The Worthing Saga (44 page)

“Batta,” a voice said softly, and Batta awoke, naked and sweating on a table in a strange place. But the face and the voice were not strange.

“Ab,” she said.

“It's been five years,” he said. “Your parents both passed away. From natural causes. They weren't unhappy. You made the fight choice.”

She was conscious of being naked, and the eternal virgin in her made her flush with embarrassment. But he touched her (and the memory of the night they first almost made love was still fresh—it had been only a few hours ago—and she was already aroused, already ready) and she was no longer embarrassed.

They went to his apartment, and made love gloriously, and they were blissfully happy for days until she finally admitted what was gnawing at the back of her mind.

“Ab. Ab, I have dreams about them.”

“Who?”

“Mother and Father. You've told me it's been years and I know that. But it still feels like yesterday to me, and I feel terrible for having left them alone.”

“You'll get over it.”

But she did not get over it. She began to think of them more and more, guilt gnawing at her, tearing at her dreams, stabbing like a knife when she made love with Abner Doon, destroying her as she did all the things that she had wished, since she was a child, she could do.

“Oh, Ab,” she wept one night—only six nights since waking. “Ab, I'll do anything, anything to undo this!”

He stopped moving, just froze. “Do you mean that?”

“No, no, Abner, you know I love you. I've loved you ever since we met, all my life, even before I knew you existed I loved you, don't you know that? But I hate myself! I feel like a coward, like a traitor for having left my family. They needed me. I know it, and I know they were miserable when I left them.”

“They were perfectly happy. They never noticed you were gone.”

“That's a lie.”

“Batta, please forget them.”

“I can't. Why couldn't I have done the right thing?”

“And what was that?” He looked afraid. Why is he afraid?

“To stay with them. They only lived a few years. If I'd stayed with them, if I'd helped them through the last few years, then Ab, I could face myself. Even if they were miserable years, I'd feel like a decent person.”

“Then feel like a decent person. Because you did stay with them.”

And he explained it to her. Everything.

She lay silently on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Then this is a fraud, isn't it? Secretly, truly, I'm a miserable bitch of an old maid who rotted away in her parents' house until they had the courtesy to die, a woman without the guts to commit suicide.”

“Absurd.”

“Who was only saved from her fate by a man who contrived to play God.”

“Batta, you have the best of both worlds. You
did
stay with your parents. You
did
the right thing. But you can go on with your life now without having the memories of what they did to you, without having to become what you became.”

“And was I so horrible?”

He thought of lying to her, but decided against it. “Batta, when I saw you in that room in the colonization office, I nearly cried. You looked dead.”

She reached over and stroked his cheek, his shoulder. “You saved me from the penalty of my own mistake.”

“If you want to look at it that way.”

“But there's a contradiction here. Let's be logical. Let's call the woman who decided to stay with her parents Batta A. Batta A actually stayed and went crazy, like you said, and
she
chose to go off to the colonies and keep her madness to herself.”

“But it didn't happen that way.”

“No, listen,” Batta insisted, quietly, intensely, and he listened. “Batta B, however, decided not to go back to her parents. She stayed with Abner Doon and tried to be happy, but her conscience wore at her and drove her mad.”

“But it didn't happen that way.”

“No, Ab, you don't. You don't understand. Understand at all.” Her voice cracked. “This woman lying on the bed beside you—this is Batta B. This is the woman who turned away from her parents and didn't fulfill her commitment.”

“Dammit, Batta, listen to reason.”

“I have no memory of helping them. They suddenly—end. I walked out on them.”

“No you didn't!”

“In my own mind I did, Ab, and that's where I have to live! You tell me I helped them but I can't remember it and so it isn't true! That choice—that was the choice that the real Batta made, staying with them. And so the real Batta was shaped by that experience. The real Batta suffered through those years, even if they were awful.”

“Batta, they were worse than awful! They destroyed you!”

“But it was me they destroyed!
Me!
The Batta who chooses to do what she believes she ought to!”

