by M. K. Wren
In Rich’s room he stopped short, wondering at the pressing quiet. His parents were standing near the bed, and Dr. Stel was at Rich’s side, but at first Alexand was only aware of his brother, who lay motionless, eyes closed, his arms stretched out at his sides; his long, graceful hands seemed too frail to hold onto life.
Alexand looked over at his parents, standing arm in arm. Phillip Woolf seemed outwardly unmoved, but the pain lurked behind his disciplined features. It was in his mother’s face, too, and not so well hidden. Alexand went to her and held her in his arms as she’d held him when he was a child.
“Mother, I’m sorry.”
She nodded, looking up at him with clouded eyes. “Thank the God you’re here. He was asking for you.”
If Woolf’s smile lacked warmth, it was only because of his distraction, an inward bewilderment.
“Alex, did you have any trouble getting here?”
“Some. Conpol declared an emergency state.”
“What? Oh—-yes, the Selasid uprising.” He showed no hint of awareness that it had anything to do with Rich’s collapse.
Alexand looked over at Rich and asked, “What is Dr. Stel’s diagnosis?”
Woolf’s shoulders moved in a half shrug. “Nervous strain and exhaustion. He’s been pushing himself too hard with his work.” He glanced at Alexand. “Don’t mistake me, I’m glad for his interest in his studies, but sometimes I wish he wouldn’t take it quite so seriously.” He seemed about to add more, then looked at the door, frowning vaguely. “Are those Bonds still holding vigil in the hall?”
Vigil. An apt term, yet there was a caustic edge to it.
Alexand said, “Yes, they’re still there.”
“Phillip . . .” Elise reached out for his hand. “Don’t send them away. You know how they feel about Rich.”
After a moment he managed a smile for her. “Yes, of course, darling.”
Alexand turned and crossed to the bed, and Rich stirred, a tenuous moan escaping him.
Dr. Stel said, “I’ve given him a light sedative. I can’t give him too much; he’s too close to shock.”
Alexand eased down on the side of the bed, numbed at Rich’s deathly pallor, the feverish brilliance of his eyes when they opened. His hand moved uncertainly, seeking Alexand’s.
“Alex . . . you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
Rich nodded, his head turning against the pillow as his eyes closed again.
“A Testing . . . the Holy Mezion tests the Blessed to . . .”
“Rich?”
There was no answer. He sank again into sleep.
5.
The clocks of humankind ticked over to a new day. Midnight. But the clocks of reality moved in slow shadings; there was nothing outside the windowall to tell of a new day. Concordia was all the stars, its light dimming the fainter lights in the sky. Harlequin sat on the floor near the windowall, knowing nothing of the new day. His hands moved ceaselessly, and the music spun out from those deft, misshapen fingers with the thoughtless grace of the turning of a world and the falling of rains and the curling of surf.
Rich still slept, only rarely moving or making a sound, and then only nearly inaudible sighs. The lumensa wall was set low, its shifting spectra providing the only light in the room except for the pervading glow of the city. Concordia at night was as beautiful as a phenomenon of nature, a visual feast that never palled, and yet across the city toward the east the rubble of disaster was even now being sorted, the dead and dying were being counted.
Alexand stood at the windowall watching the lights; he thought about Orin Badir Selasis and his compounds, medieval sinks of squalor and fear. It wasn’t surprising that Selasis had been hit with yet another major uprising. And he was thinking that if he had any ambition to serve humankind, he would destroy Orin Selasis as one would excise a malignancy, even if it cost him his own life.
He nearly laughed aloud then, the bitter futility taking the shape of sardonic amusement, as it always did. What naïveté. It amused him that he was still capable of it. It wasn’t enough to destroy Selasis. He was only a symptom; he owed his existence to the disease.
