Beowulf's Children Part 5

Plasma torches spit as the piece fitted into place. Metal ran in glowing rivulets, and the air sang with the smell of scorched iron. Justin finished pulling his gloves on, and hurried to help.

"Hola, Carlos!"

"Hola, Justin. Que tal? Como estas?" Carlos glanced away from the model for just a moment. Almost instantly, there was a high, annoying whir. "Un moment.i.to-"

The winch was malfunctioning, and the three-foot chunk of Madagascar-which weighed over a hundred kilos-sagged.

Carlos and Justin put their silver heat-blocking gloves against the lower edge, where the metal still smoked, and lifted. The heat pulsed hungrily at their fingers, but didn't burn.

"At the top! At the top!"

a.s.sistants screwed two large C-clamps into place, and Madagascar was realigned.

Torches sizzled. Carlos turned his face away from the intense light.

He stripped off his gloves. The major work finished, his a.s.sistants buzzed about, welding here and there, cooling with jets of water, then beginning to buff.

He held a broad, muscular hand to Justin. "Wasn't expecting you until day after tomorrow. Australia is next."

"I'll be back."

Carlos stepped away from the globe, leaving it to the younger artists. The African continent brushed his ceiling. On the wall opposite were blueprints for Australia.

"Have you got the basic mold finished?"

"No," he sighed. "That's what I want you for. Two days' work, maybe. Then he can cast it. Then . . ." He shrugged. "Almost finished. It's been a year. In another month, maybe, it's done."

Justin slapped his mentor's shoulder. Carlos was Latino, with predominantly African genetics. Even with his hair streaked gray, he was still disgustingly handsome. Carlos Martinez was Cadmann Weyland's best friend. About fifty-five Earth years, thirty-five Avalon, and in decent condition, but Justin knew that when Carlos cast an eye at the Seconds, especially the younger women, he felt his years.

There was a certain sadness in Carlos's face. Perhaps being so close to the completion of a dream? Sometimes that did it . . .

"Cual es su problema, Tio?"

Carlos chuckled. "For years I wanted to build this. You know, the north road is going to be a crossroads one day. Gateway to a metropolis. We have Surf's Up, and the mountain colony . . . Explosive growth soon now, as more of the Second have their children. And in fifteen years, whew."

"Terrific, huh? And how many of those bambinos will be yours?"

His smile was calculatedly mysterious. "Six that I'm sure of. Not everyone wants to gene scan, so who knows?"

"Ca.s.sandra," Justin said.

"But she will not tell."

Justin chuckled. "A little of that New Guinea flavor here."

Carlos waved a hand at the young men and women laboring in his shop. "These are my children, though. Not just Katya, but like you. Learning sculpture. Learning history. The ones who care."

"The others will come around."

"Hope so. Now what can Uncle Carlos do for you?" Justin explained about the eel. "Zack will want to kill it as fast as possible. Destroy the eggs."

"Knee-jerk reflex. I'll deal with him. Your father will want it studied." Carlos thought for a moment. "Might want those eggs destroyed, though. No telling what they'll hatch into."

"Eels."

"Samlon become grendels. We don't have any examples of harmful larval stage and harmless adult, but-"

"I see the point, but I don't agree. And that's the point. We think there's going to be a row over this at the council meeting, and I wanted to take a little straw vote, find out where we'd stand."

"What's the problem?"

"The problem is that it's our eel. It's our island, really-we're going to inherit it. And we can't just kill everything that comes up the river or flies in from the mainland. Eventually, we have to know how we fit in with this planet, or we'll be stuck here on this island forever."

"You could stay here for ten generations, easy," Carlos observed.

"Plenty of land."

"We don't want to."

"Some of you don't want to."

"Some means d.a.m.ned near all," Justin said. "Starting with me."

Carlos studied him. "I don't blame you," he said at last. "Listen-I think that your father will side with you-he believes that strength is safety. And knowledge is strength."

"Are you suggesting that Zack would like to hide his head in the sand?"

"Can you entirely blame him?"

An arc of sparks jetted out, turning the floor into a summer night's sky. The stars died.

"We almost lost, amigo," Carlos said quietly, watching Madagascar. "We make a lot of noise about how heroic it all was. But listen between the lines." His eyes were deadly calm. "We almost lost."

"I know that it was 'tough-"

"No," Carlos said. "I didn't say that it was 'tough.' I didn't say 'it was a struggle.' I said that we almost lost. All of us. Wiped out. If it hadn't been for a fluke of grendel behavior-that you can drive them crazy with the smell of their own speed-they would have slaughtered every living thing on this island."

