Linkeree didn't know how to respond. If he denied he was the child's spirit or successor or something, would they kill him? Or, if he admitted that he was, would they finish their sacrifice by killing him? Either choice might and his life, and he was not feeling suicidal this morning.
And then, as he stared into the child's dead face, remembering that last night the infant had been alive, had responded to his touch, he realized that there was more truth than they realized to their belief. Yes, he was the infant, chewed and cut and eaten and cast away to be buried in a hundred tiny graves. Yes, he was dead. And he nodded in acceptance, nodded in agreement.
The Vaqs all nodded too and one by one they came to him and kissed him. He was unsure of whether the kiss was a prelude to leaving or to killing; but then they each kissed the child's head that he held in his hands in front of him, and as he saw their lips tenderly rest on the infant forehead or cheeks or mouth he was overcome by self-pity and grief; he wept.
And, seeing his tears, the Vaqs grew afraid, babbled quietly among themselves, and then disappeared silently into the tall grass, leaving Linkeree alone with the child's relics.
Dr. Hort went to see Mrs. Danol as soon as he woke up in the morning. She was sitting in one of the empty private rooms, her hands folded in her lap. He knocked. She looked up, saw him through the window, nodded, and he came in.
“Good morning,” he said to her.
“Is it?” she answered. “My son is dead by now, Dr. Hort.”
“Perhaps not. He wouldn't be the first to survive a night in the grass, Mrs. Danol.”
She only shook her head.
“I'm sorry about last night's fracas,” he said. “I was tired.”
“You were also too damn right,” she answered. “I woke up at four this morning, sedative or no sedative; I thought and thought about it. I'm poison. I've poisoned my son just by being his mother. I wish I could be out there on the plain in his place, dying for him.”
“And what the hell good would that do?”
She only cried in answer. He waited. The sobbing let up only a few moments later. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I've been crying off and on all morning.” Then she looked at Hort, pleading in her eyes, and said, “Help me.”
He smiled—kindly, not triumphantly—and said, “I'll try. Why don't you just tell me what you've been thinking about?”
She laughed bitterly. “That's a rat's nest we hardly need to go into. I spent most of the time thinking about my husband.”
“Whom you don't like.”
“Whom I loathe. He married me because I wouldn't sleep with him otherwise. He slept with me until I got pregnant; then he moved on. When Linkeree turned out to be a boy, he was delighted, and changed his will to leave everything to the boy. Nothing to me. And then, after he had slept with every girl on this planet and half the boys, he was run over by a tractor and gave a little cheer.”
“He, was well thought of on the planet.”
“People always think well of money.”
“They often think well of beauty, too.”
And at that she cried again. Through her sobs, in a twisted, little-girl voice, she said, “All I ever wanted was to go to Capitol— To go to Capitol and meet all the famous people and be on somec so that I could live forever and be beautiful forever. Its all I had, being beautiful—I had no money, no education, and no talent for anything, not even motherhood. Do you know what it means to have only one thing that makes other people love you?”
No, Hort thought to himself, but I can see what a tragedy it is.
“You were your son's guardian. You could have taken him to Capitol.”
“No, I couldn't. It's the law, Hort. Planet money must be invested on the planet until it achieves full provincial status. It protects us from exploitation.” She spat on the word. “No somec allowed until we're a province. No chance to have life!”
“There are some of us who don't want to sleep for years on end, just to stay young a few years longer,” Dr. Hort said.
“Then you're the insane ones,” she retorted, and he almost agreed. Eternal life didn't appeal to him. Sleeping through life seemed like a disgusting waste of time. But he knew the draw, knew that most people who came to the colonies were desperate or stupid, that the gifted ones or the rich ones or the hopeful ones stayed where somec was within reach.
“Not only that,” she said, “my damnable husband entailed the entire fortune, everything. Not a penny could be taken from Pampas.”
“Oh.”
“So I stayed, hoping that when my son grew up we could find some way, go anyway—”
“If your son hadn't been born, the money would all have been left to you, unentailed, and you could have sold it to an off-worlder and gone.”
She nodded, and began to weep again.
“No wonder you hated your son.”
“Chains. Chains, holding me here, stripping away my only asset as the years made hash of my face and my figure.”
“You're still beautiful.”
“I'm forty-live years old. It's too late. Even if I left for Capitol today, they won't let someone over forty-one go on somec at all. It's the law.”
“I know. So—”
“So stay here and make the best of it? Thanks, Doctor, thanks. I might as well have a priest as you.”
She turned away from him, and muttered, “And now the boy dies. Now, when it's too late. Why the bloody hell couldn't he have died a year ago?”
Linkeree patted the last of the earth over the grave he had dug for the head and skin of the child. The tears had long since dried; now the only liquid on him was sweat from the exertion in the hot sun of digging through the heavy roots of the grass. No wonder the Vaqs had dug shallowly to hide the bones. It was already afternoon, and he had only just finished.
