A Million Open Doors

by John Barnes

  So his reason for looking embarrassed was entirely different from mine, I suppose. Sort of like the first time a clerk addresses you as "senhor" in Nou Occitan; you suddenly feel hopelessly old.

  In a moment I was dressed, and we were all heading down to breakfast in a still-slightly-grouchy but generally pleasant mood. Margaret had posted shift times for eating, and we all were getting first shift—today it would mean being that much shorter of sleep, but there was no getting around the fact that the Occitans and the Caledon staff had to be awake and ready for anything today.

  Anything did not take long to surface. As we were finishing breakfast in the smaller, private kitchen (I was disgusted to notice that Bieris, just as she had always been on camping trips, was very alert and cheerful), there was a ping from the com.

  It was Prescott, who had been fielding calls from the kitchen phone in addition to supervising a small crew of cooks. "Sorry," he said, "I was hoping you all could eat in peace, but it doesn't look like it. I think we have to be prepared for some real bad news; Saltini wants to talk to Giraut in five minutes. He says anyone who wants to can listen in."

  Well, at least that meant he didn't expect to be able to cut any private deals with me. I took that as a compliment, gulped the last cup of coffee, and set the com in the little room for wide angle so that we could all see him and he could see all of us.

  "I might have expected to see all of you together," Saltini said sourly. It was the first time I had ever seen him without that nasty little smile. "Though I'm a bit surprised that you are all up so early in the morning."

  Puritans down through the ages have always thought of the early morning as the virtuous time, I suppose. I fought down the urge to tell him we'd been up all night doing round-robin sodomy, and said, "Is there some matter that's urgent?"

  "Oh, a little change of policy, effective six hours from now. We think that many of the people who have taken up residence in the Center are very probably negative, disturbing, irrational, and anti-Christian forces within their families. As you must know, because many of them were unable to qualify for higher education, a rather disproportionate number of them had been living with parents, even though many of them are well past the normal age for it. Such I suppose is always the situation with social misfits. At any rate, it seems to us that since many of those homes have been weakened by the damaging presence of those people, and since providentially they have been removed from those homes, that this is a desirable situation we will want to preserve. Therefore we have decided to seek—and the judges have been good enough to grant—a blanket injunction prohibiting the list of people we will download to you momentarily from further contact with their families, and from moving back into their family homes. So to begin with, you are to be congratulated in that you have gained many of your guests in long-term tenancy, as opposed to the short-term you had expected."

  "Well," I said, "speaking purely as a businessman, I can always use the additional revenue." And thinking as a human being, I would like to have you alone in a room for five minutes, just to see how many times I could punch and kick you while still leaving time to strangle you before my time was up.

  The spectacular pretty cruelty of Saltini's action fascinated me; it was art in the same way that Marcabru's torturing a defeated opponent was.

  "If I may, sir, I have a question," Thorwald said.

  "Let me see—Thorwald Spenders, I believe—pending case arising from the incitement to riot at the performance of the Occasional Mobile Cabaret?"

  "Pending case arising from unjustified police interference with a legitimate public entertainment, yes, sir, that's me. My partner, also," he added, gesturing at Paul. "But my question does not arise directly out of that event."

  "Well, then, I suppose since it does not involve a pending court case, the Chairman of the Council of Rationalizers might legitimately give you some advice on whatever's on your mind. Do remember I'm quite busy at the moment."

  "Yes, sir. I myself have duties to get to, here at the Center." Thorwald might have been making pleasant, if somewhat formal and stilted, conversation with anyone of his parents' generation. I avoided looking at the screen because I was afraid some of my admiration for Thorwald's straight face might leak through. "My question was, I'm unable to find any rule or procedure for properly registering a new artistic movement with the authorities. Should my next step be to petition the General Consultancy, or should it be presented as a request for a private bill to the Council of Rationalizers?"

  It was only later that day that Aimeric managed to explain to me what was brilliant about Thorwald's question. The General Consultancy was a vast collection of aintellects, the same one that had often ruled on Center policies, which judged whether activities were rational or not. It could be subverted only over time; if Saltini stayed in long enough, the body of case law would eventually warp the General Consultancy's policies. At this moment, however, the General Consultancy was going to interpret Caledon law very much in the traditional manner, and that meant it might be relatively easy to get a ruling that would not suit Saltini at all, which—if he wanted to hang onto his paper-thin claim of legitimacy—he would have to follow.

  On the other hand, if he allowed the issue to come in as a private bill request, he would setting a precedent that in principle artistic movements were permissable activities—and from then on the General Consultancy would follow that precedent. Moreover, when he turned back the application, grounds would have to be stated—and by avoiding or reversing those grounds, the next attempt could probably sail through the General Consultancy.

  So essentially Saltini could either take his chances with what the General Consultancy might do right away—and thus risk having the whole issue put outside of his intervention—or be forced to construct a policy on the issue and hope we wouldn't be able to turn it against him.

