The Children of the Company Part 27

And, no, he'd never had vaccinations of any kind. He didn't need them. He was engineered to be disease-free, with an antibody system much more aggressive and powerful than ordinary mortals had. He'd never been ill a day in his life! So why should there be any need to give the child inoculations now, especially as he was afraid of such things, like any little boy?

The answer, of course, was that he would not be permitted to attend kindergarten until he'd had the inoculations. They were required by law. Moreover, the kindergarten Anna and Geert had chosen for Hendrick now refused to take him, and in fact filed suit against the Karremans family for lying on the application form about his legal status. No use to explain that they hadn't thought they were lying; as far as they were concerned, Hendrick was really their son, and wasn't that what mattered?

Naive idiots. We did our best, Labienus and I, at defusing the problems caused by superst.i.tion and ignorance, but really the mounting lawsuits-filed seemingly by everyone, anyone who felt they might have reason to suspect that Hendrick's creation infringed on their civil liberties-and bureaucratic stalemates were another matter entirely. I don't know what we'd have done if the situation had continued.

We took the most outrageous of the lawsuits, the one demanding Hendrick be euthanized, and had a field day with it: posters of Hendrick's sad little face with the words CONDEMNED TO DIE!! screaming below, and-even more effective-posters of Hendrick's picture side by side with that of Anne Frank, and the same caption. I think it might have done the trick, actually, for within a few days of that second poster the Anne Frank Kindergarten publicly announced that it would be happy to accept Hendrick Karremans as a pupil.

This occurred on New Year's Eve, so Labienus dropped by the house with Champagne to celebrate; though by this time Anna and Geert were in such emotional states they didn't particularly feel like celebrating.

Labienus took them upstairs for a firm talk about future strategies, and I was left to amuse Hendrick.

We stood looking at one another uncertainly, and I cleared my throat and said: "Well, Hendrick. Would you like to play Super Soccer-Man?"

He made a slight face.

"No," he said. "I don't really like it so much. Daddy does, though. Could we go for a walk?"

"Probably not the best idea," I said apologetically. We'd only had one or two incidences of vandalism outside the house, but it had been decided to keep Hendrick out of sight until he started school, by which time the more violent protest would have died down somewhat.

"I don't like living here," Hendrick told me, sighing. "I wish we could move back to our other house. But we're not going to now, are we?"

"I'm afraid not," I told him. He looked resigned. Then a furtive brightness came into his eyes.

"I know what we can do," he said, glancing guiltily in the direction of the second floor.

"What, Hendrick?" I couldn't suppress a smile. "You know I can't permit anything your parents forbid."

"Oh, it isn't anything bad," he said, taking my hand and leading me to the dining nook. "You'll like this, it'll be lots of fun! Really. Now, you sit down there-" He pushed me into the nook and I sat awkwardly on the little bench seat. He lifted the lid of the other seat and drew out an ancient imitation leather case. Stamped on it in gold letters were the words TOURNAMENT CHESS SET.

"You know how to play this game?" he inquired, setting up the board and pieces with remarkable speed, and correctly, I might add.

"Yes," I replied, stroking my mustaches. Poor little fellow, I thought, inviting a cyborg to play chess! "Do your parents object to chess, Hendrick?"

"Not-exactly," said Hendrick, avoiding my eyes. "It's just Daddy says I can't look like a brainiac or something." He smiled slyly. "And anyway Daddy isn't so good at it. I think that's why really." He turned the board on the diagonal and pushed it toward me. "Would you like to play black or white?"

I took white, and moved king's knight to F-three. He promptly advanced a queen's p.a.w.n to D-five and sat looking at me expectantly. I moved a king's p.a.w.n to G-three; his queen's bishop went to G-four. I moved my king's bishop to G-two. He countered with moving his queen's knight to D-seven. I sent a king's p.a.w.n to H-three. Hendrick sidled his queen's bishop over to capture my king's knight. I responded in kind, taking his queen's bishop with my king's bishop.

