Beowulf's Children
Chapter 39

BEES

Let Justice be done, though the world perish.
-EMPEROR FERDINAND I

    Little Chaka awoke from a dream of drowning, and found himself vomiting water. He felt only confusion, and pain, and the savage certainty that he had gone beyond agony into death, beyond death into hell.
    When the sick ended, he rolled over onto his side, not opening his eyes. He couldn't bring himself to want to look at the surroundings. The ground beneath him was rock, not the mud and silt of a riverbank. Distantly, water trickled into water. More distant still was another sound, a steady, drumming vibration.
    He opened his eyes. There was nothing to see. He wasn't certain his eyes had opened at all.
    But he'd moved, he could move his left leg and left arm. He told himself very firmly not to reach up and touch his head. He got his elbow under him, his knee, then his other knee, which felt limp and dead. He slipped, and almost went over the edge of a rock shelf, into water.
    Water again? Where the hell was he? His left hand touched something cold and scaly. His fingers felt it, and he knew immediately what it was. A dead samlon. He could feel the scales, the fins now fully developed into legs. The teeth. Tiny spikes budding on the tail. Something had bitten it, its flesh torn and . . . 
    Something.
    He stopped, quite still, and listened again. Out in the water. Something was moving. There came a sound. Not water sounds dripping from the rocks. Not the beat of his heart, or the thunder of his breathing
    The grendel. The beast that had brought him here, unharmed. Which had left a dead samlon for him. 
    Food?
    What the hell?
    He was so weak. So weak. Impossibly, the darkness spun. He couldn't think, couldn't move. Lights appeared in the darkness, and then he was gone, wondering only at the very last if he would ever wake up again.

    The sky opened, gushing with rain and lightning as if it had saved it all up since Avalon was new. On Camelot the waves pounded the already drowned Surf's Up, demolished it, drove its pilings into splinters and changed the very shape of the land.
    The storm moved across the continent like a malevolent amoeboid monster. It hit Shangri-La like a bomb. The Second draped tarps across the unfinished buildings that composed half the camp, protecting the naked wood from the savage downpour: Then they took to their shelters, huddled together, and listened to the rain. They thought of the swelling rivers. Grendels would be out tonight, but there would be no scent in rain such as this. And so they were safe.
    But quiet. Their mourning penetrated to the very roots of the colony. They had never known a moment as black as this.
    Aaron sat near the fireplace in the main hall, his long arms wrapped around his knees. He looked out at the rain and said very little, as if words would somehow cheapen his misery. His eyes were red-rimmed.
    The rain had hammered at them for twenty hours already, as savage as a hail of ball bearings.

    They came and they went, but Aaron stayed where he was. Jessica was usually by his side. She needed the touch as much as he did, but it was hours before he could let himself be comforted. When he finally leaned his great head against her chest, and held her, and at last slept, Jessica felt her own grief at last. Bleakly, she wondered how it would feel when its full impact finally struck her. For now there was the rain, and the watch for grendels in the rain. She left Aaron asleep and peered through the window at the mess hall. She knew that Justin was there, and she needed to talk to him more than she could say.
    She jumped as a hand touched her shoulder, but it was only Trish. "Go on," she said quietly. "I'll watch things over here."
    Jessica nodded her thanks, and hugged her friend. Was Trish her friend? God, what a thought. What was everything, what the hell did it all mean? Toshiro dead. Joe and Linda dead. Stu dead. Now Chaka and her father dead. Why? Because Aaron had wanted to . . .
    No. She couldn't allow herself to stumble down that road. Aaron would have saved them, if he could. Aaron was sorriest of all about everything that had happened. Aaron would have died to save Cadmann, or Chaka. Hadn't he said so? Didn't she know it?
    Then why did she want to die?
    She covered her head and went out into the storm.

