The contrast was dramatic. Where the first grendel brain had a complex web of tissue connecting different parts of the brain, the other was bare.
"Good Lord," Sylvia said. "I should have noticed—look at the bare one there. Doesn't it look as if that structure there was just made to have something wrap around it? Chaka, is that possible?"
"Is coevolution possible? Of course."
Katya giggled. "Could that fluke be, well, a fluke?"
"It could be, but I doubt that. We have examined three other parasitized grendels, and have found similar changes in them."
"And these are grendels which behaved abnormally?" Cadmann asked.
Chaka nodded. "We believe that the parasite might be interacting in a symbiotic manner, stimulating brain growth, promoting a higher order of intelligence. It's not an unmixed blessing though. One of those grendels must have been dying. The brain case was filled and the skull was being torn apart from internal pressure."
"So they have to be infected young?" Cadmann said.
"Just so, when the skull is still soft, still growing."
"Coevolution," Sylvia said. "Tens of thousands of years—"
"Or longer."
"Or longer. We never found any of those flukes in island grendels. Did we? Cassandra, grendel history. Gross anatomy. Abnormalities in brain structures of island grendels?"
"One with what appeared to be cancerous growth. Nothing else," the computer said.
"So, no flukes on Camelot," Sylvia said. "Are they common over here?"
Big Chaka waved again and the river fork appeared in relief. "Here," Big Chaka said, holding his voice steady against age, "the beaver grendels. They're not hunters. They're fisher folk. They're also cooperative, and a lot more intelligent than the grendels on Camelot were. That much is certain." He paused, and smiled thinly. "And this afternoon we found the same parasites in their waters." He displayed the image. The parasites were flattened ovals, something like a tapeworm. A ruler appeared beside one of the flukes: ten centimeters.
"The waters north of here swarm with them. We don't know what this means. Maybe something very bad. Maybe good. An intelligent grendel might learn that attacking humans means death. Such creatures can be taught. An intelligent grendel is also one which can travel further from its home waters without burning to death."
"Every silver lining has a cloud... " someone said.
"We will continue to look into this as we evaluate your new data."
"What about the bees?" Aaron called. "You said earlier today this might involve bees. I've been wondering how?"
"Patience," Chaka said. "I'm only now forming a theory. Note we have an abnormal grendel. We thought we understood grendels, and now it turns out we don't."
The cursor flicked, and the dissected grendel disappeared. Now they were looking at a delta-wing crab twice as large as a watermelon: a magnified "Avalon bee."
Big Chaka said, "Now, the bees are a problem of an entirely different order. They aren't really bees, of course. They're a flying version of the Avalon crab. They are highly organized. Some varieties are carnivorous."
Sylvia exclaimed, "Oh, don't tell us they're parasitized too!"
Chaka Senior smiled thinly. "No. I wouldn't do that. But they certainly have a level of organization that wouldn't embarrass any terrestrial bee colony. And that may be enough. Intelligence need not be the product of a single brain. A colony can behave intelligently."
He paused for a moment. "Indeed, in many ways you and I are colonies of dissimilar cells, and our—minds—may be the products of a number of independent actors. So may it be with infected grendels—and with bee colonies as well."
"Minsky," Little Chaka muttered. "A society of minds."
"You said a problem of a different order," Cadmann said. "What did you mean?"
"I think it is now clear that these are the creatures which killed Joe and Linda Sikes."
There was a general murmur, and Justin saw Edgar Sikes's head come up.
Edgar's fingernails must have been digging holes in the wooden table.
"Please explain," Cadmann said.
"Look at this," Little Chaka said, and the cursor danced over the image. It didn't look like a terrestrial bee at all. "A tough shell that sprouts fixed wings for gliding. Motor wings aft. The forelimbs are modified as claws. The key was my son's recording of this activity." The cursor moved again, and now there were animated holograms of a swarm of the bee-like creatures feeding on a dead grendel. With the grendel to give perspective they could now see that the "bees" were actually the size of Sylvia's palm, plum-sized, five to seven centimeters across: much bigger than the thumb-sized leaf cutters around Paradise. "They scavenge on grendels."
"So?"
"So... so if a grendel dies, burns itself up with speed, it isn't going to completely expend the oxidizer. The scavenger which eats grendels is going to have to develop a mechanism for metabolizing speed."
"Good Lord," Sylvia said.
Big Chaka slipped his glasses off, and polished them carefully. "What we think is that the bees... or whatever we decide to call them... are an order of necrophage flying pseudocrustacea. They like grendels for food, and either scavenge them, or trap and kill a grendel who can't get to water. Further, I believe that they've done it for millions of years, long enough to have either evolved a means either to produce speed themselves, or to store it. Store it and use it."
"Bees on speed," Cadmann said slowly. "Carnivorous bees on speed.
Christ on a crutch."
"What in hell is a bee?" Hal Preston asked.
"Come on, you know," Katya said. "There are hives of them out by the berry farms. Bees, you know, they fly and if you get too close to the hive they sting? You need them to fertilize fruit trees—"
"Here!" Edgar Sikes cut in impatiently. Among the holograms around Big Chaka appeared another: a Terrestrial flying insect as big as a dog. "Dr. Mubutu, you had to have some reason for calling them bees? And it sure wasn't the way they're built."
"No, it was the way they build," Big Chaka said. "Earthly bees make elaborate nests. They collect nectar from local plants and use it to make stuff they can store, They're stratified into castes, with a queen to lay all the eggs and drones to fertilize her and myriads of workers. Well, we know that these Avalon bees are stratified, though we don't have details yet. We've only studied the leaf-eating bees, but their nests are like underground cities. Edgar, they even have the bee trick of using antibiotics. Do you remember that?"
Trish touched Edgar's elbow; he bit back a venomous answer. " ‘Fraid not. Doctor."
"Honey would rot if bees couldn't mix the nectar with an antibiotic. Some Terrestrial bees even make their honey from carrion. Most Avalon bees make their honey from leaves, but they have their own antibiotic, and again, they can use it to preserve meat."
Edgar sat down abruptly. He looked gray. He'd be seeing the same images that were running behind Justin's own eyes. Linda Weyland and Joe Sikes thrashing within a dark fog; red-and-white bones falling to the ground; a fading buzz-saw sound as the black fog blows clear. Ten thousand flecks of human flesh flow into the ground to become dark incorruptible pools of viscous fluid...
Whispered conversations buzzed around him. Justin noticed Jessica staring at the holograms, frowning at what she had heard. Then, tentatively, she raised her hand. "Chaka. If we assume that the bees have been around for, say, a million years... mightn't that explain what happened to our mining apparatus?"