Capitol Page 0,77

She was sitting in one of the empty private rooms, her hands folded in her lap. He knocked. She looked up, saw him through the window, nodded, and he came in.

"Good morning," he said to her.

"Is it?" she answered. "My son is dead by now, Dr. Hort."

"Perhaps not. He wouldn't be the first to survive a night in the grass, Mrs. Danol."

She only shook her head.

"I'm sorry about last night's fracas," he said. "I was tired."

"You were also too damn right," she answered. "I woke up at four this morning, sedative or no sedative. I thought and thought about it. I'm poison. I've poisoned my son just by being his mother. I wish I could be out there on the plain in his place, dying for him."

"And what the hell good would that do?"

She only cried in answer. He waited. The sobbing let up only a few moments later.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I've been crying off and on all morning." Then she looked at Hort, pleading in her eyes, and said, "Help me."

He smiled-- kindly, not triumphantly-- and said, "I'll try. Why don't you just tell me what you've been thinking about?"

She laughed bitterly. "That's a rat's nest we hardly need to go into. I spent most of the time thinking about my husband."

"Whom you don't like."

"Whom I loathe. He married me because I wouldn't sleep with him otherwise. He slept with me until I got pregnant; then he moved on. When Linkeree turned out to be a boy, he was delighted, and changed his will to leave everything to the boy. Nothing to me. And then, after he had slept with every girl on this planet and half the boys, he was run over by a tractor and I gave a little cheer."

"He was well thought of on the planet."

"People always think well of money."

"They often think well of beauty, too."

And at that she cried again. Through her sobs, in a twisted, little-girl voice, she said, "All I ever wanted was to go to Capitol. To go to Capitol and meet all the famous people and be on somec so that I could live forever and be beautiful forever. It's all I had, being beautiful-- I had no money, no education, and no talent for anything, not even motherhood. Do you know what it means to have only one thing that makes other people love you?"

No, Hort thought to himself, but I can see what a tragedy it is.

"You were your son's guardian. You could have taken him to Capitol."

"No, I couldn't. It's the law, Hort. Planet money must be invested on the planet until it achieves full provincial status. It protects us from exploitation. " She spat the word. "No somec allowed until we're a province. No chance to have life!"

"There are some of us who don't want to sleep for years on end, just to stay young a few years longer," Dr. Hort said.

"Then you're the insane ones," she retorted, and he almost agreed. Eternal life didn't appeal to him. Sleeping through life seemed like a disgusting waste of time. But he knew the draw, knew that most people who came to the colonies were desperate or stupid, that the gifted ones or the rich ones or the hopeful ones stayed where somec was within reach.

"Not only that," she said, "my damnable husband entailed the entire fortune, everything. Not a penny could be taken from Pampas."

"Oh."

"So I stayed, hoping that when my son grew up we could find some way, go anyway--"

"If your son hadn't been born, the money would all have been left to you, unentailed, and you could have sold it to an offworlder and gone."

She nodded, and began to weep again.

"No wonder you hated your son."

"Chains. Chains, holding me here, stripping away my only asset as the years made hash of my face and my figure."

"You're still beautiful."

"I'm forty-five years old. It's too late. Even if I left for Capitol today, they won't let someone over forty-five go on somec at all. It's the law."

"I know. So--"

"So stay here and make the best of it? Thanks, Doctor, thanks. I might as well have a priest as you."

She turned away from him, and muttered, "And now the boy dies. Now, when it's too late. Why the bloody hell couldn't he have died a year ago?"
* * *

Linkeree patted the last of the earth over the grave he had dug for the head and skin of the child. The tears had long since dried; now the