Beowulf's Children
Chapter 31

FIRECRACKERS

Nature is but a name for an effect 
Whose cause is God.
-WILLIAM COWPER, The Task

    Cadmann woke before dawn. The rooms in the Visitors' Quarters were plain and bare, cots, sleeping bags and nightstand, bath facilities down the hall. When he came back from the toilet he wasn't sleepy. His backpack stood against one wall and for a moment he thought of getting out his mini-stove to make coffee, but decided against it. The stove's roar would wake Sylvia.
    He dressed quietly and went to the mess hall to find coffee. The main room had an eastern view and he left the lights low, and scanned the horizon for the first sign of sunrise.
    "Hello."
    Cadmann turned to greet Big Chaka. "You have trouble sleeping too?" 
    "No, but I went to bed early," Chaka said. 
    "We all did. I've found coffee makings. Want some?" 
    "Please." 
    "Like old times. We don't go camping much now." 
    "Not since the children grew up," Chaka agreed.
    An indifferent breeze blew down from the mountains behind them. Not warming, not cooling, just enough to ruffle the grass of the main compound, a slight ruffling of the grass in the glare of the safety floodlamps. There was a hint of light in the eastern sky. Cadmann and Chaka sat by the big window and waited for Tau Ceti to rise. There had been many times like this over the years, times to sit and think, to watch, to ruminate. Finally the first hint of light was golden blush above the mountains. Big Chaka sighed with pleasure.
    "So," Cadmann said finally. "What do you think?" 
    "The children have done well," he said. "They have built a real community here." 
    "Yes. I'm impressed."
    "And none too soon, I think. Avalon hasn't even begun to share her secrets," Chaka's voice was utterly content. 
    "This is what you came for, isn't it?"
    "If you're an exobiologist, you go where the exobiology is," he said reasonably. "You know, we're probably the most interesting life-form on this planet." 
    "How so?"
    "We should really study ourselves. Every single one of us came here because we had nothing--or not enough to hold us on Earth. I find that fairly telling, don't you?" 
    "You lost your family, didn't you?" Cadmann asked quietly.
    "Yes." Chaka's toe drew a lazy circle on the wooden floor beneath him. "It was my fault. Food poisoning, in the middle Amazon. My family and I were there for the year conducting piranha research. There was a village celebration. They used some canned food they got from a trader." 
    His face tightened, but his voice was still steady. "Half the village died before we could get medical help. My wife and my daughter were among them." 
    "A good reason to get away."
    Chaka took another deep sip. "I think that we had all just about used Earth up. I think that we all told ourselves different stories about it, but there were reasons. You were put out to pasture. Carlos is the remittance man of all time." 
    Cadmann grinned. "Isn't that the truth?" He was quiet for a moment. "How did you come to adopt Little Chaka?" 
    "You didn't know?"
    "I never asked. One day we just noticed that he wasn't rotating out of your house."
    "An accident, really." Chaka said. "We just gravitated toward each other. You know . . . it's odd, but Little Chaka might have been better suited to ectogynic birth than any of the other children." 
    "How so?"
    "Well, he was New Guinea stock. I know that . . . I peeked. But he's huge at least partially because his parents received such fine nutrition. His father had a literary scholarship to Harvard. One of the cultural outreach programs. His mother was from Papua--a first-generation immigrant, and a national-caliber runner. Sprinted her way to a degree in poli sci. Both descended from people used to group parenting . . . as opposed to the nuclear family. Do you see where I'm heading?" 
    "I think so . . ." Cadmann mused.
    "Most of the Bottle Babies are of northern European stock. A thousand generations of nuclear family. Which they were denied here on Avalon. And Little Chaka, who has the best resistance to that particular loneliness, had in some ways the most support."
    "So you're saying he's not like the rest of them?"
    "It's possible. He seems to have come out pretty well, don't you think?"
    Cadmann thought of a question he had never asked. "What was your name before you changed it?" 
    "Denzel Washington." They both exploded with laughter. When they died down again, the first morning shadows streaked the ground outside. "When I was in college, it was quite fashionable to take African names. Who the hell knows about my real ancestry? It's all too mixed up. So I just latched on to a Zulu name, and ran with it. And I was young enough to choose the name of a warrior king." 
