"Welcome back," Hort said.
"Hope I didn't cause any inconvenience," Linkeree answered.
"How was your night in the grass?"
Linkeree looked down at his scratches and scabs. "Painful. But therapeutic."
Silence for a moment. Hort took another bite of his sandwich.
"Dr. Hort, right now I'm in control. I know that my mother's alive. I know that I killed Zad. I also know that I was insane when I did it. But I understand and I accept those things."
Hort nodded.
"I believe, Doctor, that I am sane right now. I believe that I am viewing the world as accurately as most people, and can function in a capable manner. Except."
"Except?"
"Except that I'm Linkeree Danol, and as soon as it is known that I am capable of running things, I will be forced to take control of a very large fortune and a huge business that employs, in the long run, most of the people on Pampas. I will have to live in a certain house in this city. And in that house will be my mother."
"Ah."
"I don't believe my sanity would last fifteen minutes, Doctor, if I had to live with her again."
"She's changed somewhat," Dr. Hort said. "I understand her a little now."
"I have understood her completely for years, and she'll never change, Dr. Hort. More important, though, is the fact that I'll never change when I'm around her."
Hort sucked in a deep breath, leaned back in his chair. "What happened to you out on the desert?"
Linkme smiled wanly. "I died and buried myself. I can't return to that life. And if it means staying here in this institution all my life, pretending to be insane, I'll do that. But I'll never go back to Mother. If I did that, I'd have to live with all that I've hated all my life-- and with the fact that I killed the only person I ever loved. It isn't a pleasant memory. My sanity is not a pleasant thing to hold onto."
Dr. Hort nodded.
There was a knock at the door. Link straightened up. "Who is it?" Hort asked.
"Me. Mrs. Danol."
Linkeree stood up abruptly, walked around the office to a point at the far wall from the door.
"I'm consulting, Mrs. Danol."
Her voice was strident, even through the muffling door. "They told me Linkeree had come back. I heard you talking to him in there."
"Go away, Mrs. Danol," Dr. Hort said. "You will see your son in due time."
"I will see him now. I have a writ that says I can see him. I got it from the court at noon. I want to see him."
Hort turned to Link. "She thinks ahead, doesn't she?"
Link was shaking. "If she comes in, I'll kill her."
"All right, Mrs. Danol. Just a moment."
"No!" Link shouted, making spastic motions as if he wanted to claw his way through the wall backward.
Hort whispered, "Relax, Link. I won't let her near you." Hort opened a closet-- Link started to walk in it. "No, Link." And Hort took his spare suit off the hanger, and a clean shirt. The suit, in the standard one piece, was a little long for Linkeree, but the waist and shoulders were not far wrong, and Link didn't look out of place in it when he had finished dressing.
"I don't know what you hope to gain by stalling, Dr. Hort, but I will see my son," Mrs. Danot shouted. "In three minutes I'll call the police!"
Hort shouted back, "Patience, Mrs. Danol. It takes a moment to prepare your son to see you."
"Nonsense! My son wants to see me!"
Linkeree was trembling, hard. Hort put his arms around the young man, gripped him tight. "Keep control," he whispered.
"I'm trying," Link chattered back, his lower jaw out of control.
Hort reached into his hipbag, pulled out his id and his cred, and handed them to Link. "I won't report them missing until you are on a ship out of here."
"Ship?"
"Go to Capitol. You'll have little trouble there, finding a place. Even without money. There's always room for someone like you."
Link snorted "That's a damn lie and you know it."
"Right. But even if they send you back here, your mother will be dby then."
Linkeree nodded.
"Now here's the door control. When I say, open the door."
"No."
"Open the door and let her in. I'll keep her under control until you get out the door and close it from the outside. There's no way out of here, then, except Gram's masterkey, and this note should take care of that." Hort scribbled a quick note. "He'll cooperate because he hates your mother almost as much as I do. Which is a terrible thing for an impartial psychologist to say, but at this point, who the hell cares?"
Linkeree took the note and the door control and stood beside the door with his back to the wall. "Doctor," he asked, "what'll they do to you for this?"
"Raise holy hell, of course," he said. "But I can only be removed by a council of medical practitioners-- and that's the same group that can have Mrs. Danol committed."
"Committed?"
"She needs help, Link."
Linkeree smiled-- and was surprised to realize it was his first smile in months. Since. Since Zad died.
He touched the open button.
The door slid open and Mrs. Danol swept in. "I knew you'd see reason," she pronounced, then whirled to look as Link stepped out the door, closing it so quickly that he almost got caught in it. His mother was already screaming and pounding as Link handed the note to Gram, who read it, looked closely at the man, and then nodded. "But hurry your ass, boy," Gram said. "What we're doing here is called kidnapping in some courts."
Linkeree set the door control on the desk and left, running.
He lay in the ship's passenger hold, recovering from the dizziness that they told him was normal with a person's first mindtaping. The brain patterns that held all his memories and all his personality were now in a cassette securely stored in the ship's cabin, and now he lay on a table waiting for them to drug him with somec. When he woke up and had his memory played back into his mind in Capitol, he would only remember up to the moment of taping. These moments now, between the tape and the tap, would be lost forever.
And that was why he thought back to the infant whose warm body he had held, and why he let himself wish that he could have saved him, could have protected him, could have let him live.
No, I'm living for him.
The hell I am. I'm living for me.
They came and put the needle into his buttocks, not for the cold sleep of death, but for the burning sleep of life. And as the hot agony of somec swept over him, he writhed into a ball on the table and cried out, "Mother! I love you!"
WHEN NO ONE REMEMBERS HIS NAME, DOES GOD RETIRE?
Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.
This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sbrrow.
-- Isaiah 50:11
The prophet, Amblick, lay dying on a bed they had laid out on the floor of the room the government had provided rent-free for their meetings. He was more than a century old, and since the Church of the Undying Voice had only a few dozen members left, and none of them had professed to hear the Voice, it was plain that the church was also dying; that there would be no prophet to tell them the Way any longer.
Amblick knew it. The congregation knew it. There was little to say as Amblick lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling with its hidden lights and aging acoustic tiles. His century had been long; he had heard the Voice first when he was fifteen, and had been prophet for ninety-four years. If he had been a better servant of the Voice, he knew, the church would not have shrunk to such straits. He felt guilty and ashamed, but more than that he felt tired. A relentless century in which society had been mockingly indifferent. Preach all you like, the government seemed to say, we'll even give you a meeting place, but you'll make no converts, change no lives. Speak on and publish as you will, the world of Capitol seemed to urge, we'll tolerate you, we'll smile kindly, and for amusement some of us will invite you to visit with us during a waking, but we will not repent and give up somec or give up sex or give up lifeloops or games or war or politics or the petty murders of competitive business.