He played carefully, and in his dream Lared believed he understood all that Abner did. He engaged in pointless wars and made sure they were badly generaled and stupidly fought—but not so stupidly that there were any crushing defeats. Just attrition, a slow wearing away of the army, of the wealth of the empire.
And within the empire he also began a quiet corrosion. Mismanagement and stupid decisions on industrial production; changes in the civil service to promote corruption; unfair, almost whimsical taxation. And the conquered nations were singled out for harassment. Religious persecution; insistence on the use of the Italian language, discrimination against certain groups in jobs in education; severe restrictions on what could and could not be printed; barriers to travel; confiscation of peasant land and the encouragement of a new aristocracy. In short, he did everything he could to make Nuber's Italy function much the way the Empire did. Only Abner timed and controlled things, watched carefully to be sure that the resentment built gradually, held off rebellions, kept them small and weak, biding his time. I do not want a few geysers, Abner told himself. I want a volcano that will consume the world.
The only thing Nuber's Italy had that Capitol lacked was Catholicism, a binding force, a common faith that bound at least the ruling classes together, ensured they looked out upon the world with a shared vision. The integrity of the Church, that was the one thing they trusted in the corrupt empire that Abner was giving them.
Like somec. Like the Sleephouse. The common hope and faith of all the ruling class of Capitol and the Thousand Worlds. To sleep, and thus live longer than the poor fools who could not qualify. The integrity, the incorruptibility of the keepers of the Sleephouse was the faith of all. If through my accomplishment I truly merit somec, I will have it. It can't be bought, it can't be demanded, it can't be cajoled, it can't be had by fraud. Only recognized achievement It was the only thing that preserved the Empire of the Thousand Worlds, despite the rot that holed and softened it everywhere else. The faith in the final judgment of the Sleephouse, which measured men and women and gave them immortality, if they were worthy.
I will bring you down, thought Abner Doon, and Lared shuddered in his sleep.
It was only a matter of time, then, until Nuber's Italy became ripe. In the meantime, Herman Nuber awoke from his three-year sleep—a noble allotment of somec indeed, to sleep three years for each one year waking—a man could live four hundred years that way. But that was the esteem Nuber had won for himself, with such a creation as Italy.
Of course Nuber tried to buy Italy, so he could play. But Abner wouldn't sell. Nuber's agents were persistent, their offers princely, but Abner had no intention of letting Nuber save Italy. Nuber even tried to strong-arm him, sending hired thugs to frighten him. Abner had too much power in Capitol already, though. The thugs already worked for him, and Abner sent them back to Nuber with instructions to do to him what he had hired them to do to Abner. It seemed only just.
Except it was not just. Nuber could see what Abner was doing to his empire. He was no fool. He had spent seven years of his waking life—twenty-eight years of game time—building Italy into a phenomenon that would stand in the annals of International Games forever. And Abner was destroying it. Not clumsily, but deftly, with exquisite timing and perfect thoroughness. It was not enough to provoke rebellion and reorganization. Abner was provoking revolution and conquest that would erase Italy from the map, utterly destroy it so there was no hope that it would ever rise again. When Abner was through, he meant there to be nothing left for Nuber to buy and rebuild.
At last he judged the time was ripe. Abner did a simple thing, but it was enough: he exposed the secret corruption he had brought into the heart of the Church. The outrage, the loathing it caused tore away the last pretense at legitimacy, even decency, that Nuber's Italy possessed. The computer hardly knew how to cope with this, except with instant, overwhelming revolt. All the grievances in every nation were joined now with the anger of the aristocracy—all classes acted at once, and Italy was undone, the empire fragmented, the armies in mutiny.
It took three days, and it was over. There was no Italy left in the game.
Even Abner was stunned at how well it worked. Of course International Games used simplified patterns, but it was as close to reality as any game could be.
I will do it again, thought Abner. And the pattern unfolded in his mind. The seeds of universal revolution were already there, for the Empire was corrupt to the core, with only the hope of somec holding all in check. Abner's work, then, was to postpone revolution until he was ready, until it would all come at once, until revolution would not merely change the government, but undo everything, even cut the threads that bound world to world. Travel between the stars must end along with everything else, or his destroying would be in vain.
But here fate had been kind to Abner's plans—indeed, he suspected, things might have gone the way I wish them to without my intervention. That was the problem with manipulating reality: there was no way to find out what would have been. Perhaps I make no difference in the world. But then, perhaps I do. And so Abner began the slow process of corrupting the Sleephouse. Allowing quiet murders and manipulations through somec. Allowing sleep levels to be bought with money or power, allowing bubbles of memory to be tampered with or lost, allowing petty princes of crime or capitalism to think they could use the Sleephouse as they saw fit. When at last it all came out, the way somec had been misused, all the resentment would come at once, all hatreds would explode, with even the; somec users themselves revolting against the Sleephouse, so that somec itself would be eliminated, even for the passage between the stars, even for the one legitimate use it had.
I can do it, Abner said, triumphantly.
But he was a man of conscience, in his way. He went to visit Herman Nuber, when it all was done. The man was stricken, to see his life's work undone for no purpose that he could understand.
