Beowulf's Children
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 THOREAU, 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. Nobody 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 nobody 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 glass 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 pass, 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 Cassandra. 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 passed 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 Cassandra 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 Cassandra'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 grass 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 grassland 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 shell if you've got room." 
    Now Justin saw it too, an empty shell 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 shells.
    "Maybe coming back," Justin said. His pack would be lighter and roomier too.
    "Okay. Kids, pass the word back, it's on your left and don't miss it. The centerpiece crab evolves those shells 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? Nobody 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 pass from behind them. 
    "Devil wind," Katya said. 
    "Devil, you say?"
    "They called it a Santa Ana back in California. Air mass 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."

    The trail led down and north along one of the mountain ridges framing Deadwood Pass. Twelve kilometers from the pass there was a saddle. Their dusty trail led to the right, then steeply uphill. Dimly above they could see green trees, bushes, tall but straggly grass. Justin called a halt.
    "Fall in. Count off." He waited for the responses. "Okay, listen up." He pointed up the hill. "That's where we're going. Chaka, Katya, and I'll go up first. The rest of you follow along, but stay together. Jessica will tell you when it's safe to come up." He unslung his rifle and again checked the loads, then waited until Little Chaka and Katya had done the same. He carried the rifle at the ready as he led them up the hill.
    "Are there grendels up there?" Sharon MacAndrews asked solemnly.
    "Not there," one of the older Grendel Biters answered. There were snickers.
    "Never been any so far," Justin said. "Not so far." 
    Eight years before he'd followed Cadmann up that trail. Aerial surveys showed there wasn't anything large up there, and Geographic's IR sensors had never seen anything. "So what are we worried about, sir?" he'd asked.
    "Caves. The second grendel lived in a river cave," Cadmann had said, limping along on a stick carved by Carlos and a skinny new regrown leg. "We went in after it. Stupid of us, we didn't know what grendels were." They'd gone up slowly, while two armed skeeters flitted about watchfully. "We lost good men hunting that grendel." 
    "Looks quiet." Chaka's words brought Justin out of his reverie.
    Paradise was a garden mount in a desert of dusty volcanic rock. It thrust upward from the side of the mountain range, a rocky slope that rose steeply for nearly two thousand feet. The gentle bowl at the top was a five-hundred-foot circle no more than fifty feet deep at the center. Some trick of nature had placed a spring at one lip of the dish. Water gushed up and ran down into the dish. At the bottom of the dish the water vanished into the ground, never to reappear. Paradise was a high oasis with no streams leading in or out.
    They circled the mound until they came up over the lip on the side opposite the spring. Vegetation was sparse here, but most of the bowl was covered with grasses and horsemane trees. Insects flitted among the plants. One flew closer to have a look at them.
    It was smaller than a hummingbird, but larger than the insects of Earth. There were two large wings as rigid as the wings on an airplane, and a blur beneath it from its motor wings. It hovered near and didn't seem afraid of them at all. After a while it lost interest and flew back down into the bowl.
    At the bottom of the bowl was a tree that seemed covered with webbing. Something moved in there.
    Justin scanned the bowl, first unaided, then with his binoculars. Finally he opened his communicator. "We're here. I see nothing unusual," he said.
    "Roger. Geographic reports nothing unusual," Joe Sikes said. "You're cleared to take the kids in. Only this time try to keep the radios working."
    "Sure thing." Justin flicked the channel switch. "Bring them up, Jessica. All clear."

    Dusk.
    "It's getting late," Jessica said. "You sure you want to do this?"
    "Part of the job," Justin said. "And it won't get any earlier. Chaka? Coming?" 
    "Sure." 
    "Me too," Katya said.
    "I think I should go," Jessica said.
    "Nope. Someone's got to be in charge here, and that's you. Let's do it." Justin looked over his rifle. "Check your loads. Right. Here we go."
    He led the way out of the bowl, over the lip, and down toward the river far below.

    Jessica stood at the rim and watched them until they were out of sight among the volcanic rocks. "I've got a bad feeling about this," she told herself, but she grinned, because she'd had the same feeling last year, and the year before, and it hadn't meant anything. Mostly I just want to go with them . . . 
    She went back to the kids. They were sprawled on the grass. Youngsters that age can be energetic, blurs one moment, motionless heaps the next. Another talent lost with age . . . 
