by Hugh Howey
The third flawed assumption: that he would go mad, living by himself.
He did not go mad, no matter how many years passed on VZ-61a. For the very simple reason that Franz Morel was already about as insane as it is possible for a human being to become. The effects of isolation, social and physical, on the human mind are well studied and known to be highly deleterious, but there is also such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. A man so suffused with neuroses, complexes, fixations and delusions as Franz Morel could withstand a little alone-time. He could do exile standing on his head.
Indeed, in many ways the days Morel spent alone on VZ-61a were the happiest of his life. He possessed all the power he had ever desired, as ruler not just of some middlingly impressive country but of an entire world. Every whim, every gratuitous impulse, every whimper of his rabidly overactive id was catered to by Martin-8, the robot. All the little frustrations and mild irritations of having to actually run a country were removed from him, and he could settle down to some proper and healthful self-indulgence. On VZ-61a he could do anything he desired. He might learn how to paint, he told himself, or he might begin the multi-volume set of memoirs he’d always wanted to write.
In the meantime, he could have parades. He’d always loved parades.
Solitude, in a word, became Franz Morel. The world of his exile had become a megalomaniac’s paradise.
Sadly, paradises are only ever built to be lost.
IT BEGAN UNREMARKABLY enough. A star in the evening sky grew brighter each night, rather faster than astronomical bodies typically did. Morel, possessing a quite shocking lack of intellectual curiosity, paid it no mind. His first sense that something might have changed was when, lounging in his five-hundred-gallon bathtub one morning, he called out for Martin-8 to refresh his hot water and—unthinkably—there was no response.
There came a great whooshing noise from outside, followed by a clap of thunder. In all of his days on VZ-61a, Morel had never seen nor heard a thunderstorm. This just about reached the threshold of his interest. He called out for Martin-8 to come explain what was going on.
Again, there was no response.
Morel was forced to get out of the bath and, unbelievably, fetch his own towel. He dressed—by himself—in a bathrobe worked with cloth-of-gold in a motif of his own initials and went down to the main hall of the Presidential Palace. The doors were thrown open, letting in light and air from the main square of Morelograd. The day being clement—as close to being pleasant as any day on the unremarkably warm planetoid ever got—Morel stepped outside in his bare feet and looked around. What he saw surprised him utterly. Martin-8 was approaching down the main thoroughfare—accompanied by a human being.
Morel’s imagination began to fizz. This being another quality he lacked in a truly outstanding degree, it took him quite a while to begin to understand the possibilities of what had occurred.
Another human, another person, had come to VZ-61a. The whoosh and the roar he’d heard must have been the sound of a rocket descending and landing just outside of the city. Another person—
Morel rushed forward, his hands out in warm greeting. “Hello, hello!” he cried. “Hello! I must admit, I’m pleased, I truly am!”
Martin-8 rolled to a stop. The robot extended one arm to gesture at the newcomer. “Zir,” the machine said, “may I introduze Tolliver Upwright?”
Morel grabbed the other man’s hands in welcome.
Upwright sneered.
He was tall, a good head taller than the admittedly short Morel. He was also very thin, thin like a mantis, whereas Morel was decidedly stout. Upwright possessed no facial hair whatsoever and the hair on his head had been shaved back on the sides and—interestingly—the hairline, as if to suggest that he possessed a higher forehead than, in actuality, he did. His face was spare to the point of gauntness. He wore a very severe tunic buttoned very tightly at his throat. Of ornament or decoration he had none, except a tiny enamel pin on his breast that looked like the insignia of some political party. Which party did not matter in the slightest to Morel.
“How very good of you to come!” Morel said. “How wonderful! How quickly can we get on our way? I have a few things to pack, it shouldn’t amount to more than a short ton of cargo in all, and then we can—”
“Ahem,” Upwright said. “Ahem.” When this seemed to fail to achieve the desired effect, he turned to face Martin-8 with one raised eyebrow. “Ahem,” he said.
“Pleaze, Mr. Upwright, may I introduze Franz Morel?”
Morel frowned in confusion. The new man didn’t know who he was?
“You’ve come to take me back, yes?” the erstwhile dictator inquired. “I’m being released. That’s why you’re here.”
In his head he could see no other reason for this unexpected and unprecedented visit. Clearly he had been forgiven by the people back home. Most likely, Morel’s successor had proved so unequal to the task of actually running a country that the people had clamored to have their beloved Morel back. There could be no other explanation—
“Mr. Upwright will be a guezt here,” Martin-8 droned. “On a permanent baziz.”
“A guest,” Morel said.
“Yez, zir.”
“Here.”
“Yez, zir.”
Upwright leaned forward, looming over Morel. “I know you. I’ve heard about you,” he said. “I’ve heard a great deal about … you.”
Morel glanced back and forth between the robot and the newcomer. He didn’t understand. Not at all.
“You,” Upwright said, lifting one very long finger and pointing it squarely in Morel’s direction, “are the Butcher of Fluoristan. You’re the one who ordered the pre-emptive execution of the Humanist Congress. You’re the fellow who had an entire regiment of your own soldiers flogged because they failed to meet dress code.”
