Capitol

by Orson Scott Card

  "When you make your move and everything, as you put it, breaks loose-- take me with you."

  "Do you mean it?"

  "There'll be no use for Mother in the universe you're making, Abner."

  "But there'll be room for Rachel Crove?"

  The name struck her like a hammer. No one had called her by her given name since-- since-- And she was a girl again, and a man who was her equal, or nearly so, lay naked beside her, and she reached over and put her arms around him, whispering, "Take me with you. Take me."

  He did.

  They lay in the grass as the sun set, and she felt more fulfilled than she had since a day on a cliff in Crove when she had begun her career of conquests. Only this time she had been conquered, and she knew it, and she was willing.

  "On every waking," she said, "you must tell me your plans. You must show me what you're building, and let me watch."

  "I will," he said. "But you can't make any suggestions."

  "I wouldn't dream of it. That would be cheating, wouldn't it?"

  "You aren't very good at sex," Doon said.

  "Neither are you," she answered, laughing. "Who gives a damn?"

  Mother did not come back until half an hour before her grand entrance at tke Mother's Waking Party, the highest high society event in Capitol. Nab was distraught.

  "Mother, Mother, what a worry you've caused us!"

  She only looked at him slantwise, and frowned. "I was in good company. Were you?"

  Nab glanced at Dent. "Only second rate, I'm afraid.

  Dent laughed nervously.

  Mother growled at him. "Can't you even get a little angry, boy? It's so damned boring when everybody tries to be nice. Well, the party's already underway, right? So what am I wearing this time?"

  They brought her the dress, and seven women wrapped her in it. She was startled that her nipples showed. "This is really the fashion?"

  Nab shook his head. "It's a bit more modest than most. But I thought that perhaps the image you need to present--"

  "Modest? Me?" She laughed and laughed. "Oh, this is the best waking in years. Best in years, Nab. You can stay on, but fire the boy. Find an assistant with more gumption. The boy's an ass. And send the chancellor to me."

  The chancellor came in, bowing and uttering apologies about the poor status of the reports this waking.

  "Everybody's trying to lie to me," she said. "Fire them all. Except, of course, for the minister of colonization. And his assistant. The two of them impressed me. Leave them in. And as for you, I don't want to have another lie in a report again. Understand? Or if you must lie, at least contrive to do it well. None of these could have fooled a five-year-old child."

  "I'll never lie to you, Mother."

  "I know perfectly well that I'm empress in name only, boy, so don't patronize me. You'd just better make sure that I don't get reminded of it by the sloppy work the cabinet does. Understand?"

  "I understand."

  "And that assistant minister of colonization. He was refreshing. I want him awake and ready to meet with me again next waking. And leave him in his job. Doubtless a sinecure, but he's sweet."

  The chancellor nodded.

  "Now give me your arm. To hell with the schedule. We're going down to the party."

  Nab watched her go.

  "Am I really fired?" Dent asked.

  "Yes, boy. I warned you. Act natural. Too bad. You showed some promise."

  "But what'll I do?"

  Alb shrugged. "They always have good jobs for the people Mother fires. You don't have to worry."

  "I want to kill her."

  "Why? She did you a favor. Now you won't have to watch her act important every waking. The bitch. Wish she'd sleep for ten years."

  Dent was surprised. "You really hate her, don't you?"

  "Hate her? I suppose so." And Nab turned away. "Get on out, Dent. If she sees you here again, she'll fire me, too."

  Dent left, and Nab went to the files and cursed the next poor fool who would make a stab at satisfying Mother. He had to have an assistant. An assistant's stupidity always made Nab look better.

  Do I hate her, Nab wondered.

  He couldn't decide. He only remembered watching her in the morning, as she lay nude on the bed. It wasn't hate he felt then.

  The party was long and boring, as all the others had been, but Mother knew the importance of being visible. She had to be seen at every waking, on a set day, or someone could make her disappear and no one would notice. So she circulated, and graciously met the young girls who were just getting to somec, and the fops and fags who hung about the court, and the old men and women who had first met her a few centuries ago when they were young.

