“Isn’t this what happened to Uncle Dudley?” Morey asked.
“My brother has nothing to do with this! Don’t mention him again or I shall be forced to tell your father.”
“I just wondered if there might be a nutty streak in the family.” Morey sounded plaintive.
Your Uncle Dudley sounds interesting, Ryll offered.
Please let it rest for the moment, Lutt pleaded.
You seem almost polite.
I’m begging you. Morey would like to use this against me with our father. And if it gets back to the Zone Patrol.
Very well. But only because you’re being polite. I shall tally that in your favor.
“You should not have built that spaceship without your father’s consent,” Phoenicia said. “You know how good he is with inventions and things of that nature.”
“Like this limo?” Lutt asked.
Phoenicia scowled but she only patted Lutt’s knees. “Don’t worry, dear. Our specialists will cure you.”
“Voices in his head,” Morey muttered, nodding.
Phoenicia sent a warning glance at Morey and sank back into her seat. She placed a manicured finger against her hair, adjusting the bun.
Lutt noted the finishing-school grace of the movement, her chin uplifted. A sense of superiority had been ground into Phoenicia by a lifetime of plenty. Morey tried to ape her manners but it was all sham—another false front. There was something feral about him, sinister and sneaky, especially in those eyes of perishable blue he had inherited from his mother. Morey seldom looked anyone in the eyes.
Phoenicia, on the other hand, could burn you with a stare. She and old L.H. were as different as two married people could be—Father a tough spacedock worker who had made good the hard way; Mother, old Southern money and old ways. But in her own snobby manner, Phoenicia was every bit as tough as L.H.
“Your father wishes to talk to you, Lutt, about your recent expenditures,” Phoenicia said.
Morey grinned at him.
Lutt glanced out the window beside him. On the carpet!
“I have a few things to tell Father, too,” Lutt said.
“He’ll be very interested to hear about the voices in your head,” Morey gloated.
“He might be just as interested in what I could tell him about some of your recent activities,” Lutt said.
Morey’s brows drew down into creased lines.
“You’d better keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you, Morey,” Lutt said.
Phoenicia looked at her younger son. “Have you been getting into trouble again, Morey?”
“Tell her where you were last weekend,” Lutt said.
Is that true? Ryll asked. Was your brother meeting with vicious criminals last weekend?
EE wouldn’t lie to me about it.
When Morey did not respond, Phoenicia sighed. “Well, you’ll both be with your father, soon. I hope he can make you act more like loving brothers.”
Lutt sat up straight. “We’re going to You Gee One?”
“I told you he wants to talk to you,” she said. “Now you both be nice. We’ll be there soon.”
***
I wanna be president when I grow up. No! Not of Daddy’s company! I wanna he president of the solar system!
—Lutt Hanson, Jr., at age ten
“The Elites are dispersing with your message.”
Jongleur spoke as he entered Habiba’s private quarters, adding: “Soon, your plan will be fait accompli.”
“I wish you’d stop these Earthisms!” Habiba snapped. “That place occupies entirely too much of our lives.”
Seeing that Habiba was emotionally disturbed, Jongleur felt at first guilty for upsetting her and then contrite.
Give her time to compose herself, he thought.
He focused on calming stories and glanced around Habiba’s quarters. These always surprised him—so small and plain, a three-room mudbrick and stone building with many signs of wear. The building stood on the high vaulted lowest floor of her cone, hidden away among old storage jars and discarded seed husks.
Habiba clung to it out of sentiment, she said. It was her first dwelling, the one she had idmaged in a meadow of childseed flowers on her first Dreenor Day.
But now it was less than an hour after returning from her most recent Thoughtcon, and Habiba still displayed such emotional upset that her Chief Storyteller entertained fears for her.
“We will go outside,” Habiba said.
Jongleur blinked assent but waited. She often said this but until she led the way he never knew whether she meant actually out into the open air or just out into the artificial light of the cone’s main floor where soil had been spread over the lime slate to simulate a natural yard. It was not the same as a residential yard but Habiba said it gave her communion with her people, especially with the Elders who lived deep beneath the surface.
