♦ ChaptEr 3 ♦
aaron
For a moment, as she was getting into the passenger seat, Cadzie was tempted to make Joanie trade her hard hat for a leather flying helmet, but that would have been childish.
Satisfying, though.
The flying helmets weren’t really all that practical, and much of the time were stashed unworn beneath the seat. Instead, he asked, “Who made the hard hats, anyway?”
“Toad, of course. I think Evie Queen helped.”
“Good workmanship.” He rapped his knuckles against it. “Carlos has a couple, but they’re hard plastic.”
“Sure. That’s the model for these. We thought we needed some, but we don’t have much plastic fabrication, so Toad made them out of bamboozle. Works pretty good.”
“Oh.” Cadzie started the motors, checked the battery power levels. “Charged up pretty well. Good local power. Uh—where’d Uncle Carlos get his?”
She grinned enthusiastically. “High wattage chargers. Power from the Minervas. And he printed his, back before the grendels wrecked the 3D printers.”
“Oh. Yeah. I should have thought of that.” Lots of stuff like that, finely crafted plastic. He sometimes wondered what it must have been like when you could just print yourself a copy of—well, to hear Unka Carlos tell it, damn near anything. One day they’d have that capability again, but just now they couldn’t even make a lot of raw plastics. He’d been told why, but he hadn’t listened very hard. No point in studying problems you couldn’t do anything about. “Stand by. Here we go.”
The two-seated electric blue autogyro flashed over the fifty klicks between the dam and the eastern edge of Zack’s Plain in a little over twenty minutes. Joan and Cadzie could see the skeletal clamshell of the containment cage even from two kilometers out, bars of steel and bamboozle arced over a concrete pond. And within it, human shapes: first one and then another. Five humans. And . . one grendel.
Blue Three settled to the ground.
His stomach clenched as he stepped down. Cadzie had seen pictures of Aaron Tragon in his prime, of course: a blond Tarzan. But the colony’s original rebel was scarred now, blind in his left eye from an Avalon “bee” on speed, the same creatures that had killed Cadzie’s parents. Without the shelter of a blue blanket, Cadzie would have been rendered to bones as well. Most considered Aaron half-crazed. Only another nutcase would consider a long-time obsession anything but madness.
And madness, he supposed, was its own special chamber of hell.
“Bamboozle” (or sometimes “shamboo”) were grasses native to the highlands, flexible when green and hard as iron when dry. The giant cage with shamboo bars surrounded an artificial pond, and there in that place, Aaron and his acolytes were doing something that no one believed could be done: they were taming grendels.
Cadzie had seen vids of lion tamers in circuses on Earth, and been thrilled at the images of mighty predators leaping through fiery hoops and holding their mouths wide to receive a trusting head. But watching Aaron and his acolytes attempting something even vaguely similar with five meters of demireptile was disturbing.
The grendel squatted, warily, a quarter-ton of coiled lethality. It snapped the bison meat out of the air so fast it seemed a magic trick. He noticed that at least one human being locked eyes with the creature at all times. And that the grendel wore a neck collar with a fist-sized metal pod just behind the curve of the skull.
It studied the humans with a predator’s expert evaluation. Were they threat? Lunch? Tribe? Once it turned to snap at its female trainer, a short blond woman named Josie. Then it jerked back. Electric charge from a capacitor pod, he figured. Smart.
Aaron was always a shock to the senses: Scarred and crippled, face splotched with unblocked sun and wind-burned, with pale scars where uglier things had been frozen away. He crouched, eye to eye with the grendel. They stared at each other, for a long long moment . . and then the grendel turned away, thick barbed tail thrashing. With a flourish, Aaron removed himself from the cage, and a sigh of relief was heard by all.
He embraced his daughter Joan warmly. Cadzie noticed that her response was more restrained. Despite his scars and splotches, it was hard to think of Aaron being old enough to be Joan’s father.
“How’s Cerberus?” she asked.
The grendel’s head snapped around when she spoke that name, and it cocked its head, regarding her with what might have been curiosity. Not exactly intelligence, but certainly awareness.
“Recognizing her name. She’s learned some of what Kali knew, but Kali was brighter, I think. She found me. I do miss Old Grendel.” Joanie lifted her cheek to be kissed. Only then did Aaron seem to notice her companion.
