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What had impressed him the most was the way the kids seemed to be involved in
everything that was going on just as much as the grown-ups. They didn't come
across like kids at all, but more like small people who were busy finding out
how things were done. In a room two posts back, he had glimpsed a couple of
kids who couldn't have been more than twelve probing carefully and with deep
frowns of concentration inside the electronics of a piece of equipment that
must have cost millions. The older Chironian with them just watched over their
shoulders and offered occasional suggestions. It made sense, Driscoll thought.
Treat them as if they're responsible, and they act responsibly; give them bits
of cheap plastic to throw around, and they act like it's cheap plastic. Or
maybe the Chironians just had good insurance on their equipment.
He wondered how he might have made out if he'd had a start like that. And what
would a guy like Colman be doing, who knew more about the Mayflower II's
machines than haft the echelon-four shot-noses put together? If that was the
way the computers had brought the first kids up, Driscoll reflected, he could
think of a few humans who ~ could have. used some lessons.
His debut into life had been very different. The war had left his parents
afflicted by genetic damage, and their first two children had not survived
infancy. Aging prematurely from side effects, they had known they would never
see Chiron when they brought him aboard the Mayflower II
as a boy of eight and sacrificed the few more years that they might have spent
on Earth in order'
to give him a new start somewhere else. Paradoxically, their health had
qualified them favorably in their application to join the Mission since the
planning had called for the inclusion of older people and higher-risk
actuarial categories among the population to make room for the births that
would be occurring later. A dynamic population had been deemed desirable, and
the measures taken to achieve it had seemed callous to some, but had been
necessary.
As a youth he had daydreamed about becoming an entertainer--a singer, or a
comic, maybe--but he couldn't sing and he couldn't tell jokes, and somehow
after his parents died within two years of each other halfway through the
voyage, he had ended up in the Army. So now, though he still couldn't sing a
note or tell a joke right, he knew just how to use an M32 to demolish a small
building from two thousand yards, could operate a battlefield compack
blindfolded, and was an expert at deactivating optically triggered
anti-intruder personnel mines.
Page 52
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
About all he was good with outside things like that was cards. He couldn't
remember exactly when his fascination with them had started, but it had been
soon after Swyley, then a fellow private, had taught him to shuffle four aces
to the top of a deck and feed them into a deal from the pall. Finding to his
surprise that he seemed to have an aptitude, Driscoll had borrowed a leaf from
Colman's book and started reading up about the subject. For many long off duty
hours he had practiced top-pass palms and one-handed side-cuts until he could
materialize three full fans from an empty hand and lift a named number of
cards off a deck eight times out of ten. Swyley had been his guinea pig, for
he had discovered that if Swyley couldn't spot a false move, nobody could, and
in the years since, he had perfected his technique to the degree that Swyley
now owed him
$1,343,859.20, including interest.
But his reputation had put him in a no-win situation at the Friday night poker
school because when he won, everybody said he was sharping, and when he
didn't, everybody said he was lousy. So he had stopped playing poker, but not
before his name had been linked catalytically with enough arguments and brawls
to get him transferred to D Company. As he stared fixedly at the wall across
the corridor, the thought occurred to him that in a place with so many kids
around, there ought to
file:///F|/rah/James%20P.%20Hogan/Hogan,%20James%20P%20-%20Voyage%20from%20Yes
teryear.txt (38 of 143) [1/19/03 5:19:45 PM]
file:///F|/rah/James%20P.%20Hogan/Hogan,%20James%20P%20-%20Voyage%20from%20Yes
teryear.txt be a big demand for a conjuror. The more he thought about it, the
more appealing the idea became.
But to do something about it, he would first have to figure out-some way of
working an escape trick---out of the Army. Swyley should have some useful
suggestions about that, he thought.
Clump, clump, clump, clump. His train of thought was derailed by the sound of
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