They fought a running engagement for nearly two hours, and then the firing dwindled away behind them. The tank stopped.
Either they had outrun the enemy or outfought them, whoever the enemy was, because Knefhausen was hustled out of the tank and into a half-track personnel carrier, which set off across what Knefhausen recognized with indignation as Arlington National Cemetery. It was nearly dawn now. The modest marble grave markers showed pearly white, where they were not overturned and half buried in some other vehicle's wake. Knefhausen was not alone in the vehicle. But he might as well have been. Apart from the guard who clung to the rear gate, all the others were casualties, most of them unconscious or raving, the rest dead. By the time they came to a stop Knefhausen's will was ebbing away and his courage was long gone. He was only glad to be alive and out of that prison.
But as soon as they had stopped his spirits began to rise again, as he was hurried across a motel parking lot, as he was conducted to a room with a pool of spilled blood on the floor and an unmade bed— as the door closed behind him.
And then, as the door remained closed, he realized he had only moved prisons. At one time he would have shouted and raged against the awful injustice of keeping him here without giving him, at once, the message that would make all well again.
But that time was over. Knefhausen had lost track of birthdays again, but he didn't need a calendar to know that, without observing it happen, he had somehow grown very old.
17
JERON NEVER FORGOT WHAT HE HAD SEEN, AND DARED NOT speak of it, either. He was afraid. Shef, chuckling through his whiskers, peering through the lookout port; Ann, her body locked with his in some sort of sexual em- brace—oh, yes, they had been doing something! They were celebrating it. Or perhaps they were repenting it. Jeron could not tell; they were communicating, but not in words.
He would not have known they had been doing anything if they had not reacted so violently when they caught him watching. Shef moved like lightning. He shouted wordlessly, dived across the chamber and had Jeron by the hair in an instant; he must have untangled himself from Ann in the process, but so quickly that Jeron didn't see it happen. Ann shrieked after him—one word, "Don't!", and simultaneously her thumb-tip ripped across her throat. Jeron understood the message. It was his good fortune that so did Uncle Shef.
Shef did not release the boy, but the arm that had whipped across his throat relaxed. The two adults grunted and shrugged at each other over the terrified Jeron's head, and then Shef took him firmly by the two shoulders and stared into his eyes. He was trying to remember how to say what he wanted. His lips moved silently for a moment, and then he got out: "Don't . . . tell." And, a moment later, "Anything. No. Anyone."
"I promise, Uncle Shef," Jeron whined, and was allowed to struggle free. It was not over yet. There was something in Shef's eyes that was mad even by the flaky standards of the Constitution. Jeron moved cautiously away, inch by inch, far from sure that this terrifying adult would not grab him again. As Jeron was about to turn and dive for the downshaft, Shef managed to get out one more word:
"Ever!"
For the next few days, Uncle Shef and Aunt Ann seemed to be popping up all the time. It didn't matter where Jeron went. Working at his job on the hydroponics flats, he would look up and there would be Uncle Shef's eyes burning at him through the tangles of vines and raggedy hair. Taking his turn at KP, Aunt Ann's face would appear over the steaming vats of stew. He even fled to the communications room, where the printers spat out the latest budget of disaster and contradictions from Earth whenever anyone on Earth remembered to transmit—whenever anyone on the Constitution bothered to turn them on. And there was one of them, pausing in the descent tube to give him a cold-eyed stare.
A "promise" was not particularly binding in Jeron's view. He had rarely been asked for one by a grownup, and what passed between him and the other kids was not significant. But he was too scared to talk. Uncle Ghost at once noticed something was wrong. So, a little later, did Aunt Eve and Uncle Ski. He told them all he was upset by the changes in gravity, in domestic arrangements, in prospects, which was true even if not relevant; so Jeron learned to lie. And a week or two later Aunt Ann came to the hydroponics room. Births had been postponed until there was room to house them, so the vegetable wombs lay empty. The milk plants were stored as seeds, and now Jeron was uprooting the squacipro that even the youngest had outgrown to put in some new venture of Aunt Flo's. Aunt Ann stood over him without speaking for a time.
She should have looked quite nonthreatening, really. Her long blond hair was well brushed and pulled back in a silky tail. She was wearing the black pajama suit that went with the Chinese life-style she had been affecting again, but the pajamas, this time, were clean. By normal human standards, she had never looked more the model of an all- American woman of an interesting age. Jeron's standards were different. He thought she looked scary. He retreated from the bare flats and tried to busy himself with picking sweetbeans, nipping off the fleshy cinnamon-colored pods with his thumbnail and depositing them in a bowl, but she followed him with her eyes. He was aware she was rehearsing things to say to him in children's English.
At length she hopped a row of vines and smiled down at him. "Jeron," she said seriously, "I tell you a story. When Emperor K'anghsi in boat at Hangkow, petitioner swam out, letter in teeth. Petitioner said, 'Please use imperial power help punish my enemy, who is wickedest man in world.' You know what K'ang-hsi say?"
He looked up at her and nibbled a raw sweetbean. "Not really, Aunt Ann," he said.
She thought for a moment, then brought it out: "Say, 'Who then is second wickedest?' And tear up petition; so I tell Shef this. You understand?"
"Well, not exactly," Jeron admitted. She scowled at him in disappointment, then shrugged. When Ann Becklund shrugged her whole body was involved, like a soldier who has just received a bullet in the chest; a spasm. She said angrily, "Must understand! Shef very unhappy! Needed to do this thing! Knefhausen wickedest of men!"
Jeron wriggled under her gaze, a finger in his mouth. He had no idea what sort of response she wanted from him until she made it clear by repeating what Shef had said: "Don't tell anyone, ever!"
"Oh, I won't, Aunt Ann." He would have promised far more than that to get her eyes off him.