Beowulf's Children
Chapter 21

THE ROUNDUP

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
-FRANCIS BACON, "Of Nature in Men," Essays

    Justin sometimes felt as if he were tap-dancing through a minefield when he talked with Jessica. There were subjects that were simply taboo: Her relationship with Aaron. Her relationship with Cadmann. Her relationship with Justin. 
    Ouch.
    Katya had come over with a plate of beans. She pinched him again.
    He let his pensive mood fade. "Hi, Kat."
    She bowed, and sat next to him. Her flannel shirt rubbed against his shoulder. Tau Ceti was particularly fierce, and the distant mountains wavered in the heat.
    But this was safe--at least from grendels. Their distance from water guaranteed that. Whatever other dangers lurked out there . . . well, that was another question.
    He drew a little horseshoe in the dust with his toe. "All right," he said. "Twenty-five klicks west. Jungle starts there, but it's mostly fed by underground streams. The closest surface water is still eight kilometers distant. Lots of slow moving ground animals, so we figure it's a grendel-free zone. We're going to find the spider devils. The question is the proper means of capture. Any suggestions?" 
    All three of them stared at the crude map for a few minutes, then shook their heads.
    Little Chaka strolled over. He looked larger than life, and dusty, and extremely happy. No question why! In the last month he had begun the generations-long process of categorizing the life forms on the mainland, shipping samples back to Camelot a dirigible-load at a time. A labor of love, the beginning of a life's work.
    He said, "Father has some ideas about the spider devils. The first thing is . . . we're going to have to lose one of the piglets . . . " 
    "Ahhh."
    "And I was just getting attached to the ugly little bastards," Justin said.
    "Well, go find the ugliest one and say your good-byes. By this time tomorrow, it will be an ex-piglet." 
    Jessica bounced up to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Rest time is over. Let's go and take a look at this."

