“He had an overdeveloped sense of empathy. He could imagine other people's suffering, and felt it himself. His mother had used that against him all his life, torturing him with guilt for all the suffering of her life. The only thing that freed him was seeing what real suffering was.” And again an image came into Lared's mind. But not a face this time. It was an infant lying in a clear place in tall, knifelike grass, left to starve or freeze or be devoured by the creatures of the night. With the image came a feeling of desperate compassion—I can do nothing, and yet I must do something or not be myself—and finally the image gave way to another, to a group of uncivilized tribesmen kneeling in a circle in the grass, taking the child's corpse apart in a ritual; I understand, the child must die for the sake of the tribe, the child's death means life. It was a moment of clear understanding for Linkeree, for in the infant he saw himself, torn and broken to keep his mother alive. I am not insane; she is the one who is mad, and I am suffering for her. But does she love me as these tribesmen love the infant they have killed? The answer was no, and so he left, escaped from his world and went to Capitol, a place where everyone looked for someone else to suffer for them. Linkeree was a living sacrifice; he suffered to expiate the guilt of all who touched him.
“Hold tightly when such a vision comes,” said Jason. “I think we shouldn't do this when we're perched up here.”
“I'm not so fragile as that,” said Lared. But the infant stayed in his mind, lying there in the grass with savage insects hanging from its naked body.
“Linkeree was not a loner, after all. He was like Hux, in a way—all he cared about was other people. It made Hux sociable and stable; it made Linkeree shy and skittish; but I knew them both for what they were, and I said to myself, 'These I will make my leaders. Because power in their hands would be used for the good of all, and not to please themselves. Or rather, if they pleased themselves they would please others as a matter of course, because they could not be happy in the knowledge of others who were miserable.'”
“No one is that good,” said Lared. “Everyone wants what he wants.”
“You are that good,” said Jason. “That's, what goodness is, Lareled, and if there were no goodness in people, mankind would still be confined to loping across a savannah somewhere on Earth, watching the elephants rule, or some other more compassionate species.”
“I don't know,” said Lared. “I've never cared much about other people's pain.”
“Because they didn't feel any. But you still hear a burned up child screaming, you still feel a man's blood pumping from a wounded foot. Don't tell me you know nothing of compassion.”
“What about you?” asked Lared. “Are you good?”
No, came the answer in his mind. It took a moment for Lared to realize that it was Justice who had answered, not Jason. No, Jason is not good.
“She's right,” Jason said. “It's the whole meaning of my life, that I inflict suffering on others.”
“Did you cause the Day of Pain?” asked Lared.
“It was not my choice,” said Jason. “But I believe it was the right choice.”
Lared did not say another word that afternoon, thinking how the man who worked beside him approved of what had changed in the world since the Day of Pain. And that night he dreamed.
Jazz awakened to see the lid of the coffin sliding back, the amber light winking at the edge of his vision. His bubble must have just finished dumping his memories back into his head, and his body was hot and sweating, as it always was when he came up out of somec. Pushups, sit-ups, running in place made him alert and quick again.
Only then did he notice that it was not the amber light flashing in his coffin, but the red. Had it been red all along, or had it just changed? No time to decide the question now; in a moment he was at the controls, and the ship was telling him what it knew. An enemy ship had been hiding behind a planet, almost as if it expected his approach; two projectiles were already launched.
Even as Jason's fingers sent two of his ship's four torpedoes into space, his mind searched for and found the enemy captain, the mind controlling the missiles that dodged and pitched and weaved their way toward him. The missiles were far more maneuverable than Jason's massive colony ship, but Jason knew where the missiles were going, and moment by moment Jason drew himself farther out of the enemy's way. In the meantime, his own missiles homed in on the enemy, anticipating her attempts to dodge. For once Jason didn't care if anyone noticed that he knew things he could not possibly know, that he was a Swipe. He would not be going back to Capitol again, and so at last he could fight with his full ability.
Just before the enemy's ship exploded in a globe of light, the enemy captain knew that she would die, and in that moment she took grim satisfaction from the fact that even if she died, Claren would finish off the enemy.
Claren. She was not alone. Jason and his enemy had been concentrating on their duel, routing their missiles and their own ships; only now did he realize that there was another ship, still behind the planet, which had been using the first ship as its eyes to route its own attack. Jason's ship was tracking the enemy missiles, which were already near. Desperately Jason searched for Claren, the enemy who was so close to success. He found Claren just in time. Or it would have been just in time, except that Claren was no longer controlling his missiles—when the first ship blew up, he had lost his means of seeing and therefore controlling his missiles' flight. They were homing on Jason automatically, which meant their course was absolutely predictable and easy to dodge, except that Jason had wasted too much time looking for the captain mind, and while he could avoid one missile, he could not avoid the other. It would strike him. Its high-intensity light would carve through his ship's armor; the skin of the ship would peel back from the wound and allow the missile to enter, to plunge into the core of the stardrive and there, gently, explode. A pathetic little explosion, really, but almost anything would upset the delicate balance of impossible forces, and the ship would explode.
