Star Travels Tales of Science Fiction by Rhea Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

a lot more popular, but for a long time now
girls haven’t been requested as much.”
    “Why am I here, then?”
    “I don’t know,” I lied.
    “Doth Theep know?” She looked from me
to Ceep.
    I was relieved when Ceep didn’t say
anything. Sometimes he’d give answers but other times he wouldn’t,
but by that time he’d only told Deemi and me about girls like
Snuks. He said that she was a longlifer. All girls were. It’s the
way the dults wanted them. When she was ready to leave Daycare the
dults would eventually trade her to Offworlders. She wouldn’t get
to be immortal like me and Geebo and the others at Daycare, like
the dults. Ceep told me not to tell Snuks just yet. When I asked
Ceep who the Offworlders were and why they weren’t immortal, he
just stayed quiet.
    “Look.” Geebo elbowed me. He grinned
and held a green glowing hand over the face of each replacement. I
was surprised to see their faces were identical, and I had a
feeling these two would be special. Christmas, and now the
replacements, had me excited and a little nervous.
    They awoke earlier than Ceep had
calculated and sat quietly in the same place they had been
deposited. Fair- haired and shy, they looked up at Ceep. He was
talking to them, telling them about Daycare.
    “Since the skirmishes with the
Offworlders first began more than a century ago, it became
economically unfeasible to restore Daycare to its original
standards. When those in charge of maintenance were destroyed in a
particularly violent encounter with the Offworlders, the dults, who
long ago lost the ability to nurture their young, also lost the
maintenance knowledge needed to make sure I continued to perform
the task for them. Now it is entirely up to me to make the
necessary adjustments in both of you if you are to fulfill the role
the dults have prescribed for you.”
    “What adjustments?” one of the
replacements asked Ceep.
    “Those cannot be determined until you
have spent more time at Daycare,” he replied.
    I knew that Ceep was talking about the
times they’d be killed. Any desired abilities they displayed before
their first three deaths would be “sharpened” by him.
    Ceep continued: “A basic foundation of
knowledge is given to all of you before you come to Daycare, but
the dults can never be sure, any more, what your pre-Daycare
knowledge along with your adjustments and experiences at Daycare
will result in. It is during your time in Daycare that your
intrinsic abilities will – or will not – manifest.”
    One of the little kids turned to me.
“What do you call him?” he asked.
    “Ceep.”
    “Why do you call him Ceep?”
    “He makes a noise that sounds like
‘ceep.’ But forget him,” I said. If these two were going to
participate in Christmas, we would have to orient them to Daycare
pretty quickly. Officially, Christmas started at 1900 hours, now
only a few hours away.
    “One of you has to join Deemi’s Daycare
unit. Now who wants to go?” I looked from one to the
other.
    “Does Deemi have one of those?” One of
them pointed to Ceep.
    “Yeah. His unit’s identical to this
one, and Ceep is over there, too.”
    “I’ll go,” said the one who’d been
doing all the talking so far.
    “Good. Ceep, has Deemi responded to my
message about the new arrivals?”
    “Yes. He says that if you want to take
Christmas this year, you should keep them both. You need all the
help you can get.”
    I ignored the message. When I first
came to Daycare, I arrived at Deemi’s unit. He taught me everything
he knew about getting Christmas. Together, Deemi and I used to be
on the same team, we were invincible. Every year, Christmas was
ours. But when he started making his own rules, I left his
unit.
    I looked over at Geebo, and he seemed
to have forgotten the new kids and was completely absorbed with his
tinkering. I waved over the kid that had volunteered, and he
followed me to the exit.
    “Except for Deemi, Geebo and I are the
oldest at Daycare,” I