Beowulf's Children
Chapter 5

THE MODERN PROMETHEUS

God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender; 
God bless-no harm in blessing-the Pretender; 
But who Pretender is, or who is King, 
God bless us all-that's quite another thing.
-JOHN BYROM, to an officer in the Army

    The debate was already in full swing as Cadmann entered the town hall. The hall fairly shimmered with the aromas of the communal meal: mutton and turkey, bakery smells, mustard greens, and steamed corn fresh from the fields. It was a laughing, murmuring, jostling family chaos. Three hundred, nearly every Earth Born, most of the Star Born, all of the Grendel Scouts, many children. There were tables and seats for more than seven hundred, and that was a reminder of what population they had expected to have before the grendels nearly destroyed them.
    The tables were tiered in amphitheater rows beneath the corrugated roof, grouped around a central stage. And on that stage a tall, stocky, golden young man stood at the podium, commanding their attention by his words and stance and very being. His voice was a master orator's. Every word from the thin, sensuous mouth cut as precisely as a razor. He was Cadmann's height, and beautifully muscled. A shock of flaxen hair fell to his shoulders. His eyes were a startling blue-green, electric in their intensity. Tau Ceti had burnt his eyebrows so blond they were almost white.
    The young man's cheeks were healthfully hollow, his every motion perfectly judged as he emphasized his major points. Almost every sentence was punctuated by a cheer from the Surf's Up contingent, come inland for the weekly debate.
    Aaron Tragon. Star Born indeed.
    Cadmann listened distractedly as he found his way to the table reserved for him by Carlos and Angelica, the thin dark surgeon who was Carlos's most recent companion.
    "-ladies in the audience will agree that the automatic tendency of most males is to assume a power structure which escalates from woman to man to God Almighty. This, at any rate, was the most frequent view of the nineteenth century-"
    Cadmann slipped in next to Carlos and slapped his shoulder. "Hola, Carlos." 
    "Hola." 
    "Hello, Dad."
    Cadmann smiled warmly at his younger son. "Ho. What brings you down from the mines?"
    Mickey shrugged and looked at Mary Ann, but he didn't say anything, which was typical for Mickey. He seldom talked and when he did not many listened to him. Mickey was smart enough, but somehow he hadn't learned to communicate.
    Cadmann stood to hug Mary Ann, and kiss Sylvia briefly. "How's the debate going?" 
    "Stevens is in trouble." 
    "Has Aaron reached the Refutatio yet?"
    "Beyond that. He's in the Digressio, and I suspect that the Peroratio will be an ass-kicker." 
    "I like the subject-"
    Even without electronic enhancement, Aaron Tragon's voice rose up to embrace them. "-Shelley's modem Prometheus intended to steal not the flames of a distant Olympus, but those of Woman. And how natural for men, reading 'Frankenstein', to be deceived by her into believing that it spoke of a man's attempt to steal the divine privilege." 
    Aaron leaned forward over his podium, slamming his palm flat against the wood. "But her mother's blood ran in her! Mary Wollstonecraft, the first feminist, author of 'The Rights of Woman', was smiling on her daughter. And when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote of a man's monstrous hubris, his ego, his attempt to stitch together from chunks of dead and decaying flesh an imitation of life, what she truly illustrated was Man's fear of Woman's creative power. His vulnerability to that fear birthed an attempt to do without her altogether."
    He paused for a dramatic moment. "Did not men's fear of women keep her a second-class citizen? Deprive her of education, of legal recourse, of the vote, of knowledge of the methods of self-defense, that she might remain chattel?" 
    Cadmann clucked to himself, and then looked across the room, seeking Zack's daughter Ruth. It took him a moment, but he picked her out. She was sitting at Rachael's side, leaning forward on her plump forearms, brown hair brushed back from her face, listening as if she were devouring every word. She was rapt, so attentive and worshipful it hurt to watch. If the girl weren't seventeen years old, he would have called it the worst case of puppy love he'd ever seen. As it was, her infatuation was just one of the colony's most notoriously open secrets. 
    In comparison . . .
    He stole a sidewise glance at Mary Ann. She leaned backward in her chair, trying to put distance between herself and Aaron Tragon. Her mouth was drawn into a thin, disapproving line. She was nodding to herself, as if indulging in some kind of internal monologue.
