Children No More-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  I watched him go. I remembered a night on Dump when I'd said much the same thing to Benny. I'd needed that resolve and the anger beneath it; without them, I might not have survived. Nagy needed them, too. I had no idea what to say to him.

  "Come, brother," Nagy said without turning. "He has nothing for us."

  Bony looked at me for a few seconds, and for a moment I thought he might talk to me. Finally, though, he shrugged, said, "Sorry," and ran after Nagy.

  "So am I," I said, though I had little hope that he heard or believed me. "So am I."

  Chapter 39

  Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

  About four minutes to run from our new shelter to the cave. That's how long it took me now. I was pushing hard, moving far faster than any of the others could manage, but even for the slowest of them it wasn't a particularly long walk. Half a dozen of those who'd be staying in the cave had come with us when we'd carried some food in preparation for our first night here, but now that darkness was squeezing the last light out of the sky, they were all heading back. Benny and a couple of the others said they'd return tomorrow morning to visit.

  So why did it feel like Bob and Han and Alex and I were so far away from them, so far away from what had over the last many weeks become my home?

  We had a small fire going half a dozen steps down the path from our shelter. The night wasn't cold, and we had no reason for being awake, but when Benny had suggested that we might like a fire, no one had argued. We sat around it, doing nothing, saying nothing, not even looking directly at one another—just sitting.

  I watched the stars through the streams of smoke that tendriled into the night and wondered if Jennie was watching the sky, too. Most of the time, I tried not to think about her, to focus instead on the training, but every now and then I couldn't help but recall some happy instant of the past that increasingly felt as if it belonged to someone else.

  "It's weird, isn't it?" Alex said.

  No one agreed, but no one argued with him, either.

  "I mean, sleeping away from everyone else," he said, "leaving the cave, not hearing the ocean sounds as clearly as usual because we're in this trail—it doesn't seem right."

  After a few seconds of silence, Bob said, "No, it doesn't, but that's not what's really wrong."

  We all stared at him and waited for him to explain.

  He leaned his thin body forward. The firelight flickered on his cheeks and eyes. He glanced at each of us in turn before he said, "The problem is that this makes everything seem real, and until now none of it did."

  "Moving away?" Han said.

  "Not real?" I said. "All that training? All those times I had to fight you guys? All those drills? You didn't think it was real." I wanted to slap him but instead balled my fists and struggled to control myself. "I can't believe you."

  "No," Bob said, shaking his head, "you don't understand what I mean. Of course all that stuff was real in many ways: We worked hard, we got hurt, we got mad, all of that. But it was all still practice, something we did for a while and then went back to the cave and got on with living."

  I stared at him and wondered how he and I could be the same kinds of creatures. Had none of this affected him? Was he that weak? Or, I wondered as a flash of insight cracked like lightning in my mind, was he that much better a person than I was? I checked the others; they were all paying close attention to Bob, so I said nothing.

  "What's different now," he said, "is that there is no more home, at least not the home we had."

  I lost mine a long time ago. So did they. How could they not know that?

  "All there is now is this place and our attack on the shuttle."

  That's all there has been for weeks and weeks. How could they not know that, too?

  I was too surprised to talk, and no one else said anything, so he continued. "Sure, we're sleeping away from the others, but if Benny had asked us to fish the other side of the island, we'd have spent the night over there and thought nothing of it. We've slept in other locations during our training. It's not fun to be out here on our own, but the problem isn't what we're leaving; it's what we're heading into."

  Bob fell silent.

  The others nodded their heads in agreement.

  No one spoke.

  I backed slightly away from the fire as I realized for the first time that none of them truly understood what was happening, that for them this had all been to some degree a game, a drill of skills they'd never need to use. No wonder Benny believed it was up to me; it was.

  "I can't believe . . . ." I stopped talking, my voice floating away with the smoke on the light evening breeze, because I didn't know what to say next.

  They all stared at me, their expressions alarmed. Only when I saw their faces did I understand how angry I must have sounded.

  The telltale squeak of the wheels on Benny's cart saved me from having to find the words to go with my feelings. Everyone turned away from me and watched the end of the trail as the sound drew closer and, finally, Benny appeared around the bend.

  "Can't believe what, Jon?" he said, his tone jovial, friendly, reassuring.

  The others visibly relaxed, smiles easing onto their faces and their shoulders lowering.

  Benny was only a kid, a kid no older than I was, a kid with flippers for lower arms and feet, a kid younger than many of the others, and yet he really was their leader. He showed up, and they thought everything was better, even though nothing had changed.

  Amazing.

  He looked up at me as he continued talking. "That we're really here?" He propped himself on his elbows, smiled, and surveyed each of us in turn. "Well, we are, and you guys were right to insist we come to this place. It's hard, no doubt about that, but now we're where we should be. When the next shuttle comes, we'll take it, and we'll get off this rock!"

  Bob and Alex cheered in agreement.

  Han nodded his head.

  I said nothing.

  "I thought you were going to stay with the others," Bob said. "You left."