    "They're up there," Chaka said.
    The sound sensors picked up the web spinners as they chattered to each other. Jessica, Justin, and Chaka were eighty meters to the east, as close as they could get without scaring the creatures away. It was plenty close enough to let them pick up the chittering and constant, oddly sensual singing.
    "All right," Chaka whispered. "Let the piglet go." 
    The snouter looked confused. It carried enough tranquilizer in its belly to stupefy a battalion of grendels; but the membrane holding the toxin had not ruptured. It also wore a collar of Chaka's design. A needle ran from it into an extremely sensitive cluster of nerve endings in its snout.
    When the cage door lifted, the snouter sniffed freedom and set off running. It got five steps when the first jolt of pain clobbered it. It flopped over onto its side, and wobbled back up as if it couldn't quite believe what had happened to it. It tried running north again, and got another shock. 
    Down it went.
    "Meanie," Jessica whispered. 
    "That's me," Chaka agreed heartily.
    The snouter turned and ran south. It got another eight paces before Chaka zapped it again. It fell over as if pole-axed.
    Now one very confused little snouter, this time it tried to walk west, toward the trees. It got six paces, and then stopped--sniffed as if asking the air a question.
    "That's the direction," Chaka agreed. "Nice snouter." If it hared off line, he zapped it, but softer this time, and it began going right where they wanted it. 
    It stopped just short of the trees.
    "He's making visual contact with the spiders," he said. "Or vice versa. And there goes the music." It was louder now, and pitched lower, almost echoing the snouter's snorts.
    "What do you think?" Justin asked. "If an animal is raised or nurtured by its parents, what are the chances that it is conditioned to respond to something that sounds like its mommy's voice?" 
    "The spiders are singing it a lullaby," Jessica laughed. 
    "How quaint."
    The snouter hardly needed prompting. Dazed, it wandered into the forest one halting step at a time. It stopped to nibble on something green, then took another couple of steps, and trotted happily into the forest.
    Justin's war specs automatically followed the creature until it was swallowed by trees.
    "They'll be focused on the kill," he said quietly. "Let's get a little closer."
    The brush had a jungle flavor to it, fan-shaped trees and spiky bushes, a dense tangle of greens and yellows. They crawled forward to a new position, where they could see through the tangle of brush. Justin suddenly heard a snort of pain and betrayal, of sudden, massive fear.
    The snouter was caught in a web. It was thrashing and twisting frantically, to no avail at all.
    Justin focused in. The strands were green and white, and apparently quite strong. The snouter made a frantic, heroic effort and almost tore itself free before something dropped on it from above. Something broad and fibrous: a net, or a coarser version of the web.
    Helpless now, it rolled over onto its side and quivered.
    They moved in from the shadows. One, two, three, four, five . . . six black stick figures. Justin had wondered if they would be yet another Avalon crab, but they weren't. In motion the web spinners did look like great spiders, with small torsos, tiny heads, and four long, long limbs. 
    "Perfect," Chaka said.
    The things were closer now, and the snouter had ceased struggling. They sang, and the song was hypnotic, in perfect tune with the snouter's own sounds. Calming. Dreamlike. Almost anesthetic.
    "Jesus," Jessica said. "Kill it, will you?"
    Chaka laughed. "You have no sense of drama. Cassandra. Trigger the implant."
    The snouter heaved once, massively, crashed back down, and was utterly still.
    The largest spider devil came a little closer, probing. It didn't seem to like the sudden stillness, but the nearness of fresh meat was too much for it. It descended, sank fangs, and went to work. The others followed, and the scene turned into a general feast. An entire colony of the spider devils was home for dinner.
    After five minutes, Chaka stood. "Let's go," he said. "Motion sensors?"
    "Nothing larger than ten kilos. No sudden shifts in wind." 
    "All right. Let's go."
    Rifles at the ready, they entered the forest in a modified wing formation.
    Spongy loam underfoot. Smells of camphor and lemon. Everything seemed to smell more vibrant than the colors that exploded around them. The forest canopy wasn't particularly high here, but every tree limb was ripe and heavy with leaves, and vines, and fruit . . . or things that looked like fruit.
    Just out of Justin's reach hung something purple and bulbous, like a cluster of fused grapes, or a blackberry. He reached out and prodded it with the tip of his rifle, and it dissolved into a colony of marble-sized purple leggy things that swarmed up the branch to re-form a few feet farther away.
    He wondered what would have happened if he had touched it with his naked hand.
    That wouldn't be possible right now. They wore lightweight membrane suits that covered their entire bodies with a thin, tough barrier impenetrable to all but the most determined attacker. An entirely reasonable precaution: Chaka had already categorized at least twelve deadly plants and identified three toxic species. Small things, with a biotoxin about a dozen times stronger than a wasp. Not lethal to an adult, they would still grant a few days of truly memorable sensation.
    A couple of lizard-like things perched on branches. Unclassified. Cute. Venomous or worse.
    They were in the clearing now. The light slanted down through the trees, giving a louvered effect. 
    "Motion sensors?"
    Jessica checked a wrist sensor. "Nothing for a hundred meters."
    They knelt, and examined their take. The snouter was both withered and half-devoured. The spider devils had first sucked his juice, then ripped him apart.
    They lay on their sides, motionless. Their faces were tiny but manlike, lips slightly parted. One, the largest, lay on its back. Its legs closed feebly on Chaka's tongs when he prodded it.
    "Alive." He picked it up and examined it. The four legs quivered. Legs and torso were covered with straight black hair. These were mammaloids, Joeys, though evolved in a drastically different direction. Wet-looking lips drooled something thin and milky.
    "Close your mouth while you chew," Chaka said, and unfolded his basket to drop them in one at a time. 
    "All of them?" Justin asked.
 "Sure. They might be some kind of hive mind. Might not even be able to survive separated. I'll get them ready to ship back to Father." He grinned. "Of course, they may have ice on their minds."
    Jessica and Justin examined the web. She was scraping goo from what seemed to be an enormous mat of thin vines, and putting a bit of it into a sample bottle.
    "What the hell is it?" Justin asked, scratching his head.
    "It looks like a lattice of leaves," she said. "They chewed up the connective fibers, leaving just this heavy venous stuff. Then they coated it with something sticky, probably a biological exudate." 
    "So it's not a true web." 
    "No. They're interacting with the environment." 
    "A bit chancy. They're vulnerable to the quality of the materials." 
    "No more than a beaver," Chaka said.
    "Why would a tree want to make something useful to a spider devil?"
    "Maybe they furnish the tree with high-energy droppings."
    Her sample bottle had everything that it needed, and she snapped it shut. "Let's get out of here. I don't feel all that comfortable here." 
    "Come now. The woods are lovely, dark and deep." 
    "Yeah, right. But I have promises to keep." 
    "Right." They unclipped a rod from the side of the basket, extended it, and threaded it through loops at the top. Chaka hoisted it over one shoulder, and Jessica took the other end. Justin kept his rifle at the ready, movement and thermal sensors tuned.
    And they encountered no problems at all, all the way back to the trikes.

