“I must have died,” she said. “This must be heaven.”

  “You’re a believer?” Doon asked.

  “Only in myself. We make our own heavens. And I see, Doon, that you have created a good one. Well, Doon, you’re the first man I’ve talked to today who wasn’t an utter ass.”

  “I do not aspire to surpass my superiors.”

  She chuckled, fanning her hands to propel herself gently in the water. Doon, too, lay on his back in the water, and they heard each other’s words through the rushing sound of water in their ears.

  “Now the complete list, Mr. Doon,” she said. “All the things, you are in control of.”

  “As I told you,” he said. “Part of the ministry of colonialization.”

  “And?”

  “The rest of the ministry. And the rest of the ministries.”

  “All of them?” she asked, “Through one means or another. No one knows it, however. I just own the people who own the people who run it. I don’t muck with the everyday affairs.”

  “Good of you. Let them think they’re independent. And?”

  “And?”

  “The rest of the list?”

  “That’s the list. All the ministries. And the ministries control everything else.”

  “Not everything. Not somec,” she said.

  “Oh, yes. The independent, untouchable agency. Only Mother can make the rules for the Sleeproom.”

  “But you control that, too, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I had to take it over first. That let me control who woke up when.

  Very useful. It lets me get rid of people I don’t want. I just put them on a lower level of somec, if they’re weak, and they die out very soon. Or I put them on a higher level of somec, if they’re strong, and they aren’t around often enough to bother me.”

  “You rule my empire, then?”

  “I do,” Doon answered.

  “Have you brought me here to kill me?”

  Doon swung over and treaded water, looking at her in alarm. “You don’t believe that, do you?” he, asked. “I’d never do that, Mother, never. I’ve admired you too much. I’ve modeled my life on yours. The way you controlled the empire from the start, and everyone thought it was your husband, Selvock, the poor stud.”

  “He wasn’t much of a stud,” Mother mused. “He never fathered a child on anyone.”

  “No, Mother. You’re the only person in the world, though, who could stop me. And I knew that sooner or later you’d realize who I was and what I was doing. I’ve looked forward to this meeting.”

  “Really? I haven’t.”

  “No?” Doon broke into a crawl stroke and made his way to shore. Not long afterward, Mother followed, to find him lying on the grass.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I have looked forward to meeting you. The thief who would take it all away from me.”

  “Not at all,” Doon said. “Not a thief. Just your heir.”

  “I plan to live forever,” she said.

  “And if I have my way, you shall.”

  “But you don’t want just to own my empire, Doon. You don’t want to just inherit.”

  “Consider this a springboard. If you hadn’t built this empire, I should have had to. But since it’s built, I shall tear it up and use the building blocks to make something better.”

  “Better than this?” she asked.

  “Can’t you smell the decay? Nothing is alive on this planet. Not the people.

  Not the atmosphere, not the rock, nothing, it’s all dead, all going nowhere.

  The whole empire’s like that. I’m going to kick it into gear again.”

  “Kick it into gear!” she giggled. “That was archaic when I was a girl!”

  “I study old things,” Doon answered. “Old things are the only things that are new anymore. You were great. You built a beautiful thing.”

  She was happy. The sun was beating down on her for the first time in decades (centuries, actually, but since she hadn’t lived the years, she didn’t feel them); she had swum in fresh water; and she had met a man who just might be, just might perhaps be her equal.

  “What do you want me to do? Make you chancellor? Marry you?”

  Doon said no, none of those things. “Just let me go on. Don’t challenge me.

  Don’t force my hand. I need a few more centuries. And then it’ll all break loose.”

  “I could still stop you,” she said.

  “I know it,” he answered. “But I’m asking you not to. Nobody was in a position to stop you. I’m asking for my chance.”

  “You’ll have your chance. In return for one favor.”

  “And that is?”

  “When you make your move and everything, as you put it, breaks loose, take me with you.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “There’ll be no use for Mother in the universe you’re making, Abner.”

  “But there’ll be room for Rachel Crove?”

  The name struck her like a hammer. No one had called her by her given name since, since, And she was a girl again, and a man who was her equal, or nearly so, lay naked beside her, and she reached over and put her arms around him, whispering, “Take me with you. Take me.”

  He did.

  They lay in the grass as the sun set, and she felt more fulfilled than she had since a day on a cliff in Crove when she had begun her career of conquests.

  Only this time she had been conquered, and she knew it, and she was willing.

  “On every waking,” she said, “you must tell me your plans. You must show me what you’re building, and let me watch.”

  “I will,” he said. “But you can’t make any suggestions.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. That would be cheating, wouldn’t it?”

  “You aren’t very good at sex,” Doon said.

  “Neither are you,” she answered, laughing. “Who gives a damn?”

  Mother did not come back until half an hour before her grand entrance at the Mother’s Waking Party, the highest high society event in Capitol. Nab was distraught.

  “Mother, Mother, what a worry you’ve caused us!”