    So Mary Ann had a problem with Aaron. Somebody had to have one. Aside from Mary Ann, everyone just flat seemed to love the boy . . . then again, Joe Sikes wasn't all that fond of Aaron either. But it was a short list.
    Aaron Tragon was exceptional. Good at almost everything he did. For Cadmann's money, that was an overcompensation, a positive side effect of Aaron Tragon's Bottle Baby complex.
    The Bottle Babies were seventeen embryos raised totally in vitro, activated after the Grendel Wars and decanted nine months later. By then it had become clear that the fertility rate among the surviving women was quite adequate to replenish the colony, thank you, and the In Vitro project was suspended. Hundreds of embryos remained aboard Geographic. Aaron Tragon had been one of the first. Derik, the big redhead, and Trish the gorgeous black bodybuilder, and Little Chaka, who might be the strongest man on the planet, were also clustered up there in the first ten. They were Aaron's constant companions, and only Little Chaka seemed more than a follower.
    The three of them seemed to be sharing a joke on the rest of the colony, one which they declined to share.
    They were children of the colony, unrelated to anyone on the expedition, raised by everyone. With the notable exception of Little Chaka, few had bonded to anyone in particular. Mary Ann had always thought it a terrible idea. She thought they should be adopted into families, but she'd only shared her opinions with Cadmann.
    Seems to have worked out all right. They seem like decent kids. Work hard. Come to that, Aaron did live with Joe Sikes for a few years, when he was what, ten or twelve, up until Edgar had the accident . . .
    "-being a man, I stand to gain little by making these claims. Being a man of the twenty-second century, in which we might have hoped that women would be loosed from their biological bondage, perhaps I could have another intent. For is not the drive to 'free' woman from her biological 'enslavement' also an attempt to lessen her importance? To steal her fire? Are we not then a breed of Prometheans? What happens to us, when this difference is reduced to a mere whim, or a matter of legal designation? I cannot say. I merely propose an interpretation of literary pentimento. As for the rest of it, I trust that wiser minds than my own will probe whatever additional truths might be found therein." 
    Aaron Tragon bowed massively to Stevens, his challenger. Stevens was slight, scholarly, managed the mining operation east of the colony where Cadmann's son Mickey spent most of his time. Their positions in the debate had been chosen by lot. From the wildly enthusiastic applause, Cadmann guessed that Stevens had been slaughtered.
    The food service staff came around, took their orders, and brought sustenance. Cadmann relaxed into his meal, enjoying the spirited debate which surrounded him.
    Carlos shook his head. "What do you think, Cadmann?" 
    "Frankenstein as a crypto-feminist tract? Not on purpose. Nobody writes a tract that good . . . that close to immortal. How did Stevens do?"
    "His Exordium was pathetic. The Narratio was barely adequate, and his Refutatio was booed off the stage. Aside from that, just fine."
    Around them, Cadmann noticed that women's voices were climbing a bit higher than the men's. As Tragon left the stage he joined Jessica. They embraced and kissed lustily.
    They make a good pair, Cadmann thought. Aaron Tragon was brawny, handsome, fiercely intelligent, and possessed a magnetic presence. My successor here. Zack's too? End this silly division between administration and security?
    In any tribe, there is an alpha. There had been a time when Cadmann thought Mickey would be his heir. He often wondered if he had pushed his son too hard. Whatever happened, Mickey wasn't interested in leadership.
    Aaron and Linda were paired for a while. A good combination, but then something happened and Linda attached herself to Joe Sikes. An unlikely arrangement, and one that Cadmann didn't quite understand. Joe Sikes had been Mary Ann's lover before the grendel attacks, before Mary Ann had come to the Bluff to reclaim Cadmann from drunken despair. There had been nothing after that-then suddenly Joe and Mary Ann's daughter were paired, not merely paired but monogamously bonded.
    Ruth Moskowitz moved toward Aaron, then back away. She had the faintly shell-shocked grin he'd expected. Good sport. Hey, if he likes Jessica, all right. The fingers of her right hand were twisting painfully tight ringlets in her hair. Probably pulling out a few strands. Rachael put an arm around her, and held her daughter close. And that's another situation I don't understand, but I don't think I have to.
    Surf's Up provided dessert. A deliciously spiced crushed ice, its taste and aroma resurrected long-buried memories of childhood.
