I don’t care to dwell on the rituals of introductions and arrangements; suffice to say that the process I dismiss here actually required months, because of the bureaucratic mechanisms and protocols entailed. Uranus was a nest of rival systems, each seemingly trying to upstage the others or to gain special advantage for itself. Most of its component nations had formed the Uranian Common Market, which meant that tariffs and other impediments to trade were lowered between members, and this seemed to have a beneficial effect on their separate fortunes, but many problems remained. I felt as if I had stepped into a nest of scorpions. All were impressed with our demonstration of the feasibility of light-speed travel; each wanted all the benefits for itself, and none wanted to pay for them. I could not address the planetary leaders in a single group, obtain their commitment to the project, and be on my way; I had to hold a private audience with each leading executive, who was noncommittal until he knew of the positions of the others. What had been intended as a one week stay stretched out into months, with no end in sight.
I was never a phenomenally patient man, and age had not softened me. In those early days of frustration I was building up an unhealthy head of pressure. Spirit encouraged me to become a tourist, visiting the attractions, but though I am capable of appreciating such things, my ire at the waste of my time made me an inadequate tourist. I’m afraid the Eyeful Tower was wasted on me, however remarkable it may be as a structure in orbit.
One day Spirit went out on some routine matter, and I settled down with a helmet and holo chip, seeking diversion. Unfortunately, all that was readily available was the normal entertainment fare: feelie sex. This reminded me of what I was missing in that department. I preferred the real thing to a creation of the helmet, and what could I do about that? Phone for a professional girl? That had never been my way. Disgusted, I removed the helmet.
A young, buxom Hispanic woman walked in. My first reaction was alarm: This suite was supposed to be secure against intrusion. My second was amazement: This was a phenomenally attractive creature, by my definition. My third was shock: I knew this girl! She was Juana, my first Navy love. And my fourth was disappointment: I realized that this was Forta Foundling, doing a mime.
She was good at it, though. Obviously Spirit had coached her on it, for this was Juana as I remembered her forty years ago, before advancing age plumped her out. Not perfect, of course, for Spirit could neither have noted nor conveyed all of the special things I knew about Juana. But close enough to be quite intriguing.
I was interested in the technical aspect. Forta was tall and slender and somewhat angular, yet this creature seemed shorter and full-fleshed and rounded. I realized that some of it was Forta’s genius with the signals; a thin body that sent plump signals did appear rounded. I had not before realized the extent to which this could be true. Obviously Forta had rehearsed plump signals, and applied them to this characterization. But it was more than that; a considerable amount of that flesh was genuine. How could that be?
I concluded that I had not really been looking at Forta. She had worn an angular style of clothing, perhaps projecting that quality when it wasn’t really hers. Now she was projecting the opposite, in effect doubling the distance. However she did it, she was expert at the illusion.
Now I studied her face. It was a mask, of course, cleverly done but not truly alive. She had trained her hair down and around it to conceal the border, and it was flexible and thin, so that it moved with her own expression. The eyes and mouth were especially lifelike; I realized that they had to be her own, buttressed by makeup. I looked, but I could not see the line of mergence between the mask and her true features; there seemed to be none. She must have used foundation creme or something to flesh out her features where the scars would show, and contact lenses to modify her eyes. Oh, she knew her business, without doubt!
And what exactly was her business? To distract me. She had come to be my mistress, and I had ignored her. I had come to respect her abilities as a worker; she had become as good a secretary as I had ever had, with one exception. That exception—
No! I refused to let the memory of Shelia, my crippled but perfect secretary of more than twenty years, destroy my mood. Shelia had died protecting me; the devastation, of that loss had brought me to the verge of madness. Perhaps a bit beyond the verge. I had recovered, perhaps at the point my wife Megan ousted me from the Tyrancy, and I preferred to remain recovered. I remembered with distaste some of the things that had seemed justified by that madness. Better to play Forta’s game now, and think of Juana.
Actually, Juana had been my secretary too. We had been lovers—roommates, in the Navy fashion—until I became an officer. She had elected to remain enlisted, and therefore became off limits to me, to our mutual regret. She had been such a nice girl, lacking the drive that had brought my later wives to their pinnacles of success. It would be nice indeed to return to that world of Juana, when I was young and really not very experienced, and she, the survivor of rape, had been as young and less experienced, so that my sex with her always had to be gentle. I had at times been less than satisfied, wanting to have some more lusty fling, but in retrospect I conclude that my occasions with reluctant Juana—no, not really reluctant, merely subdued; she did what the Navy required, and tried her best to make it nice for me, and that effort of hers did indeed make it nice even if it wasn’t spectacular—well, those occasions had been as good in their way as any. It is the total relationship that makes it good, not just the raw sex. The single touch of the beloved’s hand is more meaningful than the most spectacular sex with a known professional.