Carlos sat at the edge of one of the benches, and picked up a thermos, uncapping it to take a sip. He scanned the pieces of Earth strewn about his studio. There in one corner was India, mother to Man's civilizations. Suspended from the ceiling was Africa, possibly mother to Man himself. Already in place north of the colony was Europe, which had birthed the scientific method, and the Americas, creators of the technologies that had finally taken man to the stars.

In that moment Carlos seemed old, deeply fatigued; but a light flickered behind his eyes that was almost ecstatic.

"To our home, "Carlos said, and took a long sip. The hair at his temples was almost white, and the skin on his forearms was loose over the wiry muscle. "I'll never see Earth again, muchacho. Earth is an abstraction to you. A place the old folks talk about. Pictures we show you, tapes we play. Dead voices of dead people. But it was our home."

"We haven't heard from Earth in twenty years!" Justin said, instantly ashamed of the mockery that had crept into his voice.

"Not a thing," Carlos agreed soberly. "And that means something different to every one of us. But back during the Grendel Wars, all that mattered was that we couldn't go home, and we couldn't win. We were all going to die, and there would be no one to bury our bones. We wanted to die here, to be a part of the soil-" He laughed coa.r.s.ely. "But not as grendel s.h.i.t. Anyway-at the meeting tonight, please understand why we are the way we are. If we are too protective of you, it's because you are all we have."

Justin nodded. "All right, amigo-but just remember-you can't keep making our decisions for us. And the more afraid you are, the more you had better let us grow up."

"I do remember being your age, Justin. So c.o.c.ky. So . . . invulnerable. That was before Bobbie died, and there was nothing I could do to save her." He tilted his head to stare at the floor. "And you know? There was a moment there where I tasted my own death so clearly, when it was so . . . real, that I would have given up anything." He paused. "Even Bobbie. For another few moments of life."

Carlos took another drink. Justin caught the odor of fermentation from the thermos. "You never see yourself the same way again, amigo. You never quite get it back."

He grinned crookedly, mocking the pain in his own voice. "You're all we have left, Justin," he murmured. "And just maybe all that there is." As if aware that he had almost crossed some invisible line, he stood. "Back to work," he said brusquely.

Justin hiked a thumb at the globe. "Looking good," he tossed over his shoulder on his way to the door. He let it slam behind him.

The first comm shack had been a frail thing, tin and wood, but that was before the Grendel Wars. Now the colony's communications and computers were housed in a fortress, stone and concrete walls, ma.s.sive doors, small windows. Above each door was a small room filled with boulders and rubble poised to fall on any potential invader.

The Merry Pranksters had once filled one of those chambers with wet cotton. They'd watched through videocameras as Joe and Edgar Sikes walked into the trap. The momentary shock and horror, then the laughter, man and boy waist deep in wet cotton, throwing gobs of it at each other . . . but Zack and the other Earth Born hadn't been amused. The repercussions hadn't died out for months, and now entrance to Comm Control was monitored by TV cameras and recorded by Ca.s.sandra, and you couldn't get in unless the duty watch people let you.

The communications building controlled all contact with the Orion s.p.a.cecraft Geographic still in orbit above, the branch settlements around the island, and the automated mining apparatus on the mainland. The main communications board was also the colony's defense center, manned constantly as a human backup for the main computer defense systems. None of that had been needed for twenty years.

Rules, Justin thought as he buzzed the interior. They set up their rules. Fine for them, but now we have to take turns standing watch with the First. It wasn't hard duty, and privately Justin appreciated the enforced reading and study time that Comm Watch provided, but it was another point of contention between Star Born and Earth Born.

Edgar Sikes opened the door.

"Ho. Edgar, I need a favor. I have to talk to my dad."

Edgar didn't seem surprised. "No can do. Cadmann's down south, and that's as much of an address as he left us."

Edgar was eighteen, pudgy, and brighter than h.e.l.l. A childhood back injury had kept him from early partic.i.p.ation in sports, and he had the reputation of being more interested in computers than people, someone worth knowing if you needed information, but never the first to be invited to parties. He was slightly younger than Justin. They had never been particularly close, but now Edgar's father Joe was married to Justin's stepsister Linda. Justin wasn't sure what relationship that created between him and Edgar. Close enough that he could ask Edgar for a favor. "Let's talk about it."

