A trio of little Joey skeletons greeted him. They were snugged between branch and bole, dead in their own nest.

"Definitely bee country," Cadmann said soberly.

They continued along, spotted several more abandoned bee nests and more caches of old skeletons. Often the bones lay as if carefully placed by some nitpicking archeologist. Bees didn't leave enough on the bones for it to be worth any scavenger's time to drag them away.

They reached a lower shelf, even thicker with trees and brush and grass. Then took another steep decline, and reached another shelf.

And more bones.

It was Cadmann who first mentioned that the animal sounds had died away.

"You noticed it too?" Chaka asked. I was wondering if that was just my own morbid imagination."

"No, it's not." Cadmann looked back at Aaron, trailing slightly to their left, a thoughtful expression on his face. Whatever he thought, he was keeping to himself.

The terrain was looking more and more... well, picked over. No pterodons. No birdles. No Joeys. Nothing. The back of Cadmann's neck itched.

"Look," Chaka said soberly.

Chaka pointed at a skeleton the size of a small deer, with short forelegs. It poked out of the ground. Chaka knelt and dug carefully with his knife, and unearthed the rest. Cadmann turned his head away.

This creature had died digging into the ground. Its head still remained, and its shoulders, a sort of monkey-looking thing with sharp paws. The attempt to claw its way into the ground had failed. The mummy was hollowed out, its mouth still open, clotted with dirt. Its eyes were open. Staring into its own grave.

Chaka made a blowing sound and stood, wiping his hands on his pants. He walked in a widening spiral, and found two more skeletons, of similar creatures that hadn't been as successful at burrowing. "This is wrong," Chaka said. He walked to the ridge. Below them was another flattened area, and then a cliff. Distantly, they heard rushing water.

Cadmann said, "Lovecraftian, maybe. What are you thinking?"

"Wrong." Chaka ran down the slope, digging in his heels. He saw Aaron skid down after him. There was a tight, controlled expression on Aaron's face, one that Cadmann hadn't seen before. Some game was going on here, and he was one step behind the other players.

He scrambled down the next decline, using roots and rocks to steady and slow his descent. He watched, increasingly disturbed, as Chaka poked about. This was a lushly wooded area, girdled with bushes and trees and grass. There were signs that it had been lusher still, but some of the vegetation had been badly chewed.

Except for the distant mournful skaw of a pterodon, it was just too damned quiet.

They found bones. Bones of creatures mouse-sized, rabbit-sized, and one as big as a wolf.

Chaka pulled his belt knife and cut into the wolf-sized creature's rear leg bone. He poked around in the dark interior. "Until we've got a better word, we can call this stuff marrow. This is still moist. I think that all of this death happened within the last seventy-two hours."

Chaka pushed himself up and walked out to the edge of the cliff, looking out over the valley beneath. His face was deeply troubled.

"Weather's getting bad," he murmured, so low that Cadmann almost couldn't hear him.

Aaron had heard. "True enough."

"Ordinarily, the bees build nests, raze an area for maybe a decade, and then move on. robably spawn a dozen queens each, or however they work it. But in times like this... "

"What?" Cadmann asked. He was afraid he wasn't going to like the answer.

Chaka looked back at Aaron, standing only a few feet behind him, and he shrugged. "The plains will flood. A lot of the nests will drown—no, they won't. The bees will have water traps built into them, for sure. And as soon as the first water recedes, the bees will migrate. Massively. Some of them are starting to expand westward now. See? The animals up here never evolved to deal with bees this way. A few Joeys are one thing—we're talking about the eradication of square kilometers of wildlife. It's been two hours since we've seen a single living animal, gentlemen. Those rain clouds? Those are the beginning. And the bees want the high ground.

Probably this whole region belongs to them, every fifty years. Then the population pressure drives them back to the lowlands. But when the rains hit... "

Aaron's voice was very flat. "What?"

"The bees are spreading everywhere, breeding whole hordes of queens and seeding them on the wind. These are species that never evolved to deal with bees, because bees were never here. The grendels—I've figured that out. There are so many other animals breeding their hearts out that the grendels aren't eating any of their samlon, so they're all turning into grendels. Edgar's been raving about the weird weather. We've seen it. Those bees are getting ready for the winds to scatter them everywhere!"

Cadmann nodded. "Sounds right."

Little Chaka spoke very carefully. "I have to tell Father. Do you realize that we're going to have to evacuate the mainland? And I mean right now—"

Cadmann caught a motion out of the corner of his eye, and it was a fatal half a second before he realized what was happening. Aaron, incredibly, was unshouldering his rifle. Chaka's rifle was in his hands. He was raising it, even as Cadmann felt his mouth form the word: "No!"

Chaka was closest to Aaron, and Aaron shot him first. The biologist had only begun to react when the bullet snapped his head back. Chaka's entire body straightened. He tumbled back over the cliff, the entire left half of his head a wet red ruin.

Cadmann had already leveled his grendel gun as the sound of the first explosion hit his ears. Chaka had not yet fallen. As Cadmann fired, Aaron dropped to one knee. The grendel charge went over Aaron's head. Cadmann corrected his aim and fired again.

He had aimed for the center of mass, and the center of mass for Aaron Tragon was covered by the rifle. Aaron flew back, hands splaying, hair flying out with the electrical shock. His mouth spread in a wide O as the dart released its charge. Aaron landed on his butt, three feet away. He shook himself like a big, sick dog.

Cadmann thumbed another dart into the breech and realized that it would take five seconds for it to charge. Grendel guns were backup weapons, used as part of a team effort.

Five seconds would be too late.

Chaka's gun. Cadmann dove for it, but Aaron was closer. Aaron screamed, scrambled up, and dove, and both pairs of hands closed on it at the same time.

For a second they tugged at it, their faces only inches apart. Then Cadmann released it and swung his right fist, connecting with Aaron's jaw just below the ear. Aaron's head snapped back, and his grip on the gun loosened, but as he went back his right leg whipped around, and the foot connected with Cadmann's face. Cadmann lost control of the gun, and rolled back, screaming as his shoulder thumped against the ground. His bad shoulder. Shakily he got to his feet at the same time that Aaron did.

Aaron's hands were curled loosely, spread roughly shoulder distance apart. Ready to chop, or punch, or grasp. His right shoulder was leading, about thirty percent of his weight on the front foot.

Cadmann felt sad, and tired, and old. Christ. Of course. Aaron was one of Toshiro's karate students. Probably his prize student, excelling at hand-to-hand combat as he did at everything else. Aaron was probably stronger than him, faster than him, fresher than him. Aaron would be dead in about twenty seconds.

Cadmann reached to his belt sheath and drew the Gerber Australian Bowie knife. Nine and a half inches of steel. He had carried it since Africa, a present from one of the NCOs he had lost in Mozambique. It felt heavy in his hand.