A Million Open Doors

by John Barnes

  Bruce had a big, really wonderful dinner waiting, and ushered us right in to it. Somehow that only seemed to make Aimeric more sullen, as if he resented Brace's gift, and that in turn made Bieris snippy with Aimeric and by extension with everybody. I was working up a short way to excuse myself and get home. With my drive into Utilitopia the next day, I would have to be up fairly early, and this was my second night up late in a row. Then a. com for Aimeric summoned him from the table.

  When he came back, he looked thoughtful and worried. "It was Dad. They want me to come in and consult first thing tomorrow. They seem to have arrived at something they think is a solution. So, Giraut, can I catch a ride with you tomorrow? And does that mean getting up as early as I'm afraid it does?"

  "Yes to both. Did he say anything about what this answer is supposed to be?"

  "No. And that's not good. As you get to know us you'll learn that a Caledon only says things you don't want to hear to your face. Are you going back up to your place right away, Giraut?"

  "I was thinking of it." I got up. "Want a ride? Bieris?"

  Aimeric nodded and reached for our coats; Bieris shook her head and said, "I don't have to be up early tomorrow, and I'd rather walk home in a little while, when the moon's up a little more."

  As I quickly spun through the short trip by Aimeric's cottage to mine, I noticed he was still out of sorts. "Four o'clock tomorrow," I said.

  He grunted at me and got out. I thought of asking what the matter was, but it was late and whatever it was could keep until next morning. I headed the cat for home.

  Not home. Home was my old apartment in the Quartier. I must not forget that.

  When I got to the Center the next day, I had gained a little sleep by trading off driving with Aimeric. There were a lot of people milling around, and Thorwald was frantically trying to get enough information from them to get their registrations filled in. "Late registrations," he explained. "Since I was here I thought I should get this going."

  "Absolutely right. Where'd they all come from?"

  "Oh, looks like PPP held up a bunch of people's approvals to join, then released them early this morning. So we've got thirty-eight more people in addition to the overcrowding we had before."

  "Saltini?" I asked quietly.

  "Sure, I could use some breakfast. These things just have a way of happening, yes, I guess you could say that."

  I was never, never going to get used to being spied upon, let alone having to worry about it, but since I still had no clear idea of how dangerous things might be for Thorwald or the others, I dropped the subject.

  In about an hour we had fitted all of them in. Much to Thorwald's disgust, after they filled up the last few slots in dance classes ("at least that's harmless"), they all took the last standing opportunities—the dueling arts classes.

  As he and I sat down to a quick breakfast before beginning the long day, he commented, "I'd heard some of them say that they would kill to get in here, but I hadn't thought that they meant it."

  "We won't have any killings," I said, being patient because by now I was learning that Thorwald always complained a lot in the morning and it didn't mean much—he was actually one of the most pleasant, polite, and frivolous people here, one of the few of them who had any receptivity to culture or civilization at all—it was just that like many of us he did not endure mornings gracefully. "No neuroducers set at full—just tinglers—and of course the epees aren't real in any case."

  "Very comforting," my assistant said, mixing together the nasty mash of boiled ground grain that passed for breakfast locally (he seemed to feel there was something hopelessly decadent in my preference for pastry and fresh fruit). "They won't kill to get in. Hurt people, sure, but not kill."

  "There is some difference," I said. "I would think that your family would feel differently about my punching you in the arm than they would feel about my decapitating you."

  He snickered. "Yap, they'd rather you decapitated me. It would rid them of me and confirm everything they think about offplanet people at the same time."

  I laughed. Despite being tired and short of sleep, I felt good because we were getting morning sunlight. When the sun shone all day long, Utilitopia sometimes warmed up and dried out enough to resemble an unusually ugly industrial park.

  "Why the big smile?" Thorwald asked. "Thinking of a new way to inflict pain?"

  "Only on the willing," I said. "Anyway, you should relax a little—the dueling arts class is all ki and falling for the next couple of weeks. No real fighting yet at all. Maybe you should have more faith in your fellow Caledons—probably when we start actual contact and combat, they'll all be so revolted and nauseated they'll leave en masse."

