Of all the epidemics of violence, assault and murder by the young who felt nothing for their victims were the most fearsome and difficult to stop. Here the criminal justice systems of the Earth were dealing with warriors whose instinctive quickness, unchanged for half a million years, was at its height in teenage years. They had grown up outside the restraints that humankind had arrayed against itself, with no parenting or education and no hope of welcome in or outside their class. The stubbornly law-abiding among the working poor hated them. The lawful foraging homeless hated them. The heroic working poor and lower middle class feared them. They were outcasts and failures to the tactical criminals allied with the upper middle class and wealthy. In another age they would have served conquerors and warlords, and been sacrificed in battle to great effect.
“How many warriors can you educate into post-industrial wusses?” the joke asked.
“One,” was the answer.
“If we can catch him.”
“All of them,” said some politicians.
“We cannot reform them,” proclaimed the longlifers. “And we cannot let them come to adulthood beside us. We must be careful what progeny we permit to grow as we live forward.”
As the numbers of longlifers increased, they sought to slow and then abolish the past’s dead hand of chaotic comings and goings between generations and classes. Longlife meant keeping more benefits for themselves; there was too much to lose. This quickened the drift away from the class systems of twentieth century industrial quasi-democracies, in which the working class sometimes recruited from the poor, the middle class recruited from the working class, and the rich drew from the middle class. The borders between these divisions were becoming nearly impassable, to the degree where the usefulness of classes was being lost, to be replaced with a rigid and fruitless caste system.
“These are the lost,” the longlifers said, lengthening on, “and it matters not if they live out their dead-end ways in a small worldlet, away from us. Among us they will only be unhappy and do us harm.”
“Perhaps they can change,” said some, “if we were to give them more life, more time to start over.”
“No—we will not let them into the new world we are making,” the others cried as they rushed toward their paradise. “Let them keep the life they have, but no more. We will not lengthen their nightmare into our dream.”
There were just too many. With no mindfulness within them or likely to develop, and the abyss of homelessness and early death from violence and disease waiting to swallow them, they had nothing to lose. They struck back impulsively, gripped by the moment’s needs, without a horizon of hope or a teacher other than trial and error to guide their actions.
Their presence was explained as a byproduct of market economies that had raised too many young in drugs and drink, that could not educate everyone, and in fact did not need everyone, but feared to say so. Parenting was a nonproductive activity, a hobby for those who could afford it and who lived with specific expectations from the future. The social cost of soulless young was not counted, leaving only the criminal justice system to deal with them.
“There must be a price to pay for failure!” cried the wealthy, and it was paid thrice—by the failures, by their victims, and later by the society, and each paid too late.
On Rock Six, sent for an expected thirty years, Ricardo Nona’s life was an eternal present. At fifteen his past was brief, his future blank; he had never had so much time to spend with himself, to see himself as someone else. The objects of his attention had always stood outside him; but now feelings he had been able to ignore swelled with the intensity that concentrated self-awareness forced upon him.
He felt as if his thoughts were assaulting him, as if someone had put a spell on him. What was he doing here? What would he ever do here? Thirty years was forever. He was an orphan; no one cared for him back home. His closest relative had been an uncle, who had been shot to death by the police in Detroit only three days before Ricardo’s sentencing.
His lawyer had explained his situation to him more than she probably wanted to. She was good looking, so he let her talk just so he could look at her longer.
“They don’t care what happens to you,” she had said. “You killed three people in the carjack. You’re beyond any concept of rehab. They just want to get rid of you. I’m telling you this so that when your Rock comes back you’ll know why you did the time. It won’t do you much good now, but you’ll have time to think about it.” She had smiled slightly. “There’s not much else to say. I don’t think you’ll get into more trouble in the Rock, but it won’t matter. It’ll be you and the others. No police, no guards. I do wish you luck, Ricardo.”
She had asked him why he did it, and all he could remember was that his two friends were going to do something and wanted him along. When the time came, it seemed right to kill the people in the car, or get killed. They had killed Mario right off, so at least one of them had to die. He had killed one, and Angela had killed the other. That made three. What had the judge expected? That he and Angela should have stood there and got shot? It seemed like a dream to think about it, and have it come out the same way every time.
“Ricardo,” his lawyer had continued, “there’s not much more I can do for you except say a few things that might stick in your head. It’s my last shot. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, sure,” he had said to make her feel better. What could it matter. She had great tits and good legs. Her butt was getting bigger, but still pretty good for over thirty. He could enjoy her if he had the chance.
“Ricardo, the Rock you’re going to will be nearly all orphans, or so close it’s the same thing. It’s going to be overcrowded, because they’re packing in as many as they can get in before the boost.”
“So?”
She had smiled, trying to look friendly. He had thought of killing her right there, because there wasn’t much more they could do to him except kill him, but they weren’t killing lately.
“Do you have any feelings about why you are here, and why you are as you are?” she had asked. “You might have been very different. Look—think this way, for just a few moments. You didn’t make yourself the way you think and feel right now, because you weren’t around to decide back before you were born. A lot of other things decided it for you.”