“A guest,” Aaron said, and extended his hand.
“Cadzie.”
“I hate that,” he replied, and gave the proffered flat, hard hand a single up-and-down shake.
Aaron smiled lopsidedly, the only smile he had. “You love it. What brings you over here?”
“Maybe I just want to watch the show,” Cadzie said, hoping that the nervousness he felt around grendels didn’t show in his face. “Why the hell are you taking risks like this?”
“Do you like samlon?” Aaron asked.
“What? Well, yes, of course,” Cadzie said.
“And what are samlon?”
“The juvenile form of grendels—oh.”
“Easy to forget, isn’t it? Back on the island, we farm samlon by caging some grendels as they grow to adolescence, let them lay and fertilize eggs, and kill them before they can kill us. Hard to be herders when you kill off your breeding stock every generation. Better to tame them. And the continent’s big and there are grendels everywhere there’s fresh water linked by streams. We have to live with them; don’t you think it’s a good idea to understand them better?” Aaron spoke in easy tones. Soothing. Almost hypnotic. His grendel-taming voice.
He’s said all this a hundred times, Cadzie thought.
“Never thought much about it, Aaron.”
“Why would you? Anyway, we had a little problem here a couple of days ago,” Aaron replied.
“Problem? What kind?”
“Attack on one of our herds,” Aaron said. He was speaking too casually, as if uncomfortable talking about it. “Three wild grendels using a pincer tactic. Killed two dogs and took a bison cow.”
The implications of that was disturbing as hell. “That’s . . really strange,” Cadmann replied. “They don’t usually cooperate. Were they some of yours?”
“No,” Joan said. “I heard about this. They seemed to act with forethought. We were lucky to kill them. Lucky it was only cattle, too.”
Cadzie had a notion. “Do you mind if I take one of the corpses back with me?” When there was no response, he continued, “The Shakas will certainly be interested.”
“If you wish,” Aaron said. “What brings you out here?”
“News. Excessively big news.”
The odd phrasing made Aaron pause. “And what would that be?”
“Someone’s coming.” Cadzie watched carefully. There always seemed something . . dead behind Aaron’s eye, almost like an alien peeking out from behind a human mask. Did he perhaps fancy himself part grendel?
“Coming where?”
“Here.”
“To the mainland?”
“To Avalon.”
Finally, the implication seemed to sink in.
“From . . where?”
“Cassandra’s not sure. Earth, we think.”
“A ship? A starship?” And now for the first time, real emotion mobilized Aaron’s scarred face. “How long have we known?”
“This morning. Cassandra called Carlos this morning, about dawn. He called me—”
“You? He called you?” Aaron’s expression didn’t change.
“Yes. Carlos tried to reach you, but you didn’t answer. He wouldn’t tell me over the air, so I had to go to his house, and then fly to the dam. Then I couldn’t tell Joan because of your blasted protocols, but she was the only one who knew where you were. This is the first she’s heard of it. You can get the rest from Cassandra.”
“What is it?” Aaron asked.
“A Geographic-size object, rapid deceleration, probable destination co-orbit with Geographic, origin unknown. The path is toward Sol, but not directly. It’s as if they started for a destination in our general direction, but somewhere along the line they changed course and headed for us. If you can get a better analysis out of Cassandra, go ahead and try. I can’t.”
“No wonder you look puzzled. What do—what does this presumed visitor say?”
“No communication detected. Cassandra assumes anything that big is manned, but she got no replies to messages. We’ve agreed to tell you before taking important actions, and—” He looked without much approval at the cages and other apparatus around him. “Carlos thinks doing anything more would be an important action. I assume you agree.”
Aaron fiddled with his communicator. “Cassie?” he asked.
“Yes, Aaron?” Cadmann couldn’t help noticing that Cassandra’s voice for Aaron was lower (sexier?) than the one she used for him. He wondered what that said about Aaron.
“What do you know about this approaching mass?”
“It is as Cadmann the Second described. Geographic-sized, decelerating, and on a path projected to match orbits with Geographic. It presumably changed course at least once assuming it came from Sol. There is no other reasonable assumption.”
“Artificial, then? Man-made?”
“The exact origin cannot be determined. Insufficient data.”
