Authors: Christopher McKitterick
The woman once again tried to pull him off the last step. Pehr began to feel as though he would cry, very soon.
Then he saw Teresa’s face in the third-floor window. She frowned. A second later, her game-self appeared in between Pehr and the lady.
“
Who’s that?” Teresa asked, pointing at the woman with the sun dress.
“
She’s come to take me away!” Pehr said, in such a hurry that the words came out as a scream.
“
Who are you talking to?” the woman asked.
“
Don’t go!” Teresa cried. “I’ll help.”
“
Come on, Pehr,” the woman said. “We are scheduled to meet your new parents in ten minutes. We can’t be any later than we already are. We don’t want them to think something is wrong, now, do we?”
“
Crash you!” Pehr yelled. It was the first time he had used such language around an adult.
Just then, Teresa appeared in the yard, which flickered for a second like a ground-road in hot summer sun. It changed into the
Dreadnought
, and Teresa disappeared behind the titanium and hicarb hull. The cruiser was wider than the whole yard, and longer than two blocks—longer even, farther than Pehr could see, since it was facing him. Every turret of foreward auto cannons rotated toward the woman holding Pehr, and several cartridges of missiles extended from the ship like arms stretching out, ready to fight, the missile-tips like knuckles on fists.
The woman gasped and let go of Pehr. “This is very naughty,” she stammered.
Two men jumped out of an aircar that was parked on the landing beside the ground-road, and began running toward Pehr.
Pehr took the opportunity to race up the concrete steps, being careful not to trip over the fourth one—which had shattered when someone threw an exploding “knuckleball” at one of the bigger kids last spring. He pushed open the door leading to his apartment.
“
Mom!” he shouted, slamming the door behind him and leaning against it. “That woman wants to take me away for good! We’ve got to do something.”
“
Son,” Jerry said, slowly rising out of the chair he had brought when he moved in, one of those that swallowed you all the way when you sat down, “she’s right. You’ve got to move in with the Senectuses; they already paid for the adoption. It’s too late.”
The door banged open, throwing Pehr down on the threadbare rug.
“
We’ll miss you, boy,” Jerry said. Then he turned and returned to his chair, disappearing into it. Mom lay on the couch like she did on bad nights, mouth partway open, eyes flicking this way and that, moving her hips funny. She didn’t even know he was there. Her cheeks were still wet, but she wasn’t crying. At least she didn’t smell like whiskey.
When Pehr stood, he saw two big men standing behind him, dressed in the flexible armor of police but wearing no badges or 3VRDs to say they were police. One of them had a black face, one white. The white one looked at the other, then reached a hand toward Pehr.
“
We’re leaving now,” he said. He had a big voice, almost as big as Captain Downward’s. Pehr thought he maybe looked sad.
“
Why are you doing this?” Pehr asked, not moving, feeling resigned to his fate.
“
It’s all right, kid,” the man who reached for Pehr’s arm said. “I had the same thing happen to me when I was your age. It’s not so bad after you get used to the new parents. I did just fine.”
“
Yeah, Pete,” the other man said, then laughed.
Pehr let the first man take his upper arm in that armor gloved hand and lead him outside. The
Dreadnought
still filled the yard. The woman in the sun dress was gone.
“
Pehr, are you all right?” Teresa’s game-self asked, again on the steps. She was out of breath and scared.
“
Yeah. I guess I’m moving. I hope it’s close enough so we can still play.”
Then the big cruiser vanished, and so did Teresa. When Pehr got to the fourth step, he jumped hard with both feet into the dirty hole. But he didn’t bust through, like Gosh had thought someone would. He scuffed his ankle on the way out.
The men led Pehr to the waiting aircar. This was his first ride in one of these—sure, he’d been in the air lots of times on board the airbus that took students to the museums intheflesh, but this wasn’t the same. The bus was no different than being in a game, since it was so big, or being on an electric ground-bus. This time, he had his own seat, right beside the black man who flew the car. The white man sat in back, mumbling things to someone Pehr couldn’t see.
Pehr looked out the side of the window-dome, down at Anoka as they took off hard and flew away. He felt as if he were on board a spaceship, because the aircar was always pitching this way and that. The ride was fun, and it helped him keep from crying.
An hour later, they landed outside a private home. It stood almost as tall as the eighter, only it was a single place, made of bricks and shiny metal, with a tile roof and lots of colored glass windows. Three landings stood in front of the house with aircars on each. A driveway curved in from the ground-road and back, and on it stood a pretty gold ground-car that looked like an antique.
Pehr realized right away when the dome hissed open that this would be his new house, but he didn’t know if he wanted to live with retro people who owned ground-cars.
“
Here’s where you’ll be living,” the white man said.
Pehr didn’t rise from his seat, not yet.
A door opened on the front of the house and two people stepped outside.
“
They’re old,” Pehr remarked. “I’m not going to live here, am I?”
“
Old’s good, sometimes,” the man in the back seat said. “They’re rich. I think they own a company that makes electric valves for rifles or something. You’re lucky. I was adopted by a middle-class family. You’ll be okay, kid.”
And it was okay, in time. At first, though, it was very hard not being able to comm Teresa or Gosh. When he was left alone in the huge bedroom overlooking the real sculpture garden out back, Pehr cried all night for three nights. But every sadness passes, or at least becomes bearable after a time. He found that Olaf, the servant’s son, knew how to play
Dreadnought
—it had apparently been installed on Pehr’s card, not on the apartment server, so it had moved with him. The new parents called that “scandalous,” and “forbade” Pehr from playing with the child of an unfranchised servant. Within a couple of weeks, Olaf and his mother moved away, leaving Pehr all alone again in the big house.
