Then snow pelted down, and its very touch froze the flowers, for they turned instantly gray and stiff. Soon the two figures were plowing through ankle-deep drifts.
A poncho appeared, settling around Amber's shoulders, but there was none for the me-figure. Instead the wind tore at him so persistently that his clothing tore away, exposing him further to the elements. He would soon freeze to death.
Amber removed her poncho and set it on the me-figure, trying to protect him from the deadly chill. But the poncho dissipated into mist as she did so, and was gone. Another poncho formed around her. She tried to give this also to the me-figure, but again it misted out, re-forming about her. The message was plain enough: only she could be warm.
The snow quickly became knee-deep, and the wind cut through cruelly. The me-figure faltered, his motions slowing; he was literally freezing to death. He tottered and fell face forward into the snow.
Amber got down and tried to lift him up, but her strength was inadequate. She turned him over, brushing the snow from his face. His features were frozen; he did not respond to her ministrations. He was preserved as an icy statue.
Amber bent to kiss his frozen lips, but still there was no response. She tried once more to wrap the poncho around him but, once more, to no avail. He was gone.
Then she gazed up at the snowy sky, and her face was wet with tears, not with snow. "Why are you doing this?" she cried in English, the language she was locked into.
For an instant the scene froze, not in the cold sense but in the still sense. I knew what was happening: Hopie had never before heard Amber speak in that language and was so astonished that she was forgetting to animate the scene.
Then she recovered. Her own figure appeared in the scene. "You're talking English!" she exclaimed. "How can you do that?"
"This isn't the real world," Amber reminded her. Then, realizing: "You are doing this?"
"Yes. I'm in the adjacent helmet. They interact."
"But—why are you killing your father?"
"Because he means to abuse you," Hopie said grimly.
"Oh, no, no!" Amber cried. "He is a great and gentle man, and he would never hurt me!"
"Amber, don't you understand? He wants to have sex with you."
"Yes. And I with him. I love him."
Hopie was flustered. "But you—you're a child! It isn't right! He's abusing his position, his power over you!"
"Oh, Hopie, please understand! I have no life without him! I love him utterly! All I want is to be with him completely."
"To be... one of his women?" Hopie asked disdainfully.
"Oh, yes!"
"But you know he can't love you! He doesn't love anybody, really! He only uses women! They love him, but it's one-sided. How can you even consider letting yourself be—"
"He loves each one a little," Amber said. "None of them as much as Helse or Megan or you. But enough."
Hopie paused, shaken anew. "You really mean it, don't you? You want to be one of his mistresses! You don't care what it means!"
"He only touches those he really respects or cares about. I thought there was no chance for me, and when I found there was—oh, Hopie, don't deny me this, my only real pleasure in existence! You know I have no life of my own! You're his daughter; you have everything, but I have nothing!"
"I'm his daughter," Hopie repeated. "His illegitimate offspring. You call that everything?"
"He only ever loved one woman enough to have a child by her. What could be more precious to him than that child?"
Hopie considered. Then, slowly, her militancy crumbled. She began to cry.
Amber went over to her. "Oh, Hopie, don't be sad. You have been so good to me, I don't want to make you unhappy!"
Hopie reached out to embrace her. The two girls clutched each other, both crying, while the snow melted away and the flowers returned.
"Show me how it is with you," Hopie said at last.
Amber was perplexed. "How it is?"
"We're connected now. How do you feel about my father? Just let your feeling go, and I will read it."
Amber let her feeling go. It expanded to fill the scene—not a picture, not a sound, but sheer, inchoate, encompassing emotion, such total longing, need, desire, passion, and love that it swept aside all considerations of age, sex, propriety, legality, status, and doubt. Her body might be marginally adult, but her feeling was the essence of womanly abandon.
I, the object of it all, found myself awed. This emotion—it vaporized anything childish or playful or innocent. This was the very depth of reality. To be loved so utterly—could I possibly be worthy?