Juana was standing before me, waiting for my thoughts to complete their course. I knew she was not, yet chose to accept her validity; Forta’s effort was as worthy in its fashion as Juana’s had been in hers. I raised my hand to her, accepting the presentation, and she came slowly to me, as Juana would.
I took her hand and drew her down to sit in my lap. Her bottom felt plush in the way I remembered, and her bosom was full and soft. I put my head against it, and she put her arms around me, and I felt as though I were eighteen again.
Here is the oddity: I did not take Juana to bed. I did not even undress her, or reach inside her clothing. She would have cooperated, I know, but that was not, as it turned out, my true desire. I just sat there, with her warm soft body against me, and I didn’t move. I didn’t speak, I didn’t stroke, I didn’t really do anything except remember. Perhaps I slept, without changing position, for abruptly Spirit was in the room, and I knew she had planned to be absent two hours, time enough for me to complete whatever business with Forta I was going to. But I had not completed it; I remained embraced by her, savoring the eternal moment. I had never experienced anything quite like this—not even with the original Juana. That was part of what made it so amazing. Forta had become a better Juana than the original.
Spirit merely glanced at us, and nodded, and went on to her room. I remained a further time as I was, but slowly the mood ameliorated. I realized that my legs were going to sleep; I was no longer young and robust and durable. I had to change my position and break the spell.
Finally I did so. I moved, and she got up. Neither of us had spoken during this entire session, and we did not now. She simply walked away from me, back to her own room, and I sat for another time, dazed by the wonder of it. Then I got up and resumed the day.
One thing I had learned: Forta was no longer to be neglected. She was now, indeed, in her fashion, my woman.
• • •
Spirit labored diligently to make the necessary connections. We had always worked this way: She did the behind-the-scenes work, while I handled the public scenes. She would produce bodies for me to interview, and I would pass on them, not because I was the superior individual but because that was my talent. I knew that during this period of inactivity on my part, Spirit was forging the elements of our campaign to bring the major nations of Uranus into the Dream. Forta, as our secretary, was kept busy doing spot research on situation
s and personnel.
There was an item that I remember largely by re-creation, because at the time I did not realize its significance. It serves as an example of how Spirit worked, and how she utilized whatever resources we had to accomplish our purpose. It happened somewhat like this:
“What do we have on General D?” Spirit asked Forta. General D was our contraction of the name for the President of Gaul. He was an enormous old pear-shaped man who had come out of retirement to assume the leadership of a divided nation. We considered him to be a difficult man, set in his ways, which were no one else’s, but it was true that he had forged a kind of national unity that had been lacking in that nation for some time. We expected him to be our most formidable challenge, because he disliked participating in anything he could not dominate, and he had always been a leading anti-Saturnist. If we could gain his commitment, the other nations would fall into place more readily; if we could not, we might have to write off Uranus.
“The man’s impervious,” Forta replied. “Once his mind is set, neither heaven nor hell will change it. Here they say, ‘There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the General’s way.’ That’s about it.”
I remembered. As the Tyrant of Jupiter, I had of course had dealings with the nations of Uranus. The General, nominally an ally, had as often as not been a thorn in my side. He saw reason only on his own terms. I had mostly worked around him, leaving him to his own devices, so we had gotten along. But if there was one thing the General really respected it was power—and now I was coming to him not as an absolute ruler but as an underling, a supplicant. He would consider it a matter of honor to be difficult.
“I seem to remember that there was one he listened to,” Spirit said.
“His daughter. But she died five years ago, and after that he stopped caring about any opinion but his own. There is no ameliorating personality around him now.”
“His daughter,” Spirit said musingly. She glanced at me. “They to tend to wrap their fathers around their fingers.”
Again I remembered: my daughter Hopie, now in her late twenties, sometimes sweet, sometimes imperious, always my darling girl. There had been a quarter-century media campaign to determine the identity of her mother, for my wife Megan had been beyond bearing age when I married her, and Hopie was adopted. Hopie resembled me in so many important ways, from appearance to blood type to personality, that there was no question of her lineage, but of course I had never spoken of her parentage except to acknowledge that she was the offspring of a married man and a single woman. It is one of the anomalies of our culture that it is the child of an illicit union who is blamed, rather than the perpetrators. But from the moment of the adoption, Hopie was licitly mine, and yes, she did wrap me around her little finger on myriad occasions. I wished she could be with us now, but of course I would not have her share the status of exile, so she remained on Jupiter.
“I could study her,” Forta said.
Spirit nodded. “If you are willing.”
“Megan knew of the Dream,” Forta said. “She felt I could help in its realization. I see no ethical problem here, especially considering the alternative.”
So Megan had learned of Khukov’s Dream! Of course secrets could not be kept, but I found this interesting. Megan was a leading advocate of System peace, and would do anything she could to forward it. She had understood, of course, that when I asked for a woman I meant one I could take to my bed, and she was realistic enough to accept this. After all, she knew me well indeed. But naturally she had honored my request in a manner calculated to forward her desire as well. Forta’s nominal position might be as my mistress—and I knew that it would soon enough be actual— but her real thrust was to facilitate peace and reduce the horrors of war and tyranny. Yet how could a study of the General’s dead daughter accomplish any of this?
