“This one hears and obeys!”
Hugh returned from the executives’ dining room rather late; he had sat around and gossiped. He found Kitten asleep in his bed and remembered that he had forgotten to ask for another bed for her.
Clutched in her hand was a folded paper. Gently he worked it out without waking her:
Darling!
How utterly wonderful to see your handwriting! I knew from Joe that you were safe, hadn’t heard about your promotion, didn’t know whether you knew about the twins. First about them—They are thriving, they both look like their papa, both have his angelic disposition. Six pounds each at birth is my guess, but, although they were weighed, weights here mean nothing to me. Me? I’m a prize cow, dearest, no trouble at all—and the care I received (and am receiving) is fantastically good. I started to labor, was given something to drink, never hurt again although I remember all details of having two babies—as if it had happened to somebody else. So trouble free and actually pleasant that I’d be willing to do it every day. And would, if the rewards were as nice as little Hugh and Karl Joseph.
As for the rest, boring except for our fine boys, but I’m learning the language as fast as I can. And somebody should tell the Borden Company about me—which is good, as our scamps are greedy eaters. I’m even able to help out the girl in the next bed, who is short on milk. Just call me Elsie.
I’ll be patient. I’m not surprised at your new honors; I expect that you’ll be bossing the place in a month. I have confidence in my man. My husband. Such a beautiful word—
As for Kitten, I don’t believe your Boy Scout assertions, my lecherous darling; your record shows that you take advantage of innocent young girls. And she’s awfully cute.
Seriously, dearest, I know how noble you are and I didn’t have an evil-minded thought. But I would not blame you if your nobility slipped—especially as I’ve picked up enough words to be aware of her odd category in this strange place. I mean, Kitten is not vulnerable and can’t go set. If you did slip, I would not be jealous—not much, anyhow—but I would not want it to become a habit. Not to the exclusion of me, at least; my hormones are rearranging themselves very rapidly. But I don’t want you to get rid of her when she is our only way of communicating. Be nice to her; she’s a nice kid. But you’re always nice to everyone.
I will write every day—and I will cry into my pillow and be worried to death any day I don’t hear from you.
My love forever and forever,
B
P.S. The smear is little Hugh’s right footprint.
Hugh kissed the letter, then got into bed, clutching it. Kitten did not wake.
14
Hugh found learning to read and write Language not difficult. Spelling was phonetic, a sign for every sound. There were no silent letters and never any question about spelling or pronunciation. Accent was on the penultima unless marked; the system was as free from traps as Esperanto. He could sound out any word as soon as he had learned the 47-letter alphabet, and, with thought, he could spell any word he could pronounce.
Writing and printing were alike, cursive, and a printed page looked like one written by a skilled penman. He was not surprised to find that it looked like Arabic and a search in the Britannica confirmed that the alphabet must have derived from Arabic of his time. Half a dozen letters had not changed; some were similar although changed. There were many new letters to cover the expansion into a system of one sound, one sign—plus letters for sounds XXth century Arabic had never used. Search in the Britannica convinced him that Arabic, French, and Swahili were the main roots of Language, plus Uncle alone knew what else. He could not confirm this; a dictionary with derivations, such as he had been used to for English, apparently did not exist—and his teachers seemed convinced that Language had always been just as they knew it. The concept of change baffled them.
It was only of intellectual interest; Hugh knew neither Arabic, French, nor Swahili. He had learned a little Latin and less German in high school, and had struggled to learn Russian in his later years. He was not equipped to study the roots of Language, he was merely curious.
Nor did he dare spend time on it; he wanted to please Their Charity, butter him up so that he might, eventually, petition the boon of seeing Barbara—and that meant a flood of translated articles. Hugh worked very hard.
The second day after his elevation, Hugh asked for Duke, and Memtok sent for him. Duke was rather worn down—there were lines in his face—but he spoke Language. Duke spoke it not as well as his father and apparently had tangled more with his teachers; his mood seemed to oscillate between hopelessness and rebellion, and he limped badly.