A brief eternity later it ebbed, for it had been only a glimpse. A peek into Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory combined, into Nirvana and Nothingness. Amber's entire brain was misorganized, without the normal feedbacks and governors. Her love was absolute.
"I never understood," Hopie breathed.
Neither had I, I realized.
"You never felt the lack," Amber responded.
The scene dissolved.
"Missive from Thorley," Shelia informed me, handing me the letter. Thorley, of course, clung quaintly to the printed page, despite its inefficiency, because he identified literally with the press. It is a bias I appreciate, for when I wish to express myself with unstressed candor, this is the medium I choose. The written word. Its magic supersedes technology.
At my leisure I broke the archaic wax seal on the envelope and read:
My Dear Tyrant:
I feel it incumbent upon me to advise you of a private interview I had most recently with your adopted daughter, Hopie Hubris. She came to me with what I assumed was to be a concern relating to her post as Minister of Education, but which turned out to be of another nature.
She advised me that you had required her to inform me of a private peccadillo: your passion for a rather young woman in your charge, by name Amber. It seems that Amber was given to you by Chairman Khukov two years past and serves as a kind of translator, being conversant in her fashion with a number of tongues. Now it is your intent to make of this young woman a mistress, she being amenable.
Obviously it is not my prerogative to pass judgment on your private affairs, nor is it my desire to do so. The secret passions of any man, I suspect, would embarrass him were they made public. As this particular one appears to relate in no way to your performance in office, I see no need to expose this girl to the kind of notoriety that would develop if the matter were to become public. In sum, sir, I will keep your secret. I am sure you would do the same for me.
However, there is a related matter that I found necessary to impart to your daughter. After completing her mission, which, it seems, was not entirely to her liking, she unburdened herself to the point of inquiring rhetorically why she had had to be the one to perform this office.
"Because, my dear young woman," I said to her, assuming that familiarity that our labors on the organization of education facilitated, "the Tyrant, knowing that news of this nature could not be entirely concealed from those with a keen nose for the nuance of human fallibility, wished to advise me in a fashion which could not be doubted that the object of his amorous intention was not yourself. Had other been the case, it would indeed have been necessary to expose—"
Here I had to abate my explanation, for she was staring at me with such chagrin that I realized that further discussion was pointless. She departed forthwith. May I say, sir, that if I have caused your daughter unwarranted distress, I am deeply disturbed. Certainly I bear her no malice and consider her to be a fine young woman with an attractive penchant for literary expression. It may be that I spoke carelessly in this instance. As it is too late to mitigate such damage as I may have done, I am taking the liberty of informing you of the situation. I leave the remainder in your hands.
Your Most Humble & Obedient Servant
Thorley
There are levels, and levels, to Thorley that are seldom properly appreciated. In the guise of his consciously affected style he had info
rmed me of what I most needed to know and had done a portion of my dirty work for me. Now Hopie understood why it had been necessary for Thorley to know from Hopie's own lips the truth about my passion for Amber. Indeed, Hopie's statement, and her reaction, could not be doubted. There are things that even a Tyrant does not do.
There may be those who suppose Thorley to be my enemy. How little they know!
Chapter 10 — COMPANY MAN
There had been a number of rallying points of opposition to the Tyrancy, and these intensified as our reforms were implemented. The common man, it seemed, did not really want reform—not when it inconvenienced him. Already editorials were lamenting the good old days of President Tocsin, "the last legitimate leader" of North Jupiter. There was a climate of rebellion that was coming to permeate every level of the society.
I had never realized how unpopular I could get, but I had no doubt of it now. I knew I would be lynched if I walked openly down any hall of any major city-bubble of this section of the planet. Perhaps if I had acted to control the press, it would have been better, but I refused to do that. So the editorials lambasted me continually, and the people followed, convincing themselves that they were worse off than they had been, despite the manifest fairness of the reforms the Tyrancy had made.