    Upstream of the base camp, the beaver grendels were in a panic. The river had swelled to twice its ordinary flow, and it hammered at them, drove at their nests and dams with a ferocity they had never experienced . . . but which something deep within them recognized.
    Some knowing beyond their dim consciousness. 
    This is the time . . . this is the time . . .
    So they fought to repair, and failed. And when the dams burst some were swept away and dashed against rocks. Others climbed blindly out of the ponds that had swollen to angry, storm-tossed lakes, seeking refuge from the tree trunks and jagged chunks of detritus that dashed them. Chunks of dams from their cousins farther north, chunks of their own dams. Blindly, they fought, but it was no use. And as the rains intensified, as the storms grew greater through the night and into the next day, the work that they and their ancestors had labored over for decades would be swept away as well.

    Jessica found Justin in the mess hall, looking out of the window. Katya was at his side. Jessica felt a twinge, but there was nothing to be done. She had made her choice, long ago.
    Katya pulled at Justin's arm as Jessica entered. He got up and kissed Katya's hand, crossed to Jessica, and hugged her.
    God, it felt good. That hug was like physical nourishment. She just wanted to stay in his arms, and feel his heart beat against her, and feel that her entire life wasn't falling apart, that the tears streaming down her face would stop one day. That there was enough love in all the world to make everything right.
    "Have you talked to Mary Ann?" he asked.
    She shook her head. "I can't. Not yet. I talked with Mickey--he's the one who broke the news. I just can't talk about it over holo, Justin. I can't."
    He nodded understanding. "I know. It was awful telling Sylvia. Jesus." 
    "How did she take it?"
    "Well. They're busy up at the mine. There's a thousand things to do to get Robor lashed up and into the lee. It's safe--Dad made sure of that. It would be safe even against worse storm than this. But it keeps her busy, and I guess that that is a good idea."
    She nodded, and backed away from him. She smelled coffee. "That smells good," she said. 
    "My manners."
    God, how was he holding up so well? She knew how close he and Cadmann were. In some ways, terrible ways, closer than she had been.
    Her heart broke again. Carlos brought her a cup of coffee, thrust it into her hands. "Your mothers, both of them, are very strong. If they weren't, they couldn't have survived this place. None of us could have. The weak did not make the trip. Those unsure of their strength took refuge in the HI." 
    Jessica stared. "Carlos? What does that mean?" 
    He shrugged. "Let's just say that I think HI was a convenient out for those who couldn't cope. Just work the garden. Raise children." 
    "Make sculptures?" 
    He smiled. "We all have our little refuges." 
    They paused, listening to the rain hammer against the walls, the ceiling. A steady, arrhythmic thrumming. According to Geographic, the first wave of rain would die away by morning. There would be peace, followed by more rain, in waves, for at least a week. And beyond that week, another storm front, and then yet another. They could wait it out. It was what they were here for.
    "When the sky clears," Carlos said, "I'll take a skeeter up in the mountains. To the coordinates Aaron gave us. I will find your father's bones, I think." He sipped at his coffee. There was something in his eyes that she couldn't quite read. "His comm card was still broadcasting. I will find his bones. I believe that I owe your father that much." 
    Then he closed his eyes, and drank, and didn't say another word for the rest of the night.

    The merciless torrent tore the beaver dams into splinters', and the rivers swelled, changed course, flooded across the plains. Flash floods and waterspouts raged, whirled, tore the sky ever more brutally, made it bleed.
    The water roared across the plain, and sank down into the nests, the bee nests that the Star Born had seen, but not understood. There were thousands of them across the southern portion of the continent. Each was home to tens of thousands of bees.
    There was chaos, and they responded by huddling, and then swarming up and out. The water beat them back. They collapsed their tunnel walls to seal them, and then retreated into their deepest tunnels. 
    And waited.
    For months now, they had fed their special variety of speed--enhanced "royal jelly" to selected embryos within the nest. Now it began to pay off, and the first of the new queens were shaking the water from their motor wings.