  She only looked at him slantwise, and frowned. “I was in good company. Were you?”

  Nab glanced at Dent. “Only second rate, I’m afraid.

  Dent laughed nervously.

  Mother growled at him. “Can’t you even get a little angry, boy? It’s so damned boring when everybody tries to be nice. Well, the party’s already underway, right? So what am I wearing this time?”

  They brought her the dress, and seven women wrapped her in it. She was startled that her nipples showed. “This is really the fashion?”

  Nab shook his head. “It’s a bit more modest than most. But I thought that perhaps the image you need to present—”

  “Modest? Me?” She laughed and laughed. “Oh, this is the best waking in years. Best in years, Nab. You can stay on, but fire the boy. Find an assistant with more gumption. The boy’s an ass. And send the chancellor to me.”

  The chancellor came in, bowing and uttering apologies about the poor status of the reports this waking.

  “Everybody’s trying to lie to me,” she said. “Fire them all. Except, of course, for the minister of colonization. And his assistant. The two of them impressed me. Leave them in. And as for you, I don’t want to have another lie in a report again. Understand? Or if you must lie, at least contrive to do it well. None of these could have fooled a five-year-old child.”

  “I’ll never lie to you, Mother.”

  “I know perfectly well that I’m empress in name only, boy, so don’t patronize me. You’d just better make sure that I don’t get reminded of it by the sloppy work the cabinet does. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “And that assistant minister of colonization. He was refreshing. I want him awake and ready to meet with me again next waking. And leave him in his job.

  Doubtless a sinecure, but he’s sweet.”

  The chancellor nodded.

  “Now give me your arm. To hell with the schedule. We’re going down to the party.”

  Nab watched her go.

  “Am I really fired?” Dent asked.

  “Yes, boy. I warned you. Act natural. Too bad. You showed some promise.”

  “But what’ll I do?”

  Alb shrugged. “They always have good jobs for the people Mother fires. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I want to kill her.”

  “Why? She did you a favor. Now you won’t have to watch her act important every waking. The bitch. Wish she’d sleep for ten years.”

  Dent was surprised. “You really hate her, don’t you?”

  “Hate her? I suppose so.” And Nab turned away. “Get on out, Dent. If she sees you here again, she’ll fire me, too.”

  Dent left, and Nab went to the files and cursed the next poor fool who would make a stab at satisfying Mother. He had to have an assistant. An assistant’s stupidity always made Nab look better.

  Do I hate her, Nab wondered.

  He couldn’t decide. He only remembered watching her in the morning, as she lay nude on the bed. It wasn’t hate he felt then.

  The party was long and boring, as all the others had been, but Mother knew the importance of being visible. She had to be seen at every waking, on a set day, or someone could make her disappear and no one would notice. So she circulated, and graciously met the young girls who were just getting to somec, and the fops and fags who hung about the court, and the old men and women who had first met her a few centuries ago when they were young.

  She was a reproach to them all. No matter how high a somec level they achieved, she was higher. No matter how many centuries passed before they got old, they would never live to see her get older. I will live forever, she reminded herself.

  But as she watched the people who actually believed this party was important, the thought of living forever made her very tired. “I’m tired,” she said to the chancellor, and he immediately waved a signal to someone and the orchestra struck up some stirring music from aeons ago (this was old when I was a child, she thought) and the guests lined up and for an hour she bade good-bye to all of them and finally they were gone.

  “It’s over,” she sighed. “Thank heaven.” And then she went upstairs to the room where workmen had obviously been knocking up the walls. Pretending to take the hololoop equipment out, she decided, and was amused that they thought she could be so easily fooled. That fellow Nab, a sharp one. A total bastard, too. The best kind of person to deal with. He’d be around for quite a while.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and brushed her hair, not because it needed it but because she was in the mood for it. It felt good. She watched herself in the large mirror, and noticed proudly that she didn’t yet sag. That she was still, though not young, desirable. I’m a match for Doon, she said to herself.

  I’m still a match for any Man, and more than a match for most. I’ve played their games and won them, and if I’m just a figurehead now, I’m a figurehead they have to be careful with. And Doon, an ally. He was with her. She could trust him.

  Or could she?

  She lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, where a fresco had been painted, duplicating an ancient one that had long since fallen to pieces on earth. A nude man was reaching up to touch the finger of God. She knew it was God, because he was the most terrible creature on the ceiling, and that had to be God. I was that, she thought. I was the builder, I was touching fingers and bringing things to life. And now Doon is doing that. Can there be room for two of us?

  I’ll make room, she decided. He’ll never feel threatened by me. Because he might win, and that would be terrible, and it would be more terrible if I won, because I’m lazy and finished and he’s just starting. Let us be allies, then, and I’ll trust him and he’ll trust me, and I can see something new in the universe.

  A creation that, perhaps, will be better than mine.

  “Was that what you hoped for?” she asked the bearded man on the ceiling.

