The Worthing Saga (16 page)

Hop had been wakened only two days before, when word reached the Sleephouse that his client was arriving. And they brought him a folded, sealed note. A memory slip, which the Sleephouse people kept on hand for the paranoid—people who thought of something after their memories were bubbled and before the drug and couldn't stand the thought of losing the idea. Hop had never used one before, thought they were foolish But there it was, in his handwriting, a note that said, “Someone trying to kill Jazz. Wam.”

Hop couldn't figure it out, and neither could Jason. How could he find it out just before going under? Did someone in the Sleephouse tell him? Absurd—they had no contact with the outside world, the monks and nuns of the god of sleep. What could they tell him? And no one else had access. Hop decided, therefore, that it must be that just before he slept he put together something that he had already known, combined facts so that he realized some plot on Jason's life. For the past two days he had been trying desperately to think of something he noticed on his last waking that might have been a clue. He had come up with nothing, and now Jazz was here, and he knew no more than the note he had written to himself.

Jazz knew something that Hop didn't know. He knew a man who could walk into the, Sleephouse and tell something to someone whose bubble was finished, something that had to be written down. The warning came from Doon.

It was two hours before Hop could get away from the loopers. long enough to tell Jazz about the note. By then Jason had already found a dozen people in the crowds around him who were in on one or another conspiracy to kill him. One was even armed. It was easy to evade him, and the others had cleverer plans than to pellet him in the presence of three hundred loopers.

“Don't worry,” Jason said. “It's probably nothing.”

“I hope you're right. But I don't write myself notes too often. It must mean something.”

“How do
you
know how smart you are between bubbling and the somec? Nobody remembers.”

“I'm always very smart.”

It was the beginning of a hectic few days. Jazz couldn't go to his rooms at all—there was almost always someone waiting inside to kill him, and Jazz found out about several plots to lay traps for him. Finally, things came to a head at a party held by a former lifeloop star, Arran Handully, who had given up public fornication in favor of a life of ostentatious gentility. She was deep in one of the more dangerous plots to kill Jazz. For once, sitting against a wall with no one attempting to talk to him, Jazz had a chance to study the question of why all these murder plots were coming at once. He decided to do a little searching in depth. The mind of Arran Handully was convenient.

Jazz had to die—it was one of the foremost imperatives in her mind. But why? Here was where the surprise came: Jazz's death was the beginning of a coup. Not that Jazz had any political power, of course. Just that he symbolized all that Arran hated about Capitol, about the society that had driven the only man she had ever loved to suicide many years before. It was a charming and tragic story, the death of her lover, and Jazz found himself exploring her mind for the sheer pleasure of it, carelessly ignoring the dozen other threats at the party. While he studied her, she came up to him.

“Commander Worthing,” she said.

“Call me Jazz,” he said, using the charming smile that played so well on the loops. Of course, there were a few dozen clandestine loopers taking it all in, and Jazz knew enough to please his public, even when the loop was being taken illegally.

“And I'm Arran. You are something of an unexpected guest, Jazz. We didn't know you'd be in Capitol until yesterday It was kind of you to come.”

“The pleasure,” said Jazz, “is mine. I have only seen one of your lifeloops, but it was enough to entrance me.”

“Oh, which one is that?”

“I forget the name,” Jazz said—he never knew it— “but it was one you did with an old actor named—named—ah yes, Hamilton Ferlock.”

She felt stricken, but showed nothing. Ham Ferlock was the lover who had killed himself when she refused to break character on a twenty-one-day straight-through loop. It was cruel of Jazz to bring him up—but then, she was planning to kill him.

When? Why not now? A servant came with a single goblet of wine.

“No matter what we might plan,” said Arran sweetly, “you are the guest of honor at any party you attend. I give you the cup of the night.” She held a silver cup in her hand, and she held it toward his lips, for him to drink. The servant maneuvered closer, so he could take the goblet from the tray and put it to Arran's lips. Jason took the goblet, but refused the cup.

“How can I take such an honor at your hands?” he asked.

