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8

 

Nauc, April 7

HASTINGS WILLOUGHBY HAD not ridden in a percy since being blown up in one, back in 2036. On that occasion his leg bones had been reduced to gravel and later replaced by synfab, but he had not felt right down there since. He rarely traveled at all anymore, and when he did he preferred a cavalcade of armored Caddies. In any case, other people usually came to call on him. He was Secretary General.

Any message from Agnes carried supreme priority, and that morning he had been awakened at dawn to receive one. It had come in one of their private codes, a code simple enough to require only a pocket computer. Even the smartest Systems still had trouble with homonyms, and the text he finally deciphered said merely, "Cum heer gude noos."

Come here—good news? Come, hear good news?

It had taken even Willoughby some time to work that out. Only when his regular early-morning briefing told him of the media reception she had scheduled for noon did he understand. She wanted him there, but she was not about to tell him why. The cloaking-and-daggering might be to tell him that it was important without saying so over a public com. Or she might be playing some sort of double game.

Even God would never guess at what devious mischief Agnes might get up to. Willoughby ranked her as one of the greatest schemers the world had ever known; he felt privileged to have worked with her for so many years, and the thought of observing her in action just one more time was irresistible. Moreover, in an odd sort of way he still felt affection for Hubbard Agnes Murray. No one else had ever bested him at bedroom politics. Certainly no one else could summon him like a whistled dog, as she still could.

Within seconds of receiving enlightenment, therefore, Willoughby had made his decision, summoned transportation, and canceled a dozen scheduled commeetings. He chuckled when he saw the squad of bleary, half-shaven, half-zipped bulls that gathered to escort him. One of the prerogatives of power had always been the right to rattle one's subordinates. Some men took it as a duty.

His Caddy had hardly crossed the outermost mine field before he began to have second thoughts. Cold introspection soon told him he was indulging in self-deception. He was not rushing to Agnes's side to assist her, nor out of old friendship, nor—truly—to observe her in action one more time. He was going there in the hope that she had found a lifeboat and would make room in it for him. He should have called her first and argued. To seem too eager might arouse her suspicions.

He was old and tired, and he needed solace. Folly, folly! No one appealed for help to Hubbard Agnes. She despised weakness. If she concluded that he had become too feeble to be a reliable ally, she would turn on him herself. Possibly she already had, and he was heading to his own execution.

The sharks were closing. He had known it for months, and this time he could see no raft to hand. China was poised to recognize the World Chamber. Then the U.N. would vanish overnight, or at least as soon as Cheung Olsen Paraschuk had called and won a global election. When the U.N. went, so would Hastings Willoughby; and so, too, would Hubbard Agnes. She must see the danger as well as he did. There was the real reason he was so eagerly answering her call—for comfort, to be told that once again she had found a plan that would save them both.

Sprawled out across the seat at full length, he gloomed for a long while in lonely luxury, ignoring the cityscape hurtling by, debating whether he dared cancel and return. Inevitably he concluded that to start displaying indecision would only make things worse.

It was a fine day: the rain was classed as "harmless," and the UV flux was as low as it ever got at that time of year. He saw endless miles of shanty towns, and estuaries that had once been valleys, and salt marsh that had once been farmland. None of them warmed his blue mood. He watched holo. He received bulletins from his office. The Indian government in Delhi had announced that it was withdrawing its U.N. delegation and allowing elections for Chamber representation. But the Delhi government controlled little or none of the country, and the other claimants had been Chamber supporters for years. One of the two rival Japanese governments might follow; that would be more serious.

Nor did his first glimpse of Institute HQ do anything to banish his sulks—it all looked so old now. Many of the buildings dated from the early twenties. By the time 4-I had been born, the need for cities to move to higher ground had been obvious, and thus, unlike most other large organizations, the Institute had never been forced into a massive relocation. Its shabbiness was one more reminder of the years that had died since Hastings Willoughby and Hubbard Agnes had together lifted the world by the scruff of its neck and shaken a little sense into it—not enough sense, but some.