“What is this, the old-time religion? You have a chance to be spared the consequences of your own suicidal sense of right and wrong! You have a chance to be
happy,
dammit! What difference does it make which Batta is which? I love you, and you love me, lady, and
that's
the truth, too!”

“But Ab, how can I be anything but what I am?”

“Listen. You agreed. Instantly. You agreed to let me erase those years, to wake you up and have you live with me as if that agony had never happened. It was voluntary!”

She didn't answer. Only asked, “Did they tape me when they put me under somec? Did they record the way I really am?”

“Yes,” he said, knowing what was coming.

“Then put me under again and wake me up with that tape. Send me to a colony.”

He stared at her. He got up from the bed and stared at her incredulously and laughed. “Do you realize what you're saying? You're saying, please take me out of heaven, God, and send me to hell.”

“I know it,” she said, and she began trembling.

“You're insane. This is insane, Batta. Do you know what I've risked, what I've gone through to bring you here? I've broken every law concerning the use of somec that there is!”

“You rule the world, don't you?”

Was she sneering?

“I pull all the strings, but if I make a mistake I could fall anytime. I've deliberately made mistakes for you.”

“And so I owe you something. But what about me? Don't I owe me?”

He was exasperated. He hit the wall with his hand. “Of course you do! You owe yourself a life with a man who loves you more than he loves his life's work! You owe yourself a chance to be pampered, to be coddled, to be cared for—”

“I owe me myself.” And she trembled more and more. “Ab. I haven't. I haven't been happy.”

Silence.

“Ab, please believe me, because this is the hardest thing I've had to say. Since the moment I woke up, something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. I had made the wrong choice. I hadn't gone back to my patents. I have felt wrong. Everything has been colored by that. It's wrong.
I wouldn't choose to live with you, and so everything about it is wrong!
” She spoke softly, but her voice was intense.

“I would not be here,” she said.

“You are here.”

“I can't live a lie. I can't live with the contradiction. I must live my own life, bitter or not. Every moment I stay here is pain. It couldn't be worse. Nothing I suffered in my real life could be worse than the agony of living falsely. I must have the memory of having done what I knew was right. Without that memory, I can't keep my sanity. I've been feeling it slip away. Ab—”

And he held her closely, felt her tremble in his arms. “Whatever you want,” he whispered. “I didn't know. I thought the somec could—make things over.”

“It can't stop me from being who I—”

“Who you are, I know that, I know it now. But. Batta, don't you realize—if I use that other tape, you won't remember this, you won't remember these days we had together.”

And she began to sob. And he thought of something else.

“You'll—the last thing you'll remember is my having told you I could erase all the pain. And you saying yes, yes, do it, erase it—and then you'll wake up with those memories and you'll think that I lied.”

She shook her head.

“No,” he said. “That's what you'll believe. You'll hate me for having promised you happiness and then not giving it to you. You won't remember this.”

“I can't help it,” she said, and they held each other and wept together and comforted each other and made love one last time and then he took her to the tape-and-tap where the past was washed away and a crueler life would be restored to her.

“What, is she a criminal?” asked the attendant as Abner Doon substituted the tapes—for only criminals had their minds wiped and an old tape used to erase all memory of the crime—

“Yes,” said Doon, to keep things simple. And so her body was enclosed in the coffin that would satisfy her few needs as her body slowed down to a crawl through the years until he awakened her.

She would awaken on a colony. But one of my choosing, Abner vowed. A kind one, where she might have a chance of making something of her life. And who knows? Maybe hating me will make it all easier for her to bear.

Easier for her. But what about me?

I will not, he decided, spend any more of myself on her. I will close her from my mind. I will—I will forget?

Nonsense.

I will merely devote my life to fulfilling other, older, colder dreams.

Arran lay on her bed, weeping. The sound of the door slamming still rang through her flat. Finally she rolled over, looked at the ceiling, wiped tears away delicately with her fingers, and then said, “What the hell.”

Dramatic pause. And then, at last (at long last) a loud buzzer sounded. “All clear, Arran,” said the voice from the concealed speaker, and Arran groaned, swung around to sit on the bed, unstrapped the loop recorder from her naked leg, and threw it tiredly against the wall. It smashed.

