"About our parents?" Sharon asked.
"Things about your parents. And grandparents. There are reasons why they didn't come over here. Why we're the ones."
"Why?"
Justin and Jessica looked at each other nervously; then Justin said, "When you freeze something that has water in it, you get ice crystals. They thought that they had whipped the problems, but something went wrong. They froze the crew of Geographic. They woke them up in shifts for various duties around the ship, crossing from Sol to Tau Ceti. And there were problems."
"Problems?" Carey asked.
"Yes. When you freeze people for a hundred years and then wake them up, chances are you've formed some ice crystals in their brains. Wake them twice, you get more crystals. Crystals rupture cells, mess it up in-" He tapped his skull. "-here."
"What did it do?"
"A lot of our parents aren't as smart as they used to be. They get emotional problems, too. Coordination. Early strokes. Just plain stupidity. At first it didn't really matter. They were still smarter than most people they'd known, and they'd chosen the island because it was safe. No problems to face, nothing they couldn't deal with. Even then, they got in the habit of talking things over, being sure they weren't doing something stupid-"
"Rules," Sharon McAndrews said.
"Rules," Justin agreed. "And that was good enough for a while. There weren't any real dangers here, none that they knew about anyway. Then, the first grendel came. They didn't understand. They had rules, and they stuck to the rules, and it didn't work, but Colonel Weyland helped them and they defeated the first grendels. They went hunting, and when they thought they had killed all the grendels, they hadn't. You know about that. What you don't know is how bad it shook them. After the Grendel Wars they stopped trusting themselves and they stopped trusting each other. They didn't work well together when the grendels popped up, and that's one of the reasons that our parents are so afraid of them now."
There was silence. Justin could see it: they were trying to find a lie in the story. But there were too many clues. They knew, they had always known. There was something wrong with Mom, with Dad. With Uncle. They had always known, but never had a label.
Now they did.
"Ice on his mind," Carey Lou said. "I've heard that, but nobody would tell me what it meant-"
"And my mother slapped me when I said it to her," Sharon said.
"Christ," Carey Lou said. "What can we do?"
"Love them," Jessica said. "They're doing the best they can. That's what we expect of you. Just love them, but do your own thinking. Including about their rules. That's why they make rules. They don't trust their own thoughts, not when they act alone. So they try to get a collective judgment on everything that can happen, and make that a rule, and then they follow the rules no matter what."
"Ice on their minds," Carey Lou said again, slowly. "Son of a bitch!"
Aaron and Trish carried a pole across their shoulders, with a dozen netted samlon suspended from it. They were singing some kind of hunting song or working song... "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to hunt I go".... making up verses as they approached the campfire.
Water was already simmering and bubbling in the glass cauldron. Potatoes and onions had been brought over from Camelot, but there was more: mainland bulbs and leaves known to be edible, and tasty. Some of the brighter Scouts noticed how flashlights had been focused into the cauldron, so that the vegetables could be seen dancing around in the roiling water.
There was an air of excitement, and someone ooh'd as Justin produced a wicked-looking knife and sliced the heads off the samlon.
"Look at their eyes," he said. "But for us, they would have been grendels one day, and hunted us. We killed them first. What eats grendels?" he asked. "We eat grendels."
They were as tense as an audience awaiting a magic trick. Justin figured that that was pretty close to accurate.
His blood-smeared hands gathered the beheaded samlon up and carried them to the pot, dropping them into the water.
The water foamed with blood.
"Watch," Justin said, "watch and see..."
Those first few trips, the Scouts had been crawling all over each other to watch and see, to look down into an inadequate aluminum pot. Once Ansel Stevens fell in and scalded his whole arm. Once there was a full riot. The pots kept getting bigger, but the Scouts still missed most of the action, until Chaka got big enough to carry this mucking great glass cauldron. And now everyone could see it all.
The three gallons of water in the pot churned. The samlon sank, and then churned up to the surface again, in a curious and disquieting imitation of life.
Something was happening. The flesh of the samlon split, and worm-like things boiled out. Scores of them. Hundreds. Pale, fleshy things churning and dying in the boiling water, turning the clear bubbling broth into a kind of thick gumbo... or jambalaya.
The Biters pulled back, choking. There rose from the red kettle a stench of blood.
And in a disturbing way... it was a good smell. Like last night's savory aroma, only stronger.
Justin and Aaron and Katya and Jessica and the other Second watched ghoulishly. The children stared at the kettle, sniffed at it One of them fled to the entrance of the cave and vomited.
In a half hour the brew was done, and ladled into bowls. It was an evil-looking mess, filled with fragments of samlon heads and the gutted carcasses now torn into chunks by Katya's bloody knife. The dead worms and corkscrew things were bloated pinkly in death. There were little transparent crabs no bigger than a Biter's fingernail. The base stock was as crimson as tomato soup. It looked filled with insects.
Aaron held the bowl to his lips. The Biters watched him, horribly fascinated.
"Mmmmm," he raised the spoon to his lips. He blew on it. Something thick and wormy flopped over the edge of the broad spoon. He slurped it up as if it were vermicelli, making a smacking sound. "Delicious."
"Dinner," Jessica said, "is served."
Chapter 10
THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE GRENDEL
In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.
Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily; be thou my strong rock, for an house of defense to save me.
For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me.
Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength.
Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.
Psalm 31:16
Jessica rose only when she was absolutely certain that the others were asleep. On tiptoes, she crept out of the cave. The soft purring snores of sleeping children surrounded her. She felt a delicious synthesis of maternal concern and utter wickedness.
Aaron waited just outside the cave, and held a finger to his lips.
"Shhh."
Jessica nodded, understanding the need for secrecy. This wasn't for Justin. Not anymore-he had made his choice, and Jessica had made hers. Her heart thudded in her chest as she followed Aaron down the path. They passed a tree, and it wasn't until they had passed that she realized that it wasn't just a shadow, but Trish, dark as the night. A Bottle Baby.
Trish joined them as they moved silently down the trail. Little Chaka and others drifted into their line until there were seven in all. They came to a small clearing near a very shallow running stream.
"Running water," she observed unnecessarily. "Everything I am, and everything I've learned says to stay away from it."
Aaron nodded. "In mortis veritas," he said.