The Worthing Saga (48 page)

“What the hell business is that of yours?” Herman snapped. “Buy Italy, Grey!”

“This Abner Doon, the assistant minister of colonization, he's pretty adamant.”

“Offer him the moon.”

“It's already owned. But I offered him everything else. He just laughed. He just told you to watch the game and you'd see a real genius at work.”

“Genius! The man's a moron! Already he—” And Herman launched into a description of the stupidities of the night before.

“Look, I'm not into International Games,” Grey finally said. “You know that, that's why you hired me. Okay? So let's just have me do my job and
you
follow the scoreboard.”

“So when are you going to do your job?”

Grey sighed. “Do we have to do this on the phone, with Mother's Little Boys listening in?”

“Let 'em listen.”

“All right, I've tried to trace who's controlling this Doon. The man has connections, but they're all legitimate. I can't find a bankroll, all right? So how can I get the people who are paying him to sell out if I can't find who's paying him?”

“Can't he have an accident or something?”

Grey was silent for a moment. “This is the telephone, Mr. Nuber, and it's illegal to suggest criminal activities over the telephone.”

“Sorry.”

“It's also very stupid. Do you want me to lose my license?”

“They don't listen to every conversation.”

“All right, keep praying. But we don't do anything criminal. Now sit and watch the holo or something,”

Herman punched off the phone and sat at the computer terminal. Italy had just launched a pointless, half-assed war in Guiana. Guiana! As if anything that happened there mattered. And it was such a naked act of aggression that the alliances were starting to form against Italy. Stupid!

He had to do something to take his mind off the delay. He punched in a private game, offered it for free for any taker, normal specs, and pretty soon he had a good five-man game of Acquitaine going. He won't in seven hours. I Pathetic. The great players were all on the broadcast games. What's keeping Grey?

“Nothing's keeping me,” Grey insisted when he finally came to Herman's flat that night. “I'm performing heroic tasks for you, Herman.”

“Swinging on vines isn't doing a damn bit of good.”

Grey smiled, trying to like Herman's sense of humor. “Look, Herman, you're my biggest client. And you're famous. And you're important. I'd have to be an idiot not to be doing my best for you. I've got three agencies out researching everything about this Doon. And all we can find out is that he's nothing like what we first thought.”

“Good. What do we think now.”

“He's rich. Richer than you could imagine.”

“I can imagine infinite wealth. Give me credit.”

“He's got connections all over Capital. He knows everybody, or at least knows the people who know everybody. Right? And all his money is in trusts and investments in dummy corporations that own dummy banks that own dummy industries that own half this damn planet.”

“In other words,” Herman said, “he's self-employed.”

“Self-employed but he ain't sellin', you see. He doesn't need the money. He could lose everything you own in pinochle and still like the guy who won it.”

Herman grimaced. “Grey, you sure have a way of making me feel poor.”

“I'm trying to tell you what you're up against. Because this guy's twenty-seven years old. I mean, he's
young
.”

But something didn't fit. “I thought you told me he wasn't on somec.”

“That's the craziest thing, Herman. He isn't. He's never gone under at all.”

“What is he, a religious fanatic?”

“His only religion seems to be wrecking your life, Mr. Nuber, if I may be so bold. He won't sell. And he won't tell why. And as long as he doesn't go on somec, he doesn't have to sell. It's as simple as that.”

“What have I ever done to him? Why should he want to do this to me?”

“He said he hoped you wouldn't take it personally.”

Herman shook his head, furious and yet unable to find a reason adequate for his fury—or an adequate way to express it. The man had to be reachable.

“You know what I said over the phone?”

“You'll be the first suspect, if anything happened to him, Herman,” Grey warned. “And it wouldn't help a bit. The game would end for the duration of the investigation. Besides, I'm not in that business.”

“Everybody's in that business,” Herman said. “At least scare him. At least rough him up.”

Grey shrugged. “I'll try it.” He stood up to go.

“Herman, I suggest you go back into business for a while. Make a little more money, get the feel of it again. Meet some people. Try to get the game out of your system. If you don't play Italy this time, you can play it on your next waking.”

