Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (39 page)

“Hook us up for the night, Salino,” Puladi said, and to the young man on the bed next to him. “Can you understand me yet? Do you know who I am?”

“I can under-stand you.” The reply was clear and quick, with only a slight hesitancy on the longest word. “You are Puladi.”

“That’s a good start. I’m also, so you don’t have any doubts about it, the man who brought you here.”

“You are the man who is stealing my blood.”

Dr. Salino flinched. “I told you to show respect!”

“You also warned me not to lie. Which do you want?”

“I want—I mean, Puladi wants—I assume Puladi wants—”

Salino hesitated, while Puladi sighed and said, “Finish connecting us, doctor, and get out of here. Quickly. I know what Puladi wants, a lot better than you’ll ever know.” And to the youth sitting up on the bed, “I’m going to be working for much of the night. You will speak only when you are spoken to.”

That earned Puladi a cocking of the head and a raising of dark eyebrows. But there was silence as Salino finished his work, made a final check that the remote telemetry system to his own lab was all in order, and at last obtained permission to leave.

“Take your cues from him,” Puladi said, as Salino left the chamber. “His boss is gone, and
her
boss is gone, and the two before that are gone.”

“Gone.” The youth rolled his eyes. “You say
gone
, but you mean dead.”

“Quite right. I do mean dead, although I never see it happen. I say the word, and the guards take care of the rest.” Puladi glanced along the line of the IV, then switched his attention to the other’s face. “You’ve only been here a short time, and I suppose you haven’t learned. You should be afraid of me. You’re not. Why aren’t you afraid?”

“I was afraid, once, of . . . something. But not anymore. Not of you, not of anything.”

“We can change that. Kelb and company were supposed to give you a background briefing along with the language. It looks like they didn’t go far enough. How much do you know about me?”

“That you are Puladi, although that is perhaps not your original name. That you are thirty-nine years old. That you have killed many, many men and women. That you run the world, and have done so for eighteen years.”

“Not quite. The world has its own power and energy. It runs itself. I
control
the world, which is a much more delicate business. But the rest is accurate. See those displays?” Puladi pointed a bony finger at the wall. “I can look at anything, anywhere, anytime, no matter how much people may imagine it is hidden. I have sensors that appear as a fly on the wall, a dog’s eye, an open rose, the flame of a candle. And because I can see so much, anyone but a fool must assume that I can see everything. That is the secret of power: information, and the assumption by others of
complete
information.”

“I think that you are boasting.”

“Not at all.” But Puladi realized, with a rush of self-awareness that he had not felt for years, that the youth on the bed was perhaps right. Certainly, he had been emphasizing his powers. Why did he have this odd need to show off, and to such a nonentity?

“Maybe I am boasting—a little. But everything that I have said is true.”

The lad sniffed. “Then if you are so all-powerful, why are you afraid?”

Puladi laughed. If Kelb or Mavermine could hear that! “What makes you think that I am afraid? I don’t
fear
, boy, I
am feared
. There’s a huge difference. Watch me, now. I’m going to take us on a world tour.”

He began to work the keypads in the arms of the chair, varying location and scale and point of view like a master organist. There was no way that the youth on the bed could possibly appreciate just how much skill went into manipulating the sensors, or to juggling among complex data banks; but there were views to offer that alone would be enough to astonish. Puladi swooped from salt mining on the shores of the Dead Sea, to telescopes on the highest peaks of the Karakoram range, to the dark abyssal Pacific trench where the semiorganic submersibles winnowed out high-grade metallic nodules.

Finally he moved to the orbiting monitors that were patiently scanning the surface, inch by inch. He used them to zoom in, so that the view showed the North American continent, narrowed to the central plains, then a sprawling city landscape, and at last to the gold spire on one great building.

“That’s us.” Puladi froze the display. “We’re sitting inside that building, at this very moment. And if you want to see what’s happening in any particular room, I can show you. Want to take a look?”

