, but except for a narrow band near the big river, there were no grendels.

The hunting blind was at the edge of the forest. Jessica quietly pushed aside a wisp of brush that obscured her view and peered out at the peaceful herd of chamels grazing quietly a half-kilometer away. Her war specs magnified them until they seemed close enough to touch.

One of the male chamels raised its head and looked right at her. Clever little sucker, aren't you? You can't see me or hear me. Do you smell me?

He had a gazelle's grace and the thin, sensitive neck of a giraffe.

His feathery-gray, insectile antenna trembled in the still air, sniffing. Would it alert the other eleven? Human beings were new to the mainland, but chamels often reacted with fear-and-flight response to any new stimulus. So far neither the males nor the heavy, rhinolike females nor the three St. Bernard-sized "pups" had panicked.

Jessica lay in her blind pit as Ca.s.sandra a.n.a.lyzed the image in the war specs and bounced data to Shangri-La 150 kilometers away.

"Do we want it?" she whispered.

"I'm drooling." Chaka's voice was eager. He was in one of the other blinds, probably out of direct sight of the herd, but his war specs could display Ca.s.sandra's downlink. "Protective coloration's almost perfect."

Jessica checked: naked eye, war specs, then naked eye again. d.a.m.ned good. What did the chamels do? Scan the environment with their noses, and adjust the protective coloration for a potential predator's perspective? The creatures were less conspicuous than their own shadows, a perfect predator-proofing strategy.

Strange, Jessica thought. We aren't just thinking about grendels any longer. There are other things out there. We've got to lose a whole generation's worth of bogeybeast stories, or we'll never survive.

"These are winners. Fast, and strong, and senses are sharp. Hungry, too. Haven't stopped munching leaves since they arrived."

Chaka's voice was thoughtful. "The trick will be keeping the herd together. We want to protect the family dynamics, if we can."

"Ca.s.sandra," Jessica whispered. "Note the brush, and the type and quant.i.ty and maturity of the leaves being eaten. Special note of the grazing patterns of the little ones."

They'd had to add modules to Ca.s.sandra in order to keep up with the flow of data. That had sparked yet one more debate: should their computer power be used for information processing or manufacturing? It was settled only when Zack took the side of the Second. "We can live without more consumer goods, but we can't live without knowledge," he'd said, surprising many of the Second. Everything was so new, so rife with possibilities and problems. Love her as they might-Avalon had little tolerance for errors.

Aaron's voice: "The net is ready. Repeat. The net is ready."

She grinned. This was going to be fun. A week of preparation. And now . . .

"On my count," she said. "Three . . . two . . . one . . . go!"

Four balloon-tired dirt trikes exploded from meticulously constructed blind pits. The twelve chamels whipped about, startled and outraged to find they weren't Avalon's only masters of camouflage.

The beasts took off toward the east. Jessica revved her trike, hit a mound of earth, and exploded up into the air. She slammed down with a spine-jarring bounce. The roar of the hydrogen engines, the exhilaration of the chase, her own adrenal flush all dizzied her deliciously.

The chamels were wheeling like a flock of birds. Jessica spun around the outside to head off a move eastward. Chamel defensive strategy would keep the pups in the center, actually making them easier to herd.

Hooves and wheels churned up clouds of yellowish dust dimming Tau Ceti. Jessica fell slightly behind the herd as they thundered now toward the northern horizon. She cleared her throat of dust and said, "On track, Justin."

"We 're ready for you."

The brush here was harsh and scraggly, unappetizingly brown except for tufts of tough purple gra.s.s. Even as she watched, the skin coloration of the beasts began to shift to match the spa.r.s.e foliage.

Beautiful.

"Two klicks from target," she yelled. "Keep it tight!"

Justin wheeled the skeeter around the outside of the herd and drove a stray male back to the center. The chamels traversed a long stretch of brown gravel. They changed colors wildly as the terrain changed, and from his aerial perspective it seemed the ground itself was flowing like a river. It was easier to track the herd by dust cloud than by direct observation.

Everything was right on schedule. "In position. Have visual contact with corral."

"Yippie-yi-oh-tie-yay." Jessica's voice. He knew she was grinning.

Jessica dropped her plaid bandanna across her face as she cut toward the middle of the herd. They parted for her like the Red Sea. As the trike jolted through the gra.s.s, making almost sixty klicks an hour, she could reach out to either side to touch a chamel. d.a.m.n, they were beautiful beasts! Fast, strong, agile-and intelligent. The pups darted through the herd seeking pockets of adult protection. The trike's roar blended with the steady rolling thunder of their hooves. They wheeled left to avoid a log, and she jerked her handlebars to follow.

A commotion to the right: Aaron Tragon, mounted on Zwieback, the chamel Ruth had tamed for him. They burst out of the trees just ahead of the herd.

The herd wheeled, confused for a moment . . . and then followed.

Jessica yelped her pleasure. d.a.m.n. He had been right again. Chamels were extreme olfactory sensitives. Pouches on Aaron's mount carried an overwhelming dose of chamel pheromones. Whammo-Zwieback became an instant alpha. Their herding instincts and trainability boded well. Chamels were an odd hybrid of horse and ostrich, with wide, fleshy mouths and thin, strong legs.

The trike jounced savagely as they crossed the last rise. Ahead of them was the corral, seven feet tall and a quarter kilometer around.

"All right. Let's keep it tight, keep it tight-"

It was hardly needed. The chamels followed Aaron through the open gate. Jessica turned aside at the last second and the chamels charged past her into the pen. Once inside they realized they were trapped. They snorted and tossed their heads, but there was no way out but the gate, and Chaka was already swinging that shut before Jessica could dismount and dash over to help him.

She ran up the short ramp leading to the edge of the corral.

The new twelve had joined fifty chamels captured over the previous week. The new ones snorted restlessly, but even as they did, their skin changed color, matching the beaten ground beneath their hooves.

Aaron swung off his mount, and grabbed for the ladder.

He slipped, and fell back to the ground. Jessica's fist went to her mouth. For a moment, fear locked her into immobility.

The adult chamels reared back: unmasked, Man's smell was very different from their own. Two of the adults turned their backs, and began to kick.

She had seen this behavior before. A ring of chamels to protect a pup, the heavy, hard, sharp hooves striking out over and over again. It wouldn't work against a grendel, but cameras had watched the creatures surround a bear-sized predator and literally kick it into pulp.

Aaron scrambled up to the ladder, spun as one of the hooves caught him alongside the shoulder, and leaped upward. He got two rungs up before another hoof caught him in the thigh. He grunted but kept going, and was out of range a moment later, lips curled into a satisfied smile. She could see where his jeans were dusted and cut by the striking hoof.

Chaka helped him up over the top, and he thumped down heavily. He swept Jessica up for a big, warm kiss, then gave a victory wave to the circling skeeters.