Anyone watching us would have thought we were only pretending to play, simply jumping the pieces around without purpose, so quickly were our moves made. I leaned back, setting his queen's bishop to one side, and considered him. His face was alight as he studied the pieces and quickly advanced a queen's p.a.w.n to C-six.

"You're actually enjoying this," I observed. I advanced a queen's p.a.w.n to D-three.

"Uh-huh," he replied, advancing a king's p.a.w.n to E-six. "This is the time I like the most, though. Before everything locks up."

I moved a king's p.a.w.n to E-four. "Locks up?"

"You know," he replied absently, moving his queen's knight to E-five. "It all locks up. So much has happened you can see how it's going to end."

"Can you indeed?" I slid my king's bishop back to G-two.

"Uh-huh." He captured my king's p.a.w.n at E-four. I took his capturing p.a.w.n with my king's bishop. "Then it just gets bor-ing."

"Because you know who's going to win?" I inquired, watching him move his king's knight to F-six.

"Uh-huh." He rubbed his nose thoughtfully as I returned my king's bishop to G-two once more. "Usually it's me. You're kind of good, though." He reached out and sent his king's bishop to B-four. "Check."

I blocked it with my king's knight. To my astonishment, he responded by moving his king's p.a.w.n to H-five.

"Did you mean to do that?" I asked him. He looked up at me in surprise.

"Can't you see the way it's going to go?"

"No, I'm afraid I can't." What an admission to make to a mortal child, of all people! He looked disappointed.

"I thought maybe you could. You play almost as good as me," he added tactfully.

I advanced my queen to E-two. He edged his queen over to C-seven.

"You said I was different, Hendrick," I said carefully, setting my queen's p.a.w.n on C-three. "Is that why you thought I could see the moves in advance, as you can?"

He nodded, moving his king's bishop back to E-seven.

"How am I different?"

He looked up at me, knitting his brows again. "Well, you just are. You move different. You smell different. You talk like one of those people on the Wire. You and Michel, too. You know what I mean! Don't you know?"

I knew; but it was impossible he should know, or rather it would have been impossible were he a human child. I scanned him. Yes; not quite a human brain. Engineered to better process information. So the child would be able to catch a ball, as clumsy schoolboy Geert had never been. Able, moreover, to distinguish a cyborg from a mortal human. Able to see the outcome of a chess game after a certain number of moves.

What else might Hendrick Karremans have been able to do?

He took my prolonged silence for embarra.s.sment and said quickly: "Don't worry! I won't tell anybody. I don't like being different, either."

Not knowing how to reply, I simply nodded and moved my queen's p.a.w.n to D-four. His knight retreated but he stepped up his attack after that, until the thirtieth move, when I took his queen and he took mine. Then he yawned and waved his hands over his head.

"Now it's boring," he told me. "It's going to be a draw."

"Really?" I looked at the board. I a.n.a.lyzed the positions. He was quite correct.

"Uh-huh. In eighteen-" Hendrick c.o.c.ked his head and studied the board. "No! Nineteen moves. You play good, Mr. Victor. It took a long time to know what you'd do."

We had been playing for all of six minutes.

"Thank you," I said. "That was a remarkable experience." I meant it, too.

"Want to play again?" he said hopefully.

"Some other time," I said, though I knew it was unlikely there would ever be another time.

"Okay. Can I have a Fruit Pop?" he inquired, carefully putting the board and its pieces away. From what I had observed I knew Anna didn't allow him sweets between meals, but I went to the kitchen and got the child his Fruit Pop.

He took it gleefully and we went out to the parlor, where he sat at the piano kicking his legs. He seemed completely uninterested in the keyboard, however.

"Do you play the piano?" I asked him.

"Uh-uh." He looked at me as though I were mad. "I'm only a little kid."

"Ah," I said, nodding. He nibbled away at the Fruit Pop a moment later and then his face grew suddenly apprehensive.

"What's the matter?"

"If those people said I can go to their school-then I'll have to get those shots, won't I?"

"I suppose you will," I said.

"I don't want to have shots," he cried, tears welling in his eyes.

"Well, perhaps you won't, then."

