Alternate Realities Read online

  Dela herself. Dela was, as I say, thirtyish looking, though over twice that, and she dyed the silver that rejuv made of her hair, so that it was palest blonde and she wore it in great beautiful braids. She was elegant, she was pink and gold and quite, quite small. She never liked figures and accounting; but she loved planning things and having things built. She built four cities on Brahman, with all their parks and shops, and owned them. All the inside of the Maid was Dela’s planning, down to the light fixtures, and the sheets on the beds. She had built the Maid a long time ago—the Maid was getting old inside, just like Dela (but still beautiful) and she was something worth seeing, though few ever did. She was a fairytale; and special to Dela. Deep inside Dela I think there was something that hated life as it was, and hated her expensive safety, and the guards and the precautions that were all about her on Brahman. She hated these things and loved the stories until she began to shape them about her—and shaping them, she shaped the Maid.

  I thought by that strange fancy I could understand Dela, who lived stories that were long ago and only maybe so, whose life came down to tapes, just like mine.

  Tapes and new lovers. Like Lance, she was desperately frightened of getting old. So I always knew how to please her, which was to make her believe she was young. When Dela was happy she could be kind and thoughtful; but when things went badly, they went badly for all of us, and we mourned her lost lovers with earnest grief—all of us, that is, except Lance, whose psych-set drove him inevitably to comfort her, so Lance always had the worst of it. If there was ever a face that life made sad—Dela always favored the storybook looks—it was surely Lance’s, beautiful as he was; and somehow he had gotten caught in it all unawares, because she had never given him the old story tapes I had heard. I always thought he would have understood that other Lancelot, who lost whenever he seemed to win.

  Maybe Dela was a little crazy. Some of her peers said so, in my hearing, when I was making myself a part of the furniture. It is true that we lived in a kind of dream, who lived with Dela Kirn; but only those who entered the Maid ever saw the heart of it, the real depth of her fancy. The ship was decorated in a strange mix of old fables and shipboard modern, with swords, real swords and hand-stitched banners fixed on the walls, and old-looking beams masking the structural joinings, and lamps that mimicked live flame in some of the rooms like the beautiful dining hall or her own private compartments. And those who became her lovers and played her game for a while—they seemed to enjoy it.

  It struck me increasingly strange, me, who had nothing of property, and was instead owned and made, that for Dela Kirn who could buy thousands of my kind and even have us made to order ... the greatest joy in her life was to pretend. All my existence was pretense, the pretense of the tapes which fed into my skull what my makers and my owner wanted me to know and believe; and until I was sold to Dela and until I saw Dela’s secret fancies, I thought that the difference between us and born-men was that born-men lead real lives, and see what really is, and that this was the power born-men have over the likes of us. But all Dela wanted with all her power was to unmake what was, and to shape what the story tapes told her until she lived and moved in it. So then I was no longer sure what was true and what was false, or what was best in living, to be me, or to be Dela Kirn.

  Until the end, of course, when they would put me down because I had no more usefulness, while Dela went on and on living on rejuv, which our kind almost never got. Seventy. I could not, from twenty-one, imagine seventy. She had already lived nearly twice as long as I ever could, and she had seen more and done more, living all of it, and not having the first fifteen years on tape.

  Maybe, I thought, in seventy years she had worn out what there was to know; and that might be why she turned to her fables.

  Or she was mad.

  If one has most of the wealth of a world at one’s disposal, if one has built whole cities and filled them with people and gotten bored with them, one can be mad, I suppose, and not be put down for it ... especially if one owns the hospitals and the labs. And while far away there was a government which sent warnings to Dela Kirn, she laughed them off as she did most unpleasant things and said that they would have to come and do something about it, but that they were busy doing other things, and that they needed Brahman’s good will. About such things I hardly know, but it did seem to work that way. No one came from the government but one angry man, and a little time in Dela’s country house at Brahmani Dali under our care, and some promises of philanthropy, sent him back happier than he had come.