There was no reply. Puladi turned. He saw to his great annoyance that the youth on the bed was sound asleep. How dare he sleep, in the presence of Puladi?

But how young the boy looked, and how peaceful and relaxed. He had said that he was not afraid—and amazingly, he had been telling the truth. A terrified person could not sleep; Puladi knew that very well.

In that same moment he felt a great wave of weariness and tranquillity sweep through him, as though it had transferred instantly along the line of the IV. He yawned—once. The screens on the wall seemed to dance and flicker before his eyes.

Half a minute later he was gone, down into the deepest slumber of his adult life.

* * *

“I
think
I am fifteen,” said the voice from the darkness. “But we do not—did not—think of years as you count them, and I cannot be sure.”

Puladi grunted. The viewing screens were all turned off. He did not have the energy, or maybe it was the desire, to look at them. Three more days had passed, they were deep into the third treatment, and according to Dr. Salino he was physically stronger than he had been for years; but he knew, better than anyone, that the mind controlled the body. He did not feel worse, but he felt
different
. Diffuse, drifting, disembodied.

“Before I was brought here,” the voice continued, “I did not know that there could be so many years. We were sure that the world must end, long before two full thousands of years had passed. But it did not. We were wrong about that; about many things.”

Puladi touched the IV. He had become so used to it, he hardly knew that it was attached to his arm. The strongest link in the world connected him to that slender figure on the bed, unseen in the darkness: the link of blood.
Blood.
If one had to choose a single word to stand for the whole of human history, could there be a better one? Bloodlines, blood feuds, blood money, blood sports, blood oaths, blood ties. Royal blood. Blue blood. Hot blood. Bad blood. Written in blood.

“Do you?” said an insistent voice.

“Do I what?” While Puladi drifted far away, the other must have gone on talking.

“Remember. What you were like, when you yourself were fifteen years old.”

Puladi sighed. “Yes, indeed. Like it was yesterday. Closer than yesterday.”

“You were not—afraid?”

“Not the slightest bit. That was the year that I realized I had unique genius; the time when I discovered the data banks.” Puladi sat up straighter, buoyed by memory. “It was bliss. Everything that I needed came to me so easily, it was as though I had already known it. While others plodded and staggered from one data level to another, I was a light-foot dancer, making great leaps that no one else had ever dreamed possible. By the time that I was sixteen, I could access
anything
: the most secret files, the most hidden code, the deepest data layers. No one else even suspected what I was doing. They were like blind people, in a world where I alone was sighted. And all the data banks were interlocked! I realized then that I could own everything. In another five years, I did.”

“And it made you happy?”

“Of course. Whatever I wanted was mine—is mine.”

“Except good health.”

“I have not given up the hope of that. Though you were a great disappointment to me.”

“My
blood
?”

Puladi decided that he must have said that word aloud, at some point in his musings. “Your blood is fine. But I did not bring you two thousand years and more, just for your blood. I thought I was bringing someone else, someone with the power to cure me.”

“A healer. I understand.” The youth was silent for a few moments, and when he spoke again his voice was wistful and reflective. “There was a time, just two of my years ago, when I thought that I might be a great healer. People told me that I had the gift, and I felt it move within me.”

“What happened?”

“I saw a vision. I became afraid. I made a choice. But you, if you were healed, would you then hope to live forever?”

“Let’s just say, for a long, long time.”

“But you would live hated, for all those years. And who would want to live hated? Puladi, even your assistants do not love you, though they pretend love. They hate you, too. I can feel it in them.”

“Of course they do. But they obey.”

“But if they hate you, why don’t they do something?”

“Carrion crows will not tear at living flesh. They await my death, when the time will come for them to fight among themselves.”

“How can they rule, without your knowledge of the data banks?”

“Because they expect to inherit my monitoring and control system. World control would be impossible without it, but it becomes easy with it. The genius, you see, lies in setting up the system, far more than in operating it.”

“When you die, I expect that I will die, too. They hate me also.”

“A shrewd and accurate observation.” Puladi smiled in the darkness. “They hate you, because they know that your visits here prolong my life.”