"But it's locked up now! They're the only school I can go to so Mommy and Daddy will have to send me there, but Michel will tell them I have to get shots to make the law people happy and make things easier," Hendrick wailed, forgetting his Fruit Pop, which dripped on the shining black finish of the piano. I got up hastily and mopped it with a tissue.

He was right, of course. One of the things Labienus was even now explaining to Anna and Geert was that they would have to make this particular concession, to have Hendrick vaccinated to comply with Civil Ordinance Number 435.

"You'll simply have to be brave, Hendrick," I told him. "After all, it's not as though they stick children with needles any more."

"But it still hurts," he wept. "I know it does. It went hiss and the medicine jumped into Mommy when she got her shots and she said ow! I'm scared to be hurt."

Why on earth had Anna let him watch her being inoculated?

"It's perfectly reasonable to be afraid of pain," I told him. "But you mustn't be a baby about it, after all. All the other children in that school had to have shots, you know."

"But I don't need the shots. They did," he said angrily. "And it's not fair. They're not going to die."

Was he precognitive as well? But he showed no sign of being a Crome generator, one of those mortals who produces a freak bioelectric field that carries over into the temporal wave. They occasionally seem to pick up information from the pattern of the future. "Well, neither are you," I lied. "You surely don't suppose a few little shots are going to kill you?"

"No," he said, irritably wiping his nose on his sleeve. "Not that kind of shots. I mean people are going to kill me. That's all locked up, too."

"Why would you think that, Hendrick?" I asked him, crouching to offer him a tissue. He looked at me with an expression of weary patience.

"Be-cause," he told me. "Don't you know what's been going on? All those people who are mad at Mommy and Daddy? They're scared of me. They threw things at our windows. Mommy and Daddy want me to be alive but a lot more people want me to not be alive. It would be real easy to kill me. All somebody has to do is shoot through those windows with a gun. When I go to that school it would be even more easy. They could just shoot me in the street. They could shoot me in the car. Even if I wore a soldier helmet they could get me. So it's all locked up. See?"

I stared at him, aghast at the matter-of-fact way he spoke.

"You don't seem frightened," I said at last. "Why are you afraid of shots, but not afraid to die?"

He had turned his attention to his melting Fruit Pop and was attempting to eat it before it fell off the stick. After a moment he said: "Well, when you die, it hurts but then it's over. My cat had to die and it didn't hurt him. He just went to sleep. But when you get a shot, it hurts and you're still alive, so it keeps hurting."

At that moment we heard their voices echoing down the stairs as they came, Anna and Geert sounding tired, Labienus sounding placatory.

"I thought we lived in a reasonable world," Anna was saying. "I really thought the human race had evolved beyond this sort of thing."

"Ah, but evolution is an ongoing process, isn't it?" Labienus said. "Think of yourselves as part of the change. You're fighting prejudice and irrational fear. When you've proved that what you did was right, you will have advanced civilization that much farther. But you won't manage it without a few sacrifices."

"That's true, of course," Geert said dispiritedly. They stepped down into the parlor and looked at Hendrick with identical expressions of shame. Anna cleared her throat.

"Hendrick, I'm afraid we're going to have to take you to the doctor after all-"

That was as far as she got before he began to howl, and threw himself down on the floor crying hopelessly.

"You promised," he shrieked. "I knew! I knew you'd do it-" They bent over him, murmuring reproaches. I backed away from them and turned to Labienus.

"I must get away," I murmured.

"Of course," he said immediately. "I quite understand. Take the night off. I'll stay with them." Once again he reached out and clasped my hand, startling me.

I shrugged into my coat and slipped out, scarcely taking time to wonder at the change in Labienus's administrative style. Perhaps he wasn't entirely the smiling manipulator I had known him to be.

I caught a bus into Old Amsterdam. There was a fine old restaurant on the Dam, soothing to the soul, unfashionably fitted out in red leather and crystal, with an excellent wine cellar. The food was of the sort generally described as "hearty fare" but prepared well; what should be fresh was fresh, and what should be high was just delicately so. I dined in comparative solitude and lingered over my meal, watching from my table as the Dam began to fill up with merrymakers for the countdown to midnight.

