The Chromosome Game (8 page)

Krand said, ‘I think you pretend not to like her.’

‘I,’ said Eagle, ‘pretend everything. For instance, Super Bulldozificators don’t do anything really. But this one is an extremely advanced model and very
nearly
does something.’

‘Well, Eagle, I want to show you something that really does.’

‘I’m a bit busy, Krand.’

‘It won’t take long.’

‘Okay, let’s see it.’ He put the Super Bulldozificator away carefully — so that the girls wouldn’t bust it apart — and followed Krand to the other end of the Adventure Playground and through the gymn and up to the sliding doors.

The tractor wasn’t there.

*

For Krand, the instant that Eagle gazed into the now-empty hoist area — as it turned out to be — was a frozen point in time: an instant marked by the radioactive caesium clock that embossed the flow of events with a hammered-out hallmark — as tangible a Happening as the striking of a punch upon an anvil.

As sensitive to atmosphere as an electroscope is to a static charge, Krand detected in Eagle’s gaze something which (much later on) Krand was to term ‘super-normal’ … and he chose that precise definition for a specific reason. What it meant was that Eagle was more normal than he. Krand — age ten — was already measuring, with some internal metering device in his own mind, the peculiarities of a time-gap embodied in the method of his conception that he could not possibly have known about. Naturally, the gods knew that Eagle had emerged from the ‘ice-trays’ exactly as Krand had. Krand knew nothing of the kind.

Yet he sensed something different about Eagle and this difference manifested itself in a way — as Krand was to reason in secret much later — in a way that ‘could stop the clock’.

Eagle said, in a perfectly normal voice, ‘There was a tractor in there. Wasn’t there?’

Krand found his own voice oddly flattened. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I suppose someone must have told me.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know who.’

‘Have you spoken to the twins? — or Nembrak?’

‘No.’ Eagle’s smile, spontaneous and warm (and super-normal), was really just a question.

Krand answered it. ‘No one else knows.’

‘Well, I do now. I don’t see the problem.’

‘The problem is I don’t see how you knew.’

‘Nor do I.’ Eagle smiled. ‘Does it matter?’

‘I guess not.’

‘I’ll tell you what does matter, Krand.’

‘What?’

‘Cass is ill again.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t realise Cass was a friend of yours. Let’s have his identity number.’

Eagle didn’t complicate matters by asking why this was necessary. He never did. ‘His number is 010.’

‘Right. Did he throw up, this time?’

‘All I know is, Nembrak the Inventor got a Special out of the machine because he thought it would make Cass feel better.’

‘And did it?’

‘No. Milk-shakes make him worse.’ Eagle added matter-of-factly, ‘I knew that anyway.’

‘What flavour was the Special?’

‘Strawberry.’

‘Has Cass been checked by an auto-nurse lately?’

‘Cass doesn’t like the auto-nurses.’

‘Nor do I but we’ve got to do something, can’t just leave him getting sick all the time.’

‘That’s what I think, Krand. I was hoping you’d mention it to Trell.’

‘Sure I will. Why can’t you?’

‘You and Trell and Kelda go about together. You know things that I don’t know and you know how to say them.’

‘I’m not sure of that, either.’

‘You’re looking at me strangely.’

Krand thought, I’m looking at you for the first time. Aloud he said, ‘I’ll make sure Trell knows. Got to see him anyway.’

‘About the tractor?’

‘I think he should know. I’ll go see him right now.’

*

Trell said, ‘And you’re saying this thing was on a hoist, Krand?’

‘Yes. Some kind of a hoist.’

‘And who were the first people to realise it had gone?’

‘Me and Eagle. But I don’t see how Eagle knew it had been there.’

‘And it was a tractor … So how does Eagle know there should have been a tractor there and wasn’t when he looked?’

‘He couldn’t have. And yet he did.’

‘Hadn’t Nembrak told him?’

‘No. Nor had the twins. It’s kind of … funny.’

‘News sure does flash around this place, doesn’t it!’

‘That’s putting it mildly.’

‘What colour was it?’

‘Blue.’

‘Who sent it up here?’

‘Search me.’

‘Who says it’s a hoist?’

‘You can see the cracks. All the way around the sides of the cubicle. Nembrak checked it. Seems the hoist came up with this tractor on it, went back down, then came up empty.’

‘Now you see it, now you don’t — and I don’t dig magic.’

‘Me neither, Trell. Then there’s the steel doors. We aren’t even supposed to know they lead anywhere or that they even exist.’ … Krand’s stare emitted high-intensity photons. ‘I know one thing: I don’t advise you to talk with the Computer about this.’

‘Check. Kelda will agree. We both think that the computer won’t like it too much if we know things we don’t know
officially
.’

‘Trell, do you think it already knows
I
know?

‘Not unless there are cameras or mikes near the hoist.’

Krand said, ‘But then there wouldn’t be. Not if the place isn’t even meant to be there.’

‘So the Computer must’ve opened the doors by mistake. Some mystery!’

‘We’ll have to solve it.’

Trell said, ‘But in our own way and in our own time.’

‘What are you so spooked about?’

‘I just know I’m spooked. I’m taking no action till I know why.’

Krand decided not to question this. It was the first time he’d ever heard Trell speak with such authority. There was a decisive tone in Trell’s voice that seemed new … ‘Trell, Cass is getting worse. Nembrak’s been handing out Specials and they don’t help.’

‘I’ll go into it.’

‘Thanks.’

Trell crossed the Recreation Area to the disco. He thought, they’re so right. Cass looks real sick.

‘Cass?’

‘Yes?’

‘Cass, you know what I’ve noticed?’

‘What have you noticed?’

