Beowulf's Children by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle & Steven Barnes

Author:Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle & Steven Barnes [Niven, Larry]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, General, Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Space colonies, Monsters, Niven; Larry - Prose & Criticism
ISBN: 9780765320889
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2009-08-03T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

SCRIBEVELDT AND EDEN HILL

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

all chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

all discord, harmony not understood;

all partial evil, universal good.

ALEXANDER POPE

THREE MONTHS LATER

Little Chaka watched, as his father took another careful step toward the winged creatures they called birdles. Cane first, then left foot, then right—all slow and smooth and deliberate.

Three birdles clustered about a low bush whose persimmon-sized fruit had turned from blue to red within the last two days. Only then did they begin to attract the flying crustacea. With the deepening of summer, bushes and leaves, plants and grasses all through the forests were changing color, ripening, exploding into a thousand hues of gold and red, and deep, fertile green. Horsemane trees infested with a hundred varieties of parasite and symbiote blossomed as if offering welcome to a hundred more.

The largest birdie-a big purple flying wing with spiffy little white wing tips-swiveled an independent eye toward Big Chaka, now only a dozen meters away. Big Chaka was a small man, barely cresting five feet in his tallest years. Time had crowded, shrunken, grayed him, spotted his dark face. His close-cropped, tightly coiled hair receded from his temples, and he needed corrective lenses to read and a cane to walk. A small, unwieldy pot belly swelled the front of his shirts, and his hands trembled when he wrote in the journals he had kept for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

But he could still move slowly and smoothly enough to approach animals more closely than Chaka would have believed possible. He was still Avalon’s premier zoologist. And he was still Dad.

The birdie watching Big Chaka began vibrating its motor wings. Its foreclaws anchored it to a branch, and the branch began to quiver. A high-pitched whistling whine rose up. The other two birdles stopped eating and began rustling as well. They gripped branches with two forward claws, but the little paddle-shaped wings aft blurred with their vibration. The whine became louder and louder, until the trees rustled with it.

Little Chaka wasn’t alarmed, not even when the call was taken up distantly by first one, and then a chorus. Communicating threat? Summoning help?

Big Chaka retreated a foot, and then another foot, and the birdles began to calm again. They returned to their meal. The distant droning died away. Silence returned to the forest.

An almost boyish grin wreathed Big Chaka’s face as he slumped back to his son “Not exactly a colony, too much independent action for that. More like small family clusters-maybe three to six. Possibly three sexes, or two fertile and one neuter to watch the nest while the others forage, like Avalon Type Six sea crabs. We’ll get samples later.”

He linked arms with his son as they walked back uphill. “And you call this Eden?”

Little Chaka nodded. “It’s where we take the Grendel Biters. There are things they need to learn about this planet, and this is a good place for it.”

“I can hear running water. Are there grendels?”

“Always assume grendels.

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