  "I wish I did believe that." He poured himself another cup of coffee and yawned. "I got up early this morning—good thing I did, considering that surprise influx—and the mats are all scrubbed down and the ballroom is in good shape."

  "Real efficiency," I said. "Well, I've got to get down to the main classroom and start the Basic Occitan section in a few minutes. I guess the next thing that needs doing is the dusting, and then destaticking the vu surfaces. Have you done that before?"

  "Yap. And I'll recheck the specs from the robot before I start. I certain wouldn't want to damage the art."

  Perhaps it was only because of the good mood I'd begun in, but language class seemed a bit discouraging that particular day. They took well enough to simple repetition drills (conjugations and declensions mostly) and they didn't have any big problem with working through the sample conversations—

  "Bo die, donz."

  "Bo die, donzelha. Ego vi que t'es bella, trop bella, hodi."

  "Que merce, donz!"

  But when it came time to improvise, in free conversation, they turned to stone. Perhaps we had not yet come up with a topic that they would all want to talk about ... maybe when I began my lessons in Reason, the next week, there would be beginning conversations I could borrow to make it more interesting for them.

  Still thinking of that, and badly frustrated, I went downstairs to get Thorwald for our morning workout. If he was to be my assistant for the dueling arts class, I had to keep him ahead of the class, so one of his four hours of required daily work was currently going into private lessons.

  I knew I had been pushing him hard from the way he moved. He was obviously sore, but he didn't complain; probably the soreness was the only thing that allowed him to feel like he was doing work.

  He had finished the cleaning and was dressing when I got there; I hurried to put on my fighting clothes myself, and then we went into the mat room for some quick stretches before beginning. We had just begun the unarmed portion of ki hara do the day before; we resumed it now.

  "Venetz!" I said. "Atz sang! Inner leg attacks, first form. Facing the mirror. Uni, do, tri..."

  I had been drinking much less alcohol since getting here, and the daily triple workout of Thorwald's lesson, dance class, and dueling arts class—all in eight percent higher gravity—was rapidly bringing me into the best shape I'd been in since getting out of school. Nowadays I knew a duel against anyone would be no problem; even most of the old neuroducer damage seemed to be repairing itself. My right Achilles tendon no longer hurt where Rufeu had nicked it in a barroom brawl, and the neuroducer scar on my forehead, which I had gotten while holding off two drunken bravos, had relaxed into invisibility.

  We got through the full set of basic drills in less than half an hour. I was setting a very aggressive pace, of course, but really it was Thorwald's grim determination to keep up that made the difference.

  "Bo, bo, companhon!" I said, as he finished the drill. "For a man who doesn't want to fight you show a certain excess of espiritu."

  "If that's Occitan for 'lung failure,' I agree," he said, bending over, hands on knees, and panting.

  I laughed, which seemed to gratify him, and then said, "All right, the next part is the hard part of the lesson. Today we do a little limited sparring. I know you're going to
hate it, and I know you'd rather not, but you're going to do it—we have to get you thoroughly used to it if you're ever going to be any help to anyone else. We'll wear gloves, helmets, and pads and take it slowly."

  Slowly turned out to be accurate only on the average. It took him five full minutes to agree that he was properly strapped into his fighting gear, and that his mouthpiece fit. Then, suddenly, he seemed to commit himself to it and was up and ready to go.

  I circled him, occasionally feinting and trying to encourage him to take shots at me. In a way his earlier resistance to the idea of fighting had worked to his advantage—so many beginners get through the drills by venting their aggression, and thus pound through by ignoring what they're doing. Thorwald had done the drills with the calm, patient focus that is the fastest way to learn anything.

  His movements were quick, relaxed, and by the book, and when I could occasionally probe out a real spontaneous response, he pressed his attack as if he wanted to win. My experience and my feel for a real fight still gave me the overwhelming advantage, and Thorwald would have been harmless as a kitten against me or any Occitan male of his own age—but I could see that he wouldn't be for long.