  The cunning old Pastor had not reached his present position by hesitation; he smiled, although it looked more like he had a toothache than anything else, and said, "Hmm. I do see what you mean. There are no precedents. Well, let's just let it go to the General Consultancy; if there's any problem with what they do, then we might think about taking it up as a private bill." As Aimeric explained to me later, it was a bold gamble; if the General Consultancy crushed Thorwald, Saltini would win, but if not, Thorwald would have a free hand. Saltini was simply choosing to play for the stakes that would settle the issue once and for all.

  "Thank you, sir." Thorwald's smile and nod were coolly correct; I thought I detected a little whiff of the dojo in the style.

  "If there's no further business—"

  There was none, so Saltini nodded politely to us and was gone from the screen, leaving us with the problem of telling more than a hundred frightened young people that they were legally enjoined against getting in touch with their families. I was certainly glad that Margaret had managed to get word out to every family the previous night, so that at least parents knew where their children were, and knew that they had reached a relatively safe place, even if they could no longer talk to them.

  The first hour or so of First Light was exhausting; I felt as if I needed ten extra ears and four extra brains. Had I not had Margaret to help me, I don't doubt I'd have ended up back in my room, under the covers, whimpering. First of all, it turned out that no one outside the Center knew that we had notified all the families that their children were with us; therefore, a hundred or so people whose relatives had disappeared had to check in with us, and be turned away with the bad news that we did not know either. Several of them were in fact students at the Center, but hadn't made it here yet; four were to turn up dead later that morning, skulls beaten in or having drowned in puddles, after being stunned in some alley. Naturally all four were supposed to have been attacked "probably for purposes of robbery by unknown assailants during the recent brief civil disorders." For one of them, a young woman named Elizabeth Lovelock, we had to arrange a funeral at the Center, because her family refused to know any
thing about her.

  She was the worst case. Someone, probably several some-ones, had raped her and bashed her teeth in with a "blunt object" (which was a clever way to avoid saying stun stick), and she had received a severe stunning after all this, which had caused her to drown in the blood from her mouth. ("What was she doing for them to give her a max dose like that? Resisting arrest by screaming too much?" Margaret had exploded as the facts became apparent.) Naturally the PPP said it was trying to find out which city policeman had done it, and the city police had been given no information about the case at all.

  The body was to be delivered later that day. The Highly Reverend Peter Lovelock sent us a brief note saying that since we had encouraged his daughter in her "sluttish, disobedient ways" we could deal with the "foul garbage that was left of her," and that was all we ever heard from her family. I put him on my mental list for some sort of personal vengeance, but in fact I never met him. I would prefer to report that he came to a bad end, but given that he was Pastor of a small outland congregation far north along the coast, I suspect he probably retired as the most respected and valued member of his community. Justice has a way of not arriving where and when you wish it.

  We also discovered that now that we had a subsidiary business as a hostel, we had to establish credit with a bunch of food wholesalers. It quickly became apparent that this was purely a matter of politics—and Bruce, who seemed to know everyone, was invaluable, steering us to suppliers who leaned liberal politically and could be expected to cut us some slack, and away from reactionaries who might try to tie us up in red tape, tight credit, and late deliveries.

  It was not yet First Noon when I got a moment to run upstairs and see what the others were up to. The last thing I expected to find was Thorwald and Paul engrossed in drafting "The Inessentialist Manifesto." I fought down my irritation, though it was difficult when I thought of Margaret downstairs doing enough work for deu sait how many people. "Inessentialist" seemed to be the perfect description of this particular two-person movement. "Companho," I said, as reasonably as I could manage, "is there a reason this cannot wait?"

  "Well," Paul said, "I guess, urn—"

  Thorwald shook his head. "Paul, if I can't get the idea across to you, I guess I should just give up. Giraut, if we draft this properly, we'll have a legal shield to hide the whole dissident movement behind. Without that, Saltini will slowly strangle us out of existence, one arrest and one gag order at a time; with it, we can eventually pull him down. And I've got to get it set up before he figures out a way to head it off. I know you're overworked and short of sleep, companhon. So am I, and so is Paul, and poor Margaret must be dead on her feet. But if I don't get this done and submitted to the General Consultancy within a couple of hours, Saltini will beat me to the punch, and we'll be locked out of the communication channels for good."

  I was almost staring at him. He was a teenager, after all; even earlier that week he had still behaved much like a very new jovent, with all the explosions of temper and lack of discipline. The crisis had made him—well, admit it, more of an adult than I had been a scant hundred standays ago. And as such, he was entitled to the basic respect I would give a trusted friend. "If you say what you are doing is necessary," I said, "then I trust that it is. But there's a couple things you should know about."

  Briefly, I told them about the Lovelock case, having to begin over again once, because Aimeric came in just then and had not heard. (I noticed that I became more, not less, enraged with each retelling.) I suppose that as an Occitan, I was partly inured to violence by the frequency with which I had encountered it in hallucinatory form, but the thought of such real brutality to a donzelha turned my stomach, and I could see that Thorwald and Paul were shocked beyond all bounds. The cold rage in their eyes when I finished with the news— and the deep blank stare of Aimeric—told me more than anything else that whatever Caledony had been before to my Caledon friends, it was now changed utterly.