The Institute was old, more than thirty years old, and he had already been into his fifties when he slid its charter through an unsuspecting General Assembly one sleepy August afternoon. He could still remember the bulging veins, the purpling complexion on old DeJong, who had been S.G. then.

"I turn mine back for one hour," the fat Dutchman had screamed. But by then the deed had been done. The charter for Stellar Power had been approved, Agnes installed as director.

A few years later she had applied enough bribery to return the favor, pulling strings to install Willoughby in DeJong's chair.

The good old days, alas!

He was old. He would cheerfully retire in a day, except he knew he would be dead in a week. He had made far too many enemies.

Age showed in his sagging belly, pitilessly revealed by the present fashion for absurdly tight clothes. Surgery would help, of course, had he not sickened of surgeons long ago. Modern sartorial engineers could do wonders, but he was old-fashioned enough to despise their mechanized corsets as shameless fakery. So he stayed his own prehistoric shape.

He showed age also in petty irritation at having to wait until the security forces completed their inevitable wrangling. U.N. cops in sky blue, 4-I's in dark red—bulls well named, they glowered at one another, huffing and puffing and pawing the rug. Legal fantasy made him the director's superior, and inevitably that fiction prolonged the dispute. The arguments were settled at last in the way they always were—his own guards could accompany him, but they must go unarmed, and a batch of 4-I's goons would in turn "guard" them.

Age showed even in his foolish embarrassment when his false bones rang scan alarms, as they always did, requiring explanation. And when at last he limped along the corridor, peering over the heads of a dozen angry young grizzlies, he was very conscious of a steady click from his right knee. His prostheses were aging, too.

The decor was outmoded, almost shabby. Even new it had been little more than adequate, he recalled, and now the executive suite of the world's richest organization seemed blowsy and cheap and old-fashioned. Agnes had never cared much for ostentation. One day some unscrupulous whippersnapper would seize power and clean house. Then she would be gone, and probably Hasting Willoughby also, at much the same time. They had climbed to power on the same rope, and they would fall in the same coup, leaving nothing but their names collecting static in libraries.

He was ushered at last into the big, familiar, five-sided office. How many of the current day's rebels would recognize the deliberate irony in that design? If she had changed the carpet since he had last been there, then she had stayed with the same bland peach, and the ebony pentagonal table in the center was still the only large piece of furniture.

Agnes came forward to greet him. She was wearing powder blue, as she so often did, to match her eyes, and her outfit could only be a Kaing original, or perhaps a Dom Lumi. Her hair was pure white, her gaze as sharp as ever, and her appearance immaculate. She had weathered well, but then Agnes's dislike of ostentation had never extended to personal grooming. Her facial texture would have flattered a woman a generation younger, and modern medicine had preserved her figure.

"Mr. Secretary General, this is indeed an honor." She offered both hands. Her fingers showed her age, though.

"I am a little early, I fear, Director . . . "

The flunkies departed, the door was closed. He leaned over, keeping his weight off that tricky right knee and touching dry lips to well-moisturized cheek. Then she was all business as usual, waving him to a seat at the table and taking one close by.

He felt very conscious of the bloodless appraisal behind the business-grade smile. As always, she wore a faint aura of impatience, as though she had already foreseen everything that anyone else was going to say and had long since made the right decision on the matter anyway.

"You look as lovely as ever, Agnes. Not a day over forty."

"Rot. It must be five years since you were here." She spoke with more emphasis than he had expected.

"Three and a bit. And we met at the NASA Embassy, remember?"

"So we did. Well, we have a moment before the conference—I am flattered to see I still have the power to bring you running. File for attention next week."

The last remark had been to System, in reply to some private query. She would not stop working just because she had a visitor. It was a widely-used technique, but he had never met anyone who did it better than Agnes, and she faked it less than most. Back in her younger days, Agnes had been able to read eight hundred words a minute and listen to a three-way conversation at the same time.