Memtok made no objection to transferring Duke to the Department of Ancient History. “Glad to get rid of him. He’s too monstrous big for stud, yet he doesn’t seem to be good for anything else. Certainly, put him to work. I can’t bear to see a servant lying around, eating his head off, doing nothing.”
So Hugh took him. Duke looked over Hugh’s private apartment and said, “Christ! You certainly managed to come up smelling like a rose. How come?”
Hugh explained the situation. “So I want you to translate legal articles and related subjects—whatever you can do best.”
Duke shoved his fists together and looked stubborn. “You can stuff it.”
“Duke, don’t take that attitude. This is an opportunity.”
“For you, maybe. What are you doing about Mother?”
“What can I do? I’m not allowed to see her, neither are you. You know that. But Joe assures me that she is not only comfortable and well treated, but happy.”
“So he says. Or so you say he says. I want to see it myself. I damn well insist on it.”
“Very well, insist on it. Go see Memtok about it. But I must warn you, I can’t protect you from him.”
“Rats. I know what that slimy little bastard would say—and what he would do.” Duke scowled and rubbed his injured leg. “It’s up to you to arrange it. You’ve got such an unholy drag around here, the least you can do is use it to protect Mother.”
“Duke, I don’t have that sort of drag. I’m being pampered for the reason a race horse is pampered…and I have just as little to say about it as a race horse has. But I can cut you in on pampering if you cooperate—decent quarters, immunity from mistreatment, a pleasant place to work. But I can no more get you into women’s quarters, or have Grace sent here, than I can go to the Moon. They have harem rules here, as you know.”
“And you are content to sit here and be a trained seal for that ape, and neglect Mother? Count me out!”
“Duke, I won’t argue. I’ll assign you a room and send you a volume of the Britannica each day. Then it’s up to you. If you won’t work, I’ll try to keep Memtok from knowing it. But I think he has spies all over the place.”
Hugh let it go at that. At first he got no help out of Duke. But boredom worked where argument failed; Duke could not stand to be shut up in a room with nothing to do. He was not locked up but he did not venture out much because there was always the chance that he might run into Memtok, or some other whip-carrying upper servant, who might want to know what he was doing, and why—servants were expected to look busy even if they weren’t, from morning prayer to evening prayer.
Duke began to produce translations and, with them, a complaint that he was short on vocabulary. Hugh was able to have assigned to him a tempered clerk who had worked in Their Charity’s legal affairs.
But he rarely saw Duke—it seemed to be the only way they could stay out of arguments. Duke’s output speeded up after the first week but fell off in quality—Duke had discovered the sovereign power of “Happiness.”
Hugh considered warning Duke about the drug, decided against it. If it kept Duke contented, who was he to deny him this anodyne? The quality of Duke’s translations did not worry Hugh; Their Charity had no way to judge—unless Joe rendered an opinion, which seemed unlikely. He himself was not trying too hard to turn out good translations; “not go
od, but Wednesday” was the principle he used: Give the boss lucid copy in great quantity—and leave out the hard parts.
Besides, Hugh found that a couple of drinks of Happiness at dinner topped off the day. It allowed him to read Barbara’s daily letter in a warm glow, write a cheerful answer for Kitten to carry back, then to bed and sound sleep.
But Hugh did not use much of it; he was afraid of the stuff. Alcohol, he reasoned, had the advantage of being a poison. It gave fair warning if one started drinking heavily. But this stuff exacted no such price; it merely turned anxiety, depression, worry, boredom, any unpleasant emotion, into an uncritical happy glow. Hugh wondered if it was principally methyl meprobamate? But he knew little chemistry and that little was two thousand years behind times.
