Executive (22 page)

“But if you don't require tests, or even attendance, the racists won't take that course,” I pointed out.

“And without school records the kids can sign up for school, then go out into the halls for mischief, since they won't be in the labor force.”

She frowned. “Um. I'll think about that.” She moved away.

My helmet love was not wasted on Shelia, who monitored every episode, each way. She did not conceal it from me. “Sir...” she would say, and not continue.

I knew it was unfair to subject her to this without recompense. She loved me, as all my women did, and deserved better. “Get us private,” I would mutter.

She would, and we would make love. There were ways in which Shelia was similar to the helmet woman, in that she could not initiate the act. After that first occasion her legs had never moved, if indeed they had then. She was Shelia, not Helse, and that left her paralyzed. But apart from that they were good legs, and I gave them proper attention and brought her to her joy.

“I was never jealous of any woman before,” she confessed. “I never thought I would be jealous of this one. But those scenes—”

I snapped my fingers with realization. “Shelia, we can do it with the helmet! You can have the same and not be—”

She shook her head. “No, Hope. That is her territory. I must not intrude.”

This might seem a strange ethic, but I understood it. All that my helmet woman had was the feelie sequences, while Shelia had my physical body. They were indeed separate territories, and Shelia honored that the way she honored and protected my personal privacy and my liaisons with Coral and Ebony. The truth was, these had largely abated by this time, but the principle remained.

“You know who she is,” I said.

“Of course.”

“You know whether she is correct about my not wanting her if I learn her identity.”

“She is wrong about that.”

“But you won't tell me her identity.”

“I promised not to.”

That was that; Shelia would not break her given word, and I would not ask her to. “But will you talk to her?”

“Sir, this is a thing you must do for yourself.”

“I remember when my Navy women used to manage my affairs, for my own good,” I grumbled.

“Yes,” she agreed.

But it was not to be long thereafter before my ignorance was abated, with serious consequence.

There was a problem at the zoo. There was a white elephant at the New Wash facility, and it cost a fantastic amount to maintain it, for elephants are not native to space. A lively public debate had developed: keep the elephant or abolish it? Spirit had decided to let the issue be settled by a referendum, for this was exactly the type of nonpolitical matter that could arouse and divert public attention from the problems of the Tyrancy. We tried to keep the population as contented as possible, giving it small bonuses to distract it from the more serious issues. That may seem cynical, and surely it is, but it helps keep the peace. The ordinary citizen is equipped by neither education nor temperament to decide affairs of state, but he thinks he is, so it is best to divert him. That is one reason why politicians, historically, have had very little substance in their campaigns.

However, I wanted to make sure of the situation, because the vote promised to be divisively close, and that would force me to make the final decision. I wanted to get out of the White Dome for a while, anyway. So I arranged to take the girls to the zoo. Of course, my security force would be along, but this would be anonymous. I had to put on common-man clothes and a little holo-camera, and Hopie and Amber donned girlish jumpers so as to look like innocent teenagers. We would go see the elephant.

The excursion was fun. We followed a circuitous route, changing bubbles several times, making sure no one realized our origin. There was no sign of the security men; of course, they had infiltrated the crowd before I arrived. Coral acted as a cabbie, taking us through the city in a cab rented for the purpose. The girls chattered merrily in Spanish; there was no point in setting Amber to English and having her mute.

Certainly we could all three pass for Hispanic tourists, and there were a fair number of those here too.

The zoo was impressive. It was set up in a cluster of small bubbles in the New Wash vicinity. We didn't bother with the others; we headed straight for the elephantarium. We had agreed that after we saw the elephant, and if our anonymity remained intact, I would go home, but the girls could stay and enjoy the rest of the zoo.

We entered at the null-gee lock at the bubble's admission pole and proceeded to the central orientation chamber. The animal, of course, had the favored equatorial rim of the whirling bubble; the spectators could make do with low-gee for their temporary visits.

We were, of course, accustomed to the city-bubbles. This one was different. The naturalistic environment extended in a full sphere around us, like a giant map: plain, jungle, desert, and lake, all there in living color. The sun-beacon projected the concentrated light to half the sphere, leaving the other half in deep shadow, simulating day and night. It rotated slowly so that a complete circle was made in twenty-four hours. This was mostly for the benefit of the living plants; the elephant could choose its place and time, obtaining the light or the darkness whenever it desired.

