A Coming of Age

by Timothy Zahn

  It took Jarvis a moment to find his voice. “And if I give myself the wrong drugs?”

  “Then you’ve committed suicide,” Omega shrugged. “But then, that option will always be open to you. Fortunately—for me—you’re not the suicidal type.” He glanced around as a breeze drifted through the sluggish air. The kids, Jarvis saw, had finished with the windows and were standing in a loose group studying the furnace. “I’d better go give my kids something to do,” Martel said, pointing Jarvis to a spot along the south wall, well away from both the cyanide bottles and any of the room’s doors. “Why don’t you go sit down over there. I’ll get you some paper and you can start making a list of the drugs and equipment you’ll be needing. There’s no sense in wasting time, now, is there?”

  “None at all,” Jarvis agreed. It was, after all, just after three in the afternoon, with perhaps four hours until complete darkness. He had just that much time to find a way to escape.

  It took Tirrell and his companions less than half an hour to reach the ridge just upriver of the old refinery; the three-hundred-meter trip from there to the detective’s chosen observation point took nearly as long. Tirrell himself was used to such slow advances, but both preteens were visibly fidgeting by the time he ordered a halt.

  “Now what?” Lisa asked as they settled to the ground between a bush and a stand of tall grass.

  “Keep your voice down,” Tirrell whispered, slipping off his backpack and squinting down the gentle slope ahead. The south wall of the refinery was about half a kilometer ahead, just visible through a narrow gap in the underbrush. Rummaging briefly through the pack, he pulled out a pair of lightweight binoculars, a headset, and a small microphone attached to a coil of slender wire. “Ready, Tonio?” he asked, plugging the end of the wire into the headset and setting the coil and mike onto his lap.

  Tonio nodded and raised the binoculars to his eyes; and with the barest whisper of disturbed grass the mike headed smoothly down the slope. Tirrell watched it go, trying simultaneously to protect the coil of wire from snags and also watch for signs of a sentry. It would have been nice to use a cordless model, but they couldn’t take the chance that Martel might have the equipment available to detect its broadcast. Still, as long as the wire didn’t break or alert the lookout by suddenly yanking out a swath of grass they should be all right.

  The microphone, its motion alone keeping it visible, was almost to the refinery wall. “Looks like the windows are slanted open a bit,” Tirrell murmured to Tonio as he slipped on the headset. “Ease the mike through the bottom of the crack and let it sort of edge inside.”

  “Right.”

  A moment later it was done. Flipping his on switch, Tirrell cautiously turned up the volume … and within five seconds knew he’d guessed right. “We got ’em,” he announced tightly. “Martel’s there, and at least a couple of the kids … and they just referred to Jarvis.” He slid the headset half off and turned to Lisa. “Okay, Lisa, it’s up to you now. Get that note I gave you to the Nordau police; with luck, Plat City’ll have their squad ready to move by now. Be sure to take it very slow until you’re over the ridge, then keep low until you’re well away from the area.”

  “Okay.” Taking a deep breath, she set off uphill, flying bare centimeters off the ground. Within a minute she was lost to view among the undergrowth.

  “She’ll be okay,” Tirrell assured his righthand as the latter continued to gaze after her. “Give me a hand unloading the rest of this stuff, will you?”

  It took only a minute to empty the backpack and lay its contents in neat rows in front of them. “What are these things?” Tonio asked, fingering one of the three gogglelike devices.

  “They’re gas masks,” Tirrell told him. “They’re to protect us against the stuff in these.” He tapped one of the half dozen squat black cylinders. “It’s called tear gas—acts sort of like concentrated onions in your eyes.”

  “Never heard of it,” the preteen said, looking rather apprehensively at the cylinders. “I suppose it’s supposed to keep kids from using teekay?”

  “Or at least to limit it drastically. The stuff’s hardly ever used anymore, but it was one of the few weapons that worked against the Lost Generation, and it’s a law that every police department has to keep at least a little of it on hand.”

  Tonio nodded thoughtfully. “Stan … you guys don’t really trust us, do you? Us kids, I mean.”

