Tarzan was running now, screaming in pain. She peered down. He was fading! Stress, fatigue and fear had combined to rob him of his protective coloration. There were bees all over him, and she watched with dismay as they tore at his flesh. They pitched headlong into the street, driving the breath from her lungs, tangling her up with Edgar. Bees swarmed in on the helpless Tarzan, now reverting to his native tan color. And then he was streaked with red.
Edgar helped her to her feet, still swathed in his blanket. Together, they limped through the street, and up the ramp to the radio room, and the two of them staggered through the door.
They slammed it behind them and collapsed to the floor, screaming.
Something was hitting her, striking her, swatting at her. And Edgar. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw Carey Lou and Heather McKennie dancing, dancing. The floor was littered with dead bees.
The two kids were shaking. She looked at her hands. Streaked and torn. Edgar looked worse, but it was mostly cosmetic, except for a runnel along his upper thigh that oozed blood steadily. But they were alive.
"Robor is coming," Carey Lou said. "I got Sylvia on the phone."
An hour later, the rain began. As swiftly as they appeared, the bees seemed to disappear, going to ground or taking to the trees.
Edgar was recovered enough to take control of the communications. He managed to reestablish a link with Geographic.
"Robor," he said. "It looks like the safest way for you to make it down is through the western defile, follow the ridge." He had collapsed into one of the command chairs. His face was swollen until only one eye was functional. They were running out of time. When this rain stopped, the bees would be back. And back. And back.
The door to the communications room opened, and Justin, Carlos, and Katya crowded in. They were followed by the others, survivors, looking utterly bedraggled.
"Robor, this is Shangri-La... "
Robor was almost two thousand feet above his normal cruising altitude.
Here there was no fear of bees, and the skeeter engines roared once again.
They managed to lash down about half the cargo in the dirigible's holds before the first of the winds struck them. It grew almost unnoticeably, a slow swell of rhythm, an interruption of the steady burr of the skeeter engines.
Then the rain hit like a solid wall of air. The stabilizers groaned, and Robor lurched and wobbled as he moved north on his mercy mission. The engines cried out, the wind slamming against him so brutally that it seemed that their entire world was coming to pieces.
But a kilometer at a time, Robor fought his way down from Deadwood Pass. Robor was coming.
Justin walked out slowly into the rain, to examine the bodies. He counted a dozen Star Born who hadn't reached shelter in time. Who hadn't had Kevlar sacks or Cadzie-blue blankets. What was it with those blankets?
He kept searching until he found what he was looking for.
There wasn't much left, but he recognized the clothes. He would have known her even if there were less left.
Katya was somewhere behind him. Perhaps she thought of speaking, then thought better of it. Justin knelt in the rain, and took his coat off. Slowly, he draped it over what was left of his sister, his love.
Then he gathered the bundle of red bones gently into his arms, and carried it out of the rain.
The weather had died to a slight drizzle when Robor finally appeared. The camp—what was left of it—was almost silent. Sixty-three survivors waited, faces upturned in the rain.
Robor was moored, and the exodus began. They handed the bodies—what was left of them—hand over hand.
And when the last of them was aboard, the rain had almost ceased. They could hear the buzz as the bees awakened.
Sylvia stood beside him, holding his arm. Her son seemed almost like a stranger, so intense was his focus.
"He's out there," Justin said.
"Who?"
"Aaron. He's out there."
"He's dead," she said.
Justin shook his head. "He's not lucky enough to be dead. Yet." He screamed out of Robor's door: "I'll be back, you bastard! I swear to God I'll be back, and I'll kill you!"
She pried him carefully away from the door, and closed it on the camp, the shattered shell of Avalon's dreams. And then they lifted away.
The rain started again, and the bees still huddled in the forest, awaiting their time. The chamels had been set free, and were returning to the plains. The horses and other livestock were all dead.
For a few moments there was no sound, no movement, and then the mud stirred.
Aaron Tragon rolled half free of the mud. His eyes were wild and staring, almost sightless. He wasn't certain where he was. The chamels had trampled him on their way out, and he was badly concussed. His eyes wouldn't focus. He had to move. Had to hide. The bees would come back.
Soon. They would.
But his eyes wouldn't focus.
He flopped over onto his stomach, and tried to crawl away. There was something coming. Death was coming. He couldn't think. He couldn't move. But it was there.
Cadmann. Jessica. Toshiro. More. More. So much death. He hadn't meant for this. Chaka. Wait, Chaka wasn't dead. Was he?
His mind wouldn't work. So much death. He stood, bent far over around broken ribs. He staggered through the streets of Shangri-La, the camp that he had schemed and stolen and killed to build. It was destroyed. Empty. Robor was retiring in the distance, grinning like some vast grendel, floating away.
He heard a noise behind him. He was too tired, too confused to turn.
It was the grendel. The grendel god. He felt a wave of fear, of freedom approaching. His judgment. His salvation. He spread his arms and exposed his throat.
And then the grendel came to him. And she said Cadmann...
And the grendel took him by the throat, and she said... Chaka.
And the grendel devoured him, saying... Jessica.
And in the grendel he saw her heart, and the heart beat, saying...
Toshiro.
And he passed into darkness and into death, and the grendel spake unto him, and she said...
Aaron.
We are one...
Chapter 41
CHOICES
But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood
It was a beautiful day for a memorial, Justin thought. Tau Ceti shone down on the bluff, on the land that Cadmann Weyland had cleared, planted, tilled by hand... on the house that he had built with the sweat of his back.
And if he turned around, Justin could gaze down on the colony itself. See the crosshatch of roads that Cadmann had burned into the ground. The maze of homes he had helped erect. It was a place of love and life, crowded with babies to whom Cadmann Weyland was godfather, or guardian, or honorary uncle.
The Bluff wasn't crowded. The public funeral had been held a week before. This was just family. Just the kids, and Cadmann's wives, Katya, and Carlos.
Just the ones who loved the old man—and Jessica.
Jessica.
"We're here today..." He steadied his voice as much as he could. "... to say good-bye to two people we love." He stopped, dug his hands into his pockets. A sad, crooked smile plucked at his lips. "Isn't that just the way it is? No matter how much we say to someone while they're alive, there's always more to say. That' s the tragedy of it... but that's the joy, too."