    Two of them had discovered the insect life in the grass. Jessica bent down next to them and peered between the yellowish purple blades. Something that looked like a red-orange beetle was caught in a sticky webbing, and thousands of blue mites, so small they resembled a powder, were swarming over him. They stripped the beetle and carried the parts away into the rocks.
    The mites disappeared, leaving only an empty blue shell dangling from a transparent web.
    Damn that was fast, she thought. Insects on speed?
    She shook her head. "All right!" she called. "Campsite is down in the bowl. Let's get to it-we've got a lot of setup before dusk."
    She hauled the kids up, complaining, and set them on their way, and followed after them. But she still couldn't quite get the memory of those mites out of her mind. If a Biter laid his sleeping bags in a nest of those . . .
    Blankets and sleeping bags, tents and cookstoves were produced, assembled, spread about. The entire camp sprang into existence like magic, a bubbling, steaming, jostling cacophony filled with busy bodies and giggling children, Grendel Scouts scurrying about on secretive missions, and Grendel Biters channeled into busywork and told to mind their own business.
    Carey Lou shucked off his backpack, and looked about for a place to call home. He wandered a little away from the main camp, toward the familiar shape of a horsemane tree.
    The frozen-waterfall appearance entranced him. He had spent many nights back on Camelot in the shaded comfort of the local trees, and had stolen his first kiss in their shadow. He shucked off his backpack, perhaps nurturing romantic thoughts, and stepped toward the tree.
    Jessica grabbed his shoulders, and marched him around. "No." Bad idea. 
    "Why?"
    She brushed some of the hanging fronds aside. "Take a closer look," she said sternly.
    He looked, and gulped. This wasn't at all like the friendly, sleepy trees on the island. From the root to as far up the trunk as they could see, and even in the strands of the mane itself, the entire tree was infested with symbiotes, parasites, things.
    Near the base, the greenish brown mane had turned milky, and took on the appearance of a coarse spiderweb. Something was fluttering in one of those nearby. Maybe prey, maybe predator, maybe spider. Carey Lou didn't get close. He gulped again. "Maybe that one over there?" 
    "These things are notoriously hospitable to local life. Give it a try," she said.
    Carey Lou walked cautiously to a second tree. He looked closely: no symbiotes. Relieved but still cautious, he pulled out his rolled tent. His thin arms snapped the roll outward and it unfurled into a triangle, then popped open further: a disk, then an open dome.
    Four startled Avalon birds dropped out of the horsemane tree like so many dinner platters. They caught themselves, and wheeled around the tent as it settled to the grass like a big balloon. Two brushed wings, whirled to fight. One knocked the other spinning. It dropped toward a tree a dozen meters farther out, recovered too late. The tree had it.
    Carey Lou stepped close, but not too close. Jessica was behind him, fingers resting on his shoulders. The bird: she could see details, now that it was trapped. Two big rigid wings, curved up at the tips into spiffy little vertical fins. Four little translucent oar blades, the motor wings, were still trying to thrash the bird loose.
    The creature's relationship to a sea crab was very clear. The rigid wings had been a bifurcated shell, way long ago. That early crab hadn't been so specialized as today's crabs.
    Jessica stepped forward, reached gingerly into the web. She was ready for something like a big spider. If anything had scuttled toward her hands she would have jerked back. Nothing did, and she pulled the bird loose, holding it by one wing. The motor wings buzzed, trying to pull it away. She held on until she had brushed webbing from the fixed wings. It was too rigid to bite her, but it shivered hard in her hand, trying to twist around to escape.
    "I've seen these before," she said. "Have you? Where have you seen something like this?" 
    She waited expectantly.
    Carey Lou studied it, knowing that she wanted him to get it right. His eyes suddenly opened wide. "Sea crabs!" he exclaimed.
    "Right . . . go on."
    "Split shell. You know, the wings are more like a beetle's than a bird's."
    Jessica released the bird. It hovered for a moment. The four blurred motor wings were splayed like legs on a coffee table. Then they tilted aft and it zipped away. She said, "Very good. The grendels don't like salt water much-so there was a lot more variety in the life-forms just off the coast. All those crab things. Strange how often the pattern has repeated itself on the land, isn't it? We've seen leaf-cutting bee-things like little crabs, and birds like crabs . . . " 
    "And crabs like crabs . . ."
