Brazil’s jaw dropped in wonder, and the pain hit him as he did so and he groaned. Still, he managed: “You are Serge Ortega!” in a tone of bewildered acceptance. “I had totally forgotten that…”
Ortega smiled. “I said I was, Nate.”
“But, oh, man, how you’ve changed,” Brazil noted, amazed.
“I told you this world changes people, Nate,” Ortega replied. “It’ll change you, too. All of you.”
“You wouldn’t have stopped me from finishing the pig in the old days, Serge.”
“I guess I wouldn’t have,” Ortega chuckled. “And I really wouldn’t have now—except that this is Zone. And, if you’ll sit over there, across the room from Hain,” he said, pointing to a backless couch, and, turning to Hain, continued, “and if you will stop all your little, petty games and promise to sit quietly, I’ll explain just what the situation is here—the rules and lack of them, and a few other things about your future.”
Hain mumbled something unintelligible and went back over to his seat. Brazil, still nursing his sore jaw, silently got up and moved over to the couch. He sank down in the cushions, his head against the back wall, and groaned.
“Still dizzy,” he complained. “And I’m getting a hell of a headache.”
Ortega smiled and moved back behind his desk.
“You’ve had worse and you know it,” the snakeman reminded the captain. “But, first things first. Want some more food? You spoiled yours.”
“You know damned well I won’t eat for days,” Brazil groaned. “Damn! Why didn’t you let me get him?”
“Two reasons, really. First, this is—well, a diplomatic legation, you might say. A murder by one Entry of another would be impossible to explain to my government no matter what. But, more than that, she’s not lost, Nate, and that makes your motive even flimsier.”
Brazil forgot his aches and pains. “What did you say?”
“I said she’s not lost, Nate, and that’s right. Just as this detour deprived Hain of justice, it also saved her. Arkadrian was no solution, really. Obviously you felt she was worth saving when you decided to detour—but, just here, she’s little more than a vegetable. Obviously Hain was decreasing the dosage as she became more and more accustomed to the pain. He was letting her rot out—but slowly enough to make the trip without problems. May I ask why, Hain?”
“She was from one of the Comworlds. Lived in the usual beehive and helped work on a big People’s Farm. I mean the dirt jobs—shoveling shit and the like, as well as painting the buildings, mending fences, and suchlike. IQ genetically manipulated to be low—she’s a basic worker, a manual laborer, basically mentally retarded and capable of carrying out simple commands—one at a time—but not of much in the way of original thought and action. She wasn’t even good at that work, and they used her as a Party whore. Failed at that, too.”
“That is a slander of the Com people!” Vardia protested vehemently. “Each citizen is here to do a particular task that needs doing, and is created for that task. Without people such as she as well as ones like me the whole society would fall apart.”
“Would you change jobs with her?” Brazil asked sarcastically.
“Oh, of course not,” Vardia responded, oblivious to the tone. “I’m glad I’m not anything but what I am. I would be happy at nothing else. Even so, such citizens are essential to the social fabric.”
“And you say my people have gone that route,” Ortega said sadly, almost to himself. “But—I would think the really basic menial stuff would be automated. A lot of it was in my time.”
“Oh, no,” Vardia protested. “Man’s future is with the soil and with nature. Automation produces social decay and only that necessary to the maintenance of equality can be permitted.”
“I see,” Ortega responded dryly. He was silent for a while, then he turned back to Hain. “But how did you wind up with the girl? And why hook her on sponge?”
“Occasionally we need a—a sample, as it were. An example, really. We almost always use such people—Comworld folk who will not be missed, who are never much more than vegetables anyway. We control most of them, of course. But it’s rather tough to get the stuff into their food, or even to get an audience with members of a Presidium, but, once you’ve done it, you control the entire world—a world of people programmed to be happy at whatever they’re doing and conditioned from birth to blind obedience to the Party. Control the queen and you control all the bees in the hive. I had an audience with a Presidium Member on Coriolanus—took three years of hard work to wangle it, I’ll assure you. There are hundreds of ways to infect someone once you’re face-to-face. By that point, poor Wu Julee would have been in the animalistic state from progressively smaller doses. She would be the threat to show the distinguished Member what my—er, client, would become if not treated.”
“Such a thing would not work on my world,” Vardia stated proudly. “A Presidium Member so infected would simply have you, her, and the Member all at a Death Factory.”
Hain laughed. “You people never cease to amaze me,” he chuckled. “You really think your Presidium members are like you? They’re descendants of the early Party that spread out in past, mostly lost, history. They proclaimed equality and said they dreamed of a future Utopia when there would be no government, nothing. What they really wouldn’t even admit to themselves was that they loved power— they never worked in the fields, they never worked at all, except giving orders and trying out plans and novel experiences. And they loved it! And their children’s children’s children still love it. A planetload of happy, contented, docile slaves that will do anything commanded of them. And when that pain starts, less than an hour after infection, they will do anything to keep alive. Anything.”
“Still mighty risky for you, isn’t it?” Ortega pointed out. “What if you’re knocked off by an egomaniac despite all?”
Hain shrugged. “There are risks in anything. We lose most of our people as they work themselves up. But all of us are misfits, losers, or people who started at the bottom of society on the worst of worlds. We weren’t born to power—we work for it, take risks for it, earn it. And—the survivors get the spoils.”
Ortega nodded grimly. “How many—easy, Nate, or I’ll clout you again!—how many worlds do you control now?”
Hain shrugged again. “Who knows? I’m not on the Council. Over ten percent—thirty, thirty-five, maybe—and growing. And two new colonies are made for every one we win, so it’s an ever-expanding empire. It’ll be that someday—an empire.” His eyes took on a faraway look, a maniacal glow. “A great empire. Perhaps, eventually, the entire galaxy.”
“Ruled by scum,” Brazil said sourly.
“By the strongest!” Hain responded. “The cleverest, the survivors! The people who deserve it!”
“I hesitate to let such evil into this world,” Ortega said, “but we have had as bad and worse here. This world will test you fully, Hain. I think it will ultimately kill you, but that is up to you. Here is where you start. But there’s no sponge here, or other addictives. Even if there were, you’d have fifteen hundred and sixty different species to try it on, and some of them are so alien you won’t even understand what they are, why they do what they do, or whether they do anything. Some will be almost like those back home. But this place is a madhouse, Hain. It’s a world created by madness, I think, and it will kill you. We’ll see.”