    Cadmann laughed with deep satisfaction. "A New Guinea Islander and a Chicago exobiologist both named after a Zulu war chief. That's rich."
    The mess hall door opened, and Aaron and Little Chaka came in. Aaron paused in the doorway. The sky outside was just light enough to provide a background, and Aaron seemed huge, intimidatingly large. That was certainly an illusion, but . . .
    Cadmann levered himself to his feet, consciously standing erect. Aaron was no taller than he, but was . . . larger. More full of life. Cadmann felt old. A baton was changing hands here, and it was impossible to mistake it, or mistake the implication.
    Jessica came in behind Aaron. "Hi, Dad." 
    "Thanks for bringing us coffee," Aaron said. "Any left in the pot?"
    "Sure," Cadmann said. "What's the schedule for the day?"
    "We thought we'd show you around," Aaron said. "There's a grendel lake down at the river forks thirty klicks south of here. It looks like the grendels cooperate in maintaining dams. Like Earth beavers."
    "I would certainly like to see that," Big Chaka said. "I want to give my report on the snow grendels--" 
    "Yeah, what did you find?" Aaron asked. "We paid high for that head."
    "I believe my findings are significant," Big Chaka said. "Possibly even worth that price. But I would like to observe the beaver dam before I draw my final conclusions. Has anyone taken water samples from that 'beaver's lake?" 
    "No, that would be dangerous," Little Chaka said. "Is it important?" 
    "It may be."
    "Well, we can try," Little Chaka said. "But first you should see them. They'll be most active just about lunchtime. We'll go look, and you can give your lecture at dinner time." 
    "Good."
    Cadmann said, "Sylvia complained about lack of exercise last night. She may not want to spend the day in a skeeter looking at grendels."
    "That's all right," Aaron said. "There's lots around here to look at. But that dam is in grendel country, rules say to take two skeeters. Jess, how about you and Justin go as backup for the Chakas. Cadmann, if Sylvia doesn't want to go to the grendel dam, we can hike up to the lake this afternoon." 
    "Lake?" Cadmann asked. "How far is this lake?" 
    "About ten kilometers," Aaron said. "Don't worry, it's not a grendel lake."
    "We thought that about half the lakes on Camelot Island," Big Chaka said. "But there was always a grendel. Always."
    "Not here, though," Little Chaka said. "Guaranteed. No grendel, no samlon, and plenty of other wildlife around the lake. Snouters. And some spider devils." He grinned. "We caught you some alive, but you killed them." 
    "They certainly died," Big Chaka said. "Something missing in the artificial ecology we set up for them. Possibly we didn't give them enough meat, or the wrong kind. We'll have to set up cameras to observe them in the wild." 
    "Sure," Little Chaka said. "One of these days." 
    "You don't sound very interested."
    Little Chaka shrugged. "Dad, there's so much to learn here, and those are just bigger editions of the clothesline Joeys we have back at Eden Oasis. We've watched those for years."
    Jessica came over. "The ones at Eden are interesting, though. Their mating rituals are a little odd--I wonder if these do the same things?"
    "Carnivorous Joeys?" Cadmann asked. "I haven't been following this."
    "Well, they're related to Joeys," Big Chaka said. "Some structural differences, but yes, they're Joeys." 
    Jessica nodded. "The ones at Eden use those webs to catch the local equivalent of bees and insects. And birdles. I've seen them catch birdles."
    "But these are larger and go after bigger prey," Aaron said. "Their bite is poisonous."
    "Not quite," Big Chaka said. "That turned out to be a symbiotic bacterium that lives in their mouths." 
    "I wonder if they're related to the bear?" Little Chaka said.
    "Bears? Son, you haven't told me about bears." 
    "We've never seen one, Dad. Not up close. Cassandra caught a film of a herd of chamels kicking a critter that was maybe a meter and half long, but it was in the forest and we didn't see the end of the fight. We think they killed it." 
    "It was about the size of an Earth black bear, so we called it a bear," Jessica said. "But they must be rare. We've never found one."
    "They can't be all that rare," Aaron said. "They influenced the behavior patterns of the chamels. But we sure can't find one anywhere."
    "Little herbivorous Joeys," Big Chaka mused. "On Camelot and on the mainland. Then at Eden there are larger clothesline Joeys that string out sticky ropes and catch bees and birdles to eat. Here there are even larger spider devil Joeys that can eat a small snouter. And now there's a bear? Is it related to the Joeys too?"
    Little Chaka shrugged. "No data. Look, we've got a couple of hours before we go look at the beavers. Let us show you around here after breakfast."

