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!"
Chapter 40
DEATH
In War, whichever side may call itself the victor,
there are no winners, but all are losers.
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN
It was all coming together, again. She had brought the weirds a gift, and they had accepted it.
She had wondered if their strongest would challenge her; she had wondered how. Even the dam builders did not cooperate like weirds, and no grendel was so feeble. But their strongest, the killer, was being restrained and led away.
And now they gathered round her at a respectful distance, making the sounds they always made. The injured one had spoken to her in such a fashion. It was their way of passing their thoughts from one mind to another. Old Grendel knew she couldn't do that. She must find another way.
And now another sound was rising. For a moment she took it for the sound of their flyers. Then... her heart's desire was snatched from her again.
Not for a moment did she pause to regret. Old Grendel had marked the nest's water source when it came within her sight and scent. It was an elevated structure at the hub of a web of streets. She was in motion before any weird had noticed the sound of the Death Wind. With speed raging through her blood, she wove a path among the weirds, brushing one and another but hurting none. She ran straight to the tower and up one of the legs.
The water was covered with something rigid.
The Death Wind was a darkness across half the sky. She would never mistake that for storm clouds. A dark tendril was reaching down, in the fashion of a tornado, toward where the puzzle beasts laired.
She smashed through the cover and was into Shangri-La's cistern. She settled in, lifted her snorkel, and let the heat and speed seep from her blood. The water was humming, bathing her in the sound of the Death Wind.
Carlos swung Skeeter II around in a circle, calculating wind and the direction of the bee mass, and swung around back south. The wind blew northwest. Unless the bees were heading to a particular destination, they would drift with the wind. So it made sense to figure that they wanted the mountains—and that was north. They were heading away from the plains, away from the flooding. Fine. Justin had the cowl locked down tight. A few bees spattered against it, but these bees weren't on speed. They weren't in an emergency state. On speed they couldn't cover the distance to get their queens to safety. They could be counting on a few dry hours. The rhythm of this damned planet had to be as deeply ingrained as breathing.
He watched Skeeter IV emerge from the cloud for a minute. Justin said, "Evan's going to make it! He's—" Then the cloud closed around Skeeter Four, and the sparkling pinwheel of its rotor flared outward. Something—a cloud of bees ignited.
"Holy Mary mother of God—" Skeeter IV was the edge of a fireball. Bees exploded in a pop-pop-popping that they could hear even over the whip of their own rotors, a machine-gun crackle, their carapaced speed sacs igniting as if they were a swarm of flying firecrackers. Evan's skeeter juddered sideways as if slapped by a giant hand. Then it was entirely enshrouded in flame. All that rang through the radio was Evan's anguished scream as his doomed skeeter spiraled and plunged and smashed into the rock below.
Justin's hands gripped the rail in front of him, squeezed. He had cut his hand on something. The blood ran in a thin stream, drooling down his wrists.
Carlos swung clear of the cloud of bees, heading back to the camp.
In the instant the crowd's attention went to the approaching swarm, Aaron took sudden, violent action. He stamped Trish's instep, and wrenched himself free of her grip. He turned and drove his fist as hard as he could into Edgar's face, breaking his nose and sending blood squirting down his cheek. Trish threw herself on him, screaming, biting, striking.
Jessica still couldn't move, as if trapped in a slow-motion universe of overloaded emotions.