"Blame it on my insatiable curiosity," he said.

Two of the five walls were floor-to-ceiling holos, displaying incredible vistas of peaks shrouded in pale pink ice, beetling against a violet sky—undoubtedly recorded on some world of lower gravity than Earth. The room was an eyrie perched high above the darkling valley. Willoughby leaned back and regarded her with sudden amusement.

"Why the senile leer?" she inquired acidly.

"Remember skiing? I never thought of it before, but these absurdly tight clothes we have to endure nowadays are almost exactly what we used to wear for skiing when we were kids."

"When I was a kid, you were not. Besides, throughout history, recreational style for clothes has become formal costume a couple of generations later."

"I didn't know that!"

"Well, you do now. Thank you for coming, Will."

"But you're not going to tell me why?"

Compared to Agnes, the sphinx was an open book. "Trust me."

"The last hundred men who did that are long dead."

"Nonsense," she said. "Some of them have barely stopped bleeding."

He laughed—time had not blunted her. But he knew her ways well enough to guess that she was suppressing some strong emotion. The sharpness of her voice was one sign; the way she kept tightening her lips was another. Nothing trivial would so disturb Hubbard Agnes. Big stakes today, then.

"You have the holo channels humming like hornets," he said, probing gently. "Goodson Jason says it's a Class One world at last. Eccles Pandora is claiming you've uncovered sentience, and everyone else thinks asepsis has been broken—monsters have escaped and are eating Labrador."

She shook her head in impatient disbelief. "Refer to Security."

"If you're planning to retire, then I refuse to accept your resignation."

He should not have said that. She eyed him with a sharper appraisal yet. "Your presence naturally makes the occasion more solemn, Will. I should warn you, though—your dignity may suffer."

He turned that ominous remark over several times before answering it. God alone knew what was about to happen, then. "Do I come out ahead in the end?"

She shrugged. She was still a fine figure of a woman, and she had to be well over seventy.

"I hope so. There are risks."

"I never knew one of your schemes not to contain risks. I've watched you skirt the jaws of disaster a hundred times."

She pursed her lips again. "I think you tangled your metaphors, there."

"Give me a clue."

Her eyes narrowed, and suddenly he wondered if what she was hiding might be anger. He had never known her to allow emotion to influence her actions, but he could see that she was jumpy about something.

"Cuthionamine lysergeate."

"Never heard of it—wait! LSD? Isn't that something lysergic?"

She nodded, surprised. "Ergot fungus? That fits. There's fungus involved in this . . . Well, all will be revealed in due course."

To ask for more would be futile. For a moment they sat in a silence that neither wished to break. Then suddenly Agnes said, "Would more money help?"

He shook his head. "I'd have asked. We've bought everyone except the fanatics. There are too many fanatics, that's all."

Senility had not yet reached Hubbard Agnes. Her mind went to the heart of things like a harpoon. "The Chamber? That self-proclaimed gang of shysters? The elections are all rigged! Besides, it has no legal standing whatsoever, and never had."

"Nor do we, really," he reminded her. "Unilateral abolition of the Security Council was a very shaky move."

"That was long before your time. Send him in."

He chuckled. "Why is time relevant?"

She dismissed that argument with a toss of her head, and then suddenly uttered a rueful laugh that surprised him. "You have Cheung and the Chamber. I have Grundy and BEST."

"They're in cahoots, of course."

She nodded. "Probably. But this time it's gone too far—I have a score to settle!"

He shivered at the look in her eye. He had a sudden vision of Agnes with a stiletto, counting ribs. Whose ribs? He could not shake an uneasy suspicion that they might be his.

The door opened. She rose, almost concealing a smile. "Forget them for now. There is someone you must meet."

"Who's that?"

"Your grandson."

Who? "I never . . . You mean John and Rita . . . "

But Agnes was already advancing to the door. A massive redclad bull had entered and was looking around in proper form to confirm that his client might enter safely.

