Jas took the tube (did they monitor the credit cards at the tube stations? Probablybut not even the Little Boys could board a moving tube), and switched at the first station. Then he got off again, went to another terminal, punched in the memory code and the cover code, and started filling out the application.
After a minute, the same thinga dash through the tubes, a new terminal, and a few more items on the application. And since the application wasn’t long, that finished it; Jas punched the send button, and left.
Another tube, another terminal, and he requested an answer.
Fifteen seconds, and the screen said, “Reject.”
He queried.
“Personal.”
He queried again. Specify.
“Personal. Father killed in Swipe Wars.”
He quickly punched in, desperately punched in a rebuttal, a request for voice contact. It was an agonizingly long wait. Then a face came on the screen, and immediately Jas said, “Can you hold? For just a minute?”
“I’m busy,” the woman said, irritated.
“Please,” Jas said, acutely aware that he had been at the terminal for nearly three minutes.
“All right, hurry,” she said.
Jas ran from the terminal, bumping into a man, and behind the man’s eyes Jas discovered in a moment that the man was one of Mother’s Little Boys, coming to fetch him from the terminal. No doubt nowthey were after him.
This time Jas didn’t bother with the tube. He ran to the nearest terminal, only a few ramps away, and punched in. The woman’s face reappeared.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.” Jas didn’t have time to explain. “I need to know” breath “why my application” breath “was rejected.”
“Your father was killed in the Swipe Wars,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“But I don’t have the Swipe. Telepathy isn’t passed from father to son!” he insisted, wondering if she could possibly guess that it was a lie, that she was talking to a member of the one family in which the Swipe was, in fact, inherited on the male line.
“Of course the Swipe isn’t hereditary,” she said. “We aren’t the least bit worried about that. In fact,” she said, as Jas inwardly urged her to hurry, “in fact, you’re a remarkably bright young man, widely educated, ridiculously high test scores on your record, and ordinarily we’d accept you in a moment.”
“Thanks. Then accept me.”
“The Swipe isn’t hereditary. But revenge is. Sorry.”
“I don’t want revenge!” Jas shouted.
“If you’re going to shout, please turn your volume control down. I’m not deaf.”
“I won’t try to get revenge”
“Of course you’d say that, but our statistics make it almost a probability that”
“Dammit, my father burned three planets and killed eight billion people, do you think I’m going to try to avenge his death?”
She shrugged. “We have the psychological profiles, and I’m afraid the policy can’t be reversed without a lengthy process of appeal. Go ahead and try. It’ll take only two weeks, and maybe you can change somebody’s mind, though I doubt it. I wish you luck, young”
An iron hand gripped Jas’s shoulder. Involuntarily he cried out. The woman smiled. “Do you have him, officer? Very well then. Out.”
The screen went blank.
The iron hand turned Jas around to face the man. Jas looked behind his eyes.
Amusement. That warm feeling of success. “You’ve been leading us a merry chase, boy,” the man said.
Jas smiled weakly. “Tag I’m it?”
It worked. The man smiled back. “You’re from Rockwit?”
“I’m from Capitol. But I know the game. I studied it.”
“Then I’ll feel a little worse turning you in. How did you guess I was from Rockwit?”
I saw it in your mind, of course, Jas thought. But he said, “Your accent.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I study accents. It’s a hobby.”
“Accents and archaic games,” the man said. “Come along now, boy. I don’t know why, but somebody important wants you real bad.”
Radamand, then. No one could call Hartman Tork important. But Jas went along peacefully enough. No sense struggling and increasing the man’s vigilance. Just wait for an opportunity.
The opportunity was the commuter traffic in the tubes. The rush hour was starting, and as with commuters in all times and places, the signs saying enter and exit were regarded as mere decoration. Those getting off the tube rushed out, making rivulets around those struggling forward to get on. Of course there were dozens of people who stopped, greeted each other, blocked traffic others, caught in the rush, desperately trying to reach a destination different from that of the crowd that swept them along. Three times a day the shifts changed, as the night boroughs, morning boroughs, and afternoon boroughs in each district lived their separate and rarely interconnecting days.
