Brightsuit MacBear (3 page)

Berdan spent a lot of his life dreading moments like this—he’d had to live through a good many—and not just because his grandfather never let him carry a pistol of his own, or even a dagger, to defend himself. Maybe in this instance it was just as well.

Grandfather said it was wrong to inflict injury or take a life for any reason. Berdan thought he agreed: if a Golden Rule applied in the Confederacy (at least aboard
Tom Edison Maru
), it was that nobody had a right to
start
a fight (though sometimes it seemed to Berdan the one way to prevent a fight was to be ready to finish it, regardless of who started it). If that idea, that it was wrong to start a fight, and his grandfather’s, that it was always wrong to kill or injure, weren’t precise equivalents, Berdan hadn’t managed to sort them out yet.

It bothered him from time to time—times like this in particular—how it seemed safe for those who wouldn’t obey grandfather’s dictum to threaten those who did.

As if they were one being, Geeky Kehlson, Crazy Zovich, and Stoney Edders took a step forward, menacing Berdan.

“
Three on one, boys?
”

The voice had come from nowhere. Berdan glanced aside and couldn’t have been more surprised if the statue of Deejay Thorens had spoken. The ancient, immovable Captain Forsyth was on his feet, yards from the bench he’d always seemed rooted to. How he’d accomplished this without attracting attention just deepened the mystery which hung about him like the cloak he now swept off his hip, exposing an enormous old-fashioned projectile pistol belted around his waist.

“You wanna play grown-up games,” Forsyth continued in the stunned absence of any reaction from the four boys, “you better be ready to pay grown-up prices.”

“Ah…”

A nervous Geeky Kehlson glanced from side to side at his companions who’d each taken a step backward. He imitated them, but not before they’d taken yet another. As they all took a third step, they turned and seemed to vanish from the park.

It was, it seemed to Berdan, a day for miracles. He opened his mouth to speak, to thank the old chimpanzee for his help, but Forsyth held up a palm and shook his head, letting the cape he wore drop back over the handle of his pistol.

“Get yourself some hardware, son. Somebody like me mightn’t always be around.”

Forsyth turned. Transformed once again (a final miracle for the day, not quite as wonderful as the previous two) into the fragile, elderly being he’d always seemed before, he hobbled back to his bench, picked up his paper, and sat down.

Still wordless, Berdan watched Forsyth for a moment. Breathing deep, he continued along the sidewalk and out of the park. He was careful, this time, to watch for anybody who might be waiting, out of the old warrior’s sight, to get even. Pondering the chimpanzee’s practical-sounding advice—as opposed to the philosophy his grandfather forced him to follow—he made his way, more rapidly than before (and with more confusion), toward the nearest transport patch.

He walked straight into its tingling embrace.

And disappeared.

Chapter III: The Dead Past

Berdan emerged, before he was aware of having traveled a quarter mile, from the bull’s-eye patch nearest the home he shared with his grandfather, Dalmeon Geanar.

Although they’d lived together for as long as Berdan could remember since the death of the boy’s parents, Erissa and MacDougall Bear, in what Geanar always referred to as “a scientific accident,” for reasons which seemed to perplex them both at times, the old man and the boy had never gotten along.

Geanar himself almost never left their apartment on the second floor of the modest (some might have said shabby) building across the corner from the transport patch. He was in perfect, vigorous health for his apparent age; but another thing the boy’s grandfather didn’t believe in was medical rejuvenation which could have made him look and feel like a young man, claiming it was the duty of all individuals, once they got old, to die and get out of the way for the next generation. Meanwhile, he preferred to order what he needed on the telecom.

Compared to most individuals they knew, they were poor, living on the proceeds of modest investments, small shares in the many discoveries and growing fortunes of
Tom Edison Maru
. Yet Berdan’s grandfather had always discouraged him from taking a job, in theory for the sake of his education. A few weeks ago the old man had reversed himself, allowing Berdan to go to work for Mr. Meep.

Thus Berdan knew he was in serious trouble of some kind—again—when he saw Geanar, a harsh, preoccupied expression on his big face as always, standing downstairs just outside the doorway membrane, hands on his hips, waiting.

“There you are!”

For a brief, comforting moment, Berdan entertained a fantasy: he saw himself turn around and merge into the patch again, letting the transport system take him somewhere, anywhere, as long as it wasn’t here. But he knew this would only postpone what was about to happen. He had no place to go and would only have to come back again. Besides, his grandfather had seen him exit the patch, which, of course, was what he’d had in mind, waiting for him in the doorway.

“Where’ve you been?” Geanar’s grating voice carried across the narrow street, little more than a wide sidewalk in this neighborhood. “You took your sweet time getting here!”

Berdan glanced around, self-conscious. At this hour not much traffic moved along the street, but one or two passersby had glanced up at the sound of Geanar’s voice. Worse than anything he could think of, Berdan hated to be hollered at in public—it was embarrassing—but he was helpless to do anything about it. He’d tried talking to his grandfather about it, only to be told to mind his own business. At that, he’d been lucky not to have provoked a more violent reaction.