As a member of the executive servants’ mess Hugh could have all he wanted. But he noted that Memtok was not the only boss who used the stuff abstemiously; a man did not fight his way up in the servants’ hierarchy by dulling himself with drugs—but sometimes a servant did get high up, then skidded to the bottom, unable to stand prosperity in the form of unrationed Happiness. Hugh never learned what became of them.
Hugh could even keep a bottle in his rooms—and that solved the problem of Kitten.
Hugh had decided not to ask for a bed for Kitten; he did not want to rub Memtok’s nose in the fact that he was using the child only as a go-between to women’s quarters. Instead he required the girl to make up a bed each night on the divan in his living room.
Kitten was very hurt by this. By now she was sure that Hugh could make better use of a bedwarmer and she regarded it as rebuke to her in her honorable capacity as comfort and solace—and it scared her. If her master did not like her, she might lose the best job she had ever had. (She did not dare report to Memtok that Hugh had no use for her as a bedwarmer; she gave reports on every point but that.)
She wept.
She could not have done better; Hugh Farnham had been a sucker for women’s tears all his life. He took her on his knee and explained that he liked her very much (true), that it was a sad thing but he was too old to appreciate a female bedmate (a lie), and that he slept badly and was disturbed by having anyone in bed with him (a half-truth)—and that he was satisfied with her and wanted her to go on serving him. “Now wipe your eyes and have a drink of this.”
He knew that she used the stuff; she chewed her ration like bubble gum—chewing gum it was in fact; the powder was added to chicle. Most servants preferred gum because they could go dreamily through the day, chewing it while they worked. Kitten passed her empty days chewing it and chewed the played-out cud in Hugh’s quarters after she learned he did not mind. So he did not hesitate to give her a drink.
Kitten went happily to bed and right to sleep, no longer worried that her master might get rid of her. That set a precedent. Each evening, half an hour before Hugh wanted the lights out, he would give her a short drink of it.
For a while he kept track of the level in the bottle. Kitten was often in his quarters when he was not, he knew how much she enjoyed it, and there were no locks in his quarters—his rank entitled him to locks but Memtok had carefully not told him.
He quit bothering when he was convinced that Kitten was not snitching it. In fact, Kitten would have been terrified at the thought of stealing from her master. Her ego was barely big enough for a mouse; she was less than nothing and knew it and had never owned anything, not even a name, until Hugh gave her one. Under his kindness she was beginning to be a person, but it was still the faintest flicker, anything could blow it out. She would no more have risked stealing from him than she would have risked killing him.
Hugh, half by intent, encouraged her confidence. She was a trained bath girl; he gave in and let her scrub his back and handle the nozzles for his bath, dress him, and take care of his clothes. She was a masseuse, too; he sometimes found it pleasant to have his head and neck rubbed after a day spent poring over the fine print or following the lines in a scroll reader—and she was pathetically anxious to do anything to make herself necessary.
“Kitten, what do you do in the daytime?”
“Why, nothing mostly. Sluts of my subcaste mostly don’t have to work if they have night duty. Since I’m having duty every night I’m allowed to stay in the sleep room until midday. So I do, even if I’m not sleepy, because the slutmaster is likely to put one to work if he catches one just wandering around. Afternoons—Well, mostly I try to stay out of sight. That’s best. Safest.”
“I see. You can hide out in here if you like. Or can you?”
Her face lit up. “If you give me a pass, I can.”
“All right, I will. You can watch television—No, it’s not on at that hour. Mmm, you don’t know how to read. Or do you?”
“Oh, no, sir! I wouldn’t dare petition.”
“Hmm—” Hugh knew that permission to learn to read could not be granted even by Memtok; it required Their Charity’s permission and was granted only after investigation of the necessity. Furthermore, anything he did that was out of line jeopardized his thin chances of reunion with Barbara.
But—Damn it, a man had to be a man! “There are scrolls in here and a reader. Do you want to learn?”
“Uncle protect us!”