  She was a reproach to them all. No matter how high a somec level they achieved, she was higher. No matter how many centuries passed before they got old, they would never live to see her get older. I will live forever, she reminded herself.

  But as she watched the people who actually believed this party was important, the thought of living forever made her very tired. "I'm tired," she said to the chancellor, and he immediately waved a signal to someone and the orchestra struck up some stirring music from aeons ago (this was old when I was a child, she thought) and the guests lined up and for an hour she bade good-bye to all of them and finally they were gone.

  "It's over," she sighed. "Thank heaven." And then she went upstairs to the room where workmen had obviously been knocking up the walls. Pretending to take the hololoop equipment out, she decided, and was amused that they thought she could be so easily fooled. That fellow Nab-- a sharp one. A total bastard, too. The best kind of person to deal with. He'd be around for quite a while.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and brushed her hair, not because it needed it but because she was in the mood for it. It felt good. She watched herself in the large mirror, and noticed proudly that she didn't yet sag. That she was still, though not young, desirable. I'm a match for Doon, she said to herself. I'm still a match for any Man, and more than a match for most. I've played their games and won them, and if I'm just a figurehead now, I'm a figurehead they have to be careful with. And Doon-- an ally. He was with her. She could trust him.

  Or could she?

  She lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, where a fresco had been painted, duplicating an ancient one that had long since fallen to pieces on earth. A nude man was reaching up to touch the finger of God. She knew it was God, because he was the most terrible creature on the ceiling, and that had to be God. I was that, she thought. I was the builder, I was touching fingers and bringing things to life. And now Doon is doing that. Can there be room for two of us?

  I'll make room, she decided. He'll never feel threatened by me. Because he might win, and that would be terrible, and it would be more terrible if I won, because I'm lazy and finished and he's just starting. Let us be allies, then, and I'll trust him and he'll trust me, and I can see something new in the universe. A creation that, perhaps, will be better than mine.

  "Was that what you hoped for?" she asked the bearded man on the ceiling. "Someone to top you? Or did you snick them all down to size whenever they got too big?" She remembered a story about people who built a tower to get to the stars. God stopped it, as she recalled. Well, we finally got to the stars anyway, but you had moved out by then, making space for us.

  I'll move out, making space for Doon. But he'd damn well better not forget me.

  * * *

  "The bitch is asleep, Crayn. Call the Sleeproom people."

  The new assistant, a nervous girl that would never last, Nab knew, called the Sleeproom people and they moved quickly but silently into the room, taping Mother's brain and then putting her under somec.

  When Mother was under, Nab came out into the room.

  "Give me the tape," he said, and they gave it to him because he always sealed it away in a special vault. And then they wheeled her out to put her in her coffin in a private sleeproom in a different part of Capitol from most others. With the ti
ghtest security.

  But Nab still held her mind in his hands. She had slept with Doon, he knew. What the shrimp had, he didn't know, but she had slept with him, had liked him a lot, had asked to see him next time. And he had her tape. There was nothing to stop him from accideittly destroying it, was there? And then she'd wake up not knowing anything about this waking. They'd have to use the old tape, the one they had used this time.

  It shouldn't be hard to erase, he thought, and he took the tape into the control room. "Go home, Crayn," he said. "I'll close up."

  "What a day," Crayn said as she left.

  The door closed, and Nab found the loop eraser. It would work just as well on a braintape. He would have done it, too, if a needle hadn't fired just then and killed him.

  Mother's Little Boys took the body out and disposed of it, and Mother's braintape was put into safekeeping by those who would never harm it. A close one. But how had Abner Doon known Nab would do that? The man was an octopus, a finger everywhere. But that was why Mother's Little Boys obeyed him. He was never wrong.

  * * *

  Mother had not been asleep when the braintapers came. But she lay their limply, accepting their ministrations.

