Infinity One (4 page)

“Homer tells us that men would rather have their fill of sleep, love, singing, and dancing than of war,” Goethe offered, smooth-voiced, courtly, civilized. “But there will always be some who love war above all else. Who can say why the gods gave us Achilles?”

“I can,” Hemingway growled. “You define man by looking at the opposites inside him. Love and hate. War and peace. Kissing and killing. That’s where his borders are. What’s wrong with that? Every man’s a bundle of opposites. So is every society. And sometimes the killers get the upper hand on the kissers. Besides, how do you know the fellows who overthrew you were so wrong?” “Let me speak of Achilles,” said Alexander, tossing his ringlets, holding his hands high. “I know him better than any of you, for I carry his spirit within me. And I tell you that warriors are best fit to rule, so long as they have wisdom as well as strength, for they have given their lives as pledges in return for the power they hold. Achilles—”

Voigtland was not interested in Achilles. To Juan he said, “I have to call. It’s four days, now. I can’t just sit in this ship and remain cut off.”

“If you call, they’re likely to catch you.”

“I know that. But what if the coup failed?” Voigtland was trembling. He moved closer to the ultrawave set.

Mark said, “Dad, if the coup failed, Juan will be sending a ramjet to intercept you. They won’t let you just ride all the way to Rigel for nothing.”

Yes, Voigtland thought, dazed with relief. Yes, yes, of course. How simple. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “You hear that?” Juan asked. “You won’t call?”

“I won’t call,” Voigtland promised.

The days passed. He played all twelve cubes, chatted with Mark and Lynx, Lydia, Juan. Idle chatter, talk of old holidays, friends, growing up. He loved the sight of his cool elegant daughter and his rugged long-limbed son, and wondered how he could have sired them, he who was short and thick-bodied, with blunt features and massive bones. He talked with his father about government, with Juan about revolution. He talked with Ovid about exile, and with Plato about the nature of injustice, and with Hemingway about the definition of courage. They helped him through some of the difficult moments. Each day had its difficult moments.

The nights were much worse.

He ran screaming and ablaze down the tunnels of his own soul. He saw faces looming like huge white lamps above him. Men in black uniforms and mirror-bright boots paraded in somber phalanxes over his fallen body. Citizens lined up to jeer him. ENEMY OF THE STATE. ENEMY OF THE STATE. ENEMY OF THE STATE. They brought Juan to him in his dreams. COWARD. COWARD. COWARD. Juan’s lean bony body was ridged and gouged; he had been put through the tortures, the wires in the skull, the lights in the eyes, the truncheons in the ribs. I STAYED. YOU FLED. I STAYED. YOU FLED. I STAYED. YOU FLED. They showed him his own face in a mirror, a jackal’s face, with long yellow teeth and little twitching eyes. ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELF? ARE YOU PLEASED? ARE YOU HAPPY TO BE ALIVE?

He asked the ship for help. The ship wrapped him in a cradle of silvery fibers and slid snouts against his skin that filled his veins with cold droplets of unknown drugs. He slipped into a deeper sleep, and underneath the sleep, burrowing upward, came dragons and gorgons and serpents and basilisks, whispering mockery as he slept. TRAITOR. TRAITOR. TRAITOR. HOW CAN YOU HOPE TO SLEEP SOUNDLY, HAVING DONE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?

“Look,” he said to Lydia, “they would have killed me within the hour. There wasn’t any possible way of finding you, Mark, Juan, anybody. What sense was there in waiting longer?”

“No sense at all, Tom. You did the smartest thing.” “But was it the
right
thing, Lydia?”

Lynx said, “Father, you had no choice. It was run or die.”

He wandered through the ship, making an unending circuit. How soft the walls were, how beautifully upholstered! The lighting was gentle. Restful images flowed and coalesced and transformed themselves on the sloping ceilings. The little garden was a vale of beauty. He had music, fine food, books, cubes. What was it like in the sewers of the underground now?

“We didn’t need more martyrs,” he told Plato. “The junta was making enough martyrs as it was. We needed leaders. What good is a dead leader?”

“Very wise, my friend. You have made yourself a symbol of heroism, distant, idealized, untouchable, while your colleagues carry on the struggle in your name,” Plato said silkily. "And yet you are able to return and serve your people in the future. The service a martyr gives is limited, finite, locked to a single point in time. Eh?”