“Don’t swear. If you want to—and can keep your pretty little mouth shut—I’ll teach you. Don’t look so damned scared! You don’t have to decide now. Tell me later. Just don’t talk about it. To anyone.”
Kitten did not. It scared her not to report it, but she had a reflex for self-preservation and felt without knowing why that to report this would endanger her happy setup.
Kitten became substitute family life for Hugh. She sent him to work cheerful, greeted him with a smile when he came back, talked if he wanted to talk and never spoke unless spoken to. Most evenings she curled up in front of the television—Hugh thought of it as “the television” and it was in fact closed-circuit television under principles not known to him, in color, in three dimensions, and without lines.
It played every evening in the servants’ main hall, from evening prayer until lights-out, to a packed house, and there were outlets in the apartments of executive servants. Hugh had watched it several evenings, expecting to gain insight into this strange society he must learn to live in.
He decided that one might as well try to study the United States by watching Gunsmoke. It was blatant melodrama, with acting as stylized as Chinese theater, and the favorite plot seemed to be that of the faithful servant who dies gloriously that his lord may live.
But it was only second in importance to Happiness in the morale of life belowstairs. Kitten loved it.
She would watch it, snapping her gum, and suppressing squeals of excitement, while Hugh read—then sigh happily when the program ended, accept her little drink of Happiness with profuse thanks and a touch of her forehead, and go quietly to sleep. Hugh sometimes went on reading.
He read a great deal—every evening (unless Memtok stopped in to visit) and half of every day. He begrudged the time he spent translating for Their Charity but never neglected it; it was the hopeful key to better things. He had found it necessary to study modern culture if he was to translate matters of ancient history intelligibly. The Summer Palace had a fair library; he was given access when he claimed necessity for his work—Memtok arranged it.
But his true purpose was not translation but to try to understand what had happened to his world to produce this world.
So he usually had a scroll in the reader, in his office, or in his living room. The scroll system of printing he found admirable; it mechanized the oldest form of book into a system far more efficient than bound leaves—drop the double cylinder into the reader, flip it on, and hold still. The letters raced across in front of his eyes several hundred feet at a whack, to the end of the scroll. Then the scroll flipped over and chased back the following line, which was printed upside down to the one just scanned.
The eye wasted no time flipping back and forth at stacked lines
. But a slight pressure speeded the gadget up to whatever the brain could accept. As Hugh got used to the phonetics, he acquired speed faster than he had ever managed in English.
But he did not find what he was looking for.
Somewhere in the past the distinctions between fact, fiction, history, and religious writings seemed to have been rubbed out. Even when he got it clear that the East-West War that had bounced him out of his own century was now dated 703 B.C. (Before the Great Change), he still had trouble matching the world he had known with the “history” set forth in these scrolls.
The war itself he didn’t find hard to believe. He had experienced only a worm’s-eye view of the first hours but what the scrolls related matched the possibilities: a missile-and-bomb holocaust that had escalated in its first minutes into “brilliant first strike” and “massive retaliation” and smeared cities from Peiping to Chicago, Toronto to Smolensk; fire storms that had done ten times the damage the bombs did; nerve gas and other poisons that had picked up where fire left off; plagues that were incubating when the shocked survivors were picking themselves up and beginning to hope—plagues that were going strong when fallout was no longer deadly.
Yes, he could believe that. The bright boys had made it possible, and the dull boys they worked for had not only never managed to make the possibility unlikely but had never really believed it when the bright boys delivered what the dull boys ordered.
Not, he reminded himself, that he had believed in “Better red than dead”—or believed in it now. The aggression had been one-sided as hell—and he did not regret a megaton of the “massive retaliation.”
But there it was. The scrolls said that it had killed off the northern world.
But how about the rest of it? It says here that the United States, at the time of the war, held its black population as slaves. Somebody had chopped out a century. On purpose? Or was it honest confusion and almost no records? There had been, he knew, a great book burning for two centuries during the Turmoil, and even after the Change.
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