Alexand found his thoughts wandering to holojected, computerized battles in pseudospace. What would it be like to play such games with real ships, real guns, real lives? It wouldn’t be so difficult to outmaneuver a Confleet mentality. A man of imagination could wreak havoc with their stylized choreography. And perhaps that was what Confleet needed, what the Concord needed. Something to jolt its short-sighted, self-satisfied Lords into awareness that change was inevitable; their only choice was how it would be brought about.
A simple enough choice: compromise or catastrophe.
But how many of the Lords of the Concord were even aware that they were faced with such a choice? Galinin, perhaps.
And Phillip Woolf, heir to the Chairmanship?
Fear. No human being is exempt from fear.
Rich’s words, yet they called up the memory of Theron Rovere.
He was dead now. He had died last year of a mercifully sudden and final heart attack at the age of eighty-seven in an SSB Detention Center. Rich knew about the DC. Alexand wasn’t sure when or how he learned of it, but he knew and accepted it because Rovere did.
In his last lettape to Rich, Rovere had written lightly of the compensations of old age. One didn’t have to see the end of some things; that was precluded by one’s own end. And he’d spoken with pride of Rich’s work. He didn’t know Rich’s pseudonym—only because that might mean inadvertently giving the SSB the name of Richard Lamb and his connection with DeKoven Woolf—but he’d read all his theses, and he was proud of his student, his intellectual heir. Rich wasn’t yet at Age of Rights, yet he held a degree in sociotheology, a third-degree rank in the Academicians Guild, and ten theses by Richard Lamb were now listed in the Archives.
Phillip Woolf might also be proud of his son for these achievements, but he didn’t know about them. He honored his pledge to Rich not to interfere with his life at the University; he even dispensed with the guards after the first year, and in time he became too preoccupied with House and Concord crises to be concerned with Rich’s work, and Rich discouraged any interest in his studies on the part of both his parents.
Alexand had read all his theses, and he was as cognizantly proud of his brother as was Theron Rovere. But now he considered the price Rich paid for the insights put so dispassionately into those meticulous, elegantly delineated dissertations. He wondered if Rich would find the risks worthwhile now and knew he still would.
I must understand them, Alex; I must know why. Then perhaps I can help them, help all of us—
The scream caught him entirely unaware, paralyzing every response. The sound shivered along his nerves even after it had ceased.
Rich was sitting rigidly upright, staring ahead of him with eyes as blind as Harlequin’s. The music had stopped.
“My—my lord?”
Alexand shuddered and started toward Rich even as he answered Harlequin’s vague inquiry.
“It’s just a nightmare. Keep playing—please.”
By the time he reached him, Rich was fully awake, reeling from the aftershocks of whatever vision of terror it was that brought forth that scream. Alexand waved on the bedside light and sat down beside him, gripping his shoulders. Rich stared at him, then collapsed into his arms.
“Oh, God . . . Alex—” There were no more words; they were lost in uncontrolled weeping.
Harlequin had resumed playing, casting out a silken weave of sound as soothing as the sea, and the lumensa made blue and green shadows. Alexand held Rich, making no attempt to stop his weeping. He held him until the sobbing stopped, and he didn’t know how long it was; the only time here was marked by Harlequin’s ’harp, and his were infinite strands. But finally the tension left those
spare limbs; Alexand reached for the control console and brought the head of the bed up at an angle, and Rich sank back against the pillows, his face drawn and white. His eyes had a fevered light that made the blue lambent. He looked at Alexand soberly, and when he spoke, it was as if he were continuing a conversation that had never been interrupted.
“The information is available, Alex. The problem is that no one in the Concord has bothered—or dared—to put it all together, to draw the inescapable conclusions from it.”
Alexand smiled at that. Rich didn’t consider it necessary to verbalize the transition between those aching sobs and this calm, objective statement.
“Can you blame them, Rich? It’s always easier to ignore or deny the unpleasant.”
“I can’t condone cowardice; not when the cost will be counted in untold millions of innocent lives.” Then Rich’s gaze shifted to Harlequin, and a smile relaxed his features as he listened to a new melody taking form while the lumensa answered with new colors. “Alex, what time is it?”