    The NickNack was a much smaller version of Robor, a cargo mover ballasted by hydrogen sacks, large enough to carry a dozen people and small enough to be powered by a single skeeter. It was reliable so long as they didn't run into bad weather.
    Cigar-shaped, it hovered above the animal pens. The spider devils were frozen, the dozens of plant and insect specimens neatly and safely stowed away. They would easily survive the eight-hour trip.
    Eight hours as the pterodon flies. On the other hand, to paraphrase the old joke, if the pterodon had to walk and herd a group of recalcitrant chamels, it would take twelve times as long.
    "Aaron will be back by morning," Jessica said. "Then we can start them moving. Cassandra? Map." 
    A contour map showing a quarter of the continent opened in the air before them.
    "Close on our position, Cassie. Good enough. Group, we need to water the chamels daily. We need to clear the water holes of grendels before we get to them. Trikes, horses, and skeeters are the ticket. We leapfrog ahead. Should take four days. Any questions?"
    Jessica leaned back against the log. She could hear the chamels snorting in their pens. The males bonded readily to horses doused in chamel scent, and the larger females would follow the males. Her stomach buzzed with adrenaline. A new adventure. What they had fought for, bargained for . . . 
    Died for . . .
    She sloshed her coffee down on the ground, and stood. "Let's get a good night's sleep tonight, and get started early." 
    "Aye." 
    "Aye."
    The fences, the generators, the shelters, and a cache of weapons would be left behind. Eventually, there would be supply stations all over the southern tip of the continent. Forty-eight hours of juice in the fences, and enough weapons to make a hell of a stand before help arrived, with help never more than twelve hours away. 
    She high-fived Chaka. "Good job."
    He grinned broadly. Chaka was just happy to be totally swamped with specimens. He wandered off to search for new fronds to tag.
    Jessica and Justin remained by the fireside. Silences between them were strained these days, ever since . . . what had happened. But that was the chance they had taken. If anything he seemed more uncomfortable about it than she did. And that, she decided, was appropriate. 
    "Looking forward to the week?" 
    "We'll see a lot of territory," he said.
    "Good find," she said. "The females make good meat, and are decent beasts of burden. The males are as fast as racehorses. Good stock.
    "Imagine a hunt," she said. "Some kind of camo shirts and pants, and riding one of these beauties. Sneak up on anything."
    "I've thought about it for weeks." Justin stretched. "Well, I think it's that time. Big day tomorrow." 
    "Big day."
    He left without a backward glance. Jessica hunched her knees and stared into the fire. For all of her life she had treasured countless long, intimate conversations with Justin. She missed them more than she could have dreamed.
    And yet . . . what she had done . . . what they had done was right. The only thing she regretted was Toshiro. He of the gifted hands and strong, golden body . . . 
    He had made his choice. As Justin had made his. 
    As her father had made his. And the colony theirs.
    The fire crackled, grew higher and warmer, and then slowly began to die. It was well after midnight before she felt sleepiness to match her fatigue.

