“Yes, that’s true; certainly I can’t deny it,” William said slowly. “But life is something that happens to us whether we want it to or not, my love—though our parents may have some choice in the matter.”
His hand caught around hers again, and she looked up to meet the warmth of his smile with a glow of her own. “Happiness, though, doesn’t come with the first breath of life,” William went on. “It happens to you, or it doesn’t. Even those who choose their own mates often make mistakes; you can do all the things that you think will bring happiness, and still find yourself sunk in gloom. It’s not a right.”
“No,” Dilana said slowly, never looking away from him, “but you can try to be happy. Surely that much is a right, at least.”
William’s look turned thoughtful. “Perhaps,” he said slowly, and turned to gaze out at the garden again. “Perhaps…” Watching his face, Dilana breathed out a silent sigh of relief. It had been a very difficult moment, but she seemed to have managed it fairly well. Except, of course, that he was now deep in thought, though she seemed to have rescued him from his dark mood.
Still, she also seemed to have thrown away an intimate moment that might have led to a night of ecstasy. She sighed again, and reminded herself that they all had to make sacrifices for the Cause.
The night fulfilled its promise, though, and more. The next day, William gave his judgment: that young Charyg should be apprenticed to the village cabinetmaker. Then he took old Charyg into his study for a long, long talk. The merchant emerged looking somber, but no longer angry—and very, very thoughtful.
Later that spring, Dilana astounded both William and herself by conceiving. She was nearly forty, but somehow she survived the birth of her first child, and was amazed that William seemed overjoyed, even though the baby was a girl, not a boy. Three years later, he was having long “conversations” with their daughter, which generally meant listening to her prattle as she sat on his knee. Little by little, Dilana began to mention the rights baby Luisa had gained by virtue of being born, and as the result of William’s and her own decision to encourage that event. William assured her that he was thoroughly aware of his responsibilities to the child—but bit by bit, he began to believe that women’s rights had to be stated as clearly as men’s:
Thus the genuine magistrates who stayed in office talked of human rights with their new wives, and slowly, little by little, began to think of some changes to the government, ways following from that idea of individual human rights. Miles found that, although he didn’t have enough madmen to replace all the officials, he didn’t need to.
“You don’t really think you can hold us here if we really want to go, do you?” Magistrate Flound said with a hard smile.
“Oh, yes,” Bade said, his voice soft as velvet. “Yes, I think we can hold you here no matter how badly you want to leave.”
“A mere five of you?—” Flound scoffed. He sat back with a sneer of contempt. “Against five hundred of us?”
“Five of us, and the Guardian with its thousand robots.” Actually, there were only a hundred robots on duty at any one time, but they moved around so often and so quickly that Bade was sure none of the magistrates could count them. “They could hold you fast even without we five jailers. In fact, we’re only here to watch for trouble signs the Guardian might not catch.”
It was certainly true that the master computer had never had to be a jailer before. The madmen had all wanted to stay.
Bade still wanted to stay, too, but not to wallow in delusion anymore. Hatred burned white-hot within him, and he wanted to be in Voyagend to visit the revenge of imprisonment on every magistrate brought to him. He would never forget his father’s angry shouts at Lado, their village magistrate, because the man had kept the father’s money, while turning Bade out of school for learning too slowly. (But what he had learned, he had learned well!) He would never forget the sight of his father in the stocks, with neighbors jeering at him and throwing rotten vegetables, the moldy pulp dripping down over half of Papa’s face. He would never forget his mother’s tears, or her loud arguments telling Papa to stop pushing the boy.
But Papa hadn’t been pushing Bade—he had only tried to give him the chance for the learning he so loved. Here in the Lost City, Bade had found that chance, and had spent hours in a learning carrel every day, with the Guardian feeding him pictures and words on a viewscreen, stopping to explain anything that he didn’t understand. He had still learned slowly, though not as slowly as with a village teacher who snarled and berated his students. The Guardian told him now that he knew as much as any magistrate, though he was behind in local events by a few hundred years.
Now, of course, Orgoru and the other impostor magistrates were sending back law books and history books, and their own observations on the intrigue that underlay it all. Little by little, Bade was catching up.
So he gave back hard smile for hard smile and told Flound, “You couldn’t want to break out of this city more than you do already. There isn’t a one of you who doesn’t ache for the reward and career boost that would come from telling the nearest reeve all about us rebels in this city, and letting the Protector’s spies know about our agents all over the land.”
Flound lost his smile, glaring in hatred at Bade.
The glare satisfied Bade’s need for revenge—a little. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “Yes, the Guardian hears everything you say, Flound.”
The magistrate’s eyes sparked anger at the impertinence of this peasant, addressing him without his title.
“Everything you say,” Bade went on softly. “You can’t plan an escape attempt without its knowing—and if the Guardian knows, I know.”
It wasn’t true, of course—the computer had audio pickups in every room in the city and quite a number in outdoor public places, but scarcely everywhere. It was quite possible to find some sheltered nook, some end of an alley, where the computer couldn’t hear—but it wouldn’t hurt for Flound and his lackeys to think the machine knew everything.
“How do you think the Guardian knew enough to send his skeleton to push you back, when you tried to climb the wall in the dead of night last week?” Bade asked.
Flound’s glare was a dagger, and Bade grinned in return, knowing the magistrate’s stomach was sinking as he began to believe the computer had overheard his planning with his score of confederates. Of course, the robot who had stopped them had really only been on sentry duty, making his rounds by a randomized schedule—but Flound didn’t need to know that. The man left Bade’s office with a snarl, and Bade allowed himself to feel the warm glow of triumph.
The house stood as near the wall as any, for a thirty-foot width of clear pavement circled inside the wall all around the city. But thirty feet was close enough for Flound’s purpose. Of course, the house was made of stone, like all the buildings that still stood in the ruined city—a very strange, ruddy stone, warm to the touch, but stone nonetheless, for what else could it be if it were so hard? The floors were made of the same stone, all flat, all one piece, and Flound marveled that the ancient builders had been able to find or cut such large sheets of rock. Maybe the old tales were true, maybe the ancients really had secrets of building, miraculous tools and methods that had been lost!
But the house was built around a courtyard, and the courtyard was paved with flagstones. Oh, Flound had found only a mass of weeds, but had dug down beneath them, then cleared away the dead herbage, exulting. Flagstones they were, though carved into beautiful shapes and fitted together like a puzzle—but separate stones, and the weeds sprouting between them, showed there must be dirt below!