In the shoving and elbowing at the door, Jas lurched into the secret policeman who was holding him, then tripped and fell, ripping his shoulder painfully away from the man’s hand. Someone tripped over him; someone else stepped on his leg; the crowd pulled Mother’s Little Boy away from Jason. In a moment friendly hands helped Jas to his feet, and he began moving away in the crowd.
“He’s cut!” shouted the security policeman. “Get him!”
He’s cut? Jas realized as he threaded through the crowd that the security policeman wasn’t alone. There had been more of Mother’s Little Boys close enough to call to. Who?
For a moment Jas tried identifying people as they passed, before they came near him, but he couldn’tit was too dizzying, darting from mind to mind. And moving that quickly, impressions became vague, too fleeting to catch.
A hand grabbed at his hip. Jas lurched away. Again the hand was stronger than he expected, and pulling away took so much force that Jas fell to the ground. Someone stepped on his hand, hard, and Jas cried out in pain, but pulled his hand out from under the heavy boot. Blood leaped from torn-open veins, but Jas ignored it, scrambling to his feet. Hands reached for him. He swerved away, ducked, and then spotted a break in the crowd, ran through, and shoved his way into the mass of people piling up around the station doors.
Now the crowd that had helped him escape helped Mother’s Little Boys to catch him. Where the people had been moving fast, his small size let him dodge through much faster than the police could. But with the crowd moving slowly, shoulder to shoulder, his small size was a disadvantage. He couldn’t shove people out of the way, and Mother’s Little Boys could. In a moment rough hands gripped him everywhere, and he was lifted off the ground and tossed into the air. When he came down there were six men around him.
He panted for breath. So did they. They looked angry. Wary, too, waiting for Jas to try something, to move. Jas didn’t move. Blood dripped from his hand.
“What do you guys think I am?” he finally said. “Six of you to take a thirteen-year-old kid?”
The one who had first caught him smiled. “For a minute there, we were wishing for an even dozen.”
“Well, you’ve got me,” Jas said, still panting from the chase. “What now?”
But they just watched him, and the exhilaration of flight and pursuit gave way to the despairing knowledge that he was, indeed, caught, and there was no way he could stop them from doing whatever they wanted. Would it be the school, and facing charges as a Swipe? Or Radamand, and death to protect a rising politician?
Jas waited several minutes before it occurred to him that he didn’t have to wait for answers to questions. He looked behind their eyes, and…
Just then a short stout man dressed in thirty year-old styles that looked brand new came up to their group.
“I’m amazed that you haven’t hog-tied him,” the man said.
Jas tried to find the meaning of the archaism, but hog-tied wasn’t catalogued in his memory.
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“Let him go,” the man said. “And fix his hand, he’s bleeding.”
“If we let him go,” one of Mother’s Little Boys said, “we might never catch him again.”
The stout man pushed his way into the circle, and looked at Jas with soft, kind eyes. He was so short that Jas looked down at him a little. Someone wrapped the injured hand. “Dale Carnegie cringes at their methods,” the man said. This time the allusion rang a bell, and Jas smiled, reciting back: “You can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of gall.”
“Actually,” the stout man interrupted, “Carnegie was only quoting someone else. Odd that you should know Carnegie and not Aesop.” The man turned back to Mother’s Little Boys. “He’s in my custody now.”
The policemen looked at each other uneasily. The man pulled out a little card and showed it to them. They nodded obsequiously and moved away.
The man turned back to Jas. “You have a name,” he said.
“Jas Worthing.”
“Jason Harper Worthing, a most remarkable young man. Jason Harper Worthing, don’t get any clever ideas about escaping from me. Because where Mother’s Little Boys trust to brute strength, I rely on technology.” The cockle flashed momentarily in his hand, safety off.
“Who are you?” Jas asked.