“Do you have any idea how much that equipment
costs
?” Triuff asked, reproachfully.

“I pay you to know,” Arran said, putting on a robe. Triuif found the tie and handed it to her. As Arran threaded it through the loops, Triuff exulted. “The best ever. A hundred billion Arran Handully fans are aching to pay their seven chops to get in to watch. And you gave it to them.”

“Seventeen days,” Arran said, glaring at the other woman. “Seventeen stinking days. And three of them with that bastard Courtney.”

“He's
paid
to be a bastard. It's his persona.”

“He's pretty damned convincing. If you get me even three minutes with him, next time, I'll sack you.”

Arran strode out of her flat, barefoot and clad only in the robe. Triuff followed, her high-heeled shoes making a clicking rhythm that, to Arran anyway, always seemed to be saying, “Money, money, money.” Except when it was saying, “Screw your mother, screw your mother.” Good manager. Billions in the bank.

“Arran,” Triuff said. “I know you're very tired.”

“Ha,” Arran said.

“But while you were recording I had time to do a little business—”

“While I was recording you had time to manufacture a planet!” Arran snarled. “Seventeen days! I'm an actress, I'm not going for the guiness. I'm the highest paid actress in history, I think you said in your latest press releases. So why do I work my tail off for seventeen days when I'm only awake for twenty-one? Four lousy days of peace, and then the marathon.”

“A little business,” Triuff went on, unperturbed. “A little business that will let you retire.”

“Retire?” And I without thinking, Arran slowed down her pace.

“Retire. Imagine—awake for three weeks, and only guest appearances in other poor slobs' loops. Getting paid for having fun.”

“Nights to myself?”

“We'll turn off the recorder.”

Arran scowled. Triuff amended: “You can even take the thing off!”

“And what do I have to do to earn so much? Have an affair with a gorilla?”

“It's been done,” Triuff said, “and it's beneath you. No, this time we give them total reality. Total!”

“What do we give them now? Sure, you want me to crap in a glass toilet!”

“I've made arrangements,” Triuif said, “to have a loop recorder in the Sleeproom.”

Arran Handully gasped and stared at her manager. “In the Sleeproom! Is nothing sacred!” And then Arran laughed. “You must have spent a fortune! An absolute fortune!”

“Actually, only one bribe was necessary.”

“Who'd you bribe, Mother?”

“Very close. Better, in fact, since Mother hasn't got the power to pick her nose without the consent of the Cabinet. It's Farl Baak.”

“Baak! And here I thought he was a decent man.”

“It wasn't a bribe. At least, not for money.”

Arran squinted at Triuff. “Triuff,” she said, “I told you that I was willing to act out twenty-four-hour-a-day love affairs. But I choose my own lovers off-camera.”

“You'll be able to retire.”

“I'm not a whore!”

“And he said he wouldn't even sleep with you, if you didn't want. He just asked for twenty-four hours with you two wakings from now. To talk. To become friends.”

Arran leaned against the wall of the corridor. “It'll really make that much money?”

“You forget, Arran. All your fans are in love with you. But no one has ever done what you're going to do. From a half hour before waking to a half hour after you've been put to sleep.”

“Before waking and after the somec.” Arran smiled. “There's nobody in the Empire who's seen that, except the Sleeproom attendants.”

“And we can advertise utter reality. No illusion: you'll see
everything
that happens to Arran Handully for three weeks of waking!”

Arran thoughtfully considered for a moment. “It'll be hell,” she said.

“You can retire afterward,” Triuif reminded her.

“All right,” Arran agreed. “I'll do it. But I warn you. No Courtneys. No bores. And no little boys.”

Triuff looked hurt. “Arran—the little boy was five loops ago!”

“I remember every moment of it,” Arran said. “He came without an instruction booklet. What the hell do I do with a seven-year-old-boy?”

“And it was your best acting up to then. Arran, I can't help it—I have to spring surprises on you. That's when you're at your best—dealing with difficulty. That's why you're an artist. That's why you're a legend.”