Star Travels Tales of Science Fiction (7 page)

“Except for Deemi, Geebo and I are the
oldest at Daycare,” I explained to him. “Deemi’s eleven, the oldest
and biggest kid Daycare’s ever had. He’d never been killed before I
took over this unit, but I’ve killed him three times.” I looked him
straight in the eye. “And I plan to kill him and whoever gets in
the way of me and Christmas.” He just looked up at me with an
innocent and shy expression. I told him how to et to Deemi’s unit,
and said that he should follow my directions exactly. If he
wandered dawdled there was a good chance he’d be killed by one of
the many traps which both units had spent the rest of the year
setting up. I watched him walk down the stairs to the sidewalk. He
stopped and looked up at me.

“Bye.” He turned and never looked back.
I really hoped he made it to Deemi’s, and I hoped Deemi liked him.
At least this kid wasn’t a girl. One of the rules Deemi had decided
on, while I was still with him, was no girls. Once, he was sent a
girl, and he killed her himself. What a waste. He never even tried
to use any of her abilities for Christmas. Every time Ceep restored
her, Deemi’d just kill her again until after the fourth time Ceep
never brought her back. No one came back to Daycare after the
fourth death. I thought it was really a shame; I felt sorry for the
girl. No one
wants
to leave
Daycare. I’ve never traded a girl to Deemi’s unit, and I don’t
think Ceep’s ever sent him another one.

When the new replacement was out of
sight, I looked up at the light dome high overhead. It was the
ceiling to the walls that enclosed the one and half square
kilometres of Daycare. Ceep had the overcast filters up.

I went back to the activity room, and
my knee started aching. I’d been killed three times, twice by
Deemi, and my knee hadn’t been repaired properly. It usually
started bothering me around this time, when I was worrying about
Christmas. Ceep said there was nothing the matter with it, but I
knew he had to be wrong.

When I walked into the activity room, I
saw Geebo watching the remaining kid, who was standing on a stool
and halfway inside Ceep. The vidscreen light was out and the screen
was off and
on the floor.
Geebo gave me a worried look, but the kid kept working.
“Ceep, are you still there?” It made me nervous, seeing him in
pieces on the floor.

“I’m here, Chronos,” he answered. He
sounded different. His voice was the same, but there was something
different. By this time the blond kid was looking at me. He
smiled.

“Geebo, what’s he doing?
You
know Ceep’s off limits. We all
know that,” I said. Snuks sat in the corner, her face painted
white. She was about to apply more colors. At least someone was
getting ready for Christmas.

“I gave the new kid a name,” Snuks
said, “Teb.”

“Ceep asked Teb to do this,” Geebo
said.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Fixth him,” Snuks answered. She went
back to coloring her face. Teb still worked on Ceep.

“Is that true, Ceep?” I asked, half
expecting him not to answer.

“Yes, Chronos.”

“But why Teb? Why not Geebo? You know
how he loves to do that kind of thing. And why now with only one
hour until Christmas? We’ve got to be ready. Deemi will be
ready.”

“Geebo wasn’t bred for this kind of
job, Chronos. I couldn’t let him work on me.”

I recalled the onetime Geebo had
attempted to tinker with Ceep. Geebo hadn’t been here too long, and
Ceep had zapped him so badly that I thought he’d been killed for
sure, but he hadn’t

“Geebo would have changed me. He would
have made me something more – or less.”

“I wouldn’t,” Geebo
protested.

“Yes, you would have. Don’t feel bad,
Geebo. That is your specialty. It has become more and more obvious.
Your creativity is greatly needed and desired.”

Ceep was absolutely right. Geebo’s
genius had come in handy more than once and would be greatly
desired in less than an hour.

“Besides,” Ceep continued, “Geebo’s
hands are too large for this procedure. I could not be sure the Teb
or the other replacement would survive this Christimas, and this
adjustment could not wait much longer. Do not worry about being
prepared for Christmas. You are prepared.”

By the time Ceep had finished
explaining, Teb had completed what he was doing, and Geebo replaced
the vidscreen and turned it back on. We always kept the vidscreen
on. That way it felt like Ceep was really there.

“Teb, have you looked at Ceep’s
Christmas catalogues and given him you list?” I asked. His blond
head nodded. It was strange talking to him when I felt like I had
just said goodbye to him a moment earlier. “Snuks will help outfit
you. Geebo and I have to get ready, too. Remember, it’s only
fifteen minutes to Christmas.” Snuks looked nervous. I was nervous.
But Geebo didn’t look worried at all. “We’ve got fifteen blocks to
cover by tomorrow, but then so does Deemi,” I said.

We gathered on the concrete stairs
outside of our unit. We looked at each other, admiring the faces we
had painted on ourselves. Geebo and I snickered at Teb. He’d
allowed Snuks to apply his paint to him, and she’d given him a
clown’s face, just like the ones she’d seen in Ceep’s catalogues.
Teb’s nose and mouth were red, and his eyebrows arched into the
blond bangs on his forehead. He looked like he’d been surprised by
Deemi himself. He didn’t seem to mind us laughing at him. Snuks
wore a tight, black, stretchy outfit. Her hair was tied back and
fastened down with a thong that looped around her neck.

“Watch this,” Geebo said. He slipped
off something that he had slung over his shoulder, and then moved
down the stairs and away from us. It was a flat chrome disc tied to
the end of a plastic string. He held it out to one side. With a few
twists of his wrist he had the disc spinning, and then he released
it. Slicing through the air, the silver disc cut two branches from
nearby bush before it was stopped by a clump of twigs. Not until it
had become lodged did we realize that the razor-disc was still
attached to the string Geebo held. He flicked the string; the disc
dislodged and spinning wildly, it came back to him, stopping just
short of his hand. He grinned, looking delighted with
himself.