He knew what she meant, but it didn’t matter.
“A great judge said that if a child isn’t fixed between the age of three and seven, it’ll never be fixed. Do you feel you’ll never get better?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he had said, just to say something she obviously wanted to hear.
“You know only what your way of growing up has taught you—look out for yourself and get what you can of what you need.”
“Don’t you do that?” he had asked. “What else is there?”
She had sighed. “Other people. You don’t need to step on them when they get in your way.”
“You do if they try to step on you,” he had said.
“It’s the way you look out for yourself and get what you need,” she had said. “And you will get it.”
She had given him a long look of how sorry I am, then touched his cheek gently with her hand as she stood up. “You are a handsome boy, you know.” And she had left, thinking it was too bad.
He was the youngest of the boys in the Rock, except for the hundred or so eleven-year olds. The oldest males and females here were well over twenty. The oldest had the largest number of screamers, the drug addicted, and the crazies. A few were recovering, but many were dying, unable to eat. He had seen a few of them sitting in the tall grass, where they had to sleep. They had been brought here at the last minute, a few thousand of them, just before the boost. There was no room for them in the barracks. They didn’t come to the mess halls to eat, and were getting sicker each day. A few were already dead.
The rest of the girls, even those his age, were competing for the oldest non-addicted guys, the eighteen to twenty-fives. There were maybe ten thousand people in the Rock, counting the screamers.
There wasn’t much to do except eat, sleep, and spy on the older guys making it with the girls you couldn’t get, and avoid getting beaten up by the gays and perverts. Many of the frooties would just ask, even beg, but the pervs went around in twos and threes, and they could get you. Unwilling girls were stalked, but he had not yet gotten up the courage to try it until today.
He was following a tall, willowy girl with short blond hair who liked to go up to the grove behind the mess halls. A footpath was being worn through the grass to the place. As he came to the grove of maple trees, he noticed a flurry of movement on the ground. He crept closer and peered out from the side of a tree. The girl was on the ground, her arms pinned by a tall, dark-haired boy. She struggled, then lay back, cursing at him as he reached down and started to pull up her denim skirt. She threw her long legs into the air, trying to get him into a headlock, but missed every time.
Ricardo stepped into view and shouted, “Hey, let her go!” He didn’t know why he did it.
The boy looked at him and grinned. “Wanna watch? I don’t mind.”
The girl broke loose as he spoke and scrambled to her feet. The boy reached out for her crotch. She turned and fled through the trees. The tall boy came up to him and knocked him down. Then he started after the girl.
Ricardo got up with blood in his mouth, and followed at a run.
He felt useless as he stopped outside the trees.
The girl was running swiftly across the grass, but the tall boy was pushing hard and gaining. He caught up with her, and the two figures fell silently out of sight into the tall grass.
Ricardo sat down, unable to sort out his feelings.
After a while, he saw the tall boy get up and march away.
A minute later the girl got up and looked around. She saw him. He waved to her. She seemed to be looking toward him. He started to walk toward her. She turned away and marched toward the barracks.
He watched as she neared one of the buildings. Two boys came out to meet her; then the boy who had left her in the grass came up from her left. The three seemed to be talking. She pointed toward Ricardo. The three boys started up toward him.
As he neared the three boys, Ricardo saw that they were grinning at him.
“Get him!” shouted one.
Ricardo halted and stood his ground.
They reached him, and the one who had left the girl in the grass grabbed him by his denim coverall.
“What you doin’ out here, boy?” he demanded. “Spying?”
“I was out walking,” Ricardo said defiantly. “You said I could watch,” he added.
“Who sent you?” asked a short redheaded boy.
“No one.”
“She belongs to us, you know,” said a third boy. “She complained about you.”
“I thought…” Ricardo started to say.
“Yeah?” said the tall boy.
“…you were hurting her,” he finished.
“She likes it that way,” the tall boy said. “She likes to be hunted and chased. Get it?”
Ricardo didn’t but nodded.
The piggish boy sneered. “You can see he’s never been laid,” he said—and punched Ricardo in the mouth.
The blow knocked him on his back.
He lay still, as if he were someone else.
“Ah, he’s no fun,” said the redhead.
The three looked down at him with contempt.
“Leave him,” the tall boy said. “He’ll be taking it up the ass in no time.”
They turned and walked off, laughing…
Ten years later, the screamers were all dead and buried or down the disposal chutes. Only a handful had kicked their habits and lived. It had been bad, with rotting bodies in the grass, until he had organized the dump squads.
Ricardo sometimes remembered the laughter of the older boys who had tormented him. They were now old men in their thirties, the ones he had not killed. He and those younger than him now had all the best girls and the better women, including the leggy girl he had tried to help in the grass. His lawyer had given him a good idea when she had told him how handsome he was. He still looked very young, lied about his age, and counted himself a success.
And the three old bullies went in fear of him.