"Dr. Bagshaw!" Agnes reached out two hands in greeting, a personal trademark.

The bull, naturally, looked astonished. "Yes, Director?" That brute could never be any relative of his, Willoughby decided, and was certainly too old to be John's son.

Agnes had clasped his great fists in her thin fingers. She dropped her voice until Willoughby caught only a few scattered phrases. " . . . only met her once . . . Christmas party . . . talked at length . . . "

The man's face was rigid as a granite boulder, and his voice was a gritty rumble. "Thank you, Director."

"We all share your sense of loss—and outrage."

"Deputy Fish tells me that the matter is not closed yet?"

"It certainly is not."

He nodded, and for a moment the two of them held their pose, eyes and hands locked. Whatever else was being said did not require words. Her ability to enslave men had not faded with age; if this one had not been a devotee before, he certainly was now.

Then a green-clad youth ducked through the doorway and stepped around the guard like something emerging from Sherwood Forest—possibly one of the trees. He smiled nervously down at Agnes. He was very skinny and enormously tall, even taller than Willoughby himself. His brush of tawny hair had apparently missed its daily appointment with a comb, making him seem even taller. Every bone showed through an expensively tailored suit of a screaming green color that suggested its wearer must be color blind.

John and Rita's son?

Possible, Willoughby thought, just possible; but whatever Mother Hubbard is up to with this unfortunate youngster, she is not telling the truth, the whole truth, or anything like the truth.

The bull departed, evidently reassured by those cryptic condolences. The gangling kid received the icy blue-eyed smile and the two-handed greeting. He hesitated, then stooped awkwardly to place a kiss on the upturned cheek. Agnes was a tall woman, but she did not reach his shoulder.

"You had an interesting journey, I hear, Cedric."

He blushed in deepening waves of scarlet. "I'm sorry, Gran. Truly, I—"

"Sorry? What is there to be sorry about?" Agnes turned and headed back to the table.

"I didn't do what you said . . . "

"Of course not. No real man would. I'm glad to see that my grandson is not a ninny."

"Oh!" He grinned in wide juvenile relief and took a couple of long steps to catch up with her. Then he noticed Willoughby.

"You know who this is, Cedric?"

He started to shake his head, but there were some faces everyone knew. He gulped audibly. "The Secre—sir!" He almost bowed. Then realization struck, and all the color drained from his bony face, leaving a faint sediment of faded freckles. "Hastings Willoughby? My father . . . " He looked at his grandmother—the woman he thought was his grandmother, at least. Willoughby was not so sure.

"Your father was Hubbard John Hastings. This is your grandfather."

Willoughby pushed himself to his feet, taking his time. They shook hands.

The kid had calluses, dirty fingernails, and an unthinkingly powerful grip. "I am honored, sir. I never knew!" His eyes were very wide; gray eyes, like John's, and they held an understandable hurt.

"Neither did I, lad. Agnes . . . explain!"

That was another shock, of course, and Willoughby wondered if the old vixen appreciated what she was doing to her wretched victim, God help him. He was very young to withstand such treatment.

She might not have expected him to hear the truth blurted out so brutally, but she recovered easily. "Your father and his father were not on friendly terms, Cedric. So it is true that Dr. Hastings was never informed of your existence. I respected your parents' wishes, but now that you are no longer a child, of course, you must make your own decisions."

With no visible effort, she contrived to seat all three of them in almost a straight line, with the kid in the middle. This was to be a massacre of the innocent, but just to sit and watch her in action felt like the good old days. Willoughby was almost glad he had come.

"I am very honored to have two such distinguished ancestors, Grandmother . . . Grandfather . . . " The lad's head was snapping from side to side, as he tried to deal with an impossible situation. "Tell me about my mother's family?"

"You can get all that from System," Agnes said firmly. "Begin the commeeting."