Herman didn't answer, and Grey let himself out.

At three o'clock in the morning, Herman, exhausted, finally slept.

At about four-thirty, he was wakened by the alarms going off in his flat. He groggily pulled himself out of bed and staggered to the door of his bedroom. Alarms were pro forma—no one of his class was ever burglarized, at least not while the residents were at home.

His worries about theft were soon dispelled. The three men who came in all carried small, tight leather bags, filled with something hard. How hard they were Herman wasn't eager to find out.

“Who are you?”

They said nothing, just approached him silently, slowly. He realized that he was cut off, both from the front door and the emergency exit. He backed into the bedroom.

One of the men reached out a hand, and Herman found himself crushed against the doorjamb.

“Don't hurt me,” he said.

The first man, taller than the others, tapped Herman's shoulder with his bludgeon. Now Herman knew how hard it was. The tapping continued, getting harder and harder, but the rhythm was steady. Herman stood frozen, unable to move, as the pain gradually increased. And then, suddenly, the man shifted his weight, swung the bludgeon backhand, and Herman's ribs were smashed. The breath left him in a grunt, and pain like great hands tearing apart his insides swept up and down his body.

The agony was unbearable.

They were just beginning.

“No doctors, no hospital, nothing. No,” Herman said, trying to summon a forceful tone of voice from his battered chest.

“Herman,” Grey said, “your ribs may be broken.”

“They aren't.”

“You're not a doctor.”

“I have the best medical kit in the city, and it said that nothing was broken. Whoever those bastards were last night, they know what they're doing.”

Grey sighed. “I know who those bastards were, Herman.”

Herman looked at Grey in surprise, almost rising from the bed, though the pain stopped him as abruptly as if he were strapped down.

“Those were the men I hired to rough up Abner Doon.”

Herman moaned. “Grey, no, it can't be—how could he have talked them out of A it?”

“They had an ironclad contract; They've worked for me before. I have no idea how Doon subverted them.” Grey looked worried. “He has power where I didn't expect it. They've been offered money before—a lot of money—but they always kept their contracts. Except when I hired them to teach Doon a lesson.”

“I wonder,” Herman said, “if he learned anything.”

“I wonder,” Grey added, more to the point, “if
you
did.”

Herman closed his eyes, hoping Grey would drop dead.

“Forget the game. Buy Italy next time. Doon's got to go under somec sometime.”

Herman didn't open his eyes, and Grey went away.

The days passed, and soon Herman was able to hobble back into the room where the computer screen dominated one wall, where the holo of the world of Europe 1914d rotated slowly. Whatever Doon's motive was, Herman saw countless proofs of the fact that Doon knew nothing about playing International Games. He didn't even learn from his own mistakes. The forcible occupation of Guiana was followed by a pointless attack on Afghanistan, which had already been a client state, driving several other client states to the enemy alliance. But Herman's rage finally faded, and he glumly watched as the position of Italy worsened.

Italy's enemies weren't particularly brilliant. They could have been defeated—could still be defeated, if only Herman could get to lay.

It was when a revolution flared in England that Herman began to rage again.

From the beginning of the game, Herman had established a carefully benign dictatorship as the government of the Italian Empire, with local autonomy on many matters. It was not oppressive. It was guaranteed to eliminate any chance of revolution. Any rebellions were ruthlessly suppressed, while territories that didn't rebel were lavishly rewarded. It had been years since Herman had had to worry about the internal politics of Italy.

But when the English revolution began, Herman began to scan Doon's activities in the internal affairs of the empire. Doon had pointlessly changed things, taxing the populace, emphasizing the difference between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak. He had also oppressed local nationalities, compelling them to learn Italian, and the computer had brought the inevitable result—resentment, rebellion, and at last revolution.

What was Doon doing? Surely he could see the result of his actions. Surely he could tell that he was doing everything—or at least something—wrong. Surely he would realize he was out of his class in this game, and sell Italy while he still could. Surely.