Edgar shrugged and stood aside.

"Greetings, Justin-san."

It wasn't surprising to find Toshiro Tanaka in the Comm Center. Toshiro didn't sleep, at least not until nearly dawn and then not for long. He took advantage of that: other Star Born could get Toshiro to cover their shift at the center. Toshiro was going to sit alone and read or play computer games all night anyway, and by taking someone's shift he built up obligations. Like Carlos, Toshiro never wanted for coffee or tea.

"Greetings, Toshiro-san." Justin suppressed a grin. He wasn't completely sure how to take this new kick Toshiro was on. Toshiro was always polite, always smiled, but Justin had read about the manners of the Tokagawa culture Toshiro seemed to be fascinated with. They always smiled, even when they were about to chop your liver out. "You've told them about the eel, then? Joe, he told you?"

"A little," Joe said. "You saw it too. Tell us."

Joe was sprawled in a ma.s.sive sculpture, a chair and footstool Carlos had carved from the hard, dense, twisted grain of a horsemane root system. Carlos had installed it for his own watch. b.u.t.ts and boots and elbows had polished and scarred it, but Justin believed it would last as long as Avalon.

Joe Sikes was graying, slope-shouldered and a little paunchy despite his best intentions. He was one of the three heroes of the Grendel Wars, holding a place just below Carlos and not far below Cadmann Weyland himself. Justin's generation believed as an article of faith that all First had ice on their minds, but it wasn't easy to see what disability that gave Joe Sikes. The self-doubts characteristic of the First bothered him less than anyone except Cadmann. Sikes always seemed to be working on something. He was strong on industrial development, which included maintaining and establishing the mines on the mainland, and Justin had always found him easy to talk to.

That changed, sort of, when it became clear that Sikes and Linda were much more than casually involved. Justin had never been able to justify his feeling of resentment, other than feeling that Joe was too d.a.m.n old for her. And he was First, the damaged generation.

"Five meters of fun," Justin said. "Zack just about had kittens. 'Kill it! Kill it! You have your orders, you know the rules, kill it!' "

"Glad you didn't," Edgar said. He tapped computer keys, and the image of Big Mama Eel rippled across the computer screen. "Looks harmless enough. Maybe we'll learn something."

Joe Sikes grunted agreement. "Yeah, but we still got problems from the mainland. Give Zack too much to think about, we'll overload the system."

"No possible relationship," Edgar said. He jerked a thumb at the screen where the eel swam steadily around and around in the tank. "No way that's going to explode."

Say what? Justin said, "Explode?"

"Well, I agree again," Joe said. "But Zack may not. Justin, you're gonna love this."

"Yes," Toshiro said. "Most serious. Baffling."

"What in the world are you talking about?" Justin asked.

"Linda's working the new stuff up in the waldo room, let her tell you," Joe Sikes said. "We've had little problems at the mining site before. This is a big one, but maybe it's just more of the same."

"Which will do well enough," Toshiro said.

"You sound worried."

Toshiro shrugged. "Concerned. A setback."

"h.e.l.l, you're not going to live long enough to go back to j.a.pan no matter what happens," Justin said. "So you can stop worrying."

Toshiro smiled politely.

"Well, it's true," Justin said. "Coming back with me?"

"Thank you, I am on duty here," Toshiro said.

Justin nodded and crossed the large central control room toward the green door at its far end.

"That wasn't very nice," Joe Sikes told him. He jerked his head toward Toshiro, who was now absorbed in some kind of computer game involving medieval j.a.panese warriors.

"Well, yeah, you're right, but it's still true," Justin said. "There's no way we'll build enough industry to fire up Geographic and go back to Earth or anywhere else. Not that I'd go. I can't figure why he wants to."

Edgar Sikes shrugged. "Beats me, I guess. I asked him once."

"What'd he say?"

"Roots."

"Eh?"

"Roots. Can't say I blame him. How'd you feel if you were the only white kid here?"

"I don't think I'd notice."

"Toshiro does," Edgar said. "There were four Orientals in the Earth Born, but they're all dead in the Grendel Wars. Anyway, that's what he said. I asked him why he wanted to see Earth again, and he said 'Roots.' "

The waldo room was at the rear of the telecommunications building. "Ca.s.sandra, ready or not, here I come," Justin said, and waited for the door to open. It didn't. He frowned.

"Sorry, I've been doing some reprogramming," Edgar said. "Let Justin in, please, Ca.s.sandra." The door swung open.