Beowulf's Children Part 54

" 'My wounds are noised abroad. Theirs my foemen cloak. You see my broken sword, but never the blades that she broke!' "

Justin returned to the vine he had been unable to break, and examined it soberly. "I hope to G.o.d that you're as strong as you look," he said. It was five times thicker than any of the vines used in the web itself. How old were the web's supporting fibers? How long had they been in place? What was the average size and weight of the animals these creatures fed upon?

He wrapped both arms around the vine, and set his weight, pulling it toward the web.

The spider devils changed their tune again.

"Hurry!" she screamed. She tossed her whole body violently, and for an instant the spider devil scampered back up into the shadows. " 'Here is my lance to mend! Here is my horse to be shot! Aye, they were strong, the battle was long, but I paid as good as I got!' "

With an effort that racked her spine, she turned to see Justin pulling the branch after him, forcing it to bend a few inches at a time. The soil provided little traction, taxing Justin's knotted, wiry body to the breaking point. He grunted and pulled, lost ground, pulled again, and couldn't quite make it reach.

Jessica sobbed. "No use! Get the-"

And then insanity. Justin braced himself on one foot, and took his left foot and reached up, jammed it between the strands of the web.

"Are you crazy??!"

"f.u.c.k, yes," he gasped. Using the left foot, the stuck foot, for a brace, he jumped up with the right and jammed it through likewise. He was now suspended almost parallel to the ground, holding on to the vines with his arms, his feet entwined in the web. "Think about it!" he gasped. "We've probably got five times more stress on this web than it was ever meant to hold. Fight, d.a.m.n it! We can tear this thing apart!"

Jessica was certain he had lost his mind. There was nothing to do but match his insanity. " 'Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold, and the mate of the Nancy brig-' "

" 'And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite, and the crew of the captain's gig!' " Justin continued.

Her leg. One leg was almost free of the web-it had never collided. She pulled herself back, and the whole jury-rigged ma.s.s shifted. She ignored the chittering sound from the trees. Something scampered down, darted at her with open jaws. She lurched violently and shivered the web.

The spider devil retreated a foot. " '0 elderly man, it's little I know of the duties of men of the sea, and I'll eat my hand if I understand how you can possibly be-' "

She stretched out desperately with her leg, but couldn't reach Justin's vine. Too late, she saw the second spider devil. It crawled down from Justin's side, and bit his thigh.

He screamed, cursed, convulsed so violently that for a moment she thought he would rip himself free. No such luck, but the monster scuttled back up to safety.

Justin groaned, and his eyes rolled up in his head. His face was dark with effort, and blood drooled from the leg wound.

"Justin!" Jessica screamed, but was distracted by a pain in her hand. A bite, and a spider devil vanishing into shadow. Flaming agony spreading up her arm.

Pain and mortal fear gave her what muscular strength could not. Or maybe Justin's struggles had finally pulled the branch close enough. Jessica contorted, and hooked her leg over the branch.

The two of them, together, pulled now. Justin's mad eyes met hers, and he swallowed. "Come on, Jessica. One, two three-pull! 'Says he, dear James, to murder me, were a foolish thing to do, for don't you see that you can't cook me, and I can-and I will-cook you!' "

They heaved with every ounce of strength they possessed, screaming verses to send the spider devils scurrying back up into the trees-momentarily. But now the entire nest had awakened. Five more spider devils, curious, worried perhaps, crawled back out of the shadows. They descended delicately along the ropy, gummy vines. They'd already picked up the tune of "The Ballad of the Nancy Bell."

" 'For the joy of human love! Brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild-' "

" 'Source of all-' " Jessica stopped singing as the devils joined in harmony.

Justin screamed as another monster bit him, and she barely jerked her face aside as a pair of jaws clacked shut an inch from her cheek.

"Heave!" he screamed, and they did, both of them, and the vine creaked, and their spines creaked, and the web creaked- The web ripped. They pulled on the vine and a big piece of web came down. Old bones tumbled out from somewhere above.

" 'To thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise!' "

Riiiiip. The spider devils shrieked and clambered over one another to get back up into the trees. The web was coming apart rapidly now. More of the vines began to break. Now they were supported by the mucilage alone, and that wasn't strong enough. Justin hit the ground on the side of his head. Jessica ripped half free, and screamed with laughter as a big chunk of web came with her. Her arm and both legs were free, and she had the leverage to pull the other arm free of the main web. A huge patch of gummy vines still covered her. She turned and tugged at Justin's legs until she had them free, and dragged him back away from the vines. His legs were swelling, black and red. Her arm was swollen too, and numb.

