Berserker - Earth Descended Part 14

Resting on the pool's edge after some strenuous splashing, they took up again last year's discussion about the Ship and its purposes. Bart got the idea that now they talked a lot on this subject. Today he remarked that maybe soon they would be having children, so eventually people would fill up the empty rooms still waiting on the other levels.

Fuad shook his head. "The Ship's told us we're all sterile-know what that means?"

"You can't make any babies."

"That's right. Girls and men both. We can do all the s.e.x we want, but nothing can ever happen from it."

Later alone, Bart asked the Ship: "Am I sterile too? I mean, am I going to be, when..."

"No."

That was a definite answer at last, but to his old questions he still got only the old answers.

Nineteen.

Bart's chronic worry that his life was going fundamentally wrong was lightened when he met his shipmates today. They were now so obviously adults that he could produce an inner sigh of relief and decide to leave the worrying to them.

Most of the teaching machines had been removed. At the few remaining, people were abstractedly at work, printouts and papers stacked around them.

As soon as the word spread that Bart had joined them for the day, most of the adults abandoned other activities and came towering around him, smiling and calling greetings, squeezing his shoulders and ruffling his hair. A number of people wanted to show him things.

Basil took him to see the stars. They went drifting, swimming through a part of the Ship where gravity was turned off, and though there was air Basil made him wear a breathing device just in case. Through the gla.s.s Bart looked along the curves of the hull, unreal in their great size and distances, and at the stars that looked even more unreal, like a vast bright scattering of powdered paint.

After lunch he asked to go swimming again. Lotis, in the pool with him and others, now had a peculiar slightly mottled look at her thighs that Bart eventually decided must be caused by fat under the skin. And on her left thigh was the thread-like red tracery of an enlarged vein.

After dinner Baruch and Tang took him aside "Bart-do you really like this one-day-a-year-life ?"

"I dunno. It's all right, I guess. The Ship must have some reason. It's taking care of us all, right?" He might have said something else, but Ship heard everything.

The men exchanged glances over his head. With several of the girls they walked him back to his room, when Ship called for him, and almost tucked him into bed.

Twenty.

He learned soon after rejoining the others that Tang and Ora had been killed, some months ago, trying to work their way into a part of the Ship from which humans were ordinarily sealed out.

"Were they trying...I mean, did it have anything to do with me? With waking me up more often, or..."

"No." Fay shook her head definitely. "Oh no, Bart, don't worry about that."

The thought hadn't really worried him. Actually it had generated some hope.

"They were trying to get to the far end of the Ship," Ranjan explained, "You know, the aft, as the old records call it. Have you seen any of the old records? The part of the Ship where the drive controls and so many other things seem to be located."

They explained to Bart such elementary knowledge of the Ship as they had been able to piece together, and his understanding of it grew a little. He found out also that they meant to keep on trying to get through to the other parts of the Ship, and eventually to take over its control. That was a strange thought, and Bart wasn't at all sure how much he liked it.

Twenty-one.

It had been many days since his shipmates paid him as little attention as they did today. He was greeted cheerfully enough, but no crowd gathered around. A couple of people went with him to swim, ina pool that had again been remodeled and made safer and more pleasant.

He learned that some of the people were working hard to raise plants from seeds the Ship had long ago provided for their school biology program. They showed him the new garden. It held nothing ready to eat yet, but maybe next time he came.

He saw Kichiro limping by and heard that his knee had been lamed in some contest with another man, but whether it was a fight or a game Bart did not learn.

Twenty-two.

There were no beds in the old common-room any more, and Bart found that most of the people had paired off two-by-two, sleeping in more or less stable partnerships.

More noticeably, most of the people he talked to today had runny noses. Sharon told him that an experiment in the new biology lab had gone wrong and some viruses had escaped. Nothing to worry about, they a.s.sured him. He wasn't worried, really, not about viruses anyway.

All in all, it was a casual, low-pressure sort of day.

Twenty-three.

Lotis, working in the garden, wore shorts today, and he noticed that her legs and bottom were getting quite lumpy with fat. The red vein on her thigh had extended itself into a little tracery of defective blood vessels in the skin.

All the runny noses had dried up. Some medicine the people had made for themselves was ready for Bart in case he caught the infection too. He didn't.

"Maybe the Ship's still taking good care of you," Chao commented.

Twenty-four.