“I insist,” she said. “No one deserves it more.”

“What a remarkable woman you are, Arran. Such courage— to dare to poison me at your own party.”

If he had been more watchful, he could have avoided this moment. But now the plots were coming together at once. More than a few of the guests at the party were armed; every exit was watched. The only person here who knew the secret ways out of the room was Arran herself, and they were all keyed to her palm. So he selected the most melodramatic of the would-be assassins, a young clothing designer who had created Arran's costume for the evening. Jazz stepped toward him. He was the murderer of choice, because he meant to be theatrical about it.

“Flitz Kapock,” the young man said, to introduce himself. “How dare you accuse Arran Handully of such a foul crime?”

“Because it's true,” said Jazz.

“Apologize, Jazz, and let's get the hell out of here,” said Hop quietly.

“Rapiers or pellets?” asked Kapock. Oh, he meant to do it according to the rules, didn't he? Jazz laughed at him and accepted the duel with rapiers.

One thing led to another. Jazz didn't kill the young man, mainly because Mother's Little Boys arrived while the duel was in progress. No one had called them—Doon had sent them himself. So Abner is somehow responsible for all this sudden interest in my death. If only I were sure that Doon knows what he's doing.

Mother's Little Boys created enough havoc that he escaped, with Arran's unwilling help. Jazz had only one objective—to find Doon and point out to him that Jazz's love for him did not extend to a willingness to die for him. Along the way he shed Hop and Arran, figuring they'd be safer away from him, and Hop knew well enough how to take care of himself. And at last he was face to face with Doon, beside the lake in his private garden.

“Very well done, to get away,” said Doon. “Some of their plots were quite thorough. You were almost in danger several times.”

Jason fingered the cut Kapock had given him on his arm. “What are you doing, Doon?”

“Oh, just isolating and bringing out the best people of Capitol.
You
can get inside their heads and find out who they are. I have to work out little tests like this.”

“Next time just ask me.”

“I look for things even you wouldn't be able to find.”

“It shouldn't be too hard. Your test for the best people is whoever wants me dead.”

“What do you expect? You're the foremost symbol of a detestable empire.”

“I am what you made me. We're all what you made us.”

Doon was genuinely hurt. “Surely you don't think I'm God, do you? I'm just one element in your environment, that's all.”

“In theirs, maybe. In mine you're more.”

“Because you love me so deeply?” asked Doon, mocking.

“Because the most important events in my life happened to you. The only woman who
mattered
to me was your little piece of unrequited love. All my best triumphs were your triumphs, all my strongest dreams were yours.”

“Not true.”

“Of course it's true! Your memories are more present in my mind than my own!”

“And why is that?” asked Doon.

“Because you cared so much. You have such a strong sense of purpose, even when you don't even know what it is you're trying to accomplish—all your memories
mattered
to the person who went through the experience.”

“And
your
own past? Is that nothing? Battles, struggles, fear, conflict.”

“What conflict? What fear? Except for one long moment with a little beast in your garden, Doon, I have never been afraid. A bit tense, to see how the game would go, but the outcome was never in doubt. In battle I could always hear the other fellow's plans as he thought of them, in conversation I always know the other person's hidden thoughts, I've never had to wonder or guess.”

“Your life is such a
bore.
Poor Jason.”

“There are times when I wake up thinking that I'm you. I look around the inside of the ship and I think, why am I here? I look in the mirror and I'm surprised to see this face. This face is from the loops. This face is Jazz Worthing, but I remember very clearly, I am Abner Doon, I am the one who won the confidence of Mother herself and told her when it might be a good time to die.”

As he spoke, Jason looked in Doon's mind to see if indeed the time was up. Abner had wakened the Empress herself, had met with her, revealed himself to her many years ago. “I will wreck your empire,” he told her. “I thought it only fair to let you know—” She took it calmly, perhaps even happily, and gave her consent, on one condition—that he tell her when he was about to do it, so she could be awake to watch. Now Jason looked to see if he meant to tell her soon. To see if Doon was planning to end the Empire now.

