Part 13 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. Even Tang was there, though hobbling on a broken leg he said he had got by falling two decks down a stairwell. s.h.i.+p'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. ”s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p 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.