Tyranopolis, page 8
Fleetingly, in the back of his mind, was the further awareness that this was not a promotion he would turn down. Because it could theoretically multiply his opportunities to overthrow the regime.
He sensed the return of composure. And he smiled. He raised his own glass. He said:
‘Gentlemen, one of the greatest problems in this world is the difficulty of knowing truth or speaking it. For some reason, which is not clear to me, I have an intense need to say exactly what I believe. At the moment, I am dumbfounded at the honour which is being done me. I hope that those persons who are responsible for this honour are prepared at all times to hear exactly what I believe about any given situation. But they may rest assured that I shall only speak my belief when I am asked, and then only in reply to a specific question. Thank you.’
He lifted his glass, and touched his lips to the rim. And then he smiled, and asked, ‘And now, where do I sleep tonight?’
Lilgin laughed. It was audibly a spontaneous amusement. Whereupon, a wave of laughter rippled around the table. When it had subsided, the dictator said genially, ‘My young friend and colleague, I shall have General Hintnell escort you to your new apartment.’
He looked around. ‘All right, gentlemen, see you all tomorrow night here at dinner.’
With that chairs moved, and people broke from the table. The big doors opened. Egress began. Orlo glanced at his watch. It was 9:22.
As he himself headed slowly for the doors, he looked around for Lilgin. But the dictator was nowhere in view.
Before he could think about that, fingers touched his elbow. ‘This way, Mr. Thomas.’
Orlo turned. The youthful general stood there. ‘Are you, uh -‘ Orlo hesitated, then ‘- uh, Hintnell?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re to take me to my apartment.’
‘I have the key here. And if I may say so, sir, congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I shall,’ said General Hintnell, ‘take you to the door. Those are my instructions. You will enter by yourself. From there on, you are expected to take over.’
It was an odd way of saying it. And, since they were walking along the corridor now, Orlo silently considered the wording … I’ll be damned, he thought finally, now he’s got me worried again - What could possibly be in his apartment that he needed ‘to take over’?
He remained silent as they went by elevator to the floor of the four storey palace. Out, then, onto another huge corridor, and along it to a door that had on it in gold letter and figures: C 28.
The grim-faced young super-officer stopped; and there for a moment they stood, the two of them … Two youths, thought Orlo, barely out of our teens - and Hintnell was a general, and he was a Praesidium Member.
The deadly significance of it did not seem to strike the young general. This is as far as I go,’ he said. He held out two small metal prongs attached to a silver-coloured chain. Orlo recognized the prongs as the type of electronic device that could be attuned to an individual’s electro-magnetic field, and would thereafter operate only for him.
‘They’re duplicates,’ said General Hintnell. ‘So keep one in one place, and another elsewhere. A second set may not be easy to come by.’
Orlo took note of the advice. He deduced that keys to these apartments came from Lilgin himself. And that the great man would be critical of a Praesidium Member who lost small items like keys.
The general was backing away. His stern face remained enigmatic. His grey eyes did not blink. His sturdy body was held firmly erect. Abruptly, he saluted, swung about, and strode rapidly off down the empty corridor.
Orlo waited until the uniformed figure disappeared around a corner. Then he did the attuning pressure thing on one of the keys. Then he unlocked the door -
And pushed it open with one foot, warily.
TEN
As the heavy door swung open, Orlo saw, first of all, that the lights were on inside. And that was immediately a plus-factor.
It could be, he thought, that Lilgin himself is in there, come in for that ‘chat’ … If so, how would the dictator judge a young man who entered an apartment in the palace (the guarded, enormously protected palace) so cautiously?
He knew why. Everything that had happened was unreal. In fact, it had no visible, logical explanation … I suppose I should just go in and to hell with it, because the whole thing makes no sense - besides, the truth was (a sobering realization) that if anything official was waiting inside to overwhelm him, there was nothing he could do to stop it.
It was a feeling analysis that probably would have prodded almost any other bold youth into action. But Orlo wasn’t moved by it. There was another truth in him. He was a counter. He counted things that he could see, and he counted risks mentally in advance. As he stared now through the open door into the interior, he was counting the fantasticness of what he saw.
Such a room as was partially visible to him, standing there, he had never seen in his entire short life. Furniture utterly costly looking. Carpets bright and thick and rich. He counted the length of the living room that he could see as not less than seventy feet. In the distant background was a view window, gloriously large.
Me! This has been assigned to me by the dictator of the world - why?
It was a ‘why’ that would be there for the hours and days ahead, always tugging at his reason, always incredible and suspect. And for long, for desperately long, with no answer.
Because there was not a clue to the truth in his conscious awareness, and no one visible in what he could see of that great, wonderful room beyond the door, Orlo walked in.
He could have tiptoed across the threshold. He could have peered around the door jamb one way, and through the crack at the hinges the other. But his feeling, now, was: since I don’t know anything about the improbable things that are happening, and since I have now counted some of the possibilities, let me be calm again, and take it all stride by stride.
That’s what he did next. After so much hesitation, he strode in.