“Don’t forget,” Martin-8 intoned, “the inzident with the zchoolbuz.”
“Quite,” Upwright said. “The … school bus.”
Morel squirmed inside his robe. “War,” he protested. “You know. Accidents.”
“You,” Upwright said, “are the most hated man in history. You are a villain, sir. A monster of religious proportions. That is to say, a creature so vile, so despised, that in future I fully expect you to be written into the official text of various religions. Specifically, written in as an example of what not to do.”
Morel smiled. He had a very good, very practiced smile. It was a smile that, once upon a time, had sent entire crowds into a frenzy of applause and cheering.
Perhaps he was out of practice.
“You, robot,” Upwright said. “This is unacceptable. You expect me to spend the—I am certain the very short, but meaningfully long—span of my exile here? With this man? You expect me to spend one more moment in his presence?”
“I am afraid the conditionz of your zentence—” Martin-8 began, but clearly Upwright had more to say.
“Why, simply being within a hundred kilometers of this … this organism, which I dare not give the noble name of man, must be considered highly unusual and innovatively cruel punishment—”
“What’s he in for?” Morel asked the robot.
“They called it the National Paztry Day Mazzacre,” Martin-8 replied.
Morel licked his lips.
“Massacre—”
Upwright’s face turned a bright purple. His eyes vibrated with rage.
“Those nuns were known counter-revolutionaries!” he roared.
EVENTUALLY IT GOT through the rather thick skull of Franz Morel that he was no longer alone. That he would not be, from here out, the only human resident of VZ-61a. The basic facts of the case drilled their way into his worldview.
The meaning of those facts, the subtle implications, were to work themselves out over time. First, though, he announced that the newcomer must be tired after his long journey, and therefore he must be given refreshment. Martin-8 acquiesced at once, preparing a full banquet of welcome. Dinner was served in the ver
y best of the Presidential Palace’s seven dining halls. The one that would seat fifty. The walls were hung with campaign banners, some from battles and wars Morel had actually won, some from the victories and conquests he only claimed in the official histories. The silver service reflected the light of a thousand candles and the napkins were freshly starched and folded perfectly.
Upwright entered the room with his hands clasped behind his back. He took one look, lifted his chin, and sniffed in disdain.
Morel hurried to indicate a chair near the head of the table. Near it. He took the place of honor for himself, of course. Once they were seated, he snapped his fingers and Martin-8 rushed in from the kitchen, bearing platter after platter of steaming food.
“So,” Morel said. “You’ve been exiled.”
Upwright lifted one shoulder in a shrug that required only the minimum of muscular contraction. “I prefer to think of it as an involuntary period of reflection, before the full reinstatement of my plenary powers,” he said. “I am certain that within the space of a month—likely less than that—the officials of the People’s Party will come to their senses and recognize that I did nothing wrong, that I have never done anything wrong, that my motives were of the purest and my decisions were based, always, on the best possible information available at the time. In short, I will be exonerated, cleared of all charges, there will be public apologies, there will be a formal reception upon my return, there will be—”
“Chop?” Morel asked, lifting the bell of a silver platter, revealing a mountain of succulent and perfectly sauced cuts of something that was not, in fact, pork, but which wore a cunning disguise as such.
Upwright’s nose twitched. “I am a strict vegetarian,” he insisted. “Please cover that up. It borders on the offensive.”
Morel replaced the bell. Though not, he told himself, because he’d been told to do so. Only to make sure the chops stayed warm.
“In fact,” Upwright said, “as I am to be a prisoner here, I believe I shall take this opportunity to demonstrate solidarity with all political prisoners everywhere. I shall have toasted bread and water, please.”
Martin-8 zipped off to comply.
Morel squinted at his new companion. “I’m not sure I’ve ever met a trustworthy vegetarian,” he said. “There’s always something wrong with a fellow who doesn’t enjoy a good, bloody steak.”
Upwright straightened the cutlery arrayed before him. “Is that what you told General Ugholini, when you forced him to eat the heart of his own beloved lieutenant?”
Morel chewed on his mustache.
He was at a disadvantage, here. Upwright seemed to know all about his exploits, whereas he knew nothing whatsoever of the newcomer’s curriculum vitae. This was, of course, a simple accident of timing. Morel had been exiled seven and one half years earlier. At the time, Tolliver Upwright had been little more than a party apparatchik, a rising star in the revolutionary government of the last major nation Morel had not yet gotten around to conquering.
Upwright’s rise had been nothing short of meteoric. By the classic pincer move of (a) endlessly, tirelessly proving his purity and devotion to the Party’s ideals, and (b) knowing whose throats he could safely and without consequence cut, Upwright had quickly found himself at the very center of a tidy cult of personality and had been made the First Citizen of his nation by the time he was thirty. His people had loved him dearly (or else) and the Party had heaped accolades and encomia upon him, right up until the moment of his exile.
