"Damn bastard Knefhausen," Jeron responded automatically, wondering what it would be like to be in one place and not to be eternally traveling toward it.
The Constitution was ready for the asteroids long before its orbit was stable. Pinpoint lasers stabbed at every tumbling rock in the asteroid belts. Photon counters trapped and diagnosed the returns. The useful worldlets were indexed and followed, and Uncle Ski cast soft nets of magnetic force that swept the useful objects together into clusters sorted by analysis. Carbonaceous bodies went here, pure iron there, heavy metals in another place. The element abundances were not very satisfactory, because they reflected cosmic, not planetary, proportions; Alpha Centauri had never had a planet. That did not matter. There was plenty of mass to waste, and soon Alpha Centauri would.
They did find one small cinder of a planetoid very near the star, but decided moving and cooling it was more than it was worth; the dozen-kilometer-sized bodies were the most useful. When they had finished collecting and sorting them the really hard work began. By then Constitution was locked in a nearly circular orbit one and a half A.U. from the central star, out of the plane of its ecliptic in a path that nibbled at the edges of the first and largest asteroid belt. And they started to build.
It was around this time that young Jeron, having reached that stage of sitting in judgment on adults that on Earth was called adolescence—he was four and a half—realized that his Uncle Shef was going insane.
Of course, with Uncle Shef, how could you tell? Or how could you tell with any of the people on the Constitution, including the kids? What struck Jeron as strange would have seemed baseline normal anywhere in the world they had left behind: Uncle Shef appeared to be lusting after the body of Aunt Ann.
Jeron's knowledge of what was baseline normal was at best sketchy. It was made up of casual remarks and bedtime stories, full of concepts that had no tangible reference to anything around him. Freeways. Singles bars. Expense accounts. Resort hotels. VD. Soap operas. Air raids and guided missiles; school busing and Christmas vacations; mumps; toothaches; runny noses—-none of that ever happened or existed in the world he lived in and, although Uncle Ghost was always willing to explain everything, some things merely got more confusing. In this particular area Jeron was particularly handicapped. He was intellectually quite mature, sexually not at all. What the grownups did with each other he had observed, but why they did it escaped him. Also there was the observed fact that they all made use of each other's bodies quite casually, and why was this sudden interest so uncasual? Jeron watched Aunt Ann at every opportunity to try to unravel the mystery. From comparative analysis of photographs in the tattered old magazines he perceived that she had begun to return to the "pinup" norms—had lost weight after blimping up for several years; had combed and cut her long blond hair after letting it spill ragged.
That sort of change could be quantified and understood well enough; but there were other changes. Aunt Ann had returned to her Chinese period. She had dug out the old toe bones. She cast them, with Shef hovering over her shoulder, whenever the two of them could find a moment from the incessant work of readying the ship for its new destiny; and after they had scanned the bones and looked up the hexagrams and muttered to each other they usually made love. No one else seemed to mind, or even notice. When Jeron mentioned it to Uncle Will the shadowy outlines would flicker for a while in indecision before the whisper would come: "They are not hurting anyone, Jeron, why should they be disturbed?" But even Uncle Ghost had observed that the closer the intimacy between Ann and Shef became the more Shef's cheeks sank and the more furiously he raged at everyone else around. It was Shef who mostly controlled the complex webs of forces that were seeking and tugging at all Alpha Centauri's family of useful rocks, and as the task was only partly physical, he was certainly draining his energies.
So Jeron wondered, and spied on them, not knowing what to expect to see; and when he did see something quite beyond belief he did not know it. Not until he was much older.
16
THERE WAS A CREAT GRINDING OF TANK MOTORS OUTSIDE the detention center. It was unusually loud and persistent; it woke Knefhausen up, although for several years at least he had been hearing such things as part of his interminably dull life.
He had no idea of the time. They had not allowed him a watch for—how long?—half a lifetime it seemed! And one did not ever see sunlight in this foxes' lair underground. Knefhausen was sure it was the middle of the night, though. And, as the ragged firing of weapons was to be heard even above the noise of gears and treads, there was something up, beyond doubt. He rose and dressed quickly in the dark. When the door opened and blinded him with the hall light he was ready for whatever might come.
Yet what came was a considerable surprise. It was the man from the Justice Department, yes, the familiar face of the fourth or fifth of that line who had been interrogating him forever. But there had been no preliminary search this time. And the man was not alone. No! Even with a mob, this time! The armed guard was at least a dozen soldiers now, one of them with a bloody bandage on his head instead of a helmet, all of them looking as though they had fought their way through hell to get there. But most astonishing of all was that with them was the President's secretary, Murray Amos! Knefhausen had not even known Amos was still alive—had not been sure, really, that the President was still alive, or still President, since surely his terms would have expired by now, if not his life. Knefhausen gaped and blinked, and then realization struck home.
How treacherous is the human heart! When it has given up hope, how little it takes to make it hope again!
"Murray!" cried Knefhausen, almost weeping, "it's so good to see you once again! The President, is he well? What can I do for you? Have there been developments?"
Murray Amos paused in the doorway. He was much older than when Knefhausen had seen him last, and much gaunter. He looked at Dieter von Knefhausen and said bitterly, "Oh, yes, there, have been developments. Plenty of them. The Fourth Armored has just changed sides again, so we have to evacuate Washington. And the President wants you out of here at once."
"No, no! That is not what I mean—although, yes, of course, it is good that the President is concerned about my welfare, although it is bad about the Fourth Armored. But what I would wish to know, Murray, is this: Has there been a message from the Constitution?"
Murray Amos and the Justice Department man looked at each other. "Tell me, Knefhausen," said Amos silkily, "how did you manage to find that out?"
"Find it out? How could I find it out? No, I only asked because my heart hoped. There has been a message, yes? In spite of what they threatened? They have communicated again?"
"As a matter of fact, they have," said Amos thoughtfully. The Justice Department man whispered piercingly in his ear, but he shook his head. "Don't worry, we'll be coming in a second. The convoy won't go without us. . . . Yes, Knefhausen, the message came in a few hours ago. They have it at the decoding room now."
"Good, oh, so very good!" cried Knefhausen. "You will see! They will justify all! But what do they say? Have you good scientific men to interpret it? Can you understand the contents?"
"Not exactly," Amos began; but he got no farther. Running unceremoniously into the room a tank officer shouted:
"They're running over us, sir! Let's get out of here while we still can!" And Amos whirled and was gone, leaving the soldiers to hustle Knefhausen after. No chance to pick up his papers! Not even to look around his room and see what he had forgot! It was out the door, down the hall, up some stairs, out into a wide circular driveway with looming main battle tanks all around and a fireworks display of white and red bursting in the heavens. Knefhausen was astonished to discover it was summer again; when had that happened? But there were no answers for trivial questions, not even for serious ones. He was crammed down the hatch of an MB-4 quite roughly—quite painfully, because his head scraped against the side of the hatch and he could feel blood running into his pajama collar. Amos was not with him. There was not room for more than one passenger in this small and uncomfortable space; the tank was battle-ready. And battle-active. It spun and heaved across the sidewalk, crunching aside some long-abandoned car, and the main gunner was firing at something down the hill, the two machine gunners apparently trying to ward off infantry— or terrorists—or figments of their own scared imaginations; they were teenage boys in uniforms that did not fit, and what had become of the disciplined troops Knefhausen remembered? They were not local, either. Knefhausen could smell apples in the exhaust fumes, which meant New York State alcohol in the tank.