  “Someone to top you? Or did you snick them all down to size whenever they got too big?” She remembered a story about people who built a tower to get to the stars. God stopped it, as she recalled. Well, we finally got to the stars anyway, but you had moved out by then, making space for us.

  I’ll move out, making space for Doon. But he’d damn well better not forget me.

  “The bitch is asleep, Crayn. Call the Sleeproom people.”

  The new assistant, a nervous girl that would never last, Nab knew, called the Sleeproom people and they moved quickly but silently into the room, taping Mother’s brain and then putting her under somec.

  When Mother was under, Nab came out into the room.

  “Give me the tape,” he said, and they gave it to him because he always sealed it away in a special vault. And then they wheeled her out to put her in her coffin in a private sleeproom in a different part of Capitol from most others.

  With the tightest security.

  But Nab still held her mind in his hands. She had slept with Doon, he knew.

  What the shrimp had, he didn’t know, but she had slept with him, had liked him a lot, had asked to see him next time. And he had her tape. There was nothing to stop him from accidentally destroying it, was there? And then she’d wake up not knowing anything about this waking. They’d have to use the old tape, the one they had used this time.

  It shouldn’t be hard to erase, he thought, and he took the tape into the control room. “Go home, Crayn,” he said. “I’ll close up.”

  “What a day,” Crayn said as she left.

  The door closed, and Nab found the loop eraser. It would work just as well on a braintape. He would have done it, too, if a needle hadn’t fired just then and killed him.

  Mother’s Little Boys took the body out and disposed of it, and Mother’s braintape was put into safekeeping by those who would never harm it. A close one. But how had Abner Doon known Nab would do that? The man was an octopus, a finger everywhere. But that was why Mother’s Little Boys obeyed him. He was never wrong.

  Mother had not been asleep when the braintapers came. But she lay their limply, accepting their ministrations.

  Today I met my successor and the first man I let make love to me besides Selvock. Today I fired most of the cabinet because they were fools and cheats.

  Today I stepped back into Crove the way it used to be when it was still beautiful.

  Today passed with more variety than yesterday, or three weeks ago, or eight months ago.

  Eight months ago. It was only eight months, only a thousand years ago that she had decided to go on somec at this level and live forever. She had noticed her first age wrinkle that day, and realized that she could, after all, get old. So she had decided to skim through time, only touching often enough to see if there was something worth living to experience.

  Today she had found it.

  And what, she wondered, will we do tomorrow?

  When No One Remembers His Name, Does God Retire?

  Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.

  This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.

  —Isaiah 50:11

  The prophet, Amblick, lay dying on a bed they had laid out on the floor of the room the government had provided rent-free for their meetings. He was more than a century old, and since the Church of the Undying Voice had only a few dozen members left, and none of them had professed to hear the Voice, it was plain that the church was also dying; that there would be no prophet to tell them the Way any longer.

  Amblick knew it. The congregation knew it. There was little to say as Amblick lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling with its hidden lights and aging acoustic tiles. His century had been long; he had heard the Voice first when he was fifteen, and had been prophet for ninety-four years. If he had been a better servant of the Voice, he knew, the church would not have shrunk to such straits. He felt guilty and ashamed, but more than that he felt tired. A relentless century in which society had been mockingly indifferent. Preach all you like, the government seemed to say, we’ll even give you a meeting place, but you’ll make no converts, change no lives. Speak on and publish as you will, the world of Capitol seemed to urge, we’ll tolerate you, we’ll smile kindly, and for amusement some of us will invite you to visit with us during a waking, but we will not repent and give up somec or give up sex or give up lifeloops or games or war or politics or the petty murders of competitive business.

  “So much to be done,” said Amblick, “but the ocean of sin sweeps over me, and I have done nothing.”

  No, murmured his followers. You have been a great man.

  But one person watching did not murmur comfort. He did not understand that the dying old man might need comfort. Nor did he see or understand that the death of one man was the death of a faith. Garol Stipock was seven. And Amblick was his great-grandfather, a relation so distant that Garol had always confused references to God or the Voice with his great-grandfather, whose voice seemed to come from everywhere when he spoke and whose eyes hinted at the wisdom that knew all things, had created all things, and could, eventually, accomplish all things.

  So it did not occur to Garol that Amblick needed help to go peacefully out of life; it was Garol who needed help.

  “Old Father,” Garol said, and Amblick and the others looked at him. “Old Father, if you die, who will tell us the words of the Voice?”

  Old Father looked sad, and the adults there were embarrassed that a child should bring up the one question they were all trying to avoid. “The Voice chooses his own vessel,” Amblick answered softly, his voice bubbling with the liquid in his lungs.

  “But Old Father,” Garol persisted, and the, adults longed for a way to silence him (but they could not, because children were pure tools of God’s hand, and it was fitting, anyway, that Amblick’s life should end with the hard questions, and not dodge them), “Old Father, what if the Voice chooses no one? What if no one is worthy?”