“And he says, ‘What is it Technician Theckles?’ ”
“Who was he?” asked Sam.
“Oh, that there was Faros, we called him Chilly Faros. Never no more emotion to him than to a circuit scanner. Except when he talked of his wife, then he got all soft. Old Chilly Faros, he was only a subaltern then.”
“So what did you say?” asked Sam.
“Oh, I’d say, ‘Brain malfunction, Subaltern Faros. I recommend power shutdown at once.’
“And he’d say, ‘Do so, Technician.’
“An’ you’d go to pull the plug. Disconnect the power source for the whole section. An’ you’d pray the whole time the things would let you do it.”
There had been cases of soldiers that didn’t want to be unplugged, he said. Cases where men had been found, what was left of them, like a splash of mush on the floor, red jelly.
Then young Lieutenant Halibar Ornil would come zipping up on a scooter, full of rumbling amusement. “Got a rogue, have we?” he would ask, as though it didn’t matter. “Got a rogue?”
A rogue, said Emun. A devil. A killer designed to be unstoppable, unappeaseable. A thing the height of three tall men, on clawed treads that could climb a fifty-percent grade, with disruptor circuits and de-bonder guns and no feelings. A thing that would blow up a schoolyard full of children without blinking. A thing, so thought Emun occasionally, like a Voorstoder, only bigger.
Sam blinked, setting that aside.
And the eyes, staring over his head blindly, but picking up reflections of the red telltales, as though the eyes themselves were glittering.
“Gloomy,” repeated old retired Emun Theckles to Sam Girat at the end of his tale, wishing he could forget it entirely since he had come to this better place. “Oh, Topman, it was gloomy there.”
• That night, in Settlement One, Topman Samasnier Girat tapped his gavel impatiently and, when this had not the desired effect, bellowed at the small clot of people arguing in the doorway of the settlement hall. “Can we get this meeting started, people!”
Quiet came reluctantly. Outside in the dusk, children shouted at one another. On one window sill an orange cat groomed herself in the pink light of sunset, while her gray colleague sniffed along the base of the walls followed by a staggering line of half-weaned kittens. All three hundred seats were filled, with room at the back for any young person who decided to take an interest in community government.
“All right,” Sam said. “Short meeting tonight. We all know of the recent crop shortfalls. I’ve made a complete report to Central Management, and they’ve asked me to come in for a meeting in a few days. They’re also sending some people to run tests, so they say, though what tests they can run we haven’t already run I don’t know. You all know that even after the shortfalls our production is still within the parameters set by the project, so the settlement is in no danger. Our production balance is going to suffer quite a bit, but that’s all.” Production over and above ninety percent of the reasonable quotas set by CM was converted into land credits for the settlers. Settlement One had long had an enviable production balance.
“Now, the reason for this meeting tonight is to discuss the conflicts we’ve been having among the production teams… .”
There were groans of resentment and voices raised at once, each blaming some other team or individual for whatever had happened. Sam demanded order, and got it, only to have the discussion degenerate again. It was like a grass fire, he thought. You stamped it out in one place, and then the wind took it running off somewhere else. The arguments generated heat but not light; the meeting threatened to degenerate into a brawl; finally Sam shut them up, talked them into relative peace, and adjourned the meeting before they got started again.
Africa Wilm, who had been standing by the door, keeping herself quiet with some difficulty, slipped out into the night. China went after her. Quick as she was, Sam managed to intercept her at the door.
“G’night, Sam,” she said hurriedly, increasing her pace, even as he reached out a hand to detain her.
By the time Sam got outside, the children seemed to have gone elsewhere. There were no shouts in the dusk, no squeals or cries of outrage. Sam stood in the quiet, snarling to himself. Everyone was behaving … behaving like something or other. Not like themselves. Now China. Well. Always China.
Rebuffed, Sam stalked north of the settlement, toward the temples, stopping only briefly at his brotherhouse to pick up his sword belt and helmet. Theseus didn’t like it when he showed up without them.
“It means you’re not serious,” Theseus had explained. “You haven’t the proper attitude.”
“I do have the proper attitude,” Sam had growled. “I’m tired of waiting, that’s all.” He said the same thing again tonight as he settled on the hillside near the old temple.
“You’re agitated,” accused Theseus.
“We’re all agitated. There’s lots of anger floating around. We’re not used to that.”
“What are you angry about?”
“Me?” Sam thought about it. What was he angry about? “I don’t know. Nothing specific.”
“Something in your past, maybe?”
“I guess I’ve always been angry that my father let me leave that way. He didn’t try to stop Mam from taking me. He just let me go.”
“That’s a very old anger.”
“Old ones are the worst. New ones you can yell about and get over. When you grow up, you learn that. Yell about it, then forget it. But when you’re a kid, you’re afraid to yell. Somebody might punish you for it, for the way you feel, so you put the anger away, deep, store it, and it festers. I imagine old angers are like abcesses, deep ones, full of nasty pus and sickness. You can feel them boiling inside you.”
“So you hate him because he didn’t keep you?”
“I hate him because he didn’t even
