Day by Night Page 3

  “Now you do shock me,” said Vyen, with mild disapproval. “I’m to be woven into this undisciplined dream, am I?”

  “And look who else.”

  “I perceive Casrus very well. Indeed, that figure is virtually libelous. What if he found out? He’s as much a prince as you or I. He might be insulted.”

  “True, House Klarn is even richer in technology than our own, but not so noble in status. It’s produced no Fabulasts, no technologist of any type.”

  “If Casrus Klarn entered this chamber and saw you’d made him part of your drama for the rabble, next became angry and demanded I fight a duel with him for his honor’s sake, I presume you’d be sorry.”

  “I would laugh very much,” said Vitra. “So would you. He’d only seem a dolt if he did such a thing.”

  “The image is, however, uncomfortably like him.”

  This was true. Casrus, who practiced daily with fire-sword and knife, who exercised in chariots along the subplanetary concrete tracks of the Klave, was built much on the dynamic lines of the second male image: Ceedres Yune Thar. The structure of the face was as similar as the physique. Libel, and to spare.

  “He’ll never know,” said Vitra. “Only the Fabulast is privy to her own fantasy. That I admit you to the room is a concession. And how pretty you are!”

  “Yes, I am pretty,” Vyen admitted. “Casrus’ fist, sword or gun might make me less so.”

  “I repeat, only the Fabulast has access to her fantasy as of right, except for the worms who watch the drama played out on the screen in their recreation area, and know nothing about aristocrats, either what they do or what they look like.”

  “Casrus, however, is the one aristocrat they might recognize, considering his constant forays into the Subterior.”

  “Never. See how different I’ve made him, all gold, and so arrogant. Besides, when the worms watch the Fabulism screens they’re hypnotized by the machines and forget afterward almost all they saw. Pathetic worms.”

  “Such contempt for your audience.”

  “What else? The rabble crawl about on the surface in their airsuits, or through the mines, gathering fuel and minerals to supply the Klave. It’s their destiny. My destiny is to mitigate their vile lives with visual stories. I don’t have to love them. I’m content to serve them.”

  “To serve yourself.”

  “Moralizing precociousness doesn’t become you, younger brother.”

  “Oh, excuse me.”

  Vitra consumed the last of her alcohol stick, and threw the holder on the ground, from which the machine would shortly clear it.

  “Well,” she sighed, languidly stretching herself, “the poor worms must wait for the next installment of the fantasy. My service is over for this Jate. I have,” she added, “included the ideas of Jate and Maram in the hot desert world of my Fabulism. It seemed reasonable that a place where the sun never sets should have similar sleeping customs to this place where the sun never rises. I’ve put in jokes about science, too. The hot-sider imbeciles of the story believe gods gave them their science, and pray to them through round golden globes. They think our side of the planet is hell, and have a myth about a garden paradise. We abandoned such indulgences long ago.”

  “Vitra,” interrupted Vyen, “we’re to dine at house Klastu. Are we going to insult the stupid Olvia by being late again?”

  Vitra linked her arm with his. They were almost of a height, very nearly twins.

  “Why not? Stupid Olvia is also in my story.”

  “In other words, you’ve been singularly uninventive. The least inventive Fabulast the Klave has ever known.”

  “In other words, I’ve been economical. Besides secretly displaying my contempt for all houses of the Klave.”

  Brother and sister laughed and snaked out of the chamber through the opening door.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Klave, unlike the Yunea of Vitra’s invention, was not constructed in a planet-conforming circle. (She compared Klave and Yunea now with slight irascibility. If she had deliberately caricatured certain of her acquaintances, yet she had been original in such items as the Yunea and its tenets, manners and customs. The abbreviated names, for example, were solely her idea, the style of clothing, the furniture and fittings of the fantasy. All these she had been inspired to conjure out of nothing.)