"Justin," she said. "Are you all right?"

"I think l can walk."

He stumbled a couple of feet, and Jessica put her arms around him, helping him back to the water. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up their comm cards. "Ca.s.sandra," she called. "We've been bitten by spider devils. Need medical attention fast."

Justin's hands shook as he pulled his shirt on. He tried to get his pants on. When his hands touched the bruised flesh of his thighs, he howled, and had to abandon the attempt.

She studied his eyes. No dilation. The swelling didn't seem to be any worse, but that told her little.

"We're about ten minutes away," Little Chaka's voice said. "Was this the same type of spider we captured on the march?"

"Appears to be," she said.

"Then it should be no problem. Use antibiotic paste. The bites aren't lethal. Even the paralytic effect isn't that strong. They need a whole colony to subdue something maybe twice their size. How many bites?"

"Justin took two, maybe three."

"All right. Keep him warm. We'll be there in two shakes. "

Jessica unrolled a blanket from her backpack and wrapped Justin in it.

His teeth chattered. "I'm not going to die, huh?"

"Only if you pull another stupid stunt like that," she said.

"You. How are you?"

She held his face with both of her hands. "Have I ever told you," she said, "that I love you?" And she kissed him, very softly. Then the venom hit and she started to shake. She let go of him before he could notice.

Chapter 35.

AUTOPSY.

Deduction is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Sign of Four

Justin limped into the recreation hall, and received a brief round of applause and a kiss from Jessica. It was sisterly, not at all like the kiss they had shared not three hours before, but a sparkle in her eyes that told him that she hadn't forgotten.

Katya took his arm and hugged him. "I hope that your backside is healing."

"You have plans for that?"

"Indeed." She did not look at Jessica.

"So just what did happen?" Cadmann demanded. "How did you get caught by spider devils without communications?"

Justin shook his head. "Duh. We'd been swimming, got in a race, and weren't looking where we were going. Just horseplay."

"It's not a grendel zone," Jessica said. "That's a safe area-"

"No longer," Aaron said. "Chaka, we saw a grendel in the north lake. A grendel."

Little Chaka looked puzzled. "How did a grendel get there?"

"And well may you ask." Aaron's voice was icily correct. "As I recall, you were the one who a.s.sured us a grendel could never get into that lake."

"I did," Chaka admitted. "And I still don't know how. What happened?"

Aaron started to tell him. Silence fell around him. As his hands waved and his voice rose and fell, Justin found himself grinning. Cadmann Weyland, face-to-face with a grendel . . . but the danger was as nothing next to Aaron's ma.s.sive embarra.s.sment.

Aaron broke off. "Well, however it got there, the whole area has to be recla.s.sified as grendel country. New rules for visiting it. In effect now. Everyone agree?"

There was a murmur of approval.

"That may not be the only surprise today," Big Chaka said.

Cadmann turned to him with a frown. "Good news or bad news?"

"Listen and decide for yourself," Chaka said enigmatically.

"Yes, well, we should get started," Aaron said. "h.e.l.l of a thing about those spider devils, Justin. h.e.l.l of a thing." His expression was unreadable.

Cadmann hugged Justin and Jessica, and they sat together, the five of them: Cadmann, Sylvia, Jessica . . . just like a family again . . . but Aaron sat on the other side of Jessica.

What would have happened if the web hadn't interrupted them? What did he want to happen?

"We're ready when you are. Dr. Chaka," Aaron said.

The room fell quiet. Justin grinned as he noted another table. Big Chaka, Little Chaka, Trish Chance, Edgar Sikes, Ruth Moskowitz. Interesting family grouping there-and Big Chaka climbed up to the holostage.

He said (his voice resonant and musical, in teacher mode), "There is much to cover, but let's begin with grendels. You have all seen that grendels on this continent, especially in this area, don't act the way grendels did on Camelot Island. There was the incident today, Aaron, a grendel that did not attack you on sight. There are the dam builders, who certainly cooperate. And the snow grendels, who seem to hunt as a pack. And your other reports. I have examined every mainland grendel observation Ca.s.sandra knows of, and I can only conclude that mainland grendels are not the mindless killers our experiences on Camelot suggested. Grendels here-some of them, at least-cooperate on dams, and hunt in groups. They show a rudimentary sense of planning. Possibly time-binding-that is, they pa.s.s on knowledge to the next generation.