    She laughed. "Anyway-our lesson for the night-camp only in the open, and back with everyone else. Now scoot." She swatted his behind, sending him back toward the others.
    She waited there in the clearing for a moment, smelling the forest. This was good. There was nothing around here that could hurt someone Carey Lou's size . . . but it wasn't a bad idea to put the fear of God in him. 
    A little healthy fear could keep you alive.

    One of Old Grendel's daughters held the river hereabouts. Old Grendel moved up a tributary. Why fight her own blood, when far more interesting prey were about? She had a score of crabs trapped here. They hadn't tried to crawl past her; they were crawling upstream, and Old Grendel followed at her leisure.
    She was following the weirds.
    Far above her, the daughters of God had settled out of sight. They had come from the drylands, a place Old Grendel never expected to see close up, but now they had landed much closer. Those flattish shapes with their blurred wings reminded her of the near-universal shape of the Avalon crabs. But the huge grinning Grendel God was of a different shape entirely. Perhaps the "daughters" were parasites.
    And the little ones, could they be parasites on the parasites?
    She could see three, four of the little ones at the edge of the cliff, looking about them, then withdrawing one by one. Now others moved downslope, slowly, clumsily. Would they come to her?
    No, they were gone before they came that far. Old Grendel observed patiently. The sky was darkening before she saw them again. Five, six weirds moving back up the rocky slope.
    Old Grendel believed she could reach them.
    She could see the tip of a tree up there. Likely there was water.
    She would have to drink until she could barely move. If her daughter caught her then, she would die. With a belly like a drum, she would have to crawl two miles uphill without ever going on speed. At the top she would have used up every erg of energy; she would be dry as an old bone. 
    If there was no water, she would die. 
    If anything attacked her, she would die.
    Watch them move, slow and clumsy, easy prey. It was like watching hunter-climbers. Old Grendel flashed underwater and crunched down on a bite-sized crab. She would see where else the weirds led her.

    At suppertime there were baked potatoes, and Cajun-style greens, and a Grendel Scout favorite, a rolled biscuit-bread baked in the campfire.
    And as they settled down to enjoy the feast, the kids were treated to another specialty.
    With great ceremony, Aaron and Chaka tramped back in from the shadows, carrying a steaming cauldron between them. "This," Chaka announced, "is the specialty of the house. This is the real reason that we like to come over here. There's never enough of it to take back to the island." He paused, and then said smilingly: "There really isn't enough for you guys, either, but if there's any left, you can divvy it up."
    The kids looked suspicious, but when the older Scouts didn't even invite them to eat, and promptly served themselves, Carey Lou shouldered his way over, poked a spoon in, and tasted.
    He pronounced it delicious, and they dove in.
    It was like a thick jambalaya, served over crumbled biscuit. Delicious. It was filled with things that chewed like mussel and tasted like clams or fish. Several times someone asked what it was composed of, and received only an evasive smile in return.
    "Secret recipe," Aaron said, and everyone broke up laughing.
    There was only a tiny helping for each of the kids, enough to whet their appetite for burgers. "Mainland Stew," they were told, was for full Scouts only.
    After a little wait, Jessica inquired innocently, "Who'd like some for lunch tomorrow?" 
    All hands went up.
    "Well," she said. "I guess we have to respect the public demand, now, don't we?"

    Carey Lou belched with satisfaction. "So tonight," he said. "Tonight we get to find out more about grendels?" 
    "Tonight," Aaron said.
    Heather McKennie leaned forward, her dark eyes intense. "They were like a feeding frenzy coming after our parents, huh? Like sharks on earth?"
    One of the other kids chimed in: "Or like piranhas! I saw that James Bond movie, and they ate that woman right up!" 
    "Blood-crazed monsters . . . "
    Justin laughed. "I read up on piranhas. It wasn't really blood that triggered them. There was this guy who went down to the Amazon. Zoologist named Bellamy. Went down there and studied the little bastards." 
    "Why?" Aaron asked curiously.
    "Well, their behavior didn't make sense to him. The stupid little buggers rip each other to pieces. Dinnertime isn't a friendly affair at all."
    "Ghastly business." Katya's "upper-class" English accent was terrible. "Not a black-tie occasion?" 
