The Worthing Saga (11 page)

His question was answered almost immediately. Leaving the booth, he again scanned the people near him—and one of them was one of Mother's Little Boys, coming to get him at the booth. He ducked into a crowd and left him behind. For once he was glad he was still small—he disappeared and turned a corner, all the while keeping the man's thoughts in his mind. Lost him, thought the man. Lost him.

But they were looking, and it had taken only a few minutes at the booth before one of Mother's Little Boys had reached him. He couldn't ride a worm. Even if he palmed the reader and immediately got aboard, the worm would hardly have finished acceleration before they got to him. So he had to walk. It was two hundred levels above him and four subs away. There was no hope of reaching there before tomorrow. In that time he would have nothing to eat—only water could be had without palming for it. And where would he sleep?

In one of the twenty-meter parks, under a tree. The lawn was artificial, but the tree was real, and the rough bark felt good on his hand; the needles pricked him but he needed the pain. Needed the pain so he could sleep, with his mind newly crowded with memories of what he never did, and what he had just done. His mother was not sane—he knew that better than anyone, having seen directly how she lost touch with reality, how she lived in the constant hope of Homer Worthing coming home. But how was he any less mad himself, with the vision of his dying brothers before his eyes? Why do I remember it this way? Why can't I see it as a story that happened to someone else? Why does my mother's face blend so easily into these memories? He could not separate what he knew he had done from what he knew he had not done. If he could shrug off Radamand's acts, then would he lose the guilt for what he had done to his mother? He was not willing to do that. Painful as it was, what he had done, he had done, and would not give up his own past, even at the cost of keeping someone else's. Better the madness of keeping Radamand within me than the worse madness of losing Jason.

So he slept with the prickling needles clasped lightly in one hand, the other hand resting on the bark of the tree. I am what I have done, he said to himself as he dozed off. But he awoke saying, I was what I did. I
am
what I will do.

It was a whole day's walk, up the endless stairs, not daring to palm the public elevators, along the corridors, taking a slide-walk when he could. He reached the Fleet recruiting station just before closing.

“I want to join,” said Jase.

The recruiter looked at him coldly. “You're little and you're young.”

“Thirteen. I'm old enough.”

“Parents' consent?”

“Ward of the state.” And without giving his name, he punched in his personal code, calling his data into the air above the recruiter's desk.

The recruiter frowned at the name.
Worthing
was a name not soon to be forgotten. “What, planning to follow in your father's footsteps?” he asked.

Jase said nothing. He could see the man wished him no ill.

“Good scores, strong aptitudes. Your father was a great starpilot, before.”

So there were other memories of Homer Worthing. Jase probed, and found something that surprised him. The world that Homer destroyed had refused him permission to draw water from their oceans. They had kept him there until the Fleet could catch him. They were not wholly innocent. The Fleet did not hate Homer as the rest of the universe did. Jase had grown so used to being ashamed of who he was that he did not know what to do with this new information, except to hope there would be a place for him in the Fleet. Perhaps, at last, he had a patrimony.

But the recruiter only shook his head. “Sorry. I just applied you, and you've been rejected.”

“Why?” asked Jase.

“Not because of your father. Code Nine. Something abut your aptitudes. I'm not allowed to tell you more.”

He told Jase more whether he meant to or not. Jase was being refused entry into the Fleet because of his scores at school. He was too bright to be admitted to the Fleet without consent from the Office of Education. Which he would never get, since Hartman Torrock would have to approve him.

“Jason Worthing,” said a man behind him. “I've been looking for you.”

Jason ran. The man behind him was one of Mother's Little Boys, and it was arrest he had in mind.

At first the crowds in the corridors helped him. They were moving quickly, and Jase could dodge among them, moving faster than his pursuer, and always out of sight. Gradually the man chasing him was joined by more, until a half dozen were working their way through the crowd. He could not keep track of them all. It was too hard, to look out of their eyes and try to guess, from what they were seeing, where they were.

They caught him when the crowd was slow, for then he was too small and weak to force his way through. His size was no longer an advantage, the Swipe was no help to him, and he found himself sprawled on the ground with a savagely spiked shoe on his hand. Even so he was not afraid of pain: he ripped his hand away and, despite the agony of flayed skin and torn-open veins, he almost scrambled away into the crowd before they caught him, ankle and wrist, and cuffed and shackled him.