“Touching the dirt of Dreenor prevents me from taking on airs and behaving in the vain manner of lesser rulers in our universe,” Habiba said as she stopped in the vault-enclosed yard and stared around her in the greenish-yellow light.
Jongleur was familiar with these little homilies. They reinforced the belief that all Dreens should strive for a perfect existence and that watching the idmaged worlds evolve taught Dreens the frailties inherent in other sentient creatures.
Jongleur did not dare express his own fears about this—that the idmaged creatures and their worlds reflected a flaw in the Dreen character. He thought it, though, and thus Habiba knew his fear from her Thoughtcon Sharings.
“Have you noticed how Mugly smells when he’s angry?” she asked.
Jongleur shuddered. That smell! His first lessons had taught that rage produced a snout-twisting odor, a warning to prevent Dreens from inflicting violence on each other. Until Mugly, Jongleur had never experienced the natural odor.
“That smell tells me Mugly is a throwback to an earlier Dreen form,” Habiba said. “I have asked myself many times why such a phenomenon should occur at this time.”
Jongleur waited for her to expand on this interesting concept but Habiba changed the subject.
“The Excursion Ship your son took was created to go only to Earth. Do you think Mugly connived in its creation?”
Jongleur stared at her. What a question! Did not Thoughtcon open all minds to Habiba?
She increased his confusion by what she said next.
“I know about your occasional indiscretions with bazeel, Jongleur. I tolerate them because you are not excessive.”
“Many of us. . .”
“I know.”
Of course she knows. Then why the question about Mugly?
As though she read his mind outside of Thoughtcon, Habiba said: “We must ask ourselves if a throwback such as Mugly may not have other characteristics detrimental to Dreen serenity.”
Jongleur suppressed his defensive reflex with some difficulty and wished he had a small bit of bazeel right now, just enough to calm his nerves.
“Can you visualize what may happen if Earthers capture that ship intact?” Habiba asked. “They will come here with their terrible weapons!”
“But our shield . . .”
“. . . may not be enough to protect us indefinitely.”
Habiba glanced at the tall double doors leading to the outside corridor and only then did Jongleur hear a sound there. He marveled at Habiba’s acute senses. Someone coming.
The latches gave a loud click and the doors swung inward admitting a Junior Storyteller. He scurried in, holding his floppy yellow cap on his head as he ran.
Trouble! Jongleur thought.
No one would interrupt a meeting between Habiba and her Chief Storyteller without grave cause.
The Junior Storyteller stopped at the edge of Habiba’s yard and bowed low. “Your pardons begged,” he said. “I have an urgent message. The stolen ship has collided with an Earther ship and the wreckage is in the hands of the Zone Patrol.”
“Survivors?” Jongle
ur bleated.
“We are investigating as well as we can,” the Junior said. “There is a report on Earth saying Lutt Hanson, Jr., has been rescued from an experimental ship that exploded.”
“And my son?”
“No word yet but there was a fire.”
Jongleur moaned, “Ohhhhh . . .”
“Compose yourself, Jongleur!” Habiba ordered. “This is an emergency.”
“Yes . . . yes, of course.”
“How do you know it was a collision?” Habiba asked.
“Our sensors in the Spirals. An unfortunate delay in the reporting system is being investigated.”
“It happened in the . . . in the Spirals?” Jongleur demanded.
“At Phase One of entry,” the Junior said. “We do not know if the Earther could have completed Phases Two and Three.”
“Lutt Hanson, Jr.,” Habiba said. “That’s the dangerous Earther whose experiments led to this crisis.”
“My son . . .” Jongleur began.
“Forgive the cruelty of this, Jongleur,” Habiba said, “but death might be preferable to capture.”
The Junior Storyteller was not finished. “Mugly assures us the Excursion Ship was set to self-destruct rather than submit to Earther probes.”
