The Iron Maiden (40 page)

Thorley and Hopie left their station, and walked slowly across to join the group on the dais. Her hand was on his arm, acceding to his courtly manner. To Spirit's eye, they made a nice couple. How was it that it wasn't obvious to everyone that they were father and daughter?

“We are excused at this point,” Spirit said to the others. "But I hope we can remain together for a time.

There is so much I want to hear from the rest of you--about my brother."

“There is a restaurant that oversees this square, in my building,” Shelia said. “Shall we go there, and talk?”

“Yes!” Helse said, for all of them.

Thorley and Hopie arrived. “May we join you ladies?” he inquired with a wink at Robertico to show that he recognized the non-literality of that case. “I believe it is Hopie's birthday, and it would be difficult to imagine a more compatible group to share it with.”

“Your birthday!” Ebony said. “Yes it is! We forgot.”

“If I may ask--how old?” Tasha asked. “I remember your letters to him. He liked them so well.”

“I'm thirty four today,” Hopie said, blushing as if half that age.

“We were thinking of going to the restaurant,” Spirit said, flicking her gaze toward the Shelia Foundation building.

“Of course.”

They went to the restaurant, and indeed it had a broad window providing a panoramic view of the line of women. They sat at a semicircular table, seventeen of them facing each other and the scene below. The line of women outside seemed endless.

“How did he die?” Helse asked. “I don't wish to cause pain to others, but it is a thing I must know.”

“Of course, dear,” Megan said. “We all want to know.”

“I have researched this in detail,” Reba said. “I have his itinerary throughout. Forta assumed the aspect of Spirit so that others would not know that Spirit was busy elsewhere.” She glanced at both of them.

“Hope insisted on seeing the Panchen of Laya, despite the urgent plea of the Premier of the Middle Kingdom. He was sure the Panchen would not be so foolish as to have them killed, because that would bring the wrath of the System upon that kingdom.”

“It did,” Emerald said grimly.

“And its own people,” Rue said. “They knew what to do.”

“So Hope and Forta went to Laya alone,” Reba continued. “They arrived at Hasa, the Forbidden City, where they were not welcomed. They commandeered a vehicle for themselves and the tiger.” Reba smiled. “People remember the tiger; this facilitated the tracking. They paused to pay homage to a shrine of the Buddha. Hope said he had always wanted to be like Asoka, and mentioned the four great truths Buddha spoke of: existence is suffering, the origin of suffering is desire, suffering ceases when desire ceases, and the way to reach the end of desire was to follow the Eightfold Path. The people there were impressed. Then they took the footpath up the mountain to find the Panchen. They obtained heavy clothing for the cold, and left Smilo part way up, as he was old and not a cold-weather tiger. It was a difficult climb for Hope, because of his ailment, but Forta helped him. At the top they were attacked by a robot in the shape of a white snow monster. They overcame it, but in the process fell down the steep slope. They tumbled to the base. Hope's clothing had been shredded, his dialysis loop was severed, and Forta's leg was broken. They could have been saved at that point, but were not. Bleeding and dying, they slowly froze to death while waiting for a rescue that did not come.”

There was horrified silence. Then Forta spoke. "When I tasted the ashes, I suffered a vision of that scene. I was in the form of Spirit, and I held him to my breast, trying to keep him warm. He addressed me as Spirit, and spoke of the baby. I did not understand but he was insistent that I had given it to him.

Then we sang their songs of the Worried Man and The Dear. We rehearsed the Eightfold Path. I tried to tell him that we would be rescued, but he said no, that Helse was coming for him. Then I felt the spirit of Helse join me, and I held him as he died. He was with her at the end. And I was with her too.“ She paused, for she was weeping. ”I could not save him."

There was silence again. Spirit knew that what Reba had said was research--but what way was there to account for Forta's words? The real Forta had not known about the origin of the baby. That was why she was perplexed when Hope mentioned it. She was emulating Spirit, but was not Spirit. This Forta was emulating the original Forta, complete with her ignorance.

“Of course it was just a vision,” Forta said. “Perhaps I got carried away.”

“It was a true vision,” Spirit said. “This is how he died.”

“You did bring him a baby,” Megan said. She glanced at Hopie. “That baby became mine.”