The years passed slowly, but Pehr learned how to make fun for himself. He was able to subscribe to any show, as long as Emma and Geoff Senectus—his new parents—approved of them. The first holidays were the saddest times, especially his twelfth birthday when Mom didn’t even comm. A few days later, Jerry sent a pretty picture-print of Mom, a nice holo with her and Jerry in front of the eighter. Getting that was even sadder than not getting a comm, and he punched his fluffy pillow until his wrist grew sore.
Pehr did all right at school, but mostly excelled at 3VRD athletics, because he could practice intheflesh in the many-acre lot that surrounded the house. He hurdled wells that held tropical fish, climbed gnarly old oaks and elms and box elder trees—these trees even had good leaves most of the summer, unlike those he had seen in Anoka . . . he ran and ran around the house, trying to increase the number of times he could do it without his lungs burning too badly. But the burn felt good, somehow.
Sometimes, Emma and Geoff had other old people over for “teas.” This meant awkward talking in the Library, a strange, dark room with stained-glass windows and walls made out of antique books. The books were red and brown and gold and sometimes colorful, and they held paper pages where words were printed. The words couldn’t be changed, no matter which program Pehr tried to call up from the Senectus’ Super-Two Household server—a computer that could do just about anything.
At the teas, people in fancy retro dress would chat about this and that, drink tea from porcelain cups—also antiques—and eat many kinds of sweets. The new servant was very good at making food—especially treats—but she was boring to talk to, and she didn’t have a child. Mostly, the teas were a time for Emma and Geoff to talk about Pehr.
They hadn’t been approved to have a child of their own because of some problem in their genes—cystic fibrosis? Pehr wondered, having seen a reference in the family file one day—so they had decided to adopt. The Skilcroffts had adopted a girl last January, and that left Emma and Geoff as the only ones in their circle of friends who hadn’t had a child; then came Pehr.
Pehr hated the teas. One day, roughly two years after moving to the house, he came to the Library when summoned. He was giggling with a new friend he had met in the nets, a boy named Montegue from Cincinnati. Montegue was an exceptional runner, and they had raced for the Middle States Junior High title in the Three Kilometer that morning; Montegue had won.
“
Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” Pehr said, closing the French doors that separated the Library from the house. Then he made the
Dreadnought
appear, laser and plasma cannons blazing, missiles and torpedoes launching from their cartridges on screaming spikes of flame, volume full-war loud.
The guests spilled their tea, and Mrs. Cremshaw fell off her red-velvet stool onto the plush carpeting right onto her wide butt. Montegue left right away, roaring with laughter; Pehr kept giggling. That night, Pehr was told that if he did that again, he would have to leave.
That gave him ideas. He thought he had been trapped in the stinky old house. So he began doing everything in his power to cause trouble, but never anything so obvious as the
Dreadnought
scheme. Pehr signed up to take part in every dangerous game he could—full well knowing the “danger” was no more real in school games than in any other 3VRD show. Montegue joined him in several of his exploits.
After only three months, Pehr became the second-ranked boxer in the Middle States Conference. He excelled at wrestling for a few weeks, but that bored him. Downhill skiing caused him great trouble: The judges disapproved of his “straight-bombing” the Alps Mountain runs; that was unsportsmanlike, they complained, and banned him from skiing competitions until he could ski properly. He tried undersea winging, but that didn’t draw much of a crowd of spectators—a lot of people couldn’t get past the stupid feeling that they were drowning, even though it was all a 3VRD and they were safe at home, high above the waves.
The guests who came over for teas were uncomfortable watching Emma and Geoff’s son demonstrate his dangerous antics. Seeing their nervous glances at one another, their forced smiles, Pehr took a certain pleasure.
When he turned 15, Pehr was given special approval—a year early—to enlist with the St. Paul Shooting Squad. The squad, mostly middle-aged men, taught him how to use all varieties of hand- and shoulder-arms, ranging from street weapons, like gunpowder pistols, to military rifles, like the EMMA. Pehr took great pleasure indeed when he learned his arthritic adoptive mother had the same name as the EarthCo Warriors’ battlefield dominance weapon. He became quite proficient with a wide range of arms, rated high in his age group. Though saddened when Montegue couldn’t enlist and continually asked Pehr to instead join him in various athletics, Pehr stayed with the Squad.
This was the greatest of all sports, to Pehr more real and practical than something like 3VRD running or boxing: He had watched the newsfeed, and he knew the real world was a dangerous place. It couldn’t hurt to be ready for the day some thug attacked him.
In the May 2080, US Shooting Finals, Pehr won first place in the under 21 age group in Confrontation. This was one of the survival sections: The course was laid out over a 3VRD of fictitious city and forest, and the twelve competitors had to fight one another “to the death”—the computer kept track of who was injured, slowing them down, and who was killed, plucking them from the course. Each was given only one weapon, and each wore the same suit of armor that EarthCo Warriors wore on the battlefield. Points were scored by killing the most competitors and arriving at the finish-zone first; getting wounded reduced the score, as did injuring instead of killing opponents. Whoever could run, duck, climb, cover, react, etc., the fastest generally won. Pehr won—not with a record score, but he won.
At the next tea, Pehr played the Confrontation recording for Emma and Geoff’s guests. They were appalled: “That’s a barbarian’s game,” one old woman complained. “Not fit for a gentleman,” her husband added. Pehr tried to keep the smile off his face.
When Emma and Geoff forbade Pehr from continuing this morbid sport, he enlisted with the space section of the Shooting Squad. Now Pehr felt he had found his niche: He flew a one-man General Motors Stratofighter, capable of atmospheric and vacuum operation. He never gained mastery of the craft’s controls, but that didn’t matter; its computer did the flying, and all he had to do was turn this way and that as if swimming, and learn accurate targeting. This he could do. Physical and mental reflex were still all-important, and those were his fortés.