by Ned Rust
“Affirmed,” said the family.
Patrick was about to ask what a smee was but caught an eye roll and brief smile from Oma and lost track of the thought.
“Nicely articulated, Oma,” said Mr. Puber.
“Yes, it certainly is nice to see some evidence of your top-decile scores,” said Mrs. Puber, sighing as she took a dollop of sanitizing gel.
“Oma,” said Mr. Puber, “had top scores in her communications class this yie.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Patrick knows all about that since he had to spend a whole bunch of the afternoon with her braggy self,” said Kempton.
“Um, that would be you, Kempton, who talks about himself all day long,” replied Oma.
“Okay, so what did you guys talk about all afternoon?” said Kempton.
“Mostly how proud we all are about how you get by despite your chronic mustela nervosa.”
“What’s mustela nervosa … wait. Mother!—she’s calling me a weasel again!”
“Never mind them, Patrick,” said Mrs. Puber, blotting her lips with her red napkin, “they’re just going through a tough socio-developmental phase right now. The counselor tells us it will pass. Do I understand you have a sister, too, Patrick?”
“Yeah, four,” said Patrick.
“She’s four yies old? What a wonderful age.”
“Actually, Cassie is four. She’s twins with Paul. But I was meaning to say I have four sisters.”
“Bu-u—what?!” exclaimed Mr. Puber.
“Did you say four sisters, dear?” asked Mrs. Puber.
“FOUR SISTERS!?” exclaimed Kempton, nearly dropping his sanitizer pump. “And who’s Paul?”
Oma shook her head sympathetically and perhaps, it seemed to Patrick, to indicate that he shouldn’t be so quick to answer their questions.
“And—and—you have brothers, too?” said Mrs. Puber.
“Just two. Neil and Paul, Cassie’s twin.”
“THERE ARE SEVEN CHILDREN IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD!?” asked Kempton.
“Nice arithmetic, Kempton,” said Oma, clapping.
“Are you a conjoined family?” asked Mr. Puber.
“Sorry?” asked Patrick.
“Do you have more than one set of parents living in the same, um, domicile? Or are any of the children adopted from families whose parents were unsuited for child rearing or are deceased or—”
“No, we’re all my two parents’ kids,” said Patrick, wondering if that was the best way to say it. It seemed an odd thing to have to explain in the first place.
The kitchen door slid open and a wire basket on four rubber-tipped legs stalked up alongside Mrs. Puber. She placed her red predinner napkin inside and it moved to Kempton.
“Families here on Ith only have two children,” said Oma. “It’s the law.”
“Ahem,” said Mr. Puber, “yes, the human population on Ith has been at its optimal level for nearly two decades, so parents, except in rare cases of municipal-level shortfall … Occasionally a family will have three if there’s been a nearby case of infertility, accident, or—”
“Oh,” said Patrick, still having some trouble adjusting to using scissors and tongs. Kempton had laughed at the notion of forks and knives. Apparently scissors and tongs are far more efficient and, as Mrs. Puber pointed out, less likely to scratch the plates. “I think China’s like that back on Earth.”
“China, ah,” said Mr. Puber dubiously. “So, umm, your family is so large because Earth has become underpopulated?”
“No,” said Patrick, looking down as the automated basket strode up next to him. “I mean, maybe in some places, but I think actually it’s the other way around. Like, we were just learning in social studies that 350,000 people are born every day, and only 150,000 die every day, so that means we’re—”
“TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND NET GAIN IN POPULATION A DAY!” exclaimed Kempton.
“Excellent math skills again, Kempton. Gold star,” said Oma.
“But that must mean,” said Mr. Puber, “with a birth rate that high, your overall population is at—”
“I think we’re about to hit eight billion.”
Mr. Puber put his sanitizer pump back on the table without having given himself any.
“Are you making a joke?”
Patrick shook his head. “No, sir.”