    Justin woke at the stirring of the horses. For a bare moment he was disoriented, unable to remember where he was. In his father's house? He sat up in his bedroll and washed his face from a canteen. On the mainland every camp away from a base would be a dry camp. Tau Ceti was showing a bare sliver of red to the east, and the air was pleasantly chill. The prairie was silent, and the creatures that took the place of insects on Avalon were quiet.
    The path ahead was clear. Three days' ride to the foot of the mountains, some through grendel country, but they had the technology to deal with those. Grendels wouldn't dictate their route. "First one up makes breakfast," someone called. Justin grinned and poured powdered eggs and water into a pan. Others were stirring. Chaka came over to watch the dawn with him. "Morning, cowboy." 
    "Yippie-yi-o-tie-yay," Justin said.
    "Do you see any problems in working with Jessica for the next three days?" 
    Justin glared at him.
    "I know that there have been some--"
    Justin interrupted him. "Listen. She made her choice. It wasn't totally right--but it wasn't totally wrong, either. I made my choice. We have problems. But she's still my . . ." 
    He thought about it. A dozen possibilities flashed through his mind. "Family," he decided. "She's my family. We'll work it out."

    An hour later a skeeter buzzed in from the south. Justin frowned when he saw Aaron climb out of the cabin. He felt a flash of unreasoning dislike, even hatred burning at the back of his brain.
    Aaron. Everything that is good here would have happened anyway. Eventually. And everything bad--you brought. You always knew how to make the games come out your way, didn't you?
    Jessica, still tousled but beautiful, went to meet him. Aaron embraced her, then cast a radiant smile in Justin's direction. "Top of the morning, sir."
    "Love sleeping on the ground," he said. Aaron roared as if it was the funniest thing that he'd ever heard, and slapped Justin's shoulder. "All ready to go?" 
    There was a chorus of ayes.
    I'm not being fair, Justin thought. Sour grapes. Selfish. And part of his mind whispered. You could have been the leader if you 'd wanted to be. But you wouldn't do it, and now Aaron has that and Jessica too.

