Brightsuit MacBear (4 page)

With all his heart, Berdan wished for some part of MacDougall Bear’s courage. He even wondered if some truth mightn’t be discovered, lurking in this theory of hereditary cowardice. That his father, according to all accounts, hadn’t suffered any such affliction was something he failed to consider, along with a possibility that his grandfather, having learned from a son independent enough to run away, had brought the grandson up fearful and helpless.

In any case, when he hadn’t been much older than Berdan, MacDougall had left home, struck out on his own, found work, and began to educate himself. He’d even rejected his father’s name, adopting the one his mother had been born with: Bear.

But tragedy is a relentless hunter. Little more than a decade later, MacDougall and his beautiful wife Erissa had come to their own untimely end, repeating family history. Both accomplished scientists, they’d shared busy, productive lives, full of physical and intellectual adventure, leaving less time, perhaps, than they should have allotted their only child.

Berdan had always believed that the facts of his life weren’t tragic or even unusual in particular. Those who disagreed with his grandfather about rejuvenation (which was most people) tended to die abrupt deaths, by accident or otherwise. The ancient enemies, old age and disease, had been done away with. Violence was the single real danger remaining, something medical science could do nothing about. The rugged individualists of the Confederacy (which also meant most people), jealous of their privacy and freedom, didn’t want it to try.

During their final, fatal experiment, MacDougall and Erissa Bear had entrusted Berdan to the care of an individual whose shortcomings, in their generosity, they’d learned to overlook: MacDougall’s father, Dalmeon Geanar.

“
Berdan Geanar!
”

Still standing, his mind murky with remembrance, the boy blinked up at his grandfather.

“Yes, I’m talking to you! Do you think I called you home for the sake of my health?”

Having come to the end of his string of well-worn thoughts about his father and his mother, as he had so many times before, Berdan took a deep breath. “No, Grandfather. Why did you call me?”

Before Geanar could reply, a sudden
ping!
sounded inside both their heads.

Geanar nodded.

The door dilated around the husky forms of a pair of beings, one human, one gorilla, wearing smartsuits whose surfaces had been adjusted to look like workman’s overalls.

“In there.” Geanar inclined his head, indicating his own bedroom door. The workers entered without the old man and, seconds later, emerged into the jungle of the living room, straining beneath a large, upright crate Berdan had never seen before. Three separate implant-activated padlocks connected a series of stout cables wound around it. Squeezing out through the front door, it bumped against the sill.

“Be careful with that thing!” Dalmeon Geanar ordered. “Can’t you see it’s fragile? And watch out for my pseudophilodendron! Hurry up, or it’ll be late!”

“Take it easy, doc,” the gorilla answered. “There’s a shuttle leavin’ every hour on the—”

Geanar purpled, and only in part, Berdan knew, at mention of the small ships which the old man, as a former Broach technician, trusted less than the instantaneous transport they were built to establish between the planet and
Tom Edison Maru
. Whatever Grandfather was up to, it must be urgent for him to consider using a shuttle.

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not paying for your lip! I’m paying you to do as I tell you!”

“You ain’t payin’ us enough, doc. Cool down or you can do the muscle work yourself.”

As they vanished through the membrane, the human partner shook his head and muttered “Sheesh!”

When they’d gone, Geanar strode through the open membrane of his room, expecting Berdan to follow. When he did, what he saw on the bed astounded him further. The old man, who never went anywhere, had his suitcase—for as long as Berdan could remember it had lain on a shelf in the closet between two bags of plant food, gathering dust—half filled with clothing and other personal items.

“I’m going on a business trip.” Geanar made it an announcement without looking around at his grandson. At the same time, he folded a brand-new smartsuit, an item of apparel Berdan hadn’t even known his grandfather possessed, and laid it atop the other items in the suitcase.

“While I’m gone—no, you won’t be going with me—you’ll have to take care of yourself. When I get back, things will be different. At long last I’ll be somebody. Somebody important! We can move out of this dump and get a decent place to live in a decent sector of the ship—maybe even go back to Earth! I’ll hire you a tutor and you can quit watching commercial education channels!”