We became part of a party of about twenty-five sightseers, mostly children. The canned tour announcement came on: “This is the Elephant Dome. It was constructed in 2586 and has been in continuous service since. Its ecology is completely self-contained except for the elephant and its diet; the insects, field mice, snakes, and assorted birds reproduce themselves and maintain their populations in equilibrium without interference by man. We do monitor the air, but this is minimal; it regenerates naturally. If mankind were to disappear tomorrow, this community would continue indefinitely.”

“Not likely,” I muttered. “The necessary concentration of the sunlight, twenty-seven-fold, has to be done by gee-lens, and that technology has to be maintained by man.”

“Oh, Daddy, don't talk back to the recording,” Hopie said impatiently. She nudged Amber. “Isn't he funny? He argues with canned announcements!” Amber grinned dutifully. She was a great deal more expressive than she had been when she arrived; two years of our influence had been good for her.

“Elephants are the largest of all contemporary land animals,” the voice continued. “More than six hundred varieties have existed in the past, but only two survive naturally. The one in this bubble is a genetically crafted Mammut americanum , or American mastodon. We call call her Mammy, of course.” The announcer paused to allow suitable chuckles of appreciation. Naturally Mammut became Mammy! "She stands seven feet tall at the shoulder and would weigh six thousand pounds if subjected to normal-gee.

However, she is fifty-two years old and in indifferent health, so we have scaled down the gee to eighty percent."

“That's not very big,” Hopie said. “I read where African males weigh twelve thousand pounds and are over ten feet tall.”

“Don't talk back to the recording,” I admonished her.

“I'm not! ” she protested. “I'm just making a clarification.”

“So good to know the distinction.”

“Fifty-two,” Amber said. “Your age.”

“Thank you so much for reminding me,” I said, frowning, and I knew she was smiling. “But I'm not quite as fat as the elephant.”

The recording continued with information about elephants in general and Mammy in particular: how large her brain was; how padded her feet; how versatile her trunk. “There are forty thousand muscles and tendons in her trunk; it is an extremely precise appendage. Her ears are large and have many blood vessels; she flaps them to make a breeze and cool her blood.”

“I want to get in close and get some pictures,” Hopie said.

“Let's hear the spiel through first,” I said. “Then there'll be the tour through the habitat.”

“Mammy consumes fifty thousand pounds of hay every year,” the spiel continued, “in addition to thousands of gallons of mixed grains, about six thousand pounds of dried alfalfa, and thousands of potatoes, cabbages, apples, and loaves of bread. She drinks about eight thousand gallons of water.”

I considered those figures. The cost was phenomenal! We could feed a lot of people with fifty thousand pounds of grain! The water use wasn't so bad because it was recycled, but the food—well, surely they recycled that indirectly, via the manure, but still I had to consider whether it was worth it.

“...relatively inefficient,” the voice continued. “Mammy actually eats twice the food that would be required by an animal of her mass with superior digestion.”

It looked bad for Mammy.

Then we proceeded to the tour of the grounds. Our party descended to the rim. The canned lecture followed us, explaining that the elephant was very careful where she went and would not cross a ditch more than five feet across and five feet deep. Thus we could walk in perfect safety along the marked path that was protected by naturalistic ditches and barriers. The elephant could swim well enough, with all of her body submerged except the tip of her trunk, but concealed vertical mesh under the lake region prevented her access to the marked trail in that direction.

We filed along it. “Oh, there she is!” Hopie exclaimed, pointing. “Coming toward us.”

“You don't want to wait here,” a more experienced visitor said. “Watering time in five minutes.”

“Oh.”

We moved on, not wanting to get wetted down in the simulated rainstorm coming up. We skirted the shore of a pleasant little lake.

I heard a little hiss. I looked—and there was a smoking spot on the turf at my foot.

My military experience gave instant recognition. That was a laser score!

“Girls, get out of here!” I said, and dived into the lake. Lasers are deadly but not through water. I was under attack, but my guards would manifest almost immediately to cover the situation. All I had to do was stay out of range long enough to let them function.

There was a splash beside me, and a thrashing. Someone else had jumped or fallen in. In a moment I saw that it was Amber. Did she know how to swim?

It was evident that she did not. I stroked to her and caught hold. “Relax!” I shouted at her head. “I've got you!”

She heard me and stopped thrashing. I hauled her to the most convenient shore, which happened to be in the elephant's domain. We staggered out, my arm around her waist. I had to trust that my would-be assassin had been routed by my bodyguards and would not fire again. Still, I hauled Amber under a thick bush, to get us both out of sight.

It could only have been a minute, perhaps less, that we were there before the guards found us. But it seemed like a small eternity. Because I had made a remarkable discovery.