But I was riding the tiger. I could not simply step down; to do so would be to throw the society into chaos and to wipe out the groundwork we were laying for the new society. No revolution is painless, and the Tyrancy was a revolution: a revolution of reform. Once the benefits began to manifest themselves, the common attitude would change. We knew that, and it was what kept us going. But now we were in the darkest siege of the long tunnel, seeming to make very little progress.
The day I received Thorley's missive, the bubble shook with the force of a nearby detonation. It rocked us all. In moments we learned the cause: A missile had been launched at the bubble, one with a black-hole shield similar to that of a sub but smaller. That protected it from most observation, but if it had collided with the bubble, it would have caused a deadly implosion. The Navy had intercepted it, but this one had come uncomfortably close. An investigation would be made to ascertain the source and why it hadn't been intercepted long before becoming an actual threat to the bubble; someone's head would roll.
"But we just can't be secure from this type of threat," Spirit informed me seriously. "You are too much of a target, Hope, and the threats come too thickly, from too many directions. Some of the ones we have stopped without fanfare have been frightening: poisoned food, flawed oxygen supply, hypnotic devices—anything. It isn't enough to put away the perpetrators; more keep developing. Sooner or later we're apt to be overwhelmed."
"What's our best course, then?" I asked.
"I think it's time to remove the main target. You are the Tyrant; the people are convinced that if they can just get rid of you, all their problems will abate. It isn't true, of course, but it's hard to argue effectively against that sort of ignorance."
Remove the main target. "So it's time for me to go into hiding," I said, hardly surprised.
"At least until the furor subsides," she agreed. "Once the policies start taking proper hold and things improve—"
"I feel as if I'm running out," I complained. "The budget is further out of balance than ever, and that's my—"
"You won't be running out. You will just be going to work on a more specific aspect. Our biggest present problem is industry: we nationalized companies in key industries, but when we used them as our Employers of Last Resort, they became not more efficient but less efficient. We are taking enormous losses on those companies, and that isn't going to change until we can make them efficient—with the last-resort employees."
"Get me some really good managers, and we'll get them efficient," I said.
"The best managers fled to private enterprise," she reminded me. "Unless we want to get coercive, we'll have to develop our own from scratch—and that takes time. Which is where you come in now."
"I don't know how to manage a company!" I protested.
"You'll learn. Reba set it up. For over a year a man answering your general description has been shifting from job to job and company to company, showing proficiency but moving on when he was unable to get promotions fast enough to suit him. He blew the whistle on one inefficient practice and was eased out of a bubble company."
"But we protect whistle-blowers!"
"We try to protect whistle-blowers," she said. "The company found another pretext to suppress him, so nothing could be proved. That is often the way of it. So he has a reputation for erratic brilliance, but he can't get along with management."
"Put him in as management," I said. "See what he's made of."
"Exactly," she agreed. "You will enter our Jupiter Bubble Company as a trainee manager, slated to run the company after you master the details of its operation. You should be able to make something of it—and then to make something of the other Jupiter companies. That will turn the tide on the economy and the budget."
"Just like that!" I exclaimed wryly.
"As you said, get some good managers...."
The front offices of the Jupiter Bubble Company were palatial, but I saw them only briefly. I was introduced as Jose Garcia, an ambitious Hispanic who was smart enough but not patient enough, now granted the position of prospective Manager of Jupiter Bubble, provided I could master the business. It was very like a patronage plum, because the Tyrant was known to favor whistle-blowers and Hispanics, and the prior management of the company was not particularly pleased. However, the Tyrant had spoken, so they had to tolerate me, hoping I would foul up badly enough to be displaced before I assumed the actual power.
Not the most delightful situation, but it was evident that despite my similarity to the form and age of the Tyrant himself, no one even thought of connecting me with him. Minor spot surgery had been done on my face to change its configuration, so that I simply didn't look like the Tyrant despite being fairly close. My throat had also been treated, so that my voice had a different timbre and was not recognizable as that of the Tyrant.
