But of course this was not the end. I had one final thing to accomplish, and that was to unify the System behind the Triton Project and enable man to colonize the galaxy.
• • •
I had another dialysis treatment, and Dorian Gray, who was in this reality of Earth a Cuban, joined me again. “Do you want to visit Cuba?” I inquired.
She shrugged, and I realized that she couldn’t really answer. The original Dorian Gray was Cuban, but Forta Foundling was not; what point in visiting a homeland that in no sense had been hers?
“Visitor,” Spirit said.
“Here?” I asked. I was at low ebb after the dialysis, but I knew we were being protected from random intrusions. What person would the authorities allow through?
“From Jupiter,” she said.
“Jupiter isn’t speaking to me,” I reminded her. “Make sure it isn’t an assassin.”
“No assassin,” she said with a smile. Then, to the screen: “Send him in.”
“Now?” I asked, appalled. I was in pajamas, ready for bed, and Dorian Gray was in a flimsy nightie. She jumped up, about to scurry into her room to change clothing and identities.
“As you were,” Spirit said. “Robert won’t tell.”
“Who the hell is Robert?” I demanded querously.
There was a knock. Spirit went to the door—here on Earth they used actual, literal doors, not ports or locks—and opened it. “My, how you’ve grown!” she said, stepping out to embrace the visitor.
I exchanged a glance with Dorian Gray. What was my sister up to?
Spirit brought him in. He was a solid, muscular youth in his teens, Hispanic, smiling somewhat foolishly. “Hi, Dad,” he said.
I performed a double take. “Robertico!” I exclaimed.
Dorian Gray dissolved into astonishment and dismay. She sought again to leave, but I grabbed her wrist. Suddenly I was enjoying this, though surely my post-dialysis depression distorted my judgment.
Robertico had grown monstrously in the four years since I had last seen him. He had been eleven; now he was fifteen, and that seemed to have added most of a foot to his height and fifty pounds to his mass. I had never formally adopted him, but he had become part of my family. My daughter Hopie, as I mentioned, had been first his baby-sitter, then his older sister, taking excellent care of him. Of course he was a welcome visitor!
“I come with a message,” Robertico said. Then he faltered, staring at Dorian Gray.
I smiled. “Dorian Gray, meet my ward Robertico. Robertico, meet your mother.”
For he had been the infant son of that woman. A promise is a promise, and the death of one of the parties does not abate the commitment. After I am dead, my commitments must be maintained. Now Dorian Gray had returned to me, in the only way she could, and so I was bringing her son to her.
Of course she was young, in this incarnation, only a few years older than Robertico himself. But that seemed not to matter. She stared at him, knowing what this meant, and he stared at her, seeing his mother for the first time. Then he stepped forward, and she stood, and they flung themselves into each other’s arms and wept together.
Perhaps others would see this as a ludicrous scene. I did not. Dorian Gray was as close to the original as it was possible to be, and Robertico was of her flesh. If ever a man could go back in time and meet his mother as a young woman, this was the occasion. This was the only way this man could meet his mother. If this scene was wrong, then the universe is wrong.
In due course we got to Robertico’s message. “It is this,” he said. “‘Stay clear of Jupiter.’ They do not want you there, and they will execute you if you violate your exile.”
I had to laugh. I was feeling better, regardless of the dialysis. Dorian Gray was sitting beside Robertico, holding his hand, and I had no jealously of this. “Jupiter needs no messenger to inform me of this!” I exclaimed. “I’m surprised they let you out to come to me!”
“Hopie sent me,” he said. “And they let me go, because they knew you would see me. It isn’t the same there, now. They mean it; you can’t go there.”
I remembered what the Prime Minister of Earth had said. Robertico of course would not know who was running the new political machine of Jupiter, which was another reason they had let him come here. Hopie would know, so she was kept there, surely as hostage. They knew I would do nothing to bring harm to my daughter.
“But the Triton Project needs the support of Jupiter,” I said. “It is for the benefit of all mankind.”
“They don’t care about that,” he said. “They just don’t want you back.”
“I wonder why?” I asked, as if ignorant.
“My sister told me,” he said. “It’s because the people would support you. Things were better when you were Tyrant.”
“Things always seem better in the past,” I said.
“No, Dad, it’s true!” he insisted. “There are shortages all the time now, and a lot of police, and anybody who criticizes the government gets arrested and maybe disappears. It’s bad!”
“Freedoms are being denied?” I asked. “What does the press have to say about this?”
“The news media are being shut down. They don’t dare say anything.”
“What about Thorley? Nobody could shut him up.”
“He was arrested last year.”
“What?” This time I was shocked.
“Well, first it was just house arrest, but when he wouldn’t shut up, they came and took him away last month. My sister said you’d want to know about that, even if he did criticize you a lot.”
“Right,” I said grimly. Thorley had been my most eloquent critic throughout, but despite the public impression we had close ties. At this moment I knew I had to do something about Jupiter. I didn’t even need to catch Spirit’s eye to know she concurred. This had been my daughter’s real message: that the situation was serious. The first thing a truly repressive regime does is muzzle free speech, particularly as represented by the press. As Tyrant, I had never done this, though often excoriated by the media. That had been my promise to Thorley, when he saved my wife’s life, and, as I said, I keep my promises.
