Hunched with his hands between his thighs, Daimler-Wilkinson felt the present dimmed by images of the past, his vision blurred by unshed tears which put the thought of eating out of the question. As before, it was Brougham who occupied the forefront of his mind. Brougham had stood by as, never recognizing its brother, the shattered thing which had been Clyve had expired in Sedgeley's arms. Brougham had seen Clyve's worn-out body given decent and anonymous disposal in the garden behind the house, into which Sedge-ley had never again set foot. Brougham had acted as administrative aide when, employing resources which had been successful in the search for Clyve, Sedgeley had failed to
discover any trace of Jennivere. In truth—he had been compelled, each step of the way, to struggle against an inclination to do nothing—he had never expected to, that sort of slave, a young, desirable woman, being even shorter-lived and more disposable than an Oplyte.
Swearing his alien accomplice to what was meant to be a temporary secrecy, he had never told—had never been able to tell—his niece of her parents' fate. When old enough, Loreanna had been informed that their starship, like others, had failed to return from across the Deep. Year after year he had promised his conscience that he would unburden himself of the terrible truth. Year after year, he had retreated from the resolution, until what had seemed at first a mere unsavory task assumed the proportions of an insurmountable obstacle. He looked across at her now, again attempting to state the all-important truth, instead finding his mouth clumsy and full of inanities.
"Have more caff, my dear. I can ask Brougham to brew another pot.*'
Hearing the edge in her uncle's voice and what she imagined it signified, Loreanna became aware of something she had inferred from reading history: a little love, mixed with the exigencies of politics, was a dangerous thing. "Thank you. Uncle, but I slept through most of yesterday. I greatly fear another cup might prevent me sleeping tonight, as well."
He set the pot down without a flutter, a fact of which he was shocked to find himself proud. Despite the strain to which he had lately subjected her, Loreanna was more beautiful than ever in her low-bodiced, full-skirted gown, her copper hair draped charmingly about her fair, freckled shoulders. He had believed himself a good and loving uncle, a reasonable substitute for the father she would never know. In the years she had lived with him, he had never been tempted to see her as anything other than a daughter, for all her delicate, unself-conscious, enigmatic desirability. He often wondered at this. These were corrupt and decadent times, and he himself no different from others he knew who enjoyed the opportunities corruption and decadence afford. He was a hearty individual with a taste for the flesh, the wealth and power to exercise it, accustomed to the company
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of women—although his preference ran to blondes more buxom than this miniature beauty he had brought up. Had he possessed her, most Hanoverians, steeped in their own unspeakabilities, would have looked the other way. That approached the status of a Hanoverian pastime. Any minority moralistic enough to point a finger would have been dissuaded by his position in the 'Droom.
Instead he had been a father to her. He wondered now whether the alternative might not have proven better for her. In seeking to protect her he had come close to destroying her. He had denied her the truth, he realized, not so much because he thought her unable to tolerate it—to his surprise and delight, she had grown up made of better stuff than that—but because he could neither bear being the one to inflict it upon her, nor bring himself to delegate the task to anyone less important in her life.
For her own part, whatever troubled her uncle, Loreanna was confident he would weather it. Men seemed to. Women were not so resilient, nor so lucky. She had decided long ^o—this conclusion she had reached by methods she believed scientific—that love and sex were simply aspects of another dirty power-game, with women always the losers.
Daimler-Wilkinson shook his head. Lately, through blindness, ambition, inadvertence, and loyalty misplaced, he had injured Loreanna in a manner worse than if he had touched her himself. Most painfully, he was learning a truth as terrible as that which, in intended kindness, he had withheld from her all these years, yet more fundamental and general of application.
Lies, he thought, knowing he was not the first in history to realize it, even of omission, create an inevitable necessity for more lies, until lying is a first recourse instead of a desperate last. They erect walls between those who love each other, so that, when crisis comes, as it had, one can no longer reach the person he has lied to, no longer even recognize her as the person for love of whom the dubious protection of lies was first sought.
So it was that, just as he had never told her of her parents' fate, it had never occurred to him in recent days to explain that, in this most cruel of all possible ages, the future he had labored to achieve for her—marriage of state to an entity
incapable, in any physical sense, of injuring her—was, by comparison with most likelier alternatives, a kindly one. Even the alternative might prove easier than life upon the capital world.
For an instant, their eyes met across the table, conveying no more than mutual recognition that each felt helpless to escape unenviable circumstances which almost seemed to have created themselves. He wondered if Brougham, himself a sufferer of one of those likelier alternatives, appreciated what he was trying to do, and wondered why he felt responsible to the creature.
"Sir?" The kitchen door svmng aside. Brougham, exercising that mundane but real telepathy which years of intimate acquaintance engender between beings, appeared as if summoned by his master's thoughts. "If you have finished, sir, I shall have these dishes cleared out of your way."
Daimler-Wilkinson glanced at his niece, who appeared to have accomplished as much with her food as she was likely to. He understood exactly how she was feeling this evening. He could not help worrying about her; at his present wei^t he could afford to skip a meal, whereas she, at hers, could not. Because he felt the same, himself. "Satisfactory, Brougham, and if you would afterward fetch my pipe, I would appreciate it."
