They caught him when the crowd was slow, for then he was too small and weak to force his way through. His size was no longer an advantage, the Swipe was no help to him, and he found himself sprawled on the ground with a savagely spiked shoe on his hand. Even so he was not afraid of pain: he ripped his hand away and, despite the agony of flayed skin and torn-open veins, he almost scrambled away into the crowd before they caught him, ankle and wrist, and cuffed and shackled him.
“Tough little bastard,” said one of Mother's Little Boys.
“Why are you chasing me?”
“Because you ran. We always figure that anybody who runs should probably be caught.” But he was lying. They had orders to take Jason Worthing alive, at all costs. Whose orders? Hartman Torrock's? Radamand Worthing's? Not that the answer made much difference. He should have gone to the Colonies with Mother. He had gambled everything on the chance of turning a foul future into something better; he had lost.
But it was neither Radamand nor Tork who came to take him into custody. It was a short, stout, balding man who ordered them to unshackle him, and to cuff them together. The invisible field kept their wrists within a meter of each other.
“I hope you don't mind,” said his captor. “I wouldn't want to lose you again, after going to all this trouble. His hand is bleeding. Anyone have a healer?”
Someone passed a healer over Jase's hand, and the blood coagulated and the flow stopped. In the meantime, the short man introduced himself. “I'm Abner Doon, and I'm the closest thing to a friend you're likely to find in this world. I have every intention of exploiting you unmercifully to carry out my own plans, but at least while you're with me you're safe from Cousin Rademand and Hartman Torrock.”
How much did this man know? Jase looked within his mind and saw: everything.
“I was asleep until you took that second test,” said Doon.
“But when you got half right a question whose answer wasn't known to but a handful of physicists, who weren't too sure themselves— well, the Sleephouse people wakened me. They have their instructions. I wouldn't have missed you for the world.”
They went to an official highway, which Doon entered merely by palming the door, the way anyone else might board a worm. A private car was waiting. Jase was impressed, and willingly got inside.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“A question I've been trying to answer since adolescence. I finally decided I was neither God nor Satan. I was so disappointed I didn't try to narrow it down any further.”
Jase probed his mind. The man was an assistant minister of colonization. He also believed he ruled the world. And, upon further examination, Jase realized it was true. Even Radamand, for all his machinations, would have been awed at what Abner Doon controlled. Even Mother—not Jase's mother, but Mother, the ruler of Capitol—even she was his pawn. It was not the world he ruled. He could twitch, and half the universe would tremble. And yet he was almost utterly unknown. Jase looked him in the eyes and laughed.
Doon smiled back. “It's flattering that I've had as much power as I have, for as long as I've had it, and yet a good-hearted boy can look into my heart and still laugh.”
It was true. There were no murders in Doon's memory. Dwelling in his mind was not the agony that being Radamand had been. Doon did not live to shape the world to his convenience. He was shaping the world, but what he had in mind was not at all convenient.
“I've always wondered what it would be like to have a friend from whom I could keep no secrets,” said Doon. “Have you noticed yet your stupid blunder at the Colonies office? You proved you were a Swipe to the counter man. Now I have to put him under somec and wake him up with a old bubble, so he doesn't remember it. It's very unkind of you to clutter up other people's lives that way.”
“I'm sorry,” said Jase. But he also knew that this was Doon's way of telling him that his mistakes were being covered for. He felt better.
“Oh, by the way, speaking of somec, your mother wrote you a note before she went under.”
Jase saw in Doon's mind the memory of his mother handing over a paper, her face stained with tears, yet her lips smiling as Jase had not often see her smile. He clutched at the paper, read it despite the trembling of his hands.
“Abner Doon explained everything to me. About Radamand, and the school. I love you and forgive you and I think I won't be crazy anymore.”
It was her handwriting. Jase shuddered in relief.
“I thought you'd want to know that.”
Jase read the note again, and then they arrived. They went directly from the car into a short hall, and from the hall into a forest.
