The Worthing Saga (56 page)

“Do you mean it?”

“There'll be no use for Mother in the universe you're making, Abner.”

“But there'll be room for Rachel Crove?”

The name struck her like a hammer. No one had called her by her given name since—since—

And she was a girl again, and a man who was her equal, or nearly so, lay naked beside her, and she reached over and put her arms around him, whispering, “Take me with you. Take me.”

He did.

They lay in the grass as the sun set, and she felt more fulfilled than she had since a day on a cliff in Crove when she had begun their career of conquests. Only this time she had been conquered, and she knew it, and she was willing.

“On every waking,” she said, “you must tell me your plans.” You must show me what you're building, and let me watch.

“I will,” he said. “But you can't make any suggestions.”

“I wouldn't dream of it. That would be cheating, wouldn't it?”

“You aren't very good at sex,” Doon said.

“Neither are you,” she answered, laughing. “Who gives a damn?”

Mother did not come back until half an hour before her grand entrance at the Mother's Waking Party, the highest high society event in Capitol. Nab was distraught.

“Mother, Mother, what a worry you've caused us!”

She only looked at him slantwise, and frowned. “I was in good company. Were you?”

Nab glanced at Dent. “Only second-rate, I'm afraid.”

Dent laughed nervously.

Mother growled at him. “Can't you even get a little angry, boy? It's so damned boring when everybody tries to be nice. Well, the party's already under way, right? So what am I wearing this time?”

They brought her the dress, and seven women wrapped her in it. She was startled that her nipples showed. “This is really the fashion?”

Nab shook his head. “It's a bit more modest than most. But I thought that perhaps the image you need to present.”

“Modest? Me?” She laughed and laughed. “Oh, this is the best waking in years. Best in years, Nab. You can stay on, but fire the boy. Find an assistant with more gumption. The boy's an ass. And send the chancellor to me.”

The chancellor came in, bowing and uttering apologies about the poor status of the reports this waking.

“Everybody's trying to lie to me,” she said. “Fire them all. Except, of course, for the minister of colonization. And his assistant. The two of them impressed me. Leave them in. And as for you, I don't want to have another lie in a report again. Understand? Or if you must lie, at least contrive to do it well. None of these could have fooled a five-year-old child.”

“I'll never lie to you, Mother.”

“I know perfectly well that I'm Empress in name only, boy, so don't patronize me. You'd just better make sure that I don't get reminded of it by the sloppy work the cabinet does. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“And that assistant minister of colonization. He was refreshing. I want him awake and ready to meet with me again next waking. And leave him in his job. Doubtless a sinecure, but he's sweet.”

The chancellor nodded.

“Now give me your arm. To hell with the schedule. We're going down to the party.”

Nab watched her go.

“Am I really tired?” Dent asked.

“Yes, boy. I warned you. Act natural. Too bad. You showed some promise.”

“But what'll I do?”

Nab shrugged. “They always have good jobs for the people Mother fires. You don't have to worry.”

“I want to kill her.”

“Why? She did you a favor. Now you won't have to watch her act important every waking. The bitch. Wish she'd sleep for ten years.”

Dent was surprised. “You really hate her, don't you?”

“Hate her? I suppose so.” And Nab turned away. “Get on out, Dent. If she sees you here again, she'll fire me, too.”

Dent left, and Nab went to the tiles and chose the next poor fool who would make a stab at satisfying Mother. He had to have an assistant. The assistant's stupidity always made Nab look better.

Do I hate her, Nab wondered.

He couldn't decide. He only remembered watching her in the morning; as she lay nude on the bed. It wasn't hate he felt then.

The party was long and boring, as all the others had been, but Mother knew the importance of being visible. She had to be seen at every waking, on a set day, or someone could make her disappear and no one would notice. So she circulated, and graciously met the young girls who were just getting to somec, and the fops and fags who hung about the court, and the old men and women who had first met her a few centuries ago when they were young.

