the Legacy of Heorot

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Thou must now look to the needs of the nation;

Here dwell I no longer for Destiny calleth me!

Bid thou my warriors after my funeral pyre

Build me a burial-cairn high on the sea-cliff's head;

So that the wayfarers Beowulf's Barrow

Henceforth shall name it.

Thou art the last of all the kindred of Wagmund!

Wyrd has swept all my kin all the brave chiefs away!

Now I must follow them!

Beowulf, King of the Geats

==================

The Legacy of Heorot

Chapter 1

CAMELOT

They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before

the nuts work loose.

KIPLING, "The Sons of Martha"

"Cadzie! Wait up!"

Cadmann Weyland chuckled to himself and dug his heels into the

slope, slowing his descent.

He politely busied himself, adjusting the rangefinder on his

camera. After months on Avalon he still found the shadows too

sharp and the sunlight too blue, subtle things, noticed only when

he used familiar equipment like the camera.

The Colony sprang into high relief, and the recorder in his

backpack vibrated noiselessly to make a holotape recording of the

network of buildings and plowed fields and animal pens that

stretched out in the valley below. The Colony was ten kilometers

farther on, but the electronically enhanced lenses brought its low

buildings close enough to touch.

The image jolted as Sylvia slid into him. She caught herself with

a palm against his back. "Ouch. Sorry."

"Here." He handed her the camera. "See what we've built." She

gratefully accepted the excuse to rest. Her short brown hair was

plastered to her forehead with sweat, and her freckled cheeks were

flushed.

Six miles, downhill, and Sylvia was tiring. In the last hour she'd

found a dozen reasons to stop. Stones in her walking shoes. Burs

inside her blouse.

Cadmann chuckled inwardly. The Colony's biologist was tough,

and as stubborn about admitting fatigue as he. She's also three

months pregnant. Won't admit there are real differences between

the sexes. So be it.

Ernst loped down the slope. A brace of the large silver fishlike

creatures the Colony had dubbed "samlon" slapped against his

muscular back. His grin split his broad face from ear to jug ear.

"Tiring out, Sylvia! You ought to work out! Exercise! I can show

you."

Sylvia laughed. "Not right now, thanks, Ernst."

"Later."

Poor bastard. Ernst Cohen had been the solar system's leading

authority on reproductive biology, and brighter than hell. You could

watch it at cocktail parties: everyone else talking, and suddenly

Ernst would say maybe two sentences, and half the room would go

silent as the rest of them digested the implications. That was ten

light-years ago. Ernst had come out of frozen sleep with the mind

of a child.

Sylvia scanned the valley, gave a sigh of pleasure.

"Terrific shot, isn't it?" Cadmann's voice, ordinarily a hoarse

rumbling sound, was quietly thoughtful. "National Geographic will

love it." He squatted next to her. "Are you all right?"

"Just fine," she murmured. She turned, warming him with her

smile. "But I'll be happy to get back home."

She was almost twenty years younger than he. Sylvia was all

quick wit and golden eyes that glowed with life above a galaxy of

freckles. Her pregnancy changed nothing. It was wonderful, it was

frustrating: being with her made him forget the years and the

aches. It's the eyes. She's plain except for the eyes. God help me.

The pass they traversed was at the base of the tallest mountain

on the island. The highest of its double peaks was just above

thirty-two hundred meters. Both were shrouded with mist. The

delicate bat shapes of the pterodons glided in and out of the cloud

cover with barely a flutter of their membranous wings. Ernst stared

up at them, his face a mask of puzzled concentration. What would

Dr. Ernst Cohen have made of them? They aren't really pterodons.

There are other oddities. He'd have loved it here--

"They woke him twice," Sylvia said. "Maybe if they'd just left him

cold--"

"We did need him. We did," Cadmann said. But Ernst wasn't

crew. He could have slept through, but they had a problem with

one bank of frozen embryos and woke him, and he'd solved that,

and they'd chilled him again, and then there was another problem--

And as good a man as ever lived follows me around to carry

samples. Son of a bitch--

A square kilometer of plastic-coated solar cells glittered silver on

the hills above the Colony. Today's sunshine meant independence

from the fission power plants of the landers. An actual fusion plant

would be constructed within the next four months. Then the

Colony would be fully established, and the spread of man across

the face of Tau Ceti Four could really begin.

--Across Camelot, anyway. Eighty kilometers of stormy ocean

separated the island from the mainland. A New Guinea-sized island

was quite ambitious enough for humankind's first interstellar

colony. Zack had known what he was doing. Isolate the problems .

. .

So where were the problems?

"Snow up there," Cadmann said, shading his eyes as he gazed

up into the eternal clouds at the top. Skis. We didn't bring skis. We

have plastics. Carlos can make me a pair of skis.

