"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 dby 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 masterkey, and this note should take care of that." Hort scribbled a quick note. "He'll 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 mindtaping. The brain patterns that held all his memories and all his personality were now in a cassette securely stored in the ship's 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!"
WHEN NO ONE REMEMBERS HIS NAME, DOES GOD RETIRE?
Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.
This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sbrrow.
-- Isaiah 50:11
The prophet, Amblick, lay dying on a bed they had laid out on the floor of the room the government had provided rent-free for their meetings. He was more than a century old, and since the Church of the Undying Voice had only a few dozen members left, and none of them had professed to hear the Voice, it was plain that the church was also dying; that there would be no prophet to tell them the Way any longer.
Amblick knew it. The congregation knew it. There was little to say as Amblick lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling with its hidden lights and aging acoustic tiles. His century had been long; he had heard the Voice first when he was fifteen, and had been prophet for ninety-four years. If he had been a better servant of the Voice, he knew, the church would not have shrunk to such straits. He felt guilty and ashamed, but more than that he felt tired. A relentless century in which society had been mockingly indifferent. Preach all you like, the government seemed to say, we'll even give you a meeting place, but you'll make no converts, change no lives. Speak on and publish as you will, the world of Capitol seemed to urge, we'll tolerate you, we'll smile kindly, and for amusement some of us will invite you to visit with us during a waking, but we will not repent and give up somec or give up sex or give up lifeloops or games or war or politics or the petty murders of competitive business.
"So much to be done," said Amblick, "but the ocean of sin sweeps over me, and I have done nothing."
No, murmured his followers. You have been a great man.
But one person watching did not murmur comfort. He did not understand that the dying old man might need comfort. Nor did he see or understand that the death of one man was the death of a faith. Garol Stipock was seven. And Amblick was his great-grandfather, a relation so distant that Garol had always confused references to God or the Voice with his great-grandfather, whose voice seemed to come from everywhere when he spoke and whose eyes hinted at the wisdom that knew all things, had created all things, and could, eventually, accomplish all things.
So it did not occur to Garol that Amblick needed help to go peacefully out of life; it was Garol who needed help.
"Old Father," Garol said, and Amblick and the others looked at him. "Old Father, if you die, who will tell us the words of the Voice?"
Old Father looked sad, and the adults there were embarrassed that a child should bring up the one question they were all trying to avoid. "The Voice chooses his own vessel," Amblick answered softly, his voice bubbling with the liquid in his lungs.
"But Old Father," Garol persisted, and the, adults longed for a way to silence him (but they could not, because children were pure tools of God's hand, and it was fitting, anyway, that Amblick's life should end with the hard questions, and not dodge them), "Old Father, what if the Voice chooses no one? What if no one is worthy?"
"Then," said Amblick, "No one will hear the Voice."
Garol had known this was the answer, and it was a thought too terrible for him to face. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he said, "Old Father, can't you then give us the last words of the Voice so we'll know how to live after you're gone?"
And Amblick sighed and sank into the, pillows and wondered if the Voice had ever really existed after all. Certainly there had been no words lately, nothing but a feeling of despair and impending doom. But then, wasn't that a sign that the Voice indeed had been real, since now that he needed it so desperately, it had withdrawn itself?
Itself? No, himself. And Amblick tried to grasp and hold to at least the modicum of truth that had told him the Voice was not just an ethereal source of inspiration but was rather a person of some kind. Hold to something, he told himself, and then he cried out with the bubbling in his lungs filling his voice, "Oh, God, where are you? Where is the wall that covers your face? Why do you hide silently in the noise of this world!"
And the congregation sat or stood upright, their eyes riveted on Amblick; the scribes ready to write down every word he uttered. For they knew this voice-- it was the voice of the Voice, and Amblick would, as the boy had asked, give them the last words of God before he died.
"The tigers rage in the forest, and the lions roar on the plain, and the voice of the hunter shall be silent." The pens leaped across the paper, writing. "The hunter shall now watch and wait, for those that sleep will soon never waken, and the tigers shall tear the lion's belly even as the lion rips the tigers' throats.
"Those who borrow from the future must repay, and they will pay in blood and horror and the stars shall go dark, and in the darkness on every world shall man discover again his God, wondering how he could ever have forgotten him in the bright times when the stars were handfuls of gems to be bought and sold. In the darkness will I speak again, because men would not hear me in the light.