  Beyond the chamber of the clear dome, a lift dropped down to a terrace that gave on the subsurface Residencia, the cold-side aristocrats’ city. This was as different as might be from the rolling parched splendor of Vitra’s Yunean estates. Seen from the terrace, the Residencia was a mathematically cultured lowland of concrete, white metal and crystal. Here and there hills arose, but constructed or hewn, each crowned by its mechanized complex, a diadem of bowls, pylons, bridgework. Indeed, the chamber of the dome was part of just such a complex, situated on just such a man-made cliff, Rise Iu, or forty-six. But Iu, as was occasionally obvious in other of the crowning complexes, possessed a shaft that passed straight up and through the overhead ceiling which contained the underground city. The chamber of the dome gave a direct view of the chill discouraging un-sky of space. Here, in the Residencia, everything was laved by the intensifying lamps, a glow hardly less uncompromising than that of the stars, and definitely no warmer.

  Frosty and glittering, the Residencia appeared, and the roadway which spiraled down from Rise Iu to enter it had the gleam of polished ice itself. It was fashionable among the aristocrats to dress themselves to match the state of their inner and outer country, in grays, whites, blacks and silvers. Yet the wretched workers of the Subterior, the cold-side’s lower-class multitude, were fed gaudy colors and gaudy deeds by the Fabulasts. And the workers’ horrid functional hovels, cold and generally comfortless, were often startlingly splashed with gouts of carmine and russet plastic dye, bought in place of spirits or even food.

  Unlike the chariots Vitra had willfully designed for the invented hot-siders, the Klovez vehicle which stood awaiting brother and sister had no mechanical animals. It was raised on enormous air-runners, and thrust forward with a smooth-nosed prow and a curved windshield, from which decorative white streamers floated. Very definitely it was not the sort of chariot employed by those taking exercise. Such a transport would be a mere primitive sling and rail of steel set between big wheels, and drawn by teams of large savage dogga. Probably Vitra Klovez would introduce such dogga eventually into her Fabulast drama. At the moment she was bursting with inventiveness; notions of beasts, situations and geography whirled across her mind whenever she considered her task. But probably inventiveness would flag at some point.

  There were ten other Fabulasts among the aristocrats. Their function was traditional and altruistic, their feelings on the matter no longer either. The “worms” of the Subterior who ceaselessly toiled to maintain the princes of the Klave were despised by all, possibly even by themselves, and scarcely considered human.

  The chariot car skimmed down the polished road with a panting of its runners, streamers flailing and tiny bells jingling. Its speed was the same as that which Vitra meant to give the hunting chariots of Hirz.

  Buildings flew by, silvery wedges, mechanized and humming globules a hundred feet high, and the intermittent palaces, perched in strange rock gardens. The car passed near a flash of gem-studded pedestrians about a radiant blue façade—some theater or arena of exercise. (And Vitra wondered briefly if she should have given her created solar culture more entertainments—somehow she had not envisaged many, save in the decadent area of their Slum.) The car swerved by a grotto of scintillant ice, dashed by other conveyances, stationary or in flight, and over a bridge of wildly scrolled black iron, under which swarmed a multitude of robot and human traffic.

  A moment more, and they had reached the gates of Klastu.

  It was now Maram, or J’ara for those keeping it, but no clocks had sung in the Residencia. E
ach aristocrat who cared to carried his own chronometer, along with fiddle-toys, mind games in miniature plastivory boxes, crystal-cinched alcoholic lollipops and other functional jewelry.

  Klastu’s gates folded aside, and the car ran on.

  An avenue of carved trees, hung with fruits of palest yellow luminex, ceased at a portico. The oval entrance was quite unlike the pillared porch of Vel Thaidis’ palace, save in the matter of its sliding doors.

  The Residencia was artificially heated and filled with breathable atmosphere throughout, yet within its living sectors and their immediate surroundings, this warmth and freshness were concentrated. A tepid scented breeze blew out of the house, followed by a shiny black robotic beetle of enormous size. Klastu had caught the mode of insectile servants. This weird beast now conducted Klastu’s latest arrivals into the lift and hence into the salon.

  Fountains of gauzily colored oxygen were playing, making several of the party lightheaded and frivolous. The ceiling of the salon was a fake of the space-sky, jet black, yet alleviated by tinges of blue and pink in the fire of its “stars.” Sometimes a comet would appear to rush over, and the salon would resound to little screams and exclamations, as walls, floors and guests were bathed momentarily in brilliant rose or white.

