Children of Tomorrow (18 page)

‘They were really hitting each other,’ said the girl with another

twist of her body, one that actually had a retrospective jealousy in it. But that was too complex a feeling for Mike to analyse.

The boy nodded thoughtfully as Dolores finished. He said, ‘Sack, I’ll push,’ This time when he turned away, he did not glance back. What he did do was catch hold of Marianne’s arm. He walked her rapidly toward the shopping area a block away. Mike was tense, Marianne subdued. But nonetheless she presently asked breathlessly, 'What are you going to do?’

‘Call Susan,’ he said grimly. ‘Do what I should have done this
mor
ning
.
’

The girl had been almost running to keep up with him. Her heels clacked on the sidewalk, plainly audible above the voices and feet of other students who were all around them. But after his reply, she shook his hand off her arm and slowed. Several moments went by, so obsessed was Mike, before he was able to be aware she had fallen yards behind him. He stopped short, then went back. ‘What’s the matter?’

Her arm, when he took it again, resisted him. Her face, when he put his own close to it, was unhappy. Her eyes filled with tears, as he gazed into them; and her voice was griefy but yet determined as she said, ‘I refuse to help you damage Susan quicker, by running.’

The boy was not about to accept reproof. ‘Listen,’ he said from between clenched teeth, ‘Susan confessed because Dolores saw her. So this whole thing with the sailor is more serious than we realised - ’ He broke off, shook his head wonderingly but with impatience. ‘Imagine her calling me up last night to confess, hoping - I’ll bet - to get her own story in before Dolores told what she had seen. So don’t give me any of this friendship for Susan business. The best friendship we can give her is to get her to scrap this sailor.’

‘Why don’t you talk to Lee first?’ urged the girl. Her intense brown eyes pleaded up at him, and she caught his arm. Tlease, Mike.’

Standing there under a cloudless late afternoon sky, the handsome boy with the dark, flashing eyes, and the dedicated look in them, shook his head. Deliberately, then, he turned and walked away from her. The girl watched kind of limply as he walked all the way to one of the open-air phone booths nearly half a block distance. She didn’t move as he stepped close. When he started to do what looked like the button-pressing of a number, she shook her head a little as if she couldn’t quite believe that he really was making the call.

Estelle answered the phone in the den. ‘Oh - oh, yes, Mike/ she said. ‘No, Susan is in bed. She says she’ll see you all tomorrow.

I don’t understand. Isn’t that probation over in a couple of days? Oh, something new - yesterday?’

The woman was standing with her back to the hall door, and so she did not see Susan’s shadow and then Susan come cautiously into view. The girl stopped, and stood with her back pressed against the corridor wall beside the door.

Estelle was saying, ‘I think you’re making a mistake. Can I talk to Lee . . . Oh!’ Pause. The woman swallowed hard. Her face was working. She was striving to control a strong impulse to be emotional. ‘Let me understand you,’ she continued. ‘Susan must not go near any outfit member for one week? That’s the total second penalty? All right, I’ll tell her. But I really feel you have misjudged this whole thing ... As I see it, Mike, it’s just as important not to jump to conclusions as it is to - All right, all right, I’ll say no more.’

She hung up, and then stood there. And then she turned. Her eyes were closed, so she didn’t see that Susan had come all the way into the doorway until she opened them again. Mother and daughter stared at each other. And then - Tears. Simultaneously. In both pairs of eyes.

Bud Jaeger came out of school promptly at three. He was a boy in a hurry, but his first task was to take his books home. Which he did, shuffling as fast
as he could. The thin little woman who was his ‘mother’ watched him shuffle into the house, drop his books off in his room - and then she was waiting for him at the front door.

‘What’re you going to do when your dad comes home?’ she asked.

Bud said, ‘I got outfit duties, mom. Can’t talk right now. Sack?
’

She let him by, stood in the doorway, watching him make his awkward way along the street. She waited until he was out of sight, and then with a sigh, and a shake of her head, went back into the house. The door closed.

Bud Jaeger got off the Subsurface at the fourth stop beyond the river. At this hour, he was the only one in the elevator. And so when he emerged he found himself under a protective concrete shelter structure - alone. The outskirts of Spaceport were not
visible, because Exit Number Four was exactly ten miles from the last exit inside the big city.

Around him was, well, not exactly open countryside. He could see two small communities: one in the near distance north, and the other approximately equal distance south. La between, however, was a green field: undoubtedly some kind of a crop. Bud shuffled to the nearest edge of the shelter, and then moved a few feet out onto the grass. There he stood under the alien sky of earth, and he looked up, expectantly. To the left. To the right
’
No signal came. No thought. No sign of his father.

His attention had already been attracted to a small retaining wall about a hundred yards from the Subsurface. Now, he shuffled across a portion of the crop field itself over to it, and he peered past the wall down into a swamp-like depression. The purpose of the wall was not clear, but perhaps it prevented soil from drifting into the swamp. Bud was not concerned with causes. Hastily, he looked around him; made sure there was no one near, and no one coming. Then, galvanised, he hurried around one end of the wall, and into the depression immediately behind it.

He made a sound, then. It was not a human sound. But it had a quality of joy in it. There was eagerness and excitement in it. He began to strip. He took off all his human clothes. Then he reached to some point between his legs — and a fantastic thing happened. His skin began to glitter. It separated — and came off. It fell to the ground like a long piece of pure silk.

There stood revealed an elongated, very pink hard shell of a very beautiful body with tentacles - it seemed - instead of legs and arms. A second pair of the arm tentacles were strapped to the side of the body; and it was these that he now impatiently unstrapped, and with a peculiar humming sound of joy waved around as if their long inactivity had just about driven him crazy.