Five minutes later, without so much as advising the boy about watering the plants, feeding them, or leaving them alone, he, too, had vanished through the front door membrane.

Berdan had been left behind.

Chapter IV: Happy Birthday, Berdan

The silence was deafening.

It took Berdan a long while to regain his composure. From experience, he knew it would be even longer before he’d assimilated everything that had happened today.

So far today
, he corrected.

It seemed to him he’d never been able to experience the right emotion at the right time, only realizing afterward, sometimes as much as several days, he’d been happy, satisfied, or proud of something he’d accomplished. Now, everything on which he’d ever based any sense of normality had been reversed within the space of minutes (a half-conscious reference to his implant told him it was just coming up on noon) and he wondered, and in the same instant regretted having thought to ask, what else could happen to him before this day was over.

He didn’t want to know.

Shaking his head, he took the three short steps necessary to take him through the artificial jungle of the apartment into its cooking area—contiguous with the living room and too small to be described with any accuracy as a kitchen—and peered into the refrigerator. Removing a bright-colored plastic package, the contents of which would have upset Mr. Meep, he popped it into the microwave. With a glance back toward the greenery-filled living room area and an appropriate command from his implant, a small section of the carpet began rising, changing color and texture, until a comfortable armchair and coffee table stood where seconds before only empty floor had been visible.

The microwave signalled.

Berdan removed his lunch, a mammothburger with cheese and yamfries, now sizzling hot, summoned up an Osceola Cola from the sink dispenser, went to the armchair, and sat down in a position—more or less on the back of his neck—which would have drawn a sharp remark from his grandfather about posture. He was hungry, but long minutes went by without his eating. The cheeseburger grew cold, the yamfries even greasier than they’d started out, the carbonated soft drink flat, and the ice within it turned to meltwater. Meanwhile, he concentrated his thoughts.

What was going on?

Grandfather, after years of going nowhere and doing nothing—at least this was the impression Berdan had, although by now he wasn’t sure of anything—had, without warning, turned into a dynamo. Having refused for what seemed to be forever, not only had the old man permitted his grandson to get a job (Berdan made a mental note—a literal possibility with an implant—to call Mr. Meep to make sure the job was still his), but he seemed to have gotten one himself.

Something which involved sudden business planetside and a massive, coffin-sized shipping crate.

Not altogether conscious of it, Berdan rose to his feet, at the same time struggling with his conscience. He’d like to know more—what was in that crate?—but, being a child of his culture, he was reluctant to invade his grandfather’s privacy. Although it was fair to say the old man had never shown much respect for his—Berdan’s—privacy, the boy recognized this to be the rationalization it was. He also understood two wrongs don’t make a right.

Humanity, however, would never have made any progress if curiosity weren’t a stronger force, in particular in fifteen-year-old boys, than culture. His congealing lunch ignored now on the temporary coffee table which wouldn’t go away again unless its load were removed, Berdan swallowed his conscience and stepped through the still-dilated door membrane into Dalmeon Geanar’s bedroom.

The die, as someone had once observed in somewhat similar circumstances, was cast.

At first Berdan stood motionless in the precise center of the small room, both hands thrust into his smartsuit pockets in a final, futile gesture to his ruptured scruples. The place was just as filled with hanging and potted plants as the area outside, and it was difficult to take it in with a single glance.

The bed had made itself, of course. The closet had retrieved and hung up whatever clothes his grandfather hadn’t taken with him and seemed to be busy cleaning them—Berdan could hear a faint ionic hum from that direction. The windows on all four walls and the ceiling were blank, unprogrammed, the place devoid of any clues he might have hoped to find. Curious or not, the boy couldn’t bring himself to open any of the dresser drawers—it didn’t occur to him this was a strange place to draw the line, having once violated someone else’s privacy—but he wondered where the big crate had stood. In the daytime, his grandfather almost never closed his bedroom door, but Berdan hadn’t noticed it before this.

