Capitol - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,23

and said, "Did you think that territory where you trod wbuld always belong to you?"

Now Bergen refused to understand. "What does he mean, father? What is Dal saying?"

"Nothing," Locken insisted, too quickly.

Dal refused to be stopped. "Your father," he said to Bergen, "plays the strangest games with five-year-old boys. I always urged him to invite you to join in, but he never would."

The uproar didn't die down for an hour. Locken kept uselessly pounding his left fist against his thigh, as Selly gleefully attacked him to take the opprobrium for her own dalliances from her shoulders. Only Bergen could honestly grieve. "All those years, Dal. This was happening all those years?"

"To you I was a friend, Bergen," Dal said, forgetting to say sir, "but to them I was a servant."

"You never told me."

"What could you have done?"

And when Dal left at the end of the hour he had the agreement in writing.

When Bergen woke from his first time under somec, he learned from a kindly man in the Sleeproom that his father had died only a few days after Bergen had left home, and his mother had been murdered by a lover two years later. The largest estate on Crove, besides the emperor's, was now Bergen's.

"I don't want it."

"Along with it, you should know," said the kindly man, "comes a five years under and one year up somec privilege."

"I'd only have to live one year in every six?"

"It's the Empire's way of expressing the value of certain large forces in the economy."

"But I want to paint."

"Paint then. But unless you want to visit your parents' graves, the managers of your businesses are doing a remarkably good job, according to the government auditors, and you can go back under to complete your two years of entitlement."

"I have someone I want to see first."

"As you wish. We can put you back under any time within the next three days. After that, you have to complete your year up, and you will have lost two years of sleep."

Bergen spent the first two days trying to find Dal Vouls. He finally succeeded when he remembered that Dal would still be bound by the contract with his father-- the executors of the estate were able to locate him because he was sending in occasional draughts to complete the seventy-five-percent clause.

Dal opened the door and his lice lit up with immediate recognition. "Bergen," he said. "Come in. It's been three years, then, hasn't it?"

"I guess so. Dal, it feels like yesterday to me. It was yesterday. How have you been doing?"

Dal pointed to the walls of the flat. Forty or fifty paintings and drawings hung there. For twenty minutes there was little conversation except "This; I like this" and "How did you manage that?" And then Bergen, thoroughly awed, sat on the floor (there was no furniture) and they talked.

"How is it going?"

"Sales are fairly slow. I don't have a name yet. But people do buy. And the best of it is, the emperor has decreed that all government offices are to be moved to Crove. Even the name of the planet is changing. To Capitol. It seems that if all goes well, every damn planet's going to orbit politically around Crove. And that means customers. It means people who know art instead of the military and commercial bastards who've had a stranglehold on money on this planet since time began."

"You've learned how to talk in long sentences since I last saw you."

Dal laughed. "I've felt freer."

"I brought you a present." Bergen handed him the release from the contract.

Dal read it, laughed, read it again, and then wept.

"Bergen," he said, "you don't know. You don't know how hard it's been."

"I can guess."

"I haven't been able to take the examination. Heaven knows, I've hardly been able to live. But now--"

"More than that," Bergen said. "The examination costs three thousand. I brought it." He handed the money to his friend.

Dal held the money for a few seconds, then handed it back. "Your father's dead, then."

"Yes," Bergen said.

"I'm sorry. It must have been a shock to you."

"You didn't know?"

"I don't read papers. I don't have a radio. And my draughts were never returned."

"Contracts are contracts, the executors figured. Trust my father not to free his contract servants in his will."

They chuckled wryly in memory of the man, whom Dal had last seen three years ago, whom Bergen had last seen yesterday.

"Your mother?"

"The bitch died in heat," Bergen answered, and this time there was emotion. Dal touched his hand. "I'm