    The audience decided, quite vociferously, that Aaron Tragon had triumphed in the week's debate. After a thunderous round of applause, Linda Weyland took the podium. Cadzie was bundled in a sling across her chest, and nursed contentedly as she spoke.
    "Unfortunately," she began, "that concludes the evening's entertainment. What I have to say now is more sobering-and far more educational. Cassandra, bang." 
    A glowing anthill filled the hall; it brightened as the hall lights dimmed.
    Neon vermilion tunnels, dozens of them. Hundreds of bright green dots chewed at the tips, extending the tunnels, then flowed back up to the trunk of the beast. Cadmann remembered an ant farm his brother had built when both were small. These tunnels had more of a fractal look. Despite irregularities in the topography of this mainland mountain range, the automated widgets were following a plan; you saw a symmetry, large patterns repeated in diminishing scale.
    In the tip of a tunnel, light flared. A conspicuous shock wave, confined, flowed upward to a main trunk. Refining machinery flared red, then pulsed red-black, red-black. 
    The crowd's whispered reaction was immediate, and ugly.
    Linda raised her voice above, the sound of that evil wind. "Something exploded. Not high explosive, something more like gunpowder. How it got down there . . . well. All we know is that the refinery has shut down, and we can't correct the damage from here."
    Toshiro raised a hand. "Couldn't this be any sort of normal equipment failure?"
    Linda said, "Toshiro, these bore collectors are just drills and a bucket for the ore. They run on solar cells and fuel cells, the fuel cells are just high-tech batteries, they can't explode, and there aren't any fuel cells where we're having the problem anyway." 
    "Of course you thought about this before. Sorry." 
    "It's okay. But people, it really was an explosion, and it really did come roaring up from the tip of a bore tube. Cassandra, show us the interference waves."
    Which wasn't a lot of help, Cadmann thought. And there was Mary Ann, delighted, proud of their daughter, and knowing damned well he couldn't read the patterns now flowing across the wall either. Mickey probably could, but he wasn't saying anything.
    Cadmann leaned over to Carlos. "Did you know about this? Anything at all?"
    "News to me, amigo. And I don't like the sound of it." Carlos stood and thrust his hand aggressively into the air. "Request to be recognized." 
    "Sure," Linda said.
    Carlos cleared his throat. "There is a word which hasn't been spoken, but which I sense may be on many minds. The word is sabotage, and there are a thousand reasons to believe that no one here would do such a thing. This is no prank. It's the wrong style. It profits no one and it isn't funny. Before we form any opinions, I assume that arrangements are being made for an on-site inspection?" 
    Linda petted the baby, looked out to her husband for a moment, and nodded. "Why would it be sabotage? How could anyone have put an explosive there? A gnat couldn't get into those tunnels. Of course we'll go look at the machinery. We'll look, and we'll find out it was something weird. Avalon Surprise!"
    Tip of a tunnel. No Merry Prankster could have crawled down a tunnel, Cadmann thought. Too narrow, and the central processing plant was a metal plug massing hundreds of tons. The mine was all nanotechnology; it had been growing in place for seventeen years. The tunnels led to it, not past it.
    Cadmann leaned toward his son. "Mickey? You know mines. Any suggestions?"
    Mickey frowned and shook his head. "Avalon Weird," he muttered, but not loud enough for anyone but Cadmann, to hear.
    As good as any other theory, Cadmann thought. You couldn't even . . . hmm. Cause a bore collector to deposit a charge of dynamite or gunpowder? Acquired how? From the fuel cell dump? A bore collector had been at work when the explosion happened.
    It would have been a hell of a difficult prank. Would it be enough for the Merry Pranksters that it was impossible? There didn't seem to be any other motive. The mine was the colony's mineral source. Why choke that off?
    Joe Sikes limped up to the platform. "Linda's right, it's Avalon Weird. Something else about this planet we don't know. Something that happens on the mainland and not here."
    "And it's time to take the Grendel Scout candidates over to the mainland anyway," Linda finished for him. "I just wanted everyone to see how much trouble this was causing . . . "
    She thinks it's sabotage, Cadmann thought. I guess I do too. "Impossible" is a challenge to the Surf's Up crowd.
    "So what should we do?" someone asked. "Can we fix it?"
    "We have to go look," Linda said. "There's no point in fixing it until we know what happened."
    There's that tone again. She really does believe it's the pranksters. They get their joke and the mainland expedition they want all at once. Linda hates this, and she's talked Joe into leaving it lay. Wonder if that's the right approach?
