The Worthing Saga (49 page)

“Come in, Grandfather.”

“Not a chance, Doon. What kind of fool do you take me for?”

“A rather small one, actually,” Doon said, and Herman followed the young man's gaze to the two men standing behind him.

“Where did they come from?” Herman asked stupidly.

“They're my friends. They're coming to this party with us. I like to keep myself surrounded by friends.”

Herman followed Doon inside.

The setting was austere, functional, almost middle-class in its plainness. But the walls were lined with real wood—Herman recognized it at a glance—and the computer that overwhelmed the small front room was the most expensive, most self-contained model available.

“Grandfather,” Doon said, “contrary to what you think, I brought you here tonight because, for all that you've been a remarkably bad parent and grandparent, I feel some residual desire for you not to hate me.”

“You lose,” Herman replied. The two thugs grinned moronically at him.

“You haven't had much connection with the real world lately,” Doon commented.

“More than I wanted.”

“Instead you've devoted your life and your fortune to building up an empire on a shadow world that exists only in the computer.”

“My Lord, boy, you sound like a clergyman.”

“Mother wanted me to be a minister,” Doon said. “She was always pathetically hunting for her father—you, if you recall but this time a father who'd not desert her. Sadly, sadly, Grandfather, she finally found that surrogate parent in God.”

“At least I thought I'd bequeath a child of mine some good sense,” Herman said in disgust.

“You've bequeathed more than you know.”

The world of Europe 1914d appeared on the holo. Italy was pinkly dominant.

“It's beautiful,” Doon said, and Herman was surprised by the honest admiration in his voice.

“Nice of you to notice,” Herman replied.

“No one but you could have built it.”

“I know.”

“How long do you think it would take to destroy it?”

Herman laughed. “Don't you know your history, boy? Rome was falling from the end of the republic on, and it took fifteen hundred years for the last remnant to fall. England's power was fading from the seventeenth century on, but nobody noticed be cause it kept gathering real estate. It stayed independent for an other four hundred years. Empires don't fall easily, boy.”

“What would you say about an empire falling in a week?”

“That it wasn't a well-built empire, then.”

“What about yours, Grandfather?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“How well have you built?”

Herman glared at Doon. “No one has ever built better.”

“Napoleon?”

“His empire didn't outlive him.”

“And yours will outlive you?”

“Even a total incompetent could keep it intact.”

Doon laughed. “But we're not talking about a total incompetent, Grandfather. We're talking about your own grandson, who has everything you ever had, only more of it.”

Herman stood up. “This meeting is pointless. I have no family. I lost custody of my daughter because I didn't want her. I don't know, and I certainly don't want her offspring. I'll be under somec in a few months, and when I wake up I'll take Italy, whatever damage you've done to it, and build it back.”

Doon laughed. “But Herman. Once a country has ceased to exist, it can't be brought back into the game. When I'm through with Italy, it'll be a computer-standard country, and you won't be able to buy it.”

“Look, boy,” Herman said coldly, “do you plan to keep me here against my will?”

“You're the one who asked for a meeting.”

“I regret it.”

“Seven days, Grandfather, and Italy will be gone.”

“Inconceivable.”

“I actually plan to do it in four days, but something might go wrong.”

“Of all criminals, the worst are those who see beauty only as an opportunity for destruction.”

“Goodbye, Grandfather.”

But at the door, Herman turned to Doon and pleaded, “Why are you doing this? Why don't you stop?”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Can't you wait until next time? Can't you let me have Italy for this waking?”

Doon only smiled. “Grandfather, I know how you play. If you had Italy this waking, you'd take over the world, wouldn't you? And then the game would end.”

“Of course.”

“That's why I have to destroy Italy now—while I still can.”

“Why Italy? Why not go ruin somebody else's empire?”

“Because, Grandfather, it's no challenge to destroy the weak.”

