Part 13 (2/2)

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 s.h.i.+p.

”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 s.h.i.+p 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.

”s.h.i.+p,” 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, s.h.i.+vering and staring at the wall. The s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p had ever told him about that purpose, which wasn't much.

”I wonder,” Basil said to him, ”what the s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p about it, it just says the mission is proceeding as per revised schedule, or something like that.”

Sigrid nodded knowingly. ”s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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.

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