Amber was with me, also subtly modified. Her hair had been changed in color, length, and styling, and her nose and mouth as well. In fact, she now resembled my lost love Helse remarkably closely. Was that coincidence or Spirit's teasing design or my imagination? Did it matter? She remained Amber to me, and her revised appearance did not bother me, and it did protect her from possible recognition. She was now to be called Amena, close enough to be familiar, far enough to eliminate the possible connection. She was my underage girlfriend: before the Tyrancy, relations with her would have been considered statutory rape, but now they were legitimate because she was nubile and consenting. My prior association with her, in the mock identity, had been the reason given for my disfavor; though the association was legal, it remained socially awkward, and a company was not required to promote those who were in such poor favor with their peers that a managerial position would be unlikely to work.
We were rapidly shunted to the most basic aspect of company business: prospecting. I was supposed to gain experience from the bottom up, and this was taken literally. I found myself with Amber (I have no need to call her Amena here, so am not bothering) in a mini-scoutship. It had facilities for two, for a month at a time: food, water, air, energy, sleep, entertainment. Now, this might sound like fun, but in fact, it was not considered so.
For one thing, the prospect-ship was cramped. There were no passages; there were crawlways. No separate kitchen or bathroom: one tiny chamber served both capacities. It was assumed that since the ship had to be under acceleration for the kitch/head facilities to work properly, one person would be piloting while the other did the job here. Thus the merging of plumbing made sense—to an executive who didn't have to use it. Food prepared here was, in the vernacular, termed fart-fare. Mark one item to be corrected when I had power.
"It facilitates the processing of garbage," I explained wryly to Amber. "You can put it in on
e end and out the other without having to move."
She smiled, because this was evidently meant to be funny, but she didn't really understand. She was not, and would never be, a "clever" type of woman. She was just glad to be alone with me at last. I hoped she would not find the next month excruciatingly tiresome.
The operation of the ship was simple enough for any duffer. I would have had no problem regardless, because of my time in the Navy, but this facilitated things for Amber. She was able to use a joystick to guide it in any direction, a lever to control acceleration. The screen showed a panoramic view of what was outside, with an inset and cross hairs for specific detail. Anything more complicated she could safely leave to me.
Our mission was to locate suitable bubbles for exploitation. We were in the bubble-band of Jupiter, the nether region of the atmosphere where a combination of density, temperature, and turbulence caused substances to be dredged from the hellish interior and precipitated out before settling down. I am no chemist, so this may be somewhat garbled, but my understanding is that among those exotic substances are carbon, silicon, aluminum, tungsten, and tantalum, and that some of the precipitates are natural crystals of exceeding hardness. Not as hard as diamond but harder than sapphire. It is said that the bubbles are formed of carborundum, but I believe it is more complicated than that, with an admixture of boron. At any rate, that material is just about the toughest stuff extant in nature. It isn't economical to form it in such quantities in the laboratory, considering the high pressure required and the rarity of the trace elements at our level of the atmosphere. Nature does it best, so we harvest it wild.
Of course, nature doesn't form many perfect hollow spheres of enormous size. The bubbles were seeded centuries ago and allowed to grow. Again I am hazy on the technical detail and can only say that an enormous number of very small molds were sent out—hardly larger than molecules—crafted in such fashion as to attract deposits of crystallized bubblene (that is, the boron, carborundum, or whatever mix) but with a very special quality. The deposits become unstable beyond a certain size, so that they tend to shed their inner layers even as their outer ones are forming. One might picture a tree, rotting from the center as it puts on growth outside, only more disciplined. Thus the spheres do become hollow and become proportionately thinner-shelled as they grow larger. The result is the bubbles, ranging from pea-sized to city-sized.
Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 4 - Executive Page 23