We kept it polite, as though I hadn’t really reacted to the message. Robertico was here on a limited visa, and had to return promptly. “Tell them I got the message,” I said as he left.
“Yeah,” he agreed darkly. “I’m sorry you can’t stop by there. Hopie really wanted to see you.”
“Tell her I’ll do what I have to do, as I always have.”
“And take care of yourself, dear,” Dorian Gray said to him, exactly like a mother.
He left. Dorian Gray retired immediately to her room. What effect this had had on her I could not be sure. I had thrown her unexpectedly into a completely different aspect of her role, and I knew it had shaken her. She had, for a time, been a mother, and that was no light thing.
I turned to Spirit. “You know what to do,” I said.
She nodded grimly. “You prepare Forta.” Then she went to her own room.
Within the hour Spirit emerged, ready to go. Her appearance had changed; she was now in male clothing, and looked like a man. “Give me ten minutes,” she said.
I summoned the hotel staff. When the servitor came, I told him that we were having trouble with a bathroom fixture. This was true; I had loosened it myself. He accompanied me to the bathroom, verified the problem, and brought out a tool. Soon enough he had tightened it, and the fixture worked.
“Thank you,” I said. “Here is a tip.” I urged a coin on him.
‘No, sir,” he demurred. “We do not charge for service.”
“But I was once a workingman myself,” I said. “You have done me a service, and I must repay you.”
“It is a privilege to serve the Tyrant,” he said. “Please, Sir, I would lose my job if—”
“Oh.” I pondered briefly. “Perhaps a commendation to the office, then?”
“There is no need—” he said, pleased.
By
the time he got away, ten minutes had passed. Spirit was gone. She had departed in the guise of a hotel servitor, escaping undetected. If anyone was to be challenged, it would be the true servitor, emerging ten minutes after he had supposedly left. But in that case I would come quickly to his rescue; he was blameless. The report of the prior servitor would be dismissed as an error.
Spirit was on her way, and no one would know she was gone. Satisfied, I retired to my own repose, which I now sorely needed. I settled on the bed, touched Smilo’s furry back, and sank into slumber.
• • •
In the morning I explained to Forta: Spirit was on a private mission, and she, Forta, would have to help cover for her. “You can do her?” I asked, knowing she could.
“Of course,” she agreed, still surprised by this development. “But I can’t be two people simultaneously. We are supposed to be a party of three—”
“You can do quick changes?”
She sighed. “You may have to help me, though. When we are guaranteed privacy, I can cope, but in any public or semipublic situation—”
“I will cover for you,” I agreed.
“But where did Spirit have to go, so suddenly?”
“To Jupiter,” I said.
She stared at me. “Is this something I should know about—or not know about?”
“After we finish with the inner planets, we are going to Jupiter,” I said.
“But they will kill you there!” she protested. “And they hold your daughter hostage!”
“They hold the planet Jupiter hostage,” I said. “I shall have to recover it.”
“Tyrant, you frighten me! I am not inexperienced in the matter of repressive governments, and I know the record of such as Tocsin. They hate you, and they are completely unscrupulous. You are no longer in power there; you would be helpless. And your daughter—”
Indeed, she was not inexperienced. She came from Amnesty Interplanetary, specializing in the brutality of man toward man, and had been a victim of that in infancy, as her scarred face showed. “That is why my sister is preparing the way”, I said. “She has always been the competent one.”
She was unconvinced. “Oh, Tyrant, I am afraid for you!” She took my hand, moving into my embrace, then froze. I realized why: she was out of character, being herself at this moment.
I seized the moment, bringing her into the completion of the embrace. “I know I could have no better person with me at this time than you,” I told her.
But she drew away, upset. “I must change!” she said.
I let her go. If I reacted to her differently, depending on the aspect she represented to me, so also did she react differently to me. She could not become physical with me unless she was in a role. But she was a good woman—one of the very best, in whatever way that could be taken.
She returned in a few minutes in the guise of Spirit. She was perfect in that role; there was nothing I could tell her to improve her performance.
“You’ve got it,” I agreed. “But maybe you should rehearse for quick changes. We can cover by using voices, too; when I call to Spirit offscreen, you can answer for her even when in your own format.”
“True,” she agreed.
We completed the Earth tour, rehearsing those role switches, and it worked well enough. I spoke at South America, and then at Africa, and Spirit was normally at my side in the holo representations, with occasional shots of my secretary. We accomplished the mission; the government was deluged with volunteers from all races and cultures. And in the evenings Dorian Gray slept with me, seeming to need my comfort as much as I needed hers.
CHAPTER 15
VENUS
The first problem was in making the trip to Venus. We had our own Triton Project ship, and I could pilot it alone, but boarding it was another matter. There would be fanfare and a farewell party, and it would be obvious that our party consisted of one tiger and two human beings, not one and three.
