The Worthing Saga (41 page)

“Because you're rich, in other words,” Bergen said.

“Because I'm rich!” Locken answered angrily.

“Then, if you don't mind, I'll wait to go on somec until I qualify by
my
merit, and not by my father's.”

Selly laughed. “If I waited until I qualified on my own, I'd
never
get on somec!”

Bergen looked at her with loathing. “And if there were any justice in the world, you never would.”

It surprised Bergen, but neither his mother nor his father said anything at all. It was Dal who spoke to him, later that night, as the two of them sat together putting finishing touches on art pieces—Dal a miniature in oils; Bergen, a massive, almost mural-sized portrait of the houses on the estate as he thought they ought to be, with the house much smaller and the barns large enough to be of some use. And his whip trees were beautiful.

Weeks later, Bergen slipped off and paid the examination fee and tested high enough in basic, intelligence, creativity, and ambition that he was given the right to go on somec for three years and off for five years. He would be a sleeper. And he did it without money.

“Congratulations, son,” his father said, more than a little proud at his son's independence.

“I notice you've scheduled it so you wake up two years before us. Time to play around, I imagine,” Selly said, looking and sounding more bitter than ever.

Dal said only one thing when he heard Bergen was going on somec. “Free me first.”

Bergen looked startled.

“You promised,” Dal reminded him.

“But I'm not of age. I can't for a year.”

“And do you think your father will? Or that your mother would let him? My contract lets them forbid me to paint, or lets them own anything I produce. They could make me clean the stables. They could make me cut trees with my bare hands. And you won't be back for three years.”

Bergen was genuinely distressed. “What can I do?”

Persuade your father to give me my freedom. Or stay awake until you come of age and can give me my freedom yourself.

“I can't forfeit the somec. You have to use it when you get it. They only have so many openings a year.”

“Then persuade your father.”

It took a month of constant badgering before Locken Bishop finally agreed to release Dal from his contract. And the contract had a stipulation. “Seventy-five percent of your income above room and board comes to us for five years or until you have paid us eighty thousand.”

“Father,” Bergen protested, “that's gouging. I would have freed him eleven months from now. And eighty thousand is ten times what you paid for his contract in the first place—and you didn't pay it to him.”

“I've also fed him for twenty years.”

“And he worked for it.”

“Worked?” Selly interrupted. “He just played. With you.”

Dal spoke, softly enough that they quieted down to hear him. “If I give you that, I won't be able to get enough money to take the somec merit examination.”

Locken set his jaw. “That makes no difference. It's that or you stay under contract.”

Bergen put his face in his hands. Selly smiled. And Dal nodded. “But I want it in writing.”

The words were soft, but the effect was electric. Locken rose to his feet, towering over Dal, who was seated. “What did you say, boy? Were you saying you expected a Bishop to make a written contract with a bastard contract worker?”

“I want it in writing,” Dal said softly, meeting Locken's fury. with equanimity.

“You have my spoken word, and that's enough.”

“And who are the witnesses? Your son, who'll be asleep for three years, and your wife, who can't be trusted alone with a fifteen-year-old servant boy.”

Selly gasped. Locken turned red, but stepped back from Dal And Bergen was horrified. “What?” he asked.

“I want it in writing,” Dal said.

“I want you out of this house,” Locken answered, but his voice had a new emotion in it—hurt and betrayal. Of course, Bergen thought: if Dal really meant that, and Mother certainly isn't denying it, of course Father is hurt.

But Dal looked up at Locken with a smile and said, “Did you think that territory where you trod would always belong to you?”

Now Bergen refused to understand. “What does he mean, Father? What is Dal saying?”

“Nothing,” Locken insisted, too quickly.

Dal refused to be stopped. “Your father,” he said to Bergen, “plays the strangest games with live-year-old boys. I always urged him to invite you to join in, but he never would.”

The uproar didn't die down for an hour. Locken kept uselessly pounding his left fist against his thigh, as Selly gleefully attacked him to take the opprobrium for her own dalliances from her shoulders. Only Bergen could honestly grieve. “All those years, Dal. This was happening all those years?”

