Doon was finally taken by surprise, and she felt a small sense of victory.
"Short?" he asked. "Yes, I suppose I am. Well, it isn't anything I have control over. So I don't think about it."
"What do you have control over?"
"The assignments section of the ministry of colonization," he answered.
She laughed. "That isn't a complete list, is it, Mr. Doon?"
He cocked his head. "Do you really want an answer to that?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Doon, I do."
"But I won't give an answer, Mother. Not here."
"Why not?"
"Because there are two men in the control room listening to everything we say and recording everything we do. I'll talk freely to you when there isn't an audience."
"I'll command them to stop listening."
Doon smiled.
"Oh. I see. I may reign, but I don't always rule, is that what you're saying? Well, we'll see about that. Lead me to the control room."
Doon got up, and she followed him out of the room.
"Nab! Nab, he's bringing her here! What do we do?"
"Just act natural, Dent. Try not to throw up on the looper."
The door to the control room opened, and Doon ushered Mother into the room. "Good afternoon, gentlemen," she said.
"Good afternoon, Mother. I'm Nab, and this petrified mass of terror is my assistant, Dent."
"So you're the ones who listen in and answer my every request."
"As much as possible, of course." Nab was the image of confidence.
"Monitors. Television! How quaint!"
"It was decided hololoops wouldn't be appropriate."
"Bullshit, Nab," Mother said sweetly. "This is a looper right here."
"Just for the historical record. No one ever watches it. "
"I'm glad to know how closely I'm observed. I'll be more careful how I arrange my body in the morning." She turned to Doon. "Is there anywhere that we can meet where the birds won't be watching from the trees?"
"Actually," Doon answered, "I have the only place on Crove where the birds do watch from the trees. "
She looked shocked. "Real ones?"
"Complete with droppings. You have to watch where you step."
Her voice was husky with eagerness. "Lead me! Take me there!" And she whirled on Nab and Dent. "And you two. I want this looper out of here. You can listen and you can watch, but there is to be no permanent record. Do you understand?"
Nab agreed pleasantly. "It'll be done before you return."
She sneered at him. "You have no intention of doing it, Nab. Do you think I'm a fool?" And she went out the other door, which Doon was holding open.
When the door swung shut, Dent gagged and retched into a wastebasket. Nab watched unconcernedly. "You haven't learned anything, have you, Dent? She's nothing to be afraid of."
Dent only shook his head and wiped his lips. Stomach acid burned in his sinuses and throat.
"Go get the technicians. We have to hook the looper up somewhere else. And have some phony spots ripped out of the wall, so that workmen will be repairing when they get in. It has to look like the lasers have been removed. Hurry it up, boy!"
Dent stopped at the door. "What are they going to do to this Doon?"
"Nothing. Mother likes him. We'll simply use him to, keep her happy later on. The man's a nonentity. "
Mother could sense Doon's increasing pleasure as they went (under heavy guard) through corridors that had been cleared before them, until finally they were at a door where Doon told the Little Boys to go wait elsewhere.
"This had better be good, Doon," Mother said, knowing from the way he acted that it would be good.
"It'll be worth the walk. Though you used to walk much farther than this in your childhood," he said.
"Kilometers and kilometers," she said. "What a wonderful word. It even sounds like going up hills and down them again. A traveling word. Kilometers. Show me this place Where the birds sing from the trees."
And Doon opened the door.
She walked in briskly, then slowed, then stopped. And after a moment she began walking briskly among the trees, pausing only to strip off her shoes and dig her bare toes into the grass and the dirt. A bird fluttered past her. A breeze spun her hair out like a fan. She laughed.
Laughing, she leaned against a tree, put her hands on the bark, slid down the tree, sat in the grass. The sun shone brightly above her.
"How did you do it? How did you hold this spot of earth? When I last touched ground like this, I was twenty, and it was one of the few parks left on Capitol!"
"It isn't real," Doon,answered. "The trees and birds and grass are real enough, of course, but the sky is a dome and the sun is artificial. It can tan you, though."
"I always freckled. But I said, 'Damn the freckles, I worship the sun!'"
"I know," Doon said. "I tell everyone that this place is modeled after Garden, a planet where they restrict immigration and industry is kept to a minimum. But you know what this place really is."
"Crove," she said. "My grandfather's world! What this planet used to be before it was sheathed in metal like a vast chastity belt, blocking life from this place forever; oh, Doon, whitever it is you want, you can have, only let me come and spend an afternoon here on every waking!"
"I'll be glad to have you come. Only you know what it means."
"But you want something from me, anyway," she said.
He smiled. "Want to swim?"
"You have water?"
"A lake. Crystal clear water. A bit chilly, though."
"Where!"
He led her to the water, and she unhesitatingly took off her clothes and dove in. Doon met her in the middle of the lake, where she floated on her back, looking upward as a cloud passed before the sun.
"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?"