As soon as they could function, he used them to strap down the arm tentacles that until now he had used to manipulate his human arm shapes. The job done, he began hastily the delicate job of putting on the intricate material that somehow made a human shape. First, when it was completely on him, it glittered unhumanly, and not until he did something in the area under his body, between the legs, did it suddenly flicker - and, just like that, there was the human boy who looked like the familiar Bud Jaeger.

This boy somewhat awkwardly put his clothes back on. Came out from behind the
ret
ainin
g
wall. And was about halfway to the concrete shelter that housed the Subsurface when , . . his father's thought hit him:

My son, what have you been doing?

Bud told him. The father was startled.

That was a very dangerous thing to do at this stage . .
.
But it’s done. Now, pay careful attention. I can’t stay long. The human beings have patrol ships as far out as Neptune's orbit, and we put this communication beam down six hours ago in an area of space that they were not covering
at that time.
They may be there at any moment. Such matters are difficult to predict.

Bud interjected:
How do I escape? That's what I really want to know.

It’s going to be difficult. We thought for a while that somebody might coast through the defenses of this planet, and turn his motors on for landing only. But that is no longer considered feasible.

But that’s how we got here. What’s wrong?

Be calm, my son. You may remember that as soon as we realised what star system the human fleet seemed to be heading for - this one
-
you and I jumped ahead, using our special high speed system for small, stripped-down ships. We arrived here three weeks before they did, before the people here were warned. And so we were able to make a landing.

You mean, that won’t work anymore?

I regret, my son, that will not work anymore. So here is what you must do. We’ll use the officer who flies the
Omni vulture
class spacecraft.

The one who took Susan for a ride?

Yes. You use the same method by which we controlled your human father, Jaeger, just enough so that he’ll fly you to us. Our engineers would like to have a look at one of those
Omni- vulture
types. Apparently, they have enormous destructive power.

But what do I do? How do I get into the ship?

You stated that, according to Susan Lane, he must fly such a ship periodically. Find out from Susan or Dolores where he lives. Go to see him. Use the control method. Go with him. No problem. You have the two capsules still, do you not?

What mil happen to him?

The father’s answering thought reflected military hardness:
We cannot let these people discover our methods. So, of course, he will not be allowed to return.
The invisible energy duplicate of an alien operating from a spaceship six light-hours away broke off:
My son, 1 must end this. You understand your instructions?

I guess so .. .
Reluctantly, the boy answered.
The outfit keeps me so busy these days. I've got seven little kids to supervise. It’s kind of interesting, but it will make it difficult to find spare time to go and look for Captain Sennes.

My dear son, the time for you to act is now, while your human father is in the hospital. After all, you had to skip some duty in order to meet me out here.

That’s true. One little boy._ I’ve still got to go talk to him before I go home.

Then we'd better end this quickly. But one more thing. As you know, it’s easy to get out of Spaceport, but hard to get back in., So, in going back in, why don't you pretend that you were going to run away but changed your mind? what mil happen if you use that excuse?

They'll probably turn me over to my outfit, and Til be put on probation the way Susan was.

See how easy it is.. Well, good-bye, my son. Take care, now
’
Good-bye.

During the entire time that the mental conversation went on, Bud was shuffling back to the Subsurface. As the invisible energy unit disappeared, he walked awkwardly to the elevator. The door was still standing open, as he had left it. He entered, and pushed the button. The sliding door slid noiselessly shut. A moment later, the light above the door showed that the elevator was going down. As it happened, his timing was perfect. Approximately a minute later, the next Subsurface heading toward Spaceport stopped and picked him up.

John Lane returned to the office just in time to answer a call from a Lieutenant Koenig. The lieutenant was a Port of Entry officer, and what he had to say was that Bud Jaeger, a teen-age boy, had re
-
entered Spaceport at 4.09 p.m. The officer reported that Bud had been allowed into the barriered city without com-
’
merit. He concluded, ‘However, Commander, in checking with Security, we learned that this family is under observation for a special reason, and therefore we make this verbal report, and will follow it with a written report.’

'Thank you,’ said Lane, sitting there at his desk, with the huge wall viewplate overshadowing him. He was briefly silent, considering the information. The call, and its import, had triggered an old pattern in him. He had a way of discussing nonessential, or obvious, data with official personnel in such a fashion that the other person came out of it appearing intelligent and somehow liked him for having given them the opportunity. So now he added, ‘You say the boy claims he ran away, and then he thought better of it?
’

‘Yes. He represented himself as being fearful of what would happen to him when his father got out of the hospital/

The man in the huge room, with its great computer and its other equipment towering around him, smiled grimly. ‘It would seem to me, Lieutenant Koenig, that he has a valid fear. Did he say what changed his mind?
’

“He decided, Commander, that the outfits would be able to protect him.'

‘Oh!’ said Lane. He scowled. He was again trapped, without realising it, into the certainty that the boy was in fact the genuine Bud Jaeger. The expression on his face, the way he held himself in his chair, also accepted as truth that the situation with the outfits was exactly the same kind of stereotype that he had reaffirmed it to be after his interview with Len Jaeger. The accompanying hard thoughts altered his conciliatory manner on the phone. He said curtly, ‘That remains to be seen.’ He broke off, ‘Thank you very much, Lieutenant. I appreciate your call.’

And that was the abrupt ending of that conversation.

Another one began almost at once. Because, as he broke the connection with Koenig, the intercom on his gleaming metal desk buzzed; and Andrew Scott’s voice said, ‘I’ll be right in, Commander. I have an important message.’ Lane replied,
‘Very
good!’ He sat for a moment in silence, still held by his previous thoughts. His lips were compressed. His eyes stared slanting to one side, where some gadgetry was clicking away with lights flickering in an irregular way.