“But, Rex told us,” he spluttered, “I mean, according to the Minder’s plan—there are supposed to be 101 million Earthlings … this would be almost an 8,000 percent discrepancy!”
“Why don’t you have something to eat, dear?” said Mrs. Puber to Mr. Puber.
“But I should immediately text the—”
“Stay right there in your chair and let’s have dinner as is proper—without accessing the Interverse.”
“But, Mother,” said Kempton, “this is huge!”
“Kempton, we were told to feed Patrick Griffin dinner, and we do not ever break etiquette in this family, much less at mealtime. The house is not on fire, abominations are not at the door. And, as the Commission on Family Values has long recommended, there will be no binkies at the table.”
“Nicely put, Mother,” said Oma.
“And I want no more speaking of population mandates or politics or any kind of scientific theories. We are a normal family and, even if we have an extraordinary guest, we are going to have normal conversation.”
Mr. Puber and Kempton both fidgeted like schoolboys but nodded their acquiescence.
“Did we get rutabaga compote?” asked Mr. Puber, waving his tongs excitedly.
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Puber. “It’s coming.”
Patrick recalled that Oma had said they were getting “picked up” at seven and figured it had to be close to that late already.
“So,” Mrs. Puber continued, looking brightly around the table. “Tell us about your days, children. Was the weather okay at Lasters? I was so concerned it was going to rain, what with this horrible storm coming. Did you see those awful clouds this morning?”
“Mother, the forecast said it wasn’t going to get here till this evening,” said Kempton. “You know the Meteorology Bureau is 99.8 percent accurate on precipitation predictions out to sixty-three dunts.”
“Kempton’s got a thing for meteorology,” said Oma. “It’s his backup if he doesn’t make it as an Arso. Which he won’t.”
“At least I’m not going to have a niche entirely forced on me, loser!” yelled Kempton.
“Both of you, stop!” said Mrs. Puber. “Patrick’s siblings—none of them, I am certain, ever indulges in such petty bickering.”
Patrick folded up his napkin as neatly as he could and placed it inside the collection cart.
“All ready, everybody? Let’s eat!” said Mrs. Puber. The bin almost impatiently collected Mr. Puber’s napkin and sprinted from the room. A heavier-duty six-legged model entered the room in its place. It bore a wide silver disc divided into six pie-piece-shaped trays, each heaped with what Patrick presumed must be dinner, though it was, if possible, even less appetizing than last night’s. The main dish looked like some sort of seed-filled pudding, surrounded by chickpeas and drizzled with pink mucus.
Mr. Puber moaned rapturously as he set his tongs to work, but the gloppy stuff had the exact opposite effect on Patrick. He blanched and wondered again when his and Oma’s escape was going to happen.
“What time do you figure it is, Kempton?” he whispered.
The boy, though he was sitting right next to him, didn’t seem to hear the question, so he repeated it a bit more loudly.
“The serve-bots always come in at four-point-five dunts,” said Kempton. “Why? Got an appointment?”
“Just curious,” said Patrick, and gave himself a mental kick in the butt. Seven dunts, not seven o’clock, was what Oma had meant, of course. He sighed and resigned himself to eating the most disgusting-looking meal of his entire life.
CHAPTER 40
Children and Fools
Despite having spent seemingly half his life train
ing in the field, Novitiate Frank Kyle was no fan of the outdoors. It was simply impossible to discount the distractions and discomforts that came with having no climate control or furniture. To say nothing of the bugs.
The devastating agricultural damage insects had caused throughout human history, together with their role in human disease—the brain-cooking fevers, the skin-bursting plagues, the lung-drowning infections—unleashed more chaos than flood, fire, and earthquake combined. The day when all nonessential insects, arachnids, and other subsentients were eradicated from populated areas (as Rex said had already happened on Ith) could not come soon enough.
But that day, of course, was contingent on the Purge.