  Today I met my successor and the first man I let make love to me besides Selvock. Today I fired most of the cabinet because they were fools and cheats. Today I stepped back into Crove the way it used to be when it was still beautiful.

  Today passed with more variety than yesterday, or three weeks ago, or eight months ago.

  Eight months ago. It was only eight months, only a thousand years ago that she had decided to go on somec at this level and live forever. She had noticed her first age wrinkle that day, and realized that she could, after all, get old. So she had decided to skim through time, only touching often enough to see if there was something worth living to experience.

  Today she had found it.

  And what, she wondered, will we do tomorrow?

  KILLING CHILDREN

  O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

  Frightful, sheer, no-man fathomed. Hold them cheap

  May who ne'er hung there.

  -- Gerard Manley Hopkins

  He heard the door click open but did not turn away from the tall pile of soft plastic blocks he was building. Instead he sought among the blocks scattered on the warm floor an orange block. Orange was definitely required, since it helped make no pattern whatsoever.

  "Link?" said an overfamiliar voice behind him, a strange familiar voice that, alone of all voices, could make him turn, startled. I killed her, he thought softly. She is dead.

  But he turned around slowly and there, indeed, was his mother, flesh as well as voice, the slender, oh-so-delicious looking body (not forty-five! couldn't be forty-five!) and the immaculate clothing and the terror in her eyes.

  "Link?" she asked.

  "Hello, Mother," he said stupidly, his voice deep and slow. I sound like a mental cripple, he realized. But he did not repeat the words. He merely smiled at her (the light making her hair seem like a halo, the fabric of her blouse clinging slightly to the undercurve of her breast, no, mustn't notice that, must think instead of motherhood and filial devotion. Why isn't she dead? Was that, please God, the dream, and this the reality? Or is this vision why I'm in this place?) and a tear or two dazzled in his eyes, making it hard for him to see, and in the dimness he supposed for a moment that she was not blond, but brown-haired; but she had always been blond--

  Seeing the tear and ignoring the continued madness in his dancing gaze, his mother held out her arms for a second, only a second, and then put her hands on her hips (note the way the point of her hips and the curve of her abdomen leave two slender depressions pointing downward, Link said to himself) and got an angry look, a hurt look on her face, and said, "What, don't I even get a hug from my boy?"

  The words were the incantation required to get Link from the floor to his full 190 centimeters of height. He walked to her, reaching out his long arms for her--

  "No--" she gurgled, pushing him away. "Don't-- just a little kiss. Just a kiss."

  She puckered for a childish kiss, and so he, too, puckered his lips and leaned down. At the last moment, however, she turned her head and he kissed her clumsily on the ear and hair.

  "Oh, how wet," she said in her disgusted voice. She reached into her hipbag and pulled out a tissue, wiped her ear, laughing softly, "Clumsy, clumsy boy, Link, you always have been..."

  Link stood in confusion. And, as so many times before, puzzled as to what to do next that would not earn a rebuke. He remained in that confusion, knowing that there was something that he ought to do, something that he must decide, but instead deciding nothing, only playing again and again the same loop of thought in the same childish mental voice in which he had always played it, "Mummy mad, mummy mad, mummy mad."

  She watched him, her lips forming a sort of half smile (note the natural gloss on the lips, she never painted, never had to, lips always just slightly moist, partly open, the tongue playing gentle love games with the teeth), unsure of what was happening.

  "Link?" she said. "Link, don't you have a smile for Mother?"

  And Link tried to remember how to smile. What did it feel like? There were muscles that must be pulled, and his face should feel tight--

  "No!" she screamed, stepping back from him and encountering the closed door. She apparently had expected it to be open-- as if this were not a mental hospital and patients were free to roam the corridors at will. She whirled and hammered on the door with her fists, shouting frantically, "Let me out of here!"

  They lot her out, the tall men with the pleasant smiles who also took Link to the bathroom five times a day because somehow he had forgotten to notice when he needed to. And as the door closed behind her, Link still stood, unable to decide what he should do, and wondering why his hands were stretched out in front of him, the hands set to grip something circular, something vertical and cylindrical, something, perhaps, the shape of a human throat.

