Children No More-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  Boys milled about the edges of the clearing, rifles in hand, awaiting orders. All were chewing something and occasionally spitting long streams of brown juice. Bodies covered much of the central area. Many moaned and writhed on the ground; some never moved.

  The large man from the earlier scene walked into the square and motioned to a boy, the tall one who'd been second to hit the prisoner. The boy jogged to him and snapped to a loose-jointed attention. In the Saw, any non-com or officer would have seen the movement as insolent, but the man acted as if the boy had executed a perfectly crisp salute. "Corporal, get your troops to clean up this mess," he said, "and then we'll have more root for everyone. And dinner! The storage hut here is full of provisions from the government. We'll dine well on Tumani's stores tonight."

  The boy answered so quietly I couldn't hear him. He walked to the nearest body still moving on the ground, aimed his rifle, and shot the man in the head.

  At the sound, all the boys dropped and looked wildly around, their weapons at the ready.

  "You heard the Sergeant," the tall boy said. "The sooner we finish, the sooner we eat and have more root."

  A murmur swept through the boys. They spread evenly around the perimeter of the area. At a nod from the tall boy, they advanced in a line, one step at a time. After a step, each boy stopped, kicked any body on the ground near him, and if it moved, shot it in the head. Some fired at bodies that didn't respond. By the time the boys reached the center, some of the prisoners had received three or four shots.

  The boys spread again to the edge of the clearing and paired up. Each pair grabbed a corpse by its arms or legs, whatever was convenient, and dragged it into a small clearing in the jungle on the opposite side of the village from where the large man watched them work.

  "The wind will only be with us for another hour or two," the man said, "so stack them and light them quickly. We don't want their stench interfering with our meal."

  The boys picked up their pace, soft curses providing a soundtrack to their efforts as they struggled to move the dead weight of the adult bodies.

  One pair broke from the group and ran out of view.

  Those two returned carrying two large jugs, which they opened and poured in small lines here and there on the bodies already stacked in the jungle clearing. I'd seen the same motions from children using ocean water to paint images in beach sand. These boys spread the liquid precisely but quickly; they'd done this before.

  Satisfied his troops would hit their target timeframe, the large man turned and left.

  The boys kept at it, their rhythm the slow and steady pace of soldiers on a long march, men who knew that to work too slowly was to court their commander's fury but that to move too quickly was to risk exhaustion.

  I knew the rhythm all too well.

  The recording winked out, and I sat again in blackness.

  Chapter 5

  In line for the jump gate of planet Hardy

  "Lights?" Lobo said.

  "No. We're not done." The boys had learned to function as a unit in what I suspected was a very short period. "Is there a timestamp on either recording?"

  "No," Lobo said, "but my analysis of the faces suggests that very little time passed between the two."

  I nodded my head. "It doesn't take long. You can train soldiers very quickly, particularly if they're malleable and if you don't care how much damage you do to them or if you lose a few of them in the process."

  Lobo said nothing. What was there to say? He'd seen combat. He knew. I wasn't even sure why I was talking; perhaps because conversation was normal, safe, comforting.

  "How long until we jump?" I said.

  "All non-government ships in the queue are on hold due to a large set of priority Expansion Coalition ships entering the system. The stationmaster AI is advertising a delay of half an hour, but I cannot know for certain if that's accurate."

  "There's still another recording, right?"

  "Correct."

  I wondered if any of the children I'd just watched were still alive, still in the jungle fighting. "Can you tell when Lim left this message?"

  "Yes. She made no attempt to conceal that fact. It was seventeen days ago."

  Add the time for Lim to obtain the recording and dispatch it on ships to planets many jumps away, and the holos I was watching could easily have been a month or more old. That much time was an eternity in combat. Whether you were suffering the terrified boredom of creeping through dense growth half hoping to find an enemy and half praying you never did, or the utter exhaustion of constant fighting, the days swirled together and ran away from you like blood and rain flowing down dirt banks into rivers.

  "How many jumps from Macken are we?"

  "Best path or the one we should take to make sure no one is tracking us?"

  "Best path," I said. "Lim would have had no reason to assume anyone was monitoring the teams she sent to plant the recordings."

  "Four."

  Not bad. If she'd received the originals quickly and immediately acted on them, we might be within a month of when those holos were recorded. Those boys might still be alive.

  If. Might.

  I shook my head to clear it. I was reacting, not thinking, letting my feelings and my past lead me into poor analysis. I had no data, and making assumptions instead of finding the truth and planning accordingly was more likely to do harm than good. When you don't have a clue, don't make up the facts; observe and gather evidence. However hard the truth is, it's ultimately more useful than your imaginings.

  "Show me the final attachment."

  "There's very little to it," Lobo said, "and essentially no new information."

  "Run it."

  Chapter 6

  Jungle clearing, outside Ventura, planet Tumani

  The squad had hacked away the undergrowth in a rough square ten meters on a side. They'd woven some of the cuttings among the overhanging tree branches to create a crude bivouac. Small chemical lanterns cast a pale greenish glow from spots here and there among the leaves of the trees; from a distance they might read to beginners as fireflies or as dapples of starlight painting the jungle. An experienced hunting team wouldn't be fooled, but the light was dim enough not to night-blind the boy soldiers while still being bright enough to let the sentries navigate easily.