“Of course,” Spirit agreed, hoping that Hopie would not catch on. Yet was there a continuing point to that secret, now that Thorley's wife was dead? Hope had kept it loyally, accepting decades of condemnation, to protect his sister's secret liaison. But that secret was no longer necessary.

The dialogue continued, as the others spoke of their intimate moments with the Tyrant, and these were also eerily accurate. There were things that only Spirit now knew, yet others mentioned them. Even Robertico told of details of his mother's relationship that Hope had told only to Spirit and she had told no one. Hope really had come to them with the ashes.

The only ones who did not speak were Thorley and Hopie. Perhaps that was just as well.

Dream

A few days after the memorial service, Reba Ward delivered Hope's five autobiographical manuscripts to Hopie, as she had agreed to do. Hopie, evidently astonished to learn of their existence, disappeared into them for several months. Spirit dreaded to imagine what the straight-laced young woman thought of them.

She had always been somewhat diffident about, if not openly hostile to, Hope's peccadilloes, choosing not to understand the way he needed women. But she did love him, and did relate to him in special ways.

Some very special ways.

So Spirit focused on getting the restored Tyrancy in order, and on finding and placing superior personnel for the Triton Project, and guiding South Saturn toward acceptable details of compromise for their participation in it. King and Wan were intelligent and sensible and meant well, but untrained in project management, so they came to Spirit for advice, and she helped by putting them in direct touch with the most competent personnel she knew of.

But it was more than that. “Please, we are doers, rather than directors,” King told her. The two had come in person to plead their case, and he was a dynamic young man, and she a stunningly lovely young woman. “We want to participate.”

“I am not sure I understand.”

“We want to go to space,” Wan said simply.

“But there is need for you here! You are cultural icons, the symbols of the unity of South Saturn and the Rings, known to all the System.”

“That, too,” he said. “We would like to achieve some privacy, as we thought we had when we met.”

“And to bear and raise children,” Wan added. “Not in a fishbowl.”

Spirit considered. Hope had thrived on notoriety, but Spirit had always preferred some isolation from public awareness. She had lost that, with the death of the Tyrant, and missed it. Her romance with Thorley was the current subject of endless media exposes, and extravagant conjectures, making his position difficult too. She realized belatedly that they would have been better off keeping the secret longer. Public scrutiny was hell on romance. “I understand. I would like to go too. But the penalty of responsibility is to suffer degradation or loss of private wishes.”

“Perhaps a lesser responsibility,” King suggested. “Something necessary, but less public.”

“A small hop,” Wan agreed. “To go, and return when it is done.”

Spirit shook her head. “We must either remain in the Solar System, or go out many light years. There are no small hops. Even a mission to Alpha Centauri would require four years to travel, and longer to make a viable bubble colony.”

“Not necessarily,” King said.

“You have a way to travel faster than light?”

“A shorter distance. Nemesis is within half a light year.”

“Nemesis!”

“We have talked with our people,” Wan said. “They approve the Triton Project, but are wary of untested one-way journeys to space. A colony by the dark star offers a fair test of the technology, close enough to return and report before the long-range ships go out. It would be reassuring.”

Spirit considered that. This smart young couple had a truly intriguing idea. South Saturn was not the only region wary of untested one-way travel. A close test project could be emotionally as well as technically useful. Also, this could be perhaps the ideal launching-pad to galactic space, because Nemesis was the System's richest lode of matter, more massive than the rest of the planets and moons and fragments combined. There was a plan to set up mining and construction operations there, but it had been deferred pending availability of equipment and personnel to operate what would necessarily be a huge and dangerous enterprise, largely isolated from the rest of humanity.

She looked at them. It was clear that they understood the significance of this project, and were volunteering for it. Their participation could advance the schedule considerably.

Spirit nodded. “I believe there would be no objection elsewhere if South Saturn and the Rings wish to sponsor a model Nemesis project and make the information obtained available to all others.”

“We shall attend to it,” King said, clearly pleased. “And participate ourselves, so that all will know that it is viable.”

“Thank you,” Wan said, and came to kiss Spirit. Her beauty and personal magnetism were such as to make even an old woman thrill to her touch.