  “What a boring novelty,” remarked Vyen as, the instant they entered, the apartment blushed violently in one of these comet displays. He accepted a black drink from an airborne Klastu beetle, droning on latticed wings. Vitra had prattled about humanized robots being, in her fantasy, the height of cultural elegance. At least Klastu had spared him that. But here was another comet, and everything cometically blanched. “I must remember to tell Olvia it’s her most cunning idea yet, and that she should have been a Fabulast.”

  But Vitra did not upbraid him. Vyen glanced about and saw why. Her attention was totally engaged by the presence of Casrus Klarn at the far end of the room.

  “Now usually he shuns such social events as Olvia’s,” said Vyen. “Maybe Fate, in which we, in our sophistication, no longer believe, has brought Casrus here for the sole purpose of having me confess to him your crime.”

  “What crime? An image called Ceedres—”

  “You should not,” said Vyen severely, “stare at the man so fixedly. He hasn’t any time for you. You know it. Your gorgeousness and unsurpassed wit somehow evade the mark. Of course, you put him in your drama in order to indulge yourself. Love-sick, dear sister?”

  Vitra jerked about like a spitting cat, the last of which species was otherwise long extinct from the Klave. This was not the first duel between them concerning Casrus, whom Vyen viewed with a jokingly maleficent dislike born of old unadmitted envy. Vitra, attracted and unable to gain a purchase on the cold outer slope of Casrus’ regard, viewed him similarly, her feelings, however, tempered by a wish to ensnare and a constant surprise that she could not.

  “Oh, snarl away,” said Vyen. “I suppose, in the story, Ceedres is also love-sick for your Val Thaidis, who closely resembles you, and is patently a sublimation of yourself. But in reality, we all know he prefers his little Subterior girl, the interesting Temal.”

  Vitra extended her silver-enameled nails, and raked Vyen’s hand. His drink slopped and his mouth twisted for a second in the ugliest of lines. Then he had seamlessly unpleated his rage, and appealed with smiles to bystanders, those aristocrats as inquisitive and prone to vitriolics as himself. “My sister has the Fabulast’s inventive temperament,” he said.

  “Vitra the cat,” remarked Shedri Klur, manifesting at her side. “What should we do to make you sheath your claws and purr?”

  “Vitra is full of her hours as a storyteller,” said Olvia, soothing Vyen’s injury. “She isn’t yet aware that no Fabulast is ever original and therefore has no right to temperament. The talents of the Subterior, now, the actors and creators who entertain us—they have some right to it, and display none.”

  “Ultimately,” said Shedri, “the rabble are always far better mannered than we. But perhaps we should ask the depressing Casrus about it.”

  Eyes, gilded or painted or pasted with glitter, darted toward Casrus and away.

  “I can’t guess,” said Olvia, “why he accepted my invitation. If I had realized he would, I would never have sent it.”

  “Of course,” said one of Shedri’s female cousins, leaning weightlessly upon Vyen, “the Subterines are definitely healthier than we. The rigors of their existence pluck out the weaklings, the remainder are tough and enduring. While we—”

  “Live into our three hundreds,” said Vyen, and drew off her earring with his teeth.

  Vitra turned her back and stole instead upon Casrus, still in a cat mood. As she approached she eyed him disdainfully, assembling her defenses in readiness, for it was true, he had never had much time for her or those of her persuasion. Among Vitra’s acquaintances, Casrus was scorned. He would not waste a Jate, but must use them all. Yet he had offered nothing to society, beyond peculiar acts carried out on behalf of the Subterior. No, he would not waste a Jate, but he would waste his robots and the machines of his house and his entitlement, laboring to ease the Jates and Marams of the working rabble. A hopeless enterprise, plainly. As was his absurd employment of mortal workers rather than machines in the Klarn palace, which was only an excuse to feed and clothe them. It was said he strove to educate them too, tutor them via mechanical tutors as only the children of the aristocratic matrixes were ever tutored. What good could such teaching bring the rabble? As for Casrus’ ward, or mistress, or whatever she was, a girl rescued from the Subterior when the Law had sentenced her to exposure on the frozen airless planetary surface as punishment for murder—

  Despite his eccentricity, Casrus Klarn was a tall, unusually well-made man, handsome, and with beautiful hair and eyes. To girls of Vitra’s mold, therefore, fair game—which had proved allusive.