“To you I was a friend, Bergen,” Dal said, forgetting to say
sir
, “but to them I was a servant.”

“You never told me.”

“What could you have done?”

And when Dal left at the end of the hour, he had the agreement in writing.

When Bergen woke from his first time under somec, he learned from a kindly man in the Sleeproom that his father had died only a few days after Bergen had left home, and his mother had been murdered by a lover two years later. The largest estate on Crove, besides the emperor's, was now Bergen's.

“I don't want it.”

“Along with it, you should know,” said the kindly man, “comes a five years under and one year up somec privilege.”

“I'd only have to live one year in every six?”

“It's the Empires way of expressing the value of certain large forces in the economy.”

“But I want to paint.”

“Paint then. But unless you want to visit your parents' graves, the managers of your businesses are doing a remarkably good job, according to the government auditors, and you can go back under to complete your two years of entitlement.”

“I have someone I want to see first.”

“As you wish. We can put you back under any time within the next three days. After that, you have to complete your year up, and you will have lost two years of sleep.”

Bergen spent the first two days trying to find Dal Vouls. He finally succeeded when he remembered that Dal would still be bound by the contract with his father—the executors of the estate were able to locate him because he was sending in occasional draughts to complete the seventy-five—percent clause.

Dal opened the door and his face lit up with immediate recognition. “Bergen,” he said. “Come in. It's been three years, then, hasn't it?”

“I guess so. Dal, it feels like yesterday to me. It was yesterday. How have you been doing?”

Dal pointed to the walls of the flat. Forty or fifty paintings and drawings hung there. For twenty minutes there was little conversation except “This; I like this” and “How did you manage that?” And then Bergen, thoroughly awed, sat on the floor (there was no furniture) and they talked.

“How is it going?”

“Sales are fairly slow. I don't have a name yet. But people do buy. And the best of it is, the emperor has decreed that all government offices are to be moved to Crove. Even the name of the planet is changing. To Capitol. It seems that if all goes well, every damn planet's going to orbit politically around Crove. And that means customers. It means people who know art instead of the military and commercial bastards who've had a stranglehold on money on this planet since time began.”

“You've learned how to talk in long sentences since I last saw you;”

“I've felt freer.”

“I brought you a present.” Bergen handed him the release from the contract.

Dal read it, laughed, read it again, and then wept.

“Bergen,” he said, “you don't know. You don't know how hard it's been.”

“I can guess.”

“I haven't been able to take the examination. Heaven knows, I've hardly been able to live. But now—”

“More than that,” Bergen said. “The examination costs three thousand. I brought it.” He handed the money to his friend.

Dal held the money for a few seconds, then handed it back. “Your father is dead, then.”

“Yes,” Bergen said.

“I'm sorry. It must have been a shock to you.”

“You didn't know?”

“I don't read papers. I don't have a radio. And my draughts were never returned.”

“Contracts are contracts, the executors figured. Trust my father not to free his contract servants in his will.”

They chuckled wryly in memory of the man, whom Dal had last seen three years ago, whom Bergen had last seen yesterday.

“Your mother?”

“The bitch died in heat,” Bergen answered, and this time there was emotion. Dal touched his hand. “I'm sorry.” And it was Bergen's turn to weep.

“Thank God, you're my friend,” Bergen said at last.

“And you mine,” Dal answered.

And then the door opened and a woman walked in carrying a child that couldn't have been a year old. She was startled to see Bergen there. “Company,” she said. “Hello. I'm Anda.”

“I'm Bergen,” Bergen said.

“My friend Bergen,” Dal introduced them. “My wife Anda. My son Bergen.”

Anda smiled. “He told me you were bright and beautiful, and so our son had to be named after you. He was right.”

“You're too kind.”

The conversation was good after that, but it was not what Bergen had expected. There couldn't be the banter, the in-jokes, the delightful gutter talk, the insults that Bergen and Dal had known for years, not with Anda there. And so they parted with friendship in the air—but a hollow feeling in Bergen's stomach. Dal had refused his gift of the examination fee, and accepted only his freedom; He would share that freedom with Anda.

