Orson Card - Treason

"I came home, only this time I thought, steadily, continuously, of how my son was a fraud, a total mountebank. I've never had such a struggle in my life. The closer I got to home, the more familiar sights I saw, the more I felt that Percy had always been a part of me, a part of my home. Everything familiar and dear to me had been tied to Percy in my mind, even though I had no specific memory of him in that place. I clutched Twis's letter to my bosom and reread it every few minutes all the way home. I would finish reading the letter and have no idea what it had said. The closer I got to Britton, the harder it became. I've never suffered so much anguish of mind. But I kept saying, 'I have no son. Percy is a fraud,' and never mind wondering how anyone could come to a childless man and pass himself off as his son. Suffice it to say that I made it. I came here with my mind and memory intact. And behold, on this very desk, four letters from Twis, opened and obviously read, which I had utterly no memory of receiving. Now I could read them, and each one of them referred to the matter of Percy being an impossibility.

"In the other letters, Twis gave me comments from friends who had come from Lardner to stay with him during his days in Britton, friends who had met me. I remembered them well. All of them had clear memories of the fact that I was childless and that my wife and I knew perfectly well that we had no hope of having children. He quoted my own witticism to the effect that at least now my wife had no time of month when she could beg off from her duties in bed. All at once, as I read Twis's mention of that occasion, I remembered it. I remembered saying that. It was as though something snapped inside of me. I remembered everything. I had no son. Until I turned forty or so, and then, suddenly, I had a nineteen-year-old boy, eager to rule, passionate for opportunity. I made him governor of my northernmost holding; and it was all he needed. In five years he was, incredibly, overlord of all of Britton. Eight years ago he rose from there to the head of the alliance and turned it into a dictatorship."

I shook my head. "Not a dictatorship, Barton. A figurehead for a commitee of scientists. The self-proclaimed wise men rule in Nkumai and Mueller, too."

"It's always wise, when looking for figureheads, to be certain who is manipulating whom," Barton said with a bite that made it clear he thought me unclever in holding that opinion. "Don't you understand what I'm telling you? Dinte and Percy are alike. Children who appeared out of nowhere, but no one questions them, no one doubts them in their own family, in their own country, and now they have both risen to the highest position of authority in very powerful countries, and everyone is convinced they're mere figureheads."

It did sound rather odd.

"I shall help you be convinced," he said. "When I spoke to you once about how it felt to be heir to the throne, you sad, quite bluntly-- your father was proud of your bluntness, as I remember-- you said-- and you were a little boy then-- you said, 'Lord Barton, I can only be comfortable as heir because father has no other sons. If I had a brother, I'd have to be more careful how I behaved, for then if they got rid of me there'd always be a spare.' I remember the words because your father made me recite them to five or six different people during my visit, as evidence of your precocity. Do you recall this?"

I did. I recalled the words. I recalled the moment. I even remembered old Barton, younger then, of course; he was much amused and slapped his thigh, roaring with laughter, repeating fragments of the remark. I had felt much impressed with myself at having won laughter from such a man.

I remembered, and at that moment I knew that Barton was right. I had no brother. I was an only child.

And I remembered something else. I remembered Mwabao Mawa. Not in Nkumai, but riding into Jones in an open carriage.

The servant who had brought me to the cliff house came in with toddy in a pitcher.

I had seen a middle-aged white man in that carriage. And then a moment later, coming out of quicktime, I had seen Mwabao Mawa in the carriage in precisely the same place. She saw me; I fled; and yet in all that time since then, I had never wondered why the man would have left the wagon in the midst of the streets of Jones to let Mwabao Mawa get on. Where had Mwabao Mawa been till then? Where did the white man go?

It fit the pattern. A seemingly powerless figurehead, run by the committee of scientists-- but when viewed differently, perhaps the very person who ruled.

The servant poured toddy for me first, at Barton's insistence, and was now carrying another to Barton.

I had been in quicktime when I saw the bald white man. Then, in realtime, I had seen Mwabao. Was that the difference, then? In quicktime, I saw the reality? In realtime, I was fooled like everyone else?

The servant leaned over Barton and I remembered having caught a glimpse, that very morning as I came out of quicktime, of a blue cape on a shorter man turning into a red cape on the gaunt servant who now bent over Barton, who now watched as Barton took the toddy to his lips.

"Don't," I said to Barton. 'Don't drink it."

Barton looked surprised for a moment, while the servant stood, blankly looking at me. Then, suddenly, the servant crumpled and Barton leaped to his feet, ran agilely out the door. I was startled. I was put off. I was slowed down. It took several precious moments before I looked again at the servant lying in a tumble on the floor and realized it was not the servant at all. It was Barton.

How had I seen the servant fall and Barton leave, and been in error? They had never changed places, not that I had seen. And yet there lay Barton, his head had been nearly severed from his body, held in place only by the spine. It must have been done in a single strong whick of a very sharp blade. But when had this happened? Why hadn't I seen?

An iron blade.

No time for speculation, of course. I knelt by Barton and pressed the head against the neck and did the kind of thing I had done for so many Humpers and their animals. I connected blood vessels, I healed torn muscles, I linked the skin together without a seam, I made the body healthy and whole. Then, because I was already doing the work and because I cared for the man and because it was easier to do something I knew how to do than to think about what to do next, I even found his rheumatism and his feebleness and his lung disease and his dying heart and fixed them, renewed them, made him healthier than he had been in many years.

He was conscious, looking at me. "Man-of-the-Wind," he said, smiling. "The stories are true."

"The servant was one of them," I said, though of course I had no idea who they were, except that somehow they had come to rule the world.

"That much I guessed as the blade passed through my throat. Dear Dul. How do they carry off their disguise, Lanik? I distinctly remember believing that Dul was born in this house, the child of my housekeeper. It never occurred to me to question the memory. He overheard our conversation, of course. I suppose he meant to poison us. You warned me not to drink-- tell me, how did you guess?"

I had neither time nor inchnation to tell him about Ku Kuei and the manipulation of time. "I just guessed," I said. "You had made me alert."

He looked at me doubtfully, then probably decided that if I had wanted to tell the truth I would have told it already. He got to his feet. He arose so suddenly, in fact, that he startled himself and nearly lost his balance forward. "When you heal someone, you don't go by halves, do you?" he asked. "I feel like a thirty-year-old."

"A shame. I meant for you to feel twenty."

"I didn't want to brag. Lanik, what are you? Never mind. Never mind. The question that matters is, What is Dul, what is Percy, what is Dinte? I doubt we'll find Dul, at any rate. Even if we chased him, he'd probably seem to be an old woman and then slip a knife into our backs as we passed."