  "I was," Benny said, "but I was being stupid. What if the shuttle lands while I'm back there? You guys overcome the guards, and then what? You have to wait on me to get here to fly the damn thing!" He shook his head. "No way. The minute that ship is ours, we're getting out of here!"

  This time, all three cheered.

  I couldn't believe them. Nothing at all had changed, but now they were happy.

  "Hey, Jon," he said.

  "Yeah."

  "I was carrying some more fruit on my cart, but I lost it a bit down the path. Would you help me gather it?"

  I was glad for the excuse to get away from the rest of them. "Sure, but I can handle it on my own."

  "Nah," he said, "I made the mess, so I should help clean it up." The smile never left his face, but his eyes and voice hardened enough that his intent was clear.

  "Should we come?" Bob said.

  I kept staring at Benny as I said, "No need. You guys take it easy. We'll be right back."

  Benny led me along the path for about two minutes of slow, squeaking rolling. He stopped and faced me.

  "What do you think you're doing?" he said, his voice clear even though he was whispering.

  "What do mean?" I whispered in return. He obviously hadn't wanted anyone else to hear our conversation, so at least for now I'd play along.

  "What were you about to say to them?"

  "Did you hear them?" I said, the anger surging into me again. "They don't understand. I only now realized that they've never understood. This is all a big game to them—maybe not a fun game, definitely a scary one, but still a game. Even though you've told them that some of them may die, they've never really gotten it."

  "And you have?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "You've understood what it's like to beat someone with your fists until they're unconscious," he said, "or to stab him repeatedly with your knife until he falls, or to slice his throat and watch him die. You understand all that."


  The rock walls on either side of the path closed in on me, the air stopped moving, and I wanted to punch Benny. Why had I bothered to come with him? What else had he been training us to do, if not those things? How were we not to understand it? He'd been more than clear. I ground my teeth and stayed completely still, because no matter how little the others had gleaned from his lessons, I had learned how much my own anger could rule me.

  I held my ground, stared at the sky, and thought some more about what Benny had said. No matter what else I'd thought of him, I'd never figured he was stupid. If he was saying something that struck me as really dumb, I probably didn't understand him.

  Then I did.

  "You don't get it, either, do you?" I said. "You've never been in a fight. You've never hurt anyone."

  He shook his head but kept staring at me. "No, I haven't, so in the very real way I'm trying to describe, no, I don't get it. I can't. You can't, either, any more than you can understand what it's like to swim in the ocean until you've done it. You can think about it, people can tell you about it, you can read about it, watch videos of it—you can learn everything there is to know about it, but you can't understand this sort of thing until you've been through it."

  "How do you know that?" I said. "Maybe some people can. Maybe I can. Maybe by seeing it over and over in your mind you can come to understand it."

  "Maybe," he said, "but from everything I've read and what I've seen of all of us—including you—that's not how it works."

  "So we're all going to fight those guards and not really be ready?"

  "You'll be as ready as I can make you."

  "But that's not truly ready, not as ready as we'll be after we do it."

  "That's right."

  "That's terrible," I said. "Some of us may well die and never even get a chance to know exactly what happened to us, what we did wrong, what we did right, any of it."

  "Yes," he said, his voice even lower now.

  "How can you live with that knowledge and still do what you do?" I said. "How can you train us all—people who trust you, people who think of you as a friend—send us off to fight, and then sit back and watch, knowing what can happen, knowing we're not completely ready?"

  "Jon," he said, "take another look at me. What else can I do? Fight with you? I'd cost you far more than I'd help you. Not train you? We'd be stuck here forever. Not come up with this plan? Again, we'd all be stuck here—and we've all decided we don't want that."

  I didn't know what to say. He was right, but I hated it.

  "Did you ever read, Jon?"

  "No," I said, "I never learned how. They all said it was a waste of time for anyone to try to teach me, because my brain wouldn't ever be able to hold enough to make the result worth the effort. And, of course, there was always plenty of useful work I could do in the fields and around the village." I chuckled. "Now, I'm sure I could learn, but there's nothing to read."

  "You'll get your chance," Benny said, "once we're off Dump. The reason I asked is that I read a lot before they threw me away, read every chance I had. A lot of what I read was history, what men and women before us did back on Earth. Reading taught me a lot about how the shuttles worked. It's also one of the ways I learned about this training, about fighting, and about how people like me have always been sending people like you out to fight for us."

  "What do you mean?" I said. I pointed at his front flippers. "There can't have been a lot of people like you."

  A slight grin crossed his face before he continued. "No, not like me in having this birth defect. Like me in being unable—or sometimes unwilling—to fight, but still ordering others to do it. As near as I can tell, for as long as there have been people, there have been other people, older or more powerful or richer or in some way above or exempt from the call to battle, who have ordered soldiers to go into combat and, sometimes, die."

  "But you're just a kid," I said. "Who are you to do that?"

  "The only leader we have," he said. He craned his neck upward, toward me, as far he could. "Unless you want the job."

  I pictured Bob and Alex and Han around the fire, in training, trying to fight with me. As bad as it was to know how poor their chances were, it would be worse to watch them walk away from me and toward a battle with the guards and not be beside them, trying to save them. I would already be leading them during the shuttle attack; that was more than enough responsibility for me.

