Berserker - Earth Descended Part 13

Ten.

Eating his usual breakfast, Bart felt for the first time a little anxious about meeting the people he was going to find waiting for him in the compound. If they were all another year older, they wouldn't be so much like kids any more, butpeople with whom he would have to interact almost as an equal. He shook off his misgivings and walked out.

The kids weren't enormously bigger today, but it was certainly time to celebrate their collective tenth birthday, and they reminded Bart of this right after their first whoops of welcome. They had a big calendar drawn on the wall now, and had been crossing off days, and there was no doubt that another year had pa.s.sed.

Today when several of the boys ganged up on Bart in a rough game they easily pushed him around. Not that there had been any plan on their part to gang up on him, or that they were not still impressed by his strength.

And this year there were certain moments, talking to the girls, when, oddly, Bart felt almost bashful.

Eleven Suddenly some of the boys, Baruch and Olen in particular, were almost as tall as Bart himself. And Deirdre and Sigrid were starting to round out into the shapes of women; only just starting, but you could tell the process had begun.

Right in the middle of the cake-eating, the birthday party turned solemn, and there was a long sober discussion of early memories and hopes for the future.

All of them except Bart shared as some of their major lifetime memories the things that he had seen during the last eleven days-the old nursery, the parental images and the guardian machines, the toys and teaching devices. Of course he had missed the greater part of their history, but he had a sampling of it.

They sat there soberly sipping their sweet party drinks and talking. When it came Bart's turn to recount his early memories, he explained that the Ship must have scrambled them for him in some way, erasing large sections. "I don't even know if I was raised out of the machines like you, or if my biological parents were on board, or if I was born on Earth."

No one could give him any help with those questions. The talk went on for a long, moody time before they got around to playing games.

Twelve.

Bart found himself looking up at Baruch, and level-eyed at a number of the other kids. The Ship was allowing them more freedom now, and everyone except Trac, who had a stomach-ache, had come to meet Bart right outside his room, the doors of which could only be opened by the Ship. Even Tang was there, though hobbling on a broken leg he said he had got by falling two decks down a stairwell. Ship's medical machines had neatly fixed the bones and told him he was healing.

Today the kids' collective att.i.tude was at first so grown-up and businesslike that Bart was almost intimidated. They explained to him that they had just formed themselves into a society, modeled on old societies of Earth that they had studied through the teaching machines. Baruch had been elected president, and others chosen to fill at least half a dozen additional offices.

Even the birthday party began in an atmosphere of formality, but things soon loosened up. Bart was still stronger than Baruch, and could outwrestle him with an effort. But stocky Kichiro was now slightly stronger than he.

Thirteen.

Chao, this month's president, announced early in the morning that this year's party was going to be a thirteenth birthday celebration for Bart as well as all the others. All the others chorused agreement, and Bart went along without protest, though he knew full well he had pa.s.sed his real thirteenth birthday many months ago. He had not the slighest idea whether there had been any party to mark the event, so he enjoyed this one as his due.

All through the day the girls paid him a great deal of attention, to which he reacted confusedly, enjoying it all one moment and feeling tongue-tied and awkward the next. He could tell some of the boys were getting jealous.

Every night recently he had been saying goodnight with the feeling of saying farewell, knowing that never again would he meet the same people he was leaving. Tonight he tried to stay with them, but one of the machines came and took him gently by the arm and led him from the group toward his room. He looked round at the other children's faces, and saw sympathy but no help, and knew he had to go.

Fourteen.

Every morning now he went to greet some strangers, boys and girls he had heard about indirectly but had never seen before. They resembled other kids he had met yesterday, and had their names, but that was all. Their bodies were melting and altering almost while Bart watched, flesh inflating and stretching over elongating bones; boys' faces sprouting elementary whiskers while their voices deepened, girls'

b.r.e.a.s.t.s growing, girl's legs curving and rounding to spell out disturbing secret messages in visual code.

And today they could literally talk over his head. Bart was small for his age. That's what-who was it?-always used to say.

During the party, right in the middle of the ice cream and cake, a fistfight broke out between Fritz and Kichiro. They slugged away at each other so hard that Bart saw he wouldn'tbe able to stand up to either of them for ten seconds.

The machines just stood around like dummies and made no move to halt the fight. Fay, the current president, had to yell repeatedly to get other kids to step in and break it up.

As soon as things had settled downa little, some of the kids began drifting out of the room in pairs, a boy and a girl together kissing and maybe pawing at each other as they left. Bart felt strange and almost frightened. The kids that remained in the dining hall talked and giggled and talked, talked, talked. The conversation was about nothing important, but still it seemed important that it be going on.