I decided to call on the Prime Minister for help. I asked for a concluding meeting with her, a private one, and when this was granted I explained: “You advised me of conditions on Jupiter. My sister has gone to investigate. Will you lend us one woman of her likeness to join our party, so that we can depart without my sister’s absence being known?”
She smiled. “I am glad you took my remarks to heart, Tyrant. For how long would you require this double?”
“Just to the ship. She can debark before we take off.”
“And what of your arrival at Venus? Won’t your sister be missed then?”
“My secretary is adept at impersonation. She can play the part of my sister.”
“And who plays the part of your secretary as their car conveys your party in style to your lodging?”
Was I getting confused in my age and infirmity? I hadn’t thought of that, and of course she was right. We could no more handle the arrival at Venus than we could the departure at Earth.
She put her hand on mine. “I can see how quickly you are lost without a woman to supervise your itinerary, Tyrant,” she said. “I will lend you one for the duration.”
“I wasn’t asking that,” I protested.
“When I said that Earth supports you, that is what I meant. She will be competent and discreet, and will not interfere with your private affairs. You may park her at our embassies at Venus and Mercury during your stays there, and pick her up when you travel. She will find her way home when you have no further need of her.”
I smiled. “You are very understanding.”
“I want the Triton Project to succeed, Tyrant. You are the only one who can bring that about.”
So it was that the woman I call Doppelganger, Doppie for short, joined our party. A doppelganger is a double, a person exactly like another, often in the supernatural sense. I knew her name at the time, but have forgotten it; I always thought of her as Doppie. It seemed that on a planet with five billion persons, one who resembled my sister should exist, and indeed it was so. Doppie was of a similar age and configuration, and I would have mistaken her for Spirit had I judged by sight alone. Her signals were wrong, of course, but most people were unable to read these, so for this purpose it didn’t matter.
We boarded the shuttle with the expected fanfare, and rode to Luna to board our own ship. Doppie played her part perfectly. The Prime Minister had done me a real favor, and I would not forget.
Again we used the projection tube to cover the distance between planets, so there was no long journey. Forta remained as herself, as we did not care to advertise her other relationship to me.
We were assigned a parking orbit about Venus, and an experienced local pilot picked us up and took us down into the cloud layer. We certainly required this assistance; not only were the clouds seemingly impenetrable, the winds were about a hundred meters a second at the top, and circled the planet in four Earth-days, though the rotation of the solid part of the planet was virtually nil. In addition, the atmosphere was much thicker than anything we had had experience with, being about ninety times the pressure of Earth’s at the surface. Of course there are much higher pressures in the giant planets, but Venus is smaller than Earth. We never descended to the ninety bar region of Jupiter or Saturn; our bubbles weren’t braced for it. Here we did.
So we came down to the surprisingly dark and quiet landscape of Venus, where the wind was only one meter a second. The vehicle that awaited us was a squat thing with wheels, braced to withstand the horrendous pressure, as was the shuttle. Our ship would have been crushed before it reached the ground. I began to experience the claustrophobia of pressure again. The vacuum outside a spaceship I could handle without significant qualm, as long as I had a good suit, but the horrendous planetary pressures unmanned me.
Doppie, evidently coached on this, did what Spirit would have done: she put her hand quietly on mine, reassuringly. I wasn’t reassured, but I appreciated the gesture. For one thing, it lent verisimilitude; the driver would not suspect she was not my sister.
The terrai
n, as we saw it through the phenomenally thick porthole, was rough and rocky. Venus had been settled by northern Africa, and indeed the barren desert seemed to be equivalent. Here below the clouds it was possible to see some distance; I saw that there were mountains to the side. Our vehicle traveled a road that had been cleared of boulders, and was making good time; too good, for I feared its swiftness. If anything went wrong, and we crashed ...
The dome was a dark mass, marked only by a locater beam on the top. It was formed of bubblene, of course, but of a thickness not seen elsewhere in the System. Only beneath the liquid oceans of Earth were residences placed under similar pressure, and there were few of those on Earth because it was so much easier to utilize the land surfaces and the shallow waters. Here on Venus there was no choice.
We entered the ponderous lock, and my claustrophobia abated somewhat. It was possible to imagine that this was a normal city, spinning in the atmosphere of Jupiter or Saturn or Uranus, beset by less than ten bars pressure. But I remained somewhat dazed, and really was not alert. My clearest memory of that approach is our arrival at the compact suite provided, where Forta dialyzed me. It seemed that every second event in my life had become the dialysis!
Forta arranged to drop Doppie off at the Earth embassy, as she was now off duty until we departed for Mercury. I’m not sure how they managed the transfer; I was out of it, sleeping, being baby-sat by Smilo. When I woke, Doppie was gone, and so was Forta. Instead, a new woman was with me: Coral.
Coral had been my bodyguard. She was oriental—that is, of Saturn derivation—and expert in personal defense. I had always felt secure when she was with me, though of course there were threats she had not been able to protect me from. She had been young and most attractive when she came to me, and when I separated from my wife she had been among those who had taken me as lover. She was healthy and athletic, and versed in the sexual lore of the East, and her liaisons had been a delight. When I saw her, I was gratified, for I knew that there would be marvelous times coming.