  “Well …” Tirrell shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose there’s some distrust,” he conceded, putting as good a face on it as he could. Certainly most adult tension was below the conscious level, where it hardly qualified as true distrust. “After all, with teekay, kids are a lot stronger physically than adults. You probably felt the same way toward the preteens when you were a Six or Seven. Hm?”

  “Not really. I mean, if they picked on us too much the Senior would make them get back in line.”

  “True enough—but I’m sure you realize now that without the preteens’ cooperation the Senior has no real power at all. The kids themselves have to enforce his rules; you see?”

  “Huh! You know, I never thought about it like that.”

  “That’s because the hive is set up to keep you from doing so. When you’re little the preteens enforce the Senior’s orders; and by the time you’re a preteen yourself you’re so used to obeying the Senior you do so automatically.”

  Tonio sat quietly for a long minute. “Huh,” he said again, softly. “So if most of the preteens at a hive decided to disobey some order, that would be it. The Senior wouldn’t be able to stop them.”

  “No. He’d have to call in the police … and the result could be pretty bad.” Tirrell shook his head. “When you get to school and start learning Tigrin history, you’ll realize just how much destruction and chaos the Lost Generation caused. For nearly six years they held absolute power on the planet, and if it hadn’t been for the unexpected loss of teekay at Transition the generations growing up behind them would have been just as lawless and just as ignorant … and we might well have lost every scrap of science and learning we ever brought to Tigris. If adults distrust kids, I suppose it’s because the knowledge of what almost happened is still pretty fresh.”

  Tonio actually shuddered. “And Jarvis’s drug,” he said, “would take away Transition. Wouldn’t it?”

  Tirrell turned to look at the refinery, his mouth suddenly dry. Somehow, he’d never looked at it quite that way before. “Yes,” he agreed quietly. “It would.”

  Chapter 27

  THE LAST OF THE sunbeams crawling up the east wall faded and disappeared as the sun dipped below the mountain peaks to the west. It was still a good half hour until official sundown, of course, but Martel nonetheless felt heartened in the relative gloom that now filled the refinery. Darkness always made him feel safer.

  A breeze tickled the back of his neck, and he turned as Axel landed beside him. “All set,” the boy reported. “Those boxes of yours are awfully heavy, but there are only fifteen of them and we should be able to handle two each. They’re lined up just inside the door over there.”

  “Good. What about the food supplies?”

  “All packed and ready to go. Everyone’s eaten now except you and Jarvis and the kids outside.”

  Martel glanced at the blue sky outside. “We might as well pull in the lookouts, I guess. Wherever the police are looking they’ll have to quit reasonably soon; it’s already getting dark in the valley beneath the temple site. Go call the kids in and let them eat. Jarvis and I’ll eat after they finish.”

  Axel nodded and flew off to collect the outside guards. Martel watched him go, wondering exactly what to do with the boy … or, more accurately perhaps, when and how he would do it. That fabrication about priesthoods for the kids wouldn’t hold him forever, especially with Jarvis right there to breathe on any sparks of doubt that might arise. Eventually, Martel knew, a showdown was inevitable, and he’d better be prepared to win it damn quickly.

  Still, all things were po
ssible to those who planned ahead. In a sealed cabinet two rooms over were several more bottles of sodium cyanide, and it would be simplicity itself to add one to the supplies they would be flying out with. When he and Jarvis went to eat, he would find a way to quietly take care of that little chore.

  A motion across the room caught his eye. Jarvis, still sitting against the south wall, was shifting position, apparently trying to angle the pad of paper on his knees to catch as much of the waning light as possible. For a moment Martel frowned, wondering what about the doctor seemed different to him … and then he smiled as understanding came. Jarvis was a good three meters closer to the east door than he’d been when he first sat down. Still smiling, Martel walked over.

  Jarvis got in the first word. “Don’t you have any lights in this place?” he asked irritably. “I’m going blind trying to write over here.”