    It was clear enough that Joe would prefer it was the Pranksters. That would give him the moral high ground. Joe seriously wanted to be an alpha male, particularly now that he'd hooked up with a much younger woman.
    Cadmann would have stopped that marriage if he could. He still wondered what they saw in each other. Because Linda looked very like her mother, and Mary Ann had slept with Joe Sikes before Cadmann staked his claim? Be honest. She reclaimed me from an alcoholic fog. It's her claim on me, not the other way around . . . 
    Old news. Cadmann Weyland's effector nerves didn't extend into other human beings, not even into his daughter. It was a thing he had to relearn constantly. 
    Meanwhile: the bomb.
    It was a difficult prank, but possible. Develop your own nano-beasties. Or drill straight down from the surface to where a convenient bore collector would be in a week, or a month, if you could just work out the damned fractal pattern-
    But it didn't feel right, and Cadmann felt the hairs trying to stand up along his neck and arms. An Avalon Surprise, on the mainland, where there are dragons. Alarum: Linda would go to the mainland with his grandson. She never left Cadzie. Mary Ann had raised her children the same way, with lots of affection and bonding.
    Linda and Joe knew those mines better than anyone, and they had no clue, so what was more probable? This didn't feel like the Pranksters. It was destructive and unfunny. And if not them, than an Avalon Surprise: like the grendels. 
    Mary Ann's hand closed over his. "Penny?" 
    "Bad bargain," he said quietly. "Bad memories. I'm going to be helpless again." 
    "You don't like that feeling, do you?"
    "Being tied to a table with a grendel in my lap. Being tied to this island while my grandson is half a world away." 
    "Go with them."
    "I don't think they want Daddy tagging along." And what he didn't say was: I've had enough, Mary Ann. I don't want any more excitement. I've had all I need for one lifetime. Let someone else deal with the damned dragons.
    And Linda was handling herself beautifully. She was in a spot: she had to admit the possibility of sabotage-but could only admit it to herself. She couldn't let that uncertainty infect the Earth Born. On the other hand, she had to let potential perpetrators know she knew, and hope to God they had enough sense to stop. 
    A fine line, indeed.
    There was another general murmur, and both Jessica and Little Chaka raised their hands.
    "Jessie," Linda said. "You wanted to say something?" 
    Jessica pushed Little Chaka ahead of her, and they both strode onto the stage. Linda and Joe Sikes retired hand in hand to their seats. Chaka strode to the podium and blinked at the crowd. "Cassandra, display my Long Mama Demo, please."
    The screen behind him lit to show the eel struggling up the Amazon, flashed ahead to show it in the glacial pool, then cut to the covered tank where it glared up at the camera. "Our visitor. She's not really an eel, but that's the closest thing Earth evolved to this, a big saltwater eel."
    "Sure startled me!" Jessica said. "Came right into the living room at the Hold."
    Someone guffawed and an adult voice shouted. "Good thing for Long Mama Cadmann wasn't home!" 
    Chaka grinned uncertainly and started over. "I looked at everything Cassandra knows about eels back on Earth," he said. "It isn't really an eel, but it's interesting, eels on Earth go long distances to spawn, and that's what Long Mama was doing, trying to find the headwaters of the Amazon, following instinctive patterns that might be ten or ten thousand generations old." 
    "Not ten thousand," someone shouted.
    Chaka frowned in thought, and Jessica came to join him at the podium. "Probably not ten thousand generations," Jessica said. "I agree, it's likely that anything that carried those genes would have been wiped out by grendels. But we don't know!"
    Chaka had found his voice. "A shorter time argues that the grendels came to the island fairly recently," he said.
    "And makes our point!" Jessica said in triumph. "It's inevitable, really inevitable, the natural ecology of Camelot will come back now that the grendels are gone. Sorry, Chaka."
    He nodded absently. "The natural ecology will come back. Shouldn't we know more about it?"
    "Won't be the same." Edgar Sikes's nasal whine came from the audience. "Can't be."
    "I know, Edgar. We've seeded the island with Earth species," Chaka said. "When they mix, it'll get interesting. But we'd like to guess what any Avalon life-form will do to us."
    "Tell us more about the worm," someone called. An adult voice.
    "Carolyn," Sylvia whispered. "She sounds scared." 
    "I don't blame her," Mary Ann said.