    NickNack was already out of sight. Skeeters went along to assist in herding the chamels. Two hundred chamels, and ten horsemen to keep them under control. Shock prods and tranquilizers for the uncooperative.
    Aaron grinned widely. "Head 'em up! Move 'em out!" he shouted.
    Someone answered, "Rawhide!"
    The chamel pen was made of nylon netting strung from poles. Two electric lines kept both chamels and predators away from it. Chaka opened the gate as Justin mounted a roan mare from the remount pool. They call it the ramada, he thought. The word, like most everything else they knew about cattle drives, came from recordings of Earth television shows.
    Aaron stood in his stirrups. "All right, we have thirty klicks that's never been explored on foot," he shouted. "The skeeters will scout it for us, but stay in threes! Stay together, stay alive. Nobody gets hurt, right? All right, let's move."
    "Heeyah!" Katya had ducked under the pen's netting. She waved her arms and shouted to drive the chamels out.
    The males moved with light, birdlike fast-twitch motion, scenting the air and looking for an opportunity to escape. One made a dash eastward. Justin kicked at his horse and again wished for spurs. They weren't needed, but there was something about boots and spurs. He laughed and dashed after the stray, caught up and swatted it with a stun wand. The effect was astonishing. It dropped exactly where it was, quivered, and changed colors twice. Its huge eyes blinked three times, and an enormous tear rolled out of one. Then it scrabbled up onto its haunches, and it looked at him accusingly, as if to say, "You beast!"
    He prodded it back toward the herd. It returned slowly, damn near dusting itself off first, its dignity untouched. It humphed like a society matron.
    Jessica reined up next to him. "Shut your mouth," she said. "You'll draw flies. Well. You certainly made a fan there, didn't you?"
    He rolled his eyes, chucked his mount, and kept them moving.
    Tau Ceti rose steadily in the sky, but the air remained cool. They were close to the equator, but heading into the high country, and this was winter in Avalon's northern hemisphere. In summer the high desert might be a blasted heath, but it was tolerable for now.
    In fact, it was downright pleasant. There were vast beds of poppy-like flowers, and twice he hopped off his mount to snag samples for Cassandra's information banks. Her major task was cataloging and analysis of all data on mainland animal, vegetable, and mineral forms.
    This is the way to tame a continent. You have to let it take its crack at you. Some die and merge with the new world. More are born to take their part of the future.
    But all this would have happened, in time. Toshiro died because Aaron was in a hurry.
    The way was lazy and long, the sun and the dust and the cool breezes were intoxicants. The chamels sang songs of sadness and loss. He tried to whistle their repetitive rhythm.
    Chaka rode up next to him. He rode double with Wendy Powers, who often shared his bed. 
    "This is the life, eh?" 
    "No worries, if that's what you mean." 
    "Right. Hakuna matata," Chaka said.
    They rode together for a while, in silence. The chamels lowed and sang. The rumble of their hooves on the hard-packed dirt was a music all its own.
    Wendy shaded her eyes with one hand, and with the other pointed at an irregular mound, man-high, a hundred meters to the north. "Another one of those bug hills," she said.
    Chaka nodded. "I've counted a dozen so far. Little flying crab things. Industrious buggers. God, Dad would love it out here. So much to see."
    They passed another klick or so before Wendy spoke again.
    "Do you ever wonder what's happening on Earth?" 
    "Sure. I guess. No way to know, though." 
    "They just forgot about us. That's what I think." 
    "Probably a bookkeeping error," said Justin.
    Chaka snorted and pulled his horse away. Before he did, Wendy swung athletically onto Justin's mount, and wrapped her powerful arms around his waist.
    They rode silently for a while, and then she said, "Just like Clint Eastwood in Rawhide." 
    "Yeah. But the Indians didn't eat you."
    "You wouldn't know that from watching the movies, that's for sure."
    She was quiet for a while, and then said, "When are you and Jessica going to forgive each other?" 
    "Taking up Julia Hortha's habits?"
    "No, I'm really worried about you two. And don't change the subject."
    He shook his head. "She made a fool out of my father. And then made him a killer. Not easy for him to forget something like that."
    "Not easy," she repeated. "But hasn't there been enough trouble?" 
    "Are you trying to make peace?"
    She kissed his ear, and blew in it warmly. "Would you accept a peace offering?" 
    "How do you spell that?" 
    "Any way you want." 
    He laughed.
    "You know," she said, "I'm not that different from you. You have a foster father, who you love. I love a dream--that's what I have instead of a family." 
    "The whole colony is your family," he said gently.
    "That's the same as having no family at all. Aaron is my family. Aaron's dream. If mistakes were made, they were made on all sides. We've got to let them go." 
    "You guys. In some ways, you Bottle Babies seem like . . . one big body with two dozen legs and a dozen heads. Sometimes it seems as if you don't care about anything but each other."
    "That's not true, and you know it. I fight with Stu Ellington all the time. Well, almost all the time." She smiled at him, and patted his cheek. "If you're interested, you know where to find me, tonight," she said.
    She hopped off the back of his horse, and trotted effortlessly back to where one of the trikes was rounding up a stray female.
    Justin hunched forward into his saddle. There was some truth in what Wendy said. There had to be a way of putting things back together. If he didn't see it at the moment, it might still be real.

    Jessica nodded hello as he pulled up to the rear of the herd.
    "Nice country." He felt cautious, and guilty about the caution.
    "Beautiful." No other words followed. 
    "Jessica," he said--
    There was a security buzz on his collar, and he cursed. "Yes, Cassandra?"
    "Weather reports have shifted. There is now a sixty percent probability that heavy fog will shroud your intended camp site."
    "Is that right? Damn. What would you expect the temperature to be?" 
    "As low as fifty degrees." 
    "How close is the nearest running water?" 
    "Twelve klicks."
    Twelve klicks. Too damned close for comfort. Pity--they had chosen a beautiful site, near one of the wells. Shower facilities had already been erected, but . . . 
    Safety before comfort. We need a different route.
    Even as he thought it, Aaron's voice was in his ear. "You heard Cassandra," Aaron said. "We should change course. Those in favor of taking the Mesa route please signify." 
    "Aye . . . " 
    "Aye . . . " 
    "Aye," said Justin.
    "Motion carried unanimously. Let's do it. Skeeters Two and Six--start flying in supplies."