This was no park. The grass underfoot was real, the squirrels gamboling on the trunks of the trees were not mechanicals, even the smell was perfect, with not a hint of plastic in the air. The door closed behind them. Doon turned off the cuffs. Jason stepped away from him, looked up into a sky for the first time in his life. No ceiling. No roof at all. He was afraid he might fall. How could people stand to live without a roof overhead?
“Dazzling, isn't it?” asked Doon. “Of course, there is a ceiling—all of Capitol has a ceiling—but the illusion is well done, isn't it.”
Jase looked away from the sky and back to Doon.
“Why did you save me? What am I to you?”
“I thought Swipes didn't have to ask questions,” answered Doon. To Jase's surprise, he was undressing, shedding clothing as he led the way deeper into the woods. They came to the largest open body of water Jase had ever seen in his life, nearly fifty meters across. “Swim?” asked Doon. He was naked now, and he was not stout. The bulk had come from protective clothing. Doon poked the armor gently with his foot. “There are those who want me dead.”
Of course there were. Doon did not have Radamand's advantage of knowing other men's desires and secrets, to bribe and blackmail perfectly.
“My cousin Radamand will be one of them, as long as you keep me alive.”
Doon laughed. “Oh, Radamand. He's due for his next sleep in the next few weeks. He's a loathsome sort of man, and he's not that much use to me anymore. I doubt he'll ever wake up.”
Jase was horrified to realized that it was true. Abner Doon could cause the Sleephouse to kill a man. The one unshakable verity of life in Capitol was this: the Sleephouse could not be corrupted. And yet Abner Doon's influence reached even there.
“Swim?” asked Doon again, walking into the water.
“I don't know how.”
“Of course not. I'll teach you.”
Jase undressed and followed the man uncertainly into the water. He could see that Doon meant nothing but good toward him. Doon was a man that he could trust. So he followed Doon out until the water was almost to their necks. Doon and he were nearly the same height.
“Water is actually a very safe medium of locomotion,” Doon said. Jase only noticed that it was cold. “Now here, my hand is against your back. Lean back against my hand. Now let your legs just come loose from the ground, just relax. I can hold you.”
Suddenly Jase felt very light, and as he relaxed he felt his body bobbing lightly on the surface, only the gentle pressure of Doon's hand under him to remind him of gravity.
Then the world turned upside down, Abner Doon had a backbreaking hold on him, and Jase's face suddenly plunged under the water. He gulped, swallowed; his eyes stung; he desperately needed a breath, and dared not take it. He struggled to come up, but couldn't break the hold. He struggled, he twisted, he tried to strike with his hands and feet, but he did not come to the surface until Doon pulled him up. And in all that time, Doon had meant nothing but good for him. Doon had intended no harm. If this is love, thought Jase, God help me—or is it that Doon is somehow able to lie to me, even in his own mind?
“Don't cough,” said Doon. “It splashes water everywhere.”
“What was that for?” demanded Jase.
“It was an object lesson. To show you what it feels like to be in something over your head.”
“I already knew how it felt.”
“Now you know even better.” And Doon calmly proceeded with the swimming lesson.
Jase caught on quickly, at least to something as simple as a backfloat. The pseudo-sun was setting, and the sky turned gently pink. Jase lay on his back in the water, stroking the surface just enough to keep moving, just enough to stay afloat. “I've never seen a sunset before.”
“Believe me, that isn't how sunsets look on Capitol. The sky of this planet is greasy and dank. Sunset topside is downright purple. Orange is noon. Blue sky is impossible.”
“What does this place imitate, then?”
“My home world,” said Doon. Jase caught his memories, and they were of the planet Garden. Indeed, this room was only an imitation of a tiny comer of the place. Jason could see Doon's longing for the rolling hills, the thick groves of trees, the open meadows.
“Why did you ever leave it?” asked Jase. “Why did you come here?”