“Widen your parameters,” he said. “Make a guess.”
“I prefer not to speculate about extrahuman intelligence, Aaron.”
He frowned. “But it might be a starship?”
“That is certainly possible, Aaron.”
“And we don’t have communication with them?”
“Nothing to report at this time,” Cassandra replied. And disengaged.
Aaron grunted. “Odd,” he said.
Cadzie stepped into the breach. “By now Carlos will have informed the rest of Camelot. I see Joan is on the phone so I expect she’s telling the other Starborn.” Tragon’s daughter had stepped away. Her wristband pulsed a dull red, and she chattered excitedly into the air. Those wristband pulses were the only thing that told you someone was talking to another human being, not merely babbling.
Aaron spoke, perhaps to Cadzie and perhaps to the air, “A ship from Earth. When did they leave?”
“We don’t know?”
Aaron frowned. “Why not?”
Cadzie shifted uncomfortably. “We don’t know. They’re not answering.”
Joan and Aaron exchanged quizzical expressions. “Isn’t that strange?” Joan asked.
Aaron said, “I don’t know. Maybe. Cassandra may. The old girl is creaking a bit, but I have no real reason to doubt her.”
“Ummm . . .” Joan’s discomfort was obvious. With what? Him? Her father? The notion of visitors? Or something else? He couldn’t read her. She toed the dirt and stared off in the opposite direction.
“Do I?” Aaron asked. “Josie?” he called to his assistant. “Watch things here. I have something important to take care of.”
With Aaron sitting in the jump-seat behind Joanie, the autogyro’s engine made angry sounds as it labored back to the dam. Some private words between Aaron and his daughter had triggered a dark expression, followed by silence. Their combined weight strained the aging skeeter’s engines as they flew.
When they returned, she would not tell Cadzie what was going on, only that he needed to stay until dark, that there was something she wanted to show him. When he protested, she evaded direct answers by encouraging him to strip and repair the autogyro, offering him Toad and his assistants to dig in and clean the fuel lines.
Why was she so desperate to stall him? Why wouldn’t she speak? Was she playing a little tit-for-tat? He’d made her wait, so she was making him wait? No . . it seemed more purposeful than that. “Why are you trying to keep me here?”
She smiled with an odd, cool humor. “Oh, Cadzie. Maybe I’ve grown accustomed to your face.”
“That’s a relief.” He and Joan could rarely be in the same room for five minutes without rubbing each other raw. “What is going on?”
The kids exchanged an expression. Collie Baxter said, “I think it’s time.” Baxter was a year younger than Joanie, and like most of the other NextGen, followed her lead.
“Time for what?”
“For you to meet some friends.” Even among these, Collie had a reputation as a computer wizard. He was bigger than Cadzie, resembled a shaved bear, and his attitude was either truculent or . . what? Guilty?
Mysterious, Cadzie thought. And more serious than playful.
They led Cadzie and Aaron back to the dam, up through the back entrance and the spiral staircase. And from there to the observation booth. “What do you see?” Joan asked.
“Horseshoe Falls? The dam? Oh, hey!” An arc of ruby torpedoes flashed out of the water below the dam. They rose like rockets, keeping formation, over the rim of the dam and into the water upstream.
Joan snapped, “No, not just the speedfish!” She handed him a fat pair of night-vision goggles.
“That’s only the second time I’ve ever seen speedfish. Wow, they went right over the dam!”
He fiddled with the lens rocker, and now, finally saw something unexpected. Squid-shapes, crawling up the dam’s sloping wall. “What in the hell are those?”
Aaron’s single eye stared. Then he began to curse under his breath.
Joan’s lips twisted with a sheepish, lopsided grin. “We call them cthulhus.”
“Lovecraft? As in ‘In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming’?”
“We . . um . . .” Joan cleared her throat. “Among the Starborn, we call the dam R’lyeh. Just among us.”
Aaron bit the word, “Cute.”
“When we first built the dam, it seemed to interfere with their ability to travel upstream . . we thought there must be a spawning ground up there, but now we know they only breed in brackish water, so we really don’t know why they want to go up this stream. They really want to, though. Just watch.”
Cadzie brought up his phone. “Cassandra, what am I looking at?”