    Edgar sheltered his head against the rain, and walked out in the ankle--high mud, and sloshed across the encampment. The lights of the distant mess hall were dimmed by the intensity of the rain.
    He caught sight of a small shape huddled in the downpour against the wall of one of the dorms. Without knowing entirely why, he headed in that direction.
    It was Ruth, and when she saw him coming, she ran in the opposite direction, sloshing through the rain. It was probably impossible but he would have sworn he heard a sound through the downpour, a small, hopeless animal cry.
    He caught up with her, happy for his newfound stamina--it was damned difficult to make headway through mud this deep.
    He grabbed a shoulder and spun her around. The rain had streaked her hair across her face. Her eyes were wide and staring. She didn't seem to recognize him. He guided her into one of the storerooms.
    She shivered. Her teeth clattered until he thought that she would crack the enamel.
    "What's the matter with you?" he asked. 
    She looked at him, through him. And was silent.
    She stopped shuddering. Her skin looked very fine to him. Almost porcelain. Almost translucent. She looked to so innocent. So lost.
    "You're going to catch your death," he said.
    "I don't care,'" she said. "I . . . just don't care." She sounded so lost, so helpless.
    He sat her down on a barrel, peeled the cowl back from her head. "What's the matter? Why don't you care?" 
    "I don't know what I'm doing here," she said.
    He started to speak, then realized how hard it was for her to say even that much, and kept silent.
    "I came for Aaron. I thought that maybe there was a way to be . . . with Aaron."
    She lowered her face into her hands. "What am I doing? Why am I here?"
    Aaron didn't want Ruth. Or anyone. All Aaron wanted was this continent.
    "What you did," Edgar said finally, surprised to hear the words escape his lips, "was follow your heart. You had to try."
    She looked up at him, and focused on him, as if she were seeing him for the first time. And then lowered her face into her hands, and began to sob. And finally, after a long time, he pulled a barrel next to her, and put his arm around her. She let him.
    After a while she leaned her head against his shoulder, and she cried, and he listened to rain, for a long, long time.

    Two days later, the rains ceased. The waters began to recede, and the plains began to drain. The earth absorbed the waters, and finally the sun touched the earth again. Dark clouds still fringed the sky.
    The earth trembled. And then began to crumble. And from within the ground crawled first one, then ten, and then a hundred, and then a million bees. 
    Tens of millions. Swarming. Hungry. 
    The Death Wind had come.

    The second day after the rains ceased, Carlos was in Skeeter II, Evan Castaneda in Skeeter IV. They rose up over the mountain ridge, floating like insects on a breeze. Justin crouched next to him.
    "Are you all right, amigo?" he asked. The question was one of those existential absurdities that friends were obliged to ask each other. Justin looked at him bleakly.
    He didn't answer directly. "Look at the grendel dam," he said instead, pointing below them and to the east. "Utterly destroyed. They're pretty harmless most of the time, I guess--but who knows how they behave in a disaster like this?"
    "Mmm." Carlos swung around. There was apart of him that didn't want to complete their stated mission, that would rather do anything in the world than find what they expected to find.
    "How is Jessica?" Carlos asked. His voice had grown quieter. Much quieter. Justin could barely hear it above the hum of the rotors.
    "She's made her choices," Justin said. "She thinks she's more use back at the camp."
    There was something that he hadn't said, of course: Caring for Aaron.
    Something had certainly happened to Aaron up there. There was some core of the man that was different. Exposed. Torn. Damaged. Something. Justin couldn't quite believe Aaron's account of what happened. Something was wrong. Had Aaron panicked and abandoned Cadmann and Chaka? What was Aaron hiding?
    Or perhaps it was just seeing death, so stark and violent. Justin remembered watching Stu die in the snow. The image was locked away from him where the pain couldn't reach. Where he didn't feel it. That way, he didn't have to think about barbecues at Stu's house, or playing five-card stud, or skeeter racing with a friend and brother. It was just too painful to think about those things.
    And maybe that was what was killing Aaron. No one can ever quite live up to his own self-image. Maybe Aaron just got a dose of reality.
    Justin ground his palms against his eyes. Father. Cadmann. God, I'll miss you.
    They were maybe twenty minutes from the coordinates when the nightmare began.
    The wind had shifted. He looked out of the main window, and saw a huge dark cloud billowing across their path.
    "Hey, Justin. Any idea what this is? Where in the world would a dust cloud that size come from, after a rain like this?"
    The question was hardly out of his mouth before the radio clattered in a burst of static. Evan. His voice was taut with fear.
    "It's not a dust cloud. Mayday, Mayday--" 
    Justin saw the edge of the dark cloud touch Skeeter IV. Above the skeeter was a sparkling; the skeeter lurched. The blades were sparkling, little bright flashes in the smoke . . . and in that moment, Justin knew the face of their enemy. He screamed to Carlos, "Get us the hell out of here! It's bees!"
    Carlos's hands were lightning at the controls. The skeeter tilted far over, away from the approaching swarm.
    "Bees in the rotor blades. They're exploding. Vicious little flying cherry bombs--" 
    Death was coming. Death was almost here.