Power is the only gift I have, thought Doon. Jason followed his thoughts. How to get power, how to use it, how to destroy it. A human being can only go where his gifts are useful. Capitol is the place where I must be. However much I hate it. However much I long to destroy it. Capitol is my dwelling place, at least for now.
Then, suddenly, Doon's thoughts changed. Jase heard him in the distance, getting out of the water. Jase tried to swim toward shore, but he was awkward and slow, and when he tried to stand the lake was too deep, and he only just recovered himself enough to return to the backstroke. Swimming—staying afloat, in fact took so much of Jase's concentration, especially now that he was afraid—that he could spare little of his attention to probe in Doon's mind. That was why he taught me. That was why he brought me here. To distract me so I wouldn't know what he had in mind. So I couldn't predict his every move. He fooled me, and now what does he have in mind, what trap has he set for me?
When at last he reached the shore, Doon was disappearing through a door in the garden wall. Jase looked desperately into his thoughts, searching for danger, and found waiting for him Doon's knowledge of the Estorian twick. A small marsupial with teeth like razors. He saw Doon's memory of the little animal leaping at lightning speed onto the udders of a cow before the beast so much as noticed it was there. The twick hung there for a moment by its claws, then disappeared, boring upward and inward into the cow's body, blood gouting from the wound. The cow only then reacted, it had happened so quickly. It shuddered, ran a few steps, then dropped to the ground and died. The twick crawled slowly from the cow's mouth, panting and sluggish and bloated. Jase had read about twicks too and knew something of their habits. Knew too that twicks had wiped out the first colony on Estoria, and even now they were only restrained by ultrasonic fences that kept them confined to reservations.
Why was Doon thinking of Estorian twicks? Because he was releasing one into the park right now. The only prey the twick would want was Jase, and Jase was naked and unarmed beside the lake. Yet still in Doon's mind, Jase could find nothing but goodwill. That frightened him more than anything else—that Doon meant well for him, and yet had no idea how Jase would survive the attack of the little beast.
Already the twick was perched on a branch not twenty meters off. Jase stood absolutely still, remembering that twicks rely mostly on smell and sound and motion to identify prey. He tried, desperately, to think of a weapon. He pictured himself picking up one of the stones from the lake's shore, and as he tried to bring it down on the twick, the little animal would leap up and eat his hand in mid-stroke.
The twick moved. So quickly that Jase hardly saw the motion, except that now the twick was in the grass, and only ten meters off.
Jase's hand throbbed where it had been torn under his captor's boot. The smell of blood is on me, he realized. The twick will come for me whether I move or not.
The twick moved again. It was two meters off. Jase tried desperately to see into the animal's mind. It was not hard to get the fuzzy view the beast had of the world, but it was impossible to make sense of the welter of urges. He would not know what the twick meant to do until it happened. Jase could not use the Swipe, and had no other weapon.
Suddenly Jase felt an excruciating pain in his left calf. He reached down to pry the animal off. For a moment the twick clung, still boring into his leg; then it wriggled out and immediately was burrowing into the muscle of Jase's upper arm. The leg gushed blood. Jase screamed and struck at the animal with his left hand. Every blow landed, but it did no good.
I'm going to die, Jase shouted in his mind.
But his survival instinct was still strong, despite the terrible pain and worse fear. Like a reflex he realized that the twick would simply jump from target to target on Jase's body. It was only a matter of time until it hit a vital artery, or until it found the boneless cavity of his abdomen and devoured his bowels. But with each gram of flesh it ate, the twick would grow more sluggish. If Jase could only manage to stay alive, the twick would gradually lose its frenzied speed. But Jase too was growing weaker as the blood flowed out of him through two great wounds. And he had no weapon, even if the twick were slow.
He threw himself to the ground, trying hopelessly to crush the animal under the weight of his body. Of course the twick was uninjured—its skeleton was flexible, and it sprung back to shape as soon as Jase rolled off.
But it had stopped eating for a moment, was not attached to Jase's body, and it would be slower now. Jase scrambled to his feet and began to run.