It was a testament to Upwright’s bloody, brutal efficiency that the nation he helped create was a model of bureaucratic effectiveness. Deposing Franz Morel had required a prolonged and costly battle that left his capital city (also called Morelograd) in ruins. When the time came, however, to remove Upwright from power, the Party had simply had to submit a single form, properly notarized and copied in triplicate. By name, a Party Inner Circle Eyes Only Form 57/J: Authorization for Removal/Assassination/Usurpation of High Official. The only small hang-up with the entire process had been that some anonymous clerk had made a typo on the form. Said person had meant to make a very large, emphatic X in the box marked Summary Execution Preferably Including Public Spectacle, but had instead managed to check the box that read Permanent Exile. The Party Secretary had passed on the form without actually reading it, and so the life of Tolliver Upwright had been spared.
“Hmm,” Morel said. Knowing none of this, only that he had been caught out.
“Hm,” Upwright said, more succinctly.
Martin-8 arrived with a new platter almost at once. It bore a stainless steel rack of toast soldiers and a glass bottle of still water.
“That’s fine,” Upwright said, using a silver fork to snag one of the toast triangles. He laid it down on his porcelain plate and stared at it for a while. “A fitting meal for a prisoner of conscience. I think that the statement I’m making here is clear.”
Morel spooned caviar onto a blini. “Absolutely,” he said.
Upwright nodded. He poked at the piece of toast with his fork. His mouth pursed up in distaste, however, and he employed his knife to dissect the piece of half-burned bread.
“These aren’t caraway seeds, are they?” he asked.
They almost certainly were not—technically. Martin-8 made do with what he had available on VZ-61a, a world which possessed no great wealth of culinary raw materials. It was a triumph of technology that the robot was able to convert the local bacteria, slime molds, and fungi into something resembling human food. Whether or not the robot was proud of its ability to construct things that looked like caraway seeds would forever remain unknown, however, as Upwright did not provide him a chance to answer the question.
“I can’t have caraway seeds in my bread,” the former Party Official said. “They get stuck in my teeth. And this water. I assume it has been double filtered? Was it secured from a sustainable source? It looks a bit gray to me.”
“Zir,” Martin-8 said, whisking the offending foodstuffs away from the table.
When the robot was gone, Upwright drummed his fingers on the table in an impatient way. “I suppose there’s no chance of getting decent food here.”
“You could go on a hunger strike,” Morel pointed out. “That might make an even bolder statement than bread and water.”
Upwright stared at him through dramatically narrowed eyes.
“Hmm,” he said.
It was Morel’s turn to prove that brevity was the soul of wit. “Hm,” he said. And forked the largest of the chops onto his plate.
AFTER THE BANQUET was finished, the two of them went for a stroll. Morel desired to show off the grandeur of Morelograd, his capital and home. It didn’t take very long. The city was dominated utterly by the Presidential Palace, by far the largest building on VZ-61a. Beyond the precincts of the palace, the city possessed only the one main square and the four roads which radiated from it. There were a number of buildings of tastefully restrained architecture facing the palace, but these structures possessed a common flaw which Upwright, to Morel’s embarrassment, was quick to point out.
“They’re façades,” Upwright said.
In fact, the buildings were all front. Designed cunningly to look like complete houses, banks, factories and schools from one side—the side that faced the palace—there was nothing to them when they were viewed from other angles, just flat faces propped up with long wooden buttresses from behind.
Essentially two-dimensional in nature, these buildings served only to present Morel, in the palace, with a stately view.
“But then where am I to live, while I’m here?” Upwright asked.
“I’ll find some place for you in the palace,” Morel said. “I only ever really use seven of the twenty bedrooms. One a day, rotating each week, so I always have clean sheets.”
“You expect me to sleep in that rococo nightmare?” Upwright asked. “I should think all the gilt and ormolu and baroque tchotchkes would invade my dreams. I would wake up every morning thinking
I was drowning in chintz.”
Morel took a deep breath. He understood that not everyone shared his decorating sense. He did not, actually, understand why, but he supposed people were people and by definition perverse.
Still.
It was becoming rapidly clear to him that a situation was brewing, here. One which he was going to have to nip in the bud.
“Perhaps the time has come to discuss how you’re going to fit in here,” Morel said. “What position you’ll fill. I’ve been operating for some time with a reduced staff, and it would be good to fill some of the vacant seats. Martin-8 does his best as chief of staff, press secretary, and bodyguard, but honestly, he lacks initiative and vision. You could help round out the body politic, as it were.”
“Is that a fact?” Upwright asked.
“Indeed. I find myself in need of a Minister of Propaganda, for instance. Do you think you could bring something unique to the role?”
“Minister,” Upwright said. “Minister.”
“I admit it’s asking a lot. The requirements of the post may be taxing, and I’m afraid the hours will be long. It is a position with great responsibilities—but also excellent perks. You would have the ear of the highest office in the land, for instance. Unfettered access to my glorious self.”
“How exciting,” Upwright replied. “Though I wonder if—perhaps—I might challenge a supposition.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” Upwright said. “What exactly makes you think that you’re in charge, here?”
“I beg your pardon?” Morel asked. Dim as he was, he honestly didn’t understand what Upwright was asking.
“You have assumed, sir, that I would be interested in playing your subordinate. I don’t see why I should just acknowledge your preeminence. Perhaps I intend to be the leader of this world. You, of course, would be my constituent.”