THE BOYS AT PLAY

1529 4D

Andrew turned to his brother Martin. “Come with me. We’re going upcity today.” Out in the front room of the Luce home, the sensi crooned voices and colors. Andrew scratched the palm of his left hand — it felt like a small bite from a scavenger beetle.

Martin hung back in the kitchen, shaking his head. “Father won’t let us. We have to stay with the babies.”

“We’ll take the babies with us.” Raul was four, and Norwell, the youngest of the Luce children, was three. Both of them were big and strong for their ages, and Andrew liked taking them out when the understreets were safest. It was a lot better than just staying in the cubbies of their home and watching sensi. Andrew hated the sensi.

“No, Andrew. He beat you the last time, remember?”

Andrew flinched a little at the memory. His legs had been sore for many days.

Wranmar Luce drove a stonehoser to make his pay and feed his children. It was a rough job. The life of the City was measured in the speed of its change, and the stonehosers were the sculpting-tools that carved out new shops, filled in old vacancies, reinforced crumbling corridors, made new pillars, and created new passageways. “It’s like riding a big snake,” Wranmar would tell his boys, “while the snake tries to eat you for dinner.”

Just behind the stonehoser‘s dozens of working arms at the front end, the operator sat in a cradle, guiding its efforts with waldoes and voice commands. Under the operator’s direction, the stonehoser liquefied tons of rock in seconds, using its ultrasonic claws and needlejets, mixed the dissolved rock into a kind of slurry, and stored it in big tanks in its tail. Then it vomited out the lava-hot liquid through shaping nozzles into whatever forms and shapes were needed. The new-cast stone hardened almost instantly.

Wranmar would return at the end of each workday, bathing in his own sweat, caked with rock dust, his eyes bleary, his skin reddened with the heat. “Didn’t eat me yet,” he’d say to Andrew, and then he’d duck into the washroom to shuck the grit and filth from his body.

When he’d discovered that Andrew had taken the other children out, that one time, he’d stopped on the way to the washroom. He’d grabbed Andrew and whacked him across both legs again and again with his stone-clogged hands, roaring, “You’ve got to keep them safe! Safe! Safe! Safe!” With each word “Safe”, a blow landed, accompanied by hot spray from Wranmar‘s mouth. Andrew had stood as long as he could, and finally fell on his face from the pain.

This day, Wranmar had just left for work, and Andrew hoped to take his brothers up to the surface for a look at the sky. His father had talked about it, they’d all seen it on the sensi, but it was just an image. Andrew remembered seeing the stars in that sky one night, and he dimly recalled seeing the daytime sky just once. It wasn’t enough, and he was willing to take the risks of pain to see it again.

He said to Martin, “We’ll get back early. He won’t know.”

“Yes, he will. They’ll tell him.” Martin retreated to the hall, his eyes wide. “I’m not going. He’ll beat me the next time. He told me.”

“Okay. You stay home. I’m taking them.” Andrew went out to the front room, where Raul and Norwell sat together in Wranmar‘s one big soft bag of a chair, kicking in time to the newsbeat. They wore only the light skinsuits needed at home.

The Hejjati Shushan feed, Wranmar‘s favorite for himself and his children, blasted away on the sensi, martial music with a sensual dance rhythm infesting its woman-whispered news voiceover with a mindless, chest-pounding thud: “CLAIMS on the NAMES of the SEVen volunTEERS, FILED in the COURTS of the REEgional OFFice, QUICKly overTURNED by the JUDGes from the CORPS, BROUGHT out the HEJJ for a CITy demonSTRAtion.”

Images of bleeding faces and bodies flashed in sync to the beat, and some ruined understreet storefronts panned by on the screen. The relentless female voice continued in its magnified hush, “The miLItia smashed HEADS and the HEJJi needed MEDS, so they BROKE down the DOORS of the NAga Zone MEDshops. NOW we’ve got FINES and some SANCtions on the HEJJi, so it’s JUST NOT NEWS ‘cause it’s HAPpened all beFORE. It’s JUST NOT NEWS ‘cause it’s happened all before. No, it’s just not news ‘cause it’s happened all before.”

Raul and Norwell were clapping hands in time to the newsfeed‘s bass rhythm. The beat faded back to an insistent throb, and the voiceover rose from its whisper to normal speech. The screen showed a sweeping surface landscape under a clear pale sky. “No, it’s just not news, and it’s not just news, it’s the stream from the home of the Darko Hejj in Gran Dar, down here in Lidiss, where the sun’s days still come and go in our hearts, and the blue-green hills of the southwest rise in our souls. Say it with me, children, Hejjati Shushan, the Hejj sun rises.”

Raul said, “Hejjati Shushan,” and elbowed Norwell, who mumbled his best three-year-old imitation.

Andrew stepped between his little brothers and the screen. “Do you want to go see the sun and the hills, right now?”

They nodded. Raul craned his neck to see the screen, where the woman talked now about Hejji clothes for sale.

“Come on. Get your coveralls. We’re going up.” Andrew took Norwell‘s little hand and pulled him up out of the big chair; Raul jumped up and ran back to get their clothes.

“Where’s Martin?” Raul asked, coming back.

“He’s staying home,” Andrew said. “You’ve got to promise not to tell Father we’re going,” he said as he dressed the two boys.

“Why not?” Raul fastened his front seam.

“Because he’ll hurt me if you do.”

“Oh.”