  “Of course we do,” Martel told him. “Run by our own private generator and battery bank, since the service from Nordau seems to have been suspended. However, if we wanted to use the lights, we’d first have to close and curtain the windows, and I’m afraid it’s still too hot in here for that.”

  “If I don’t get more light, I’ll have to quit working,” Jarvis threatened.

  “Oh, by all means—you’ve worked so hard for the past hour and a half that you’ve earned some time off. Besides—” he smiled pleasantly—“it’ll give you the chance to devote all your energy to sidling imperceptibly toward the door.”

  Some of the starch seemed to go out of the scientist. “Damn you,” he muttered.

  “Come now, Doctor,” Martel chided mildly. “Don’t sound so discouraged. Especially since I know it’s all an act, anyway.”

  For a moment Jarvis’s eyes blazed with anger. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” he said. “You know everything, understand everybody, and never make a mistake.”

  “Of course I make mistakes—but seldom any of consequence. And the reason is exactly as you said: I understand people. I don’t know what if anything Tirrell told you of my background, but I assure you that I’ve been a master of psychology far longer than you’ve been studying hormones.”

  “Then you must know I’ll die rather than give you what you want.”

  Martel shook his head. “I doubt it. You see, Doctor, all your professional life you’ve been solving problems that at first glance have looked unsolvable. This is just the latest one in a long string, and habit alone will keep you searching for a way around me for a long time yet. Besides, if you die before the project’s complete, you’ll never know if the damn thing works, will you?”

  Jarvis remained silent, and Martel knew at least one of his shots had hit home. A small victory, but a potentially significant one. If he could convince even a fraction of Jarvis’s mind that he, Martel, was unbeatable, he would in effect have gained an ally inside the scientist’s own brain. “If you’ll forgive me now, I have a few more things to attend to before our departure,” he said, glancing out the window at the blue sky. “We’ll probably be leaving in about—”

  He broke off abruptly as something hard and cold wrenched at his heart. Nestling almost invisibly just inside the window’s lower left-hand corner was a tiny black cylinder … a cylinder hanging from a thin wire.

  A microphone.

  He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the nausea of fear and anger bubbling in his throat. “Axel!” he bellowed.

  “Damn!” Tirrell snarled, ripping off the headphones as Martel’s yell echoed off his eardrums. “We’re in for it now, partner.”

  “They’ve spotted us?” Tonio asked, sounding a lot calmer than Tirrell felt.

  “Just the mike, so far. But that’ll give them our general direction if they sight along the wire. See if you can pull the mike back out; if not, better break the wire as far away from us as you can.”

  The righthand was already peering through his binoculars. “Okay … got it. Mike’s down in the grass now, but I think I was too late. Someone was pulling from the other side. Do we get out of here or stay put?”

  “We stay put,” Tirrell said grimly, trying to see through the dust coating the refinery windows. “They’ll have to fly straight overhead in order to spot us, and once they’re out in the open you’ll have a strong tactical advantage. Just watch for flanking maneuvers and don’t let anyone get too close. At least that crowd they’d left outside got in before the alarm went off; I guess that’s something to be thankful for.”

  “What happens if they all sneak out the far side of the building?”

  “Aside from the fact that they don’t know we’re alone, it wouldn’t do them any good.” The detective pointed. “Except where the river cuts through, the ground on the north side slopes up, and there’s not a scrap of decent cover anywhere this side of that ridge. Ditto for east and west; they’d have nearly a kilometer to cross before they’d even get to any tall grass. No, they’ll try to come this way—and they’ll try to eliminate us first. So look sharp.”

  For several tense minutes nothing happened; and the first attack, contrary to Tirrell’s expectations, did not come from high-flying preteens. Instead, one of the windows suddenly opened all the way and a large object shot out, heading straight for them.

  Tirrell opened his mouth to yell at Tonio—and bit down hard on his tongue as the projectile sailed cleanly overhead and thudded into the ground a good fifty meters upslope. It had barely landed when a second missile followed it, this one hitting less than twenty meters in front of them and nearly as far to the left.

  “Trying to flush us out,” Tonio murmured.

