The Green Queen Page 6

  Would she do for the Queen? Perhaps. From a distance, with the light coming from an angle, with all the prestige of the government behind her—she might pass. And if she weren't too closely confronted with Leaf.

  Suddenly, Bonnar felt that he couldn't stand any more of her. The situation was growing serious, reports that the Green Queen had shown herself down Stairs were increasing in number and detail with every hour. Time was valuable. But right now, for now, he couldn't stand any more Auglinger. He'd have to have a rest from her, if it was only for a couple of hours.

  "We'll have a recess," he said to the woman. "I'll call the guards."

  "Oh." Her doughy face lit up. The only animation she had ever shown, from the first moment she had been brought to the Tower, the government fort in the center of Shalom, had come at the times he was dismissing her. "That will be nice."

  The only animation? No, that wasn't entirely true, not quite fair to the Auglinger. She had shown animation, interest, excitement even, when it came to embroidering the robes she was to wear as queen. And she had done a beautiful job. AH that was best in Caroline Auglinger came out in her embroidering.

  She had embroidered a fantasy, pure and lovely, in tender shades of spring-like green. Jade, emerald, nephrite, and a dozen tones between, had been in her needle's palette. Between the fantastic shades of green she had set touches of turquoise and robin's egg blue. And finally there were flowers of a strange flat pinky beige. The robes of a queen. Even on Caroline herself they looked well. How would they have looked on Leaf?

  Bonnar sighed. He pressed the buzzer. To the guards, when they entered, he said, "Take this lady to her rooms."

  Meditatively he watched the queen-candidate's broad back as it retreated down the corridor. The idea of Caroline's robes had started a train of thought which it seemed somehow important to pursue. Her lack of animation, her interest in her embroidering ...

  Oh, now he had it, the idea that had been eluding him. It was the difficulty they had had with Caroline—their failure, finally to make her believe that she was the Green Queen.

  It had been decided, almost without argument, that she would give a better performance in her role if she were convinced that her role were true. The first visit to her narrow, crowded, ill-smelling Body-servants lodging had had the character of an Annunciation. The visitors—Bonnar had been among them—had bowed to her and addressed her deferentially. They had spoken to her in glowing terms of her future. And Caroline had looked at them slyly out of her doughy face with her flat eyes, and refused to believe.

  They had tried hypnosis. For a moment Bonnar thought longingly of the psychological techniques of far-away earth. On earth, though it was legally forbidden, it was possible to make anyone believe anything. But Viridis was, as a Rockefeller man had once said, two hundred years behind the times, and a backwater to boot. Hypnosis was very nearly all they had.

  When hypnosis had failed, they had tried direct suggestion, argument, and veridical maskart. It had all been futile. Less suggestible as well as less intelligent than Leaf, Caroline had remained stubbornly aware that her betters were using her for their own ends.

  Why had the hypnosis failed? The hypnotist himself had said that what they had been trying to get Caroline to believe conflicted too deeply with her picture of herself. Caroline saw herself as pitiable, wronged, weak, abused. (That she showed considerable aggressiveness in marketing her sufferings did not change the pattern basically.) If she were the queen she would no longer be pitiable. So she could not believe that she was the queen.

  But might there not be something else? An equally valid if less penetrating reason for her disbelief? Yes. Bonnar's lips tightened. The Auglinger might refuse to believe that she was the Green Queen—if she thought the Green Queen was somebody else.

  Bonnar remained standing for a moment, thinking. Then he buzzed Intelligence and gave instructions. Their gist was that while Caroline Auglinger was to be allowed free egress from the Tower, all her actions and contacts were to be carefully watched.

  He sat down at his desk. From the big range of windows in front of him he had a view high up over the capital's broad, tree-lined streets. He could see nearly the whole city. He was an important man in the government now, with a suite of rooms almost at the top of the Tower. His days in verbal mask seemed to be over. Sometimes he felt a little lonely for them.