    Chaka didn't seem to notice the fear. He spoke eagerly. "We've only had the eel a few days. And she's just one piece of the pattern! We don't know how she interacts with other life, with climate, with grendels for that matter. We don't know what prompted her to swim upstream now, now when so many other Camelot species are changing their habits. We need to know what the mainland ecology is doing. Are things changing there, too?"
    "And what eats grendels?" A child's voice from the back of the room. Several older children shushed him.
    "Big grendels eat grendels. I've been over there," Joe Sikes said with belligerent pride. "That's your ecology, Chaka. Big grendels, little grendels, grendels that live in snow, water grendels, grendels that build dams, grendels that are dams. Grendels eat grendels, and they deserve each other. There aren't any grendels here, and by God we'll keep it that way, so why do we care how our stupid eel interacts with grendels?" 
    "That's not fair," Jessica said.
    Chaka cleared his throat. He sounded more positive now. "We do have to know, Joe. What you don't know can kill you. If you hadn't known grendels need to cool off . . . ?" 
    There were murmurs of approval from the tables where the Surf's Up crowd sat. Linda nodded and pulled Joe Sikes back into his seat; and Joe didn't resist. You wouldn't have dumped burning kerosene into the Amazon Creek, Chaka hadn't needed to say, to sear the grendels raging through humanity's last refuge.
    "We have to know," Chaka repeated, "and it should be clear there's only one way to find out. We need a full expedition to the mainland. A permanent base there. Not just trips to the highlands, mine inspections. We need a full biological team in place to study the mainland, study it now, before the winds carry Earth species from Camelot to the mainland, because once that happens we'll never know!" 
    "Now just a minute!" Zack Moskowitz half rose. "If it comes to that, we don't have to know-" 
    More murmurs. Cadmann frowned in thought. 
    "Wrong way to talk to the youngsters," Carlos said.
    "We do have to know," Chaka said. Jessica nodded vigorous approval as Little Chaka stood to his full height and let his voice rise. "We must study what is there now, we must understand the natural ecosystem, or we will be caught unprepared. For the past twenty years you have ignored this truth, the truth that it is impossible to live on this planet and hide from it at the same time. I say that this is our world, and we don't know enough about it. It's time we learned." 
    There was loud applause from the Star Born, mostly silence from the First Generation.
    "And we'll need all the resources, here and the mainland," Coleen McAndrews said. Her voice was as serious as a fifteen-year-old's can be. "To go back to the stars!" 
    The audience buzzed like an angry hive. There was no organized back-to-the-stars group, and no real leader, but the issue cut across the generations. No leader yet, Cadmann thought. But when that girl grows up and all that enthusiasm matures we'll have another political fight. Lord, lord, why did we think we left all that behind when we came here?
    Zack Moskowitz rose. He took his place at the second podium, across the stage from Chaka. "I think," Zack said, "that an issue as important as this one should be considered as formally as possible. I propose a debate a week from today-" 
    "No!" Jessica stood, flushing.
    "The chair hasn't recognized you, young lady." 
    "The chair didn't recognize you either, Zack!" 
    "You know that I am the chairman-"
    "Of formal discussions, yes. But this isn't a regular meeting, it's an after-dinner discussion. You can't just run roughshod over it like you do over everything else, Zack. This is too important. Are you declaring an emergency meeting?" 
    "No-" 
    "Then wait for Chaka to recognize you."
    Zack looked to Cadmann for support. The king appeals to the warrior, but the warrior was ignoring him. Zack stifled his protest. "Very well. I will turn the floor back to Chaka. Chaka? May I be recognized?"
    Little Chaka's white teeth gleamed. "Jessica first," he said, "and then you." 
    Zack smiled sourly.
    Jessica took the podium. "The time to decide this is now. We're already taking the Grendel Scouts over, and we've got to send a repair crew as well. It's the right time. Make this the beginning of a permanent base." 
    "For what?" Zack said.
    "For what? To learn about our world," Jessica said. "We need toxological tests, soil tests, we need to know about parasites. The highlands would be perfect for an initial base. That's safe, at least."
    She looked as if she had more to say, but had changed her mind about saying it. "Chaka, can we alter this format?" 
    "Into what form?"
    "Informal debate. Allow Zack to take the opposing view, at your podium. We can then field questions and see if we can come to a consensus this evening."