As I said, this scene passed without making much of an impression on me at the time, and my reconstruction may have embellished it somewhat, but that was the essence. Its significance registered only after the denouement.
We finally got our interview with the General. One of the complications was his refusal to utilize the holo technology. It was possible to transmit the complete image of a person and his surroundings in three dimensions, so that he seemed to be physically present, and this was normally employed for important meetings. I had used it when interviewing the Shogun of Rising Sun. For one thing, it saved the inconvenience of physical travel time; for another, it eliminated any question of assassination, for a weapon smuggled into such an interview could not be effective against a mere image. Staff members offstage from the holo pickup cameras could signal their man, giving him necessary cues, so that he did not suffer embarrassing lapses. When the interview was over, each party could relax immediately, being right at home. The recording of the interview could be rerun as convenient by either party, questing for significant aspects after the fact. No wonder it was the most popular mechanism for such encounters; I certainly preferred it.
But the General was old-fashioned, and did not trust modernistic devices, for all that this one had existed for centuries. He believed only in face-to-face summit-type meetings, and not too many of those, and that was it. If I wanted to address him it had to be his way. This included his language, French; he would not deign to discourse in our common language, English, though he knew it. So I went, at his convenience, and brought along my sister and secretary; this was as elaborate a party as we could muster. We duly presented ourselves at the palace in the city-bubble of Aris, Gaul.
The General in person was surprisingly affable. We had been braced for boorishness, but he was the soul of hospitality and cheer. He shook my hand, and we took seats. He certainly was physically impressive, both in magnitude and in atmosphere. He seemed every centimeter the leader. He had also done his homework; he knew why I was here and what I wanted of him, in general and in detail. But I knew as I read him that his mind was already made up, and that this was merely a formality. He was not about to render himself subservient, by his reckoning, by participating in the galactic project.
Thus there was no point in talking with him. I was here merely for show. To show that the General could summon the Tyrant like a lackey, to be informed that there was no sale. Four years ago, when I remained in power in Jupiter, he never would have tried it. The sheer arrogance of the man excited my admiration as much as my ire; one seldom gets to experience such towering certainty and folly.
Spirit caught my eye as I exchanged inconsequentials with the General via the interpreter. I gave her to understand my reading, by the slightest nod: thumbs down. I knew she had anticipated as much. She in turn made an unobtrusive signal to Forta, who stood at the edge of the room.
Forta turned around a moment, as if suffering an attack of vertigo. She was doing something to herself; was she really sick? I saw her only peripherally, as I could not take my overt attention from my host. But then she turned again, her aspect changed. She stepped toward us.
The General paused, glancing at her, startled. He got to his feet.
“My secretary,” I said. The translator started to speak, but the General negated him with a curt gesture.
“Vous avez tort père,” Forta said. I saw now that she had entirely changed her hair, and she wore one of her masks, so that she resembled a young woman who would have been attractive except for her overly large nose. That nose resembled that of the General.
The General looked stricken. “Ce n’est pas ma faute,” he said.
She only gazed at him, shaking her head sadly.
Abruptly he addressed me directly in English: “What do you see here Hubris?” He was severely shaken.
“Only my secretary,” I said innocently. I realized now that Forta was emulating the General’s dead daughter.
He shook himself and blinked. He looked again at Forta. It was as if he saw a ghost.
I glanced again at Spirit. What was the point of this charade?
“You support this man?” the General ask
ed the ghost.
Forta nodded in a special manner. I did not know his daughter’s mannerisms, but I was sure Forta did. “Why are you talking to my secretary?” I asked, as if I didn’t understand.
He ignored me. “And if I agree?”
Forta approached him, lifted her face, and kissed his cheek. Then she walked slowly out of the room.
For a moment the General stood stunned. Then he strode after her. Spirit and I remained where we were, letting this play itself out.
All that the General found in the other room, of course, was my secretary, Forta, who could in no way be mistaken for his daughter. Disgruntled, he returned. “You saw only your secretary?”
Spirit and I nodded together, too polite to remark on his erratic behavior.
He considered. “Gaul will support your project, Tyrant,” he said abruptly.
“Your generosity and foresight are much appreciated,” I said. “The greatness of Gaul will long be commemorated.” We concluded the interview with the usual amenities.
In the private airplane that Helvetia had provided for our use, I braced Spirit. “What did you do?”
“Helse manifests to you on occasion,” she replied. “Why not his departed daughter? She had a dream for humanity; all he needed was a reminder.”
And in the face of our insistence that it was only our secretary he saw, the General had realized that his daughter was manifesting to him alone. He could deny us, but he could not deny her. So he had risen to the occasion and done what his beloved daughter wanted. Such persuasion is not to be resisted.