It seemed but a brief time before Hopie came, though it was not. “You are my mother,” she said.

So she had at last caught on, as was perhaps inevitable after the mention during the Tyrant's memorial service. Spirit found herself holding her daughter, and crying. “So he finally told you, Hopie,” she said, thinking of Forta's vision.

“He wrote it in his manuscript,” she said. “I never suspected, before.”

Hope could have done that, though it surprised Spirit. “Because you are so like him. You inherited so many of his ways.”

“Then who is my biologic father?”

There was the other shoe. She deserved to know. “Thorley.”

“Thorley,” she repeated, her mind almost visibly sifting significant files.

“You know how he saved Megan, suffering injury himself, and Hope told me to take care of him.”

“You really took care of him!”

Spirit smiled ruefully. “I really did, dear. We could not marry, but I could not give up the baby. So I brought it to Megan, and she--she was, is a great woman.” Spirit was crying again. Hopie held her, as Spirit had held Hopie in her infancy, and now the secret between them was gone. “I got to keep you, in my fashion.”

“And that's how Megan repaid Thorley for saving her life,” Hopie said.

“Oh, it was so much more than that! Megan loves you, dear.”

“I know. I could not have had a better mother than Megan, or a better father than Hope Hubris, and I will not deny them now. But how much my new knowledge of my natural parentage adds to my life! The times Thorley was with us, as when he joined our expedition to Saturn when Daddy was Governor of Sunshine. And sending me to him for advice on Education. That's why Daddy let him do that!”

“Yes, in part. Thorley loves you too.”

Hopie digested that. “Must this remain secret?”

“That is for you to decide. I may marry Thorley. We can no longer be hurt by your origin. Do what is right for you.”

“Aunt Spirit--” Hopie faltered, embarrassed. “Spirit, your story must be told!”

“Hopie, I have never written personal things down; only my brother did that. Now I am the Tyrant, carrying on in his stead; I have no time for such a narrative.”

“Then tell me, and I shall write it for you!” she said. “There is so much that you alone know, that will otherwise be lost with you.”

“But the time, even for that--”

“In snatches,” she pleaded. “At odd moments, when you are free. Tell me, or dictate briefly for a tape that I can transcribe. I can fill in the context from his narrative. All the details he omitted, because you took care of them--”

Spirit shook her head. “Hopie, it just isn't feasible! You have no idea how busy I--”

“It cannot end here, my sister, my love!”

Spirit stared at her daughter, startled. That had been Hope's voice issuing from her, just as Spirit had heard it when she tasted the ashes. Hopie did identify with him.

What choice did she have? Spirit bowed her head. “As you wish, as ever, my brother, my love,” she whispered, and there was comfort in that capitulation.

Now the full story would be out, as Hopie made her inexorable way through Spirit's private life. It was time to deal with Thorley.

She went to see him. “Something has come up?” he inquired, for it was not one of their scheduled trysts.

“Yes. Hopie knows.”

“Does she accept?”

“Yes. She means to write my biography. The System will know our secrets.”

He laughed. “I will stand revealed as a philandering hypocrite, by my own illegitimate daughter. It is perhaps a fitting finish for the Tyrant's leading critic. Hope Hubris is surely laughing. I hope she is kind to us.”

“He's not laughing,” she said. “He visits Hopie, and sometimes speaks through her mouth.”

“She is a victim of mass hysteria. She has a special problem dealing with his death.”

“So do I.” But she had not come for this. “Thorley, I want to marry you now.”

He considered. “Are we then to assume legal responsibility for what we have done?”

“Yes. Isn't it time?”

“It is time,” he agreed. “But I trust you will still be my lover.”

“Your only lover,” she agreed firmly.

They were formally married in a civil ceremony, Hopie attending. They moved in together, but continued their separate public personae: Spirit as current Tyrant of Jupiter, Thorley as the leading critic of the restored Tyrancy. “We do not discuss politics in the bedroom,” Thorley reported in a column. But others remarked with some humor that surely the Tyrant had had his vengeance on his critic by chaining him to the Iron Maiden. He came to be known as the Chained Man.

There was a holo session with King and Wan: “We are getting the hardware, but not the software, as it were,” King said. “The ships are assigned, but only half filled. We need face personnel.”

