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

explained to him. “Deemi’s eleven, the oldest
and biggest kid Daycare’s ever had. He’d never been killed before I
took over this unit, but I’ve killed him three times.” I looked him
straight in the eye. “And I plan to kill him and whoever gets in
the way of me and Christmas.” He just looked up at me with an
innocent and shy expression. I told him how to et to Deemi’s unit,
and said that he should follow my directions exactly. If he
wandered dawdled there was a good chance he’d be killed by one of
the many traps which both units had spent the rest of the year
setting up. I watched him walk down the stairs to the sidewalk. He
stopped and looked up at me.
    “Bye.” He turned and never looked back.
I really hoped he made it to Deemi’s, and I hoped Deemi liked him.
At least this kid wasn’t a girl. One of the rules Deemi had decided
on, while I was still with him, was no girls. Once, he was sent a
girl, and he killed her himself. What a waste. He never even tried
to use any of her abilities for Christmas. Every time Ceep restored
her, Deemi’d just kill her again until after the fourth time Ceep
never brought her back. No one came back to Daycare after the
fourth death. I thought it was really a shame; I felt sorry for the
girl. No one wants to leave
Daycare. I’ve never traded a girl to Deemi’s unit, and I don’t
think Ceep’s ever sent him another one.
    When the new replacement was out of
sight, I looked up at the light dome high overhead. It was the
ceiling to the walls that enclosed the one and half square
kilometres of Daycare. Ceep had the overcast filters up.
    I went back to the activity room, and
my knee started aching. I’d been killed three times, twice by
Deemi, and my knee hadn’t been repaired properly. It usually
started bothering me around this time, when I was worrying about
Christmas. Ceep said there was nothing the matter with it, but I
knew he had to be wrong.
    When I walked into the activity room, I
saw Geebo watching the remaining kid, who was standing on a stool
and halfway inside Ceep. The vidscreen light was out and the screen
was off and on the floor. Geebo gave me a worried look, but the kid kept working.
“Ceep, are you still there?” It made me nervous, seeing him in
pieces on the floor.
    “I’m here, Chronos,” he answered. He
sounded different. His voice was the same, but there was something
different. By this time the blond kid was looking at me. He
smiled.
    “Geebo, what’s he doing? You know Ceep’s off limits. We all
know that,” I said. Snuks sat in the corner, her face painted
white. She was about to apply more colors. At least someone was
getting ready for Christmas.
    “I gave the new kid a name,” Snuks
said, “Teb.”
    “Ceep asked Teb to do this,” Geebo
said.
    “Do what?” I asked.
    “Fixth him,” Snuks answered. She went
back to coloring her face. Teb still worked on Ceep.
    “Is that true, Ceep?” I asked, half
expecting him not to answer.
    “Yes, Chronos.”
    “But why Teb? Why not Geebo? You know
how he loves to do that kind of thing. And why now with only one
hour until Christmas? We’ve got to be ready. Deemi will be
ready.”
    “Geebo wasn’t bred for this kind of
job, Chronos. I couldn’t let him work on me.”
    I recalled the onetime Geebo had
attempted to tinker with Ceep. Geebo hadn’t been here too long, and
Ceep had zapped him so badly that I thought he’d been killed for
sure, but he hadn’t
    “Geebo would have changed me. He would
have made me something more – or less.”
    “I wouldn’t,” Geebo
protested.
    “Yes, you would have. Don’t feel bad,
Geebo. That is your specialty. It has become more and more obvious.
Your creativity is greatly needed and desired.”
    Ceep was absolutely right. Geebo’s
genius had come in handy more than once and would be greatly
desired in less than an hour.
    “Besides,” Ceep continued, “Geebo’s
hands are too large for this procedure. I could not be sure the Teb
or the