A Coming Of Age

Because—he didn't add—if the reinforcements didn't arrive before dark, he and Tonio might just wind up taking on the whole place by themselves.

And that definitely didn't sound very pleasant.

"You'll have to excuse the accommodations, Doctor," Martel said with exaggerated politeness as the two adults walked toward the middle of the huge, high-ceilinged room, leaving the small group of preteens to close the door behind them. "But I'm afraid We really weren't set up for visitors here."

Jarvis passed up the scathing reply that came to mind and instead took a good look around. The room was indeed huge, taking up probably an entire third of the building, and was, in addition, stiflingly hot. Thick-paned, wire-reinforced windows covered three of the four walls, presenting a somewhat dust-filtered view of the mountains to the south and east and the river flowing by the building to the west. The floor space was dominated by what appeared to be a furnace and two large tanks, each liberally wrapped up in catwalks, conveyors, control and power lines, and tens of meters of heavy pipe. Other catwalks and stairways crossed to what appeared to be a glass-walled control room stuck above the windows on the south wall. Other smaller pieces of equipment were laid out in a seemingly random pattern, co

"Oh, sort of a business sideline of mine," the other said airily. "Axel—I want four of your boys outside to watch for company," he called, his voice echoing in the huge space. "One on each side of the building."

Axel seemed to stare at Martel an unusually long time before nodding and turning back to the other eight kids hovering near him. Inaudible words were exchanged, and four boys detached themselves from the group and disappeared back out the door. The other four dispersed to the windows, which they proceeded to unlatch and teek open. Watching their curious glances around the room, Jarvis concluded that it was their first visit to the refinery, which meant they weren't any more familiar with the layout than he was. Offhand, he couldn't think of any way that could help him.

Axel flew over and settled down beside Jarvis and Martel. "Now what?" he asked with more than a little truculence. "We can't stay here very long—we're not that far from the temple site, and that's the first place the police will look."

"We'll be safe enough, at least until dark," Martel said. "At that point we can fly over the mountains to a secluded place I know of."

"And then what? Back at the cabin he said it would take years to figure out if his stuff even worked. You going to sit out there and eat conetree pods that whole time?"

"We won't have any trouble with supplies." Martel was gazing thoughtfully at his preteen aide. "I can keep my business contacts in Rand and elsewhere, and in the next room is the means to finance any purchases we'll need to make through them. We'll be perfectly comfortable out there, I assure you."

"Glad to hear it. And who exactly are you going to find to experiment on?"

"I thought we'd adopt Dr. Jarvis's method, seeing as how it's already worked so well. You and your preteens will simply kidnap some four- or five-year-olds, we'll use whatever trickery the doctor used to keep them from panicking, and that will be that."

"You sure he's going to help us, huh?"

Martel glanced at Jarvis; his frown deepened as he returned it to Axel. "He'll mix up the drugs for us, under the threat of very painful consequences if they don't work."

Jarvis snorted. "You're going to chain me to my bed for ten years, are you? That should be interesting."

"Actually, I have something more sophisticated in mind," Martel said, his eyes still on Axel. "If there are no further questions—"

"There are," the preteen interrupted. "I want to know who these business friends of yours are, where your hideout is, and how you intend to force anything out of him. We're in as deep as you are, Omega, and it's time we got in on more of the pla

For a long moment Martel simply gazed at the boy... and when he finally spoke his words were edged with steel splinters. "You're a slow learner, Axel; did you know that? A slow learner and a glutton for head punches. I told you once today already that you weren't practiced enough at thinking to take over that job from me—and so you've naturally decided you want to take over that and everything else."

"No, I didn't mean—" Axel began, his insistent ma

"Just how far do you think you'd get?" Martel cut him off brusquely. "Even if I was stupid enough to answer all your questions, how many would you forget to ask until you'd disposed of me? How would you go about recruiting new kids when you all hit Transition in a year or so, for instance? Hm? What would you do to persuade the doctor to cooperate if he suddenly decided to be stubborn? How would you even know what chemicals he was using, since you can't even read the damn labels? He could sprinkle poison in your soup and you'd never know it."

Axel threw a glance in Jarvis's direction and swallowed visibly. "I... All right." He took a deep breath. "All right, then; but if we can't do without you, you can't do without us, either."

"Who ever suggested I intended to?" Martel asked. "You have the strength, I have the knowledge and brains. The arrangement's worked well for Tigris for two hundred years; there's no reason it should fall apart now, is there?"

"But what about Transition?" the boy blurted.

"What about it?" Martel countered smoothly. "I'll need people I can train to act as priests among the kids once we get things going again. The message of Truth isn't dead, you know, just reorganizing. I suspect we're soon going to have more power on this planet than anyone since the Lost Generation."

Axel nodded, his eyes shining, and Jarvis could practically see the boy's embryonic thoughts of rebellion vanish under the weight of Martel's dazzling promises. "He's lying, you know," the scientist spoke up, wishing now he hadn't waited so long to do so. But he still might not be too late. "He doesn't need any priests to share his power. Once you lose your teekay, he'll get rid of you without a second thought."

If the words sank in at all, they did so without leaving a trace. Axel gave him a cool look and turned back to Martel. "What should we do next?" he asked.

"Go and check on the lookouts; make sure they're well concealed," the other said promptly, his businesslike ma

"Right." He turned toward Jarvis. "What about him?"

"I'll watch him. Just make sure one of your kids is always in the room with us."

"Okay." Axel flew across the room and vanished through the outside door.

"I hope that'll dissuade you from further attempts to turn my kids against me," Martel said, facing Jarvis. "They have the loyalty of extreme self-interest: greed plus the knowledge that I'm the only one who can protect them from the police."

"Must be an interesting form of greed, given you don't even know what my project is," Jarvis retorted. "Or is it your stockpile of gold they're interested in?"

Martel's smile vanished. "How did you know about the gold?" he demanded, his voice deadly. "Did Tirrell tell you?"