  His rise had come about easily, naturally, and it appeared in retrospect inevitably. At the "clarifying" interview he had used his surmises to answer the questions and to gather more information from what was asked. There had been other interviews with other more important persons. His old intimacy with Leaf had stood him in good stead; he had managed to parlay that, and what he had surmised and guessed up into an insight that must have seemed almost uncanny to his questioners. In the end, he had had a complete, even detailed, knowledge of what the government feared, of what it had attempted and why it had failed. And when Leaf had disappeared, they had put him in charge of training anti-Leaf.

  For a long time, he had learned, the tensions in Viridian social life had been increasing. Punitive measures against the Lowers were only temporarily effective; the sum total of Lower discontent always increased. (Discontent, not only with the precariousness of their lives, which one could understand, though not forgive, but also discontent with their own idleness and uselessness. That, as every Upper knew, was entirely the Lowers' own fault. They had a task in society to perform. They could perform it, if they only would.)

  On the other hand, the number of Uppers—misguided, sentimental, or merely destructive—who wanted to make a basic change in Viridian society was increasing too. The government had reason to suspect that the cult of the Apple Pickers was a focus for people like these. It had seemed a brilliant, if possibly over-bold, idea to use the mask about the Green Queen that Bonnar had promulgated, to draw both groups—the rebellious Lowers and the reforming Uppers—out into the open where the government could sterilize the infection and deal with the dissidents radically. Yes, a brilliant idea. Bonnar had been impressed when he had learned about it. But it hadn't worked.

  Leaf, of course, had been the heart of the plan. Green Queen, Mistress of Viridia in her own eyes, she was to have been in reality the government's puppet, or, more accurately, the government's judas sheep (What would have become of her, Bonnar wondered, if the plan had worked? Would she have been allowed to go on living after she had led her docile followers into the government's grasp?). But only at first had she played the part assigned to her.

  She had joined the Apple Pickers in her emotional reaction to Bonnar's breaking with her. She had passed the initiatory tests triumphantly and had become genuinely interested in the teachings of the cult. (They were egalitarian and mystic, Bonnar understood. Somewhere on the surface of Viridis, the Apple Pickers believed, there was a wonderful tree whose fruit, given to all to eat, would make human beings so free and wise and good that they would be like gods. Such a teaching could easily be brought into harmony with Bonnar's mask about the Green Queen and her golden tree of life.) But the next step no one had been able to get Leaf to take. Odic, the government's spy in the Apple Pickers, had never been able to acquire any influence over her.

  Odic. Seated at his desk high above Shalom, Bonnar permitted himself a sour smile. What genius, high in the Council, had thought Odic could influence anyone? Odic was a typical KG, with the shambling gait, accusatory eyes, and unattractive personality KGs always seemed to have. To imagine him controlling Leaf was preposterous. But it was true that KGs were oddly apt to acquire influence over people who felt resentful. Their own intense resentment at having been KGs (cagees) seemed to act as a psychic bond with the others. Perhaps it had been assumed that Leaf would be feeling so resentful at Bonnar's desertion of her that Odic would be able to act on her.

  Bonnar picked up the latest sheaf of reports and riffled through them. They all dealt with Leafs appearances below Stairs, the usual miracles. Levitation
, healing a Lower who was almost dead with the lesions, cryptaesthesia. One dealt with a government agent's attempt to assassinate. He had failed. The reports were detailed and clear, just as Bonnar had expected. He put them down again.

  They brought up the question he never could answer quite satisfactory: was Leaf really the Green Queen?

  He himself had made up the mask about the queen.

  The Green Queen was the mother of Viridis, the source of all Viridian life. She had gone away when her creatures had been disobedient. But when she saw how much her children were suffering in her absence, she would come again. She would lower the barrier, make the surface of the planet habitable, give all her offspring the fruit of the tree of life to eat. In the end, she would meet her divine consort beside the golden tree. The divine marriage would be consummated. And life on Viridis would be wonderful, a paradise, a dream ...

  He had made up the mask about the Green Queen himself.