“Of course not,” said Doon. “I have too much to accomplish before that. Give me at least another hundred years.”

What did he have to accomplish? He had been sending out colony ships for centuries now. But these that he was sending now, they were the ones that held his hope.

“Mankind is my experiment,” said Jason. “Cut the threads that bind the stars together, and each world will spin on its own for a while. Perhaps thousands of years, until someone comes up with a stardrive that needs no sleep, and then we'll see what mankind has become in a thousand different cultures.”

“That's
my
speech,” said Doon.

“That's all right,” Jason said. “You've been playing puppet with us all. My voice, your words.”

“Are you angry?”

“Why me? Why am I singled out for the joy of being one of your twelve oddities?”

“I don't know.”

“I know you don't know. I know what you know, and I know what you don't know. I even know what you don't know that you don't know. I can find things in your head that you've forgotten ever knowing. You have been planning this for me for the fifty years that I've been gone, and you don't even know what you expect from it!”

“I'm sending you farther than I'm sending anyone else. I'm keeping no record that your ship was ever sent. Officially, all the traitors and conspirators going with you were executed. No one will look for you, not until they find the message that will be released a few thousand years from now. Your little world will have longer to develop than any other.”

“What do you expect, evolution in a few thousand years?”

“Not evolution, breeding.”

In Doon's mind, Jason saw himself as Doon saw him. With the eyes pure unflecked blue. Like his father's eyes, and his father's eyes...

“The stud—for a world of Swipes, is that it?”

“
Sire
is the more delicate word.”

“I wasn't raised on a farm.”

“You and your family are an anomaly. Your gifts are far more reliable, far more extensive than any known strain of telepathy. Why not see what happens to it in isolation?”

“Then why didn't you isolate me? Why give me a colony full of people who have spent their last few wakings plotting to kill me?”

Doon smiled. “It appealed to my sense of proportion. It would be too easy for you to run a normal colony. It would hardly be enough to keep you awake all day.”

“It's kind of you to keep me so alert.”

Doon took Jason by the hair at the back of his neck and drew him down, drew him close, and face to face he said, “Surpass me, Jason. Do more than I have done.”

“Is this a contest?. Then why not start even? Three hundred and thirty-three colonists against one ship's captain—I don't like the odds.”

“With you,” said Doon; “no one is even.”

“I don't want to go.”

“Jason, you have no choice.”

Jason saw that it was true. Doon had already given out more than enough proof that Jason was a Swipe. He would be arrested the moment he left Doon's personal protection; if he tried to escape, where would he hide, when everyone on Capitol knew his face?

“The puppet,” Jason said, “wishes to be free.”

“You
are
free. Stay and die, go and live—you have your choice.”

“What choice is that!”

“What do you expect, an infinite selection? To have a choice at all is to be free—even when the choice is between two terrible things. Which is most terrible, Jason? Which do you hate the most? Then choose the other and be glad.”

So Jason chose to go; Doon had his way again.

“It's not so bad,” Doon said. “Once you've gone, you won't have me manipulating things anymore.”

“The only star on the journey through the night,” said Jason. “It will comfort me as my colonists sharpen their knives in the darkness.” Yet it was no comfort. To be without Doon, that was what frightened Jason most. Doon was the foundation for his life, for good or ill; ever since Doon had found him, Jason had known that nothing could go too wrong in his life—Doon was watching.

Now when he stumbled, who would lift him up? This was freedom after all, Jason realized, because from now on no one would save him from the consequences of his own acts. It wasn't freedom that I yearned for, was it? It was childhood that I wanted, and Doon is barring me from my refuge; he has been my father all these years, and now he's thrusting me away. “I'll never forgive you for this,” Jason said.

“That's all right,” Doon said. “I never expected to be loved.” Then he smiled oddly, and Jason knew he was not as cheerful as he pretended. “But I love
you
,” Doon said.

“I'm so much like you that to love me is purest narcissism.” Jason was not trying to be kind.