    Old Grendel was as close as she could come to happiness. Contentment, perhaps. She had found the water she sought, a pool fed by water that flowed down from the mountains. Cold water. Water that came from the ground. She dove in, and swam against the water, down into a passageway just wide enough for her thickness.
    As she wound through subterranean passages, through places she hadn't been since she was a swimmer, she had to conserve her energy. There was no light here, and little heat.
    There was danger above, and the danger grew stronger daily. She could smell the changes, and if she didn't respond to them, she was lost. She had lived long enough to have a vague abstract sense of her own mortality. She did not want to die. In the back of her mind, she perceived how this might be prevented.
    If only she could make contact.
    She swam until there was no air left in her lungs. In agony, she continued. The pain in her lungs eased, became something else, a familiar sensation usually perceived as rage and terror.

    There was another use for speed, one that the weirds had not dreamed of. It was an oxygenator, and her body could use speed where there was no air. It enabled her to stay underwater longer than the weirds would believe possible.
    She glided. There was no light, but she could smell the currents, feel the water flow from above her, and move through the caverns toward her destination. There were times when rock squeezed her hard, but Old Grendel was a lean one, and she could contract her body into a compact missile.
    Fire burned within her, a slow blaze of complete exhaustion. She had been underwater for almost twenty minutes now, crawling and swimming continuously, and moving steadily up and up. Moving. She knew that she might be crawling to her death, but she was driven to know more. The risks she took now might change everything. The weirds were intruders in a situation unchanged since the beginning of time. She had to know more about them. She had once thought of them as prey. They might still be that, but they were something more as well.

    Her fear was fading now . . . and when her fear was quite gone, she would be dead. She understood that she was nearing the end of all limits, that only few seconds remained . . . and then . . . 
    Light above her. She moved more quickly now, holding on to the last fading traces of her fear. She plunged up into the light, up into the wavery oval, through the water, out into the air, great lungs like bellows, gulping and expanding. Life was hers once again, and she might yet cheat the great mother, death.
    Time raved at her back, but she could do nothing now but breathe. There was no speed left in her. She couldn't fight a snouter, now.

    Not long after dawn, they walked northwest from Shangri-La.
    A pufftree shook violently as they approached the strip of forest. Justin looked for what had done that, but there was nothing to be seen.
    Shangri-La was built on a flat area. To the east the land fell away to the river and grendel country. North and west were mountains. A thin strip of forest ran along the base of the mountains. The trees grew like green puffballs of varying size, shells of branches and orange-veined leaves, hollow inside. They'd spaced themselves, leaving room for man-sized creatures to squeeze between.
    "Every pufftree is a little ecology," Little Chaka said. "Each one a little different. It's better to have armor, but if you probe with a stick first you can avoid getting bitten. There's a vicious little Joey that likes to lurk in here, and where the Joeys didn't get to--Here, Dad--" He bent over one of the smaller trees and pulled the branches apart with his hands. Holding the hole open with his elbows, he poked his stick and flash inside, blocking the opening with his body.
    "Nothing," he said.
    Katya had a bigger tree open. She was ready to dodge away, but--"Nothing big. I can smell something ranker than Joeys. We scared them away."
    Their nice little walk had turned into a mob scene. Aaron, Carlos, Big Chaka, Little Chaka, Jessica, Sylvia, Katya . . . Justin met his stepfather's grimace with a helpless grin. Any living thing would flee the pounding of feet.
    Little Chaka was investigating another pufftree. He said, "I was going to say, don't squeeze between two trees unless you've looked inside. We'd better do that anyway. It's a symbiosis. The way the trees space themselves, they can force big animals into range of the things that live inside. I've found a carnivore Joey and two kinds of nesting birdles, both vicious--Hey!" His stick poked and probed as if he were fencing, there in the dark inside the puffball. He retreated, and a big flying-saucer crab buzzed out after him; and another; three, four. Chaka was tapping them lightly, knocking each off balance as it came near, and the birdles were furious. Suddenly they all veered off and away, downhill.
    Big Chaka was sitting against a puffball, laughing. It was clear he didn't have the strength for anything else. Sylvia and Katya were snerkling behind their hands, and Cadmann was suddenly into a rolling belly laugh, and what the hell. The others sat down to take a break.