  No, Leaf couldn't be the queen. But that meant that there must be somebody behind Leaf in the same way that he himself was behind Caroline. (Who had been behind Leaf when she had stopped the Felodon? Hm? He wasn't going to let himself think about that.)

  Somebody behind Leaf would imply an organization, a well-organized conspiracy, with scientific resources equal to those of the government. And Intelligence had never found a trace of anything like that. But what alternative was there?

  An individual, supporting Leaf, manipulating her? But the "miracles" would be quite beyond the scope of an individual. And even if they weren't, who could the individual be? Horvendile had disappeared; the reports on Leaf mentioned many followers with her, but the only one who seemed to be consistently present was Odic. Odic was a spy, a turncoat, a deserter. To imagine him as a cunning manipulator was ridiculous.

  Could one of the big Foundations be supporting her? They were supposed never to intervene in domestic or planetary matters, but their studies, surveys and reports constituted in themselves a very considerable interference, as most practical politicians realized. Was it possible that one of the Foundations was going further and fomenting a revolution directly?

  Possible, but unlikely. Surely Intelligence would have discovered it.

  Bonnar looked at his dial. There was a council meeting; he supposed he'd have to attend it. And then, more work with the Auglinger.

  He was, at this moment, one of the most powerful men in the government. It was odd how little satisfactions the knowledge brought.

  It was late when he got back from the meeting. He switched on the lights in his office and looked about him, sighing. The meeting had been confused, nervous, unconstructive. The head of the secret police had expressed doubt about the reliability of some of his men. If ...

  There was a new bunch of reports on his desk. Bonnar picked them up.

  He had not read four words of the first one before he was pressing a button. His brows were knitted in a furious frown. His mouth was grim. He had rarely been so angry.

  When the Auglinger came he stood for a moment looking at her. Oh, the wide, soft body, the flat, doughy face! He began to talk.

  "You couldn't offer to surrender to her freely, could you? To throw down the glove honestly. That would have been a matter of principle. No, you couldn't do that. You had to try to make money out of it."

  Her fingers had gone to her mouth; she looked at him with scared, stupid eyes, and then away again.

  "Such a little bit of money," Bonnar continued. "We heard most of your conversation, you know. The listener heard something about your robe. Are you trying to sell them your robe?"

  She winced. The shot had gone home. Had Caroline Auglinger really tried to include that too, in the deal she had wanted to make with the partisans of Leaf?

  "Oh, I believe you would," Bonnar went on cruelly. "You'd sell your robe to the other queen, if you thought she'd pay for it. 'For sale, one robe, beautifully embroidered? Suitable for Green Queen?' Is that it? You'd sell your—"

  A bell on Bonnar's desk rang clamorously. A red light had begun to flash. Hastily he jammed the phone to his ear.

  After a few words his face grew dark. "Yes, yes," he said. "Certainly—Yes."

  He hung up. For a second he stood with his hands clapsed together behind his back, his head lowered. "She's appeared above stairs," he said to nobody in particular.

  The Auglinger gave a muffled gasp. Bonnar looked at her keenly. "You're to get dressed," he told her, "as quickly as possible, but carefully, in the queen's robes. Remember what I've tried to teach you. When you're dressed, the doctor will give you an injection of benz. Then you're to go to the Great Square.

  "No, listen. I'm going with you. I'll have a receiver close behind your ear, and I'll tell you what to say and do. I'll also have a gun behind your back.

  "Give a good performance, Mrs. Auglinger. Because if you give a bad one, I'll shoot you. I, or one of the men with me. We'll have nothing to lose by your death. Do you understand?"

  Her face had gone pasty gray. She lowered her head. She would not meet his eyes. "Yes," she said.

  They rode in a belocar to the edge of the square. Bonnar had had a small shot of benz himself. It pleased him to find that he didn't especially need it. As they shot through the yellow-lit night he felt an emotion that was almost exhilaration. After so much waiting and suspense, such nervous, breath-held maneuvering, it was a relief to have the prospect of action at last. However this night ended, the issue would be resolved at last.