"Yes, sir." Brougham supervised a pair of female yensidsLS they cleared the table. The omnivorous tablecloth had made short, discreet work of any spots or crumbs the moment they had been dropped.
At this moment, when she might have offered some word which might (or might not) have changed everything, Loreanna recalled a recent confrontation in which he had enumerated ways, had he not been more considerate of her wishes, she mi^t have been induced to cooperate, through drugs or less-pleasant forms of mind-alteration. An unbearable sense of injustice boiled up within her, expunging any thought she might have entertained of making peace. In thirty-first-century matters of the "heart", she thought with bitter satisfaction, the sanction of the victim—an outward appearance of consent without regard to whatever inward reality it may have concealed—had become all-important. Those perceiving themselves as the more refined elements of
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society preferred ''unpersuaded" women as earlier ones had preferred virgins.
In due course Brougham brought his master's smoking materials. Daimler-Wilkinson had never acquired the Ceo*s taste for nicotine. Since Loreanna had been a child, he had come to enjoy a single pipe of cannagrass after the evening meal. It settled his stomach and was helpful in overcoming a chronic difl&culty getting to sleep. Accepting the miniature pipe, he watched the yensid cut a comer from the small cube of resinous brown essence and sprinkle the resultant crumblings upon the fine mesh in the bowl. He leaned forward to receive the flame, drew the sweet smoke in and inhaled, already beginning to relax from nothing more than years of habit.
Loreanna reminded herself that she was both: virgin and unpersuaded.
In these precarious times, precious little personal security existed, Daimler-Wilkinson observed, returning to the track upon which his thoughts had run all evening. Loreanna should consider herself fortunate. The trouble, he realized, was that, again from a desire to pr
eserve the gentler sensibilities he had sought to ingrain in her, he had taken pains to see she led a sheltered life. She knew nothing of the savagery churning just outside her door. She would never believe that good intentions for her were all that motivated him.
"Uncle?"
Daimler-Wilkinson blinked. Brougham had vanished without his having noticed. The cannagrass must be quite fresh. His chair made scraping sounds upon the carpet as he arose with feelings of disappointment and depression. "Yes, my dear?"
"If you will excuse me, I still have packing to accomplish ..."
Daimler-Wilkinson allowed himself an inward sigh. Over the years he had been accustomed to having her company these last few minutes every evening. Now she had been finding excuses to leave him at table, and he was beginning to have those bleak, never-again feelings which accompany an irrevocable break. Even had they been a string of paradise worlds, Baffhdgestar was, in terms of time and
Space, a long way away. "Of course, my dear. Perhaps I shall see you in the morning before I leave for the 'Droom.*'
Virgin and unpersuaded, the thought returned. She who remained the latter might yet remain the former. While it was true, throughout history, that uncounted women had survived political marriages, many more had managed to make admirable lives for themselves without handling from any man. Virgin and unpersuaded equaled "Old Maid." Loreanna intended to do her grim and level best to remain both—and if need be the lattermost—for a long time to come. "Good night, Uncle Sedge—" she answered with an odd expression. "Good night. Uncle.'*
As she left him, he sat down again, feeling ill. He drew upon his pipe, hoping against experience that it would make him feel better. Save for its bubbling, silence descended upon the dining room.
It was also possible to lie to oneself, he thought, and easiest to do so by omission. The consequences were more difficult to see, not just in advance, but even as they were happening, even after they had ended in one's destruction. However, for a different variety of reasons . . . reasons that had created this aching . .. gulf between himself and Loreanna, Loreanna, Loreanna ... he had never so much as attempted to discover. .. What had he never attempted to discover? That was it: in what manner had it come to pass that his family, of all families ... of all families had been disrupted . .. by the travesty .. . travesty of interstellar slavery and death.
Daimler-Wilkinson found his thoughts separated by disconcerting gaps in his sense of time-flow which were the signature of cannagrass, the reason he had sought surcease with the drug in the first place. Now that he had achieved it, he was not certain it was what he wanted. He put the pipe down and took several deep breaths, attempting to reorder his thoughts.
When his mind was alert, working in the interests of Ceo and Monopolity—and not beclouded with the effort of hiding from itself—Daimler-Wilkinson was contemptuous of coincidence. What had happened to Clyve and his young wife might have been random happenstance, the unpredict-
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able conclusion to an inauspicious business-and-pleasure voyage. Operating at uninhibited capacity, the Ceo's Drector-Advisory and Executor-General believed it likelier to represent some connivance against his own interests which, perhaps at the last moment, had gone wrong. No punchline had ever arrived. No agent of an enemy had ever appeared to promise, threaten, or gloat. The whole thing had remained an ugly mystery, and the elder brother's secret, for most of Loreanna's lifetime.
Which was what had brought him to this place and time, forged a bond of conspiracy between him and a servant, and, despite his best intentions, lost him the love and respect of the only living human being he cared for. He was surprised to discover himself taking another draught upon his pipe. Shaking his head, he accepted it, leaned back, driving his emotions back inside where they could not affect him, forgetting as hard as he could.
