Brightsuit MacBear Read Free Page B

to start a fight, and his grandfather’s, that it was always wrong to kill or injure, weren’t precise equivalents, Berdan hadn’t managed to sort them out yet.
    It bothered him from time to time—times like this in particular—how it seemed safe for those who wouldn’t obey grandfather’s dictum to threaten those who did.
    As if they were one being, Geeky Kehlson, Crazy Zovich, and Stoney Edders took a step forward, menacing Berdan.
    “ Three on one, boys? ”
    The voice had come from nowhere. Berdan glanced aside and couldn’t have been more surprised if the statue of Deejay Thorens had spoken. The ancient, immovable Captain Forsyth was on his feet, yards from the bench he’d always seemed rooted to. How he’d accomplished this without attracting attention just deepened the mystery which hung about him like the cloak he now swept off his hip, exposing an enormous old-fashioned projectile pistol belted around his waist.
    “You wanna play grown-up games,” Forsyth continued in the stunned absence of any reaction from the four boys, “you better be ready to pay grown-up prices.”
    “Ah…”
    A nervous Geeky Kehlson glanced from side to side at his companions who’d each taken a step backward. He imitated them, but not before they’d taken yet another. As they all took a third step, they turned and seemed to vanish from the park.
    It was, it seemed to Berdan, a day for miracles. He opened his mouth to speak, to thank the old chimpanzee for his help, but Forsyth held up a palm and shook his head, letting the cape he wore drop back over the handle of his pistol.
    “Get yourself some hardware, son. Somebody like me mightn’t always be around.”
    Forsyth turned. Transformed once again (a final miracle for the day, not quite as wonderful as the previous two) into the fragile, elderly being he’d always seemed before, he hobbled back to his bench, picked up his paper, and sat down.
    Still wordless, Berdan watched Forsyth for a moment. Breathing deep, he continued along the sidewalk and out of the park. He was careful, this time, to watch for anybody who might be waiting, out of the old warrior’s sight, to get even. Pondering the chimpanzee’s practical-sounding advice—as opposed to the philosophy his grandfather forced him to follow—he made his way, more rapidly than before (and with more confusion), toward the nearest transport patch.
    He walked straight into its tingling embrace.
    And disappeared.
     

Chapter III: The Dead Past
    Berdan emerged, before he was aware of having traveled a quarter mile, from the bull’s-eye patch nearest the home he shared with his grandfather, Dalmeon Geanar.
    Although they’d lived together for as long as Berdan could remember since the death of the boy’s parents, Erissa and MacDougall Bear, in what Geanar always referred to as “a scientific accident,” for reasons which seemed to perplex them both at times, the old man and the boy had never gotten along.
    Geanar himself almost never left their apartment on the second floor of the modest (some might have said shabby) building across the corner from the transport patch. He was in perfect, vigorous health for his apparent age; but another thing the boy’s grandfather didn’t believe in was medical rejuvenation which could have made him look and feel like a young man, claiming it was the duty of all individuals, once they got old, to die and get out of the way for the next generation. Meanwhile, he preferred to order what he needed on the telecom.
    Compared to most individuals they knew, they were poor, living on the proceeds of modest investments, small shares in the many discoveries and growing fortunes of Tom Edison Maru . Yet Berdan’s grandfather had always discouraged him from taking a job, in theory for the sake of his education. A few weeks ago the old man had reversed himself, allowing Berdan to go to work for Mr. Meep.
    Thus Berdan knew he was in serious trouble of some kind—again—when he saw Geanar,