  "No," I finally said, "I don't want that. I'd rather fight with them."

  He nodded. "Let's head back. Let's make them as happy as we can tonight, and train as hard as we can tomorrow. That's the job."

  I picked up the still tied collection of fruit that he'd clearly pushed off his cart so he could reach us faster.

  He didn't wait for me; he knew I could catch up. He turned and headed back. "That's my job," he said.

  I'd never heard him sound more sad, but when we entered the clearing, he greeted the others with a smile and a joke about how much time I could waste simply picking up some fruit.

  I laughed along with the others.

  Chapter 40

  In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

  The scream came from near the corner barracks. I stopped patrolling the perimeter and turned toward the sound that broke the quiet of the darkening day.

  "Get him!"

  "Kill him!"

  I sprinted toward the noise. As I drew closer, I could make out other, less loud voices urging the people involved in the fight to stop.

  I cut to the inside of the row of buildings in time to see Schmidt and Long tear around the corner and spot the large circle of boys.

  Boys were also running toward the conflict, streaming into the circle and merging with it. As a few of them joined from the same angle on which I was approaching, the crowd parted enough that I could see for a second what was happening: Nagy was chasing Bony, swinging wildly and yelling, his mouth working but no words emerging.

  Though I wanted to barrel through the boys, I was never supposed to get violent in any way with them, so I slowed as I reached the perimeter of the crowd and began gently working my way to its center.

  Nagy's voice was no clearer than before, because he was yelling wordlessly, animal sounds of anger and pain erupting from his throat as if his body could no longer contain them.

  Bony's words were clear. "I didn't mean anything bad," he said. Gasps punctuated the words as he zigged and zagged to evade Nagy. "I was trying to make you feel better."

  Nagy stopped running. He held his arms at his sides, craned his neck forward, and stared at Bony.

  The shorter boy stopped, too, and faced his friend.

  "You're weak," Nagy said. He spit at Benny and hit the small boy's shirt. He pointed at Schmidt and Long, who were now on the inside of the circle but standing still, watching but not moving. "Like them. Like all of them."

  Bony said nothing. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

  "You made me weak," Nagy said, "you and your crying and your stupid words."

  "You're my brother," Bony said as he began to sob.

  "No!" Nagy said. "I had a family, a real family, and a brother, a real one, not some little coward who ran away as his family was killed."

  "We couldn't have saved them," Bony said. "Not your family. Not mine."

  "You could have tried!" Nagy said. "You could try now! At least I went down with them." His voice faltered and for a few seconds he hung his head. "I fought, and I fell, and I don't know why I lived. You—you ran away."

  "What could I have done?" Bony screamed. "There were so many men I couldn't count them all, and they were stabbing and—"

  "You could have fought!" Nagy said. "Instead, you left your family, and now you're leaving me."

  "No," Bony said, "I'm not. I'm right here, brother." He held out his right arm.

  "We could have saved them!" Nagy screamed. He launched himself at Bony and knocked the other boy onto the ground.

  Schmidt and Long darted into the circle. They each
grabbed one of Nagy's arms and pulled him off Bony.

  The smaller boy stayed on the ground, curled in a ball and motionless. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," he said.

  Long wrapped his arms around Nagy's torso as the tall boy kicked and screamed, his eyes seeing nothing, only memories visible to him.

  Schmidt stood in front of him and spoke slowly and gently to him. "It's not your fault," she said. "It's not your fault." She glanced over her shoulder at Bony and at me before she focused again on Nagy. "It's not your fault."

  "You can't keep me here!" Nagy screamed in reply. "You're all too weak. None of you can stop me!"

  I pushed past the last boys in front of me and bent over Bony. I couldn't tell if he even knew I was there. I picked him up. There was nothing to him, even after weeks of eating decently, just a sticklike frame of sinew and bone. His eyes were shut.

  All the boys in front of us stared at me.

  I walked toward them, and they parted to let us out.

  My body vibrated with energy. My face burned. I had to blink to see clearly.

  I glanced at the boy in my arms, over my shoulder at Schmidt, Long, and Nagy, who were still locked in their positions, and back down at Bony.

  "It's not your fault," I said, my voice hoarse and rough. "It's not your fault."

  "You did a good job out there," Schmidt said.

  "What?"

  "You did a good job," she said again. "With Bony. With not diving into the conflict."

  "With controlling yourself," Long added from his seat on the chair next to hers. The sky outside the small window over their heads was dark but somehow felt less dim than the inside of the tiny room Schmidt used as an office and meeting area.

  "How was that good?" I said. I had to struggle to keep my voice under control. "Bony's best friend turned on him. All I did was carry him away and repeat what you were saying." I shook my head. "I don't even know why I said that stuff to him."

  "Because it's true," Schmidt said, leaning forward in her chair, "and he needs to hear it, over and over again, until he learns it, until he believes it and knows it, deep in his heart." She sat back and took a deep breath. "It's vital to healing."