Edris came to sit near Bart and talk talk talk with him. A red ribbon tied up her brown hair, but a few strands fell loose down as far as the halter that covered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Solon got jealous and came over and started an argument. Soon he and Bart were trying to think up insults to call each other.

Bart shoved Solon, who was not too big for him to think of fighting, and Solon punched Bart on the cheek, so his mouth started to bleed inside. Bart hit back, and then they grabbed each other and wrestled in deadly earnest to see who could get the other down. With furniture in the way they couldn't come to any clean conclusion. Bart saw that a couple of machines were hovering near, and Edris was watching with enjoyment. Pretty soon some of the big kids grabbed the combatants and broke up the fight.

The social atmosphere was a little strained for the rest of the day, and Bart went back to his room earlier than usual, before the machines came to urge him along.

He sat on his room's one chair, arms folded. "Ship, I'm not being a parent. What am I really supposed to be doing?"

"Further instructions will be given you as required."

"Are you still going to wake me up only once a year?"

"The mission is proceeding according to its revised schedule."

He got up and tried to walk out of the room again, but found the door immovable.

He wondered if something vitalcould be wrong with the Ship. Might not its planning computers have broken down like so many common machines and be making hideously wrong decisions? Though his bland, smoothed-out memory suggested this was impossible, Bart went worriedly to bed. Sleep was still mechanically fast in coming.

Fifteen.

Solon had grown alarmingly large and it was with relief that Bart saw him smile in a friendly if distracted way. The inside of Bart's mouth was still sore from yesterday but Solon said h.e.l.lo as if he didn't recall their fight at all.

Bart's former opponent had other matters on his mind, and returned quickly to a conversation he was conducting in fierce whispers with Fritz and Himyar and one or two other boys. It was shortly concluded, and the bunch of them took off, running grimly and purposefully down a corridor.

Bart looked around and realized there was no one left in the common room with him but half a dozen girls, most of whom looked worried.

Galina and Vivian came over to Bart and started trying to explain. It seemed that the boys were now divided into two gangs, of six members each, and between the gangs existed something like open war.

"They've been fighting this way off and on for months now," Galina told him. "Always getting black eyes and b.l.o.o.d.y noses. Today looks like it might be one of the worst. It started today over whether we should have another birthday party or not." Galina, who was rather plain, was solemn most of the time, usually giving the impression she favored sobriety and order. "And the trouble is that now half the girls have gotten involved too."

Helsa and Lotis also came over, and the girls debated whether there was anything they could do to stop impending hostilities. All around them the Ship was quiet, ominously so, Bart felt. He stood by, feeling dangerously out of it all. He didn't even know the layout of the pa.s.sages the girls talked about as they tried to guess where their male friends might be planning fights or ambushes.

While the other girls kept on talking to one another, Lotis came to Bart and with a gesture got him to follow her off into the Ship.

"Where're we going?" he asked, supposing some plan for peace-keeping or hiding out was being put into effect.

"Something I want to show you." She was just barely taller than he, with straight black hair and Chinese eyes. Shortly they came out in a wide, open s.p.a.ce, a meeting of corridors where, Bart saw, the kids had improvised a swimming pool. Decking had been taken up, and a room in the lower level flooded. Lotis pointed out how water-proof patching had been stuck in where necessary, and a water pipe tapped to fill the pool. The water looked deeper than a man's head.

Bart was impressed, but somehow disturbed, too, that they had done this much on their own. "Didn't the machines do anything to stop you?"

A flirt of her head dismissed the powers of the machines. "I'm going in. Do you know anything about swimming? People on Earth used to do it all the time. The records show them doing it in the oceans even."

Lotis pulled off her scanty clothing and slid naked down into the water. She turned over on her back and paddled, smiling knowingly up at Bart while he stared down in helpless fascination. Female nudity was not among the things on which his memory could give him rea.s.surance. His mind lurched in turmoil this way and that.

Suddenly he heard running feet quite near at hand and turned to see a figure dash out of a side corridor.

Fritz was bigger and stronger even than a year ago, but his eyes were wide and frightened; he scarcely looked at either Bart or Lotis, but came running around the pool as if pursued.

He was. Kichiro and Basil and Mai came pounding after him, carrying bludgeons made of the unscrewed legs of chairs, their faces trans-formed in the fury of the hunt. Bart started to run too; he realized almost at once this was a mistake but it was too late-someone, responding to his flight with instinctive pursuit, had grabbed him from behind and he was flattened on the deck beneath his captor.