“Need what?”

“People of stature, of high visibility or notoriety, to attract the masses. Most are already committed to other projects, and the colonists are signing with them. Nemesis is a dark star; there will not be much light, and folk don't like that. They need further inducement to join.”

“But notoriety is a thing of the moment,” Spirit protested. “It is fickle. In a decade there will be an entire pantheon of other notables.”

“This is the moment,” Wan said.

Spirit sighed. They had a point. “I will see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

How was she going to find “face” personnel? Virtually all the evocative figures had been taken. The ships did need to be filled, or the project would falter. In the restored semi-democratic framework, complements could not simply be assigned; they had to volunteer. That meant attractive names, for an otherwise unattractive mission.

Hopie came again. Spirit could not deny her, and did not want to. “I can't call you 'Mom,'” she said.

“Megan will always be that.”

“Of course. She raised you and gave you her name.” A thing Spirit would forever appreciate. What could be more fitting that to have her daughter's surname be Hubris?

“But I want to be with you, Spirit. And with Thorley. I want my lost family back.”

“Oh, Hopie, it is too late to have that. You have your own adult life to make now.”

“I still want it. I want to be with you and Thorley. Amber and Robertico want it too.”

“But they aren't--”

“I was adopted. They were virtually adopted. We grew up together for a decade, and have not separated since. We think of ourselves as siblings. We all use Hubris as our surname.”

“You want to seem to be a family?”

“We are family, in ways that count. We want to be together.”

“I don't think I understand.”

“You have married Thorley. Take us in.”

“Hopie, none of you are children any more!”

“And you are old. So there isn't a lot of time. But we can have a few years together, if we do it now.”

Spirit was about to protest again. But two things stopped her. First, she found this crazy idea strangely appealing. She had never had a family, formally, and realized that she missed it. Hopie was her daughter, and it would be wonderful to be truly together with her as family members. She knew Thorley would want it too; he had always had to mask his sincere appreciation of the Tyrant's daughter, lest it be misunderstood--or, worse, understood. Second, she suddenly realized that there was a way. “How would you like to go with us to Nemesis?”

Hopie stared at her. “You're going there?”

“If you do. They need participants of notoriety, to attract a full complement of colonists. I think the five of us could help. It would be somewhat isolated, in terms of the Solar System, but we could return in perhaps two years once the colony is fairly established.”

“Or go from there to deep space, once the technology has proved itself. And we would be together, away from the cynosure.”

“We would be workers. The colonies can't afford slackers.”

Hopie nodded. “I like it. Let me check with the others.”

Thus readily was the decision made. They would go halfway to space--and be a family. It seemed fitting.

It was another year before the Nemesis Project was ready to depart, but it did have a full complement.

Hopie, Amber, and Robertico were all active recruiters, holding responsible positions and working hard.

Spirit gradually shifted her duties to competent and incorruptible leaders, so that the Tyrancy would become an oligarchy--a government by a few. That would not be perfect, but nothing was. With luck it would hold long enough to get mankind safely into space and established at several stars. The long-range effort, of course, would not be realized for centuries, because it would take the colony ships that long to reach their destinations, even at light speed. But once they were fairly started, there would be no stopping the program, even if the solar System itself defaulted. Like the original Earth, it would no longer be crucial.

Hopie came through to a degree that surprised Spirit. “All the Fifteen are coming,” she reported.

“Hope's women?” Spirit asked, amazed. “The ones who tasted the ashes?”

“Yes. Once Daddy possessed them, they want to remain together. Even Mom.” She meant Megan.

“They understand each other in a way few others do. It was what Thorley calls a numinous experience.”

“Numinous?”

“Mysterious, almost supernatural or religious, arousing feelings of honor, duty, loyalty and such,” Hopie said, evidently quoting a dictionary definition. “Hope Hubris came to them in love, and possessed them again.”

Indeed, Spirit had seen it happen, and experienced similar herself. “Numinous,” she agreed. “But how is it you understand this, when you did not taste the ashes?”

“I didn't need to. Hope was already with me.”

“With you?”

Hopie looked her in the eye. “My sister, my love,” she repeated in Hope's voice. And in that moment, it was Hope's face Spirit saw.