Amber, completely soaked, had her hair and dress plastered to her body. But she was not a mess; she was beautiful. Suddenly I saw the features of Helse on her. Not precisely but approximately. Amber was about fifteen years old, just a little younger than Helse had been. She was Hispanic, as Helse had been.

She was very much like a younger version of Helse.

I gazed at her silently. I saw now that she had developed in two years. Of course, it had been happening all along, but I had not been noticing.

Not only that.

Her development paralleled that of my anonymous helmet lover. So did her appearance, now. And her manner, as she gasped and clung to me, frightened.

I focused my talent on her, reading her, and in a moment I had no doubt. This girl was that woman.

The guards appeared and brought us back to the marked path and out of the zoo. I hardly noticed. My mind was in a whirl.

Amber had not realized that I had caught on. That was the way I wanted it, because I had some complex thinking to do.

Things were falling into place: these mysteriously appearing chips; Shelia's attitude; the anonymous woman's inexperience—they all fit now. Amber, lonely, liking me, unable to express it directly because she couldn't talk in English and knowing she shouldn't talk about this in Spanish...

But the helmet woman had talked in English! How could that be?

It could indeed be, I concluded. Amber could not speak English, but she did know the language. In a feelie a person's imagination governed. If she imagined she could speak there, then she could—and so she had. And she had gotten what she wanted.

What she wanted? I pondered the past year of helmet love, and knew that I had wanted it too. Had I realized the identity of the woman, I would never have done it; but now I did realize, and though I was shocked, I knew I still wanted that woman.

Fifteen years old. Fourteen when it started. Below the age of consent. Yet the age of consent had been all but abolished by the Tyrancy; any two people could do what they wanted together, provided both understood and acceded.

But the fact remained that she was younger than my daughter. That bothered me.

What was I to do? I wrestled with it, then went to Shelia. “I have caught on,” I informed her grimly.

She made no pretense at ignorance. “Then you know why she wouldn't tell you.”

“Yes. I would have cut it off at the outset, before—”

“Before you loved her,” she agreed.

I nodded. “But you—why did you collude in this?”

“She needed you—and you needed her.”

“But she's a child!” I protested.

“Not anymore.”

I thought again of our year's affair. No, not anymore! “What do I do now?”

“Why, you love her, Hope.”

“But she's younger than Hopie!”

“So?”

“Don't you see—she—how can I—?”

“Helse was sixteen,” she reminded me.

“Helse was a woman!”

She nodded agreement.

And, of course, my definitions were skewed. I had been fifteen when I knew Helse. She had seemed adult then. Now I looked back on that age, and it seemed to be that of a child. It was not so.

“Don't you see the complications?” I argued. “She came as my... my ward. Like another daughter. How can I—?”

“We shall keep your secret, Hope.”

“Coral, Ebony—they know?”

“They know. It was Coral who first recognized Helse. That was why Chairman Khukov gave her to you.”

Obvious—in retrospect. Khukov shared my talent and perhaps my tastes. He had recognized the physical potential in the girl and seen what she would become. The fact that she was a variant idiot savant was incidental. “You demon!” I muttered.

“You would have done the same for him,” Shelia said. “In fact, you gave him his position.”

“Let me think,” I said. “She doesn't know I know, and I don't know how to tell her or what to do after I do.”

Shelia handed me the chip. “Tell her here.”

Maybe so. I didn't feel free to talk to the child Amber, but I could do so with the anonymous woman. I took the chip.

I donned the helmet and played through our latest scene. It happened to be of violent sex. I had hit her, and she had hit me, and then we had clutched each other and done it standing up. In the scene our blows had been painless; we were playing at violence, just for the variety of it, knowing that we would never have done it in real life.

Playing at violence. Playing—as children did.

No wonder! She was a child! And I in my second childhood.

After the act we stood together, just holding each other. Children?

“Amber,” I said, not sure how the helmet woman would react to this.

“You found out,” she said.

“I found out,” I said, half appalled that she should have had this programmed, anticipating my realization.

I moved back to a prior congress and repeated the word.

She responded similarly. I went back to our very first act together—and she responded to the name.

From the outset she had been ready, just waiting for me.

For a year she had waited.

A child?

I returned to the most recent scene. “I finally realized,” I said. “But what are we to do now?”

“Whatever you will,” she said simply.

“No!” I protested. “You are the one at risk here. You must decide. You must come and tell me what you want—in life.”

“Hope, I cannot speak this language in life.”

“And I cannot touch you like this in life,” I retorted. “But now that I know, I cannot continue this way, through the helmet. Come to me, tell me in Spanish if you must, but tell me. To love you—or to leave you alone.”