“Tough little bastard,” said one of Mother's Little Boys.

“Why are you chasing me?”

“Because you ran. We always figure that anybody who runs should probably be caught.” But he was lying. They had orders to take Jason Worthing alive, at all costs. Whose orders? Hartman Torrock's? Radamand Worthing's? Not that the answer made much difference. He should have gone to the Colonies with Mother. He had gambled everything on the chance of turning a foul future into something better; he had lost.

But it was neither Radamand nor Tork who came to take him into custody. It was a short, stout, balding man who ordered them to unshackle him, and to cuff them together. The invisible field kept their wrists within a meter of each other.

“I hope you don't mind,” said his captor. “I wouldn't want to lose you again, after going to all this trouble. His hand is bleeding. Anyone have a healer?”

Someone passed a healer over Jase's hand, and the blood coagulated and the flow stopped. In the meantime, the short man introduced himself. “I'm Abner Doon, and I'm the closest thing to a friend you're likely to find in this world. I have every intention of exploiting you unmercifully to carry out my own plans, but at least while you're with me you're safe from Cousin Rademand and Hartman Torrock.”

How much did this man know? Jase looked within his mind and saw: everything.

“I was asleep until you took that second test,” said Doon.

“But when you got half right a question whose answer wasn't known to but a handful of physicists, who weren't too sure themselves— well, the Sleephouse people wakened me. They have their instructions. I wouldn't have missed you for the world.”

They went to an official highway, which Doon entered merely by palming the door, the way anyone else might board a worm. A private car was waiting. Jase was impressed, and willingly got inside.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“A question I've been trying to answer since adolescence. I finally decided I was neither God nor Satan. I was so disappointed I didn't try to narrow it down any further.”

Jase probed his mind. The man was an assistant minister of colonization. He also believed he ruled the world. And, upon further examination, Jase realized it was true. Even Radamand, for all his machinations, would have been awed at what Abner Doon controlled. Even Mother—not Jase's mother, but Mother, the ruler of Capitol—even she was his pawn. It was not the world he ruled. He could twitch, and half the universe would tremble. And yet he was almost utterly unknown. Jase looked him in the eyes and laughed.

Doon smiled back. “It's flattering that I've had as much power as I have, for as long as I've had it, and yet a good-hearted boy can look into my heart and still laugh.”

It was true. There were no murders in Doon's memory. Dwelling in his mind was not the agony that being Radamand had been. Doon did not live to shape the world to his convenience. He was shaping the world, but what he had in mind was not at all convenient.

“I've always wondered what it would be like to have a friend from whom I could keep no secrets,” said Doon. “Have you noticed yet your stupid blunder at the Colonies office? You proved you were a Swipe to the counter man. Now I have to put him under somec and wake him up with a old bubble, so he doesn't remember it. It's very unkind of you to clutter up other people's lives that way.”

“I'm sorry,” said Jase. But he also knew that this was Doon's way of telling him that his mistakes were being covered for. He felt better.

“Oh, by the way, speaking of somec, your mother wrote you a note before she went under.”

Jase saw in Doon's mind the memory of his mother handing over a paper, her face stained with tears, yet her lips smiling as Jase had not often see her smile. He clutched at the paper, read it despite the trembling of his hands.

“Abner Doon explained everything to me. About Radamand, and the school. I love you and forgive you and I think I won't be crazy anymore.”

It was her handwriting. Jase shuddered in relief.

“I thought you'd want to know that.”

Jase read the note again, and then they arrived. They went directly from the car into a short hall, and from the hall into a forest.

This was no park. The grass underfoot was real, the squirrels gamboling on the trunks of the trees were not mechanicals, even the smell was perfect, with not a hint of plastic in the air. The door closed behind them. Doon turned off the cuffs. Jason stepped away from him, looked up into a sky for the first time in his life. No ceiling. No roof at all. He was afraid he might fall. How could people stand to live without a roof overhead?

“Dazzling, isn't it?” asked Doon. “Of course, there is a ceiling—all of Capitol has a ceiling—but the illusion is well done, isn't it.”