    "They'd eat the tie too. Now, our barmy zoologist began wondering: what's in it for the fish?"
    He dropped his voice. "So they went to the village where it happens. Where the natives throw pigs into the water, for the entertainment of the tourists. And they'd throw one of these terrified creatures in the water, and it would thrash-and the water would churn with blood. Piranhas ripped it to ribbons in a couple of minutes. Just like in the movies." 
    Justin was getting into it now. "And he wondered: Was it the blood? Was it? And he took a bloody knife, and slipped it into the water . . . " 
    They held their assembled breath.
    "And nothing happened. Nothing. And then . . . he slipped his foot into the water." 
    "Jesus. What happened?"
    "Nothing. And then he slipped his hand into the water-" 
    "Christ! Did he stick his dick in the water too?" 
    "I have no idea," Justin said haughtily. "I did hear that he later requested an audition with the Vienna Boy's Choir, but that was likely a coincidence." Justin gave the speaker a nasty look.
    "At any rate-then he slapped the water with an oar, and they went crazy." He leaned back. "It was the splash that did it, all along. Drives 'em nuts."
    Aaron nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "I bet you have trees overhanging. Monkeys or something fall in occasionally . . . " 
    "Yeah. Instant piranha chow."
    "Well, but there aren't many trees that overhang the water, and monkeys aren't that stupid," Chaka said. "Not enough critters fall in the water, certainly not enough to affect evolution of the fish." 
    "So why?" Aaron asked. "What is in it for the fish?" 
    "Absolutely nothing," Chaka said. "It's extra behavior." 
    "Extra?"
    "Extra. Extraneous. Useless. Something that got genetically coded with a real survival characteristic. Happens all the time." 
    "We haven't found anything like that here," Justin said.
    "How do you know? We haven't had the chance to look," Katya said. "Not over here. We understand Camelot, but really, the grendels didn't leave much to understand. Here there's a real ecology, but they won't let us come look at it." 
    "They," Heather said solemnly. "The First." 
    "They're just trying to take care of us," Sharon McAndrews said. "Aren't they?"
    "Jailers take care of their charges, too," Aaron said. "You can't be a prison warder without a prisoner-" 
    Sharon McAndrews frowned. "You told us that you would tell us some things. About our parents." The other kids echoed her enthusiastically, but she sounded a little nervous.
    Justin, Jessica and Aaron looked at each other. "Not tonight," Aaron said softly. "Tomorrow night. But not tonight." 
    "Why then? Why not now?" 
    "Because-" Justin began.
    "You sound like a First," Heather said.
    "Maybe I do. But we do have reasons," Justin said. "These are things you have to learn first. You'll know before we leave here."
    "Is that a promise?" Sharon McAndrews sounded younger than her twelve years. 
    "Sure, it's a promise," Aaron said.
    They sipped their coffee, and watched each other without speaking. Unspoken was the thought: First, Carey Lou has an appointment. He won the lottery.

    Carey Lou had been asleep for no more than an hour when they came for him. They said nothing. Blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back. Thrust a rope between his teeth. Someone spoke, in a voice too gruff for recognition: "Hold on to this, and follow us. If you drop it, we leave you for the grendels."
    Thank God they slipped shoes onto his feet before leading him away from the camp, out into the woods. 
    He had no idea how long he walked, or what time it was.
    He lost track of the distance. He could see nothing, but felt every slap of brush, heard every night sound. He kept telling himself that this was calculated. This was all planned. They wouldn't really leave him for the grendels . . .
    Still, his teeth bore down on that half-inch hemp until he was certain that it would break off in his mouth.

    "Shhh," Justin whispered. He adjusted his night glasses, binoculars with big lenses to gather as much light as possible, and focused in. Fourteen-year-old Carey Lou was about twenty-five yards from the edge of the water, and looked ready to soil his pants. Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing pants. Or shirt, or socks-anything, in fact, but an expression of stark terror. The boy stared back at them beseechingly. His hands were strangling the grendel gun. He knew that somewhere back in those shadows was Heather McKennie, she of the cutoff jeans, freckles, tanned hide, and raunchy sense of humor. Heather, a whole enormous two years older than Carey. Heather would be his prize . . .  
    If he survived the night.