    Jessica and Aaron crossed Shangri-La's main square. The buildings had all stood up under the assault of the elements. When the tarps were dragged down, the new timbers were unwarped and sun-dried. There was repair work to be done, but it would be completed within the week. They walked out to the horse pen, next to the chamel pen on the outskirts of the camp, near the double electrified fences.
    The chamels were muddied and streaked; in fact, they rolled happily in the mud. She let it touch her heart, bleakly. There was death here, but wonders too in a world that could produce creatures as beautiful as these.
    A crowd gathered around them to hear the speech Aaron had promised them. Carey Lou gaped worshipfully. Beside him, little Heather McKennie held his arm. Trish and Edgar were among the throng, but she noticed that they weren't bonded as they had been only a week before. Edgar was holding hands with Ruth. They had spent a lot of time together over the last few days. There was no sexual heat between them, just gentle touches and a lot of quiet conversation.
    Just holding hands. Almost innocently. Here stood a pregnant girl, and this young man, newly awakening to the hungers of the flesh. And the two of them had forged a bond of . . . innocence. There was no other word for it. Aaron had tried to separate him from Trish, and it hadn't worked . . . Trish had performed some kind of miracle on Edgar, saving him after Toshiro's death . . . but then didn't want him for herself. But seemed to have infected him with the Pygmalion bug.
    Jessica was confused. And not a little jealous, and wasn't entirely certain why. She had all the sex she wanted. Why the hell would she covet . . . holding hands with Edgar?
    "We have to rebuild," Aaron said. The sun burned down between the clouds, as if trying to make up for the burst of rain. It was lying to them: Geographic promised another downburst within a day or two. "We have paid too high a price. We must claim this continent for our own." His voice quavered. She had never seen him like this, never seen him quite so honest, so close to the bone. This was a new Aaron. Her father was dead, and into that vacuum had stepped a new leader.
    She scanned the faces of the gathered. Family. Friends. Lovers. Standing in the muddied streets, contemplating the work to be done before the camp could come to life again.
    But in the end, there would be Aaron. Aaron, who had led them back to the mainland. Aaron, who had risked his life in vain, to save the one man he loved more than any other.
    She could see it in their faces. This tragedy would finally knit the entire colony together.
    Dogs barked anxiously at the periphery of the camp. Jessica peered out over the crowd to see . . . 
    The impossible.
    Just beyond the double electrified fence, a torpedo shape crawled through the mud. Slowly. Gradually. Tentatively.
    The entire camp was utterly silent. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aaron's face, and it was ashen. Whatever he had been about to say had simply died on his lips.
    A grendel. A huge grendel. It approached slowly. And it was . . . dragging something.
    Unmistakably, its barbed tail was hooked through the pant leg of a . . . a man. A black man. Trish's rifle went up to her shoulder, and Big Chaka Mubutu, standing beside her, said, "No."
    "Oh, my God," someone said. "It's little Chaka." 
    Little Chaka???
    "He's alive," Big Chaka said. Jessica felt frozen in place, unable to move. How . . . ?
    She looked back up at Aaron, and his eyes were wide. Too wide, and she felt as if she were falling into them.
    Aaron had seen Little Chaka die! Had seen him torn to pieces by . . . by grendels. Her world spun, and her eyes locked again on the enormous shape that had paused just at the outer ring of buildings, and made a kind of cooing sound.
    Oh, my God. It was trying to speak to them. 
    "The fuck you don't--"
    That was Edgar's voice. A slapping sound. Jessica heard a gunshot, loud enough to stun her hearing, blasting right next to her ear. Mud kicked up a few feet in front of her. 