Jason saw his future in a moment, and in that moment decided that he would prefer any alternative to utter destruction. The missile was too close from him to move his whole, massive ship out of the way. But the payload, a slender shaft projecting forward from the massive stardrive, it would not go out like a pent-up star if the missile struck and exploded there. Almost instinctively Jason swung himself into the path of the missile. Somewhere back along the kilometer-long tube behind him, the missile would strike, colonists would die, and Jason found himself hoping that the missile would kill only some of the people, and not harm the all-important animals and seeds and supplies and equipment at all.
Impact. The ship shuddered from the distant explosion; alarms went off on the control panels; but the explosion was far enough from the stardrive, shielded enough that the drive was able to cope with the disturbance, balance itself before an unstoppable reaction destroyed everything.
Alive, thought Jason. Then he set about killing Claren. The enemy remained out of sight behind a planet, but Jason used Claren's own eyes to track the missiles when they were in the lee of the world, in a place where Claren knew he would be safe, but the missiles came on as if they had intelligence of their own, as if they could read his mind, for wherever he dodged the missiles were already headed for his new course, and in a few moments he was dead.
I don't like knowing my enemy's name, thought Jason.
The damage was brutal, but not unsurvivable, or so it seemed at first. The 333 colonists were arranged in three parallel corridors at the back of the payload, each of the three corridors completely shielded from the others, to help protect against the whole colony being wiped out in such an event as this. One corridor was a total loss—it had been peeled open to space and the coffins had burst open and erupted with corpses. A second corridor seemed untouched—the bodies all lay peacefully within their coffins. But the controls had been seared as the missile canted into the ship, and none of them would ever be revived.
Still, the third corridor
remained, and 111 people would be enough to start the colony; with the supplies and equipment unharmed, they would survive. They would accomplish less work the first year, but they would have all the more supplies on the ship to keep them going for a few more years, till things were up to speed. It was sad that so many had died, but the colony had not been undone.
So Jason thought, until he reached the very back of the payload, where the bubbles were stored in a carefully protected environment.
That was where the missile had actually exploded.
Fourteen bubbles had survived intact. Nine from the corridor that had exploded, four from the corridor whose residents would never wake up, and only one bubble from the surviving colonists.
Only one human being left. The others would be incapable of doing anything for themselves, remembering nothing, knowing nothing. How could he deal with 111 adult-sized infants? What good were people without minds?
He walked back through the surviving corridor and looked down into the coffins at the people who, though not dead, would never again be themselves. His good friend Hop Noyock, the actress Arran Handully, he touched each coffin and remembered what he had seen within each mind, Hux, Linkeree, Wien, Sara, Ryanno, Mase, I know what you will never know again—who you are, what you have done, what you meant to be. Now what are you, if I ever wake you up? You, Kapock, with your fierce, devoted loves, what lovers will you remember now? Their names were broken with your bubble, and your past is dead.
The only bubble that survived belonged to Garol Stipock. Jason studied his face as he lay in his coffin, sleeping. Are you the one that I should waken? The one person committed to undoing authority in any form? What sort of ally would you be?
Anyone's bubble but yours, if the choice had been mine. Your childhood is the one I least needed to keep in living memory.
Jason swung the ship through its change of course, but when it was done he did not sleep. Instead he studied, dumped into his head the Empire's collective wisdom on the art of colonization. All the jobs took dozens of able-bodied women and men to make them work. He plunged deeper into the library, to the books rather than the bubbles, unscrolling them in the air over the control desk, trying to find out what he could teach infants to do, how many he could support by the labor of his own hands.
Many times he almost despaired. It could not be done. The high-level technology to farm and manufacture to create a modem society required many people with strong specializations. How could he hope to educate a hundred people from infancy to advanced specialties quickly enough that they wouldn't starve while they waited to grow up?
But gradually, inevitably, the answer came. The modern economy would be impossible, but an earlier life would not. A life with simpler tools that could be made by hand; a life from fields that could be plowed by people who had not learned their algebra but could drive an ox. I can plow an acre myself, plant and harvest it, to feed myself and a few others. Just a few at a time, until the first ones have developed enough to help me with the next ones.
The only drawback was that it would take years. The ship would preserve those he had not yet wakened, but each one he brought out would be utterly unproductive for some time, and during that time would still need an adult's portion of food, of clothing, of everything, and would require frequent attention and time consuming care. The colony would never be able to sustain more than a few of these at a time, for the economy would always be marginal, farming as they would with hand fools and animal strength.
It would take years, but perhaps, if they learned quickly enough, Jason could leave them from time to time, return to the ship and sleep for a year or two, come back just to bring new colonists from the ship, just to check and make sure the colony was running smoothly. After all, these people had been carefully chosen-the best people of Capitol, Doon had said. If some of that ability survived, despite their loss of memory, it might work. And if a few of them showed exceptional leadership ability, I could bring them aboard the ship and put them under somec again, and preserve them for a time of great need. I could—
Then Jason realized what he was doing. Planning to create a colony of ignorant peasants, using somec to create an elite class, headed by himself, of people who would withdraw from the world and return to it, years later, without having aged. All that was detestable about somec. I am already planning to use again.