He hurried across the street, hoping the old man would lower his voice as he came nearer.

“Berdan Geanar, the next time I send for you, you’d bloody well better not dawdle!”

The last thing Dalmeon Geanar might have been called was inconspicuous, even when he wasn’t shouting. He was large, with huge hands and a belly to match hanging over his belt, if he’d been wearing a belt. He wasn’t even wearing pants, but instead, affected a loose-fitting caftan. Berdan had never seen him in a smartsuit, everyday fashion of the most practical kind for a people whose activities might take them from a hundred fathoms underwater to the bitter vacuum of outer space; Geanar never went anywhere, and had no need for such a garment. Geanar’s face was broad, red-jowled, rough-complexioned, the enormous nose in its center almost grotesque, blue-mottled, and covered with a network of fine, broken capillaries. His smallish eyes glittered from beneath a thick, untrained hank of white hair which hung over his forehead.

They weren’t the eyes of a kind man.

As Berdan approached, his grandfather reached out with astonishing swiftness and seized the boy by one thin shoulder—the old man’s big thumb dug in, painful between the bones—and half-shoved half-dragged his grandson through the apartment building’s door membrane, following on the boy’s heels. They stopped in the hallway. Geanar’s thumb tightened on Berdan’s shoulder.

“Now what have you to say for yourself?”

Berdan knew it was a trap. His grandfather wasn’t interested, and anything he had to say would be used against him. But he couldn’t help trying to defend himself. “I—”

“There’s no excuse!” The old man roared down at him, shaking the helpless boy back and forth until his head hurt, until Berdan could no longer control his jaw and bit his tongue.

“Your one business is to do what I say, understand me?”

Berdan said nothing.

“Answer me! What were you up to?”

Having eliminated any possible excuse, why did he now demand one? It was illogical. It was also another trap, Berdan recognized, but one he wouldn’t be permitted to avoid, since any alternative was a good deal more painful to contemplate.

“I got stopped in Deejay Thorens Park…” He was astonished that, this time, his grandfather hadn’t interrupted him. Hoping against long experience that he’d be allowed to finish for once, he rushed on.

“Geeky Kehlson and Crazy Zovich and Stoney Edders wouldn’t let me—”

“Thorens Park?”

Berdan wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Geanar’s complexion grew even redder. His painful grasp tightened even further on the boy’s tender shoulder.

“What were you doing in Thorens Park? There are a dozen patches between Meep’s greasy spoon and there! You think I went to all the effort of calling so you could waste your time—and mine—loafing with your no-good friends?”

Only three such patches existed, in fact, and the “effort” in question consisted of thinking about calling him at Mr. Meep’s. But pointing this out wouldn’t make Berdan’s situation any better. (Nor would trying to wriggle loose from Geanar’s grasp; he’d tried it before, and knew the hard way.) Appealing to facts and logic never accomplished anything but making the old man madder.

Inside Berdan, an unbearable mixture of anger, pain, and contempt boiled over. “I wasn’t loafing, and they’re
not
my friends!”

Still holding Berdan’s shoulder between a thick forefinger and a thicker thumb, which felt to the boy like titanium clamps, Geanar bent down and peered into his grandson’s face. He wasn’t shouting anymore. He’d fallen silent. His lips were compressed into a short, straight line. His color had faded in an instant from reddish-purple to white. Berdan knew this was going to be a bad one.

“Defy all precedent and tell your grandfather the truth, you ill-conceived little barbarian.” Geanar’s roar had diminished to a far more terrifying whisper.

“You’ve been fighting again, haven’t you?”

It was clear to Berdan that, without any evidence or justice, the old man had just convicted him of what was considered in their household the ultimate crime. Geanar wouldn’t listen if he tried to deny the charge. Fear of the great knob-knuckled backs of Geanar’s huge hands put a quaver in Berdan’s voice. “No, Grandfather, I haven’t been fighting.”

Although, he conceded to himself, he’d have fought Geeky and the rest in an instant, if—thanks to Captain Forsyth’s sudden interference—he hadn’t avoided it.

“And now you’re compounding it with lies and backtalk!”

With a melodramatic gesture of disgust, Geanar thrust the boy away from him. Helpless against the old man’s strength, Berdan slammed backward against the corridor wall and hurt his head again. One of the other tenants, old Mrs. Kropotkin it was, poked her curler-covered head out through the membrane of her own apartment door.

“Neighbor”—a warning simmered in her voice—“I’m gonna call Security if you—Dalmeon Geanar, don’t you dast glare at me! Just be grateful I don’t handle you myself!”

Behind the man, she spied Berdan. Her expression brightened, and with it, her tone, “Howdy there, sonny boy! Always remember:
illegitimates non carborundum!
”

And with this enigmatic parting advice, Mrs. Kropotkin popped back into her apartment.

