"Manipulate? Who isn't manipulated? Even you, Arran — you were manipulating Farl Baak. And who was manipulating you? A person who believes with all his heart in Doon's vision, who is willing to go to the colonies, willing to lose his last waking for it —"
"Fritz Kapock," Arran whispered.
"There, you see?" Jazz said. "We all know who our manipulators are, once we're willing to admit that we're not really free."
"But Fritz is such a good, honest man —"
"So are we all," Jazz said. "Even me."
They left him then, and the guards took them directly to the tape and tap, so that they could see no other colonist and tell what they had learned. In the tape and tap, however, the attendant was called to the phone, and when he came back, he led Hop and Arran away from the somec table, and sat them in the taping chairs, and put the sleep helmets on their heads. "What does this mean?" Hop asked, knowing what it meant. "Captain Worthing told me to do this," the attendant said, and Hop and Arran wept with joy as they lay back and gave their memories to the whirring film. And when the helmets came off, and they were led to the somec beds, they embraced, and wept again, and smiled and laughed and kept thanking the attendant, who nodded, promising to offer their thanks to Captain Worthing. And then they were put to sleep, and laid in their coffins, and the attendant took the tapes to the colony ship, and gave them to the starpilot, who also thanked him, and paid him the money he had promised.
Colonists traveled nude, of course, in special boxes that were linked to the life–system of the ship. Because of their shape, these boxes were called coffins, though their purpose was exactly opposite. Instead of guarding a body as it rotted and decomposed, the colony ship coffins kept colonists alive, so that they didn't age a day as somec helped them sleep their way across the galaxy. As long as the coffins remained absolutely, perfectly sealed, and as long as the ship's life–system kept functioning, human beings placed inside them under somec sleep could, in theory, Jive forever.
Peopling the Planets: The Colonies, 6559, 11:33.
The last of the coffins was wheeled through the lock, down through the storage compartments (which, on a military ship, would have held armaments) and on to the passenger section. The A and B tubes were full, sealed, locked, the dials and registers on the doors monitoring the almost infinitesimal but still detectable life–signs of the sleepers. Jazz Worthing and Abner Doon watched as the coffin was wheeled through into the tube. Watched as the silent workmen connected the tubes, wires, and drains that kept the sleepers alive.
"Back to the womb, back to the placenta," said Doon, and Jason laughed. And as they had done a dozen times before, stretched out in front of the highly illegal and therefore very expensive fireplace in Doon's flat, they began to play their game of archaism. "Western Airlines, the only way to fly," Jazz said. Boon blandly responded, "Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to us." And so it went as they followed the workmen back through the ship. In the storage compartment, Boon paused to pat the oversized coffin that held an ox. "For years," he said, and the joking tone left his voice, "these people have known no other animal, except the rats. For the first time they're going to have to deal with an animal that's guaranteed to be stupider than they are."
"The sudden proof of superiority will probably bring back a belief in God, don't you think?" Jazz asked.
"God?" Boon asked. "There's only one God on this ship, and he's already playing his role."
"I thought you said you didn't claim that title."
"I don't. But you do."
"I? I'm part of your collection, remember?"
"Playing God with your colony, Jason, can be dangerous. Especially when you aren't following a plan. Doing things for sentimental reasons will destroy you and your colony. Sentiment has no place in a man of vision."
"I'm not a man of vision," Jazz said, shrugging.
"Then you'll die as fruitlessly as your father did. In the meantime, I advise you to destroy the memory tapes you had made of Hop Noyock and Arran Handully."
Jazz chuckled. "I knew I should have paid that attendant more."
"It would have made no difference. He has instructions to accept all bribes and do everything he's bribed to do. As long as he reports it" to me. Destroy the tapes."
"I don't think it will do any harm to have two that remember their waking."
"No harm? A man with full knowledge will spread even more poison than a man with no knowledge. Hop and Arran would have you in their power. You'd have to ask their advice before you did something, and before long asking advice always turns into asking permission. It's up to you, though, Jazz. Be a fool if you like."
"Hop's my friend," Jazz said.
"And you're my friend," Doon said. "But of course, I'm a megalomaniac, as you love to remind me. A man with a eugenics program for the universe. The other ships are all gone."
"Eleven others?"
"And no, I won't tell you where the others are going. If you want to find them, you'll have to look."
"You told my colony that they were the best of the conspirators. Was that true?"
"For once, Jazz, I wasn't lying."
"Why are you giving me the best?"
"The others all have excellent colonies, too. I want the gene pool and the intellectual climate to be superb. The best start I can give my little projects."
"But why the best for me?" Jazz insisted.
"Because I love you so dearly," Doon said, reaching up to pat the starpilot's head. "But mostly, I'm afraid, because I believe that you, of all the captains I've sent, are best equipped to create what I want to have created."
"And what is that?"
"A better human race than the one we've had since men began killing each other and cooking the meat."
"And what improvement could the human race possibly make?"
"Perhaps," Doon said, "you might be able to develop a branch of the human family that could know and understand what other human beings are — and love them anyway. Hmmm?"
"Impossible. And I should know."
"You should know," Doon said. They left the storage room and went back to the pilot's cabin, where a soldier was waiting, out of breath. "Captain Worthing," the soldier said, saluting. Jazz returned the salute. "Yes?" And then the boy noticed Abner Doon, and saluted again, his face showing even more awe. "Abner Doon, sir," he said.
"I take it this means the tape has been played," Jason said.
"It has, sir, and we're waiting for orders. The fleet is with you."
"Then tell the fleet," Jazz said, "that I have done all that I can do, and am leaving on an important expedition. Tell them that Abner Doon will give them somec. Tell them to follow Abner Doon."
The soldier nodded, saluted, and then said, "Sir," looking at Doon. "Sir, will you come with me? Admiral Pushkin is waiting."
Doon smiled at Jason. "See you again." "Where?" asked Jason. "In heaven?"
"Unlikely," Doon said. "Give me three hundred years, and I'll have this Empire where it should be."
"And where is that?" Jazz asked.
"Please hurry, sir," the soldier insisted.
"In a gutter, bleeding to death," Doon said. And then he walked out of the ship. The door closed behind him, and he followed the soldier to the hall where the representatives of the Fleet were gathered.
Inside the control room, Jazz began working immediately. He didn't know his final destination — only the official destination, Siis III, was known to him. The computer would tell him where Doon wanted him to go only after he got the ship to Siis. But Jason knew enough — that the ultimate destination would be deep in the galaxy, far toward the center, far from the human pale. He knew that it would be hundreds of years of sleep, traveling all the while at many times the speed of light (using the drive that he himself had made possible in childhood). He knew that there was no record in the Empire, save in Abner Doon's head, that clearly told that Jazz Worthing and the other eleven ship captains were going anywhere but to their official destinations.