“What have I ever done to you?” asked Nuber. He was a very old man, it seemed, or at last very tired.
“Nothing,” said Abner.
“Did you win much, betting on the fall of Italy?”
“I had no wagers placed.” The sums involved would have been petty, compared to what Abner already controlled.
“Why should you wish to hurt me, then, when it profited you nothing?”
“I did not want to hurt you,” Abner said.
“What else, man, did you think it would do?”
“I knew it would hurt you, Herman Nuber, but that was a result I neither desired nor undesired.”
“What did you want, then?”
“The end of perfection,” said Abner.
“Why? What is it about my Italy that made you hate it? What low, small thing in your heart requires you to undo greatness?”
“I don't expect you to understand,” said Abner. “But if you had taken this last turn, the game would have ended. The world of your game would have gone into stasis. It would have died. I was not against the beautiful thing you made. I was merely against it lasting forever.”
“You love death, then?”
“The opposite. I love only life. But life can only continue in the face of death.”
“You are a monster.”
And Abner silently agreed. I am the monster of the deep. I am Poseidon, who shakes the earth. I am the worm at the heart of the world.
Lared awoke weeping. Jason touched his shoulder. “Was it as bad a dream as that?” he whispered.
Only gradually did Lared realize he was no longer in the plastic world of Capitol, but under the leaning wattles of a forest hut, with Jason leaning over him in the dim light coming from the edges of the sheepskin door. It was very warm inside the hut, which told Lared at once that it had snowed in the night, making a thick layer on their walls to keep in their bodies warmth. Indeed, the wattles sagged deeply, and unless they built them soon they would break and not be usable for next year's huts. The urgency of the work took the dream from Lared's mind, or at least pushed it ba
ck enough that he could stop his grieving.
It was late in the morning when Lared brought up the dream with Jason. Lared wanted the man beside him now, in the snow it was cold hard work, and with Jason using the claw Lared could cut the girdle and go on to the next tree, leaving Jason to follow his tracks in the snow. Only when they reached the cliff were they together long enough to talk.
“We have to climb this?” Jason asked, looking at the snow-covered ledges.
“Or fly,” said Lared. “There's a quick way, but it's too dangerous in the, snow. We'll take the slanting crevice there.”
“I'm getting old,” Jason said. “I'm not sure I can climb it.”
“You can,” said Lared. “Because there's no other choice. You don't know the way back home, and I'm going up.”
“It's sweet of you to be so careful with me,” Jason said. “If I fall, will you climb back down to help me, or leave me as an offering to the wolves?”
“Climb back down, of course. What do you think I am?” And then his rage burst out. “If you ever send me a dream like that again, I'll kill you.”
Jason looked surprised. How could he look surprised, when of course he knew all that Lared felt?
“I thought you'd understand Abner, if you saw that dream,” Jason said.
“Understand him? He is the devil! He's the one who brought the Day of Pain! He found the world at peace, and beautiful, and he destroyed it!”
“He's dead, Lared. He had nothing to do with the Day of Pain.”
“If he had been there, he would have done it.”
“Yes.”
“And he would have come here to gloat, to see how much we suffered at his hands, the way he came to Nuber!”
“Yes.”
And then another realization more terrible than the first. “He would have come to see us, the way that you and Justice came.”
Jason said nothing.
Lared got up and ran to the cliff and began to climb. Not the safe way, up the crevice, but the dangerous way, the quick way that he used when the rocks were dry and his feet were bare.
“No, Lared,” Jason said. “Not that way.”
Lared did not answer, just moved even faster, though his fingers had to fight for purchase and his feet kept slipping. Higher up the cliff, it would matter more, but Lared didn't care.
“Lared, I can find the safe way in your mind, you won't harm me by going this way, you'll hurt only yourself.”
Lared stopped, clinging to the rock. “That's the only person that a good man would ever willingly hurt!”
So Jason began to climb up after him. And not the safe way, either. Step for step, he followed Lared up the most dangerous part of the cliff.
But Lared would not quit. He couldn't, now—going back down this way would be far more dangerous than going on. So he climbed, more slowly now, more carefully, brushing the snow from each handhold, each foothold if he could, trying to make the way clear to Jason, safe for him as he came up afterward. At last Lared lay at the top of the cliff, reaching down to help Jason up the last difficult clamber. They knelt beside each other on the brink, looking down over the forest below them. In the distance they could seethe fields and cookfire smoke of Flat Harbor. Behind them the forest loomed as deep, as black and white as ever.
“More trees to girdle?” Jason asked.
“No more dreams of Doon,” said Lared.
“I can't tell this story without him,” Jason said.
“No more of his memories. I hate him. I don't want to remember being him. No more dreams of Doon.”
Jason studied him a moment. Looking in my mind, aren't you! Lared shouted silently. Well, see how much I mean it! I would never do what Doon would do.
“Don't you understand, at all, why he did it?”
I don't want to understand it.
“Mankind is more than just these billions of people. Together we're all one soul, and that soul was dead.”
“He killed it.”