In a kind of a way, then, he did half-expect to see Lilgin. Thus, because he was looking for a small, elegant male with black hair and black moustache, it took a measurable number of seconds before he saw a brightly dressed girl with long blonde hair.
She sat sort of curled up on a richly coloured divan off to his right. And the outfit she had on sort of matched the colours of where she sat. It was the chameleon principle at work, like a yellow worm sitting on a yellow leaf. And, of course, her startlingly goodlooking face (which did not match the leaf) was the first part of her to leap out, so to speak, at him.
After that, the rest of her came into view rapidly.
She said something at that point - probably her name, Orlo realized later - but at that instant he was staring, and didn’t hear it.
For some reason, her next words were clear and totally audible. She said simply, ‘I was asked if I would like to be the girl friend of a new man in the palace. And, of course, I thought it would be unwise to refuse. So if you agree, I get to stay here from now on.’
He thought of her in those first moments after she had spoken as an agent provocateur. A spy. And then he looked at her again. This time he noted that she was probably not more than eighteen or nineteen.
With that observation, Orlo turned and closed the door behind him. Then he turned and walked over to a chair near the divan where she remained curled up. And he sat down.
It was not impossible - his first suspicion. She could still be the eyes and ears of a dictator, and later could be a witness. But her age marked her as merely another dupe. She wa§, like him, someone caught up in the forever dark purposes of the most remorseless man in the history of the world. Soon, she would have forbidden knowledge in her pretty head. Thus, whether she was innocent as her words implied, or guilty as he had initially believed, the end-result would be the same. She was doomed. Her living days could be numbered in weeks, or months; surely no more than a year. Her destiny was an early grave.
He had braced himself many times against such malignant visions. It was not hard to brace himself again. Also, he was curious. ‘How was it done?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Getting you over here?’ When she looked blank, he went on, ‘You know, who gave you the assignment to come over here to this apartment?’
‘Oh!’ She brightened. ‘I was called into the commissar’s office - where I work - shortly before five, and told.’
‘You didn’t argue?’
The pretty face looked baffled.
Orlo continued, ‘You didn’t say, “I’m a girl whose body belongs to herself, and it is not available to be assigned to a stranger.” ‘
Her bright eyes stared at him. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ she said. ‘I’ve never belonged to myself since I came out of the mists of babyhood and found myself a member of my first group. We were an intercontinental organization - we were told - all of us devoted, eagerly serving the people. After I had been indifferent a few times, and acted as if my own personal whims were more important than the group purposes - and each time I was penalized - I got the message. And so within months, before I was five years old, I developed a joyous smile and the ability to vibrate with group energy. I never actually opposed anything after that. Yet I was thinking my own thoughts all the time, observing, considering, but accepting since there was no escape from my group obligations.’
In case anyone was listening, Orlo spoke the stereotype: ‘Most people, when they grow up, cooperate with their employer for a salary, with a woman or a man in the marriage situation, and with friends in order to have companionship. They behave in stores and in other public places. They pay their bills. And so on. Why shouldn’t all this be observed by a social engineer like Lilgin, and made a part of larger group activity by law? By that method, individuals who would normally be dissidents are forced to cooperate, also. And that is the main purpose of the system: to catch that percentage of troublemakers.’
The girl looked at him. Her eyes were slightly widened, and so he had his first impression of their colour: hazel. But she said nothing.
‘However -‘ Orlo continued, ‘- what you have been assigned seems to go considerably beyond lawful group activity. I’m sure you could complain to your street government.’
‘I had to report to them when I moved my things,’ she said. ‘The secretary there authorized a taxi at the street’s expense to take me over here. She made no comment. She just did it fast.’
Orlo leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and said, ‘How did you get into the palace grounds? Did you have a written authorization?’
‘How else?’
‘The guard at the palace gate looked at it, and waved your taxi in?’
‘No. The taxi had to stop right there and turn around. My bags were put into a conveyance, taken to an inspection station, and what was in them was examined piece by piece - by hand and - and by those, uh - you know -‘ She made a vague gesture.
‘Electronic?’
‘Yes.’
Orlo opened his eyes. ‘I can see,’ he grinned, ‘that a girl who can’t even remember the word, electronic, will be an ideal companion for a person like myself.’ He explained, ‘I’m trained as a sort of scientific supervisor. I’m a jack of all sciences, master of none.’
‘I’m totally ignorant of science,’ she admitted. ‘I was barred at school from all that. So I got the message early, and blotted it out whenever I came into accidental contact.’
It did not at that moment occur to Orlo to ask what her training was. He realized he was shocked by the arbitrariness of those persons who had pointed a direction for her education, and had never let her deviate from it. He shrugged. No use arguing with such details of life … Back to here and now, thought Orlo. ‘Next question,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘A domestic volunteer let me in.’
‘A chambermaid?’
‘They’re called volunteers, poor things. But yes.’
Well, thought Orlo cynically, the key doesn’t seem as rare an item as Hintnell suggested it was … He wondered if (bizarre possibility) the maid would let the girl into the apartment in an emergency, but not him. Or if that way of entrance for her was good for only one admission … I suppose I could give her my duplicate key -
But he made no immediate move to do so.