“A question I’ve been trying to answer ever since adolescence. Shall we walk?” They walked. “I finally decided I was neither God nor Napoleon. I was so disappointed I didn’t try to narrow it down any further.”
The stout man escorted Jas to the officials-only door in the station and they went down the lift to the private cars. They got into one that looked rather old and shabby. And ridiculously out of date.
“I’m an archaist,” the man said. “Like you. I collect old things. The difference is that you, being poor, can only collect ideas. I, being rich, can collect things. Things are worth much more money than ideas.”
The man chuckled gently, and as the car took off, skimming the tube on its delicate magnetic balance, he laid a kind hand on Jas’s knee. A good, strong hand, though small, and the gesture of affection was all it took to push Jas over the edge. The tension before had been too greatthe relief now too sudden. Jas began to tremble and his breath came in short gasps like sobs.
“Please try to avoid hysteria,” the man said, and then continued his pleasant conversation. “I also collect new things. But new things are hard to judge. One never knows if they’ll last. One never knows if they’ll appreciate or depreciate. Quite a risky investment, new things. Here we are.”
The car stopped. It hadn’t traveled far. The man led Jas to a door and they stepped into a lift and rose for a long time. When the ceiling was right above their heads they stepped onto a bare wooden floor.
Wood. Jas realized that it didn’t feel like wood. He said so.
“Ah, your curiosity is beginning to function again. Good. It doesn’t feel like wood because you’ve never touched wood in your life, you’ve touched plastic. This, Jason Worthing, is wood. From trees. I needn’t tell you that you can’t buy any of it on your credit allowance.”
And then they were through a door and Jas gasped.
At first, for a moment, he had thought it was a park. But it was too large, and there was no ceiling. Instead the walls just ended, and a dazzling bright blue arch crested over him, just like the pictures of sky. The trees seemed to go on forever. The grass underfoot was real. Something living moved in the branches of a tree.
“I collect old things and new things,” the man said. “But mostly I collect living things. Like you.”
Jas turned to look at him and suddenly realized that the eyes were no longer soft and kindhad they really been before? And the man seemed to be staring past Jas’s clothing and his skin and into his soul. Jas realized he had trusted this man without reason, and he looked behind his eyes.
The man’s name was Abner Doon. (Silly namenever heard of him.)
His job was assistant minister of colonization. (Colonies again. Mother.)
He honestly believed he ruled the world. (Crazy? Or am I?)
And he knew Jas was a Swipe.
“I’m dead,” Jas said, suddenly feeling despair. Why had he thought he was no longer in danger with this man?
“Very nearly,” Doon said. “It depends on some decisions you make in the next few hours. You know my name, of course.”
Jas shook his head to say no.
“You know my name, you know my title, you know my real function, and you know that I know what you are.”
Jas took a step back. Abner Doon only smiled. “Surely you don’t fear any kind of physical attack?”
“You’re insane,” Jas said.
“That’s been said before,” Abner answered mildly, “by men and women with better credentials than yours.”
“I often wondered who really ruled Capitol and the Empire, but I really never supposed it was the assistant minister of colonization,” Jas said, wondering how quickly he could get the door open again. He decided that he couldn’t possibly do it faster than Doon could get the cockle into action.
“Well, it all depends on what you mean by rule. Mother rules us, officially. But everyone knows that the Cabinet rules Mother, and they’re right. She’s just a figurehead. But who rules the Cabinet?” Doon took off his jacket and tossed it to the ground. “And even more important, who owns the people who carry out the Cabinet’s orders?”
Abner Boon took off his shoes.
“Walking in grass with shoes on is a waste of an opportunity,” he told Jas. “Take your shoes off. Join me in a swim. Hmmm?”
Jas took his shoes off, and they walked deeper into the park. A large white bird flew nearby, then skimmed the surface of a lake, stopped, dipped its head, and flew off with something silver dangling from its mouth.
“A fish!” Jas shouted, and he hurried past Boon to the edge of the water.