    The grendel's head cocked. It watched them.
    Edgar's hand was on the barrel of the gun. Aaron tugged at it. He was in such shock that he couldn't harness his strength, couldn't pull it away from Edgar for a critical second.
    "It killed Cadmann!" he huffed. "It killed Cadmann. Let me--"
    Big Chaka spoke quietly. "I thought you said that it was a raft of small ones. It was spawning samlon killed Cadmann. Killed my boy."
    Aaron was silent. Trish looked at Aaron, eyes murderously cold. It was a community of guns, and guns were turning toward Aaron.
    "Jessica," Aaron whispered. "It isn't what it looks like." 
    And in that moment she knew. She couldn't make the part of her that knew talk to the part of her that could act. She couldn't. But she knew for an instant, she felt the shields slide back and looked into the core of herself and knew, and felt herself falling into the abyss, and sealed it back up, teetering. Heard her own voice quavering, heard the lie as she spoke it to herself. "Of course. I don't know what they're--"
    Big Chaka took a step forward. The grendel shook its tail, detaching it from Little Chaka's leg, and then backed up a few feet.
    "My God," someone said. "It's smart."
    "It brought Chaka back." Big Chaka punched a code into his comm card, and the fence power died. He swung the gate open. The crowd moved forward, the grendel retreating as they did. It backed up a dozen feet, and watched them carefully.
    Big Chaka's yelled. "No one touches that animal. NO ONE." It was the first time that she had ever heard him raise his voice. Jessica stood with Aaron. Edgar's hand was on the rifle. Somehow, Trish had moved over behind Aaron. Her hand was on Aaron's other arm. Tight.
    Aaron was frozen. His tongue dipped pinkly out of his month, moistening his lips. His hair hung down to his shoulders stringily. There was no life in his face.
    "No," Trish said quietly, and her eyes met his squarely. "If you raise that rifle, I swear to God I'll kill you. Or Edgar will."
    Aaron looked to Jessica for support. She was numb. This was all happening too damned quickly. Her chest felt like a skeeter had landed on it.
    "My boy . . . ?" Big Chaka wept. "My boy." 
    The small man cuddled his son's body in his arms. They stayed like that for along time. There was a stillness to the world, something that penetrated deeply, and Jessica couldn't bring herself to move
    Under Big Chaka's direction three of the crowd picked Little Chaka up and carried him back into the camp. They swung the gate closed behind them. Outside, the grendel watched them. Big Chaka's eyes were on fire. He walked toward them, one hesitant step at a time. Then she realized that he struggled to keep from running, as if something connected him to Aaron Tragon that wanted to pull him faster and faster, as if he were a man out of control.
    Big Chaka whispered something. When he got closer she could hear what it was. "He was shot," Chaka was saying over and over again. "He was shot."
    "I told . . . I told you," Aaron said, trying to find words, trying to find anything to fill the void of silence that had suddenly opened all around him. "I tried to help. I fired at the grendels . . . " There was spittle on his chin.
    "You had a grendel gun!" Chaka screamed. "My son was shot with a bullet!" 
    "I . . . I . . . " 
    "Do you want to know what my boy said?" 
    Aaron shook his head numbly. A vast buzzing filled Jessica's head.
    "He said: 'Aaron shot us.' That's what he said." 
    Suddenly, without any warning, Trish's belt knife was at Aaron's throat. "You incredible bastard," she hissed.
    The center of Jessica's world was falling away. Aaron was crumbling in front of her. She didn't know what she was doing. Trish pulled the rifle from his hands. Limp hands.
    Trish on one side, Edgar on the other. Aaron too shocked to fight, still staring at the grendel as if looking into the face of Judgment.
    "You will stand trial," Big Chaka said. "And my son will testify against you."
    Aaron struggled to find an answer, but before he could voice it, they were interrupted by a scream:
    "Bees!"