    "Carey . . . " She called from somewhere in the darkness, beyond the torches.
    "Oh, sleet," he said, and took another step closer to the water. Twenty-three feet now.
    Justin's rifle scope gave him a good angle on the pond. Aaron would be fifty feet to the north, similarly equipped. Little Chaka was farther south. All wore the modified infrared scopes. They would have barely a second to act, but that would be enough. Reacting to grendel flare was something Avalonians learned almost before they could walk. 
    Carey took another step closer to the water.
    Burbling just beyond him was a spot already identified as a grendel hole. That meant a mama, and a flock of young'uns in the larval stage of grendel development. Samlon. They knew that upon maturation Mama would drive them out. In lean times she would eat the samlon themselves. On the island of Camelot, an entire ecology had developed-samlon eating algae, mamas eating samlon. They also knew that under ordinary circumstances, momma grendels would eat anything rather than their own young.
    They would certainly eat tender fourteen-year-old colonists.
    Jessica's voice wafted from somewhere in the bushes. "Just a little closer, Carey . . . "
    Carey, stark naked, terribly alone, looked back into the brush. He would be blinded by the torches, unable to see anything.
    Justin remembered his first grendel hunt. He hadn't been alone, but there hadn't been a backup team behind him either. He'd waded into the water, going slowly, feeling stark terror, but more too. Carey would be feeling that now.
    Stark terror. Anger. Fear. And excitement, because if the grendel came and he survived, he would be a man.
    Naked except for the grendel gun, shivering with the cold, Carey took another step toward the water-
    And then the water parted. Something glided from its depths. A black destroyer. A fanged shadow. A thing of terror and appetite, made flesh. It blinked slowly, placidly at the naked creature trembling before it, and took a lazy step.
    Carey shifted his rifle at the first disturbance. The kid was quick. Skinny, but quick. Justin was already sighting-
    Carey screamed, aimed, and fired. The grendel gun bucked, and a splash of Day-Glo orange splayed across the grendel's snout. The grendel blurred, flying toward Carey at heart-stopping speed. Carey fired again, and shouted, "Oh, sleet!"
    Another long second, and the marrow had to be freezing in his veins. Perhaps the first bitter words of condemnation and a forlorn prayer were beginning to form on his lips . . . 
    Then fire flared in the darkness behind the torches. Three shots almost as one. A quarter second later, a fourth shot. Then the grendel was hit six, seven, eight times, slammed by heavy-caliber slugs that fried its nervous system, turned its assault into a leaping spasm, splashing toward the paralyzed Carey, who seemed to be watching the entire tableau in slow motion.
    He staggered to the left as the grendel thundered to earth. It was on its side, its projected prey forgotten now. Alive, but in an awful agony as its own speed sacs overloaded. A quarter ton of amphibian death clawed at the ground, screaming, chasing its own tail in diminished circles, tearing up earth and rock and grass there in the half circle of the firelight, its dying hiss burning their ears . . . 
    Steam rose from its body. Its claws and tail trembled, twitched, and were still at last.
    Carey turned back to look at them as they emerged from the shadows. Jessica hung back, her motion sensors wary for additional predators. They were pretty certain about this-only one momma per hole. But grendels had surprised them before.
    Not this time, but it had happened.
    "You . . . bastards," Carey said. Panting, he flung his rifle down on the ground. Pitiful in his nakedness, he had clearly wet himself, but was unconscious of it.
    "You incredible bastards." He took another breath, and held it. This was a critical moment. He looked back at the grendel. Justin remembered the first time they had done this, and what the kid had said afterward. There had been no one to do this for him-he was one of the eldest Star Born, and no Earth Born even dreamed that something like the Grendel Run was going on. None of the Earth Born would do something so risky . . . and so much fun.
    But he knew that Carey was looking at them. And the rifles, and then at the grendel. And remembering the incredibly short pause before the grendel was blown back into the water. Less than a second. Time enough to lose control of his bladder. Time enough to feel more naked and defenseless than he had ever imagined a human being could feel. Time enough to experience the incredible precision required by a kill team.
    Carey looked at them and swallowed. He knew somehow that his entire reputation for machismo rested upon what he said next.