“A few minutes past midnight.”
“I’ve had a long rest. But you look tired.”
He shrugged, then, “Rich, I . . . talked briefly to Fenn when I arrived this evening.”
Rich took a slow breath, and his expression didn’t change, but the hectic light in his eyes intensified.
“He told you where I was this afternoon.”
Alexand was silent for a time, feeling the pain of the memories in Rich’s mind.
“Rich, I’m sorry.”
He nodded his understanding of those few words, then turned and looked out at the lights. “I had a baptism today, Alex; a baptism in horror. No one can go through something like that and come out of it unchanged.” He paused, his eyes slipping out of focus. “It was an education, this baptism. I learned a lifetime in an hour. I learned . . . something new about death, and, above all, I learned about fear. Fear is the most powerful destructive force human beings are capable of unleashing or suffering. The mother of cruelty, the sister of death.” He looked up at Alexand. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You of all people must understand it. Fear can eat away whole civilizations, and ours is rotten with it. But we’re dealing with a social unit here, even if it’s a large and complex one, and sociological principles apply. There are ways of tempering and even reversing mass trends—if the problems are recognized and dealt with soon enough. And you’ll be in a position one day to do something about the problems. The God help us, I hope it isn’t too late.”
Alexand looked away from him. “Don’t invest too much hope for our civilization in me.”
“Why not?”
He frowned. He’d made that statement without thinking, and he didn’t want to amplify it.
“Because ‘one day’ is a long time in the future, and it may never come. I’m not in a position to do a damn thing about anything right now.”
“No, not yet, but there’s power in being an heir. Father holds the titles, but you’re his son, his first born. He loves you, and he trusts you.”
“Well, then, I can only hope he never ceases to love or trust me. Otherwise, your touching faith in me as the hope of civilization will never be realized.” His tone was light, almost joking, but Rich didn’t smile, nor did he respond for some time. His intent gaze didn’t falter, but now it was curiously detached and analytical.
Finally, he asked, “Alex, is the rift so deep between you and Father?”
“There’s no rift, Rich. Maybe it’s just that seven months with Confleet have given me a rather pessimistic outlook.”
“Confleet isn’t the source of your pessimism.” He shook his head slowly. “Holy God, what an error to teach you the mechanics of war.”
Alexand raised an eyebrow; he felt an odd chill at that, but doggedly held on to his light tone.
“Why? Are you afraid I have the makings of a new Mankeen?”
“That’s an interesting—and perhaps indicative—phrase: a new Mankeen.”
“Is it?” He hesitated, then, with a short laugh, “Rich, I think you’re taking me more seriously than I am.”
“Well, I’m a sociologist, Alex. It seems to be endemic in the trade to take things seriously, and I know the climate is almost right. I can name at least twenty minor Houses and eight or nine major Houses that might align themselves with a new Mankeen now, and I know that potentially, by aptitude and training, you’re capable of organizing and leading the dissident factions not only among the Elite, but among the Fesh. They’d flock to your banner in a moment if you could expand your present image of the Concord’s crown prince into that of a hero prince. That wouldn’t be difficult. You have a built-in foil: Selasis. You couldn’t ask for a better focus of polarization. The potentials there—”
“Rich!” Alexand stared at him, baffled by those coolly spoken words. “Your imagination is slipping its scholarly moorings.”
“I doubt it. At least it’s crossed your mind that something concrete must be done if we’re not to keep sliding down into a third dark age, and it’s crossed your mind, however fleetingly, that you might be compelled to do that something.”
Alexand turned away from Rich’s probing gaze, but in his mind’s eye were the red and blue patterns of holojected battles.
“Of course it’s crossed my mind. What hasn’t? But passing thoughts aren’t conscious intentions. I’m no Mankeen, and I never will be. How did we get off on that morbid subject, anyway?”