Herman left, and the door slid shut behind him. He went back to the tube, and it took him to his home station. At home, the holo of the globe was still dominated by pink. Herman stopped and looked at it, and even as he watched, a large section of Siberia changed colors. He no longer raged at Doon's incompetence. The boy was obviously compensating for a miserably religious childhood, which he blamed on his grandfather. But no amount of talent the boy might have could possibly dismember Italy. The computer was too rigidly realistic. Once the computer-simulated populace of Italy realized what Doon's character, the dictator, was doing, the unchanging laws of interaction between government and governed would oust him. He would be compelled to sell, and Herman could buy. And rebuild all the damage.

England rebelled again, and Herman went to bed.

But he woke gasping, and remembered that in his dream he had been crying. Why? But even as he tried to remember, the dream slipped from his mind's grasp, and he could only remember that it had something to do with his former wife.

He went to the computer and cleared it of the game. Bimiss Humbol. The computer summoned her picture to the screen, and Herman looked as she went through a sequence of facial expressions. She was beautiful then, and the computer awakened memories.

A courtship that had been oddly chaste—perhaps religion was already in Birniss's blood, only to surface fully in her daughter. Their wedding night had been their first intercourse, and Herman laughed at how it had been—Bimiss, worldly and wise, so strangely timid as she confessed her unpreparedness to her husband. And Herman, tender and careful, leading her through the mysteries. And at the end, her asking him, “Is that all?”

“It'll be better later,” he had said, more than a little hurt.

“It wasn't half as bad as I expected,” she answered. “Do it again.”

They had done everything together. Everything, that is, but the game. And it was a crucial time for Italy. He began going to bed later and later, talking to her less, and even then talking of nothing but Italy and the affairs of his small but beautiful world.

There was no other man when she divorced him, and to satisfy a whim of curiosity he looked up her name in the vital statistics bank. He wasn't surprised when the computer told him that she had never remarried, though she hadn't kept his name.

Had there been something remarkable about their marriage, so that she'd never marry again? Or was it simply that she had only trusted one man, and then found that marriage wasn't what shed wanted—or sex, either, by extension. Her hurt had poisoned their daughter; her hurt had poisoned Doon. Poor boy, Herman thought. The sins of the fathers. But the divorce, however regrettable, had been inevitable. To save the marriage, Herman would have had to sacrifice the game. And never in history, real or feigned, had there been such a thing of beauty as his Italy. Dissertations had been written on it, and he knew that he was acclaimed by the students of alternate histories as the greatest genius ever to have played. “A match for Napoleon, Julius, or Augustus.” He remembered that one, and likewise the statement of one professor who had pleaded for an interview until Herman's vanity no longer allowed him to resist: “Herman Nuber, not even America, not even England, not even Byzantium compared to your Italy for stability, for grace, for power.” High praise, coming from a man who had specialized in real European history, with the chauvinism of the historian for the era he studied.

Doon. Abner Doon. And when the lad had proven himself no match for his grandfather's gifts as a builder, what would happen to him?

Herman found himself, as he dozed at the computer, daydreaming of a reconciliation of some kind. Abner Doon embracing him and saying, Grandfather, you built too well. You built for all time. Forgive my presumption.

Even Herman's dreams, he realized as he awoke, even my dreams require the surrender of everyone around me. Bimiss's image was still on the screen. He erased her, and began to scan Italy.

The entire empire was being swept by revolution from one end to the other. Even in the homeland on the Italic Peninsula. Herman stared in disbelief. It had only been overnight, and suddenly all the revolutions had come at once.

It was unprecedented in history. How could the computer have been so mad? It had to be a malfunction. Many empires had faced rebellion, but never, never so general—never universal revolution. Even the army was in mutiny. And the enemies of Italy were madly plunging over the borders to take advantage of the situation.

“Grey!” Herman shouted over the phone. “Grey, do you know what he's doing?”

“How can I help it?” Grey asked nastily. “All the games-players on my staff have been chattering about it all morning.”

“How did he do it?”

“Look, Herman, you're the games expert. I don't even play, all right? And I've got work to do. Did you meet with him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He's my grandson.”