  “Yeah. Waiting to see which shots come close enough for us to deflect.” A third object followed its predecessors. “Tonio—if this one’s aimed high, deflect it at the last moment to land as close to us as you can.”

  “Got it.”

  Tirrell held his breath. The shot was indeed going to be a solid ten meters long … and suddenly it jerked in midair and fell, digging itself half into the ground less than a meter from Tirrell’s feet. The detective swallowed painfully; but it had been what he wanted. “Nice job,” he managed.

  “Thanks. Now what?”

  “They should be throwing everything loose at the place that one was supposed to hit. Deflect as many as you can in any direction you want—not so close this time.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when the open window suddenly erupted with a veritable stream of flying objects. Tirrell ducked involuntarily, but Tonio was equal to the challenge. Directly overhead, the stream broke up, its component elements splashing into a roughly circular pattern centered a dozen meters upslope. Gritting his teeth, hating his own inactivity even while recognizing there was nothing he could do, the detective watched and waited … and, as abruptly as it had begun, the barrage ceased.

  Beside him, Tonio exhaled loudly. “Whew! I’m glad that’s over. Or are they just collecting more stuff to throw?”

  Tirrell risked taking the time for a quick look at the objects littering the ground around them. Several sections of iron grating, what looked like an ingot mold, a wheel off a cart, a small box. “They’re certainly throwing everything that isn’t nailed down,” he said. “But I suspect that last attempt cleaned out their stockpile, at least for the moment. My guess is that they’ll try coming after us personally next—we’ve pretty well proved this approach doesn’t work.”

  Tirrell’s prediction was quickly borne out; but with a twist the detective hadn’t expected. Without warning, two kids came shooting out the same window the earlier barrage had come from and headed swiftly toward them. Simultaneously, a third boy took off from the building’s east side, a small box clutched in his arms. At breakneck speed he headed for the trees a kilometer away.

  “Stop him!” Tirrell snapped, pointing at the fugitive. Their only hope was to keep Martel’s group bottled up in the refinery until reinforcements arrived, and if they allowed even one of them to get away, the fagin would keep trying until all of them
had made it.

  Tonio’s response was typical of the righthand’s sense of humor. Instead of simply trying to halt the other’s dash by brute force, he abruptly teeked hard on the box clutched in the kid’s arms. Unable to react fast enough as the box suddenly slowed, the boy slammed into it stomach-first, legs shooting by underneath as he wrapped himself around it with a gasping yelp loud enough for Tirrell to hear a kilometer away. An instant later both he and the box were hurtling backward toward the refinery as all resistance to Tonio’s teekay vanished into the boy’s all-consuming need to get air back into his lungs. Satisfied his righthand had that part under control, Tirrell shifted his attention skyward.

  The other two kids were almost directly overhead, drifting slowly now as their eyes swept the ground. Tonio, sitting right next to a large bush, was temporarily out of their line of sight; but Tirrell was perfectly visible from their position, and he knew he had seconds at the most before they spotted him.

  There was only one thing he could think of to try. “Get ready to catch me,” he muttered to Tonio. Waiting until the searching eyes above them were looking elsewhere, he scrambled to his feet and ran recklessly down the slope toward the refinery, the tear-gas grenade he’d scooped up concealed in his left hand.

  He hadn’t covered more than five meters when his feet found themselves treading air. Looking up, he saw one of the kids coming up behind him at a height of a hundred meters or so. The second, close behind, was glaring at the ground, and Tirrell got the impression that a teekay battle was underway between him and Tonio. Mentally crossing his fingers, Tirrell glanced at the ground, perhaps three meters beneath him now, and waved his empty hand at his captor. “Not so high! Not so high!” he yelled, putting an edge of hysteria into his voice.

  The kid responded exactly as Tirrell had hoped he would. Instead of lowering the detective, he did just the opposite, yanking him swiftly upward as a fisherman would reel in a catch. Higher and closer he was teeked … and as the kid reached out toward him, Tirrell pulled the three-second fuse on his grenade, counted two, and threw it.