She was a reproach to them all. No matter how high a somec level they achieved, she was higher. No matter how many centuries passed before they got old, they would never live to see her get older. I will live forever, she reminded herself.

But as she watched the people who actually believed this party was important, the thought of living forever made her very tired.

“I'm tired,” she said to the chancellor, and he immediately waved a signal to someone and the orchestra struck up some stirring music from aeons ago (this was old when I was a child, she thought) and the guests lined up and for an hour she bade goodbye to all of them and finally they were gone.

“It's over,” she sighed. “Thank heaven.” And then she went upstairs to the room where workmen had obviously been knocking up the walls. Pretending to take the hololoop equipment out, she decided, and was amused that they thought she could be so easily fooled. That fellow Nab—a sharp one. A total bastard, too. The best kind of person to deal with. He'll be around for quite a while.

She sat on the edge of her bed and brushed her hair, not because it needed it but because she was in the mood for it. It felt good. She watched herself in the large mirror, and noticed proudly that she didn't yet sag. That she was still, though not young, desirable. I'm a match for Doon, she said to herself. I'm still a match for any man, and more than a match for most. I've played their games and won them, and if I'm just a figurehead now, I'm a figurehead they have to be careful with. And Doon an ally. He was with her. She could trust him.

Or could she?

She lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, where a fresco had been painted, duplicating an ancient one that had long since fallen to pieces on Earth. A nude man was reaching up to touch the finger of God. She knew it was God, because he was the most terrible creature on the ceiling, and that had to be God. I was that, she thought. I was the builder, I was touching fingers and bringing things to life. And now Doon is doing that. Can there be room for two of us?

I'll make room, she decided. He'll never feel threatened by me. Because he might win, and that would be terrible, and it would be more terrible if I won, because I'm lazy and finished and he's just starting. Let us be allies, then, and I'll trust him and he'll trust me, and I can see something new in the universe. A creation that, perhaps, will be better than mine.

“Was that what
you
hoped for?” she asked the bearded man on the ceiling. “Someone to top you? Or did you snick them all down to size whenever they got too big?” She remembered a story about people who built a tower to get to the stars. God stopped it, as she recalled. Well, we finally got to the stars anyway, but you had moved out by then, making space for us.

I'll move out, making space for Doon. But he'd damn well A better not forget me.

“The bitch is asleep, Crayn. Call the Sleeproom people.”

The new assistant, a nervous girl who would never last, Nab knew, called the Sleeproom people and they moved quickly but silently into the room, taping Mother's brain and then putting her under somec. When Mother was under, Nab came out into the room.

“Give me the tape,” he said, and they gave it to him because he always sealed it away in a special vault. And then they wheeled her out to put her in her coffin in a private Sleeproom in a different part of Capitol from most others. With the tightest security.

But Nab still held her mind in his hands. She had slept with Doon, he knew. What the shrimp had, he didn't know, but she had slept with him, had liked him a lot, had asked to see him next time. And he had her tape. There was nothing to stop him from accidentally destroying it, was there? And then she'd wake up not knowing anything about this waking. They'd have to use the old tape, the one they had used this time.

It shouldn't be hard to erase, he thought, and he took the tape into the control room. “Go home, Crayn,” he said. “I'll close up.”

“What a day,” Crayn said as she left.

The door closed, and Nab found the loop eraser. It would work just as well on a braintape. He would have done it, too, if a needle hadn't fired just then and killed him.

Mothers Little Boys took the body out and disposed of it, and Mother's braintape was put into safekeeping by those who would never harm it. A close one. But how had Abner Doon known Nab would do that? The man was an octopus, a finger everywhere, but that was why Mothers Little Boys obeyed him. He was never wrong.

Mother had not been asleep when the braintapers came. But she lay there limply, accepting their ministrations.

Today I met my successor and the first man I let make love to me besides Selvock. Today I fired most of the cabinet because they were fools and cheats. Today I stepped back into Crove the way it used to be when it was still beautiful.