"As for my servant Amblick, he was the weakest of all my servants, and yet when he dies the last strength shall go out of the world. Only one of you shall
live to see the end. And that one shall not know whether his God won or lost the final battle."
And then Amblick fell silent, and the pens chased his last words and at last came to rest on the periods, and then Amblick reached out to Garol Stipock and embraced him, as if to thank him for demanding the last words of the Voice, and it was thus Garol Stipock who first felt the stiffening and then the relaxing of the hands and arms and knew that the prophet, Amblick, was dead.
They took the body and gave it to the machines, which gave them back ashes and let them pour the ashes into the garden of life. And then they all went home.
Garol's parents had made their decision, and so had made his. With Amblick gone, they decided that the religion could only be followed privately; the preaching and the publication (and, not coincidentally, the constant embarrassment and ostracism) were over. God would be their secret; the neighbors could find their own way without the preaching of the Way.
Not all the congregation reached that decision. Many of them kept holding meetings for a while. One of them even claimed to have the Voice, but when he dictated revelation the scribes refused to write it because there was no ring of truth in it and it didn't burn them with the fire of life as Amblick's words. had. But eventually there was nothing more to say in the meetings, and eventually there was no more money being contributed; when believers lose their faith, their purses discover the fact even before their hearts and minds do.
Amblick's Church of the Undying Voice died only four years after he did. And Garol Stipock, who was then eleven, did not even know it had lasted that long.
Without the congregation to buoy them, Garol's parents soon began to compromise with Capitol; the long war was over. First it was the decision to send Garol to school. He was eight years old when he started, but he learned so quickly that within six months he was caught up to the children his own age, and by the time he was ten he was studying material that bright fourteen-year-olds had trouble with.
His parents made other compromises, too. The first compromise was a quiet one in their own bedroom, where they began taking the medicine that would let them use sex for something other than procreation. The next compromise was a move to a different sector, where they were strangers, and they began to go to parties and invite friends over and Garol's father even joined a group of gamers and Garol's mother became a gourmet cook of sorts. They thought Garol was so young the didn't notice. But he noticed, and though it was not in his nature to say anything, his parents' apostasy shook him to the foundation.
At first he thought his parents had betrayed the faith and wavered between hating them for their infidelity and fearing that God would strike them down.
But, God didn't strike them down, and after a few years Garol discovered that his parents were still decent, good people, and about this time Garol discovered science.
At first it was geology, with the pictures of rocks. He had never seen a rock in his life. To him even granite was a gem, and he lovingly fondled the school's samples of rocks as if just touching them could give him an understanding of a planet and what made it live.
Then it was biology, the endless variety of plants and animals working together to form one vast, planetwide organism. It struck Garol's sense of beauty more than it stimulated his scientific curiosity-- there were few mysteries in biology anymore, and Garol studied it only until he knew how it worked.
And then he found the field where the mysteries still endured: physics. And though he was locked into a planet where nothing grew that was not forced to grow, and where nature was utterly defeated, he became a pioneer for the colony ships. Surely there must be a way to learn, before a ship ever landed on a planet, exactly what mineral deposits there were, and where; exactly what kind of animal life there was, and which animals could be safely killed for food; and what the weather and climate patterns were. His goal was to create a way for an orbiting ship to know everything the colonists would need to know before they landed-- so that the best possible landing site could be chosen, and all necessary precautions could be taken. He was an eclectic-- he knew the questions in other fields that only physics could answer.
He was fifteen and a college graduate when he began his serious work. His professors in his graduate school were uneasy at having a student so young, and their uneasiness turned to outrage when they discovered that he was designing, of all things, machines.
"Mr. Stipock," said the dean to the young man who was quietly listening and obviously not paying the slightest attention, "we are concerned because you seem to be wasting your time with toys."
Garol looked surprised. "Not toys," he said. "Tools."
"Physics is a theoretical science, a mathematical manipulation of the universe, Mr. Stipock. Not a field for magic boxes."
"But Dr. Whickit," Garol protested, "I have to measure minute amounts of radiation. That means I have to have a tool to measure it. And there isn't any such tool."
"If you want to make tools, perhaps you should be in a different program. A technical school."