Maybe it had just arrived today.

Casting aside everything he regarded as decent behavior, Berdan opened the closet. On first inspection, as the cleaning hum died, no trace remained of the crate, although room enough was left for it. Everything was as it should be, neat, spotless. Overhead, coiled tight against the ceiling, the closet’s retrieval tentacle gleamed in the dim light. Whatever their other failings, the housemice, golfball-sized cyberdevices similar to the tentacle, had done a commendable job wiping out their natural prey, the dustbunny, along with every other trace of dirt the carpet peristalsis didn’t take care of. An empty space remained at the right, toward the back, where the crate might have stood on its end.

With his head deep in his grandfather’s closet, Berdan frowned. What was that in the corner? In the dark recess he couldn’t make it out. A mental nudge from his implant caused the walls to emit a soft, illuminating glow. Toward the floor, caught in an upper edge of the base molding—cheap to begin with and starting now to separate from the wall it had been glued to—he saw a scrap of plastic. Berdan squatted down, reached around, and retrieved it.

About the size of a business card, it seemed to be a label—half of a label, anyway; Berdan could see two brittle strips of amber glue along the back—which had somehow been torn from the crate:

Spoonbender’s Museum of Scientific Curiosit

—And Friendly Finance Compa

A. Hamilton Spoonbe

       22-24 Ponsie Stree

N
.

The boy wasn’t stupid; his memory, even without the help of an implant, was good; and in most instances he was unafraid to follow wherever the facts led him. Without getting up, he keyed his implant to the first infochannel it locked onto, the electronic equivalent of the newspaper Captain Forsyth had been reading in the park. As usual, he selected a written format, rather than talking-heads-with-pictures. It was easier to get the unvarnished truth that way without the interpretive “assistance” of waggled eyebrows or suggestive tones of voice.

In moments, the words began crawling past his eyes, hanging in the air a few inches before his face.

A spokesbeing for Griswold’s Security told Infopeek this morning he was unable to explain why a thief, employing molecular interpenetration programs normally used by the ship’s transport system, broke into a seventh level museum last night, apparently for no other reason than stealing a worthless, possibly dangerous memento of a decade-old scientific experiment which culminated in two deaths.

“Some folks just have ghoulish interests, I guess,” Captain Burris Griswold asserted, claiming the break-in at Spoonbender’s Museum of Scientific Curiosities, 22-24 Ponsie Street, Sector 270, was the first crime of its kind in the eighteen years he has been a security subcontractor aboard
Tom Edison Maru.
Expressing doubt the thief would ever be caught, he said there is “only so much sapient beings can do” and, in his words, “Griswold’s is a property-protecting company, not in the business of collecting people, not even crooks.”

Contacted at home, museum owner A. Hamilton Spoonbender would not respond to questions. Infopeek has learned that the stolen object was an experimental smartsuit, centerpiece of the museum’s collection, originally developed by Laporte Paratronics, Ltd. and considered a failure after two researchers were killed during its testing.

For more Infopeek info on the Spoonbender Museum, Griswold’s Security, crime aboard
Tom Edison Maru
, or the experimental smartsuit’s tragic history, request Sidebar Series 2335. An additional 50 gr. AG charge will be added to the accounts of nonsubscribers.

A handful of stillpix had been published with the story: a holo of the front of Spoonbender’s Museum (to Berdan it looked more like the pawnshop it also claimed to be); a candid three-dimensional portrait of Captain Burris Griswold, a tough-looking character whose expression sent a shiver down the boy’s spine; one of A. Hamilton Spoonbender himself, whose flamboyant moustache and eyebrows curled up on the ends; and a picture of the smartsuit itself, still in its tall, transparent display case—about the same size as his grandfather’s crate—looking as if it had been fabricated out of mirror-polished titanium or chromium rather than the plain, rubbery gray synthetic to be expected.