“No formal name. Called cthulhus by the Starborn. Aquatic animals who breed in brackish water. First observed fifteen years ago.”
“They are using tools. What other tool-using activities do we know of?”
There was a noticeable pause. “Very few,” Cassandra replied in her never-changing voice.
“Have they been studied?”
“Ask Joan. I can’t tell you,” Cassandra said.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” Cadzie demanded. “You know who I am!”
“I have no knowledge to give you,” Cassandra said.
“That’s the weirdest conversation I ever had with Cassie,” he told Joan. “You heard?”
She frowned, a troubled expression. Or perhaps one of exasperation. Cadzie couldn’t tell. “I heard.”
She didn’t say anything else, and that was even more puzzling. He lifted the night glasses and looked more carefully. The creatures were big; maybe two meters long, but they could reach much farther. There was a gap where the ladder of the steps was replaced by smooth concrete. And . . were they carrying something?
As he watched open-mouthed, one of the squids extended a rigid pole of some kind (what was that? Bamboozle?) across a gap too wide for its sinuous arms to bridge, and then shimmied across, rather like an ape with more arms than a statue of Kali.
“Holy cow,” he heard himself mutter. “Those things are smart.”
Aaron snarled. “How could I not know this? Joanie? I knew the cthulhus were here, but—tool users? Fifteen years you hid this!”
“Yes, they are smart.” She ignored her father. “We estimate them to be as smart as chimpanzees. Maybe dolphins, but with better tool-using.”
“What the hell?” Cadmann watched them again. The pole-user looked as if it was chewing the far end of the bamboozle, and when it finished it climbed onward, and the next creature in line began the climb. The chewing action seemed to have fixed it in place. Regurgitating some kind of adhesive substance, perhaps? Something else?
He sat down, hard. “All right. What are we really looking at?”
“They communicate across a greater harmonic spectrum than dolphins, with what seem to be more discreet data packets, apparent repetition of words and phrases.” Joanie’s voice was flat.
“They have language?” He felt like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach.
“We think so, yes. It’s more complicated than the dolphin signals, so we’re confident that it is some form of communication.”
Her voice had been—formal, as if she’d been lecturing to a class. Cadzie waited a moment, but when it was clear that Joanie wasn’t going to say anything else, he spoke into his phone. “Cassandra. Tool-using creatures that resemble squid. Short summary. What do we know about them?”
“I have no knowledge to give you.”
“Cassandra. Do you mean you don’t know, or that you can’t tell me what you know?”
“I have no knowledge to give you.”
The room spun, and he felt as if he wanted to puke. He turned to Joan, fighting the urge to tense his fingers into claws. “How long have you known about them? I mean, wow. You just discovered them, right? That’s why Cassandra doesn’t know. This is huge.”
Collie looked sheepish. “Ummm . . no. We’ve known about them for, ah . . fifteen years.”
“I’ve known they existed for more than sixteen years,” Aaron said. “Maybe a bit more. Nobody ever told me there was any reason to learn more about them.” He looked quizzically at Joanie. “Apparently there was?”
“What the hell! You just found out they were intelligent though, right?”
“Ah . . no.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “We’ve known that, since we first found them. You got there late that night, Aaron.”
Cadmann stared at her, disbelieving. There had to be a silver lining to this cloud, but he was having trouble finding it. “Are they . . herbivores?” Pretty please.
“Ah . . no.”
Cadzie chewed his lip. “Are they at least aquatic . . no, obviously they’re amphib.” What a mess. “Christ. I don’t believe this. All right. Tell me, please, that they’ve never hurt a human being.”
Joan looked away. “I can’t say that, either.”
“What? Who? When?”
“Jennifer? Tell him.”
Cadzie had barely noticed when the older woman entered. Jennifer Sharpton was one of the first Starborn, Aaron’s age, wearing a shapeless muumuu over a thin muscular frame. She’d been one of the den mothers when Cadzie had been a Grendel Scout. What was she doing over here on the mainland? At the dam?
“It was sixteen years ago,” Jennifer said slowly. “We lost Archie. My boyfriend. The cthulhus killed him at Surf’s Up. Aaron was there.”
Aaron gave a long, slow lizard blink. Somehow, Cadzie found his confusion comforting. “Long time ago. But yes, cthulhus killed Archie because he had a grendel painted on his board. Haven’t thought about it in a long time.”