    Chaka yielded the floor, and Zack took his place, giving Jessica a grudging nod. "May I?" he asked. She inclined her head.
    "May I ask what is the great hurry?" Zack began. "You will shortly visit the mine site. Others will carry out the Grendel Scout rituals. When you've returned we can decide what needs to be done next. Perhaps by then we will know what has gone wrong at the mines. It's probably something natural but surprising. In any event nothing need be done in haste."
    "There you go, being reasonable again," someone shouted.
    Zack shrugged. "I try to be."
    "You wanted to kill the eel," Jessica protested. "That wasn't reasonable!"
    Zack nodded. "Yes it was. The eel was unfamiliar, and we have standing rules formulated by our best experts after discussion. The rules aren't perfect, but they're the best judgments we can make." 
    "And that one is wrong," Jessica insisted.
    "Perhaps. This time it appears to have been wrong. But that doesn't mean all the rules, or even that one, are wrong as a general case. We can't foresee everything." 
    "We don't have to foresee everything," Jessica said.
    "You're talking past each other." Aaron Tragon stood. "I beg your pardon for speaking out of turn, but don't you see it? Governor Moskowitz is concerned that when an unexpected danger appears, we won't be able to decide what to do in time, and while it is unlikely that the delay will destroy the colony, it might. Isn't that it, sir?" 
    "Yes, exactly."
    "But here there is no possible danger to the entire colony," Aaron said. "The people who go to the mainland may be in danger if they are careless, but the colony won't be . . . Actually, to be callous for a moment, if there's something so dangerous on the mainland that the only way to find out about it is to have the entire expedition killed, that knowledge alone is worth the price! It will make the colony safer, not less safe. Wouldn't you agree?"
    Aaron waited a moment, and when Zack didn't answer, nodded politely and took his seat. 
    "Arrogant little snot," Mary Ann said.
    "I thought he was quite reasonable," Cadmann said. 
    "You would."
    "Not that there is that much danger," Jessica was saying. "We've been to the mainland dozens of times now. We even take the children to the highlands. And in all that time, the only dangers have been grendels, and we know how to deal with those." 
    "I'm still worried," Zack said. 
    "Name the danger."
    Zack shook his head. "You know I can't. Call it Avalon Surprise. We couldn't have named grendels, but they were real."
    "But you learned how to fight grendels," Jessica said, "and you taught us. By the way, thank you. From all of us Second-"
    There was a murmur of approval. "Well said," Aaron shouted.
    "But Zack, you knew it would be dangerous before you left Earth," Jessica said. "But you came. You couldn't ask if we wanted to come-" 
    "We did think about that, you know," Zack said.
    "Yes, sir, we learned all that in school," Jessica said. "And we're not sorry you brought us. But it's our world too, and we want to know more about it. Don't we?" 
    Another chorus of young voices in enthusiastic approval.
    "Except I want a shopping mall!" someone shouted. Everyone laughed.
    "And we're learning," Jessica went on. "The eel is important because it's a reminder that we won't always have an artificially simple ecology here. We still don't know when grendels came to this island. We don't even know if these were normal grendels! Maybe they were-" 
    "Supergrendels?" Chaka said. He grinned. 
    "Or stunted, stupid weak grendels," Jessica said.
    "My God," Rachael Moscowitz said. "That's a horrible thought!"
    "So we go find out," Jessica said. "And now's as good a time as any. A highland base with expeditions into the lowlands. Now. This year." 
    A swell of applause, and not only from the Second.
    "Count me out." That too came from where the Second were seated, to be answered by catcalls. "Aww, poor baby-"
    "Who staffs that base?" Zack had lost and knew it. "Who plans this expedition?"
    "We can work that out," Jessica said. She looked meaningfully at Cadmann. "We're not fools, Governor. We want your advice."
    "But not our leadership," Zack said quietly. "That's plain enough."
    "We want that too, unless your leadership means doing nothing without your orders." 
    "We just want you to be safe-"
    "If you wanted to keep us safe, you could have stayed on Earth!"
    Mary Ann stood. Cadmann looked at her in surprise. Mary Ann almost never spoke at meetings.
    She didn't wait to be recognized, but no one said anything. Certainly Jessica wasn't going to interrupt her. "Why do you think it was safe on Earth?" Mary Ann demanded. "It wasn't safe. Not even in the best neighborhoods. You must know that. We brought recordings." 
