The kids looked suspicious, but when the older Scouts didn't even invite them to eat, and promptly served themselves, Carey Lou shouldered his way over, poked a spoon in, and tasted.
He pronounced it delicious, and they dove in.
It was like a thick jambalaya, served over crumbled biscuit. Delicious. It was filled with things that chewed like mussel and tasted like clams or fish. Several times someone asked what it was composed of, and received only an evasive smile in return.
"Secret recipe," Aaron said, and everyone broke up laughing.
There was only a tiny helping for each of the kids, enough to whet their appetite for burgers. "Mainland Stew," they were told, was for full Scouts only.
After a little wait, Jessica inquired innocently, "Who'd like some for lunch tomorrow?"
All hands went up.
"Well," she said. "I guess we have to respect the public demand, now, don't we?"
Carey Lou belched with satisfaction. "So tonight," he said. "Tonight we get to find out more about grendels?"
"Tonight," Aaron said.
Heather McKennie leaned forward, her dark eyes intense. "They were like a feeding frenzy coming after our parents, huh? Like sharks on earth?"
One of the other kids chimed in: "Or like piranhas! I saw that James Bond movie, and they ate that woman right up!"
"Blood-crazed monsters... "
Justin laughed. "I read up on piranhas. It wasn't really blood that triggered them. There was this guy who went down to the Amazon. Zoologist named Bellamy. Went down there and studied the little bastards."
"Why?" Aaron asked curiously.
"Well, their behavior didn't make sense to him. The stupid little buggers rip each other to pieces. Dinnertime isn't a friendly affair at all."
"Ghastly business." Katya's "upper-class" English accent was terrible.
"Not a black-tie occasion?"
"They'd eat the tie too. Now, our barmy zoologist began wondering: what's in it for the fish?"
He dropped his voice. "So they went to the village where it happens. Where the natives throw pigs into the water, for the entertainment of the tourists. And they'd throw one of these terrified creatures in the water, and it would thrash-and the water would churn with blood. Piranhas ripped it to ribbons in a couple of minutes. Just like in the movies."
Justin was getting into it now. "And he wondered: Was it the blood?
Was it? And he took a bloody knife, and slipped it into the water... "
They held their assembled breath.
"And nothing happened. Nothing. And then... he slipped his foot into the water."
"Jesus. What happened?"
"Nothing. And then he slipped his hand into the water-"
"Christ! Did he stick his dick in the water too?"
"I have no idea," Justin said haughtily. "I did hear that he later requested an audition with the Vienna Boy's Choir, but that was likely a coincidence." Justin gave the speaker a nasty look.
"At any rate-then he slapped the water with an oar, and they went crazy." He leaned back. "It was the splash that did it, all along. Drives 'em nuts."
Aaron nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "I bet you have trees overhanging.
Monkeys or something fall in occasionally... "
"Yeah. Instant piranha chow."
"Well, but there aren't many trees that overhang the water, and monkeys aren't that stupid," Chaka said. "Not enough critters fall in the water, certainly not enough to affect evolution of the fish."
"So why?" Aaron asked. "What is in it for the fish?"
"Absolutely nothing," Chaka said. "It's extra behavior."
"Extra?"
"Extra. Extraneous. Useless. Something that got genetically coded with a real survival characteristic. Happens all the time."
"We haven't found anything like that here," Justin said.
"How do you know? We haven't had the chance to look," Katya said. "Not over here. We understand Camelot, but really, the grendels didn't leave much to understand. Here there's a real ecology, but they won't let us come look at it."
"They," Heather said solemnly. "The First."
"They're just trying to take care of us," Sharon McAndrews said.
"Aren't they?"
"Jailers take care of their charges, too," Aaron said. "You can't be a prison warder without a prisoner-"
Sharon McAndrews frowned. "You told us that you would tell us some things. About our parents." The other kids echoed her enthusiastically, but she sounded a little nervous.
Justin, Jessica and Aaron looked at each other. "Not tonight," Aaron said softly. "Tomorrow night. But not tonight."
"Why then? Why not now?"
"Because-" Justin began.
"You sound like a First," Heather said.
"Maybe I do. But we do have reasons," Justin said. "These are things you have to learn first. You'll know before we leave here."
"Is that a promise?" Sharon McAndrews sounded younger than her twelve years.
"Sure, it's a promise," Aaron said.
They sipped their coffee, and watched each other without speaking. Unspoken was the thought: First, Carey Lou has an appointment. He won the lottery.
Carey Lou had been asleep for no more than an hour when they came for him. They said nothing. Blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back. Thrust a rope between his teeth. Someone spoke, in a voice too gruff for recognition: "Hold on to this, and follow us. If you drop it, we leave you for the grendels."
Thank God they slipped shoes onto his feet before leading him away from the camp, out into the woods.
He had no idea how long he walked, or what time it was.
He lost track of the distance. He could see nothing, but felt every slap of brush, heard every night sound. He kept telling himself that this was calculated. This was all planned. They wouldn't really leave him for the grendels...
Still, his teeth bore down on that half-inch hemp until he was certain that it would break off in his mouth.
"Shhh," Justin whispered. He adjusted his night glasses, binoculars with big lenses to gather as much light as possible, and focused in. Fourteen-year-old Carey Lou was about twenty-five yards from the edge of the water, and looked ready to soil his pants. Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing pants. Or shirt, or socks-anything, in fact, but an expression of stark terror. The boy stared back at them beseechingly. His hands were strangling the grendel gun. He knew that somewhere back in those shadows was Heather McKennie, she of the cutoff jeans, freckles, tanned hide, and raunchy sense of humor. Heather, a whole enormous two years older than Carey. Heather would be his prize...
If he survived the night.
"Carey... " She called from somewhere in the darkness, beyond the torches.
"Oh, sleet," he said, and took another step closer to the water.
Twenty-three feet now.
Justin's rifle scope gave him a good angle on the pond. Aaron would be fifty feet to the north, similarly equipped. Little Chaka was farther south. All wore the modified infrared scopes. They would have barely a second to act, but that would be enough. Reacting to grendel flare was something Avalonians learned almost before they could walk.
Carey took another step closer to the water.
Burbling just beyond him was a spot already identified as a grendel hole. That meant a mama, and a flock of young'uns in the larval stage of grendel development. Samlon. They knew that upon maturation Mama would drive them out. In lean times she would eat the samlon themselves. On the island of Camelot, an entire ecology had developed-samlon eating algae, mamas eating samlon. They also knew that under ordinary circumstances, momma grendels would eat anything rather than their own young.