Aloud, he said, ‘What do you think would happen if I told you that I don’t believe in women being furnished to men as prostitutes? And asked you to leave?’
‘I suppose I’d have to go. But please don’t send me away tonight. I have no authorization to be anywhere else.’
‘Oh - that,’ said Orlo, resignedly.
‘Besides,’ she spoke hastily, ‘I’m not here as a prostitute. I still have to work daytimes to earn my living. I get no extra pay for this. So I’ve labelled myself mistress. I’m hoping you’ll do the same.’
It was an appeal. Her voice had a tiny begging note in it that jarred him. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said wearily, ‘you sleep in the bedroom. I’ll stretch out here on the couch while I think all this over.’
No more than ten seconds after those accepting words were spoken, the girl moved her body for the first time. She began to uncurl. Orlo watched sympathetically as she unwound from her defensive position, and lowered a pair of shapely legs to the floor. ‘I’ll sleep on the couch,’ she said, firmly.
He shook his head. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It’s one of those apartments,’ she said, ‘where you get to the bathroom through the bedroom.’
Orlo was abruptly amused by the implied logic. ‘What does that mean?’
‘We might as well recognize that intimacy is inevitable.’
He grinned. ‘I guess I can go through the bedroom without pausing to lie down.’
‘You’re dreaming,’ she said. ‘You can only do me harm by resisting this situation.’
He had no real answer to that. His feeling was that she was doomed now whether she stayed or went. But it was possible that if she left in the morning she just might survive. He braced himself in his fashion against the instant gloom that thought brought, and said, ‘I gather you’ve looked the place over.’
‘Your bags were here,’ she said. ‘I unpacked them, and put your things in the bureau drawers in the bedroom. What will you be? Some sort of young people’s official in the palace?’
‘Something like that,’ said Orlo.
She said, ‘There are extra blankets in one of the clothes closets, the - you know - kind.’
‘Electronic?’
She nodded rapidly, and stood up. Erect, she looked about 165 centimetres to his 180. She must have had a similar awareness. ‘We’re a good fit,’ she said, ‘for a man and a woman.’
‘You seem to speak with the voice of experience. I personally have never had a woman.’
‘I’ve never been authorized before either,’ she said.
‘You’re a virgin?’
‘What else? If you’re even seen talking to a boy your own age, you get a lecture from the street government about the importance of preventing over-population.’
Orlo was smiling grimly. ‘Since contraceptives are provided only for married couples, what would our method be if we accepted this situation?’
‘I was sent to a doctor before I came here. He gave me some pills.’
When Orlo said, ‘I thought things like that weren’t good for the health!’ the girl shrugged. And when he said, ‘You’ve taken one?’ she nodded.
Then she said, ‘Would you like to see the bedroom?’
‘Not really. Not tonight, except for having to go through it to the bathroom, and for getting ready for my couch. I’m tired. No sleep last night, and a long day.’
‘Oh, you poor thing. Of course.’ She sounded contrite. ‘I should have realized.’
‘Get my pyjamas, a pillow, and a blanket,’ Orlo said. ‘I see three doors besides the one to the hall. Which one leads to the bedroom?’
She pointed. That’s a kitchen.’ She pointed again. ‘That’s a sort of an office-library. And -‘ Vision, then, of the girl in colourful coat and slacks hurrying toward the third door. She opened it, and held it for him as he went in. In the act of entering, Orlo caught His first glimpse of the dazzling interior. He faltered, but only for a moment. Then he was walking, eyes pointing straight ahead, toward the only other door that he could see.
It turned out to be a bathroom with a small swimming pool for a bathtub, gold coloured taps, a shower for two, two toilets, four washbowls, and drawers by the dozen, plus half a dozen mirrors of various sizes. As Orlo stood helplessly surveying the shining, gleaming, glistening everythingness of it all, the girl brought his pyjamas, handed them to him, and said, ‘You’ll find the blanket on the divan where I was , sitting. Is that all right?’
The tiredness was back. He said, ‘Fine.’ He thought with a wan smile: In the morning I’ll make up my mind about why it’s all right for her to stay …
Morning. His watch said ten to eight … Boy, it’s time I was up.
He rolled out from under the blanket, and sat up on the divan. He picked up his clothes from the nearby chair, and went through the bedroom to the bathroom. As he did so, he was aware that the blonde person in the king-sized bed was awake. The memory of her too-wide eyes (with fear in them) went with him. While he dressed he tried to recall what she had said her name was. And that brought the realization that she had probably told him in her very first words, the ones he had -missed. Yet, a magical thing was happening. Something was coming out of that amnesic moment -Shala, Shala - Shanta, Shanta - Wonta, Wonta - could it be that her identity was in one of those words?
He gave up presently. He could always ask her. And, in fact, since he would have to talk to her and tell her what his decision was about her, that was the best idea.
He bathed, shaved, combed his abundant hair, zipped himself into cunningly designed clothes - and came back into the bedroom feeling clean-cut and nattily dressed, and with the faint smile of somebody who was not fooled by anything or anybody, and intended to stay that way.