"The obvious conclusion is that mainland grendels are considerably more intelligent than our island grendels were. If Camelot 'normal' grendels have the intelligence of an Earth tiger, think of those here as tigers with the intelligence of an orangutan."

Aaron nodded slowly. "Frightening, but no more than we here had concluded, right?" He looked around the room and got approving nods from many of the Second.

"Dragons," Sylvia Weyland muttered.

"Dragons," Cadmann repeated. "Chaka, an intelligent grendel is the worst thing I can think of."

"Maybe not," Big Chaka said. "First, though, a theory. Here is a Camelot grendel. Ca.s.sandra, my file, Grade Eight Test Twenty-four, please."

Laughter rippled among the Second. Grade Eight Test Twenty-four in Big Chaka's biology cla.s.s was very familiar to them. "The beast floated before them, a composite of many grendels the First had examined after they were torn, charred, and otherwise mangled. This was no holo of a dead beast, but a mere cartoon.

As Chaka's hands moved, so moved a white arrowhead floating in midair: the cursor. The Camelot grendel opened like a puzzle box. The view zoomed in on the grendel's big blunt head. The head opened.

The sinuses were large: a grendel's head was half-hollow. The brain showed convolutions shallower than those of a human brain. There was no corpus callosum connecting left and right lobes, in fact, the grendel brain had no lobes. It was more of a doughnut, and the snorkel ran right through it, sliding freely in its own channel.

"Now for a mainland grendel. Ca.s.sandra, my dissection file, Composite One. This shows features common to the snow grendels we examined."

Ca.s.sandra had painted parts of the corpse with a lavender tinge.

"We had to guess at some features due to the damage done when the grendels were killed. But there's enough." The snow grendel was longer than the Camelot grendel and about as thick. Its claws were bigger, with two dewclaws that faced forward. Big Chaka pointed those out with the cursor. "Brakes." He indicated the tail and the downward-hooked barbs: "More brakes. If you're going to run two hundred klicks an hour on ice, you need that. Trivial stuff, but now note the ventral surface. There's almost no belly armor. What's left is these four head-to-tail ridges, more skis than protection."

Aaron interrupted: the student a.s.serting his freedom. "I get it. The thing expects to squat in snow and lose heat through the belly."

"That's what we think, but notice that it can't rear up to fight. Got to charge like a tank, with its head lowered, and b.u.t.t." The cursor outlined the misshapen head. "More armor. Like a ram. It'd work better if the head hadn't been distorted."

That head was no cartoon. This was the hologram of a dead grendel's head.

Cadmann again. "Chaka, were they all lopsided like that?"

"We're lucky to have any kind of answer, the way our kids tore through these things. My son was much embarra.s.sed."

Little Chaka said, "I brought back some pieces of skull, but they aren't big enough to tell. Maybe they're distorted too-"

"But there was enough," his father said. "Quite enough." The skull opened: a b.l.o.o.d.y puzzle box.

The head was half-hollow, as with the Camelot grendel. The right side of the brain was grossly swollen. On that side the sinuses were shrunken and the skull ballooned out. There were thin spots in the ma.s.sive bone.

Near the root of the brain on the right side, the midst of the convoluted ma.s.s of gray tissue was a tangle of . . . worms.

Unmistakable.

"Parasites," Justin murmured. "Flukes."

"We've already found six kinds of parasites. Four are types that infest samlon too. Our Grendel Scouts are familiar with those," Little Chaka said. "Dad-"

"Yes. This is the interesting one. It has caused localized swelling, and some changes in brain chemistry. We're still working on those. We've already established that there are abnormal levels of the grendel a.n.a.log of acetylcholines present. Now look here." The light pointer wavered on an area far from the fluke. "Notice the dendrite structure here. Very dense. Nothing like what you find in uninfected grendels. And here. Here's an uninfected grendel for comparison."

The contrast was dramatic. Where the first grendel brain had a complex web of tissue connecting different parts of the brain, the other was bare.

"Good Lord," Sylvia said. "I should have noticed-look at the bare one there. Doesn't it look as if that structure there was just made to have something wrap around it? Chaka, is that possible?"

"Is coevolution possible? Of course."