Sylvia handed him back his camera. Voice carefully neutral, she

said, "You don't have to go to the continent, Cadmann. There's

plenty for you to do around the camp."

"Nothing that any other able body couldn't do."

"You're not a geologist. You'd be doing grunt work anyway." She

looked down at him, sighed in exasperation and gave him her hand

for balance as he stood. "Do you just want to go hunting

dinosaurs?"

"Sure! What boy doesn't want to bag a brontosaurus?" He

slipped the camera back into its holster at his side. "Sometimes I

wish we'd brought fetuses for a kodiak, or a few mountain lions . .

He was smiling as he said it, but Sylvia wondered.

Cadmann brushed his hand through thick black hair. There was

no gray in it, but his face was sun-cured leather. His body was as

young as a daily hour of intensive exercise could make it. He could

remember when he hadn't needed regular exercise to maintain the

natural tone. Now, at the adjusted age of forty-two, he was

seriously considering nudging that up to an hour and a half. I'm

slowing down, he thought. She's carrying another man's baby, and

I'd rather be with her than . . . Mary Ann Eisenhower? He thought

of four or five women who had made their intentions clear. Phyllis

McAndrews. Jean Patterson, willowy blond agronomist rumored to

give the best massage on the planet. He just wasn't interested.

Time wounds all heels. The glands must be drying up.

Sylvia grinned back. "Only real gentlemen refuse to notice when a

lady is slowing them down." Ernst stood carefully out of earshot.

His intelligence was gone, but not his manners. She jerked her

thumb at the pair of freshly caught silver-and-black torpedo shapes

hanging over Ernst's back. Fifteen and twenty pounds, at a guess.

One still gaped; the gills still fluttered, too far back on its body . . .

they didn't look that much like earthly salmon, but no other

creature of Earth fit either . . . "Tell you what. I'll fix dinner tonight.

Everybody to the beach for a samlon roast."

She linked her arm with Cadmann's as they marched down the

side of the hill. He grinned maliciously. "Are you sure Terry won't

mind that?"

"Oh, come now. I'm just a poor pregnant lady biologist who

appreciates the presence of a strong man--and Terry's known you

for years."

"I may not be as safe as you think."

She snorted. "Fat chance. When I'm sure you want my body and

not my mind, I'll faint."

He looked at her appraisingly. "Which way will you fall?"

"Hush."

They laughed. The sun shone more brightly than usual.

"Golden fields. Silver rivers."

Cadmann laughed. "I suppose. I see a year-round water supply

and fertile croplands."

"You would."

Somebody 'd better.

The stream flowed past the camp and over the bluff above

Miskatonic River, the greatest body of running water on the island.

Eight kilometers to the south the grasslands ended in a burnt,

blackened semicircle of firebreak and beyond that the crest of giant

brambles began. The colonists had chosen a beautiful place to start

a new world, lovely enough to make him feel . . . almost at peace.

Times like this confused him. It was a fight not to shut down his

thoughts and find some project totally involving, and preferably a

little risky.

Slender fingers dug into his arm. "Hey, big guy. Don't go

brooding on me. This was supposed to be our walk day. Stay with

me for a while, hmm?" He was still quiet. "Tau Ceti Four. Avalon."

She rolled the words over her tongue.

"It's a good name."

"But?"

"Don't know."

"Not poetic enough?"

He helped her over a rock. It took effort to focus on the game

she was inviting him to play. "I've read poetry--"

"Kipling." She laughed. "It's all right. I know you're better read

than me. And I'll keep your secret. I don't know, Avalon's all right.

But there are others. Beautiful, exciting places from history, or

legend. Shangri-La, Babylon . . ."

"Xanadu?"

"Sure. Pellinore."

He shook his head. "You must mean Pellucidar. Pellinore was a

king. One of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table."

"Well . . . maybe so. But I don't mean Pellucidar, either. There

aren't really any predators on the island. Except for the turkeys

and other critters we've seeded, there just isn't a damn thing

bigger than an insect. Even the plant life. Low grass and thorn

trees. It's like a blank slate. Or a park. Cadmann--"

He asked, "Does that bother you?"

"Well, the worst we can do is mess up one island. It isn't like

we'd turned all those Earth creatures loose on the mainland."

"I meant too perfect. Why do you care?"

"Well--"

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Thoumustnowlooktotheneedsofthenation;HeredwellInolongerforDestinycallethme!BidthoumywarriorsaftermyfuneralpyreBuildmeaburial-cairnhighonthesea-cliff'shead;SothatthewayfarersBeowulf'sBarrowHenceforthshallnameit.ThouartthelastofallthekindredofWagmund!Wyrdhassweptallmykinallthebravechiefsaway!NowImustf...

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the Legacy of Heorot

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