    "Mom-"
    "It wasn't," Mary Ann said. "You think of Earth as some kind of paradise lost? An Eden? It was a horrible place, where all the education in the world wouldn't save you from losing your job, and there was nowhere you could go without graffiti, and smutty drawings, and criminals, and people demanding handouts and accusing you of being a criminal if you didn't give them something. Where . . . Jessica, it's safe here, really safe, but it wasn't safe on Earth. That's why we came here!" 
    There were murmurs of agreement from the First.
    "Well, Mom, you make Earth sound more dangerous than the mainland."
    "It was," Cadmann muttered. "We forgot that."

    "It's still the end of the debate, amigo," Carlos said. "Jessica still wins." 
    "Yeah," Cadmann said. "And we'll have to plan it." 
    "What you mean 'we,' paleface?"
    "We've got some time, though," Cadmann said. "First they go look at the mines, initiate the Grendel Scouts. Time enough for serious planning when they get back." 
    Jessica thanked the audience and made her way back to her father. She quietly touched his shoulder. "Thanks, Dad. Mom."
    Cadmann put his arms around Mary Ann and Sylvia, drawing them in close. Mary Ann chuckled. "If I know your father, you might be taking that thanks back in a few days. He's going to put you through the wringer." 
    "I wouldn't want it any other way."
    "Jessica-can you and Justin come up for dinner?" Mary Ann brushed a strand of blond hair out of her eyes. "It would be nice to have a family dinner. We've been gone, and you'll be going over to the mainland . . ." 
    "Not tonight," Jessica said apologetically. "This is going to be big news at Surf's Up. I think that I need to be out there tonight."
    Sylvia looked up at Cadmann. "How long do you think it will take to set up a lowland expedition?"
    "Skeeter-based? Scouting out a location? A little preliminary work." He closed his eyes, musing. "Built it around the Robor vehicle. A fairly quick in-and-out. I would say no more than twelve hours, preparing for a much more thorough expedition in maybe a . . . month?"
    Jessica nodded happily. "You're reading my mind, Dad."
    "Plans will be on Cass by tomorrow morning. Okay?"
    "Finestkind."
    The meeting was breaking up. Jessica and her brother headed toward each other, hugged fiercely, and collected in a cluster with some of the other Second. They headed out the door together.
    A hand smacked Cadmann's shoulder, and he turned around to face Aaron Tragon.
    As usual, the sheer size of the young man hit Cadmann, hard. Reminded him of a friend . . . long ago. 
    Ernst. First casualty of the Grendels.
    As such he should have felt a touch of nostalgia, of loss. Ernst had died because Cadmann thought he could handle it. Could handle everything.
    And for a moment it felt as if Cadmann were moving in slow motion, Tragon's glittering, wide smile so intense and intimate that it seemed that the other shapes in the room faded to nothing.
    The full force of Tragon's personality was so strong that Cadmann had to consciously remind himself where he was. Not in the past, but here, in the present, as if he had awakened from a micronap.
    "-you for backing us, Cadmann. Jessica said that we could count on you." 
    His smile was dazzling.
    "I imagine that you'll be going over?" 
    "Wouldn't miss Grendel Scout initiation." 
    "Good," Cadmann said, and meant it.
    "Not that Justin can't take care of the kids," Aaron said carefully. "Well, good night, sir. Thanks again." 
    Aaron turned, but before he could walk away Ruth Moscowitz blocked his path. She stared up at him in admiration. Aaron paused and took her hand. "You look lovely tonight, Ruth." 
    She beamed. "I thought you were just brilliant." 
    He touched her right hand to his lips, winked at her, and strode off to rejoin his coterie. Ruth took her right hand in her left as if she wanted to wrap it in tissue paper. 
    "I think I'm going to be sick," Mary Ann said. 
    Sylvia chuckled. "He's a nice young man. I can understand what Jessica sees in him."
    Mary Ann's smile was ghastly. "Let's get home, Cad. I'd like to build a big fire in the bedroom. Get really toasty. Okay?" 
    "Sure."
    Sylvia unwound herself from his arm, and headed off. "I want to check with Linda on her simulations. I'll be up to the Bluff later, all right?"
    "No problem." The crowd was thinning now. Cadmann took Mary Ann's small hand in his, squeezed it gently. "Things are changing fast now. It had to happen." 
    "I . . . don't want to talk about it just now. Cad. Take me home."