Beowulf's Children (50 page)

"For we are at once the most adventurous and the most thoughtful human beings who have ever lived. But there is a price for the wealth, the opportunity, the beauty which fills our lives. Stu paid that price. More of us will pay it. We may pray to be spared his bitter hour, but remember his sacrifice and hope that if your moment of duty comes, you may discharge it as nobly.

"It is because of this nobility that I do not mourn. For I know that we have been born into a world of manifold chances, and that he is to be accounted happy to whom either the best life, or the best death falls. The two are joined inexorably as one.

"There is only a plaque to celebrate Stu here. His body belongs to the soil, to the cycle of life. This whole planet is the sepulcher of a brave man, and Stu's story is not merely graven on this plaque, but lives on in our hearts as we think of him, and strive to follow his example. As we try to lead a life, or die a death, one half so noble as his."

Aaron closed his eyes, and placed both hands, folded together, above his heart. "Good-bye, Stu," he said quietly.

FAMILY TIES

Sun-girt city, thou hast been

Ocean's child, and then his queen;

Now is come a darker day,

And thou soon must be his prey.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY, Lines Written Amongst the Euganean Hills

There were those who felt that the intent of Shangri-La was as stated in their formal manifesto: to explore and conquer the mainland. To others, the major intent was to create a world separate from their parents. To a few, the major intent was to party.

By agreement, anyone who didn't do his share, or compromised camp security, could be sent back to Camelot. Surf's Up was a more forgiving environment. There had been two such expulsions, both times at Aaron's insistence. There were no slackers at Shangri-La.

But children want the respect of their parents.

Despite everything that had been said and done, and all of the accusations and protestations of independence, it was noticeable that the streets were a little cleaner, that things moved with a little more sparkle and polish when the dirigible was due to come over from the island.

Much of the work stopped at least an hour before Robor's imposing shadow fell across the land. The landing pad, surrounded by electrified fence and another trench, was cleared. The landing crews stood by. Everything and everyone was in place.

Aaron, Justin, Jessica, Chaka—the entire Board of the Star Born were there to meet Robor. Today there were special visitors inside.

The skeeters purred gently as they urged it toward its destination. Sudden music blared out: the Shangri-La Symphony Orchestra was now the town band, as Cassandra played a match composed by Derik and Gloria with theme suggestions from Jessica. The tune went from oompah to swing with odd transformations as the dirigible glided into the restraining web. The ground-crew volunteers hauled the mooring lines taut and cleated them down.

"Clear and secure!" Heather McKennie called. The pilot acknowledged, and let down the landing ramp.

Cadmann Weyland was the first out. He waved to Justin and Jessica as he strode down the gangplank. Sylvia followed, then the stooped figure of Big Chaka.

Cadmann and Jessica regarded each other. Justin watched carefully. This was, the first time they had seen each other in eight weeks. The longest they had ever been separated. Their relationship had suffered a terrible blow: who knew what might happen?

Sylvia went to Justin, and embraced him. He wanted to lose himself in his mother's arms. He'd forgotten how much he missed her, how very good it felt to allow himself to be enfolded. She looked a little tired, a little more worn, but still wonderful.

But he kept a bit of peripheral vision on Jessica and her father, and he wasn't disappointed.

Jessica took the step forward, and held out her hand. Cadmann took it.

He held it, and they looked at each other.

Justin could see Aaron's face over Sylvia's shoulder. As Chaka and Justin and Jessica embraced their parents, Aaron Tragon beamed like a proud schoolmaster... well, not quite.

"How is Mother?" Jessica asked finally.

"She's fine. Your brother Mickey is watching her. She wanted me to come over to check on you."

"I can believe that." Her eyes shone.

There was still so much in his face. She had looked up and into those eyes so many times, over so many years, and she had watched it slowly age like good leather. He was still the man that she knew, and she couldn't quite bring herself to say the things that she needed to say.

"Come on," she said. She took his hand, and led him away from the others. Aaron tried to stay in step with them at first, but she locked eyes with him. This is about me and my father. There really wasn't a place for him here. He nodded, and turned to something else.

Big Chaka embraced his son. "I saw the grendel brain scans," he said. "A month ago Tonya got bitten by a leech-like parasite, didn't she? While swimming upriver... ?"

Jessica led Cadmann though the streets. They rang with the smell of iron and singed plastic. There were a thousand different projects under way at the same moment. Everywhere, Star Born labored efficiently at a hundred vital tasks.

Little Carey Lou Davidson ran past lugging a bucket of plastic nails.

He called "Hi, Cadmann!" and disappeared into a half-erected wood frame.

Cadmann waved back. "You've done well," he said.

"You must have been able to see most of this through Cassandra."

"Yes. That was nice, the virtual tour through the streets. But it's never quite real for me until I can feel the wind on my skin, and smell the trees."

They walked all the way through the town, back to the stone stairs cut into the mountainside. She took the stairs two at a time until they were above the rooftops, until they could see everything in the colony at one sweeping glance.

She sat him down, and took his arm, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"I wanted you to see this," she said. "I wanted you to really know that it wasn't just a pipe dream."

"I knew that it wasn't going to be that..." he said, and his voice trailed off. He was looking out over the mainland shantytown. From here, the individual human voices were as soft as wind chimes, and the sounds of industry dwindled to a burr. There was something of newness in the air, and it was easy to imagine that it was the beginning of a new world. Of course, in some ways it was. He could see more than the camp from here, too. From this altitude, he was looking out over a river plain, seeing the stretch of mountains gently wreathed in fog. There was a mystic quality to the scene. The land was waiting. The land was alive. Beyond the mists lay adventure, and romance.

