Capitol - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,29

that to happen, anything to get me away from there--"

"Then come away."

"But I keep thinking about my parents. My mother, who can't manage her own life, let alone father's, and father, who does his best to rule everyone and only I can keep him under control and happy. They need me."

"At the risk of being thought trite, so do I."

"Not much," she said, waving her hand to indicate the paraphernalia that proved that he was a man of power and wealth.

"This? In fact, Batta, this is all part of a much grander plan. A direct line leading to something rather fine. But I'd rather share it with you."

"You are a romantic idiot like all the other adolescents," she laughed. "Share it with me, nonsense. What makes you even think you love me?"

"Because, Batta, every now and then my dream fails to keep me warm."

"Women are rather inexpensive."

"Batta isn't even for sale," he reminded her, and then he reached out and touched her as she had never been touched, and she held him as she had never held anyone. For two hours everything was new, every flutter, every smile.

"No," she whispered as he was about to end her long sexual solitude. "Please no."

"Why," he whispered back, "the hell not?"

"Because if you do, I'll never be able to leave you."

"Excellent," he said, and moved again, but she slid away, slid off the bed, began dressing.

"You have very poor timing," he said. "What's wrong?"

"I can't. I can't leave Mother and Father."

"What, are they so loving and kind to you?"

"They need me."

"Dammit, Batta, they're grownup people, they can take care of themselves."

"Maybe when I was seven, they could," she said, "but by the time I was twelve they couldn't. I was dependable. I could do it. And so they lost all their pretenses at adulthood, Ab. I couldn't go off and be happy knowing they'd disintegrate, having to watch them."

"Yes you can. Knowing that if you don't you'd disintegrate. I can put you on somec, Batta, right now. I can put you under for five years and when you woke up they'd have learned to take care of themselves and you could go see them and know that everything was all right."

"Do you have that kind of money?"

"When you get enough power in this lovely little empire," Abner Doon answered, "money becomes unnecessary."

"When I woke up they might be dead."

"Perhaps. And then they'd definitely not need you."

"I'd feel guilty, Ab. It would destroy me."

But Abner Doon was persuasive, and by small stages he got her to lie down on a wheeled table and he put a sleepcap on her head and taped her brain. All her memories, all her personality, all her hopes, all her terrors were recorded and filed in a tape that Abner Doon tossed up and down in his hand.

"When you wake up, I'll play it back into your head, and you won't even notice that you were asleep.

She laughed nervously. "But anything that happens now, the somec wipes out, right?"

"True," Doon answered. "I could ravish you and perform all kinds of obscene acts, and when you make up you'd still think I was a gentleman."

"I never have thought such a thing," she said.

He smiled. "Now let's get you to sleep."

"What about you?" she asked.

"I told you. I'm a year away. I'll be a year older when I wake you up, and we begin our life together, with or without benefit of contract. Good enough?"

But she began to cry and she kept crying until it was near hysteria. He held her, rocked her back and forth, tried to find out why she was crying, tried to understand what he had done, but she answered, "Nothing. Nothing."

Until finally he brought out the somec bottle (but no one has a private supply of somec! It's the law--) and a needle and reached for her to lay her on the table. She pulled away, retreated to the other side of the room.

"No."

"Why not!"

"I can't run away from my parents."

"You've got your own life to live!"

"Ab, I can't do it! Don't you see? Love isn't just a matter of liking somebody. I don't like my parents very much. But they trust me, they lean on me, I'm their whole damn foundation, and I can't just walk away and let them fall down."

"Sure you can! Anybody could! It's sick, what they've done to you, and you have a right to your own life."

"Anybody could do it except me. I, Batta Heddis, am a person who does