Then she stopped talking—the silence test. Willoughby was busily trying to analyze her play, but old age must have been slowing him, for he was making no progress. The presence of the supposed grandson made a difference to him—she had warned him that his dignity might be in jeopardy. He felt much less happy now about being included in whatever sensation she was plotting. If he withdrew, would that turn her against him? Would it upset her plans? And was that young beanpole really his grandson?

He wondered how many games she was running simultaneously. The curious regrets to the guard, the epoch-making press conference, the sudden revelation of a putative grandson—were those independent or related? And where did the unpronounceable chemical come in? Or Grundy Julian Wagner and his Brotherhood of Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians?

As the silence dragged on, the youngster twisted restlessly, looking from one to the other, white-knuckling the arms of his chair. His Adam's apple bobbed several times before he spoke. "You have a job for me here, Gran?"

"Yes. Some media relations work, I thought."

With great difficulty, Willoughby stiffled a laugh. Agnes's media relations were the worst on the planet, and she liked them that way. Tendons tensed in the kid's stringy neck, but he was not cowed yet.

"I have always hoped to become a ranger like my father, Grandmother."

Ranger? What garbage had the old woman been feeding the kid all these years?

"So you've told me often enough!" Agnes said with distaste. "It must run in the family, then. It was your father's fixation on that which led to his quarrel with your grandfather."

There was a remarkable absence of truth in the conversation, but if Willoughby began throwing denials around, he might spoil whatever Agnes was up to. The kid was easy meat—far too easy for her to be bothering with for his own sake, so she was cooking him up for some other table. Cedric had swung around to look apprehensively at his alleged grandfather; he suddenly frowned, rose, moved his chair back two paces, and sat down again. A little late, but not bad under the circumstances.

"Can you read and write, Cedric?" Agnes inquired brusquely.

"Of course." His knuckles whitened again.

Certainly Agnes had been keeping this unreported grandson—if that was what he was—under wraps, and almost certainly at an organage. Green was an appropriate color for him, then. It was astonishing the kid could even talk in sentences.

"That's good! What I had in mind was some public relations work. The Cheavers report that you are very personable. You were well liked by everyone—from ranch hands to small children."

Hubbard Cedric reddened and squirmed as any young male would under such torment. "But, Gran—"

"To give you an example," Agnes said firmly, "a lot of important visitors call on us. There's a princess arriving here shortly. Someone has to squire her around. That sort of thing. She's about your age."

The boy's mouth sprang open as though he were being throttled, but Willoughby did not hear whatever sounds emerged. Another piece in play! He could guess where that princess came from, and so he knew at least one of the games in progress. He was amazed that the old harridan would dare attract media notice at such a time. She was obviously plotting a diversion—something outrageous. His skin prickled. He must be crazy to trust Hubbard Agnes when she was in this mood. She was capable of anything.

With a ping! of warning, a hologram appeared on the far side of the table—a short, plump man with hair gleaming like black steel and a pudgy face as pale as cream.

"Ah . . . Cedric," Agnes said. "I want you to meet the senior staff. This is Deputy Director Fish, in charge of Security."

Cedric sprang to his feet and leaned across to offer a hand before he realized that he was making a fool of himself.

"Good morning, Mr. Secretary General," Fish's image said in a voice like oil—oil of vitriol, perhaps. "And Mr. Hubbard? I hope we can meet in the flesh soon. Will you be coming up to Cainsville in the near future?"

Crimson-faced, Cedric said, "Er . . . "

He looked at Agnes, who said, "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, sir."

Fish Lyle was as mild and inscrutable as a bowl of milk. He peered across at Cedric through thick glasses that likely served no purpose except to frustrate any clear view of his eyes. He was devoted to Agnes. He was also one of only three men in the world whom Hastings Willoughby truly feared, a slick assassin with a silk-smooth smile.

The mutual greetings had hardly ended when another ping! produced another holo and the greetings began again.