‘You seem to get ill when you drink your Special. Noticed it before.’

Cass said, ‘Come to think of it, you’re right.’

‘You don’t look good.’

‘I don’t feel good.’

‘Cass, what else makes you feel sick like that? If you get any whiter in the face you’ll grow up the Invisible Man.’

Cass’s frail face telegraphed a brave attempt at a smile. ‘An invisible man to go with an invisible tractor?’

Trell’s eyes shot upward, where the mikes were. ‘Let’s not get off the point.’

Cass looked momentarily surprised. When he commented he kept his reactions out of his voice. ‘Trell, I don’t want to talk with those autonurses again. They scare me.’

‘You been down there?’

‘Often enough to avoid them in future.’

‘Talk to Kelda. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

He found Kelda in the Laser Art Room. Here you could examine sculpture in 3-D, walk right around it, do anything but touch it, it Wasn’t There, it was lasers, the incubants took this in their stride, you could learn a lot from lasers, just punch up the name of the artist, glance down the index, then select the Work you wanted to look at, if you liked you could switch on the tape commentary, the appropriate tape chatted away according to which button you hit …

‘The work you see before you is a life-size laser projection of Henry Moore’s
The
Family
Croup
. If you examine the expression on the face of each member of the family, you will be surprised at the amount of detail Moore suggests, using curves rather than than routed-out incisions … Let’s take a look at the Mother first —’

Kelda saw Cass’s expression and pressed the
stop
button. The commentary ceased and the hologram disappeared.

‘What is it, Cass?’

‘Am I interrupting?’

‘It’s
okay
Honest.’

Honest. Yes, thought Cass. Those green eyes of hers are honest, no doubt about that, no wonder Trell and she hit it off, they’re friends, no doubt about that either. Me personally, I can take them or leave them — girls as
girls
, I mean — the heck I’m only ten, but somehow these two act older than ten, and there
is
something comforting about Kelda, okay she’s pretty, what hair! Love the way it shapes itself so thick around her face, it can’t help it, thick but not coarse, and very dark, makes her green eyes into a bit of a Special, must say I can’t imagine my mum having green eyes, but Kelda’s so gentle, and this panicky thing I feel inside sort of dies down a bit, and I can talk calmly. Well, almost calmly.

‘Go on, Cass.’

‘I was … going to say this to Trell. But you and he are pals, right?

‘Yes, Cass. We are.’

‘Yes, well I don’t want this to get around, I know I can trust you and Trell —’

‘— Oh, I think you can trust most people, Cass.’

‘All the same —’

‘— All right, it’s between the three of us. Hadn’t you better sit down? You look … awful.’

‘Kelda, I’m scared. And — just now — I was at the soda-fountain having a Special. Trell came up and asked me if having a Special made me feel worse. I told him, yes. Then he asked me if anything else did.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, Kelda. Sweetened food and drinks does it most.’

‘Yes … I see.’

Cass couldn’t help smiling. ‘You do sound very grown-up, talking like that! I’d much rather talk with you than an auto-nurse. Who invented those things, anyway?’

‘Our parents, I guess … Go on about this sick feeling. You say
sweet
things? — candy … chocolates?’

Yes.’

‘With sugar in them?’

‘That’s right … Look, what are you —’

‘— Nothing. Honest. I don’t know. You’ll have to go to an auto-nurse and —’

‘— Kelda, you don’t talk like a kid at all.’

She said quietly, ‘You don’t sound much like one, either.’

‘In that case, Kelda, I’d better hear what you think.’

‘It’s just that in the tape-lectures —’

‘— Which?

‘Physiology, Biology, whatever. I remember something. I could be wrong.’

‘But you could be right.’

‘I could.’ What Kelda was actually thinking was, Do they have any Insulin. She didn’t want to say it seemed like diabetes if there wasn’t any.

Cass said, ‘Kelda, I can practically
hear
your mind. You’re worried there might not be a cure. You might as well say. We kids are all on our own here. I don’t know how, or why, but we are. I have a right to know.’ The tears glistened in his eyes. ‘I don’t want to die, Kelda. Please tell me.’

Kelda said, ‘You’re talking to a ten year old kid.’

‘I’m talking to someone who sounds like … like a young mother. The more you talk the more I notice it.’

‘Cass, that’s just about the nicest thing that’s ever been said to me.’

‘It’s true.’ He held onto her. The tears passed from his cheek to hers. ‘Kelda, what’s wrong with me? Please tell!’

‘I think you have diabetes.’

*

Thoughtful, Kelda entered the Nursing Hall.

She had not, of course, any idea that it was in here that she had been synthetically conceived, electronically sponsored, autonomically created within a synthetic womb. To Kelda this was simply the hospital area; the auto-nurses were devices installed pro-tem to care for the children in the unexplained absence — temporary, of course — of their busy parents.

Kelda had no particular reason to question this. Ignorant of the nursing procedures of the Twentieth Century she felt it must be the norm for kids to be supervised by computers for indefinite periods and nothing in the movies shown on ZD-One conflicted with this impression.

At the same time, the Nursing Hall gave her the creeps. She couldn’t explain it, it was an instinct about the place, so mechanised, those overhead rail-tracks on which the auto-nurses ran, the atmosphere in there … Hardly encouraging when you wanted to confide in a Black Box.

By this time the Laserpeople had been erased and the projection equipment transferred automatically to the Laser Art Room. Neither Kelda nor any of the others remembered the Laserpeople. Instead, they had the vague illusion, a ghosted memory, that they had at some time known and seen and heard their parents, long, long ago. Then something must have happened because their parents had all gone away, and the incubants didn’t even remember their leaving. Maybe it wasn’t unusual. How do you know what’s usual?