Geebo had other gadgets hooked to his
belt. I recognized his grease gun and a few other things. Snuks
wore her pellet shooter around her neck like a necklace. She blew
through it a couple of times then tucked it down the front of her
top. A small pouch filled with pellets hung by her hip. When she
was ready, she slipped her thumb into her mouth and sat on the top
step.

I was ready too, but I wasn’t sure
about Teb. I had no idea what his capabilities were. He probably
wouldn’t make it all the way through Christmas, but I was going to
make sure we got as much use out of him as possible, at least until
Deemi or one of his gang got him.

“Message from Deemi,” Ceep’s voice came
through the com by the door.

“I’ll come inside to take it.” I didn’t
want to take Deemi’s message while the others were listening. It
might disturb them.

I left Geebo bragging to Teb about some
gadget he’d created and wlaked into the silent activity room. Ceep
was quiet.

Ceep was quiet!

That was it. Teb had fixed Ceep so that
he no longer made the hissing sound we’d named him after. I stood
in the silence and wondered what Deemi could possibly have to say
just before Christmas. I decided that it was probably some kind of
trick and was ready to walk back outside when Ceep
spoke.

“Shall I communicate Deemi’s message?”
he asked.

“No.” I really didn’t want to hear
it.”

“I would like to talk with you before
you go.”

“There’s not much time, Ceep.” I felt
uncomfortable.”

“I have always considered your
development, and the others at Daycare, my most important task, but
until now, the way your time has been spent here has never been
completely under my control.”

“You’ve done everything for us,” I
said, wondering what Ceep was getting at.

“No. The dults neglected Daycare and
were afraid of the children that were coming out of here because
the children were violent. Conditions here demand that you be
tough. I do what I can to ensure that you will survive once you
leave here. The dults don’t know how to stop Daycare, and at one
time hoped it would break down completely - until they saw how they
could take advantage of the children. They need you to defend them
from the Offworlders. The dults introduced Christmas to Daycare to
ensure the violence would continue – a motivating agent. They’ve
been preparing you, the others and many before you to fight for
them, to die for them –“

“But you won’t let us die.”

“You will be beyond my range once you
leave Daycare,” he said.

I felt cold.

“The dults who do not fight the
Offworlders are not mine. They didn’t come from Daycare. But you
and other
are
mine.
Especially you, Chronos.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You love the other Daycare
children, even those in the other unit. You even loved Deemi once
but you especially care for Snuks –“

“I’ll be sorry to see her go,” I
mumbled.

“She will be traded to the Offworlders.
You may kill her one day, or she you.”

“Why does Snuks have to go
there?”

“The Offworlders threaten to destroy
the dults. They want the dults’ secret to immortality.
Unfortunately the remaining dults don’t have that information. It
was lost long before the first Offworlder skirmishes. The
immorality gene was bred into you and the others – except for
Snuks. Her offspring will be longlifers, and all females like her
are traded to the Offworlders in order to keep the Offworlders from
carrying out their threat. This trade appeases them for
awhile.”

“Can
you
give the Offworlders the information they
want”?

“No. I’ve lost large batches of
information as a result of the degeneration that has taken place in
Daycare and the outside world. Your immortality was already present
in you gene pool.”

“You don’t think I’m going to survive
this Christmas, do you, Ceep?”

“I did consider that possibility. I
have reissued your genetic pool, Chronos, and have designed the two
new replacements after you. Yet they are also significantly
different from you.”

There was a long silence.

“Are you finished?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I have to get back to the
others.”

“Goodbye, Chronos.”

I stepped outside not wanting to think
about why Ceep told me this. I just wanted to win
Christmas.

“Let’s get Christmas,” I said, and we
began.

We jogged the down the street on which
our Daycare unit was stationed. Snuks and Teb followed me with
Geebo bringing up the rear. We moved in single file towards the
centre of Daycare.

Skirting potholes and debris from other
Christmases, we travelled north. Daycare had been a small grassy
park surrounded by many city blocks. The park was battered and worn
from years of battle, but there were still patches of yellow grass
to be found at the outskirts. The old tenement buildings that still
stood were now empty shells. Some old street lamps will worked, and
Ceep usually turned them on for Christmas.

We didn’t move straight down the middle
of the park but drifted west where the park foliage was heavier.
Here, some of the trees were still real and alive, but most were
imitations. None of us were even sure which ones were real, though
Ceep assured us that there were still originals. We had planted
many of our own traps here and were able to move through the area
in relative security.

The buildings on the outskirts were a
kind of no-man’s land where both groups, Deemi’s and mine, tried
not to become trapped. The roads there did not lead to Christmas,
but the buildings could provide cover from an attack.

It was getting cooler out. My breath
came out in cloudy bursts, but it seemed too early for Ceep to be
lowering the temperature. We came to the treed area, and I jogged
to the base of a tree with low branches. Linking my fingers
together, I formed a cup with my hands. Snuks ran as hard as her
legs could go, stepped briefly into my hands and leaped upward.
With the momentum gained from the leap, she swung her body around
the branch, straddled it and was able to reach the rest of the
branches to clamber high into the tree.

In a moment she was rapidly climbing
down the tree. As she came to the last branch, she leaped,
confident that I would catch her.

“They’re coming, three of them. They’re
just over the hill. Run!”

Our only chance was to head west
towards the empty buildings and hide there. Snuks was ahead of me,
her small legs pumping so fast that I couldn’t keep up with her. I
couldn’t figure out why Deemi had deviated to drastically from the
course that would take him to Christmas. Snuks headed for an old
house. She took the steps two at a time and disappeared through a
doorway. I followed her and, and in the distance, cold hear Deemi
calling my name. I ran faster. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw his
gang take cover behind a bush.