“Archie’s surfboard had grendels painted on both sides,” Jennifer said. “Not the smartest thing to do, but at the time we thought it was . . cool. Wild grendel sightings are fewer here than in waterways not used by cthulhus. We figure this means cthulhus and grendels are natural enemies from way back.”
“So you kept them around like . . pets? Like dogs or something?”
“More like dolphins, I think. We try not to annoy them, but there are often dolphins and cthulhus hanging around the fence that keeps the dolphins in the bay. Anyway they’re pretty much smarter than dogs. How much smarter, we don’t know.”
“These things killed your boyfriend, and you’re okay with that?” Cadzie asked.
“I wasn’t at first. But it wasn’t their fault! It was that grendel image! I had to accept that. A mistake. And the hurt just . . faded.”
It was possible. Perhaps these creatures were not only smart, but hated grendels as much as he did. The enemy of my enemy is . . But why don’t I know this already? “Aaron, did you know all this?”
“Never asked,” Aaron said. “Jennifer told you true. Archie had grendels painted on either side of his board. Made me twitch. Cost me a board race. Must have driven the cthulhus nuts. That’s why there’s a rule about not having grendel images unless it’s a party of two and both are armed.”
“Only nobody plays with grendel images,” Jennifer said. “Not any more.”
Cadzie frowned. “When did this happen?”
Aaron laughed. “I don’t know, about the time you and Joanie learned to read, I guess. I was about your age, I remember that. It was a beach party. Your mother might have been with us, can’t remember. Before she was married, yeah, I think she was.” His eyes narrowed slyly. “Hey, I might have been your father, well, the father of her kid. Wouldn’t have been you, of course. We weren’t very careful then.”
Cadzie suppressed a flash of anger. They weren’t all that careful now. If a couple wasn’t ready to go over the falls, there were as always people who were ready, willing and able to raise babies. Cadzie’s grandmothers had certainly been eager. “So you didn’t tell anyone.”
Aaron’s mouth tightened. “Of course we did. They’d killed Archie! Couldn’t tell your father that. So we mentioned that there were some big squiddy things around Blackship, be careful where you swim. No big deal.”
Jennifer said, “They’re intelligent, and they belong on this planet. Belong more than we do! And my dad and your grandfather would have exterminated them, just as they did grendels on the island. I loved Archie, and he wouldn’t have wanted that. The Earthborn would have killed them all. All of them! So we didn’t tell anyone.”
Silence followed that statement, and lasted a long painful moment. “You understand, don’t you?” Joan asked. For the first time since her childhood, vulnerability had crept into her voice.
Aaron said. “Seemed like the right thing to do. I never learned they use tools. And now you say they talk to each other? Why don’t I know this?”
“Yes. How did you keep this secret?” Cadzie tried to keep his voice calm, but wasn’t entirely successful.
“We just made it forbidden information for anyone but the inner circle of the Starborn,” Jennifer said. Aaron snorted. “Some of the Starborn. It’s a graduation secret for the highest level Grendel Scouts like Joan. Our greatest secret. Those who don’t reach the top rank never find out.”
“I was a Grendel Scout leader,” Cadzie said calmly.
“Yes, and you’re Cadmann Weyland’s grandson,” Jennifer said with equal calm. “And you don’t keep any secrets from Carlos and you never will. Carlos and your father hunted down every adult grendel on the island. Every one of them.”
“And . . why are you telling me now?”
Joan said, very slowly, “We didn’t want to.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jennifer said. “Joan called me and I flew over. I’m in charge of keeping this secret. Always have been.”
Cadzie looked completely puzzled. “So?”
“Because we think it might be connected with the visitors,” Joan said.
“The visitors . . how in the hell . . .” Then, comprehension dawned. “You think that there are no visitors. Because they haven’t communicated.”
“Yes.”
Cadzie thought fast. “Then you think that Cassandra is making an error. A pretty damned big one.”
“Well, she might.”
“And you think she’s making that error because . . .” Suddenly he understood. “Because you told her to lie. She knows about the cthulhus, doesn’t she? Of course she does.”
Joan seemed to flinch. “It would have been hard to keep it from her.”