    "Well . . ." He strained to sound casual. He bent, picked up his rifle. He walked toward them until he was standing three feet from Justin. He extended the rifle with his left hand. Justin extended his own right to take it-and Carey hit him, quite hard and very quickly, with his right fist, just under the left ear.
    Justin stumbled back, tripped, and went down.
    Finally Carey smiled. "That was . . . pretty fair shooting." He watched Justin carefully.
    Justin pushed himself up to a sitting position. He felt his jaw tenderly. "Got a pretty good right there, kid." And held up his hand.
    Carey took it and yanked him up, then stood with his legs slightly apart, well balanced. His lopsided grin was challenging. "Hendrick's a good coach," he said. Justin nodded. No action. A great sigh seemed to go through them all, a release of tension.
    "You'd have got him, you know," Justin said. "It was a good hit." 
    "Why the hell do you do that?" Carey asked. 
    "It's fun," Aaron said.
    Justin frowned. "We had a kid panic once. Nobody got shot, but it was close." 
    "Why paint? Cassandra would know if I hit--oh." 
    "Heh. Cassandra doesn't know about this. Jesus, can you imagine what Zack would do?" 
    They all laughed. 
    "So who panicked?" 
    Justin looked at him and shook his head. 
    "Edgar," Aaron said. 
    Carey smiled knowingly.
    "Got the grendel, though," Justin said.
    Carey coughed politely. "Who's got my clothes? My nuts are freezing."
    Heather sashayed out of the dark. "Here's a blanket," she said sweetly. The blanket was wrapped around her. When she opened it, there was nothing underneath but Heather.
    Carey swallowed hard. It wasn't certain, but the good bet was that Carey was still a virgin. Well, this evening would see the end of that onerous burden.
    Heather wrapped the blanket around the both of them, and Carey became very, very involved in a kiss. Amid the general cheering, the two of them retreated from the firelight.
    Aaron grinned. "Today I am a man," he said. 
    "Indeed. Now. Jessica-any other ghoulies about?" 
    "No grendel-sized heat sources. Let's harvest some samlon."

    By the time they got back to Heorot, Tau Ceti was rising over the mountains.
    Mercifully, the day was set for lazing and play. Carey Lou managed to stagger to his tent and collapse. Or at least they assumed that he was collapsing. Heather was with him, and the more Justin thought about it, the more he was convinced that a fourteen-year-old libido just might be impervious to fatigue, fear, and a thorough workout by the (rumor had it) inexhaustible Miss McKennie. 
    Ah, youth.
    The day passed quickly, samples were gathered and catalogued, lessons on wildlife and herbology were taught by the elder Scouts, and a considerable amount of skinny-dipping, impromptu tree-climbing competitions, and general hell-raising continued through the day.
    When evening finally fell again, there was a pleasant air of fatigue settling over the camp. They had shared two extremely alive days. Carey had also learned that three other Biters had suffered as he had. He was a member of a fraternity now, and he was already relishing the thought of passing that favor to one of the younger kids in a few years. Say, his younger brother Patrick . . .

    The cook fires were burning, and soon dinner would be prepared. But there was another question still on the Biters' minds, and they had pestered their elders all day long.
    Finally, Aaron sat them down, not a shred of playfulness in his attitude.
    "All right," he said. "There's something serious we need to talk about tonight. Tonight, it's time that you learned things." 
    "About our parents?" Sharon asked.
    "Things about your parents. And grandparents. There are reasons why they didn't come over here. Why we're the ones." 
    "Why?"
    Justin and Jessica looked at each other nervously; then Justin said, "When you freeze something that has water in it, you get ice crystals. They thought that they had whipped the problems, but something went wrong. They froze the crew of Geographic. They woke them up in shifts for various duties around the ship, crossing from Sol to Tau Ceti. And there were problems." 
    "Problems?" Carey asked.
    "Yes. When you freeze people for a hundred years and then wake them up, chances are you've formed some ice crystals in their brains. Wake them twice, you get more crystals. Crystals rupture cells, mess it up in-" He tapped his skull. "-here." 
    "What did it do?"
    "A lot of our parents aren't as smart as they used to be. They get emotional problems, too. Coordination. Early strokes. Just plain stupidity. At first it didn't really matter. They were still smarter than most people they'd known, and they'd chosen the island because it was safe. No problems to face, nothing they couldn't deal with. Even then, they got in the habit of talking things over, being sure they weren't doing something stupid-" 
    "Rules," Sharon McAndrews said.