“I wondered if he'd tell you.”

“You knew?”

“Of course,” Grey answered. “And I had his psychological profile. Do you think I would have let you meet him alone if I hadn't been sure he had no intention of harming you?”

“Not harming me? What about those walking turds he had beat me to a pudding last week?”

“Retaliation, Herman, that's all. He's a good retaliator.”

“You're fired!” Herman shouted, slamming the button on the console that disconnected the conversation. And he watched grimly, hour after hour, as, the loyal fragments of Italy's army attempted to cope with the mutiny and revolution and invasion all at once. It was impossible, and by late afternoon, the only pink areas on the globe were in Gaul, Iberia, Italy itself, and a small pocket in Poland.

The computer reported that Doon's persona, the dictator of Italy, had vanished, and would-be assassins couldn't put him to death. And as Rome itself fell to an invading army from Nigeria and America, he knew that now defeat and destruction were inevitable. Impossible yesterday, inevitable today.

Still he fought his despair, and sent an urgent message to Grey, forgetting that he had fired him that morning. Grey responded as deferently as ever.

“Offer to buy Italy,” Herman said.

“Now? The thing's in ruins.”

“I might pull it out. I still might. Surely he's proved his point by now.”

“I'll try,” Grey said.

But by late evening, there was no pink on the board. The other players and the computer's ironclad adherence to the laws of public behavior had left the game no chance of Italy's rebirth. The information appeared on the status lists. “Iran: newly independent; Italy: discontinued; Japan: at war with China and India over the domination of Siberia...” No special notice. Nothing. Italy: discontinued.

Grimly Herman played back all the information he could find in the computer. How had Doon done it? It was impossible. But for hours he pored over the information the computer gave him, Herman began to see the endless machinations that Doon had set in motion, always postponing revolution here, advancing it there, antagonizing here, soothing there, so that when the full revolution erupted it was universal; so that when Italy's defeat was obvious, there was no lingering desire to have some fragment of it remain. He had gauged the hatred better than the computer itself; he had destroyed more thoroughly than any man had ever built. And in his bitterness at the wrecking his creation, Herman still had to recognize a kind of majesty in what Doon had done. But it was a satanic majesty, a regal power to destroy—

“A mighty hunter before the Lord,” said Doon, and Herman whirled to see Doon standing in his living room.

“How did you get in here?” Herman stammered.

“I have connections,” Doon said, smiling. “I knew you'd never let me in, and I had to see you.”

“You've seen me,” Herman said, and turned away.

“It went faster than I thought it would,” Doon said.

“Glad to know something could surprise you.”

Doon might have said more, but at that point Herman's self-control, overstrained that day, broke down. He didn't weep, but he did grip the console of the computer far too tightly, as if afraid that when he let go the centrifugal force of Capitol's rotation would throw him into space.

Grey and two doctors came at Doon's anonymous call, and the doctors pried Herman's fingers away from the console and led him to bed. A sedative and some instructions to Grey, and they left again. It was only mild—too much in one day, that's all. He'd feel much better when he woke up.

Herman felt much better when he woke up. He had slept dreamlessly—the sedatives did their work well. The false sunlight streamed through his expensive artificial window, which seemed to open on the countryside outside Florence, though of course in reality nothing but another flat much like his own was on the other side of that wall. Herman looked at the sunlight and wondered if the illusion was good. He had been born on Capitol—he had no idea whether sunlight really streamed into windows that way.

Under the dazzling light, Abner Doon sat on a chair, asleep. Seeing him brought a flood of feelings back to Herman—but he retained his control, and the vestiges of the drugs made him oddly calm about things, after all. He watched his grandson's sleeping face and wondered how so much hatred could be hidden there.

Doon awoke. He looked immediately at his grandfather, saw that he was awake, and smiled gently. But he said nothing. Just stood and carried his chair closer to Herman's bed. Herman watched him silently, and wondered what was going to happen. But the drug kept saying, “I don't care what happens,” and Herman didn't care what was going to happen.