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.Carey Lou almost felt afraid in that moment.Not of grendels or of some other bogey being out in the jungle, but of Aaron himself.That, of course, was crazy.So he asked no more questions as they carried load after load of children back up the mountain, and when it was his turn he didn’t question, had run out of questions, and wanted only to squeeze into his seat, and make himself small.Justin piloted the skeeter, for which Carey Lou was grateful.Whatever was going on, Justin knew about it.He could tell in the rigid set of his shoulders.The skeeter spiraled into the air.Ordinarily he loved flying.But this time there was no joy.There was nothing but fear.Why won’t they tell us.What’s wrong.They circled Robor.There were two pairs of guards on each side, facing away from the craft, grendel guns at the ready.Their expressions just about froze his heart.He had thought that Robor looked funny, almost comical.A big grendel.A big dragon, the biggest that ever lived.But there was nothing funny about it now.They landed behind the two guards, and were immediately whisked into Robor’s shadow by Jessica, who looked almost as pale and emotionless as Justin.Again he was struck with the contrast.Jessica and Justin looked scared.Aaron looked.intrigued?They ushered him up the gangplank, and into the hold, and he went to the nearest knot of kids and lowered his voice, asking, “Does anyone know what’s going on?”He found Heather, who tried to smile in memory of a magic evening.She looked as frightened as he felt.“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.“Somebody’s dead.”Carey Lou went to the front window and pressed his palms against the glass.Who? Who was dead.He remembered who had stayed behind.With her baby.The room swam.“What in the hell was it? I won’t believe in invisible grendels!” Cadmann squeezed his eyes shut, and massaged his temples with stiff fingers.There was a monster of a headache coming on.They’d seen every kind of grendel, and he was far too close to believing in this one, too.There was a numb sensation in his chest, something spreading as if he had been struck there.He wanted to scream, to foam, to throw something.to do anything but sit here and wait.Wait as they received sketchy video broadcasts of skeeters relaying children back to the Robor.Wait, and pray to a half-forgotten God.“Not everything on this freezing planet is a grendel,” Cadmann said, tasting the thought.It felt right: real.“We don’t have any idea of what’s really here.We’ve got to stop acting like grendels are the be-all and end-all of lethality.”Hendrick grabbed his arm.“What in the hell are you talking about?”“We’ve been afraid of grendels,” Cadmann said.“To that extent, we’ve probably blinded ourselves to what is actually out there.over there.We never went and looked for ourselves, and I think that the grendels became a kind of bogeyman.” The screens showed Robor taking off now, safe.Safe from what lived in the ground.Have they gathered her bones? he asked himself.God.I hope they gathered her bones.But of course they would.Jessica would insist and Aaron would have done it.Thank God Aaron was there.He felt numb.Doors were slamming in his mind, and behind them raged fear and grief.If he wasn’t careful, a door might creak open.Behind one of them was Linda’s birth.Such a small, wrinkled, bulbous thing she had been.And his first touch, his first scent of her.she would have been a breech birth, but for the prenatal diagnostics, and God.He slammed that door in his mind, and the one with invisible grendels behind it too.Pure horror fantasy.You’d have to be crazy.Came up, hearing the hubbub in the room.and then sank down again, fighting as his eyes grew hot, and then flooded, all of his efforts to keep his tears under control as futile as their attempts to tame this fucking planet.It was no good.None of it was any good, and he had to leave the control room, which had grown crowded.The news had to have reached every corner of the camp by now.Razelle Weyland would be flying in from the lumber preserves, and her brother Michael from over at the slope camp.People were looking at him with an emotion in their faces that he had never seen there before: Pity.Shock.They wanted to touch him, to comfort him, but with every step he felt the shields sliding down, even as the shields around his heart crumbled.The images were coming so fast, too fast, as if there were twenty years of tension, twenty years of fear stored up inside of him, and now that it had clawed free and claimed his youngest, there was nothing to hold back the pain anymore, and then.He saw her, running up to him.Linda was just a baby, and her round and shining face, the diapers bunched up between her chubby thighs, her little chubby arms outstretched to him, her smile stretching that round little face.Her eyes so blue, her mother’s eyes.He held out his hands to her, stretched out his arms.Stretched his arms across the table, his fists closed hard on the edge, his good ear pressed flat against wood, eyelids like tiny fists closed hard around red-hot embers.The trip back to the island was subdued.The children were wrapped in blankets.Some of them cried.All knew, by now, what had happened to Linda and Joe.Jessica came to sit next to him.Justin looked at her, and she felt the oddest sensation from him.Almost as if he were a stranger, rather than her brother.His eyes weren’t hot, or cold.They were just eyes.Black holes, gathering data.Justin’s hand strayed over and over again to his pistol, palm resting on it as if death might follow them into the air, come aboard Robor and follow them back to Camelot.“Where were you?” he asked quietly.“You know where,” she said.“Pranksters,” he said.“Justin-even if I had been there, right there, I couldn’t have done anything.”“Of course.”“Justin-she was my sister too! Don’t shut me out.Please.”“She shouldn’t have been there alone.”“She was not alone.She was with Joe!”“You’re right.You’re right.” He wiped his hand over his face.And for the first time that she could remember, Jessica hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on behind her brother’s eyes.Was he blaming her? Himself? Imagining what he was going to say to Father? Was he thinking of the bones in the hold, all that remained of their baby sister?She reached out to him, touched him gently on his shoulder, and was absurdly happy when he didn’t brush her hand away.Aaron came up behind her.“Jessica,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”She was torn between Justin and Aaron for a moment.Then she smiled almost apologetically, and said, “I’ll be right back.”Justin’s gaze slid coldly from Jessica to Aaron and back again, and then he nodded, so shallowly that it was almost no motion at all.And then, in some way that she couldn’t completely explain, Jessica knew what Justin was thinking.And feeling.She knew it, but couldn’t quite make the thought rise up to consciousness.That might have hurt a little too much.The entire colony was on the beach as Robor floated into the bay.Cadmann drew his coat collar up around his jaw
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