Kichiro had tackled Bart, while Basil and Mal closed in on Fritz. It sounded like all of them were yelling.

Fritz broke away and fled for another corridor, but Basil was too fast and blocked his path. Fritz lunged at him in desperation and before Basil could swing his club he was slammed up against the bulkhead in a choking grip. The club dropped from Basil's hand, and Bart, pinned on the deck under Kichiro's kneeling weight, could see the whites of his eyes seeming to expand.

Mal stepped close to the struggling pair and earnestly swung his plastic chair leg. The impact made an ugly sound and Fritz let go of his enemy, staggered back and fell.

Kichiro had started to get up, and Bart squirmed out from beneath him, tore free of a grasping hand, and ran. His one thought was to reach the safety of his own room. He had to pa.s.s between the group of boys and the pool, where Lotis, open-mouthed, clung to the side and watched.

Mal, turning wild-eyed, saw Bart coming and raised his club for another swing- None of them had seen the machine approach, but now it was on hand as if it had popped out of the many-paneled wall. It took the swinging club from Mai's hand as if it were a feather and in the same instant shoved him violently back, so that he stumbled over Fritz's unmoving legs and fell.

"Youhurt me," Mal croaked stupidly from the floor. His hand was sc.r.a.ped raw, oozing blood, where it had collided with the gripper of the machine.

The Ship said loudly to them all: "I have authority to sacrifice individuals, if I judge it necessary for the good of the mission."

No one moved or spoke as the machine walked through their shocked silence to bend over Fritz. As it picked him up, Bart saw that his eyes were half open but unseeing, and his mouth was slack.

It walked off down a corridor, carrying Fritz in its arms. His limbs hung down, utterly limp. The other boys stirred and followed, their weapons left behind. Bart heard a slosh and trickle behind him: Lotis getting out of the pool. He did not turn to look. The machine went on for a few score meters, then stopped, facing a panel in the wall.

"Ship," Kichiro said, "that's a disposal chute." But Fritz was already gone.

Ignored by the others, Bart ran back to his room and sat there, shivering and staring at the wall. The Ship served him his dinner without comment. He ate a little, and then soon turned to his bed, where sleep and forgetfulness never failed to come.

Sixteen.

All twenty-three of the kids were waiting for him in the corridor when he stuck his head out of his room to see what might be going on. But it was all right.

"No one's going to try to kill youthis time," was one of the first things said, by a strong young man with thickening patches of dark beard on cheek and chin. With just a minor effort Bart could recognize the speaker as Kichiro, who, as Bart soon found out, was this year's president. They were having elections only once a year now, he was soon informed.

Fights were evidently much less frequent also, Bart discovered to his great relief. He overheard part of an argument as to who had tried to kill him last year; that was the closest thing to a fight that happened on this birthday.

He also soon found out that birthdays, like gang wars, were now considered kid stuff, and today there was no party. Instead there was a good, elaborate lunch, with ice cream produced unpretentiously for dessert.

Talk turned to Bart, and his purpose in the world. He repeated to the kids everything that the Ship had ever told him about that purpose, which wasn't much.

"I wonder," Basil said to him, "what the Ship'll do with you now? I mean we obviously don't need you any more as a father or model or whatever to help us grow."

"I dunno," said Bart, taking a little more ice cream. The kids' eyes were all sympathetic, but still their silent gaze made him uncomfortable. "Whenever I ask Ship about it, it just says the mission is proceeding as per revised schedule, or something like that."

Sigrid nodded knowingly. "Ship's that way. If it doesn't want to answer something for you, it just won't."

Seventeen.

This morning it was a relief to meet a group of stable, sane-looking people, not too much different from their namesakes he had said good-bye to the night before.

Bart soon noticed that Basil was missing from the group. "Oh, he's all right," said Ora rea.s.suringly. "He'll be along for lunch. He goes studying the stars."

"The stars?"

"We've found a way to reach the outer hull. In one place there's a gla.s.s port where you can see the outside of the Ship, and the stars too, of course."

Bart could call up a plain picture of what stars were; sometime, somehow, he had seen them.

"What do you think about the stars, Bart?" Tang asked him patronizingly.

He didn't have a quick answer, and Armin said: "Look, we've been working on this problem of the Ship and where it's going for seventeen years now. And Bart's put in how much time? About seventeen days."

And there was laughter, not unkind.

Eighteen When Bart mentioned that he thought it would be fun to learn to swim, they took him to the newly remodeled and enlarged pool. Everyone was matter-of-fact about undressing and after clothes had been off for a minute or two it all seemed practically normal to Bart.