But as he had worked, he had forced himself back, coldly reassembling his memories in his mind, burying them one by one in the child's grave. It was not Mother I killed in the street, it was Zad. Mother is still alive; she visited me yesterday. That was why I lied the hospital; that was why I wanted to die. Because if ever there was a person who deserved to live, it was Zad. And if ever one deserved to die, it was Mother.
Several times he felt himself longing to curl up and hide, to retreat into the cool shade under the standing grass, to deny that any of this had ever happened, to deny that he had ever turned five at all. But he fought off the feeling, insisted on the facts, the whole history of his life, and then hid it under the dirt.
You, child, he thought. I am you. I came out here last night to die in the grassland, to be eaten alive, to have my blood sucked out. And it happened; and the Vaqs ate my flesh and now I'm buried.
I who bury you, child, I am the you who might have been. I am without a past; I have only a future. I will start from here, without a mother, without blood on my hands, rejected by my own tribe and unacceptable to strangers. I will live among the strangers anyway, and live unencumbered. I will be you, and therefore I will be free.
He brushed the dirt off his hands, ignored the painful sunburn on his back, and stood. Around him the sucker eggs on the grass blades were already hatching, and the newborn suckers were devotedly eating each other so that only the few thousand strongest would survive, fed by the others. Link avoided obvious comparisons, merely turned and headed back toward the government compound.
He avoided the gate, instead climbing the fence and enduring the electricity that coursed through him when he gripped the top wire. And then, as the alarms went off, he walked back to the hospital.
Dr. Hort was alone in his office, eating a late lunch, from a tray that Gram had brought him. Someone tapped at his door. He opened it, and Linkeree walked in.
Hort was surprised, but out of long professional habit, he didn't show it. Instead, he dispassionately watched as Linkeree walked to the chair, sat down comfortably, and leaned back with a sigh.
“Welcome back,” Hort said.
“Hope I didn't cause any inconven
ience,” Linkeree answered.
“How was your night in the grass?”
Linkeree looked down at his scratches and scabs. “Painful. But therapeutic.”
Silence for a moment. Hort took another bite of his sandwich.
“Dr. Hort, right now I'm in control. I know that my mother's alive. I know that I killed Zad. I also know that I was insane when I did it. But I understand and accept those things.”
Hort nodded.
“I believe, Doctor, that I am, sane right now. I believe that I am viewing the world as accurately as most people, and can't function in a capable manner. Except.”
“Except?”
“Except that I'm Linkeree Danol, and as soon as it is known that I am capable of running things, I will be forced to take control of a very large fortune and a huge business that employs, in the long run, most of the people on Pampas. I will have to live in a certain house in this city. And in that house will be my mother.”
“Ah.”
“I don't believe my sanity would last fifteen minutes, Doctor, if I had to live with her again.”
“She's changed somewhat,” Dr. Hort said. “I understand her a little now.”
“I have understood her completely for years, and she'll never change, Dr. Hort. More important, though, is the fact that I'll never change when I'm around her.”
Hort sucked in a deep breath, leaned back in his chair. “What happened to you out on the desert?”
Linkeree smiled wanly. “I died and buried myself. I can't return to that life. And if it means staying here in this institution all my life, pretending to be insane, I'll do that. But I'll never go back to Mother. If I did that, I'd have to live with all that I've hated all my life—and with the fact that I killed the only person I ever loved. It isn't a pleasant memory. My sanity is not a pleasant thing to hold onto.”
Dr. Hort nodded.
There was a knock at the door. Link straightened up. “Who is it?” Hort asked.
“Me. Mrs. Danol.”
Linkeree stood up abruptly, walked around the office to a point at the far wall from the door.
“I'm consulting, Mrs. Danol.”
Her voice was strident, even through the muffling door. “They told me Linkeree had come back. I heard you talking to him in there.”
“Go away, Mrs. Danol,” Dr. Hort said. “You will see your son in due time.”
“I will see him now. I have a writ that says I can see him. I got it from the court at noon. I want to see him.”
Hort turned to Link. “She thinks ahead, doesn't she?”
Link was shaking. “If she comes in, I'll kill her.”
“All right, Mrs. Danol. Just a moment.”
“No!” Link shouted, making spastic motions as if he wanted to claw his way through the wall backward.
Hort whispered, “Relax, Link. I won't let her near you.” Hort opened a closet—Link started to walk in it. No, Link. And Hort took his spare suit off the hanger, and a clean shirt. The suit, in the standard one piece, was a little long for Linkeree, but the waist and shoulders were not far wrong, and Link didn't look out of place in it when he had finished dressing.
“I don't know what you hope to gain by stalling, Dr. Hort, but I will see my son,” Mrs. Danol shouted. “In three minutes I'll call the police!”
Hort shouted back, “Patience, Mrs. Danol. It takes a moment to prepare your son to see you.”
“Nonsense! My son wants to see me.”
Linkeree was trembling, hard. Hort put his arms around the young man, gripped him tight. “Keep control,” he whispered.
“I'm trying,” Link chattered back, his lower jaw out of control.