“He resurrected it. He broke it into little parts that had to change, to grow, to become something new. We used to call it the Empire of the Thousand Worlds, even though there were only some three hundred planets with populations. But Doon fulfilled the name for us—it wasn't all destruction. He sent out huge colony ships, spreading mankind farther and farther from Capitol, so that when the end came, when he destroyed Capitol and ended starships for three thousand years, there truly were thousand worlds, like a thousand spider balls, each one teeming with its billion people, each one finding its own way to be mankind.”
And how many people were grateful to him? Were they as glad as Clany's mother, perhaps?
“It has been more than ten thousand years since then, and his name lives on as one of the devil's names. No, they weren't glad of it at all. Is the apple tree glad when you cut it off to graft it into the wild-apple root?”
A man is not a tree.
“As you are to the apple tree, Lared, Abner Doon was to mankind, He pruned, he grafted, he transplanted, he burned over the old dead branches, but the orchard thrives.”
Lared stood. “There are more trees to girdle. If we hurry, we can make the third night's hut tonight, and save ourselves some wattling.”
“No more dreams of Abner Doon, I promise.”
“No more dreams at all. I'm through.”
“If you wish,” Jason said.
But. Lared knew that Jason agreed because he figured Lared would relent. And Lared knew that he was right. He would not dream of Abner anymore, but of Jason he would dream. He had to know how that child became this man.
So when the trees were girdled and they came home, two days earlier than usual because they had worked so well together, Lared went to his pen box and opened it, and cleaned the pens, and said, “We write tomorrow, so give me dreams tonight.”
5. The End of Sleep
The tinker was a cheerful man, and he loved to sing. He knew a thousand songs, he liked to say, a thousand songs, and all but six of them were too filthy to sing in front of ladies.
Truth was he knew dozens, and if Sala's work was done, she'd sit at his feet and sing along with him—she had a memory for words and melodies, and her sweet voice with the tinker's piping tenor were a sound to hear, and upstairs where he wrote for hours each day Lared liked to hear them. Liked it so well that every now and then Jason would say, “The world won't end if you take a breath now and then?” and they'd go downstairs and tool the leatherwork that always waited, while the women spun and wove and whispered and Sala and the tinker sang.
“Will you sing?” Sala asked Justice.
Justice shook her head and kept on with her weaving. She was not good with her hands, and Mother only let her do roughspun cloth, the sort of stuff that hardly mattered. The fine wool for shirts and trousers, that was done by cleverer hands; and above all Justice was never let to touch a spinning wheel. The village women kept three of them, besides Mother's own, in the common room of the inn during winter—because there were no travelers, it was the gathering place for Flat Harbor. Each day when they bundled against the cold and came, the women each brought three good faggots for the fire and a pear and apple, or half a loaf, or a rind of cheese for nooning, and they made a feast of it. The men ate after, at a separate table, a hot meal that somehow seemed less cheery than the laughter from the cold table where the women ate. It was the way of things—women had their society, and the men had theirs. But poor Justice, thought Lared, she belongs to neither.
It was sad, for Justice made no effort at all to learn the language, and so while she understood everything—far more than anyone said, in fact—she never spoke a word to anyone, except through Sala or, occasionally, Lared— but usually Sala, for they were always together. Ever since Justice had tasted the pain of the burning man on the raft, from that time on Sala was Justice's comfort, her company, her voice. Of all the women, only little Sala seemed to love her.
So while Sala and the tinker sang, Justice listened intently, and Lared understoo
d that Justice was, after all, capable of love. He could not see into her mind, as Jason could, to see she was drawn as much to the tinker as to Sala.
The tinker was a laughing man, of average height and profound but solid belly, and he alone did not treat Justice as if she were strange. Indeed, he must have made a point of making sure his eyes always included her as he looked from face to face around the room, that his ribald comments were directed as often to her as any other woman in the place; and Lared also understood if his smile seemed to fall on Justice more often than on any other woman. Justice was young, and none of her teeth had rotted, and she had a pleasant body and a face that in certain lights was beautiful, for all its sternness. The winter was long, and this woman seemed unattached, so why not try for her? Lared was old enough to understand that game. But the chance of playing heat the sheets with Justice—well, if the tinker did that he was more of a miracle worker than Jason. And I don't care who overhears my thoughts, I'll think what I like all the same.
“Think what you like,” Jason said, “but Justice might surprise you. She's lost more in her life than you have, so she has a right to be stern—and a right to love whomever she likes whenever she likes. Begrudge her nothing, Lareled.”
In Lared's surprise, he did care who overheard his thoughts. Angrily he closed his pen box. “Do you always listen to my thoughts? When I strain over the hole in the privy, are you there, feeling what I feel? When my father takes me through the most sacred steps of a new man, will you be at his side, along with me?”
Jason raised his eyebrows. “I'm getting older, Lared. If I'm with you in the privy house, it's to recall how easy it is for a young man, compared to the work I go through.”
“Well, stop it!”
“You don't know what straining is.”
“Stop it!”
From downstairs came Mother's voice. “What's going on up there?”
“She's your mother,” Jason whispered.
“I'm telling Jason that I hate him!” Lared called.
“Oh good,” Jason whispered. “That will make everything so much easier.”
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