  * * *

  In Doctor Hort's office, Mrs. Danol sat, poised and beautiful, distractingly so, and Hort wondered whether this was indeed the same woman who had wept in the attendants' arms only a few minutes before.

  "All I care about is my son," she said. "He was gone, vanished for seven terrible, terrible months, and all I know now is that I've found him again and I want him home. With me!"

  Hort sighed. "Mrs. Danol, Linkeree is criminally insane. This is a govemment facility, remember? He murdered a girl."

  "She probably deserved it."

  "She had supported him and cared for him for seven months, Mrs. Danol."

  "She probably seduced him."

  "They had a very active sex life, in which both were eager participants."

  Mrs. Danol looked horrified. "Did my son tell you that?"

  "No, the tenants downstairs told the police that."

  "Hearsay, then."

  "The government has a very limited budget on ths planet, Mrs. Danol. Most people live in apartments where privacy is strictly impossible."

  And Mrs. Danol shuddered, apparently in disgust at the plight of the poor wretches that huddled in the government compound in this benighted capital of this benighted colony.

  "I wish I could leave here," she said.

  "It would have been nice at one time," Hort answered. "Your son hates this world. Or, rather, more particularly, he hates what he has seen of this world."

  "Well, I can understand that. Those hideous wild people-- and the people in the city aren't much better."

  Hort was amused at her reverse democracy-- she esteemed all persons her infinite inferiors, and therefore equal to each other. "Nevertheless, now Linkeree must stay here and we must attempt a cure."

  "Oh, that's all I want for my boy. For him to be the sweet, loving child he used to be-- I can't believe he really killed her!"

  "There were seventeen witnesses to the strangling, two of them hospitalized when he turned on them after they pried
him away from the corpse. He definitely killed her."

  "But why," she said emotionally, her breasts heaving with passion in a way that amused Hort-- he had known many such closet exhibitionists in his time. "Why would he kill her?"

  "Because, Mrs. Danol, except for hair color and several years of age, she looked almost exactly like you."

  Mrs. Danol sat upright. "My God, Doctor, you're joking!"

  "Almost the only thing that Link has been consistent about since he arrived here is his firm belief that it was you that he killed."

  "This is hideous. This is repulsive."

  "Sometimes he weeps and says he's sorry, that he'll never do it again. Most of the time, however, he cackles rather gleefully about it, as if it were a game that he had, after many losses, finally won."

  "Is this what passes for psychology on this godforsaken planet?"

  "This is what passes for psychology on Capitol itself, Mrs. Danol. That is, you recall, where I got my degree. I assure you I have invented nothing." And dammit, he thought, why am I letting this woman put me on the defensive? "We thought that the fact of seeing you alive might have some effect on your son."

  "He did try to strangle me."

  "So you said. You also said you wanted him to come home with you. Is that really consistent?"

  "I want you to cure him and send him home. Since his father died, whom else have I had to love?"

  Yourself, Holt refrained from saying. My, but I'm getting judgmental.

  The buzzer sounded and, relieved at the interruption, Holt pressed the pad that freed the door. It was Gram, the head nurse. He looked upset.

  "It was time for Linkeree's toilet," he said, beginning, as usual, in the middle, "and he wasn't there. We've looked everywhere. He's not in the building."

  Mrs. Danol gasped. "Not in the building!"

  Holt said, "She's his mother," and Gram went on. "He climbed through the ceiling tiles and out the air conditioning system. We had no idea he was that strong."

  "Oh, what a fine hospital!"

  Holt was irritated. "Mrs. Danol, the quality of this hospital as a hospital is indisputably excellent. The quality of this hospital as a prison is woefully deficient. Take it up with the government." Defensive again, dammit. And the bitch is still throwing her chest at me. I'm beginning to understand Linkeree, I think. "Mrs. Danol, please wait here."