Capitol - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,83

projects are finished."

The Sleeproom people weren't used to being refused, but his reasons were plausible, and he was only fifteen, and so they waited.

But Garol's reasons were not what he said they were.

"Mother," he said. "Father. They've offered me somec."

He watched his parents carefully. Somec was the worst sin of all the sins of Capitol, and Amblick and the other prophets had condemned it as the Souldestroyer, the Hatemaker, Somec the Lifestealer. Garol knew enough science to know that God was impossible; knew enough of life to know that no one believed in God and few enough remembered he had ever existed in people's hearts. But all that knowledge had never undone the structure of his childhood: sex for pleasure was still unthinkable, somec was still a sin.

And so he watched his parent to see if they, too, still held on to a measure of the old faith.

"Somec?" asked his father. "What level?"

"Seven under, one up."

"That's high," his mother said.

His father looked at his mother for a moment, and then, rather awkwardly, he asked, "Garol, I understand that someone who's at that high a level can choose several close family members to go on somec with him at the same level, so that his life isn't too disrupted."

"Yes," his mother said. "And we're all the family you have."

Their eyes were bright with hope, and Garol felt the last of the religion crash down inside himself. He felt angry, betrayed, hurt; but all he said was, "Of course. I won't be going on for a few years, but you can come with me."

"A few years?" asked his mother. "Why?"

"I have work to do."

His, father coughed, looked a little upset. "It's your right, I suppose. But remember, Garol, that while you're still young, we're getting a bit on in years."

Garol did nothing to show his contempt. The next day he went to the Sleeproom and told them that he would go on somec in three years, but he wanted his parents to go on somec now.

"But Mr. Stipock," said the man at the Sleeproom, "they can only go on somec at precisely the same level as you. So if they went on now and you went on in three years, they would never see you again. They'd always be asleep when you awoke, and vice-versa."

Garol tapped the desk. "Draw it up, and I'll sign it."

They drew it up, he signed it, and his parents went to the Sleeproom happily, knowing that they were the envy of all their friends. They hadn't even asked whether Garol would be awake when they awoke. Perhaps they merely took it for granted and would be terribly disappointed. But Garol simply assumed they didn't care. And neither, he pretended, did he.

The Stipock Low-Density Radiation Counter was a revolution in physics. Now, because an extremely sensitive machine could detect infinitesimal amounts of radiation from the most inert elements, it was possible to analyze practically to the molecule the makeup of any sample-- whether it was a small rock or the light from a star millions of light-years away.

Garol's new work was more that of a cataloguer than of a scientist-- but he was unable to perceive much difference between theory and practice of science, and saw no contradiction in it. He set up the programs for the Stipock Geologer, which would analyze planets from orbit and lay out incredibly detailed maps of metals, ores, and topography; the Stipock Ecologer, which analyzed the lifesystem of a planet in a single orbit; and the Stipock Climate Analyzer, which could predict weather for a year in advance with fair accuracy, and climatic trends for centuries with near perfect accuracy. It would take years to make the machines work well, but once Garol's groundwork was done, the details could be fleshed out by thousands of much less talented researchers.

It was not work that involved Garol's mind completely, and it seemed to those few who knew him at all well that he seemed determined to keep his mind as disengaged as possible. He asked the wife of a professor to explain sex to him; she did, and they kept practicing for a few weeks before he set out to experience as much of it as possible with as many different partners as possible.

"You don't seem to pay any attention when we make love," a fellow graduate student complained one night.

"Was it good?" he asked.

"Wonderful," she said. "But--"

"Then don't ask for more than that," he said. She soon stopped sleeping with him, however, which