With a wound in his leg, he was slower too, and before he got three steps away, the twick struck. But Jase's back was to it now, and the animal only dug into the muscles under the shoulder blade.
Jase threw himself to the ground, backward. This time the twick made a sharp sound and scurried a little farther away. Jase tried to run again, skirting the edge of the lake. This time he managed a dozen staggering steps before the twick clutched at his buttocks and began tearing at him again. Jase broke stride, fell to one knee. The lake was only a meter away. I can't swim with all these wounds, thought Jase. Oh well, the coldly intellectual part of his mind answered. Maybe the twick can't, either.
He crawled toward the water, dragging his left leg, for the twick had severed the great muscles of the thigh, and the leg would not respond to him, except with agony. Jase reached the water just as the animal struck bone.
It was impossible for Jase to float. He just crouched under the water, holding his breath forever, trying to ignore the agony pulsing from his buttocks, from his leg, from his arm, from his back. He could feel the twick burrowing along the edge of his pelvic bone. His analytic mind noted the fact that this was taking the animal away from the vulnerable anal areas. Muscles can heal. I can live. Muscles can heal. The repetition kept him underwater despite the pain, despite his lungs bursting for air.
The twick slowed. It emerged from Jase's body at the hip. Immediately Jase grabbed it, fumbled for its neck. The twick was slow, and Jase had it by the throat, crushingly. Now Jase let himself rise from the water enough to take a breath, still holding the twick under. The air came like fire into his lungs, and he almost immediately fell forward into the water again. But he did not let go of the slowly wriggling twick. His hands, if anything, held it tighter. He struggled with his elbows and one good leg to drag himself toward shore again. The water became shallow enough that he could keep his head above the surface without trying to stand. The twick vomited and the water went black-red with Jase's undigested blood and flesh. Then, at last, the twick stopped moving.
Jase found the strength to fling the limp animal out toward the middle of the lake. Then he fell forward, onto the shore, his face slapping into the mud, his bleeding leg and buttocks and hip still under the water. Help, he thought. I'll die, he thought. After a moment he gave up trying to turn his thoughts into words. He only lay there, feeling the blood rush out of him, filling up the lake, touching every shore of the lake, until it was all red, all part of him, and there was nothing left in his body at all
, nothing inside him now at all.
4. The Devil Himself
There were tasks, as winter came on, that books must wait for, even though Lared's book work was bringing money to the family; The coming of snow was not taken lightly, and all hands were needed to be sure of food and fuel enough for the season. Especially now, when they knew there was no protection; since the coming of pain, any dark thing was possible. So each day when Lared awoke he did not know whether today would be spent twitching his fingers to move a pen or bending his whole body into some heavy task. There were days when he hoped for one, and days when he hoped for the other; but regardless of what he hoped for, he worked hard at whatever the day required. Even when the story that he wrote was painful; even when the tale was held in memories of dreams that had been near unbearable when they came.
The first snowfall began late on the afternoon of the day Lared wrote the story of Jase and the battle with the twick. The snow had threatened all day; the sky was so dark that Jason had lit a candle at noon to light the page for Lared's work. But now that part of the tale was told, and Lared was already putting away the pen and ink when the sound of the tinker's cart could be heard above the ringing of Father's hammer in the forge. It was the old saying— the coming of the tinker is the coming of the snow. Actually, as everyone knew, Whitey the tinker came several times a year, but always arranged it so he'd reach Flat Harbor before the first hard snow.
Jason looked up from blotting the new ink on the parchment with a linen cloth, for Sala was stuttering up the stairs—both feet hitting each step, she was so short. “The tinker's come,” she shouted, “the tinker's come! And there's snow on the ground today!”
It was worth a little rejoicing, that something in the world still worked as it should. Lared closed his pen box. Jason set aside the parchment. So small and fine was Lared's writing, so economical of words, that the first sheepskin was not yet full.
The Worthing Saga Page 9