Brightsuit MacBear (2 page)

Chapter II: Tom Edison Maru

The world was two miles tall and seven—not quite eight—miles in diameter for young Berdan Geanar, growing up aboard one of the giant starships of the expanding Galactic Confederacy.

Those were the dimensions of the
Tom Edison Maru
, the only world he’d ever known, a gleaming, dome-topped vessel of which Berdan himself, his employer Mr. Meep, and everyone else the boy had ever met, were “residents” or “crew,” depending on who was describing the many humans, porpoises, killer whales, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas aboard—not to mention the numerous alien species which those wandering Earth-born races had made their friends.

Inside, just like one of the layer cakes baked in the Meep Family ovens, the ship was divided into level upon level, some no taller, floor to ceiling, than the kitchen he’d just left, others so high vaulted that clouds sometimes formed within them. Rain—even snow on occasion—fell at times like that, over indoor forests and parklands planted by the ship’s builders. Birds flew through the brilliant artificial skies, startled by weekend kite fliers or the odd passing hang glider.

If Berdan had thought to look up just now—his eyes, in fact, were on his feet—he might have seen a yellow and red hot air balloon rising in the haze-accentuated distance.

On the lowest of these levels but one, a miniature ocean, dozens of fathoms deep in places (“miniature” being a relative expression), and more than forty square miles in extent, served as living space for the porpoises and killer whales among the ship’s inhabitants. Its sandy shores, hot beneath a fusion-powered “sun,” were intended for recreation. Its algae provided most of the ship’s oxygen.

All in all, when the total area of any of the levels within the huge vessel was added to that of all those levels above it and below it, the
Tom Edison Maru
was larger than many a small nation-state on the human home world, Earth.

None of this was in Berdan’s conscious mind as he made his reluctant exit from the restaurant. The essential facts he lived with every day and had been aware of for as long as he could remember. The actual numbers, down to the last ten-thousandth of a cubic inch, were accessible to him whenever he wished, by thinking the thoughts which would command his cerebrocortical implant to provide them.

Implants served other purposes, as well. As he stepped out, Berdan ignored a “headliner,” an airborne hologram tempting passersby to tune in various news or entertainment channels with tantalizing hints about what they might see.

Most were full of talk about Majesty. The new planet
Tom Edison Maru
was orbiting appeared to be covered, from pole to pole, with some kind of leafy moss, in some places miles deep. Scientists were fascinated with the planet because, they said, it should have been impossible for one species of plant life to dominate an entire world to the exclusion of all others. Berdan had noticed before how scientists seemed a lot better at explaining why their guesses had gone wrong than at making correct guesses in the first place, a trait they shared in common with investment counsellors and physicians. Just about everything in Berdan’s everyday life, from its technology to its politics and economics, had, at one time or another, been declared “impossible” by some expert.

Other channels buzzed with an unusual scandal, a break-in and theft at a scientific museum. Crime was rare in the fleet: instead of being imprisoned where they could learn from professionals, criminal beginners were expected to work, to pay—in a literal sense—for what they’d done. They never came to think of themselves as crooks but as people who’d made a mistake and made up for it. The widespread custom of carrying personal weapons discouraged crime, as well. Thus the media, enjoying a unique opportunity, were playing it for all it was worth.

Berdan, however, had other things to worry about. Compared with other times and places he might have been born, all the misery the human race had seen and suffered during its long, bloody history, it was a wonderful world he lived in. For the moment, however, the boy was blind to the wonder all about him, oblivious, in fact, to just about everything. His thoughts centered on how terrible he felt.

Mr. Meep’s back entrance let out into a quiet, somewhat twisted corridor behind the restaurant. On this residential level, few of the streets—most fabricated from a springy synthetic substance, easy on the feet and decorated in bright colors—had been constructed in straight lines. They meandered about, wandering past homes and shops and other restaurants (none, in Berdan’s opinion, as good as Mr. Meep’s), following leisurely, scenic routes, with the idea of making the journey, whether by foot, by bicycle (a gorilla on a unicycle passed Berdan as he shambled along), or by small car, as important as the destination. Quicker means of transportation existed for those beings in a hurry.

Just as numerous, and meandering, were the many canals provided for the finny folk of the Confederacy. Here and there the color-paved pathways dipped, so people who followed along them could see into the water through thick transparencies set into decorative walls, and so the porpoises and killer whales could see out. And they, too, if they were in a hurry, had quicker means.

The nearest transport patch was a hundred paces away from Mr. Meep’s back door.

Transport patches might have seemed like magic to someone from an earlier, simpler age. To Berdan, using one was as common and unromantic as getting on a bus—and amounted to the same thing. People approached what appeared to be a solid, carpeted wall, indicated with an unmistakable red and white bull’s-eye pattern, walked right up to it, penetrated it as if it were air or water—the atoms of their bodies mingling with those of the fibrous mat—and disappeared.

Which was what happened, as Berdan watched now without seeing, to the gorilla on the unicycle.

In narrow tunnels miles long, billions, trillions, quadrillions of near-microscopic “smart” fibers, inspired by the cilia which protozoan animals use to get around or by the similar hairlike structures which line and clean the human respiratory system, had been engineered at the molecular level to ripple like microscopic fingers, propelling their living cargo throughout the starship’s many levels. The system would accelerate its passengers away, Berdan knew, whisking them faster than the speed of sound, taking them wherever their implants had requested, long before they could attempt to take a breath, become aware of the stifling darkness, or feel a moment of claustrophobia.

Unaffected by this everyday magic, Berdan passed it by, wanting some time, on the way home, to think. And to be angry. Prompt obedience had never come easy to Berdan, any more (if his grandfather was to be believed) than to his father MacDougall.
Bad blood
, the old man was fond of saying, an expression on his face which Mr. Meep reserved for rotten eggs or spoiled milk, bad blood had killed MacDougall, and it would no doubt someday kill Berdan.