The clouds on the horizon were a light haze shading slowly from blue to white, to blue again in the sky above. Tau Ceti burned a yellow-orange hole through the haze.

Cadmann inhaled deeply. Jessica watched as something within him tensed and then relaxed, but she didn't interrupt him.

What are you thinking, Father? She reached out to touch his arm, and felt him take her hand. There was a rough quality to his skin, a masculine smell to him, which was of infinite comfort. His face, so weathered by the elements here, so grooved by care and loss, seemed more angular to her. He didn't seem old to her now, as he often did. He seemed... historical. She almost laughed.

The silence stretched on, long and unnatural. Then Colonel Cadmann Weyland said to her, at last, "You may have done the right thing, but that can't make up for how it was done. Nothing can."

"Toshiro?"

"More than that."

"What could be—more than that?"

"We trusted you, then. When we found we couldn't, everything changed. Toshiro died because we no longer knew what we could expect from you. From any of you. From him."

"But he wouldn't—oh." She leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I'd have said that about you," the colonel said. "And did. Toshiro wouldn't kill Carlos. Jessica wouldn't—Jessica, I can stand being made to look a fool. Anyone who has to make decisions knows that will happen some day. But—you came into our home and took advantage of your status there. That can't happen again."

Her throat tightened.

"But there's another thing that you need to hear," he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle. "I'm still your father, and I love you."

"Really?" she hated the sound of her own voice, the little-girl quality, the needing-Daddy's-approval quality. There was something there that she hadn't heard in her own voice for years, and she wasn't certain if she hadn't missed it.

"Really," he said. "I'll visit you here on the mainland. Both of your mothers will come over. But you're no longer welcome at the Bluff. Not now. Perhaps later, after we see what you do with your responsibilities here. Love you get just because you're my daughter. Trust has to be earned."

She reached up and kissed his cheek. Started to speak, and he said, "Shhh."

She nodded, and looked.

"Is everything all right here?" he asked "Is there anything wrong?"

"What you see is what you get around here, Dad," she said.

He nodded again, and she wondered what it was that he had almost said, almost commented upon.

"Some of the First will never accept you," he said. "Will never be able to accept that you have a right to live the lives you want. To accept you as equal partners in this entire venture."

"What are they saying?" she asked.

"They suggest that you need to create your own society because you can't get along. That you have an adolescent need to break free, regardless of consequences. It's not just the First who say it, you know. There are plenty at Surf's Up—what's left of Surf's Up—who' II say it too."

A pterodon flew past, close enough that a well-thrown rock would have clipped a wing. Cadmann watched it for a long time.

"The nest," Jessica said.

He nodded.

"But that was long ago."

A smile.

"Dad, I'd say the same thing old Hendrick did. I'd tell a child,

'Don't touch the eggs. We don't know what the pterodons will do, but you won't like it.' "

He nodded again and looked away from the pterodon to stare down across the dry rock areas to where the river lay beyond grendel range. It wound off out of sight, an old river running through a long-silted valley, a snakelike, misty ribbon.

"The wells are over there," Jessica said. "No connection with running water."

He nodded. "You've chosen a good site. I'd say Shangri-La is safe.

Unless—"

"Yes?"

He shook his head. "In the military we called it ‘taking counsel from your fears.' You can get so concerned about what might happen that you can't do anything."

"What's bothering you?"

"Suppose a grendel could control itself. Not go on speed until it got up here. I think one could make it."

"They don't, though," Jessica said. "They didn't back at the Grendel Scout camp, and that was a much better place for one to do that."

"I expect you're right."

"But we thought of that too," she said. "We have motion and IR detectors out there." She took a deep breath. "You said—we did it the wrong way, but it was the right thing. Did you mean that?"

He laughed. "I think that it's too damned easy to forget why we came. Lots of reasons, but all of us had a dream. We believed we could make a future."

"Dad—"

"Yeah, I know. You do too. And the ones we left behind thought we were crazy, just like some think that about you. Jess, what's done is done. You're here, you've got a dream. You have to follow it, just as we did."

"I don't think I ever heard you talk this way before."

"Sure you did, you just weren't ready to listen yet." He looked out at the distant, mist-shrouded peaks, and stretched elaborately.

"Want to climb them?"

"Reading my mind without permission again? We left a lot behind, you know. Not like you, here. We really left. We'd never go home, and there wasn't much chance anyone we'd ever known would join us."

"And no one has—"

"And no one has," Cadmann said. "And we wish we knew why, but we don't. Jess, some of the good-byes we had to say were pretty bitter, you know. But they were good-byes. Once Geographic boosted out, we were all there was and all there would be. We had to trust each other. Really trust, with our lives, later with our families. That trust was broken, once—"

"I know. Zack thought you might have killed your friend—"

"Not just Zack. Everyone." He paused to stare into the distance, and she knew that he was once again strapped to a table, drugged and helpless as the grendel toyed with him. It had happened many times before, but now Jessica felt as if he was someone she didn't know at all. He was angry, hurt, disappointed... and yet somehow, under and aside of all of that, there was still profound hope, and a level of trust that she wasn't certain she deserved. It hurt to look at him, and she opted to change the subject. "Are you ever sorry that you came?"

He shook his head slowly. "Not me. There weren't any wars. I have no political savvy. I wasn't going anywhere in the UN military bureaucracy."

"And what about your marriage?" she asked carefully.

Her father looked at her, smiled sadly, and lowered his eyes. "Sienna made her choice," he said. "I was the first to cheat. I was married to my job. It took me everywhere. I was never faithful to her. She knew it. I knew it. I thought that somehow... somehow we'd survive."

"Did you love her?"

"Very much."

"As much as you love Mom?"

For a moment she wasn't certain that he would answer; then he said, "Yes."