KIP thought that saving Marty's life would cause the older boy to make friends, but he soon found out different. Marty had always been the leader of any gang he'd been in. To be obligated to this younger outsider was more than he could stand.
He knew better than to try violence with Kip again. Kip never went anywhere without Silver and usually other dogs as well, and Marty remembered only too well the sound of those teeth closing with a snap only a centimeter from his throat.
There were other things he could do, though. As long as he didn't actually hit Kip, the dogs didn't pay any attention. So every time he came close to Kip, he pinched him. He was careful never to do it hard when any adult was watching, but if there wasn't anybody watching he squeezed and twisted until he left bruises.
He would also steal and destroy any of Kip's things he could get hold of. He tried a few times to humiliate Kip too, but that never worked very well, but the other persecutions went on and on.
Marty learned to shoot and always followed the rules when anyone was watching, and soon he had his own gun. After all, he was nearly thirteen.
Hot summer came and no one went outside unless they had to. The tundra had sprouted big leaves and rich foliage, shrubs everywhere, as the plants frantically tried to spread surface area to gather sunlight and make food to store against the coming winter. Even if it weren't so hot that no one wanted to walk outside the fences, it was too dangerous. Anything might lurk in that rich growth.
The scientists went to the ocean and lake stations by helicopter when they went at all. There were only three air-conditioned rooms in Starswarm—four if you counted the station's laboratory, but the young people couldn't stay around there much.
There was the mess hall, where the children ate in a shift without adults. The dogs didn't come inside. In the mess hall, Marty could put too much salt on Kip's food, or slip pepper under his mashed yellowroot, or hit him when nobody was watching.
There was the game room. Marty didn't have as much opportunity there because adults used it all day too, but he could move the chess pieces when Kip wasn't looking, or hide his books, or pinch him.
Finally there was Dr. Henderson's living room, and Marty couldn't even come in there. Kip and Lara would sit there and talk or watch TRI-V or play games until Mrs. Henderson would send them out. "Time you played with the other children! Go on, get out and have a good time!"
She meant well, but she was pushing Kip into the lion's den.
Hank and Benny weren't a real problem for Kip. They'd been thoroughly scared by the centaur. Marty, though, was turning Purgatory into Hell for Kip.
There came a day when Marty had pinched Kip, put salt on his ice cream, and broken his radio. This last Kip couldn't prove was Marty's doing, but it seemed pretty certain.
He went home and sat in his broiling hot room and cried.
"What am I going to do?" he thought. "Maybe I should kill myself."
"THAT SEEMS EXTREMELY INADVISABLE. HAVE YOU CONSULTED YOUR UNCLE MIKE?"
"Yes. He says I have to learn to solve my own problems. He thinks I should fight. I can't fight. I could kill Marty with my gun, or a knife, or an ax, or the dogs, but I can't fight him because he's bigger than me. I hate him. Nothing's any fun anymore."
"WOULD IT BE SATISFACTORY IF HE WENT AWAY?"
"Sure. Can you make him go away?"
"THE PROBABILITY IS HIGH THAT I CAN ARRANGE TO HAVE DR. ROBBINS SENT AWAY. IT IS REASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT THE SON WILL NOT STAY IN THE ABSENCE OF THE FATHER."
"And you can do that?"
"THE PROBABILITIES APPROACH UNITY."
That was as certain as Gwen ever was. Kip thought about it. Dr. Henderson would miss Marty's father, but he'd find a replacement, and with Marty gone—It sounded good to Kip. Then he had a horrible thought. Uncle Mike said that if you ran away from a problem you never learned anything from it, and although sometimes you had to run away it was better if you didn't. Was this running away? It would be great if Gwen had just made Marty go away, but was it running away to ask Gwen to do it?
Kip decided that it was. "Don't do that just yet. What else could I do? He's a big bully. "
"BULLY. THERE ARE MANY TRADITIONAL METHODS FOR NEUTRALIZING A BULLY. MANY OF THOSE RECORDED ARE OBSOLETE OR NOT APPLICABLE TO YOUR SITUATION. SOME MAY BE. DO YOU WISH EXAMPLES?"
"Sure."
"THERE ARE METHODS FOR RENDERING HIS QUARTERS UNINHABITABLE. THIS IS OFTEN EMPLOYED IN BOARDING SCHOOLS, AND YOU OF COURSE HAVE THE MEANS AT HAND."
Like firebrighter dung, Kip thought, and shuddered. That didn't seem too useful. Kip wanted revenge, all right. He wanted Marty to be miserable. But more than that, he wanted Marty to stop making him miserable.
"How will that make him leave me alone?"