Let it, Berdan thought, right now, he didn’t give a—

“
Chickensquat!
”

Berdan’s unhappy ruminations were interrupted by a rude word he’d heard many times before. He looked up from the yellow, rubbery sidewalk on which he’d kept his eyes as he made his way home, and was surprised. His absentminded footsteps had brought him further than he’d intended, past three transport patches, almost home the hard way, to the center of Deejay Thorens Park. Far across its cultivated lawns, a brass band played from a whitewashed gazebo.

Unlike the people of many previous civilizations, the beings of the Confederacy tended to honor scientists, inventors, and philosophers, rather than soldiers or politicians, erecting statues, naming parks and streets and starships after them, preferring to single out those who were still alive to enjoy the tribute. Some exceptions disproved the rule: two levels above this, another park had been given the same name the starship itself bore, Thomas Alva Edison.

But this was Thorens Park, and, sure enough, right at the feet of its central feature, a life-sized statue of the galaxy’s greatest (and most beautiful) physicist, the woman who’d discovered the principle which drove this vessel between the stars, sat its other central feature, a rumpled study in gray and black, just as he always seemed to be, on a violet-colored park bench.

Old Captain Forsyth. Rumors which had almost grown into legends claimed the old fellow had once been a fearsome warrior of great accomplishment. Now he was in his usual place, silent and immovable as the statue itself, reading an old-fashioned hard-copy newspaper. Even from where he stood, Berdan could read headlines about the museum theft and the new planet, Majesty. He’d often wondered whether the ancient chimpanzee ever went home, or whether he even had a home.

“
Slimy loops of DNA!

“
Spell ’em out—whaddo they say?

“
What’s in genes won’t go away!

“
Chickensquat—the family way!
”

But, for the moment, Berdan had more immediate problems. Before him, standing in his way and blocking it, he saw a trio of all too familiar-looking faces.

Berdan sighed to himself. He knew what was coming next. What always came next. It made his heart pound in his chest like a hollow drum. He swallowed—so they wouldn’t notice how dry his throat had become—and assumed a fed up, weary expression which was affectation only in part. No one knew better than Berdan Geanar how it was possible to be bored and terrified at the same time.

He spoke first. “Okay, jerks, what do you want now?”

“Hey, whaddya know, you guys!” replied one of the three, speaking to his cronies and ignoring Berdan. “Chickensquat here answers to his chickensquat name!”

The particular jerk in question was Olly Kehlson, about the same age as Berdan. Kehlson displayed a kind of belligerent stupidity which bothered Berdan worse than anything else about him, as if he were proud of chanting idiotic doggerel. He and the pair with him, Berdan thought, weren’t your ordinary textbook bullies. Olly was a stringbean of a kid, with bleached-looking skin (what showed between his thousands of freckles), curly orange hair sticking out clownlike over his ears, and bulging blue eyes which watered in “outdoor” light.

Somewhere, in somebody’s battered old attic trunk or a secondhand store, he’d discovered a pair of celluloid-rimmed spectacles, useless in a time and place where correcting poor eyesight was a surgical procedure. He’d pushed the lenses out, wearing the empty, ugly frames perched down at the pointed end of his skinny nose, where he believed—and never hesitated to assert—they made him look “inelleckshual.” Berdan thought they made him look even dumber than he was.

In fact, Olly’s nickname, wherever he happened to go, was “Geeky.” Everybody called him that. He seemed, for some strange reason of his own, to accept it.

The pair either side of Geeky shook with theatrical laughter and began chanting “
Chickensquat! Chickensquat!
” in a way which kept Berdan from answering, just as they intended, even if he’d thought of something clever to say. He gave up, shrugged, and stepped forward, intending to pass between them and be on his way.

“
Hey, Chickensquat!
” Someone grabbed Berdan by the arm.

The complaint—and the grab—came from Kenjon “Crazy” Zovich, in some ways the worst of the three. He was nicknamed (although no one Berdan knew had ever dared say it to his face) not just for his nasty sense of humor, but because he possessed a violent, unpredictable temper (or it possessed him) when other people didn’t think his jokes were funny or tried to play jokes on him.

“Hey, Chickensquat, you oughta know by now,” Zovich warned him, holding on to Berdan’s arm, “we ain’t gonna let you off that easy, Chicken-chicken-squat-squat!”

He danced in place around Berdan, turning him as he went.

“We ain’t even
close
to through with you!”

Berdan seized the offending hand by the fingertips and peeled it off his arm, giving the boy a gentle but definite shove, out of his path. He tried to walk on.

“Hey!” Zovich shouted at no one and everyone.

“You saw it! He
nishiated
force against me!”

The proper word, of course, was “initiated,” and the charge false—stupid, in fact, since Zovich had grabbed Berdan first. However, Berdan realized with a renewal both of weariness and fear, logic wouldn’t stop trouble from coming now.

“Youbetcha, Kenjon!” The third boy, Stoney Edders, grinned wide with conspiratorial glee, and Berdan realized the whole thing was a put-up job. This was where they’d been headed all along.

“We saw it! He
nishiated
force!”

Edders’ hand dropped to the faceted pommel of the broad-bladed dagger he was wearing. At the same time, Zovich made a gesture, cocking his thumb, pointing his extended index finger at Berdan’s head. He dropped the thumb with a flourish of imaginary recoil while making a swishing noise through clenched teeth. It was the sound they’d all made when they were younger, running, hiding, playing interplanetary explorer, a sound they’d heard in every telecom adventure they’d ever watched, the sound of a fusion-powered plasma pistol going off.