  Toward the end of the time it seemed as if even Thorwald was having fun. Of course, I was not about to mention that and risk offending him.

  I stepped in to draw another attack from his right side, and he pivoted and socked me in the nose. My face felt like it was exploding, "Patz!" I gasped out.

  "Did I hurt you?" He sounded like he might cry. "Your nose is bleeding."

  "It's a fight atz sang, companhon. You won." I tried to force a smile at him, but I don't think it worked because my nose still hurt. "I just need to step into the restroom and splash some cold water on this."

  He turned still paler. "Shouldn't you see a doctor or something?"

  That's the kind of thing one says in Nou Occitan when one is suggesting that the other jovent is a hypochondriac or a mama's boy, and I was already furious at him for his silly response to winning the fight, so rather than say something to humiliate him, I turned and stalked to the bathroom. As I was splashing handfuls of welcome cold water on my face—and probing to discover that my nose was probably just badly bent—Thorwald heaved up breakfast into the toilet behind me.

  "Are you all right?" I finally asked.

  "Do people get used to that?" he asked, going to the sink to wash.

  "You even learn to enjoy it. Drawing blood, I mean, not vomiting."

  He shuddered all over, but he followed me meekly enough back into the dojo to bow out. And strangely, when we entered the dojo, he seemed to suddenly stand straighter and prouder; and his bow was crisp and proper, the first real one I had gotten him to do.

  As I stepped back from the sensei's line after accepting his bow, I happened to look up.

  Margaret and Valerie were up in the galleries.

  Even here in Caledony, nothing brought out enseingnamen like an audience of donzelhas. I had to admit that Bieris had a real point; somehow seeing it this way, though, made it funny rather than offensive. It was all I could do not to tease Thorwald about it as we showered off. It was also all I could do not to scream when I accidentally touched my nose.

  EIGHT

  I had planned to stay in town, partly to keep Aimeric company (he would be taking a guest room at the Center that night) and partly to get a few extra hours' sleep. Now that I had enough clothing here at the Center, it was no major problem. I didn't worry much about Utilitopia's nightlife distracting me because as far as I could tell, Utilitopia's nightlife consisted mostly of sermons. So, when late in the afternoon I sat down to review some administrative nonsense, I was more than a little surprised to find a note in my file of incoming messages, inviting me to "A Performance of New Works by Caledon Artists" in the city that evening.

  The idea was at least intriguing—to hear of a Caledon artist was to hear of an exhibit of dry water or heavy vacuum— and perhaps one of my students was involved. I tried to check with Thorwald, but he'd already gone out for the evening—so probably he was.

  Well, whatever it was, it wasn't common and I knew I didn't want to miss it. I commed Aimeric and discovered he had been sitting around all day, being bored and answering technical questions. He was more than ready to go to dinner; after the heavy workouts of that day, I was even looking forward to dinner at Restaurant Nineteen, Aimeric's favorite place in Utilitopia. We agreed to meet there.

  I left the cat parked and took the trakcar, sitting back to enjoy the swift, silent ride up the steep hills into the city. It occurred to me that Utilitopia would really lose something with ' the coming of the springer, and not long ago I'd have sworn it had nothing to lose. Restaurant Nineteen had become so popular that the ferocious Pleasure Tax had forced it to locate less than two hundred meters from the front gate of the Municipal Sewage Works, which meant that by pure accident it had also acquired a view. It was hard to imagine how they had justified windows, but they had managed that as well.

  Every thirty seconds or so the automatic voice reminded me that "Having the windows unshuttered and the heat on simultaneously is wasting power, sir." I didn't let it annoy me; I was watching the sun of Second Noon play on the icy summits of the Optimals. Somehow I was going to go climbing up there before I left.