  This much I understood of it, that Dela had bought her way out of that problem as she had bought off other people who stood in her way; and if ever Dela could not buy her way through a difficulty, then she threatened and frightened people with her money and what it could do. If Dela felt anything about such contests, I think it was pleasure, after it was all over—pleasure at the first, and then a consuming melancholy, as if winning had not been enough for her.

  But the Maid was her true pleasure, and her real life, and she only brought her favorite lovers to it.

  So she brought Griffin ... all gaiety, all happiness as we hurried about the Maid’s rich corridors settling everyone in our parting from Brahmani Station—but there was a foreboding about it all which my lady understood and perhaps Griffin did not; it was months that she would love a man before she thought it enough to bring him to the Maid, and after that, it was all downhill, and she had no more to give him. The dream would end for him, because no one could live in Dela’s story forever.

  Only we, Elaine and Lancelot and Vivien; and Percy and Wayne and Modred ... we were always there when it ended; and Lance would be hurt as he always was; and I would comfort him—but he never loved me ... he was fixed on Dela.

  So we set off on holiday, to play out the old game and to revel while we could, and to make Dela happy a time, which was why we existed at all.

  II

  Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme Of bygone Merlin, “Where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes.”

  Griffin, as I say, was one of the strange ones my lady Dela picked up from time to time, not easy to fix which of his several natures was the real one, no. I had found him frightening from the start, truth be told. He didn’t laugh often, but much when he did, and he could be mortally stubborn and provoke Dela to rages which came down on all of us and darkened the house at Brahmani Dali for days. He interfered with Dela’s business and talked to Vivien about the books, which ordinarily Dela would never allow—but Griffin did, and had his way about it, amid storms in the country house which would have disposed of less appealing lovers. He wound himself in tighter and tighter with my lady’s business, and that disturbed us all.

  He was an athletic sort, who looked rather more like one of us than he did like a born-man; but then, they play games even with born-man genes when women are rich, and Griffin certainly came from wealthy beginnings. Like Lance, Griffin seemed to fill whatever room he was in. He was very tall and slim in the hips and wide in the shoulders ... and he had an interesting, strong-boned face—not so fine as Lance, who was dark-haired and handsome and had meltingly dark eyes, but Griffin was bronzed and blond like one of the knights in the storybook tape. That answered, physically, why Dela had been attracted at the outset.

  But Griffin was not, like most of her previous lovers, empty-headed; and he had not gotten pretty by spending all his time taking care of that beautiful body. He was just that way, which left the rest of his time to be doing something else—and in Griffin’s case, that something else was meddling with Dela’s business or lying lost in the tapes. He was one of the few men I ever did know who looked merely asleep under the tapes, and not lackwitted: Griffin did not know how to be ungraceful, I think it was muscle. He just did not collapse when he slept the deepsleep. And when he was awake, he was imposing. He tended to stare through the likes of me, or at very most remembered and thanked me for doing some small extra service for him—a courtes
y far greater than I had gotten from most of my lady’s associations, and at the same time, far less, because he could still look through me while he was thanking me. He never bedded with me, and he was the first of Dela’s lovers who had never done that. He stayed to Dela. That fact upset me at first, but he bedded with none of the estate servants male or female either, so I understood it was not my failing: he simply wanted Dela, uniquely and uninterrupted by others—quite, quite different from the usual. I saw them together, matched, blond and blonde, storybook knight and storybook lady, a man full of ideas, a man my lady let into more than the bedchamber. He was change; and he frightened us in strange and subtle ways.

  What, we wondered, when she should tire of him?

  We had set out from station that morning, and Dela was taking a nap, because we had been up too many hours getting up from the world and getting settled in, and we had gone through a time change. We were, of course, under acceleration and moving a little cautiously when we walked, but nothing uncomfortable: the Maid rarely hurried. Griffin was still up and about, typical of the man, to be meddling with charts and tapes and comp in his cabin; and he wanted a little of my lady’s imported brandy. I brought it to his cabin, which was next to Dela’s own, and since he had not dismissed me I stood there while he sipped the brandy and fussed with his papers.