“But it was a collision,” Jongleur said.
All three of them reflected on the unknown possibilities in such an accident. Habiba was first to recover.
“Jongleur! We must act quickly. Earther knowledge of our Spiral technology, whether developed independently or stolen from us, must be destroyed.”
Jongleur was shocked by the potential violence in her orders. “What are you saying?”
“Send our operatives immediately. That troublemaker, Hanson, will have to be dealt with. Abduction if necessary, but no killing.”
Jongleur was speechless. Of course no killing! A Dreen could not commit murder! Only some life forms evolving from primordial Dreen idmages could do that and, even then, only if they were granted Free Will.
“Free Will,” Habiba muttered, echoing Jongleur’s thought.
Jongleur agreed completely with the emotion he sensed in her. Free Will—that eminently bothersome concept Habiba warned them about so often. But she did not (could not?) put a stop to it, nor to bazeel.
“Well go at once and see to these matters!” Habiba ordered.
Deeply disturbed, Jongleur left the Supreme Tax Collector’s presence. His thoughts suggested limitations on Habiba’s powers—powers Jongleur and other Dreens had taken for granted over many generations.
Jongleur heard the quick, shuffling steps of the Junior Storyteller behind him as he left the cone’s vaulted room.
And I dreamed my Ryll would wear that yellow cap one day. Ohhh, what has happened to my son? Ohhh, why did I not take the advice of my Elders and fit him with a yellow Soother?
Shame had prevented him from taking the advice, Jongleur realized. Each small Soother, a living creature, soft and furry, faceless and without appendages, projected balancing thoughts into the mind of the one it soothed. But the things were always visible and people tended to avoid the presence of a person being soothed. Who wanted his thoughts read all the time? And Soothers certainly read the thoughts of anyone within their range.
***
You Gee One—Phonetic for UG One, the underground (UG)terminal where Lutt Hanson Senior’s private tube train picks up passengers bound for his subterranean offices and shops built in an old MX missile site.
—Atlas of the Powerful
From the moment he learned they were headed for You Gee One, Lutt realized he was headed for a family confrontation. Morey was maneuvering again! Never let up, do you. Brother?
The infernal rickshaw lurched and Lutt caught Morey’s gaze for a moment, easily forcing the younger man to look away.
No guts!
“This hallucination about an alien in your body can be dispelled quite easily by modern medicine,” Phoenicia said.
Lutt let it rest. With any luck, Morey would take the revelation merely as a sign of weakness, something to exploit with L.H. Let them believe in a head injury. God! This morning was sure to lead into an awful day.
Perhaps you should reinforce the impression of mental instability, Ryll suggested. Your brother appears hostile to you. Perhaps I was a bit impetuous insisting you reveal my presence.
Right! Let’s have some fun.
Abruptly, Lutt shouted: “Graaar!” He waved his arms wildly and leaned toward his mother and brother with a look of menace. “You think I’m nuts, eh?”
Phoenicia and Morey recoiled.
Her voice cracking, Phoenicia said: “Of course not, dear.”
Lutt found he still could read her emotions as well as ever. So like his father. Poor dear. An uneven personality.
Lutt had once heard her describe him to someone on the vidcom: “He looks rather bookish. It’s partly his glasses. His hair is still reddish-brown but beginning to thin prematurely.”
Yes, Lutt agreed. I’m the sort of person you might find in the dusty stacks of a library. But that’s not where you’ll often see me. My lessons come from life.
He knew it was bragging but he liked to tell people he was a newspaperman who rarely read anything except headlines.
Morey studied him with fearful expectation.
Lutt wished he were elsewhere. The brief flash of enjoyment over Morey’s discomfiture vanished. Mother, he noted, had a brown leather case by her feet. Prepared for a stay? He settled into the seat, legs extended.
I’m slouching, Mother.
He knew what she would say next.
“Don’t slouch, dear,” Phoenicia said.