Cadzie frowned. “And she was acting strange when I talked to her about them.” As the implications sank in, he felt his throat tighten. Hoarsely, he asked, “How did you do it?”
“It was gradual,” Jennifer said. “It got more complicated after a while.”
Joanie said. “Cassandra’s firewalls are a joke. Hacking her was the best game we had, and our parents never noticed. Later we added a board to her primary preferences. She knows things she won’t tell anyone but those with the key passwords. It didn’t take much, she just doesn’t respond to questions about intelligent nonhumans. As you just found out.”
Now he was reeling. “Oh my god. Do you have any idea how much damage you may have done?”
“I’m starting to wonder, yes.” A little-girl’s voice.
“I have to tell Camelot. They need to know. Carlos needs to know now.”
“Cadzie.” Desperation was creeping into her voice. “I trusted you. I’ve betrayed a secret that will probably get me expelled from Surf’s Up. I may not be forgiven. You have to give me something.”
“What?”
“Let me tell Surf’s Up first. Dad will help me. Give me that much.”
He paused, thinking. How much of an emergency was this? Aaron made his skin crawl, and Joan wasn’t a lot better, but . . “Aaron?”
“Two days,” Aaron said.
Cadzie looked thoughtful, then nodded slowly. “All right. Landing Day is day after tomorrow. You talk to Zack and Carlos about the cthulhus then. And you and Jennifer explain to the council exactly what you did to Cassandra and why you did it. Maybe they’ll decide not to share that information with the general colony. I don’t know.”
He looked through the binoculars again. Two last man-sized squid-shapes were crawling over the lip of the dam.
“Cadzie. Please. You don’t understand.” She gripped his shoulder. He stared at her hand until she dropped it.
“Help me,” he said. “Make me understand.”
“Our grandparents wanted this,” she said. “Needed this. Wanted their own world. And got it. We . . you . . never asked for this. Just found that our parents had made the decision for you. Talked about Earth as ‘home’ while making sure you knew there was no way back.”
“So?”
“So Earth isn’t ours. And Avalon isn’t ours. Your parents make it clear to us every chance they get that they are the heroes of Avalon. They pretend to know everything, decide everything, control everything.”
“You wanted something that was yours.”
For the first time since her childhood, he watched her eyes water. “Yes. You . . you’re almost one of us. Can’t you understand?”
“I understand,” he replied. “I understand that you may have done more damage than you can possibly realize. But you know more about computers and AI than I do! You know what interfering with the prime programming can do, and you did that. Is anything Cassandra tells us reliable?”
“We got through the mainland wars all right,” Jennifer said. “Cassandra was very reliable, and the new boards were already in place then.”
“She didn’t warn you about the bees, did she, Aaron?”
Aaron glared. Jennifer said, “Cadzie, Cassandra’s all right, she just can’t tell some people anything about nonhuman intelligence.”
“Such as an approaching spacecraft?”
“Well, that might cause a conflicting orders dilemma because of all these requirements about who to tell this or not tell that. That’s how you got in the loop. By agreement, Carlos couldn’t tell you before he told Aaron. Carlos resolved that by getting you to act as messenger, no big deal, but Cassandra can’t resolve conflicting orders that easily. Especially if one of the conflicts is in the prime programming.” Jennifer spoke with a confidence Cadzie didn’t think she had. “Cassandra is reliable. Really. Look, we won the mainland wars without any of this coming out.”
Tears made Joanie’s blue eyes shimmer. “Cadzie, please. Wait until Landing Day.”
Cadzie sighed. If he admitted no empathy for her position, he’d be lying. “Fine. Fine. You have your two days.”
“Good choice,” Aaron muttered.
The school was together again, assembled on the high side of the dam. The water tasted too fresh: they would need brackish, too soon. The voices of the dam roared, drowning out thought. Roar of water, roar of magnetic flow.
The dam’s magnetic voice was deep inside its structure. The school could not penetrate, not even from here, not even by diving deep underwater. Whast could make out nothing of the dam’s thoughts, no matter how hard he listened.
What was this thing that the walkers had built?
Magnetic force was the essence of thought. The dipole in Whast’s belly amplified his voice, joined him to the school. What was being amplified by this thrumming thought, inside this immense curved stone wall? Whast could only wonder, like the rest: What were the walkers trying to say?