And Stipock laughed. It was an unnerving laugh, and Whickit was offended. "Dr. Whickit," Garol said, "if you really believe physics is a mathematical game, why do you persist in using data acquired from the telescopes and the accellerators? It isn't the fact that I'm working with tools that bothers you, is it? It's the fact that I know how to ask questions for which there are no tools to get the answers-- and that I am daring to make those tools. If I were so unscientific as to be a psychologist, I'd speculate that you were a bit envious and felt threatened. And since I've already made my tool and it works very well, I'd be perfectly delighted for you to expel me from this university, and I'll just go to Sector H-88 to publish my papers and patent the machines."
Whickit was furious; he shouted, he resented, he plotted, he undermined. But Stipock had already won. His tools did all he meant them to, and Whickit quickly discovered that the administration would trade twenty Whickits for one Stipock any day.
And they offered Stipock somec.
"We need to keep you alive," the Sleeproom people said. "You're one of the ten or twenty most valuable minds in this century. We need to let you live for centuries so you can help answer the questions that arise then."
Stipock said no. "I'm working on several projects that no one can complete except me, and if they could I wouldn't want them to. Come see me when the projects are finished."
The Sleeproom people weren't used to being refused, but his reasons were plausible, and he was only fifteen, and so they waited.
But Garol's reasons were not what he said they were.
"Mother," he said. "Father. They've offered me somec."
He watched his parents carefully. Somec was the worst sin of all the sins of Capitol, and Amblick and the other prophets had condemned it as the Souldestroyer, the Hatemaker, Somec the Lifestealer. Garol knew enough science to know that God was impossible; knew enough of life to know that no one believed in God and few enough remembered he had ever existed in people's hearts. But all that knowledge had never undone the structure of his childhood: sex for pleasure was still unthinkable, somec was still a sin.
And so he watched his parent to see if they, too, still held on to a measure of the old faith.
"Somec?" asked his father. "What level?"
"Seven under, one up."
"That's high," his mother said.
His father looked at his mother for a moment, and then, rather awkwardly, he asked, "Garol, I understand that someone who's at that high a level can choose several close family members to go on somec with him at the same level, so that his life isn't too disrupted."
"Yes," his mother said. "And we're all the family you have."
Their eyes were bright with hope, and Garol felt the last of the religion crash down inside himself. He felt angry, betrayed, hurt; but all he said was, "Of course. I won't be going on for a few years, but you can come with me."
"A few years?" asked his mother. "Why?"
"I have work to do."<
br />
His, father coughed, looked a little upset. "It's your right, I suppose. But remember, Garol, that while you're still young, we're getting a bit on in years."
Garol did nothing to show his contempt. The next day he went to the Sleeproom and told them that he would go on somec in three years, but he wanted his parents to go on somec now.
"But Mr. Stipock," said the man at the Sleeproom, "they can only go on somec at precisely the same level as you. So if they went on now and you went on in three years, they would never see you again. They'd always be asleep when you awoke, and vice-versa."
Garol tapped the desk. "Draw it up, and I'll sign it."
They drew it up, he signed it, and his parents went to the Sleeproom happily, knowing that they were the envy of all their friends. They hadn't even asked whether Garol would be awake when they awoke. Perhaps they merely took it for granted and would be terribly disappointed. But Garol simply assumed they didn't care. And neither, he pretended, did he.
The Stipock Low-Density Radiation Counter was a revolution in physics. Now, because an extremely sensitive machine could detect infinitesimal amounts of radiation from the most inert elements, it was possible to analyze practically to the molecule the makeup of any sample-- whether it was a small rock or the light from a star millions of light-years away.
Garol's new work was more that of a cataloguer than of a scientist-- but he was unable to perceive much difference between theory and practice of science, and saw no contradiction in it. He set up the programs for the Stipock Geologer, which would analyze planets from orbit and lay out incredibly detailed maps of metals, ores, and topography; the Stipock Ecologer, which analyzed the lifesystem of a planet in a single orbit; and the Stipock Climate Analyzer, which could predict weather for a year in advance with fair accuracy, and climatic trends for centuries with near perfect accuracy. It would take years to make the machines work well, but once Garol's groundwork was done, the details could be fleshed out by thousands of much less talented researchers.
It was not work that involved Garol's mind completely, and it seemed to those few who knew him at all well that he seemed determined to keep his mind as disengaged as possible. He asked the wife of a professor to explain sex to him; she did, and they kept practicing for a few weeks before he set out to experience as much of it as possible with as many different partners as possible.
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