  I would have opted for safety and slower movement, but this choice at least wasn't stupid.

  Pairs of guards watched each of the four sides of the encampment, the boys in each duo staying apart and on the move. Each duo covered its half of their zone for a bit, and then they swapped sides. If there were snipers and spotters in higher positions, I couldn't see them.

  The boys not on patrol should have been sleeping, but all the bodies on the ground appeared to be in motion, waves rippling in a human ocean.

  The small boy who'd hit first in the initial holo entered the central area and wove his way among the prone soldiers, bending and speaking softly to each one and handing him something. When he drew closer to the recorder, I could finally make out his words.

  "Relax, brother," he said to a boy who couldn't stop rolling over and righting himself again, his hands always in flight. "You don't need the sleep, so don't worry that it won't come. Chew some more root, and you'll be fine." He handed something to the boy on the ground, straightened, and thumped his fist on his chest. "I haven't slept in over a week, and I'm fine. Like the Sergeant says, we must stay alert and strong."

  The boy on the ground took a bite of the root and chewed it. His face, a mask with barely enough skin to cover his skull, distorted with anger and effort. He chewed as if each motion of his jaw might beat back an enemy.

  As the standing boy lifted his leg to move to the next soldier, the one on the ground gagged, gasped, sat up, and clutched his chest. A scream ripped from him.

  The standing boy leapt upon him and covered the other's mouth with his hand.

  The boy bucked under him, pained cries forcing their way out.

  All the other boys
jumped to their feet, weapons in hand, and moved to the square's perimeter.

  The large man ran into the clearing and straight to the small boy trying to quiet the larger one beneath him. The man kneeled beside the pair, pulled off the covering boy, and smoothly slid his hand over the mouth of the one on the ground.

  "I tried to quiet him," the shorter boy whispered as he stood.

  "Look at me," the man said. "Look at my eyes, only my eyes."

  The boy did.

  "You did well," the man said. "This one was weak."

  The standing boy's eyes flicked downward.

  "No!" the man said, his voice quiet but commanding. "Look only at my eyes so you can understand the truth."

  The standing boy complied, and as he did, the man grabbed the other side of the prone boy's head, kneeled on the boy's shoulder, and wrenched his head to the left.

  The boy on the ground stopped moving.

  "The government must have put poison in the food we ate in the last village, and it finally struck his heart. We are lucky it did not kill more of us. Do you understand?"

  The standing boy nodded, his eyes never leaving the man's.

  The man stood.

  "This brother died bravely. Tomorrow, we will avenge him!"

  Other boys glanced at the man and nodded their heads.

  "Bury him now," the man said, "and remember the face of this hero. Chew the root, and ready yourself for the battle ahead."

  A few of the boys raised their rifles in support and muttered cheers.

  The recording ended.

  Chapter 7

  In line for the jump gate of planet Hardy

  "Do you know what the root is or what drug it contains?" I said.

  "No," Lobo said, "though from what we've seen it almost certainly includes an amphetamine of some sort."

  "I did notice that," I said. "I was simply curious how addictive it was."

  "And that matters why?"

  I shook my head slowly. "It doesn't, not really, not now. If we end up going with Lim, we'll learn whatever we need to know."

  "If?"

  I stood and slitted my eyes. "Lights, please." Lobo's front area snapped into bright relief. I slowly opened my eyes the rest of the way. "I've been letting these holos affect me too much, making too many assumptions in advance of hard data. I'm trying to be more measured. That's all." Before Lobo could comment, I added, "What's happening with the jump queue?"

  "We're third in line on our side when the stationmaster AI lets civilian ships start moving again. Estimate for that is still half an hour."

  I paced back and forth, more tired than I had any right to be, tense, angry, and unable to shake the effects of what I'd seen. It had been a long day, but I've had many longer that had left me less fatigued.

  Why was I fighting sleep? I had nothing else I needed to do until we were in orbit around Macken, and Lobo could easily take us there without my help.

  I left the front and headed to the small room I use as my quarters. The door opened as I approached it. I practically dived onto my cot.

  "How long to Macken?"

  "Assuming a couple of counter-surveillance runs along the way and typical jump-gate times, about twelve hours."

  "Perfect. Wake me when we're pulling away from its gate."

  "Nothing leaves me feeling more fulfilled," Lobo said, "than acting as your alarm clock."

  I was too tired to argue with him. "Shut me in, and get the lights."

  My fatigue—or maybe my bad emotional state—must have been obvious, because without further commentary Lobo closed the door and snapped off the lights.

  Blackness enveloped me again. I surrendered to it and was asleep in seconds.