Hort reached into his hip bag, pulled out his id and his cred, and handed them to Link. “I won't report them missing until you are on a ship out of here.”
“Ship?”
“Go to Capitol. You'll have little trouble there, finding a place. Even without money. There's always room for someone like you.”
Link snorted. “That's a damn lie and you know it.”
“Right. But even if they send you back here, your mother will be dead by then.”
Linkeree nodded.
“Now here's the door control. When I say, open the door.”
“No.”
“Open the door and let her in. I'll keep her under control until you get out the door and close it from the outside. There's no way out of here, then, except Gram's master key, and this note should take care of that.” Hort scribbled a quick note. Hell cooperate because he hates your mother almost as much as I do. Which is a terrible thing for an impartial psychologist to say, but at this point, who the hell cares?
Linkeree took the note and the door control and stood beside the door with his back to the wall. “Doctor,” he asked, “what'll they do to you for this?”
“Raise holy hell, of course,” he said. “But I can only be removed by a council of medical practitioners—and that's the same group that can have Mrs. Danol committed.”
“Committed?”
“She needs help, Link.”
Linkeree smiled—and was surprised to realize it was his first smile in months. Since. Since Zad died.
He touched the open button.
The door slid open and Mrs. Danol swept in. “I knew you'd see reason,” she pronounced, then whirled to look as Link stepped out the door, closing it so quickly that he almost got caught in it. His mother was already screaming and pounding as Link handed the note to Gram, who read it, looked closely at the man, and then nodded. “But hurry your ass, boy,” Gram said. “What we're doing here is called kidnapping in some courts.”
Linkeree set the door control on the desk and left, running.
He lay in the ship's passenger hold, recovering from the dizziness that they told him was normal with a person's first mind-taping. The brain patterns that held all his memories and all his personality were now in a cassette securely stored in the ships cabin, and now he lay on a table waiting for them to drug him with somec. When he woke up and had his memory played back into his mind in Capitol, he would only remember up to the moment of taping. These moments now, between the tape and the tap, would be lost forever.
And that was why he thought back to the infant whose warm body he had held, and why he let himself wish that he could have saved him, could have protected him, could have let him live.
No, I'm living for him.
The hell I am. I'm living for me.
They came and put the needle into his buttocks, not for the cold sleep of death, but for the burning sleep of life. And as the hot agony of somec swept over him, he writhed into a ball on the table and cried out, “Mother! I love you!”
18. And What Will We Do Tomorrow
Of all the people on Capitol, only Mother was allowed to awaken on her own bed, the bed where she had slept with Selvock Gray before his death eight hundred years ago. She did not know that the original bed had fallen apart centuries ago; it was always remade, right down to the nicks and scratches, so that she could awaken on it and lie there for a moment in solitude, remembering.
No attendants murmuring. No flush of fever. Of all the people in Capitol, only Mother was given the delicate combination of drugs that made waking a delight—that cost more for each of her wakings than the entire budget of a colony ship.
And so she luxuriated in the bed, cool and not feeling particularly old. How old am I? she wondered, and decided that she was probably forty. I am probably middle-aged, she said, and spread out her legs until they touched both sides of the bed.
She ran her hands over her naked stomach, finding it not as fiat and firm as it had been when Selvock had come to visit Jerry Crove and had, as an afterthought, seduced his fifteen-year-old granddaughter. But who had seduced whom? Selvock never knew it, but Mother had chosen him as the man most likely to accomplish what her grandfather was too good and her father too weak to accomplish—the conquest and unification of the human race.
It was my dream, she said to
herself. My dream, that I needed Selvock to fulfill. He bloodied himself in a dozen planetside wars, sent fleets here and there at his command, but it was I who made the plans, I who set the wheels in motion, I who fired the starships and sent them on their way. I found the money by bribing, blackmailing, and assassination.
And then, on the day Selvock was confident of victory, that bastard Russian had shot him with (of all things!) a pistol and Mother was alone.
She lay naked on the bed, remembering the feel of his hand on her flesh, the tense, gentle hand, and she missed him. She missed him, but hadn't needed him after all. For now she ruled the human universe, and there was nothing she wanted that she could not have.
Dent Harbock sat in the control room, watching the monitor. Mother was playing with herself on the bed. If the people could only see a holo of this show! he thought. There'd be a revolution within the hour. Or maybe not. Maybe they really did think of her as—what had Nab called her?—an earth mother, a figure of fertility. If she was so fertile, how come no children?
Nab walked into the control room. “How's the old bitch doing?”
“Dreaming of conquest. How come she never had any children?”
“If you believe in a god, thank it for that. As it is, things are comfortable. The only royalty in the universe is a middle-aged woman we only have to wake up one day in every five years. No family squabbles. No war of succession. And nobody trying to tell the government what to do.”
Dent laughed.
“Better start the music. We have a busy schedule.”
• • •
The music started and Mother was startled into alertness. Ah, yes. It was time. Being Empress wasn't all luxury and pleasant memories. It was also responsibility. There was work to be done.
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