  Restaurant Nineteen's special was called "Shepherd's Pie." A rough translation of that would be "overcooked vegetables and chunks of undrained mutton buried in oversalted mashed potatoes." "I'm obviously going native," I said to Aimeric, as I took seconds. "I think I'm beginning to like this stuff."

  "You're just acclimating to the colder weather," he said. "So where is this place you've been invited to? And who invited you? I guess things must have changed more man I thought they had—there sure wasn't anything of the kind when I was here."

  "I don't even know what's being performed. The place is called the Occasional Mobile Cabaret. Anyway, the time specified isn't for an hour and a half yet, so we might as well sit here, kill a dessert, and catch up a little. We haven't really talked much since getting here, with everything we've had to do."

  Aimeric sighed. "Not a lot to talk about and too much to do is a Caledon's favorite situation. I've got to say, Giraut, you've taken to it far better than I thought you would."

  That hurt me, reminding me of Marcabru's last letter, complaining that I wrote as if I were "a stranger named Giraut."

  Aimeric had been sitting there quietly, watching me think, and now he grinned at me. "Your nose looks kind of swollen."

  "Accident with a beginner."

  "Oh." He let that subject go.

  I remembered that Aimeric had spent his first couple of hundred standays on Wilson as a rigid, angry young man, alternately plunging into Occitan life with a fierce gusto and retreating into angry, sulking moralisms. He had then been four years older than I was now. "It must have been very different, growing up here," I said, quietly.

  "Yap. I always explain to myself that I got to be an adult, and then I got to be a jovent. It was so bizarre, coming to Nou Occitan, to find out I didn't have to miss being a kid after all. If I hadn't gotten a slot on the ship, I might have ended up a minister like Bruce."

  "I still haven't figured out what a minister is or what one does," I admitted.

  Aimeric shrugged. "A substitute parent for grownups. Tells them what's right and wrong, comforts them when they're upset, interprets the world. Shames them into being good and coaxes them out of being bad." He sighed. "When it's a good, decent person like Clarity, there's probably no harm in it. That's why she has the biggest congregation in Caledony, I suppose."

  "She does?" I said. "Then why do they all discriminate against her? Why doesn't she have more power on the Council of Rationalizers?"

  "Her congregation is so big mostly because it's sort of an automatic gerrymander. She tolerates dissidents and nobody else does. So all those people get one representative—and every little orthodox congregation gets one. Dad's congregation is only abo
ut three hundred people, but Peterborough's must be upwards of two hundred thousand. Anyway, the decent gentle souls like Clarity are the exceptions." He took another long pull from his wineglass. "It's usually just ambition that puts them into it—and like any group of people selected for ambition and nothing else, they turn out to be a pretty bad lot. Like mandarins in China, colonial administrators in the British Empire, lawyers in old North America, or the reconstruction agencies after the Slaughter—individually there are decent people who do some good, but as a class they're amoral, vicious leeches with a good cover story."

  The bitterness in Aimeric's voice startled me. He added, "This hasn't been a good thing for me to say. Anyone who was overhearing us and didn't report it could be in trouble with the Reverend Saltini, and I don't want that to happen to anyone. We're safe, of course—as resident aliens—but there's something about taking advantage of our position, like that, that bothers me. And I just want you to understand that a lot of what is just amusement, or entertaining an idea for the fun of it, to you, is potentially very dangerous to your students."

  "What do they do to people here?"

  "Well, Caledony isn't Thorburg or Fort Liberty. They don't torture or imprison dissidents, if that's what worries you. What they do is shut them completely out of public discourse. Heretics spend years of living on nothing but naked anger, doing godawful jobs and never having anything more than basic material comfort, ignored by everyone except the other angry cranks like themselves—until one day in their midforties or so, they realize that their lives stink and there's no point in any of it anymore, and then they go in for a big public confession, recant, and get a belated slice of decent life. It's a lot more effective than police repression—they just demonstrate that they can live with being called names a lot longer than most dissidents can live with being invisible." He flushed, and I realized now that he was really drunk, had had a lot of wine before dinner and must have had some before I got there as well.