    The air grew chill. The chamels labored upward. The fliers scouted ahead, then came back to lift trikes up to the top of the plateau. Two stayed, two others came down the trail they were climbing. Chaka and Derik pulled up next to Justin and revved their trikes. "How's it going?" Derik yelled. He held out a stick of beef jerky.
    Justin said, "Nominal," and bit off a chunk. The chamels struggled up the boulder-strewn path. Their hides were a dusty gray now. It was beautiful to watch them change. They were like terrestrial chameleons with a touch of . . . well, of speed. Everything on this planet was sped up just a touch. Magical. The pace was fast. The trick was to keep pace, to think, to move, to feel just as quickly.
    Aaron was right about that. They had to match the rhythms of the planet. Trying to impose Earth's rhythms was a losing proposition. They should stop counting in Earth years . . . though the change would be a major hassle.
    One of the young chamels stumbled, its long and deceptively delicate leg turning badly. It slid back a few feet, and could have fallen. Justin was off his horse in a moment, and behind it just a moment before its own mother got there.
    He felt a horseshoe ridge of hard flat bone close on his shoulder, hard.
    Chaka came in with the shock prod, and Justin said "No!" and met her eyes squarely, and kept pushing. She backed away, put her great head behind her child's butt, and pushed.
    Together, they got the calf up the defile. She sniffed around her child, and the bruised leg, and seemed satisfied. She eyed Justin suspiciously, got between Justin and her offspring, but somehow . . . somehow seemed less hostile now.
    "Trying to gain their trust?" Derik asked. "I suspect that's a waste of time. They're just meat, right?" 
    "Not so sure," Justin said. "There are lots of creatures we can use for meat. I think that these things are pretty smart, and they've got a hell of a natural advantage. How about hunting? Ever think of that?" 
    "Hunting. On a big chameleon?" Derik liked it.
    The mesa's top was hard and flat. The trail lay across it for nearly a hundred kilometers before dropping into lowlands again. Grendel country. They would skirt the river that carved that valley, then climb back again to the base camp Aaron had named Shangri-La. Exploring, Justin said aloud.
    The northern wind whistled. Something hit his face. Cold rain, he thought, then corrected himself. Sleet.
    "Flash storm," Evan said in his earphone. Justin could hear the burr of Evan's skeeter in the background. "Just like the ones up on Isenstine. Secondary camp is only five klicks. We're already setting up. You'll be here in an hour, I reckon."
    "Sounds good." Prefab corrals, fire, chuck wagon. This was the life.

    The daughters of God, two of them, settled on the mesa.
    Old Grendel watched from below, from the shade of a deep forest, fifteen kilometers from open water. The weirds had veered away from the river. They never came very close to open water.
    Yet they needed water. A tiny rivulet trickled from the heights. It wouldn't cool Old Grendel on the naked rock slopes; but there would be water on the mesa, enough if she was careful. She sniffed snow on the wind.
    Many nights ago the weirds had come down from their heights. Two or three tens of them had surrounded and killed one of Old Grendel's daughters. If those were prey, they didn't know it yet.
    The river crabs were long gone, the local hunter-climbers had learned to ignore her, and Old Grendel was hungry. If she couldn't find prey in a day or so, she would have to attack the weirds.
    They were an awkward long way away, but the hill above them showed trees; it would likely have water, and cover for Old Grendel. Water or no, with the coming snow to cool her she could get above them. It looked like she could hit and run. Creep close. Seek out a loner. Go on speed, hook the loner with her tail, drag her to the cliff and let her roll while Old Grendel moved straight down into the stream.
    Then watch. No need to go back right away. Would the loner call for help? Would she live long enough to do that? Would help come? What would they do? She was as interested in that as in a quick meal.
    Weirds. The more she saw, the less she knew. The little flyers were not daughters of God. Rigid creatures with wings so fast they blurred to invisibility, they resembled the ubiquitous pattern of the Avalon crab, though God looked nothing like that at all. God was slow and wingless. She floated like a bubble, a bubble that changed its appearance, attempting to hide itself like a puzzle beast. God couldn't move without the little flyers to push. God had a true daughter, a smaller floating thing pushed by one little flyer.
    There was cooperation here, as among beaver grendels and other species too. Was it possible that God had tamed, enslaved her own parasites?
    And the little prey? The weirds rode God's little flying symbiotes like an infestation. Old Grendel knew about symbiotes and parasites. Some tiny life forms would weaken or kill a creature; some would make it stronger. She had wondered if there was a symbiote that would open a grendel's mind . . . but it would be too small to see.
    Old Grendel had followed the weirds hundreds of kilometers. She lost nothing in so doing. The river-laced meadows that had been her kingdom for most of her life were one vast swamp now. For two years, ever since the sunlight took on that spooky tinge, the rainfall had been increasing. The dammed lakes overflowed; water covered the flats. Old Grendel had left the southland to her daughters, and good luck to them. She would follow the weirds, upstream.
    One branch of the river came near their primary nest, the heights where God customarily dwelt. The main river branch ran here, where Little God carried supplies that fed the weirds.
    From the moment her mind opened. Old Grendel had known how much more there was to know. There was this about the weirds: no other grendel, no other kind of grendel had studied them like she had. When Old Grendel understood the weirds, they would be her prey alone.