Jase looked away from the sky and back to Doon.

“Why did you save me? What am I to you?”

“I thought Swipes didn't have to ask questions,” answered Doon. To Jase's surprise, he was undressing, shedding clothing as he led the way deeper into the woods. They came to the largest open body of water Jase had ever seen in his life, nearly fifty meters across. “Swim?” asked Doon. He was naked now, and he was
not
stout. The bulk had come from protective clothing. Doon poked the armor gently with his foot. “There are those who want me dead.”

Of course there were. Doon did not have Radamand's advantage of knowing other men's desires and secrets, to bribe and blackmail perfectly.

“My cousin Radamand will be one of them, as long as you keep me alive.”

Doon laughed. “Oh, Radamand. He's due for his next sleep in the next few weeks. He's a loathsome sort of man, and he's not that much use to me anymore. I doubt he'll ever wake up.”

Jase was horrified to realized that it was true. Abner Doon could cause the Sleephouse to kill a man. The one unshakable verity of life in Capitol was this: the Sleephouse could not be corrupted. And yet Abner Doon's influence reached even there.

“Swim?” asked Doon again, walking into the water.

“I don't know how.”

“Of course not. I'll teach you.”

Jase undressed and followed the man uncertainly into the water. He could see that Doon meant nothing but good toward him. Doon was a man that he could trust. So he followed Doon out until the water was almost to their necks. Doon and he were nearly the same height.

“Water is actually a very safe medium of locomotion,” Doon said. Jase only noticed that it was cold. “Now here, my hand is against your back. Lean back against my hand. Now let your legs just come loose from the ground, just relax. I can hold you.”

Suddenly Jase felt very light, and as he relaxed he felt his body bobbing lightly on the surface, only the gentle pressure of Doon's hand under him to remind him of gravity.

Then the world turned upside down, Abner Doon had a backbreaking hold on him, and Jase's face suddenly plunged under the water. He gulped, swallowed; his eyes stung; he desperately needed a breath, and dared not take it. He struggled to come up, but couldn't break the hold. He struggled, he twisted, he tried to strike with his hands and feet, but he did not come to the surface until Doon pulled him up. And in all that time, Doon had meant nothing but good for him. Doon had intended no harm.
If this is love
, thought Jase,
God help me—or is it that Doon is somehow able to lie to me, even in his own mind?

“Don't cough,” said Doon. “It splashes water everywhere.”

“What was that for?” demanded Jase.

“It was an object lesson. To show you what it feels like to be in something over your head.”

“I already knew how it felt.”

“Now you know even better.” And Doon calmly proceeded with the swimming lesson.

Jase caught on quickly, at least to something as simple as a backfloat. The pseudo-sun was setting, and the sky turned gently pink. Jase lay on his back in the water, stroking the surface just enough to keep moving, just enough to stay afloat. “I've never seen a sunset before.”

“Believe me, that isn't how sunsets look on Capitol. The sky of this planet is greasy and dank. Sunset topside is downright purple. Orange is noon. Blue sky is impossible.”

“What does this place imitate, then?”

“My home world,” said Doon. Jase caught his memories, and they were of the planet Garden. Indeed, this room was only an imitation of a tiny comer of the place. Jason could see Doon's longing for the rolling hills, the thick groves of trees, the open meadows.

“Why did you ever leave it?” asked Jase. “Why did you come
here
?”

Power is the only gift I have, thought Doon. Jason followed his thoughts. How to get power, how to use it, how to destroy it. A human being can only go where his gifts are useful. Capitol is the place where I must be. However much I hate it. However much I long to destroy it. Capitol is my dwelling place, at least for now.

Then, suddenly, Doon's thoughts changed. Jase heard him in the distance, getting out of the water. Jase tried to swim toward shore, but he was awkward and slow, and when he tried to stand the lake was too deep, and he only just recovered himself enough to return to the backstroke. Swimming—staying afloat, in fact took so much of Jase's concentration, especially now that he was afraid—that he could spare little of his attention to probe in Doon's mind. That was why he taught me. That was why he brought me here. To distract me so I wouldn't know what he had in mind. So I couldn't predict his every move. He fooled me, and now what does he have in mind, what trap has he set for me?