"That I envy," Big Chaka said.
"Well, you could come with us-"
Big Chaka laughed gently. "You know better. I would not be welcome among your friends." He put his shoe back on and fastened it. "Be careful, son. We don't know what killed Joe Sikes and Linda Weyland, but we are very sure of what killed nearly every one of us during the Grendel Wars. Don't be so concerned about an unknown danger that you ignore a known one.
Now we ought to be getting back-" He stopped to look at a colorful lichen.
"In a moment."
Little Chaka was still a little nervous about these side trips. They were too far from Deadwood's reinforced Kevlar shelters for his comfort. But Big Chaka won that argument, as his father usually did.
On their first day at the mine site, he had wandered far afield, to the very edge of the tree line. "Chaka," he had said. "Look at the density, only five hundred meters from the death site. Nothing has razed this. There are Joeys in the trees, and birdles, and these little insect fellows. Whatever killed Joe and Linda also ate the dogs. Ate all of the organic material in their clothes. It was a freak occurrence. In truth, this is probably the safest place on the planet now-this particular lightning won't strike here again for quite a while." When his son seemed unconvinced, he added, "If you're worried, carry a couple of Cadmann's survival sacks with you."
"I'm worried. Grendels can't bite through the Kevlar, but a bite could still crush a bone-"
"You have grendels on the brain. You studied those skeletons as carefully as I did. No pressure had been applied. No broken bones. No tooth marks. Scrapes, yes, something scraped the meat from the bones, but it was small, not the teeth of a grendel. Whatever killed Joe and Linda was no grendel-unless that grendel had cooked them for hours and then sucked the meat off the bones."
Chaka grimaced at his father's morbid imagery. So what was the danger? The Kevlar sacks should theoretically protect from an acid cloud, or... or whatever the hell it was that had killed their friends. The current guess was something biological rather than chemical. A memory stirred in his mind, something from an old science-fiction novel about giant protozoans lurching out of the swamps of Venus to digest unwary space folk. There were movies of large bloodsucking monsters among the stars.
He didn't really believe that, but invisible death had eaten two members of his family under Cassandra's very nose, and the only clue was traces of speed on the bones. Speed meant grendels, but how? A fascinating puzzle, if only it hadn't been real.
They made good time the rest of the way back to the mine. His father accepted little help, even when sweat beaded his brow and the breath whistled in his throat. Long before dusk they found themselves hiking up the final approach. The hum of machinery was clear at half a kilometer-repair and restoration were well under way. A thin stream of smoke and screams of tortured metal told that some large piece of equipment was being ripped out and refitted. His father was blowing a little on the upslope, but Chaka had released his son's arm and was stalking bravely up the side of the hill.
Little Chaka was bouncing like a balloon. Free at last! He had forgotten what it felt like to climb around in the mountains without that damned cook pot on his back.
Sylvia Weyland waved her arms as they came up over the rise. Smelting metal was a sharp tang in their noses. Cranes and scaffolding hovered about the new mine shack. A dozen workers hustled about, carrying, loading. Grafting. A new and stronger shed was being erected, and Sylvia, biologist turned engineer, was the week's gang chief, and would rotate back to the mainland with the arrival of Robor.
"How was the walk?" she yelled.
"Great!" They were a little closer now, and voices could be dropped. Sylvia looked tired and a little sweaty, but satisfied. She and her crew worked fast. Two new steel frames had been fitted into place on the structure that would house permanent, grendel-proof shelters for mines and miners. Atop it was an antenna to serve as a backup relay for communications between the mainland and the base camp Aaron called Shangri-La, now under construction three hundred and twenty kilometers away.
"I'm not seeing as much of the local biology as I'd like," Big Chaka complained as she approached him for a hug. "My son is just too protective. I'm not a child."
"We're just taking the mountain back," Sylvia said. "Our resources are still split. Let's just say that we'll all feel a lot better when you've categorized more of the life around here, but there are unavoidable risks attached. You're the only father Little Chaka has; is it surprising he's a bit"-she grinned-"possessive?"
His father looked up at Little Chaka owlishly. "It wasn't so many years ago that I carried you up into the highlands on my shoulders. Now, you could carry me, and with less effort." Then he smiled. "I suppose that every man wants his son to grow up. Mine just grew up a little further than most."
Little Chaka glowed with pride, touched with only the slightest tinge of sadness. He was just beginning to really understand that one day his father would no longer be there to talk to, to share with.
But until that time, he could give thanks that they had had so much time together. That they had been able to share so much.
The Robor misadventure had not damaged their relationship beyond repair. He wasn't certain how he would have withstood that. Even now, there was a slow coiling of anger and resentment and self-contempt surrounding the whole issue. Self-contempt for allowing himself to be talked into it. Resentment toward Aaron Tragon. Anger, unresolved and smoldering, over the death of Toshiro.
But if his relationship with his father had been damaged...
He didn't want to think about that. He would have felt far more self-contempt. Far more resentment.
Far more anger toward Aaron.
He wondered, somewhat darkly, what he might have done about that. But he had to get back to Shangri-La and plan the expedition to the Scribeveldt, and there was no time at all for such thoughts.
The Scribeveldt was a vast oval of highland plain that began at the foothills 350 kilometers northeast of Shangri-La Base Camp, and stretched for over two thousand kilometers to the north and east from there. A long, sluggish river that someone had dubbed the Zambezi ran from north to south a little to the west of the plain's centerline. It was a river with few tributaries, and effectively divided the Scribeveldt into two unequal portions. Both parts of the veldt were covered by thick grassy stalks that grew up to waist height, and were sometimes covered with tiny yellow flowers.
It was called the Scribeveldt because when they first examined it from orbit it appeared to be covered with cursive alien script written in broad lines with faded ink, close-mowed curving stripes that approached each other, merged, then diverged. They had to be animal tracks. For the past year the trails had hardly come together at all, as if they were deliberately avoiding each other.
The Scribeveldt ended in a forest that covered the foothills. A few year-round streams ran through the forest, none more than a few inches deep. The Scribeveldt and forest had been examined from orbit for years, and one thing was certain; there were a number of animals on the veldt and within the forest, but except for a narrow band near the big river, there were no grendels.
The hunting blind was at the edge of the forest. Jessica quietly pushed aside a wisp of brush that obscured her view and peered out at the peaceful herd of chamels grazing quietly a half-kilometer away. Her war specs magnified them until they seemed close enough to touch.