Bergen went back to the Sleeproom and used the rest of his new entitlement.

•    •    •

When he awoke the next time, things had changed. With Crove now called Capitol, there was an incredible building boom. And Bergen's companies were deeply involved.

The building was haphazard, and Bergen began to realize that it wasn't enough just to throw buildings into the air. Capitol would be the center of trade and government for hundreds of planets. Billions of people. He could conceive of it eventually becoming one vast city. And so he began to plan accordingly.

He set his architects to planning a structure that would cover a hundred square miles and house fifty million people, heavy industry, light industry, transportation, distribution, and communication. The roof of the building had to be strong enough not only to handle the takeoffs and landings of landing craft, but also to cope with the weight of the huge starships themselves. It would take years to design—he gave them the obvious deadline of his next waking after five years of sleep.

And then he spent the rest of the year lobbying with the bureaucrats to get his plan, already taking shape, adopted as the master plan for the planet. Every city designed the same way, so that as the population boomed, the cities could link up floor to floor and pipe to pipe and form a continuous, unbroken city with a space port for a roof and its roots deep in the bedrock. When his time was up, he had won—and the contracts almost all went to Bergen Bishop's companies.

He did not forget Dal, however. He found him by his paintings, which were now gaining some note. It was difficult to talk, however.

“Bergen. The rumors are flying.”

“Good to see you, Dal.”

“They say you're stripping the planet right down to the bedrock and putting steel on top.”

“Here and there.”

“They say it's all supposed to interlock.”

Bergen shrugged it off. “There'll be huge parks. Huge tracts of land untouched.”

“Until the population needs it. Right? Always that reservation.”

Bergen was hurt. “I came to talk about your painting.”

“Here then,” Dal said. “Have a look.” And he handed Bergen a painting of a steel monster that was settling like pus onto the countryside—

“This is repulsive,” Bergen said.

“It's your city. I took it from the architect's renderings.”

“My city isn't this ugly.”

“I know. It's an artist's job to make beauty more beautiful and ugliness uglier.”

“The Empire has to have a capital somewhere.”

“Does there have to be an empire?”

“What's made you so bitter?” Bergen asked, genuinely concerned. “People have been tearing up planets for years. What's getting to you?”

“Nothing's getting to me.”

“Where's Anda? Where's your son?”

“Who knows? Who cares?” Dal walked to a painting of a sunset and shoved his fist through it.

“Dal!” Bergen shouted. “Don't do that!”

“I made it. I can destroy it.”

“Why did she leave?”

“I failed the merit test. She had an offer of marriage from a guy who could take her on somec. She accepted.”

“How could you fail the merit test?”

“They can't measure my paintings. And when you're twenty six years old, the requirements are higher. Much, much higher.”

“Twenty-six—but we're only—”

“
You're
only twenty-one. I'm twenty-six and aging fast.” Dal walked to the door and opened it. “Get out of here, Bergen. I'm dying fast. Ina couple of your years I'll be an old man who isn't worth a damn, so don't bother looking me up anymore. Get on out there and wreck the planet while there's still a profit in it.”

Bergen left, hurt and unable to understand why Dal should suddenly hate him. If Dal had only taken the money Bergen offered two years before, he could have taken the test when he could still have passed it. It was his own fault, not Bergen's. And blaming Bergen for it wasn't fair.

For three wakings, Bergen didn't look Dal up. The memory of Dal's bitterness was too harsh, too hurtful. Instead Bergen concentrated on building his cities. Half a million men were working on them, a dozen cities arising simultaneously on the plain. There was plenty of land left undisturbed, but the cities rose so high that the winds were broken and the whip trees died. How could anyone have known that the seeds had to fall to the earth from no more than a meter off the ground, and that without wind strong enough to bend the trees all the way to the ground, the seeds would fall too far and break and die? In fifty years the last of the whip trees would be gone. And it was too late to do anything about it. Bergen grieved for the whip trees. He was sorry. The cities were already filling up with people. The starships were already coming in to land at the only space port in the galaxy large enough and strong enough to hold them. There was no going back.