Today passed with more variety than yesterday, or three weeks ago, or eight months ago.

Eight months ago. It was only eight months, only a thousand years ago that she had decided to go on somec at this level and live forever. She had noticed her first age wrinkle that day, and realized that she could, after all, get old. So she had decided to skim through time, only touching often enough to see if there was something worth living to experience.

Today she had found it.

And what, she wondered, will we do tomorrow?

To Peggy Card,
who believed in these stories
even before they were true

During Jason Worthing's centuries of sleep, his children lived—and transformed themselves—on an obscure farm deep in the Forest of Waters. Some of their stories are told in
The Worthing Chronicle
—but only briefly, as they were remembered by later generations. Here are the tales in full.

Elijah stood in the dust of Worthing Farm and wiped his hand across the sweat on his face. The dirt on his hand turned to wet clay, but in a moment it was dry again, dust again, and the sweat left on his face was the only moisture in the field. Elijah picked up the empty buckets and walked on to the river.

It was a dark world, and the West River flowed from the heart of it through its blackest soil and deepest forest. Once at the east end of the river, and once at the west, cities burst through the ceiling of trees, and here and there the forest was interrupted by a small clearing and a house and a stand of grain. In distant lands, cities had stood for centuries, nations had endured and grown and learned to be civilized, but none of this had touched the Forest of Waters. From the Heaven Mountains south to the Stipock Sea the wood was master, and the people who lived there were constant and desperate rebels against its sovereignty.

In recent years as the two cities of Hux and Linkeree arose, it appeared that at last the forest's rule would be thrown off. But the dark heart of the world seemed to realize that this was its light to the death, its last battle, and that to survive and to rule, the forest would have to free itself of men.

It had only one weapon with which to fight. No snow fell during the winter, and all through the spring no rain came to the Forest of Waters. The roots of the trees burrowed deep and found last year's water. Grain threw roots down fast and far, but not fast and far enough, and they clung to dust.

The river was lower than it had ever been before, and it ran slow and thick, and brown, twenty feet out from the old shoreline. Elijah dipped in the buckets and carried them sloshing back to Worthing Farm. When he came to the field again he stopped. The stalks of grain were still short, and they had turned brown in the sun. Faint traces of green still streaked the leaves.

Elijah reached his hand into the bucket and let water dribble from his fingers to the roots of a few plants. The drops of water immediately were glazed with dust and skittered across the surface, then slowed, then stopped and vanished without a trace. Elijah had long since given up trying to water his crops from the river. A hundred men couldn't carry enough water to bring life back to this field. The water was for Alana and John and little Worin. And for Elijah. To boil over the fire for a few minutes, then to drink as soup or tea or stew when Alana found good roots in the forest and Elijah killed a hare; From the farm they had nothing.

But this was Worthing Farm, and Elijah belonged to it.

“This Worthing Farm,” his old grannam had said over and over until the ritual inhabited his dreams, “is the most important place in the world. It was for this piece of land that Jason brought the Ice People to life. It is our glory and power that we are the keepers of Worthing Farm. If you leave it, the world will die to no purpose, and you will die the deep death that no one was from.” Grannam said it and stared down at Elijah with her blue eyes, the pure bright blue that stared without breaking. Elijah stared back with eyes just as blue, and he didn't break, either.

He never broke. Not during the winter when the fields stayed frozen and brown with no snow, and Alana began to murmur that the corn would never sprout. Not in the springtime when the ground was plowed and black but the rains didn't come to wet the soil. They had tried for a while to bring water from the river. Weeks of ten trips back and forth every day, gently dribbling the water down the rows: at last the young green shoots struggled to the surface. But no one noticed for two days as Elijah and the boys nursed Alana back to health. Elijah had come out the morning that Alana's fever broke and looked at his field with the thin layer of green over the soil and knew that he would have to let it die. They couldn't carry a rainstorm on their backs, not forever.