Read Beowulf's Children for Free Online Page B

skin, now it was a network of muscles, now it was a mere skeleton whipping eerily through the water. Now it was a jelly sac crowded with internal organs, and in the next second it was merely a nervous system, each branching node outlined in blue.
    Jessica lit a cigarette. It was machine-rolled but unfiltered. The tobacco field covered less than ten acres of the twelve thousand acres of cultivated land surrounding Camelot. There had been discussion as to whether the seeds should be grown at all. Most of the Earth Born didn't smoke and hated tobacco. Some were astonished to find there were tobacco seeds aboard Geographic. The same debate had preceded the hemp planting.
    Mankind's vices had accompanied him to the stars. Alcohol, nicotine, and marijuana existed on Avalon; likewise poppy fields and coca plants. The mountain ridges had been seeded with coffee. Pharmaceutical cocaine and morphine were too valuable medicinally. Hemp too hardy and useful a plant fiber. Tobacco... well, tobacco was tobacco.
    Jessica allowed herself a cigarette or two a day. You'd have to quadruple that level of consumption to find clinical deterioration of lung tissue, and it had been a century since anyone died of cancer anyway. As for the other drugs... well, they were a part of Man's history.
    "Terrible habit," Justin said. She nodded, and shook him out a butt.
    The pumps made small, moist rhythmic sounds, swishing murky water about in the egg tank.
    Chaka was totally absorbed: the rest of the world might as well have disappeared. Jessica said, "Listen, we'll check back with you, all right?"
    Ruth Moskowitz waited right outside the door for them, a bemused look on her round and pleasant face. She was five foot seven of clean-featured brunette. Attractive, but not pretty. Rounded, but not chubby. Competent, but not particularly bright as far as anyone could tell. Ruth was on the edge of everything, and not remarkable for anything but being Zack's daughter. She stripped off her work gloves. "It's beautiful," she said.
    "What's beautiful?" Justin asked.
    "The eel! Tell me about it."
    "Not much to tell," Jessica said. "It swam up the Amazon this morning, you know, right through the living room—Oh. The Amazon is a stream."
    "I've been to your house," Ruth said. "It must have been going to the pools above the Keep."
    "Yes, that's right."
    "What would it want?" Ruth mused, "There's nothing up there, just glacier."
    "Right again. Got to the headwaters and laid eggs."
    "Ooh. Wish I'd been there," Ruth said. "It's safe, then?"
    "Looks harmless enough. Chaka is looking into it."
    "I bet Daddy had a tizzy," Ruth said. "Municipal Standing Order 142." She looked puzzled. "He must have ordered you to kill it, but I can see it's still alive."
    "That's right," Jessica said.
    "Wish I'd been here," Ruth said again. Her comm card chirped. She lifted it, listened a moment, and said, "Yes, sir. I'll ask him." She smiled uncertainly at Jessica. "Got to ask Chaka something—"
    "Right. See you."
    Ruth went into the Biomed building. Justin and Jessica looked at each other and grinned. "Wish I'd been here," Justin said, his voice mocking Ruth's.
    "You're unkind," Jessica said, but she laughed. It was easy to laugh at Ruth.
    "You're the one who forgot she'd been to the Keep. She was there more than once, actually."
    "Years ago," Jessica said. "Look, you decided she couldn't be a Grendel Scout—"
    "We all did. You know she'd go straight to Zack if she learned what we do." Justin climbed the ladder to the top of pen number two, and sloshed his hand in the water until Hipshot, the small dark male of the dolphin pair, approached and rubbed against it. He stroked the dolphin carefully. "What do you think, boy? Think you'll give Quanda a tumble?"
    Jessica sat next to him. They looked down on Avalon Town.
    The main colony boasted almost three hundred separate dwellings now, and another went up every month or so.
    A hundred and thirty-seven of the original two hundred remained