Right on cue every time. Dear this, dear that. It’s always dear.
“I’m Lutt!” he shouted, and this time there was no pretense. “Don’t call me ‘dear’! Don’t call me ‘Lutt Junior.’ Don’t call me ‘Lout’! You know my name. Use it!”
Phoenicia looked hurt. “I’ve never called you Lout. I call both of my sons ‘dear’ out of love.”
Lutt felt anger pulsing in the serpentine blood vessel at his temple and put a finger on it.
Phoenicia shook her head, causing the golden circles of her earrings to bounce against her smooth neck. “Your father worries about you, Lutt. I do, too. And you really should not slouch. It’s ruinous to your posture.”
“I’m thirty-five,” Lutt said. “If I want to slouch, that’s my business. I don’t have to ask permission of you or Father when I want to do something.”
“But, dear, your attempts at invention are becoming quite dangerous. Someone has been killed.”
“An accident! Father wants to stop me because he’s afraid I’ll invent something better than he ever did. And I already have!”
“Your father knows what’s best to invent, dear. If he says something’s wrong, you should listen to him. After all, you are using his money.”
Lutt stared past her out the rear window and muttered: “I’ve earned that money with all the crap I’ve taken from him.” He saw Morey’s involuntary nod of agreement and felt a resonant chord—a shared but mostly unspoken suffering—two neglected sons of a man consumed by his business empire.
Phoenicia’s silence hinted that she shared this resentment. How much emotion had she invested trying to make up for L.H.’s neglect of his family? Was that what had driven her to her high-society friends? Perhaps. But as usual she went too far.
She’ll do anything for those fawning sycophants!
Morey chose this moment to make his contribution.
“I’ve noticed something about you, Lout.”
Phoenicia, quick to smell trouble, snapped, “You must not call your brother that!”
Morey shrugged, then: “You know, he always slouches like that when he’s in trouble or wishes he were somewhere else.”
“We all have our little idiosyncrasies, dear.”
“Sure we do,” Lutt growled. “And Morey’s is to play fast and loose with money trusted to hi
m.”
Morey paled but Lutt’s satisfaction was cooled by his own involuntary reaction: sitting up straight. I’m still in trouble, Lutt thought.
Lutt touched a panel button to his left. An oval vidcom dropped from the ceiling on the end of a flexible tube. The tiny robot eye on the microphone positioned it in front of Lutt and blinked green to show it was ready.
“Shop Two,” Lutt said and he imagined the crystal bell sounding in the shop near Seattle where he had built his ship. The area was wooded and mostly uninhabited now. Once it had been a prime residential area but the senior Hanson had razed the homes after acquiring the property. It was a pattern repeated on all eleven family plots around Seattle.
“The Hansons want privacy and hunting preserves,” commentators said.
A high-pitched computer ditty signaled engagement of the scrambler system to ensure privacy on this call.
Presently, a bearded face appeared on the tiny screen and a deep voice said: “Hi, Lutt. Good to see you’re okay.”
“Yeah, Sam. You heard, huh?”
“Is Drich really dead?”
“And the ship is shot to shit.”
Phoenicia rolled her eyes heavenward. Lutt, dear boy that he was, could be so gross. And he kept such low-class company! This assistant, Sam R. Kand, was every bit as improper as the friends L.H. chose. Unsuitable, all of them.
“Can we salvage anything?” Sam asked.
“I’ll let you know later. Meanwhile, start building a new core. And I want you to make these modifications . . .”
Lutt noted Phoenicia’s eyes glaze over. She never liked technical details. And Morey was too interested in watching a shapely young woman walking a bloodhound at curbside.
The limousine came to a crisp stop, blocked by a truck backing up to a warehouse bay. Morey smiled and tried to catch the young woman’s attention but she did not even look at the garish limousine.
Lutt noted this with part of his attention. Everyone down here knew the rickshaw, of course.
While Lutt gave his instructions, Ryll absorbed the words for later examination.