  The Great Square had always been something of an anomaly in Shalom. Presumably it had been built because the designer of the capital city had felt that the captital was incomplete without a great open-air meeting place. But the modest assemblages of Uppers and Body-servants that had been held in it had never filled it; its white durastone had always looked a little empty and forlorn. Now in the glare of the yellow floodlights not only the short flights of steps around the square were packed with people, but almost the entire floor. Volunteers (partisans of Leaf?) kept pushing people back from the tiny raised area at one end that was the speaker's dais. Even while Bonnar watched, the defensive line bulged and broke, and black dots spilled out over the pavement. But a moment later the line had reformed itself further out in the square.

  There was a speaker on the dais. From the strange loose gestures and rough, unintoned voice Bonnar guessed that it was Odic, even before he picked him up in the field glasses. Bonnar's party was too far from the dais for him to get more than a word now and then of Odic's speech, but the KG seemed to be talking about his childhood in the glass cage, his misery, his isolation, his despair. It seemed a strange topic on which to address a crowd that was waiting for a sight of the Green Queen, but perhaps there was some reason in it. Many people on Viridis, Lowers especially, had felt the emotions Odic described. No KG would ever admit that his aseptic rearing in the leaded glass of the cage could have been motived by a mistaken regard for his welfare, a desire to protect him completely from radioactivity. One and all, KGs were passionately convinced that they had been treated as they had out of gloating, sadistic cruelty.

  Caroline Auglinger plucked at Bonnar's sleeve. "What are we going to do?" she asked in a thready whisper.

  There was no reason why she shouldn't know. "We're going into that house," Bonnar said. He indicated a darkly looming structure behind them. It was distant almost the length of the square from the dais where Odic stood. "Do you see that topmost balcony? You and I are going out on that."

  "Oh," the Auglinger said.

  Bonnar sent men into the house. There were voices, protests, soft cries. Once there was a thud like the noise a club makes hitting flesh. In a little while one of Bonnar's men came back to say that the house had been evacuated.

  Bonnar and anti-Leaf went into the house, up, out on the balcony. At this height they could hear Odic's voice much more clearly, though the crowd seemed black and anonymous as ants. The door behind them from the balcony into the house was guar
ded by Bonnar's men. They would help, too, when the moment came.

  Odic seemed to be getting near the end of his speech. "I felt that I had lost my soul," he boomed. "I was desperate." He made a wide, flapping gesture. KGs always suffered from impaired space perception. "I became a spy for the government. I hated everybody. And then I found my queen, the Green Queen. Queen Leaf.

  "How can I tell you how it feels to get your soul back, to be human? I won't attempt to describe it. You shall see. Queen Leaf!"

  He had finished. He clambered down awkwardly from the dais. Nobody else moved. The dais stood vacant. Then a woman appeared on it.

  Where had she come from? It was stagecraft, of course; Leaf, after all, had been an apprentice in Veridical. Bonnar had a trick or two up his sleeve himself that he had taken over from Veridical. But it had been wonderfully managed, very effective. Almost like a miracle.

  The woman, of course, was Leaf. But was woman quite the right word? It was odd what an impression of majesty, almost divinity, she gave. Bonnar fumbled with his field glasses and brought her pale face up close. He was relieved to find how much like the old Leaf she still was.

  She was smiling a little. She stood quite motionless for a moment. Bonnar had time to notice how simple her green robe was, how unlike the heavy impressiveness of what Caroline had embroidered for herself. Then Leaf began to speak.

  It was a simple speech. Afterwards, Bonnar couldn't remember the words she had used. She told them that they were unhappy, that she had come to help them, that she would lower the barrier. They need be afraid no longer. She was the Green Queen. She would give them the fruit of her tree to eat.

  Yes, it was a simple speech.

  The thousands in the square were utterly silent. People seemed to have stopped breathing. Then a clear voice on the edge of the crowd—it must have been a child's voice, it was so young and pure—said, "Are you really the Green Queen?"

  "Yes," answered Leaf.