  Chapter 8

  Pinecone Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

  The air shuttle carrying my sister, Jennie, away from our home, away from me, shot into the sky and accelerated upward and forward until it was only a tiny point of light. I stood on the side of the mountain, not far from the cave where Jennie had fixed me and left me sleeping, and watched it fly until I wasn't sure the light that was the ship was still there. Then I stood some more. Tears wet my cheeks. I knew the government had taken her so she could spend her time fixing important people, not useless and dumb ones like me, but I also knew she hadn't wanted to go.

  I vowed that one day I would rescue her, though I had no idea of how I might do that. I said the promise aloud, as if she could still hear me, as if what I said mattered.

  I sat in the grass, closed my eyes, and let the wind from the ocean dry my face. I imagined she was next to me, already back from her trip, and when I opened my eyes she would smile and tell me everything was okay.

  Except that couldn't happen. Before she'd fixed me a few hours ago, I might have been able to make myself believe that everything would go back to the way it was, but not now. She'd fixed me too well. Now, I knew she was gone for good, as she'd said she would be.

  With a speed my brain could never have managed before, I instantly also deduced that her departure could cause more problems for me. I was the big useless kid, the dumb one who couldn't learn as much as the slowest of the six-year-olds, and now I didn't have Jennie to protect me. Even though I believed she had fixed my brain—it felt different, as if before my thinking had been crawling and now it was flying like a bird racing across the sky—I didn't know how to convince anyone else that I could do more than before. That I was valuable now.

  I glanced down the hill and saw two men in uniform climbing toward me. They were taking their time, laughing and talking as they came, not even bothering to keep an eye on me. They knew I had nowhere to go. Jennie had taught me that Pinkelponker was nothing but islands, a world of them, thousands of them scattered all over a huge planet-covering ocean, and that Pinecone, our island, was one of the smallest that people bothered to live on. Though I was the biggest person here, I was also the stupidest. They had no reason to worry about me.

  I thought about running back to the cave, but I decided not to bother. They'd find me eventually. For all that Jennie and I had treated it as our special, secret place, I now understood clearly that locating it would not be very hard. Besides, I might as well learn what they wanted.

  I should also, I realized, not tell them about Jennie fixing me. It could get her in trouble, and I didn't want that.

  I stretched out on the grass, stared at the clouds, and waited. I counted them and found the task easy, the numbers past ten coming readily and without effort. I had learned those numbers a long time ago and relearned them many times since then, but usually I could not easily bring them to mind. This fast thinking was nice. I smiled, silently thanked Jennie again, and went back to waiting.

  The two men would be here soon enough.

  They approached me from both sides at once. When they stopped, they were each at least two meters from me. I was bigger and probably stronger than either of them, but that was true of almost all the men I'd ever seen. I'd never, though, had any grown-ups act as if I might get violent with them; everyone on Pinecone knew I'd never hurt anyone. These two clearly weren't taking any chances.

  I smiled first at the one on my right and then at the one on my left.

  "Jon Moore?" the left guy said.

  I wondered why he asked a question when he already knew the answer, but I figured that he was probably making sure. Even if he was just being stupid, I wasn't going to point that out to him; I knew how much it hurt to have someone do that to you. "Yes," I said.

  "We'd like you to come with us," Left said.

  I sat. Both men tensed slightly. I couldn't believe it. They were afraid of me. I'd never hit anyone. Jennie had always told me that fighting was bad and besides that, when you were as big as I am, you had to be careful not to take advantage of smaller people. I wanted to reassure them that everything was fine, but I figured the best way to do that would be to keep behaving nicely. "Okay," I said. "Where are we going?"

  "To see your sister," Right sa
id. "She's asked us to bring you to her."

  I had a hard time continuing to smile, because I knew, without understanding why I knew, that he was lying and that I could only cause trouble by saying so. Besides, if I was wrong, I'd get to see Jennie, and nothing could be better than that.

  I also didn't really have a choice. The way they watched me, the places they stood, everything about their actions made one clear statement: One way or another, I was going with them.

  I stood. "I understand that part. I meant, where are we going: the village, the beach, where?"

  They exchanged a quick glance. Both visibly relaxed.

  Left said, "You know that she left on a government ship, right?"

  "Sure," I said. "She told me, before—" I paused as I realized that telling them the truth would be wrong but that I had no experience lying. Jennie had always told me she liked that about me, so I felt embarrassed at what I was about to do. "Before I took a nap."

  "Of course she did," Left said. He smiled. "Follow me, and I'll lead you to our ship. It's in the government landing area on the other side of the island. You've never been in an air shuttle, have you?"

  "No. I've never left Pinecone."

  "You'll enjoy the ride," Right said. "It's fun."

  "Yes it is," Left said. "You'll have a good time."

  He turned his back to me and started down the mountain. Right stayed behind me. I stared at Pinecone spread out below me: the trail down, the small collections of five and six huts that filled the flat areas, the yellow sand beach far below, the blue-green ocean surrounding us, the birds soaring back and forth over land and sea as if they recognized no boundaries. I feared I'd never see this place again, and I wanted to hold it always in my memory, the way I held Jennie. I inhaled deeply and savored the rich scents of the ocean and the wheat we harvested from all over the mountain.