“I have to disagree,” said Ovid. “If a man wants to be a hero, he ought to hold his ground and take what comes. Of course, what sane man wants to be a hero? You did well, friend Voigtland! Give yourself over to feasting and love, and live longer and more happily.”

“You’re mocking me,” he said to Ovid,

“I do not mock. I console. I amuse. I do not mock.”

In the night came tinkling sounds, faint bells, crystalline laughter. Figures capered through his brain, demons, jesters, witches, ghouls. He tumbled down into mustiness and decay, into a realm of spiders, where empty husks hung on vast arching webs. THIS IS WHERE THE HEROES GO. Hags embraced him. WELCOME TO VALHALLA. Gnarled midgets offered him horns of mead, and the mead was bitter, leaving a coating of ash on his lips. ALL HAIL. ALL HAIL. ALL HAIL.

“Help me,” he said hoarsely to the cubes. “What did I bring you along for, if not to help me?”

“We’re trying to help,” Hemingway said. “We agree that you did the sensible thing.”

“You’re saying it to make me happy. You aren’t sincere.”

“You bastard! Call me a liar again and I’ll step out of this screen and—”

“Maybe I can put it another way,” Juan said craftily. “Tom, you had an
obligation to
save yourself. Saving yourself was the most valuable thing you could have done for the cause. Listen, for all you knew the rest of us had already been wiped out, right?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Then what would you accomplish by staying and being wiped out too? Outside of some phony heroics, what?” Juan shook his head. “A leader in exile is better than a leader in the grave. You can direct the resistance from Rigel, if the rest of us are gone. Do you see the dynamics of it, Tom?”

“I see. I see. You make it sound so reasonable, Juan.” Juan winked. “We always understood each other.” He activated the cube of his father. “What do you say? Should I have stayed or gone?”

“Maybe stay, maybe go. How can I speak for you? Certainly taking the ship was more practical. Staying would have been more dramatic. Tom, Tom, how can I speak for you?”

“Mark?”

“I would have stayed and fought right to the end. Teeth, nails, everything. But that’s me. I think maybe you did the right thing, Dad. The way Juan explains it. The right thing for
you,
that is.”

Voigtland frowned. “Stop talking in circles. Just tell me this: do you despise me for going?”

“You know I don’t,” Mark said.

The cubes consoled him. He began to sleep more soundly, after a while. He stopped fretting about the morality of his flight. He remembered how to relax.

He talked military tactics with Atdla, and was surprised to find a complex human being behind the one-dimensional ferocity. He tried to discuss the nature of tragedy with Shakespeare, but Shakespeare seemed more intersted in talking about taverns, politics, and the problems of a professional playwright’s finances. He spoke to Goethe about the second part of
Faust
, asking if Goethe really felt that the highest kind of redemption came through governing well, and Goethe said, yes, yes, of course. And when Voigtland wearied of matching wits with his cubed great ones, he set them going against one another, Attila and Alexander, Shakespeare and Goethe, Hemingway and Plato, and sat back, listening to such talk as mortal man had never heard. And there were humbler sessions with Juan and his family. He blessed the cubes; he blessed their makers.

“You seem much happier these days,” Lydia said.

“All that nasty guilt washed away,” said Lynx.

“It was just a matter of looking at the logic of the situation,” Juan observed.

Mark said, “And cutting out all the masochism, the self-flagellation.”

“Wait a second,” said Voigtland. “Let’s not hit below the belt, young man.”

“But it
was
masochism, Dad. Weren’t you wallowing in your guilt? Admit it.”

“I suppose I—”

“And looking to us to pull you out,” Lynx said. “Which we did.”

“Yes. You did.”

“And it’s all clear to you now, eh?” Juan asked. “Maybe you
thought
you were afraid, thought you were running out, but you were actually performing a service to the republic. Eh?”

Voigtland grinned. “Doing the right thing for the wrong reason.”

“Exactly. Exactly.”

“The important thing is the contribution you still can make to Bradley’s World,” his father’s voice said. “You’re still young. There’s time to rebuild what we used to have there.”

“Yes. Certainly."

“Instead of dying a futile but heroic death,” said Juan. “On the other hand,” Lynx said, “what did Eliot write?
‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason
.’ ”

Voigtland frowned. “Are you trying to say—”

“And it is true,” Mark cut in, “that you were planning your escape far in advance. I mean, making the cubes and all, picking out the famous men you wanted to take—” “As though you had decided that at the first sign of trouble you were going to skip out,” said Lynx.

