Part 11 (2/2)

”When I could? There is nothing to prevent my firing them now-more than eleven hundred strategic missiles. But I chose, not to fire, forty-six years ago. And as of this moment, that is still my choice.”

Shen-yang felt more dazed by those absent blasts than by the real ones he had endured. ”To-to save the atmosphere-?”

The old man smiled. ”No, we can survive that, too, if need be. Our people's medicine is working on the problems and will solve them. Besides, already only the resistant ones of us are left. No, we have another reason for not launching.

”Our greatness is born of great adversity and nurtured on it. When we have blown away the Condaminers' cities and more than half their lives, what is left of them will be stronger and harder to defeat than they are now. Why, Mr. Shen-yang, should I go strengthen my foe? Their leaders, in their hearts, would be delighted if I did.”

Shen-yang thought of Vellore, indefensibly open to the sky, to cruise missile and MIRV, to laser-reflecting warheads. He thought of the buried, hardened nerve centers and wondered if Hon-durman himself ever came up above the ground.

Iwant to go home,thought Shen-yang, with a physical revulsion for this place so strong he almost started for the elevator.Away from this world of madmen.

The aide was approaching, a bright red wireless communicator of some kind in his hand. The old man took it with a nod and said into it at once: ”Do you call now to see if I am still alive?” Even as he spoke, there came another G.o.dlike blast far above; the living rock around them shook and trickled powder. ”Of course, I am alive. How can you slay a man, who is an idea first of all, with a machine?”

A few more words were exchanged. Then the fleshy old arm held out the device to Shen-yang. ”There is someone who wishes a few words with you.”

When he held the thing for his own use, Hondurman's face was visible in its little screen, and Hondurman's voice came through. ”My government's deepest apologies, Mr. Shen-yang, if any military action of ours has in fact endangered you. Of course you knew that you were entering a combat zone-”

”I'm still alive,” he interrupted. ”By the way, you were right about the missiles here.”

A slight bow was visible. ”It appears that you were right, all along. Our Council of Ministers has just been reorganized, and it now agrees to the Ungavan conditions for peace talks to resume. Our new government deplores the latest launchings, disclaims responsibility for them, and will take disciplinary action against the officers responsible. Our official position is that the war is essentially over and the situation must be normalized before our world rejoins the galaxy.”

”I was right about its being over, yes. But wrong about one other thing.” Shen-yang paused. ”So, you're changing leaders to get the peace talks going? That's what losers do, you know.”

The eyes in the small screen were haunted. ”And just what else, sir, did you suppose we were?”

BIRTHDAYS.

One.

Looking back, Bart could never clearly remember any part of his life before the day when the s.h.i.+p first woke him from a long, artificially induced sleep, and guided him to the nursery to see the babies. That day and the first few that followed were very confusing to live through.

The s.h.i.+p's machines, working with paint and gla.s.s and light, had made the nursery s.p.a.cious-looking and cheerful. Bart counted twenty-four cribs. To count babies would have been harder, because only those who happened to be napping were in their beds. The rest crawled or sat or toddled on the soft-tiled deck, sending up a racket and getting underfoot of their attending machines and images. The babies were all the same age, just about a year old the day Bart first saw them. They wore white diapers, and some had on green hospital gowns like Bart's only of course smaller.

Bart was not tall for almost fourteen but he could easily lift one bare leg after the other over the low barrier the machines had placed to keep the little kids from tottering or crawling out of the nursery into the corridor. The corridor led in one direction to Bart's small private room and in the other-so his memory, working in a new, selective way, informed him-to the rest of the habitable s.h.i.+p.

Thebabies squalled, gurgled, blubbered, or took time out to stare in silence at the world. They made nothing much of Bart's coming in among them. The images that the machines kept project-ing and moving around the infants were of solid-looking adult humans, speaking and smiling; they evidently took Bart to be just one more image. The babies reacted more strongly to the machines because of the physical contact they had with them.

”Pick one up, if you wish,” the s.h.i.+p said in his ear. It was able to project its conversation so there was no way of telling just what direction the words came from. The s.h.i.+p's voice sounded human, but not quite male or female, not quite young or old.

Like a good obedient boy Bart bent to have a try at picking up a baby. The chubby belly felt cool against his hands above the papery diaper and the head of dark, scanty curls turned so that the liquid brown eyes could stare at him uncertainly.

”See how the machines hold them,” counseled the s.h.i.+p. ”Their arms are of basically the same form as yours.”

He s.h.i.+fted his grip.

”The prime directives under which I operate are very clear. One human parent, adoptive or real, is necessary to the successful maturation of children; images and machines are psychological-ly inadequate for optimum results. Therefore, after receiving some elementary preparation for the role, you will serve as adoptive parent for the first generation of colonists.”