An embarrassed, wordless moment passed before Berdan’s grandfather lifted a thumb. Berdan nodded, issuing mental instructions to his implant which relayed them to the building, and knew his grandfather was doing the same. Under their feet, the section of carpet they were standing on began growing, lifting them both at a gentle pace toward the ceiling. Before their heads could brush it, it retreated around them. They passed through it onto the next floor.

The hall was empty.

As the carpet sealed itself beneath them, they strode to their own apartment, through its membrane—also implant-controlled—and into its small living room. As they entered, a small flurry of motion near one wall at floor level caught Berdan’s eye. It was the housemice, out to play when the people were away. In a well-kept modern building, they wouldn’t have been seen at all.

Perhaps the humidity slowed them down. This room, the kitchen portion of it, his grandfather’s bedroom, and the bathroom were filled with potted plants, hundreds of them, which the old man tended, watered, fertilized, and misted every day. Their apartment looked like a jungle, felt and smelled like one, as well.

Berdan had never understood his grandfather’s obsession. He didn’t dare so much as touch the old man’s plants, as green things seemed to die a horrible death in the presence of what Geanar called his “black thumb.” In the boy’s opinion, which had never been consulted in this or any other matter, plants belonged outdoors. He preferred animals, although he’d never been allowed to have one, warm things which could move around, with a personality and eyes to look back at you, things which were maybe just a bit unpredictable.

As usual, what could be seen of the apartment’s windows through all the greenery had been left adjusted to display the brightest, busiest, most crowded intersection aboard the
Tom Edison Maru
. To anyone unfortunate enough to be without an implant, they’d have appeared to be nothing more than blank sections of the walls. Although Berdan had heard it was considered smart, in certain better-off neighborhoods, to have real windows with real glass looking out onto real streets, he liked these windows better: they could look anywhere.

His grandfather needed the feeling of other people around him, even though he never seemed to like people much. Berdan liked them well enough, he supposed, but preferred to let the windows of his own, one hundred percent plant-free, bedroom give him a computer-enhanced view of the star-brilliant blackness through which
Tom Edison Maru
quartered in her endless journeying. This was another transgression for which the boy caught it on regular occasions. For some reason, looking into the depths of space disturbed the old man.

“What am I to do with you?” Geanar’s voice, which had thundered at Berdan downstairs, was now a pitiable whine.

“You’re just like your father—and his mother before him! It’s bad blood, I tell you! Bad blood! What in the sad, sorry world did I ever do to deserve it?”

Berdan, who knew the signs, began to relax. Grandfather wasn’t going to hit him, as he’d feared, but just launch into the millionth repetition of the “bad blood” lecture, though it was pretty serious when his grandmother got dragged in, too. In an odd way, all of Berdan’s troubles seemed to revolve about Grandma Lucille, although her tragedy had taken place long before he’d even been born.

Grandfather, it seemed, wasn’t the only one in the fleet who believed in bad blood.

“Are you listening to me, young man?”

No, Berdan thought, I’m not listening to you, Grandfather. Neither of them had so much as sat down, but stood not far apart in the center of the overgrown living room. But he gave Geanar a dutiful nod and continued thinking his own thoughts.

Unknown to his grandfather, Berdan had been aware for years—thanks to thoughtful individuals like Geeky Kehlson, Crazy Zovich, and Stoney Edders—that, in common opinion, Dalmeon Geanar carried his own share of the family curse.

In earlier days—contrasted with the housebound existence the old man had pursued all of Berdan’s life—Geanar and his wife, Lucille, had been part of a planetary survey, he as a Broach technician, a sort of matter-transmitter installation and repair man, she as the praxeologist whose studies of intelligent life constituted the reason for planetary surveys in the first place.

According to the stories thrust upon Berdan, it had either been bad judgment on Geanar’s part or cowardice (hence the name “chickensquat,” an affliction, in popular theory, which could be passed on to succeeding generations) which had been responsible for the slow death she’d suffered at the hands (or claws or tentacles) of primitive aliens during the exploration of a new world. This was all the detail the boy had ever been given. His grandfather wouldn’t talk about it. Berdan didn’t even know what planet had been involved.

“
Pay attention!
” A huge, rough hand landed on Berdan’s shoulder and rattled his teeth again. “If you’d stop stargazing and listen for once, you might make something decent of yourself!”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

But all the time, the boy was thinking to himself
, Just like you, Grandfather?

Attempting to escape the public outrage that had followed these events, Dalmeon Geanar had fled his post aboard another great ship of the fleet. Taking his son, Berdan’s father, MacDougall, with him, he’d arrived at the
Tom Edison Maru
. The story had traveled with them, however. The son, who according to the stories had gotten along no better with his father than Berdan did now, had published notice of legal separation from his surviving parent.