But only for a time, Jason told himself. Only until the colony is firmly established, only until we've recovered from the missile that has so undone us all. Then I'll destroy somec, destroy the whole ship, sink it in the bottom of the sea, and somec will disappear from my planet.
It was the only way he could think of to form the colony at all. Even at that, it would require almost unbearable amounts of work from him, especially at the first. But it could be done.
Could be done, and might provide an opportunity no one else had ever had. A chance to create a society out of nothing. To create its social institutions, its habits, its beliefs, its rituals, to design them carefully with no need to compromise with old habits, old beliefs. I can make utopia, if I have wit enough; the power is in my hands if I can only decide what the perfect society must be.
The idea grew, and he began to write of what he thought his world might be, until at last he realized that he was happy again, excited again for the future, more than at any time before in his life. The enemy's missile undid all of Doon's designs, and for the first time in his life Jason if was truly on his own, without having to account to Doon or anyone else. If he failed now, it would be his own failure; if he succeeded, it would be success for him and for every generation that followed him in his world. And it will be my world, he told himself. By accident I have been made the creator; I am the one who will put the breath of mind into these men and women; let us stay in Eden this time, and never fall.
6. Waking the Children
The house was sealed; they could all feel the difference, lying in bed in the fire light. The drafts from under the door were almost gone, so Lared felt no urgency to hide behind the low walls of his truckle bed. The heat sometimes was so great that Sala would Cast off her blankets in the night.
And still the snow did not fall. The cold whined out of the north, but the only snows were scattered, a few showers that blew into corners and clung to shingles.
“When it comes, it'll hide your head,” said the tinker. “I've got me a weather sense, and I know.”
In the night, Lared tossed and turned with the dreams that Justice took from Jason's memory and put into his mind. But it was different now. For some reason, when he awoke, he could not easily remember what he had dreamed.
“I'm trying,” he told Jason. “I know it had something to do with plowing. You were doing it all wrong or something. You were trying to drive the oxen the way you lead a well-trained horse. You weren't much of a farmer then. Is that it?”
“Of course I wasn't much of a farmer,” Jason said. “It was the first time I had seen dirt in my life.”
“What's dirt? Dirt is dirt.”
“I see,” said Jason. “That's our problem. When I brought the oxen out of the ship and put them in their plastic barn, I had never set my hand on the back of a hot, sweating beast, never felt the play of his muscles under the skin. When I hitched the plow on them, I had to discover the tricks of the straight furrow and controlling the depth of the blade myself—none of the books taught me. The ox plow and the oxen were only sent along in case of a massive power failure. Who was alive in those days who knew how to use them?”
“Even Sala knows more than you did,” said Lared. How was he supposed to take it seriously?
“It stays in my mind as magnificent, hard-won discoveries. It comes to you as clumsiness in tasks you do every year without thinking. No wonder you forget.”
Lared shrugged, though in fact he felt like he had failed them somehow. “I can't help it. It's not as if I didn't try to remember. Find another scribe.”
“Of course not,” said Jason. “Why do y
ou think we chose you? Because you were of this world, you knew what mattered and what didn't matter. I loved the work of the soil because I had never done it before, it was all new at a time in my life when I thought I had already done everything. To you it isn't new, it's drudgery. The little things I do while you write, the axe handles, the boots, the wickerwork, it's all pleasure to me; living here with you, after all these years to be part of a village again, I love it, but what does it matter to you? So don't write it. Don't write about how I worked as hard and fast as I could to earn an hour to go wandering through the forest, collecting herbs to test in the ship's lab. Don't bother with my first tastes of real food, the way I threw up at the taste of bread after so many years of predigested pap made from algae, fish meal, soybeans, and human manure. What's that to you?”
“Don't be angry,” Lared said. “I can't help it that it doesn't matter to me. I'd remember it if I could. But who would want to read about it?”
“For that matter, who'd want to read about any of it? Lared, you dream of civilization, don't you—a life of comfort and safety, with time enough to read whatever you liked, and no one to turn you into a plowman or a blacksmith if you didn't want to do it. Yet what you do—herding the trees for harvest, shuttering the windows, making sausage and strawing the ticks—that is better than any other life I've lived or seen or even heard about.”
“Only because your life's never depended on it,” Lared said. “Only because you're still just pretending to be one of us.”
“Maybe so,”Jason said. “Just pretending, but I know my way around the forest, and I do an axe handle as well as anyone I've seen here.”
Lared was afraid when Jason was angry. “I mean then. You were pretending. You must have learned over the years.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “A little. Not much.” He was twisting horsehair into a bowstring, and his fingers were quick and sure.
“But I stole the skills from other men, who learned them better than I. I got inside them while they worked, and knew the feel of it without looking. I didn't earn it. I didn't earn anything in my life. I'm just pretending to be one of you.”
The Worthing Saga Page 14