  This time? I wondered. It would spoil all my reckonings of him if he asked me to bed with him now. I stood thinking about it, watching his broad back, no little distressed, thinking of all those tapes he listened to, about murdering and pain. He was altogether imposing under those circumstances. Dela was abed, drugged down; perhaps he felt he needed someone. A lot of people get nervous before jump. I waited. I blanked, finally, went null as my knees locked up, and I was in some pain; blinked alert as he stood up and looked down at me.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he said. “Go. Go on. That’s all.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, wondering now if it would have pleased him had I been forward with him: some expected that. I looked back from the doorway. But Griffin had snugged down on the bed on his belly, head on his arms, and looked genuinely content enough: the brandy seemed to have had its effect. So he was happy; Dela would be. That was all I wanted. I went back and took the empty glass, set it on the tray, and left.

  It might not be, I was thinking then, so bad a voyage, Griffin simply remaining Griffin: some men changed aboard, becoming bizarre in their fancies and their demands, but he did not. I diverted myself through the library, a simple jog from the corridor that joined his and Dela’s cabin and the outer hall, into the library/deepsleep lab, with its double couch. A touch of a button, the unsealing of a clear-faced cabinet, neat tucking of a tape cassette into my coveralls pocket and off and out the other door, into the same hall and out into the main corridor. Dela never minded, but then, Dela had whims: I kept my borrowings neat and quiet.

  The galley then, on lowermost level, and up again to our own quarters, midway in the ship, very nice, very comfortable, after the fashion of things aboard the Maid. Deep, fine beds, the finest sheets, fine as Dela’s own—she never scanted us. Beautiful thick carpet, all the colors rust and brown and cream, a fine curved couch wrapped all the way around the corner, one level behind the other, with multiple deepstudy outlets, and the screens above, on the ceiling. Lance was there, not deepstudying, just sitting on the couch, arms on his knees, looking downhearted and tragic as he usually did at such settings-forth. I had had some thought of using my tapes; I gave it up, and sat down by Lance and took his hand in my lap and simply went into blank again. For us too, it had been too many time changes, and it would be better for Lance when he was rested.

  Vivien came in from attending whatever business had occupied her with the station and the undocking, accounts and charges all squared, presumably. Not the least drooping, not a sleekly chignoned hair mussed, but Viv was on our schedule: she had a brittleness to her movements, all the same. And came Percy and Lynette, of the crew, who were on ship’s time and who looked like business as they usually did when we saw them. Percy was a youngish man with red hair and a delightful beard, all very close and delicately trimmed, his great vanity. And Lynn, Lynn was a flat and ethereal sort with an aquiline nose and freckles that had never seen much of any sun, brown hair trimmed as close as Percy’s.

  “What sort have we got this trip?” Percy asked, reclining on the nearest bed, his booted ankles crossed. He propped himself up sidelong on his elbow. This was our haven, this room. We could say what we liked with no one listening, so it was safe for him to ask. Lynette had settled sidelong the other way, leaning against him, not flirting, but because we all like touching when we relax, which is the way we are, sexed or not. Percy and Lynn, being crew, and busy all this while, had not yet met Griffin.

  I shrugged. That was the kind of impression I had to give about Griffin, that I didn’t have a clear impression, even after all this time. We had gotten used to him down at Brahmani Dali, as much as one could get used to Griffin—which meant we accepted that he would be up to something constantly, and alternately upsetting my lady and pleasing her.

  “I don’t like him,” Lance said suddenly. Four months of silence, and: “I don’t like him.” He had never said that before, not even with some of my lady’s absolute worst, who had abused him and any others of us accessible. “I wish she would get rid of him.”

  That frankness upset me. It was one thing to think it, but it was another to say it out like that, even here.

  “This one,” said Vivien, “this one is different than the others. I think she might marry this one.”

  “No,” I exclaimed, and put my hand over my mouth, guilty as Lance.