    Uphill from the fringe of pufftree forest was rock and low scrubby bush like things with thorns. This was serious climbing. Cadmann would have been slowing the rest if Big Chaka hadn't slowed them further. But Big Chaka was seeing things: wildflowers, an abandoned birdie nest, old and fading tracks of something bear-sized.
    They'd gone less than two kilometers in the hour since they left the pufftrees.
    Thirty meters away, Aaron said, "Ouch!" 
    "What's going on?"
    "Something bit me." Aaron hopped to his feet, and slapped his chest. "Three of the darned things," he said. "Not a sting, a bite." Something that looked like a tiny crab or a big flea lay crushed on the ground. A second crawled away slowly.
    Carlos picked the crushed life form up on the end of a foot-long twig. Enough of its insides bulged out that it adhered to the twig easily. It was thumb sized, with a sharp-looking pair of mandibles. Suddenly, its shell unfolded, and crumpled wings began to blur the air.
    "Whoa!" Carlos said. The little wings beat so violently that the whole twig shook. The twig jerked and trembled, and then was quiet.
    Cadmann peered at the thing more carefully. "Damn," he said, "but that was fast."
    "Energetic, too," Dr. Mubutu said. "It looks a lot like speed, doesn't it?"
    The others gathered around. "Where did you find this?" Cadmann asked. "Where were you sitting?"
    They looked at a patch of ground near Aaron's feet, and found no more of the little creatures.
    From a few feet away Carlos called, "Over here!" 
    He poked under a bush dotted with light purple, somewhat fleshy flowers that reminded him of orchids. Several of the insect-like creatures hovered around the blossoms like hummingbirds.
    "Nectar?" Katya asked. 
    "Nope. Something stinks."
    They brushed blossoms aside, and uncovered the decomposed body of a creature the size of a woodchuck. It seethed with little crabs.
    "Jesus," Cadmann grunted. "Are these the local substitute for flies?"
    "Bite like a bitch," Aaron said.
    Sylvia took out her first-aid kit. "Let me see." 
    "It's just--" 
    "Let me see," she said.
    "Yes, ma'am." Aaron unfastened his shirt.
    Sylvia swabbed the wounds clean, then poured on peroxide. It foamed as if it would eat him alive. "There. It looks clean enough but--Dr. Mubutu, may I borrow your portable unit?"
    Little Chaka was carrying for both Chakas. He shrugged off his backpack and unzipped it, pulling out a metallic boxy contraption as big as both his hands: a portable analyzer. Sylvia took the twig from Cadmann, teased the dead bug off the end, and dropped it into the box. She touched an oblong button on the side, and it began to hum. In a moment the bug would be flash burned, and the results relayed to the main camp and uplinked to Cassandra. With luck she would then report that there were no toxic substances--
    Blam.
    The miniature unit jarred in her hand. Seams popped.

    They all jumped. Then Big Chaka quickly leaned forward and sniffed. Black smoke rose from the ruined analyzer.
    "Dear God," Sylvia said shakily. "What was that all about?"
    The device's shattered components barely clung together. Carlos said, "Pranksters?" 
    For a moment, the glade crackled with tension.
    "Pranksters?" Sylvia demanded, still shaken. "What idiot would sabotage your analyzer?"
    "Calm," Carlos said. "I'm sorry. I thought it was obvious. I see that Dr. Mubutu understands."
    Big Chaka nodded. He turned to Cadmann and said, "Tell me . . . if you put a chunk . . . say a chunk the size of your fingernail . . . of speed into an analyzer, what would it do?" 
    "Bang?"
    "We need to find another of these things. Don't disturb those on the corpses. We may not want to irritate them."

    They had the crushed bug on the end of a stick. Justin and Katya had built a small, busy fire of sticks and bits of moss. Chaka Mubutu held the bug out over the fire. Its legs curled, its shell peeled up and--
    Blam.
    The sharp sound was as loud as a firecracker, and about as powerful. The tip of the stick flew into bits, and they jumped back a foot or two.
    "Freeze me blind," Cadmann said.
    Dr. Mubutu spoke gravely. "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I think that we can state, officially and for the record, that we have discovered a second life-form on this planet that uses speed." 
    "What exactly does that mean?" Sylvia asked. 
    "I want to think on it before I say." Big Chaka looked thoughtful. "We have a lot to talk about tonight when I give my report," he said. "But now I want to see the beavers." 
    Carlos looked thoughtfully eastward. "I think I will follow those bees," he said. "Katya can show me the beavers another time."