The new image was that of Moore Rudolph. He was faded and dessicated now, but he had always been unobtrusive—a brilliant accountant and operator of the greatest graft net the universe had ever known. The fires of stars flowed in through the transmensor at Cainsville to power all human civilization, and Willoughby had once calculated that at least a tenth of the proceeds were distributed illicitly by Moore's unseen hands. For a quarter of a century that flood of corruption had helped keep them all—and especially Willoughby—on top of the world heap.

Agnes ruled 4-I through a team of aides commonly known as the four horsemen. The door swung open to admit another—after her bull had inspected the room, of course. In her youth, Wheatland Mary had been an embodiment of the Earth Mother. Huge and black and voluptuous, she had conveyed to every man she had ever met the understanding that she wanted to rape him as soon as possible. It had all been a fake—U.N. Security, which knew everything, insisted that she was still a virgin, even now.

As Willoughby rose to greet her in old-fashioned courtesy, he wondered if women lasted so much better than men did only because they spent more money on repairs, or if the cause was deeper. Age had not withered Wheatland Mary. Her joyful roars of welcome filled the room, her massive arms were outstretched, and an infinite smile spread over her plump ebony face as she flounced across to envelop him in a rib-cracking embrace that proclaimed to the world that they must be fervent lovers. He wondered how he would have reacted had he not been expecting this.

"Good to see you again, Will," she repeated several times, still clutching him like ivy, pressing her cheek against his chest, thumping his back. "It's been much too long! Good to see you . . . "

She broke loose at last and turned to the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed Cedric. "Oh, aren't you gorgeous! Come to Mama, sonny!" When he courageously stepped forward into her embrace, she gave him much the same treatment. Willoughby tried to estimate what the effect would have been on him at the kid's age, but the very idea trashed his mind. Probably Agnes had planned all this.

Was the lad being tested? Tested for what, and why? Tested for whose benefit? Certainly not his own. Willoughby thought of an old technical term from his college days and shivered at the memory: tested to destruction.

Wheatland Mary's arrival left one to come, one whom Willoughby had never met. The Institute's original Deputy for Operations, Bieber Marvin, was two years in his grave. That was another sign that time was rolling on. His replacement was . . . Willoughby had forgotten the man's name.

Cedric had not. He had been visibly impressed by meeting so many powerful people—understandably so, for Agnes and her band of helpers would impress anyone—but when another guard had glanced around and withdrawn to admit a fourth deputy director, the kid looked ready to fall on his knees.

Tall and broad, brazenly moustachioed, and immaculate in rangers' safari denims, Devlin Grant was a self-made legend. Unlike Agnes, he was a master of media relations. Explorer of a dozen exotic worlds, hero of fierce battles against carefully holographed monsters, Devlin had been the only possible replacement for Bieber. Without waiting for an introduction, he strode forward to squeeze Willoughby's hand too hard and boom that he was honored. And then he turned his charisma on young Cedric like a battle-ax.

"Hear you're a marksman," he said. "A sharpshooter?"

The boy nodded rapidly, obviously overwhelmed that the great man should have heard of him at all. "I've done some lasering, sir."

"Grant! Call me Grant. That's great! When're you coming up to Cainsville, Cedric?"

"Tomorrow—Grant."

Devlin winked, faking a punch at the lad's shoulder, man-to-man. "How about a little trophy collecting? We usually have a good game world on tap. Big game. Very big game! Things that make dinosaurs look like rabbits—"

"Grant, that's not teaching my grandson proper respect for regulations." But Agnes did not seem very disapproving.

"Ah . . . right! Regulations! Can't allow private hunting parties, now, can we?" Devlin winked even more broadly, and Cedric's eyes glowed.

Willoughby decided that he did not care for Devlin Grant, Great Explorer and Mighty Hunter.

The projections of Moore and Fish remained patiently seated at the far side of the big table. The real Wheatland and Devlin edged unobtrusively toward chairs, gently excluding Cedric and Willoughby.

Agnes smiled graciously. "System tells me that the media persons have arrived, Will. Would you and Cedric like to go down? I'll join you in a moment. I need a quick word here."

