Part 18 (1/2)

School went on, Bart arguing with his teachers that they should show him more about the structure of the s.h.i.+p than about things of old Earth that didn't seem to him to have any bearing on his present situation.

Galina still pushed biology, but Bart could see that you'd have to study that for years to really get anywhere. He didn't know how much time he had to study any-thing.

A couple of small riding carts had been built, powered by electric motors, and Bart had some fun riding them about. His elders got angry and yelled at him when he drove too wildly.

The most popular physical game consisted of sliding plastic discs over a pattern of numbered squares on the floor.

Sixty.

When he woke up in his room a machine was standing beside him, waiting to give him his monthly physical. His gains in weight and height were both greater than at any time during the previous month. He counted a few more pubic hairs. This morning the creamy drink was dropped from his solitary breakfast.

The birthday party had more and fancier decorations than before, but little else was different, except that most of the people were content to just sit around and eat and drink and talk. Fuad didn't eat or drink much-he'd lost a lot of weight. But Chao, as the others said, was having a good day, and joined in merrily.

All in all, the old people had a good time. They fussed over Bart quite a bit, but he felt pretty much out of it. Not sad, really, but detached. School had been recessed for the day, though he would have liked to learn more about the s.h.i.+p.

Sixty-one.

Ranjan had suffered a stroke, and was lying paralyzed in the hospital, unable to move anything on his right side. Everyone seemed angry at the s.h.i.+p, for what they described as cutting back more on its medical programs just as their needs were rising. Part of the s.p.a.ce it had formerly used to give them such n.i.g.g.ardly medical treatments as it provided had now been walled off. Something else was going on in there, they said, and nodded angrily, though they didn't know what was going on.

They questioned Bart, something like envy now mixed on their faces with the tenderness they usually accorded him these days. But he had not a sc.r.a.p of information to provide.

At the moment the office of president was empty, and the question of reorganizing the government was being somewhat crankily debated.

Sixty-two.

Vivian, who had been getting fat, was wasting and suffering internal pains. Ranjan was still unable to help himself at all. Bart was told these ills and a catalogue of lesser ones as if he should be just bursting with eagerness to hear them.

He was more interested in ping-pong, which was now a favorite game.

The burning social question was whether there should be an attempt at tinkering with the basic food machines to try to get a more easily chewable output from them.

Kichiro, Solon, and Armin, the only really healthy men, were undertaking an ambitious program to get themselves in shape. Edris, Galina, Sharon, Helsa, and Lotis were laughing a lot at the men and pondering a reducing program for them-selves. Trac was thin already, maybe because she had trouble eating.

Sixty-three.

He learned that Vivian was dead, to n.o.body's surprise.

His school today was conducted by Lotis, who about seven weeks ago had started to seduce him in the swimming pool. Meeting the eyes of the old gray-haired woman now, Bart thought she didn't remember that at all, which was only right; that hadn't been her in the pool at all, only someone with whom she shared a name. Today she taught him gardening.

The garden was being expanded again. A lot of the rejuvenation plants were still there, taking up s.p.a.ce, and not so much living room was needed for people any more, Bart supposed. There were fourteen of them alive now instead of twenty-four, and the survivors didn't move around as much as they used to.

”Remember when I took this picture of you, Bart?”

”Yes, I do, but you don't.” And he went rudely on his way, leaving Armin standing still behind him. It wasn't really Armin that bothered Bart, it was the whole situation. The future wasn't coming for these old people, but it was sure enough coming for him.

Sixty-four.

Fuad had just died, of another heart attack, and Bart was solemnly conducted to see the still body being stored in a refrigeration room before they said words over it and gave it back to the s.h.i.+p through a disposal chute.

”Death is a part of life, Bart,” Basil explained. They hadn't given him that reasonable an explanation a couple of months ago when they murdered Fritz before his eyes. Never mind, he told himself.

The more energetic people were playing squash today, and Bart joined in for a little while. He was fussed over as usual, and after school people pressed cake and cookies on him.

Sixty-five.

He had noticed for some time that his sessions in the school room (not far from the hospital, from which came now and then a querulous groaning) tended to fall into two types. In the first type a teacher tried very earnestly to cram knowledge into his head; in a lesson of the second type (some-times conducted by the same man or woman) there were long pauses, and an air of futility hung over the proceedings.

Today's session, starting right after lunch, was of the second type. After about an hour Sharon, his instructor, left him alone with a teaching machine, from which he abstracted information on the layout of the s.h.i.+p, until that got boring. He played with the machine trivially then until they came to get him for dinner.

Sixty-six He asked to be allowed to study on his own again, and when the request was granted he day-dreamed and played with the machine for a while. The vision of young Lotis in the pool came to him, and he got up and went to see if the pool was still there.

Gray-haired Lotis, his teacher again today, discovered his unexplained desertion and came after him angrily. They quarreled, and she tried to take him by the hair and drag him back to school.

She was still a st.u.r.dy old girl, but in getting free he pushed her hard enough to knock her down. Alarmed by the way she yelled, he ran away.

Soon Kichiro came limping after him. Bart might have run some more and evaded capture, or sought the safety of his room, but he thrust out his lip and stood his ground. Kichiro slapped him and over-awed him and made him come back to school, the hardest grip that Bart could remember clamped on his arm.

Sixty-seven.

He heard that Ranjan had died, to everyone's relief, after six years of paralysis.