Rich smiled. “Because I forced it.”
“Why?”
“I suppose because I’ve come to a point of decision in my own life. I’m not sure of the full extent of it yet; I need a little more time. But I know I’ve wasted too much time already.” He looked at Alexand, a fathomless melancholy in his eyes. “For instance, with you. There are things I’ve observed and conclusions I’ve drawn because I’m trained for them, but I haven’t discussed them with you because I knew you didn’t want to talk about them. But I haven’t time now to be so cowardly, or even so kind.”
Alexand felt himself closed in. “Rich, I don’t understand.”
“I know, and I hardly know how to explain.” He paused, his eyes still on Alexand, then, “When you were at the University, I was interested in the reactions of the Fesh students toward you. They talked freely around me, of course, and I know their attitudes are reflected among the young Elite. You’re regarded as the young man with everything, the golden princeling of the Concord, and it seems so bitterly ironic, because none of it—wealth, title, admiration—is enough to satisfy you.”
“Am I so demanding? If I’m not happy with all that, something must be wrong with me.”
“I said to satisfy you, not to make you happy. Happiness is an ephemeral state. I suppose on some level I’m foolish enough to think I can help you. On a more objective level, I know you to be a dangerous young man, considering your birth, your training, and your state of mind. You have three years of active duty in Confleet ahead of you, and today I had a taste of what you might encounter—what you undoubtedly will encounter. You won’t come out of it unchanged any more than I did. And I . . . I’m afraid, Alex. I’m . . . afraid . . .” He faltered, the words choked off, and it came unexpectedly, creating an aching silence.
“Oh, Rich. . . . Haven’t you enough pain of your own without assuming mine?” Then he asked, “You’re afraid I’ll be driven to make a new Mankeen of myself?”
“In one sense or another, and I know what the end results would be, both for the Concord, and most of all, for you. I . . . I only hope you find something to satisfy you that won’t destroy you.”
“Perhaps I will, Rich.”
“But you really don’t believe you will.”
Alexand looked at him, then away, shoulders rising in a quick shrug.
“One can—or perhaps must—hope. What do the Shepherds call it? Humankind’s gift to itself. And they also say that every gift has a price.”
Rich smiled fleetingly at that. “So they say. What is it you hope for? What would satisfy you, Alex?”
He turned to look out at the dazzling profusion of Concordia’s lights; they began to waver and blur.
“I’m not really sure, Rich. What can I hope for? I’m a living fossil, like the ginkgo trees in the Plaza. I always thought it fitting that ginkgos were planted in the shadow of the Hall of the Directorate. In the end we’ll all topple together—the ginkgos, the Concord, and I. My problem is that I have a high regard for music and poetry and art, for the refinements of mathematics and science. For civilization; for that accumulation of our unique capabilities as human beings gathered over the millennia. I resent anything that threatens that; I resent it to my soul. And I have a high regard for the unique capabilities of individuals. Harlequin.” He stopped to listen, closing his eyes. “Harlequin is a genius. Yet he’s a slave. I resent anything that deprives anyone—including myself—of his humanity. It’s too rare a gift. Choice, Rich, that’s the crux of it. I’m no more free to make my own choices than a Bond, not the important choices in life. And I know what would . . . satisfy me. A real hope; something solid enough to embrace with conviction, something to devote my energies, my self to. A cause. Perhaps that’s what I mean. A cause that offered a hope for giving all human beings the right of choice, and by the God, giving me that right; the right to choose my own strictures. Freedom is only another figment of the human imagination, but choice—that’s the source of our humanity, and that’s what makes civilization possible. Give me a cause, Rich—that’s what would satisfy me.”
The words had spilled from him in a rush, and now they echoed in a silence even Harlequin’s music couldn’t penetrate. Rich was motionless, his eyes never leaving Alexand’s face, and the old, nearly telephathic bridge of comprehension existed between them.