Till then, the only thing to do about the midges aimlessly dancing in the early-spring sunlight was to keep squinting and not to inhale any of them. The thought of one of their swamp-birthed fleshy little bodies entering his eyes or mouth or nose or—
A voice spoke just then. It emanated from the wireless receiver knit to his auditory neurons. Nobody else—not even a gnat that had flown all the way inside his ear—could have heard it. But Novitiate Frank Kyle surely did.
He stopped walking and activated his retinal display: “Pawprint: lagomorphic, subject approximately 41.1 kilograms, moving at 4.8 kilometers per hour. Recency: 129.8 quats.”
He shut off the data and looked down at the soft, rain-soaked grass. A pair of long, thin prints, half a meter in length, were there as plain as day.
“A lagomorph!” he exclaimed aloud. “Well, that’s interesting; if not terribly scary.”
It was almost encouraging, really, that the enemy had taken their last big shot and hadn’t chosen anything more formidable than a rabbit. Had they sent a half lion, flying horse, or a venom-spitting giant lizard, or something else fairly radical—that could have been somewhat challenging to address.
But a large rabbit—even if it turned out to be somewhat chimeric (perhaps it had the head of a chicken or the arms of a monkey)—was
A) going to be relatively easy to kill and
B) something that could be explained away.
The educated population here was now coming to terms with genetically altered crops, cloned sheep, and miniature horses. A giant rabbit could simply and easily be construed as an escaped laboratory experiment.
“Oh, those horrible, horrible scientists!” he said aloud in a mocking falsetto voice.
But Novitiate Frank Kyle wasn’t here at this podunk suburban golf course to allow such a scenario in the first place. Because if nobody ever saw a giant rabbity monster—if nobody knew it had ever been here—then nothing would ever need to be explained.
The voice traveled into his auditory cortex once again: “Second print set: human, approximately 19 kilograms, moving at 4.8 kilometers per hour. Recency: 132 quats.”
And indeed, close to the first ones, Novitiate Frank Kyle now discerned another imprint, that of a human child’s shoe.
“Third subject,” continued the voice. “Human, approximately 21 kilograms, moving at 4.8 kilometers per hour. Recency: 132.1 quats.”
And then, in rapid succession, the voice announced two more pairs of indentations, each of which had been made within moments of the others.
Novitiate Frank Kyle scrolled through some hyperlinked pages on his retinal display and determined—based on the size, spacing, and depth of the footprints—that the enemy combatant’s companions were approximately four years old.
He continued to walk as he read reports, examined charts, and reviewed his decision-making protocols.
Witnesses younger than five years were considered highly unreliable. But, still, above two there was risk. And risk had to be minimized.
He pulled out an ammunition clip just as the automated voice made another announcement: “Voices, 442 meters, east northeast. Acoustic analysis suggests three to five English-speaking entities.”
Novitiate Frank Kyle sighed as he slid his gun from the bag, removing the knit sock from the end of its barrel. Then—just to be certain—he removed one more ammunition clip from the golf bag.
Disengaging the gun’s safety as he went, he walked up the crest of a wooded hill, lay down in the filthy, muddy (and doubtless insect-infested) leaf litter, popped the protective caps off his rifle’s scope, and examined the figures he could see gathered in a sand trap near the seventh green.
The four young children were there—playing in the sand—but that was all. Nothing else, much less anything rabbitlike, was with them.
Well, he’d find it soon enough. Doubtless after making contact with the children, the creature had moved off to pursue whatever futile objective it had been sent here to achieve.
His BNK-E suddenly buzzed in its belt loop. The device’s screen was asking if it was okay to disengage silent mode on his neural implants, and to replay three recent alerts.
The color drained from Novitiate Frank Kyle’s short-bearded face. He hadn’t engaged silent mode. How could it have been in silent mode?! The interface was located inside his own head and he’d surely have remembered if he’d done anything so stupid! He hastily selected the unmute icon and gasped in horror as his motion detector exploded onto his retinal screen. A large red dot was racing toward the center of his range-finder.
He turned just in time to see a very large furry foot closing in on his face.