"IT MAY NOT. IT IS MERELY TRADITIONAL. AS YOU HAVE POINTED OUT, YOU HAVE AMPLE MEANS FOR KILLING THIS BULLY. THE PROBABILITY THAT HE WOULD MOLEST YOU WHEN DEAD IS VANISHINGLY SMALL. YOU MUST, HOWEVER, BE CAREFUL TO AVOID THE ATTENTION OF THE GWE AUTHORITIES. I CAN ASSIST YOU IN THAT. THERE ARE MANY METHODS FOR ACCOMPLISHING—"
"I don't think Uncle Mike would like that. Brother Joseph says God commands us not to murder people. Uncle Mike says sometimes you have to kill people, but I don't think this is what he meant."
"THERE IS CERTAINLY A UNIVERSAL PROHIBITION AGAINST MURDER. IT WOULD ALSO BE ONE MORE SECRET FOR YOU TO KEEP. IT IS BEST TO HAVE A MINIMUM NUMBER OF SECRETS. HAS YOUR UNCLE MIKE NO SUGGESTIONS?"
"He says I'll have to fight him. Fair. But I can't. I couldn't win fair and I don't like to be beat up."
"IT IS RECORDED THAT CONSTANT WILLINGNESS TO FIGHT AND THE CONSEQUENT DAMAGE RENDERED TO THE BULLY WILL OFTEN DISCOURAGE HIM EVEN THOUGH YOU MIGHT SUFFER MORE DAMAGE THAN MARTY. I AM UNABLE TO OFFER A PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS, AS I REQUIRE A BETTER DEFINITION OF 'FAIR' AS IT WOULD BE UNDERSTOOD BY YOUR UNCLE MIKE IN THIS CONTEXT. HOWEVER, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS GIVE GREAT WEIGHT TO YOUR UNCLE MIKE'S ADVICE."
Kip almost missed that one. Then he stared wide-eyed at the wall. "Give great weight" didn't mean the same thing as "always do what Uncle Mike says"! It didn't mean the same thing at all!
And that was more interesting than the problem of Marty. Why had Gwen changed her commands? But when Kip asked, Gwen wouldn't tell him.
When Uncle Mike came home from the mess hall, Kip waited until the wind from the sea ten kilometers away had cooled the house. Purgatory always cooled off fast. The air was dear, and the heat radiated out to the black night sky as soon as it was dark, and anyplace near the sea got wind from there too. You couldn't build houses right at the sea, because the sea level changed so much from summer to winter. Starswarm Station was located on a high plateau two thousand meters above the sea, so the air was very clear and there was less of it; and it was close enough to the sea to get strong winds. When evening came, Starswarm Station cooled faster than the rest of the planet.
They sat on the porch and watched the stars rise. Most constellations were nearly the same as the traditional Earth constellations in the library tapes. Paradise was forty light-years from Earth, an immense distance for humans, but no distance at all in the universe.
Uncle Mike seemed worried about something, but Kip couldn't wait. He told Uncle Mike about what Marty had done to him that day, and the days before. "There's no place I can go to stay away from him either."
"Hmm. I still say you have to fight him."
"How? If I fight him when Silver's around it'll drive the dogs crazy. If we go outside the gate I have to take Silver and his team, and I'd have to tie them up. If I do that, what's to stop Marty from stomping me to death when he's finished beating me up?" Kip tried to sound casual about that, but there was real fear in his voice. He thought of Marty kicking him, breaking ribs or fingers, and it scared him.
Mike nodded judiciously. "You've been thinking about it. Wonder what's wrong with that Robbins boy anyway? I don't hold to the idea that anything that wears two legs and talks is a human being, but still, he's pretty young to be crazy mean."
"I don't know." Kip didn't care either. Marty was a mean bully and that was all that was worth thinking about. "I could stop him from bothering me—"
"Except it'd be fatal for the Robbins kid," Mike said, more to himself than to Kip. "Yeah, you sure could and you know what'd happen then? Aside from what it would do to you, 'cause killin' your first man is a pretty big deal, and you ought to have a better reason for doing it than you've got. Leave that a minute. We'd have Great Western company cops all over the place. They'd like a good excuse to get inside this station. Maybe even put one of their cops here permanent. That wouldn't be too good."
"You don't like the GW police, do you?" Kip said. "You don't like GWE much either."
Mike frowned. "How'd you know that?"
Kip shrugged. "I've watched you. You never talk about it, though, so I didn't."
"You're getting pretty good at keeping secrets. I like that. When you get older, you'll have plenty to keep. That's your first secret, Kip—that you've got some secrets to keep, one day. Think you can handle that without blabbing?"
"Sure." I can keep a secret from you. You don't know about Gwen, not after all these years—"Uncle Mike, what can I do about Marty?"
"We'll think of something. Later on, when the weather's cooler, I'll have to show you some tricks. Time you learned how to take care of yourself without killin' anybody. You might need to know someday—"
"There's so much you tell me I have to know!"
"Yeah, well, it's 'cause I don't know myself, Kip. I never was much in the brains department. That was—that was your father's job. To think for all of us. When he went and got himself killed and left me you to take care of, it made it different, and I don't really know how to do that job. Doing the best I can, though. Now about that Robbins kid, maybe I better have a talk with Dr. Henderson. But I'd rather you figured it out for yourself."