  “Happy J’ara, Casrus,” said Vitra.

  Ensid Klastu, to whom Casrus had been speaking, had moved off. Casrus stood alone by a mosaic wall, whose tones were like the chips of a rainbow never seen but in pictures. Frankly, Casrus had been the exact model for Ceedres Yune Thar, all but for coloring, expression and Ceedres’ trick of facial mimicry. This last Vitra had borrowed from an occasional knack of her brother’s.

  “May your J’ara also be happy,” said Casrus gravely, looking at Vitra from impenetrable blue eyes.

  If you knew, she thought, and for a moment felt a false power over him, because she had made him one of the puppets of her dance.

  “How are your adopted worms?” she asked now, deliberately sparring.

  “The men and women in my house are well enough.”

  Not a hint, not a clue of anger or embarrassment to guide her, for her to fasten on.

  “And the luscious Temal. How is she?”

  “Your concern for my people is most affecting.”

  The edge, unexpected, stung.

  “Your people, Casrus? The workers exist to serve all the princely houses. How can it be you’re able to abduct so many from their ordained duties? Has no one ever complained of you to the Computers of the Law?”

  “Not yet,” he said. But now he smiled a little, amused by her threatening tone.

  How she wished this man were accessible to her. She would like to lead him about by a chain of finest steel.

  “And you have disturbed poor Ensid,” she murmured, smiling also to demonstrate an unreal camaraderie between them. “What did you say to him?”

  “We were discussing the Subterior.”

  “Of course. Casrus, you have no tact. But such breadth of thought. You should be a Fabulast, as I am.”

  “I don’t consider it my role,” said Casrus slowly, “to pour soporifics into the brains of the working class of the Klave. They need to understand why they are in pain, not to be drugged against feeling any.”

  Vitra was affronted by his scathing ref
erence to her new skills. And suddenly alarmed.

  “Their destiny is to labor. If they refused—”

  “I imagine we might be somewhat inconvenienced.”

  “Are you suggesting that the princely class should toil in their stead?”

  “Why not?” he inquired. “But no, that’s not precisely my aim. I conclude our machines might undertake such work. At one time, I’m certain that they did, and that no human was forced to break his back, his lungs and his soul in this way. Our technology has slipped, I’m not sure why, some oversight in the past, or merely our own laziness.”

  Vitra was not flattered that he offered his theories to her. He would offer them to anyone. She wished she might fascinate him. She wished he would speak to her of herself and not of others. She had been in love with him, a sort of love, selfish, but nevertheless desperate and quite hurtful, for some years. Other men laid themselves gracefully at her feet. Casrus, who was perhaps four years her elder, glanced at her as if at a troublesome child.

  “You know none of us will listen to you,” she said softly and winningly. “We’re all too mindless and too afraid of losing what we have.”

  She was pleased to see he seemed puzzled by her insight and her abrupt veracity. She was not a fool, but she was young.

  “I asked Ensid for the loan of a machine,” said Casrus. “A tunnel has collapsed in the Nentta mine. My own robots are there, but not enough. I was there earlier myself.”

  “The Subterior,” said Vitra. “Do you speak only of that to Temal?”

  “I try not to speak of it to her. She grieves sufficiently for her people.”

  “Yet doesn’t, I assume, desire to return to them? Nor you. Your sad worms are trapped in a tunnel. And here you stand, waiting for Olvia’s probably very silly dinner. Oh, forgive me, Casrus. But why should I want to give up what I have to help them? I shall help them much better as their story-maker.”

  There had never been an instant when his eyes had revealed anything to her beyond courtesy, even the inner vehemence of his beliefs was visually held in check. Now he said calmly, “You are quite right, Vitra Klovez. I should not be here but overhead in Nentta. Thank you for your reprimand. Happy J’ara.”