All became very bright for Novitiate Frank Kyle right then. And then black. And quiet.
CHAPTER 41
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
“Can you turn down the moon a little?” Patrick asked. Kempton had them sleeping under a tree-framed country sky bright enough to read by. Either Kempton hadn’t had the moon on last night or Patrick had been so tired that he hadn’t noticed. But—between his nervousness about his and Oma’s coming escape and the way that vegetarian glop from dinner was sitting in his stomach—there was no missing it tonight.
“Turn it down?”
“It’s so bright,” said Patrick.
“That’s my prescription.”
“Prescription?”
“My counselor prescribed elevated ambient light levels because of my stress dreams. It’s this or the aurora borealis routine. But that can be annoying. All those colors moving around, you know. The moon’s good, though. Nice and calming, don’t you think?”
“I guess I’ll get used to it,” said Patrick. “And what’s the deal with the bed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can I turn off the massage? It’s kind of annoying.”
Wherever Patrick rolled or however he lay, the mattress came up to meet him. It was a strange sensation—like hands pressing upward.
“Massage? No, it’s just the active response,” Kempton explained. “The Commission of Public Health says there’s been a 43 percent reduction in spinal complaints since it became standardized.”
“So, like, you can’t turn it off?”
“Did you not hear me? It’s good for your back. You’ll get used to it.”
Patrick sighed and tried to stay still so that the mattress would leave him alone.
“Say,” said Kempton. “I was thinking, is the reason you have so many siblings because you are in a celebrity family on Earth?”
“Celebrity? Us? No, definitely not,” said Patrick.
“Oh,” said Kempton. He looked over to Patrick in the not-so-dim light.
“Patrick?”
“Yes, Kempton?”
“What would you say is the chief difference between Earth and Ith? I mean other than for your eyes being small and your ears being big. And the population issue. And not being as technologically advanced.”
“Between Ith and Earth?” said Patrick, and thought about it a moment. “I guess things are more organized here.”
“Organized? How do you mean?”
“Well, it’s like you guys seem to have all these rules and things—and all the machines—this bed, and the robots, and how your toilets are all automated and stuff.”
�
�Okay, but what else? You said your written language is different, right? And, really, there are no abominations?”
“Kempton,” said Patrick. “I am not going to talk to you anymore because I’m feeling very tired right now and—no offense—I think this is all a dream and I don’t need to answer your questions.”
“You what?!” said Kempton, sitting bolt upright. “That’s just like Rex! He went three days before he stopped suspecting it was all a dream! Do you want to see a psych counselor?”
“No,” said Patrick, his heart sinking. “I want to sleep.”
“Okay, but if you need help—they told us to watch for adjustment issues and, if you’re feeling disoriented—”
“Good night, Kempton,” said Patrick, turning his pillow and pushing his face into its dark, soothing coolness.
“Good night, Patrick,” said Kempton, lying back down.
Patrick closed his eyes and began to count in his head. He remembered how Kempton had counted One Missouri, two Missouri rather than One Mississippi, two Mississippi. It occurred to him this was because a tert—or was it a quint?—was a little shorter than a second, and Missouri is a little shorter to say than Mississippi.
“Patrick.”
“Yes, Kempton?” said Patrick, raising his face from the pillow.
“Our trip to Silicon City is going to be awesome.”
“Sure,” said Patrick. “Good night.”
“Good night, Patrick.”
Patrick reburied his face in the pillow. A moment later there was a weird raspy, whiny sound and Patrick rolled over to see Kempton asleep and snoring like a sick little lamb.
Frustrated, he lay awhile watching the boy and found himself thinking about school, his real school. The year was almost over—just another couple months to go. He couldn’t wait for the summer. He hoped they’d go to Washington, DC, again and see Uncle Andrew. Everybody had complained about the trip last year—how hot it had been, how small the hotel rooms had been—but they complained everywhere they went. And he knew he and his parents, at least, had really enjoyed all the museums and the tours and the …