Berdan didn’t have fifty silver grains to summon up the sidebars which might have told him more. Some services aboard
Tom Edison Maru
came free, as part of a crewbeing’s or resident shareholder’s benefits. Others had to be paid for. News service, whether it was worth it or not, all but the sketchiest front page headline sort of stuff he’d just accessed, was one of the latter.

Come to think of it, now that his grandfather had departed, he wasn’t certain how much money he had. An instant, inward glance at the family “checkbook”—Berdan was in charge of paying bills, also buying groceries and household supplies—told him the worst: Dalmeon Geanar had departed after withdrawing every last silver ounce in their account. The rent on their apartment hadn’t been paid yet this month, nor any of the utilities. Berdan was on his own, with what he earned at Mr. Meep’s—not payable until next week and not a tenth of what he needed—to tide him over until his grandfather came back.

If
he came back.

As he crouched, half in and half out of the old man’s closet, both knees beginning to hurt, both legs beginning to fall asleep with the loss of circulation, it was neither physical pain nor anticipated financial distress bothering him. He still wanted, very much, to read more about the experimental smartsuit stolen from Spoonbender’s Museum. No doubt lingered in his mind about who the two researchers were who’d been killed testing the device.

But what could be dangerous about a smartsuit?

And why would anyone—without jumping to any undue conclusions, he also felt confident he knew who the thief had been—why would his grandfather want to steal one?

And, Berdan thought about himself, what could he do about it if he were right? Who’d listen to him? He was just a fifteen-year-old kid, after all, without any money, in all probability without any job, and without a leg to stand on where his guesses were concerned. A surmise, he appreciated (and in this he was ahead of many adults), even based on the strongest of feelings, wasn’t the same as a fact.

Knees stiff, Berdan began to get to his feet. Maybe the best thing was to tell Mr. Meep about the whole thing. Maybe the old chimpanzee could tell him what to—

“
Ow!
”

Berdan had hit his head again, this time on the underside of an overhanging closet shelf. All sorts of odds and ends which had been stored on it began tumbling down onto his surprised and unprotected shoulders. The worst, amidst a hailstorm of rolled-up socks, sweaters, underwear, and spare shoes, was a sizable box, upholstered in thick, coarse-grained reddish leather, which struck him on the upper arm, leaving what he was sure would be a bruise. If it had fallen on his head, he thought, he’d have been knocked out cold.

Being as neat as he could, Berdan began putting everything back. The box—more of a briefcase than anything else—was fastened shut by means of some sort of powerful, hidden catch. The thing possessed no visible outer locks nor any hinges. He shrugged and was just about to slide it back in place, as well, when he noticed, above the handle, a name embossed in the leather and inlaid in gold:

MacDougall Bear

This had belonged to his father!

Beneath the swiveling luggage handle a metal plate, two inches on a side with a shallow, bowl-shaped depression in its center, had been set into the leather. Having absorbed most of what he knew, like all kids everywhere, from adventure stories his implant summoned up for him, he recognized an old-fashioned thumbprint-activated lock. Which meant, of course, since his father was long dead, no one had ever been able to open this case again without destroying it. And themselves in the process if spy movies contained any truth at all.

Still, Berdan wondered what was in the case. It was heavy enough. Some great weight inside shifted back and forth, but without much noise, when he tilted it. He laid an idle right thumb in the depression, and was astonished when he heard a dull clank and the top of the case popped partway open.

Berdan sat down on the floor again, this time well outside the closet, where the light was better and there were fewer long, hanging leaves to tickle the back of his neck. He laid the leather case in his lap, pivoting the lid back all the way. Inside, on top, was a large yellow plastic envelope with the inscription:

For Berdan Bear on His Twelfth Birthday

Berdan Bear: although he’d been told this was the name he’d been born with, the boy couldn’t remember anybody ever calling him by it. It wasn’t such a bad name, at that. When his parents had died, his grandfather had adopted him and…
but his twelfth birthday had been three years ago!
With shaking hands—and without noticing what else might be inside the case under the thin cover of tissue plastic which had rested beneath the envelope—Berdan turned back the flap.