No one came down the corridor toward his room to meet him, but as soon as Bart had entered the general living area they all jumped out of hiding with cries of "Surprise!" and "Happy birthday!" It wasn't his birthday yet, but he soon understood that a sort of general birthday had been declared in which he was being invited to share.

"It's been ten years since we've had one, Bart," said Himyar. "A party, I mean. So we just thought it was time."

"We could make you an honorary fifteen," Fay put in. "Or how about an honorary twenty-four?"

"Have a gla.s.s of wine, Bart," said someone else.

"Wine?"

"Told you our garden was going to be a success."

"-oh, give him only a small one! He's too young-"

"-one gla.s.s won't hurt him-"

He realized after a while that some of the people were pa.s.sing around another kind of drug, something they sniffed up into their nostrils. But he stayed with his one gla.s.s of wine, which made him feel just dizzy and high enough to be wary of asking for any more.

The party went on practically all day, with games and jokes and songs. Bart no longer minded when people paired off and vanished for a while, their arms about each other. Their behavior was grownups'

doings now, not something in which he might possibly become involved. He went along with all the partying and had a good time. Still, now and then he caught himself wishing they would get down to business. Though he didn't know just what their business was.

Twenty-five.

This year his wish seemed to have been granted, for he got the impression of a lot of serious business going on. People were punching at computers and crouched over teaching machines, and in some rooms devices Bart couldn't identify had been set up.

He noticed that Olen's hairline was receding sharply, and wondered if the man had some kind of scalp disease. But he didn't ask.

In a large room away from the usual living area, Bart found Himyar working to form a towering metal sculpture, using a torch that showered and streamed electric flames. With this home-made device Himyar brushed the glowing metal into the shapes he wanted. Parts of the sculpture reminded Bart of flowers in the garden, or, again, of the curves of splashed water that lived momentarily when someone dived into the pool.

They talked for a time, and Himyar showed Bart some paintings Vivian had done. Himyar and Vivian spent most of their time working here or scrounging materials from every part of the Ship that they could reach; they had become known as the Artists.

"And Armin's an artist too, I suppose," said Himyar. "He's made himself a camera and goes around using it. Well, the Ship made some of the component systems for him, and the film."

"I'd like to see that."

Twenty-six.

n.o.body was working quite so hard today. Bart found an elaborate game in progress, a contest involving both physical and mental effort, with complicated rules. It had to do with dividing up the regularly occupied territory of the Ship between two contending factions or teams who struggled to gain more territory from each other. People sometimes were allowed or compelled to switch sides in the game. The dividing line between the territories was marked with bright tapes stuck on the decks and bulkheads, and moved back and forth as people won or lost at events like Indian wrestling-men were matched against men, girls against girls for the physical struggles-or asking each other difficult questions.

"Bart, be referee. Wasn't his foot off the deck just then?"

"Yep."

Powerful Kichiro, still limping on his trick knee, smiled and moved the tape into his opponents' territory by a distance of two wall panels.

"Hey, Bart!" It was Armin, approaching with something in his hand. "You never had a chance to see this.

Here's a picture I took of you at the last birthday party. We'll have to have another one of those sometime."

Bart looked. "You hadn't even started with the camera when we had the party. It must have been yesterday when you took this. I mean last year, for you guys."

"Hm. I guess you're right."

Twenty-seven.

He found some of the marker tapes still stuck up in place, but the game wasn't being played today and everyone seemed to have forgotten it. He met Fuad and Trac and was a little surprised to see how fat they both looked, with rolls of flesh above their shorts.

He thought of going down the pa.s.sageway that led to the stars again, but there was no breathing equipment in the locker where Basil had kept it earlier.

Baruch and Solon came along and asked what he was doing. They soon explained that the breathing equipment was being used in "engineering studies" to find out how to reach the more distant parts of the Ship.

Bart wanted to know more. They told him of the solid walls and sealed doors that cut off access to those regions, and how the Ship refused to discuss letting anyone go there. It had not tried to stop their engineering studies, though; whether it would interfere when they began to break through a wall remained to be seen.

Using explosives aboard a s.p.a.ceship was intrinsically dangerous; something important and irreplaceable might be damaged, or a compartment's air might explode into vacuum.

"That's how Ora and Tang were killed. And then I was getting some acid ready to eat through a wall, and it disappeared. I suspect some machine found it and took it away." Baruch shrugged, fatalistic but still determined. "But we'll see, we'll see." He did not sound or look at all discouraged.

Twenty-eight.