  “Why else does she have me going over her accounts and letting him into them, and why does she have spies going over his? She said once she might marry him. I don’t think it was a joke. I think she’s really thinking about it. It has to do with that government business last year. This Griffin’s family has influence. And the worlds, Brahman and Sita—position for a natural alliance. The government has other concerns at the moment, can’t afford prolonged trouble in this direction. And besides—she seems to enjoy him.”

  Viv looked satisfied. Her position wasn’t threatened. No one said anything for a while. This move seemed then to have monetary reasons behind it, which we understood: everything my lady did seriously tended to have such reasons in it, so this frightened me more and more. “He’s not so bad,” I said, not that I really believed it, but Lance was beside me and his hand was sweating in mine. “And she’ll get cooler toward him someday. If he stays—it’ll still happen that way, won’t it? And he’s never done anything to any of us, not like that Robert she took up with.”

  There was a general muttering, a reflexive jerk of Lance’s hand. Robert had been the worst.

  “Maybe she’ll get some favor out of him or his family,” Lynette said, “and then it’ll be like the others.”

  “But she talked about marrying,” Vivien persisted, unstoppable. “And she’s never considered that. Ever. Griffin’s intelligent, she says. Someone who could run things in years to come. She’s never talked like that about the others. He’s young.”

  More silence and heavier, even from Percy and Lynette, who were generally not bothered with estate finances and problems of that sort. After all, if another owner came into the picture, if Griffin began to involve himself permanently and changed Dela’s way of operating—then the Maid might not go on making such trips as she did now. So the crew faced uncertainties too.

  The Maid might—the thought came washing over me—might even be sold, and so might we all, being part of a fancy Dela might tire of if she changed her life and stopped taking lovers. Being sold was ... I could not imagine it. I had heard dread whispers that it meant being taken back into the labs for retraining, and that meant they took your mind apart. It was effectively like dying. I didn’t say that aloud. We had enough troubles, all of us. And Lance ... he was old for retraining. Lance could be pu
t down.

  I was never inclined to sudden panics, but I had one. I sat there and blanked, and when I came out of it, Lance was tugging at my hand to shake me out of it.

  “Elaine?” he said.

  I clenched his hand in mine and said nothing.

  “We’re going to make jump sooner than usual,” Lynn said. “She’s told us to keep up acceleration all the way. It has to do with him, maybe. Ask Wayne and Modred about particulars: but it’s Delhi.”

  The regional capital. The kind of place her ladyship had stayed out of, with her wealth which she had no desire thus far to flaunt near the government.

  “Griffin has property on Delhi,” Vivien said.

  “What kind?” I asked, heart pounding, because I had heard of establishments on Delhi where a lot of our kind came from. Percivale was one of Delhi’s breeding, so he said; and I knew that Modred was.

  “Farms,” Vivien said tautly. “And training centers. Labs. They’ve been talking about taking an interest in that. In shifting assets—Griffin’s wealth and our lady’s can pull hard weight in Delhi Council if they start playing games with banks. Those kind of maneuvers ... Griffin can do. All he has to do is free up some currency. His farms there—”

  Then they all seemed to think of selling and being sold, and Percy blanked, and Lynn too, for a moment, like two statues reclining there.

  “I think we should get some sleep,” Vivien said, with a stretch of her back. She had spent all she had to say, and in our matters, that was as far as Vivien’s interest went. She got up and left. Sleep seemed a good idea, because there was certainly nothing pleasant to think of awake. We moved to our beds, all of which were close together, and began to get undressed. Only Lance still sat there, and I felt sorry for him. They psych-set me so that I can’t stand to see someone suffering. Born-men feel; we react; so the difference runs. And Lance was reacting to everything, and especially to this most frightening of the lady’s affairs. I think maybe he would rather have had Robert aboard again. Any of them. It had already been hard on him, this involvement with Griffin, lasting now for four months and promising to go on long—but marry him ... and all this maneuvering, this trip to Delhi which seemed to make it all more and more like the truth.... All this had surely struck poor Lance to the gut. He wasn’t blanked, and it would have been healthier if he were. He just sat there like he was bleeding inside.