“Administrator Kelb pretends otherwise. He suggests that I am brought here at night only for your sexual pleasures. Why do you permit such talk?”

“Kelb’s time will come—soon. Anyway, in my condition perhaps I feel flattered. You would not understand that. You are too young to have had lovers.”

The bed next to Puladi creaked, at some violent movement.

“That is not true! I am fifteen years old. I am a man, and I have had women—many, many women!—since I was thirteen.”

“My apologies. Perhaps you would like a woman tomorrow? Or ten women, or a hundred, or a thousand? I am Puladi, and I own the world. Make your request. If it is not unreasonable, I will grant it.”

There was silence from the bed. When it finally came, the voice sounded flat and empty. “Dr. Salino told me never to lie to you. But I did. I have not had lots of women. In truth, I have never had any woman, although most youths of my age have known them.”

“There are lies and lies. Forget it. My offer still stands. Make your request. Do you want a hundred women?”

“No.” There was a sigh. “I do not want even one. But I do have a request. I want to visit the laboratory of Professor Rustum Belur. I want to see the Chronoclast, the machine that brought me here.”

* * *

Dr. Salino was in a difficult position. He dared not argue openly with Puladi, no matter how strongly he disagreed with him. All he could do was battle Kelb—who already resented and hated the physician, for his guaranteed round-the-clock access to his master.

Salino flourished the medical records at the Administrator. “It was working, and all the evidence suggested to me that it would continue to work. There had been minor recent abnormalities, but conditions were stable for the first time in more than a year. Why did you take the risk?”

“What risk?” Kelb was quite ready to argue Puladi’s case for him.

“How do I know what risk?” Salino looked to Puladi for support, and found none. “Suppose that the boy becomes sick, because of the different food in India—too sick for us to continue treatment when he returns? Suppose that he is killed in a transportation accident? Suppose that his return is delayed? Didn’t you consider all those possibilities?”

“Naturally.” Kelb’s leonine face was smug. “And after assessing all factors, it was Puladi’s own decision that the boy should go to Calcutta. Are you questioning his wisdom?”

Yes.
The fatal word was on the tip of Salino’s tongue. But before he could say it and damn himself totally, Puladi finally spoke.

“Dr. Salino, all the risks that you mention are real, but they are risks to
me
more than to anyone. And most of them are already in the past. He has visited Belur’s lab and seen the Chronoclast, and he is on his way back here. So now you wonder why I allowed him to do it—I can see the question in your face. The answer is simple: I was taking your advice. You told me that worry and stress change the chemical balance of the blood. Correct?”

“That is so.”

“And the ‘minor recent abnormalities’ that you mentioned. They were in the blood being transferred to me. In its chemistry. True or false?”

“True.”

“So would you like to know what was causing it? Near the end of the last treatment sessions, he told me that the desire to go back to his own time had been growing on him, to the point where it was an obsession. I agreed to let him visit Belur and the Chronoclast, for one simple reason: I wanted him to know that a return to his own time is absolutely impossible. I spoke to him a few hours ago. He is at last convinced. And he will be here tonight, in time for the next treatment. All right?”

Salino nodded, grudgingly satisfied.

He would have been amazed by Puladi’s own unvoiced question to himself: Why had he
really
agreed to the visit to Calcutta? He did not know. And following that came the odd realization, of how much he was looking forward to the coming nighttime session.

* * *

Ten hours later, Puladi was questioning the wisdom of his decision. The visit to the Chronoclast had on the face of it achieved just what he wanted. And yet something else had happened. He could read it on the countenance of the youth who lay on the bed next to his wheelchair. There were smudges of exhaustion beneath the clear brown eyes, and the mouth was more tightly drawn than before.

A boy had gone to Calcutta, and a man had returned.

“Did you see Rustum Belur himself?”

“For a few minutes.” The tense mouth relaxed to a quick smile. “Did you know, Puladi, that he admires you greatly? He described you as a kind and generous man.”