“They’ve got a point,” his father said. “Rational selfprotection is one thing, but an excessive concern for your mode of safety in case of emergency is another.”

“I don’t say you should have stayed and died,” Lydia said. “I never would say that. But all the same—”

“Hold on!” Voigtland said. The cubes were turning against him, suddenly. “What kind of talk is this?”

Juan said, “And strictly as a pragmatic point, if the people were to find out how far in advance you engineered your way out, and how comfortable you are as you head for exile—”

“You’re supposed to help me!” Voigtland shouted. “Why are you starting this? What are you trying to do?” “You know we all love you,” said Lydia.

“We hate to see you not thinking clearly, Father,” Lynx said.

“Weren’t you planning to run out all along?” said Mark. “Wait! Stop! Wait!”

“Strictly as a matter of—”

Voigtland rushed into the control room and pulled the Juan-cube from the slot.

“We’re trying to explain to you, dear—”

He pulled the Lydia-cube, the Mark-cube, the Lynx-cube, the father-cube.

The ship was silent.

He crouched, gasping, sweat-soaked, face rigid, eyes clenched tight shut, waiting for the shouting in his skull to die away.

An hour later, when he was calm again, he began setting up his ultrawave call, tapping out the frequency that the underground would probably be using, if any underground existed. The tachyon-beam sprang across the void, an all but instantaneous carrier wave, and he heard cracklings, and then a guarded voice saying, “Four Nine Eight Three, we read your signal, do you read me? This is Four Nine Eight Three, come in, come in, who are you?” “Voigtland,” he said. “President Voigtland, calling Juan. Can you get Juan on the line?”

“Give me your numbers, and—”

“What numbers? This is
Voigtland.
I’m I don’t know how many billion miles out in space, and I want to
talk
to Juan. Get me Juan.
Get me Juan."

“You wait,” the voice said.

Voigtland waited, while the ultrawave spewed energy wantonly into the void. He heard clickings, scrapings, clatterings. “You still there?” the voice said, after a while. “We’re patching him in. But be quick. He’s busy.” “Well? Who is it?” Juan’s voice, beyond doubt. “Tom here. Tom Voigtland, Juan!”

“It’s really you?” Coldly. From a billion parsecs away, from some other universe. “Enjoying your trip, Tom?” “I had to call. To find out ... to find out . . . how it was going, how everybody is. How’s Mark ... Lydia.. . you...”

“Mark’s dead. Killed the second week, trying to blow up McAllister in a parade.”

“Oh. Oh.”

“Lydia and Lynx are in prison somewhere. Most of the others are dead. Maybe ten of
ms
left, and they’ll get us soon, too. Of course, there’s you.”

“Yes.”

“You bastard,” Juan said quietly. “You rotten bastard. All of us getting rounded up and shot, and you get into your ship and fly away!”

“They would have killed me too, Juan. They were coming after me. I only just made it.”

“You should have stayed,” Juan said.

“No. No. that isn’t what you just said to me! You told me I did the right thing, that I’d serve as a symbol of resistance, inspiring everybody from my place of exile, a living symbol of the overthrown government—”

“I said this?”

“You, yes,” Voigtland told him. “Your cube, anyway.” “Go to hell,” said Juan. “You lunatic bastard.”

“Your cube—we discussed it, you explained—”

“Are you crazy, Tom? Listen, those cubes are programmed to tell you whatever you want to hear. Don’t you know that? You want to feel like a hero for running away, they tell you you’re a hero. It’s that simple. How can you sit there and quote what my cube said to you, and make me believe that / said it?”

“But I. .. you—”

“Have a nice flight, Tom. Give my love to everybody, wherever you’re going.”

“I couldn’t just stay there to be killed. What good would it have been? Help me, Juan! What shall I do now? Help me!”

“I don’t give a damn what you do,” Juan said. “Ask your cubes for help. So long, Tom.”

“Juan-”

“So long, you bastard.”

Contact broke.

Voigtland sat quietly for a while, pressing his knuckles together.
Listen, those cubes are programmed to tell you whatever you want to hear. Don't you know that? You want to feel like a hero for running away, they tell you yotCre a hero.
And if you want to feel like a v
illain
? They tell you that too. They meet all needs. They aren’t people. They’re cubes.