    "Rules," Justin agreed. "And that was good enough for a while. There weren't any real dangers here, none that they knew about anyway. Then, the first grendel came. They didn't understand. They had rules, and they stuck to the rules, and it didn't work, but Colonel Weyland helped them and they defeated the first grendels. They went hunting, and when they thought they had killed all the grendels, they hadn't. You know about that. What you don't know is how bad it shook them. After the Grendel Wars they stopped trusting themselves and they stopped trusting each other. They didn't work well together when the grendels popped up, and that's one of the reasons that our parents are so afraid of them now."
    There was silence. Justin could see it: they were trying to find a lie in the story. But there were too many clues. They knew, they had always known. There was something wrong with Mom, with Dad. With Uncle. They had always known, but never had a label. 
    Now they did.
    "Ice on his mind," Carey Lou said. "I've heard that, but nobody would tell me what it meant-"
    "And my mother slapped me when I said it to her," Sharon said.
    "Christ," Carey Lou said. "What can we do?" 
    "Love them," Jessica said. "They're doing the best they can. That's what we expect of you. Just love them, but do your own thinking. Including about their rules. That's why they make rules. They don't trust their own thoughts, not when they act alone. So they try to get a collective judgment on everything that can happen, and make that a rule, and then they follow the rules no matter what."
    "Ice on their minds," Carey Lou said again, slowly. "Son of a bitch!"

    Aaron and Trish carried a pole across their shoulders, with a dozen netted samlon suspended from it. They were singing some kind of hunting song or working song . . . "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to hunt I go" . . . making up verses as they approached the campfire.
    Water was already simmering and bubbling in the glass cauldron. Potatoes and onions had been brought over from Camelot, but there was more: mainland bulbs and leaves known to be edible, and tasty. Some of the brighter Scouts noticed how flashlights had been focused into the cauldron, so that the vegetables could be seen dancing around in the roiling water.
    There was an air of excitement, and someone ooh'd as Justin produced a wicked-looking knife and sliced the heads off the samlon.
    "Look at their eyes," he said. "But for us, they would have been grendels one day, and hunted us. We killed them first. What eats grendels?" he asked. "We eat grendels." 
    They were as tense as an audience awaiting a magic trick. Justin figured that that was pretty close to accurate.
    His blood-smeared hands gathered the beheaded samlon up and carried them to the pot, dropping them into the water. 
    The water foamed with blood.
    "Watch," Justin said, "watch and see . . ." 
    Those first few trips, the Scouts had been crawling all over each other to watch and see, to look down into an inadequate aluminum pot. Once Ansel Stevens fell in and scalded his whole arm. Once there was a full riot. The pots kept getting bigger, but the Scouts still missed most of the action, until Chaka got big enough to carry this mucking great glass cauldron. And now everyone could see it all.
    The three gallons of water in the pot churned. The samlon sank, and then churned up to the surface again, in a curious and disquieting imitation of life.
    Something was happening. The flesh of the samlon split, and worm-like things boiled out. Scores of them. Hundreds. Pale, fleshy things churning and dying in the boiling water, turning the clear bubbling broth into a kind of thick gumbo . . . or jambalaya.
    The Biters pulled back, choking. There rose from the red kettle a stench of blood.
    And in a disturbing way . . . it was a good smell. Like last night's savory aroma, only stronger.
    Justin and Aaron and Katya and Jessica and the other Second watched ghoulishly. The children stared at the kettle, sniffed at it One of them fled to the entrance of the cave and vomited.
    In a half hour the brew was done, and ladled into bowls. It was an evil-looking mess, filled with fragments of samlon heads and the gutted carcasses now torn into chunks by Katya's bloody knife. The dead worms and corkscrew things were bloated pinkly in death. There were little transparent crabs no bigger than a Biter's fingernail. The base stock was as crimson as tomato soup. It looked filled with insects.
    Aaron held the bowl to his lips. The Biters watched him, horribly fascinated.
    "Mmmmm," he raised the spoon to his lips. He blew on it. Something thick and wormy flopped over the edge of the broad spoon. He slurped it up as if it were vermicelli, making a smacking sound. "Delicious." 
    "Dinner," Jessica said, "is served."