Alone.
Chapter XXXV: The Drowned Man
Frantisek Demondion-Echeverria, Ambassador Plenipotentiary from the 'Droom of Ribauldequin XXIII, Ceo of the Jendyne Empery-Cirot, to the 'Droom of Leupould IX, Ceo of the Monopolitan Imperium-Conglomerate, leaned back upon his mesh relaxer, sunk within the comfortable gloom of his personal apartments at the embassy upon Hanover, taking solitary pleasure, as he often did, in his many well-deserved titles and responsibilities.
He grinned at the retreating alabaster bottoms of his latest pair of mistresses. Gone again, my well-upholstered beauties, he thought as he did each morning at this time, with a melodramatic sigh intended only partially in jest, no more fun for Frantisek again until tomorrow.
The feeling was mingled with a degree of pleasant satia-
tion. How much less mischief, he reflected, how many fewer wars might have raged throughout the long, mournful dirge which was the sum of human history, had men of power simply put things off another hour to have a second (or a third) go-round with their enamorata? As he should know, who, in all appropriate modesty, happened to be, if not the principal power behind the Jendyne Chair, then at least one of an elite handful and upon the rapid rise.
He blinked. A small, golden-colored fish swam by at eye level. One of many he kept here, its movements were uncoordinated, frantic with dull-witted terror. Another flash of movement cau^t his eye as a small brown kitten the girls had recently acquired streaked by, paddling for all it was worth. In an instant it had snapped up the goldfish, devouring it greedily as it drifted a measure from the floor. Demondion-Echeverria laughed and clapped his hands at the sight. Some he knew were not particularly fond of cats, even actively abhorred them. He had never understood such a narrow attitude. This miniature devil had scarcely been here in his special apartments a week, yet it had gamely overcome its most instinctive fears, learning to swim like the otter it resembled and in the process winning the ambassador's heart.
"Of course, my swift, voracious friend," he murmured, "some unfortunates we know of—our esteemed, deteriorating master, Ribauldequin, for example—are incapable of a first go-round. I wonder what excuse they find to continue such a featureless existence." A spare man, small of stature and dark of complexion, he enjoyed the effect this place had upon his voice, which came to his ears deepened in tone and timbre, the opposite to that effect observed when breathing mixtures less dense than ordinary air, like helium. "I should say we know our Ceo as well as any minister, as well, let us say, as our upright, prissy colleague Sedgeley Daimler-Wilkinson knows his, which, we are given to understand, is well indeed."
Halfway between floor and ceiling, the kitten licked its paws. At the sound of the man's booming voice, it stared at him curiously. "The sad truth, furry one, is that, unlike the shrewd, prolific Leupould, our own poor nominal ruler is not only impotent, but senile into the bargain." The kitten
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meowed silently, blinked huge eyes, turned and, attempting to seize and wash its tail, whirled in frustration, the appendage eluding its grasp. It flailed its legs in an effort to stop the rotary motion. "With each passing year, it grows more difficult, diplomat though I am, to conceal my monumental contempt for the fool as prudence dictates. And why not? All things being relative, Ribauldequin is a mere youth, scarcely a hundred years old!"
He dismissed these oft-repeated thoughts and rang for a manservitor. It was past time, however reluctant he felt, to begin today's appointments. One was of some importance. He recalled, thankful for small blessings, that it was acceptable to let that individual see him as he was. Another movement caught his eye. One end of a decoratively stitched waist-tie of his dressing gown had apparently decided upon its own to float to the ceiling. Smiling, he snatched at it as the kitten had its tail (albeit with more success), and wrung it out. Minute bubbles squeezed from the fabric vanished upward. The strip of cloth relaxed, this time staying where he placed it. Nodding to himself, he reached to the table beside him and took up a datathille which would inform him in detail of items upon the morning's agenda.
In its usual deliberate course, the manservitor he had summoned f
inally arrived. Seeing it as no more than a shadow behind a curtain, the ambassador knew that it would be slow-moving, blank-eyed, loose-lipped, and slack-jawed, like every Jendyne menial. This specimen, the vendor had informed his deputy (who had seen fit to mention it casually), was from Kalfom. It had been discovered carrying a small-bladed folding knife, he believed, although in general he seldom kept track of such insignifica, and dealt with upon the spot, as Jendyne law required, by a constable wielding a lobotomizer.
"And a good thing," he informed the kitten. "Within our Empery-Cirot, this law and others like it, as all laws at root are intended to do—though they are seldom enforced with sufficient stringency—have eradicated the servitor problem." He did not inform his friend (who might not have appreciated the point) that lobotomees were a trifle less imaginative than those left intact. They were a deal closer-mouthed. Neither as fearsome nor versatile as Oplytes—
useless as bodyguards or soldiers, upon the other hand, massed upon plantations, they were unprone to revolt—they were cheaper than the warriors, and, accordingly, more expendable. "Given proper legislation," he added as an afterthought, "which all men must violate daily because it basically outlaws living, they are available in endless quantity."
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