“Clever deduction. What else did you learn from the bird?”
Jas turned around. The assistant minister of colonization was taking off his clothing.
“Is this a test?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” Abner Boon answered. “I just thought you might have guessed from the species of bird what planet this park is modeled after.” Jas watched him undress to the skin, and was mildly surprised to discover that the man wasn’t stout at alljust wore layers of protective clothing.
“The water’s relatively warm,” Doon said. “Swim with me.”
“I don’t know how to swim.”
“Of course not. I’m going to teach you.”
Jas undressed and followed the man uncertainly into the water. They stopped when it was up to Jas’s neck.
“Water is actually a very safe medium of locomotion,” Doon said. Jas only noticed that it was cold. Numbing. If this was what Boon called relatively warm, Jas wondered what in the world he called 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 up.”
Suddenly Jas felt very light, and as he relaxed he felt his body bobbing lightly on the surface, only the gentle pressure of Boon’s hand under him to remind him of gravity.
Then the world turned upside-down, Abner Boon had a back-breaking hold on him, and Jas’s face suddenly plunged underwater. He gulped, swallowed water. His eyes, when he opened them, stung in the water. He hadn’t taken a breath, needed one desperately. He struggled to come up, but couldn’t break the hold. He struggled, he twisted, and tried to strike with his hands and feet, but he couldn’t get free, and not breathing became agony.
Then he felt himself pulled to the surface. He gasped for air. Coughed.
“Don’t cough, it splashes water everywhere.”
“Let go!” Jas cried out, still gasping. “Let me go-”
“Never,” said the man. “I’ll never let you go, Jason Harper Worthing. I have collected you. I never break up my collections.”
Jas looked behind his eyes, struggling to find a motive, but found only an emotion oflove? Kindness? The man was threatening his life, and yet all Jas could find in his mind was kindness.
“This,” Doon said, “was an object lesson. May I assure you that you are in over your head? A figure of speech that you may not have known.”
“I knew it,” Jas said. “Me Gook system.”
“Much older than that,” Doon said, “but of course that’s where it’s still current. Very good. You get the point, I’m sure, even if you haven’t read Aesop. Even when we step out of my lake, you’ll still be deep in water, and believe me, in that water you don’t know how to swim. I have only to flick a wrist” suddenly Jas found himself dipping into the water again, and Doon’s sentence was muffled and yet strangely clarified by the water “and you will certainly drown.”
This time Abner Doon let him up almost immediately, and Jas coughed and spluttered only because he knew it annoyed the man. “What are you arresting me for?”
“I’m not arresting you. Whatever gave you that idea? I said I have collected you. Like the Cabinet. Like Hartman Tork. Like Radamand Worthing. The only difference is that I’m telling you. You should be flatteredvery few people know.”
“I would have known anyway, Mr. Doon,” Jas
Said, and that was his surrender, admitting that he had the Swipe, that Doon therefore had control over him. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Why, teach you how to swim, of course,” Doon answered. “May I suggest you start by swimming on your back? Much easier, and you don’t have to fuss with learning how to breathe. Just kick lightly with your legsthat’s right, shallower kicks and more rapidly, very good. Arch your back. The other way. Yes, yes, very good. I’m going to let go.”
Jas felt the hand go out from under him, and for a moment he felt himself sinking. But he kicked harder, and arched his back more, and floated.
“Now, one at a time, raise your arms in front of your head and draw them back down to your side, through the water. That’s right, Jas. Very good. Not a champion, but you’ll float.” And then there was a splash, and Jas felt the water shift violently as Abner Doon swam past him, not on his back, but on his stomach in the water, breathing under his arm. Jas turned his head to watch, and was rewarded with an eyeful of water and a dunking as he lost flotation. Sputtering, he tried to find bottom with his feet, and couldn’this swimming had carried him out where the water was deeper than his head. But his instincts were righthe splashed his way to the surface, and kicked violently, bringing himself back up into a back float.
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