"Of course," Willoughby said resignedly. He felt a tingle of warning from some ancient instinct.

She turned her imperious gaze back on the youth. "This could be good practice for you, Cedric. I've called a major media reception. Probably all the big names will be there."

His eyes widened. "Really there?"

"They can't guzzle my champagne by hologram."

"No. Of course. But like Eccles Pandora? Quentin Peter?"

"Yes, yes. Everybody. You should meet them. But also, I think you should introduce my speech."

Willoughby saw panic rise behind the gray eyes and felt an odd admiration as he watched it being overcome. "If you will tell me what to say, Gran."

Not bad at all! Faced with four possible replies, the lad had instinctively chosen the right one. If Agnes wanted to break this boy, she was going to have to get much rougher. She would, if that was her purpose.

She merely glanced at Willoughby. "Make up something for him, won't you?" It was a dismissal.

For a moment he seriously considered pulling out. He had never been so vulnerable, and he was starting to have serious doubts about Agnes. Under the cool veneer she was certainly more agitated than he could ever recall seeing her. But then Cedric had sprung to open the door for his supposed grandfather, and the chance had gone.

Someone had taught the kid manners. Not many organages would bother doing that, and if he had picked it up on his own by watching a lot of holo, then he must be brighter than he looked. Limping past, Willoughby felt himself being assessed.

He straightened his stoop. "Two point what?"

The kid stammered, shamefaced at being so obvious. "T-T-Two point oh-five, sir."

In the anteroom red guards and blue guards rose to their feet. "To the press conference," Willoughby told his own party chief, who referred the command to the bulky Bagshaw man by means of a silent glower. As the convoy formed up and set off along the corridor, Willoughby turned back to considering his stringy young companion. "You're taller than I ever was, then."

That earned a satisfied grin. "A little, maybe, sir."

Willoughby chuckled to put him at ease. "A fair bit. I claimed six-foot-six when I was your age—that's a fraction less than two meters—but I never quite was. In the morning I almost made it. A man's taller in the morning—did you know that?"

Willoughby had never been as tall, and certainly never as gaunt, as this human skeleton. The skintight clothes were no help, of course. He looked grotesque in them.

"No, sir."

"Slow down!" Willoughby complained. "Your grandmother will certainly keep us all waiting half an hour at least. There's no hurry. Yes, a man shrinks a little by nightfall. He shrinks as he gets older, too. And I lost a couple of centimeters when I got my tin legs."

Apparently Cedric now noticed the limp for the first time. He frowned and changed the subject. "What do I have to do at this meeting, sir?"

"Just stand up by the lectern. Give them time to notice you. Then say something like, 'Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen—Director Hubbard.' You needn't shout. System'll amplify your voice so everyone can hear you."

The kid's sigh of relief was quite silent, yet as obvious as a cornet fanfare. "That's all?"

No. Almost certainly that was not going to be all.

"It's all I would do."

Cedric nodded vigorously. "Sir—tell me about my father?"

Tricky! Willoughby was tempted to say, "Tell me what you think you already know."

What he did say, to gain time, was: "I wish I had known him better." The convoy had reached an escalator, and the bulls were checking for booby traps. "Your grandmother is a remarkable woman, lad. How well do you know her?"

"I just met her! You saw." Then Cedric bit his lip and protested loyally, "But she's called me often on the holo—almost every month. A lot of the kids never hear from their families at all. Not ever. Not even at Christmas!"

Agnes had been working on this one for twenty years or so, and she was putting him into play now. Important cards were only used to take important tricks.

"Yes, a remarkable woman," Willoughby said. "We really got to know each other back in 'ninety-nine, I suppose it was. It was the year she was nominated for the Nobel."

What a woman! A truly remarkable mind, better than average looks, and a will of steel. Willoughby had possessed far wider experience than she, and yet she had outwitted him.