  "I'll have to tell Dad and Clarity about this," Aimeric said at last. "It might put some fight back in Clarity—and Dad may have some ideas about what to do. I've just been on the com to the PPP, and apparently most of the major political prisoners will be released sometime in the next couple of hours, generally out to house arrest, which means I'll be able to visit them but they won't be able to go anywhere. I'm supposed to com Ambassador Shan, soon, too. I assume I should fill him in on everything."

  We all nodded. So far, the Council of Humanity had been about as strongly on our side as we could have dared to hope.

  "Well, then I'd best get to it." Aimeric stood slowly and nodded at Paul and Thorwald. "You make sure that manifesto is airtight. If there isn't some way for me to speak, with things like this happening, I'm liable to do things that will get diplomatic immunity revoked."

  They turned back to the page in front of them, and I went downstairs. There were five more crises exploding, and Margaret was on top of all of them; she pointed out another one. "We need to see if we can resume classes soon—otherwise the PPP can start forcing people to ask for refunds. Would you have time to figure out what we'll have to do to get the Center functioning as the Center again, in addition to being Utilitopia's leading Heretic House?"

  Call it just natural merce, or maybe I just needed to keep my skills at flattery in shape, but I told her that what she asked me for I was incapable of refusing. She blushed yet again and her eyes wouldn't meet mine, but she was obviously overjoyed at the attention. I realized that I deeply enjoyed giving her the pleasure, and that as delighted as she was, she was almost physically passable.

  Almost.

  I was upstairs at a terminal in my office, trying to work out where we could move all those bodies so that all the classes could meet at their regular times, when there was a gentle tap at the door. "Venetz."

  Valerie came in very hesitantly; she looked as if she might break and run. "Are you busy?"

  "Incredibly, midons, but there's always time for you."

  "I just wanted ... well, to see how you were doing, and maybe to find out, oh, just how things are."

  The difference between Valerie and Margaret, it occurred to me, was that both had Caledon skill at flirting—which is to say, none at all—but where Margaret simply communicated as best she could, Valerie actually tried to flirt and failed miserably at it. Still, as I looked at the clear skin, the immense luminous eyes ... and the curves of her body ... I thought skill and communication might be highly negotiable.

  "Well," I said, "I'm exhausted because I haven't slept much, and there's much more work in front of me than I can reasonably do. But at least so far the PPP can't touch me personally, which is a better situation than most of you are in, so I try to hold my share of things up." It came out much more tired and duty-bound than I had meant it to; more Caledon, if you will.

  Her smile was still warm, and by lowering her eyes a little she managed to give herself some look of mystery; it would have been unusually crude for a pubescent Occitan, but just the attempt was remarkable here. "I know how much you've been doing for all of us. Have you ... er, had even a chance to think a little about ... when we—jammed together?"

  She emphasized "jammed" just enough to make sure that I would remember what it meant in local slang. There hadn't been any real danger that I would forget.

  "Well, it was just about the last pleasant thing that happened to me," I said. "Was there anything in particular about it you wanted to discuss?"

  "Just that I'd love to ... perform with you again. And since Paul and Thorwald seem so determined to launch this Inessentialist Movement, that means more chances to perform, and—well, you know. I wanted to know if you felt about it the same way I feel about it."

  "Sort of the ultimate in unanswerable questions, isn't it?" I wasn't sure why I was teasing and fending in quite this way—perhaps I was afraid that she might make a more explicit suggestion soon, or perhaps I was afraid that she would not and I would be confronted by my own arrogance. Certainly I did not want
her to leave, and I was enjoying the sight of the little flush spreading across her cheeks, not much caring whether it was embarrassment or excitement. "Anyway, until they get their manifesto done, how are we to know, as true artists, whether or not we are Inessentialists?"

  If the peeps had a bug left, that might give them a bit of a headache.

  "Oh, but ... well, I think all artists are. Paul was telling me about it; his eyes were all full of light, and just to listen to him ... what he said was that it's about the idea that art doesn't serve a purpose, art is a purpose, that's the only thing I can remember exactly." Her eyes were fairly "full of light" in their own right, and the mention of Paul's name had triggered a couple of thoughts in me. First of all, I was in the middle of a genuinely dangerous political crisis, in which Paul had been useful and Valerie had not, and from what Margaret had told me, I sort of strongly suspected that Valerie had been creating a certain amount of chaos among the people staying with us, and probably giving Paul one more thing to worry about.

  The second thought, which practically blinded me, was that although I was certainly excited by her face and body, and the purity of her voice and the passion of her playing were magnificent, I did not know her very well, and what I knew I didn't like.

  It had never occurred to me that I might like or dislike a donzelha. Maybe Marcabru had been getting letters from a stranger named Giraut, after all.

  I don't know what exactly I did in that long moment of thought—tossed my hair, I think—but something in the way I did it must have given her the feeling that she wasn't getting anywhere, because after a minute or two more of small talk she excused herself and disappeared.

  The pile of problems in front of me claimed my attention immediately; if we put everyone sleeping in the dueling room onto shift two, then the kitchen work would be slightly screwed up but on the other hand—