Let's Go Play at the Adams'

discovery versus execution-excruciating indecision. They fell grave. Because of the

sweetness and youthfulness of their faces, a difference and advantage they clubbed their

elders with, the gravity had an almost comic effect. Cindy, in fact, giggled.

"We can't kill her," Bobby said. Here his tone separated himself and Cindy from the other

three.

"Why?" Tears started in Paul's eyes. He was keen on it.

1

"Well-" Bobby paused. "She's-well, she's a-· she's just a kid like us."

"Yeah," Cindy agreed.

And still again, Freedom Five stopped to think.

They understood the argument Bobby had made with-· out being able to put it into an

articulate statement Barbara might still be on their side of the war. Grown-· ups killed each

other and got beat up in accidents, so OK it was hard to care about a grown-up outside of

your own family (and sometimes difficult then). But an· other one of them . ... It had a

strange force; they could identify with themselves or their equals, and not one of them had

ever died or been killed that they knew of. It was something new, indeed.

192

"Aw-w-w, she's old enough to be Cindy's mother."

"Is not!" Cindy was insulted. "She's only twenty." "A mother, then." (Mothers-for purposes of

this discussion-had a fairly low cartel.)

"So's Dianne," Bobby said, "and John's old enough to be a father. They'll both be in college like

her in a couple of years." He looked around and saw that his point was won. He had made it

"serious."

Freedom Five appreciated quietly.

After a minute Dianne said (and she had thought about Bobby's point as if it were something

new), "What difference does it make?"

"I dunno. It just does."

"We'd be in the same fix, and we'd have the same trouble if she was Cindy's age. Twice as

much trouble. You're not supposed to kill little children."

"I'm not that little!" "Oh, shut up, Cindy."

She did. Her expression showed that it was getting a little scary around here.

The other four were equally wordless, and yet somehow the tension had lifted one degree.

Ethically speaking, they would never victimize a small child nor-if their play was rehearsal for

life-would they think twice about an older person. Barbara was indeterminate. The matter

could not be solved on the basis of age. The jury was still out.

"Anyhow," Bobby, ever practical, said, "how

would you do it?"

"Any way." "Ask Paul."

Paul said very little, but he went ashen with the effort of getting it out. More was passing

through his mind than could be encapsulated in a single phrase, and he was in a near faint. He

said, "Like we always do."

"Oh."

Bobby, who knew Paul, sat back in his chair and let this sink in as far as it would go.

193

"Oh." Cindy was awed. John set his jaw.

Dianne never let much emotion show; if you knew her, you would say she had no

surface feelings at all (and the deep ones you would grant only out of politeness). She

listened to Paul and sat quite still as always, but she was rigid, and underneath the

rigidity was a trembling.

"Well, that's what we always played we wanted to do, isn't it?" Paul laid it on them.

Freedom Five heard and sighed. In imagining such a thing, they were not going as far

as. childhood would allow them to go and remain children any longer, but they were

going as far as being adult would ever allow them. Simply by considering the thing, they

were going as far as dreams and dreams again would take them-certain dreams.

Dreams of ....

The philosophical ins-and-outs of one person's taking another person's life---a nicety

that seems rarely considered in actual events-was beyond them. The point needs

clarification: they could not have discussed it. The literature on the subject, the

annotated codes of law prescribing the provocations and instances of retribution, the

history of the matter-all of history with all its precedents pro and con-were unavailable,

unreadable, and incomprehensible to them. They faced the subject anew.

Each person, after all, in his or her ability to create or destroy life is a god of some sort.

If a person is born, two other persons (presumably; who knows anymore?) created him;

if that person is deliberately killed, at least one other, equally human person did away

with him. Being god on a local scale is possible; any child who has ever squashed a

mushy caterpillar knows that.

"And we can get away with it," John said. In spite of the air conditioning, he appeared

sweaty.

"No way," Bobby said. "Dianne has it all figured out."

194

"You're going to get . . . well," Dianne said quickly, "Someone's going to break into the

house tomorrow night."

"The Picker," John said.

"How's he going to do that?" Cindy said. "Shut up."

"And he's going to force Barbara to lock you"Dianne looked at Bobby and Cindy-"in the

closet, so you can't get out. Then he's going to take Barbara out to the tenant house and

kill her. Then he's going to run away, and we're going to come over here in the morning