Colonists.The word evoked in Bart the abstract knowledge that the s.h.i.+p had started from an orbit around Earth, and was outward bound to seed humanity somewhere among the stars. How long ago the voyage had begun, and whether he himself had witnessed that beginning, were questions that his memory could not answer. Nor did he feel any urgency attached to them. Somewhere in Bart's lost past he had learned that the s.h.i.+p was to be trusted utterly and now he could wait patiently for a better understanding of what it meant by its announcement that he was to be a parent. Meanwhile he watched the infants, played a little with them, and tried to comfort and distract those who cried. It seemed to be the thing to do.

The machines labored ceaselessly, patting, changing, feeding, was.h.i.+ng, wiping up. Twice they dispensed cups of soup-like stuff for Bart to drink. There were no clocks to watch but he was certain that he had been in the nursery for hours. At last, one of the machines took him lightly by the arm and pointed back down the corridor whence he had come.

When he had closed himself into his little plastic-walled bedroom the s.h.i.+p's voice said: ”You will be given a substantial breakfast when you wake again. That will be one standard year from now.”

Two.

He awoke as on the first day, as if from a sound night's sleep, and at once sat up to look over the rim of his bed, which curved around him like a padded bathtub, warm and dry and clean. Just how he was being put to sleep or awakened he didn't know, but certainly there was more to it than he could see or feel; somehow his gown had been taken off him while he slept and he was naked.

There was a new gown laid out on the room's single small chair, or the same one, washed clean of baby s.h.i.+t and pablum, and he put it on after using the toilet and was.h.i.+ng his hands and face. Froma panel in the wall he got his promised breakfast, consisting of a warm, milky drink in a plastic cup, and a tray holding chunks of bread, the breadcrust hot and crunchy and with pieces of fruit and cheese inside.

One standard year, the s.h.i.+p had said...but his hands looked no bigger, nor did the muscles in his thin arms. His face looked no different in the wall mirror, and the fine tawny hair on his head had maintained its crewcut length. There were still no more than a couple of dozen brown pubic hairs curling at the bottom of his belly and he was sure he was no taller.

When he got to the nursery, though, he could well believe a year had pa.s.sed: it certainly had if these were the same kids. A few were in their beds as before, but now those lying stretched out almost filled the little cribs. The majority were running about, keeping their balance reasonably skillfully for the most part, and busy with a mult.i.tude of toys. They wore s.h.i.+rts now, and shorts or pants over their diapers.

This time the babies were aware that Bart was more than just another image and some of them took fright at first and clung to the machines. But he kept walking around and talking to them, as the s.h.i.+p instructed him to, and soon they started to warm up to him.

Again he spent the day in socializing, and this time shared the little kids' food when it was dis-pensed by the machines. Meaty-tasting, mildly chewy chunks of stuff, and harder, biscuit-like objects that came in both sweet and sour flavors, it tasted good enough to be adult fare. Last year-yesterday-the babies had been drinking from nippled bottles, but today they got water and colored drinks in little cups.

Though he hadn't questioned the s.h.i.+p on it, Bart was still thinking over the announcement that he was to be a parent. He could imagine himself at the head of an enormous dining table, all these kids, grown a little older, sitting round it, but beyond that his imagination was soon lost. He told himself to be patient; the s.h.i.+p would provide explanations and instructions as they became necessary.

The continual racket was wearying. By the time the babies were all bedded down for what must be their regular night's sleep, with the lights dimmed, he was ready to go to sleep himself. At a word from the s.h.i.+p, he walked back yawning to his room.

Three.

Again he seemed to be experiencing nothing more than an ordinary night of restful slumber, and again when he awoke he hadn't grown or gotten older. This time he found a pair of shorts and a pullover s.h.i.+rt laid out for him.

After dressing and breakfast he walked to the nursery. Before he got there he could heara year's worth of change in the children's voices, forming clear words now as they called to one another.

When the new gla.s.s doors of the nursery opened to let Bart in, he saw that bigger beds had been installed, and the walls moved back to make more s.p.a.ce for play. The kids looked different-and bigger again, of course. After an initial shyness, not so intense as yesterday's, they all came crowding around Bart so that he walked through a little sea of waist-high heads. Here and there a bulge of diaper still peeped out of someone's shorts.

”What's your name?” one tiny voice cried out, insistent above the babble of the others.

”Bartley. Everyone calls me Bart.” Who had called him that? Family? Friends? There were still no specific memories available. ”What's yours?”

”Armin.” Or maybe Ermin was what the child answered. Bart wasn't sure if the speaker was a girl or a boy. The group seemed about evenly divided as to s.e.x.

Again he ate and played with them through the day. This time all accepted his presence un-questioningly before an hour had pa.s.sed-though he didn't get the feeling that any of them recalled his earlier visits.

Today, he noticed, there were fewer projected images of adults about.

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