Dusk fell. I watched the lights begin to glow, sipping my coffee, savoring my dessert. New Year's Eve, and the year 2092 was about to slip into history. What was the first New Year's Eve I could remember? The Eurobase One celebration in 503 A.D. Very clearly I remembered lying in the ward recovering from my latest augmentation, furious at the pain I felt, as the nurses hung pink and purple and yellow streamers in the hall. There were cut-out decorations, too: a smiling baby wreathed in a banner, and a terrible old man with a scythe and hourgla.s.s. The nurse told us a story about the old man. She explained how we needn't be afraid of him, ever, for we lucky little children were becoming immortal.

She didn't tell us about the other things we had to fear. But that would have been cruel, really, wouldn't it? We'd learn the rest of the truth soon enough.

I ordered another dessert, a torte rich in Theobromos. Pleasure is at its best when one proceeds at a deliberate pace, I find. I ate slowly, and emptied my mind of any considerations save what I was doing and what I was about to do. Presently I walked out into the night.

It was cold, damp under the stars, with a thin sea-fog lying at ground level that made haloes around the streetlights. Over the crowd a.s.sembling around the Nationaal Monument, there hung a steamy cloud of exhaled vapor. People festooned with little electronic lights were dancing. I walked away into darkness, having no interest in that particular aspect of the mortal carnival, but I hadn't far to go. Amsterdam is quite a conveniently arranged city.

I found what I wanted near the Oz Achterburgwal.

A long quiet street along a still ca.n.a.l, pleasantly shadowed, no lamps to cast unwanted glare on the faces of pa.s.sersby. Quite unnecessary, when all the windows afforded such illumination. Just visible, along the street, pacing slowly and staring, were the dark figures in overcoats like mine; but who could spare a glance or a thought for anything but the windows?

Uncurtained and wide, each displayed its occupant in her own particular pose or ambiance. Some were straightforward and traditional, with scarlet lighting, with black lace and cla.s.sically provocative poses. There were the fantasies: a window that glowed with blue flickering light, La Sirene in green sequins reclining in a languid pose on her undersea couch. A girl with mime's training in a bare window under harsh white lights, made up in dead flesh tones, the perfect motionless image of a smiling display mannequin. A girl in the habit of a nun, her face innocent of paint, kneeling rapt before a photographer's backdrop of a rose window.

Some windows were dark, with a small apologetic electronic crawl at eye level: Presently engaged. Will reopen shortly. All currencies accepted. Free certification available on premises. Presently engaged ...

Some places clearly catered to a sense of sin; there one looked into a garishly lit h.e.l.l where the occupant was doing her best to convey the idea of pleasures cheap and degrading. In others there were promises of delights for the most eclectic, not to say criminal, tastes.

No. No. And no again, not for me ... I generally preferred more Nature and less Art.

I found her at last in a window that glowed with amber light, radiated heat like summer.

So little artifice, and such charm. Quite without clothing save for a loincloth of white linen. She sat perched on a metal folding chair, in an ordinary sitting room. The only hint of a theme was a poster on one wall depicting some North African city. A music system on a shelf was playing a dance song with a quick beat, Reggae Nouveau perhaps. I could hear the music, but to most pa.s.sersby she rocked silently in her chair as she regarded the evening, supremely unconcerned.

Her hair was superb, heavy as an Egyptian wig in its complex corn-row beading, and the bright beads-blue faience, copper, and bra.s.s-swung as she rocked, and tapped out a rhythm on the back of her chair. As I watched she parted her full lips and began to whistle out a counterpoint to the music. She had the slightest of gaps between her front teeth. Skin like midnight.

She noticed me at last and arched an eyebrow in cheerful inquiry. I nodded and climbed the steps to her door.

"Good evening, dear, may I see your credit ID please?" she greeted me, extending a pink-palmed hand. "Thank you."

She led me into the house, pausing only to key in the light control that dimmed her window and set its crawl message going. She named a price. I agreed to it.