“Grey,” Herman said over the phone, “this Doon. Is he stupid?”

“If he is, it's the best-kept secret on Capitol.”

“His game is too stupid to believe. Totally stupid. He's doing everything wrong. Anything that could be done right, he's done the opposite. Does that sound like him to you?”

“Doon's built up a financial empire from nothing to the largest I've ever heard of on Capitol, and done it in only eleven years since his majority,” Grey answered. “That doesn't sound like him.”

“Which means that either he's not playing the game himself—”

“No, he's playing, that's the law and the computer says he's following it—”

“Or he's deliberately playing to lose.”

Grey's shrug was almost audible. “Why would anybody do that?”

“I want to meet him.”

“He'll never come.”

“On some neutral ground, someplace that neither of us controls.”

“Herman, you don't know this man. If you don't control the ground, he does—or will, by the time a meeting takes place. There is no neutral ground.”

“I want to meet him, Grey. I want to find out what the hell he's doing with my empire.”

And Herman went back to watching as the revolution in England was put down brutally. Brutally, but not thoroughly. The computer showed armed bands still roaming in Wales and the Scottish highlands, and urban guerillas still alive in London, Manchester, and Liverpool. Doon could see that information, too. But he chose to ignore it. And chose to ignore the revolutionary movement gaining force in Germany, the brigands harassing the farmers in Mesopotamia, the Chinese encroachments in Siberia.

Asinine.

And the fabric of a well-wrought empire began to come apart.

The telephone sent its gentle buzz into the flexible speaker in his pillow, and Herman awoke. Not even opening his eyes, he said into the pillow, “I'm asleep, drop dead.”

“This is Grey.”

“You're fired, Grey.”

“Doon says he'll meet with you.”

“Call my secretary for an appointment.”

“But he says he'll only meet with you if you can come to the C24b tube station within thirty minutes.”

“That isn't even in my sector,” Herman complained.

“So he isn't trying to make it easy for you.”

Herman groaned and got out of bed, dressed in a suit that looked far from natty as he sagged out of the flat and into the corridors. The tubes were running at half-schedule at that time of morning, and Herman stumbled into one and followed the route that led him to station C24b. It was even less crowded than Herman's own area, and there on the platform waited an unprepossessing young man, only a little taller than Herman himself. He was alone.

“Doon?” Herman asked.

“Grandfather,” the young man answered. Herman looked at him blankly. Grandfather?

“Not possible.”

“Abner Doon, colt, out of filly Sylvaii, daughter of Herman Nuber and Birniss Humbol. An admirable pedigree, don't you think?”

Herman was appalled. After all these solitary years, to discover that his young tormentor was a relative—

“Dammit, boy, I have no family. What is this, vengeance for a divorce a hundred years ago? I paid your grandmother well.
If
you're telling the truth.”

But Doon only smiled. “Actually, Grandfather, I don't give a damn about your liaison and lacks of it with my grandmother. I don't like her anyway, and we haven't spoken in years. She says I'm too much like you. And so now when she comes out of somec, she doesn't even look me up. I visit her just to be annoying.”

“A trait you seem to specialize in.”

“You find a long-lost grandchild, and already you're trying to cause division in the family. What an ugly way of dealing with family crises.”

And Doon turned on his heel. Since they hadn't yet discussed the game, Herman had no choice but to follow. “Listen, boy,” Herman said as he trotted doggedly behind the younger man's brisk walk, “I don't know what your purpose is with my game, but you certainly don't need any money. And you're certainly not going to win any bets, not the way you're playing.”

Doon smiled over his shoulder and went on walking down the corridors. “It rather depends, doesn't it, on what I'm betting on.”

“You mean you're betting that you'll lose? The way you're playing, you'd never get any takers.”

“No, Grandfather. As a matter of fact, I'm holding bets made months ago. Bets that Italy would be destroyed and utterly gone from Europe 1914d within two months of your waking.”

“Utterly destroyed!” Herman laughed. “Not a chance of that boy, I built too well, even for a games moron like you.”

Doon touched a door and it slid open.