    The wind had picked up, and was already blowing the first small flakes their way. The chill was noticeable despite their cheery campfire. "Chamels should be all right." Chaka had slipped into a fur-lined jacket. "We've observed them as high as ten thousand feet, and at temperatures ten degrees lower than anything we're likely to get tonight." 
    "Good." Justin said, "There was something about that calf, and the way it looked at me. I'd never seen that in one of them before." 
    "Well? What do you think?"
    "I think that there was somebody home. Dog-smart, maybe. I don't know. I liked it. And the way the mother nipped at me, and then seemed to understand what I was doing. I can't help the feeling that it was aware. A little. More than those males we had back at Camelot." 
    Skeeters had whirled in and out for the last hour. Supplies arrived from Shangri-La. All but a dozen of the herders took the opportunity to go back to the base camp for a shower and a night's sleep.
    Jessica came into the firelight with her arm around Aaron. The giant's laughter boomed loudly enough to fill the entire territory. He had won. The First had lost. He sat at the fireside, and lifted his voice against the driving snow. His voice was baritone, and easily penetrated the driving wind:

"In fourteen hundred ninety-two 
This gob from old I-taly 
Was wan'dring through the streets of Spain 
A-selling hot tamal-e . . . "

    Everybody knew the words, and began to sing along with the refrain:

"He knew the world was round-o 
His beard hung to the ground-o, 
That navigating, copulating, 
Son-of-a-bitch Colombo . . . "

    Justin was quiet, but Jessica caught his eye. They shared a smile, and at her urging, he joined in.

"He met the Queen of Spain and said: 
Just give me ships and cargo 
And hang me up until I'm dead 
If I don't bring back Chicago,' 
He knew the world was round-o . . . "

    Katya came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist. He leaned back and looked up at the stars, at the constellations.
    "Still pretty much the same as they were for my great-grandmother," Katya murmured.
    "Yep. Ten light-years doesn't go as far as it used to."

"For forty days and forty nights 
They sailed the broad Atlantic 
Colombo and his lousy crew 
For want of a screw were frantic . . . "

    Katya was working her hands under his clothes, giggling breathily. It was getting harder to concentrate on the song.
    Why qualify that, Justin thought in a happy daze. Truth was, it was just plain getting harder.

"They spied a whore upon the shore 
And off went coats and collars 
In fifteen minutes by the clock 
She made ten million dollars . . ."

    By the end of the song (in which Christopher Columbus returned to the Old World with an impressive assortment of New World microorganisms), Justin and Katya had retired to their sleeping bag. He protested that he was actually much too sleepy to be of any service to her. Her clever sculptor's hands soon made a liar of him. Within a few minutes, he found himself rolling on a warm and familiar tide, one that swept him slowly to the peak, and then dropped him swiftly, but gently, into the fires below.
    And finally he lay at the edge of sleep, enfolded in Katya's arms. He murmured, "Thank you, ma'am," into the hollow of her throat.
    "You're welcome, sir," she chuckled dreamily, and somehow managed to effect a curtsy right there in the sleeping bag.
    She said something after that, something about wondering if there wasn't a river the two of them could find, here, on the mainland. He gave her some kind of answer . . . river equals grendels, you little idiot . . . And the next thing he knew he was dreaming of childhood, of games with Jessica and Aaron and Chaka.
    Games that Aaron always seemed to win.