Those had been exciting times in global politics. The first generation of truly liberated women had been making its mark, those who had been brought up all their lives to expect equality and who had arrived at the top in large numbers. But in Willoughby's experience, any political action always produced side effects. Every blow inevitably boomeranged somehow, and that triumphant female invasion had unwittingly reintroduced sex into statecraft on a scale not seen since the days of Antoinette and de Montespan—not that this gangling yokel would have ever heard of such people.

Willoughby had been thirty-two, tall, and—when he cared to bother—suavely sexy. He had been devious and consciously amoral, playing the lover game. He had also used a couple of legal-term pairings to good effect. He had won promotion in bed, establishing himself as an up-and-coming man at the U.N. . . . marvelous expression, that! And then he had run into Agnes.

Having found neither bomb nor ambush, the bulls waved their clients onto the escalator, standing guard at top and bottom.

Willoughby led the way, chuckling. "We'd spoken a few times at meetings. We met again one evening in an elevator. By the time we reached ground level, she'd told me she wanted a child, she believed in natural insemination, and I looked like her idea of a lover—would I be interested in a breeding contract?"

Young Cedric's eyes bulged at that story. "What did you say?"

"I suggested we have a drink and discuss terms. Your father was conceived about an hour later."

Stunned silence.

Or three hours.

Or ten . . . "By morning it still seemed like a good idea to me." Willoughby recalled how he had decided that a younger woman would be a form of vacation for him, a well-earned change. "We agreed to set the legal wheels turning, and I left on a trip to France. Neururb, you'd call it now."

They set off along another long corridor.

"And?" Cedric asked in a fascinated whisper.

"I returned two weeks later. By then your father had been pipetted out and installed in an incubation tank. Your grandmother told me the deal was off."

"Off?"

"She had what she'd wanted. Oh, I squired her many times after that. She was always a fascinating companion. Everyone assumed we were pairing. We weren't! No one else knows this, lad . . . but she never did let me into her bed again."

"Why—Why not?" To be thus taken into the confidence of a world leader was turning the boy an extraordinary shade of red.

Because Agnes gained her thrills from other activities.

"Because she regarded sex as an unnecessary and potentially risky procedure, I suppose. She put her own name first on our son, and she never let me pay any support. She did show me the gene reports. I was his father, no question on that. But I rarely met him until he was an adult—and not much even then." A Secretary General had very little in common with a rodeo cowboy.

Agnes had gained what she wanted in other ways, too. However promiscuous, a human male usually had some regard for the welfare of his offspring, and she had judged Willoughby correctly. He had fostered her career for the boy's sake. Together they had formed an unofficial, political pairing, a mutual assistance society. Young Hubbard John Hastings had been unwitting cement for one of history's most effective partnerships.

"What was he like, sir?" Cedric asked wistfully. "My father?"

Just for a moment Willoughby felt a surge of pity, but he suppressed it quickly. He would really be showing his age if he started letting sentiment interfere with business. This innocent was obviously business, and Agnes's plans must not be warped from their path.

"Not as tall as you and I, but not short. About average. Gray eyes. Talked a lot." Willoughby cut off the next question. "Now it's my turn. I'm a little shocked at running into two meters of grandson that I didn't know I had. Tell me about yourself. Where have you been doing all this growing up?"

The corridor had reached another anteroom, a much larger one. It was a real bull pen at the moment, with about fifty guards in thirty different uniforms spread all over the furniture, even sitting on the floor. They were already rising menacingly, and Willoughby sighed at the certainty that every one of them would demand the right to search him. He waited for the wrangling to start.

With half his mind he was wondering still what devilry Agnes was planning and how this green kid fitted into it. Why, for example, had she not suggested that he comb his hair?

The rest of him was vaguely listening to that same unexplained possible grandson babbling enthusiastically about his life in some place called Meadowdale. It certainly sounded like an organage, but it must have been an unusually humane example. Some of those places confined their victims from birth to puberty in animal cages and, often, in atrocious squalor. Perhaps that sort of treatment was actually kinder, though, considering the barbaric fate awaiting them.

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Framed