Beowulf's Children

by Larry Niven

“Safety—”

  Justin grinned. “We can work that out, Dad. We can work it all out. We just want to know that, if it comes to a fight, you’ll be on our side.”

  Cadmann hesitated.

  “Or at least not against us,” Jessica added swiftly.

  Cadmann considered them both. The fear was in him, dammit, not in them. Fear would be a horrible legacy to bestow upon his children. And—it was their world, more and more it was their world. They hadn’t asked to be born here.

  Cadmann often wondered what the children—the Star Born—thought about that. Did they resent being born here, denied the heritage of Earth? Earth, the solar system, crowded, teeming with humanity, and with the crowding came rules, rules, rules—He had come here to escape the rules. And now they had rules because they couldn’t trust their own damaged brains.

  And it’s their world, not ours.

  “Open mind,” he said. “I’m already bound, right, Justin?”

  ♦ 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 modern 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 Ste
vens, 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 backed 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 funnel, light flared. A conspicuous shockwave, 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.”