Страница 30 из 42
They tried to run away from evil, but we, we’re uprooting it—getting rid of it, piece by piece!”
Haber’s paeans of triumph made Orr uneasy, and he didn’t listen to them; instead, he had searched his memory and had found in it no address that had been delivered on a battlefield in Gettysburg, nor any man known to history named Martin Luther King. But such matters seemed a small price to pay for the complete retroactive abolition of racial prejudice, and he had said nothing.
But now, never to have known a woman with brown skin, brown skin and wiry black hair cut very short so that the elegant line of the skull showed like the curve of a bronze vase—no, that was wrong. That was intolerable. That every soul on earth should have a body the color of a battleship: no!
That’s why she’s not here, he thought. She could not have been born gray. Her color, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixed nature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people’s world. She had not been born.
He had, though. He could be born into any world. He had no character. He was a lump of clay, a block of uncarved wood.
And Dr. Haber: he had been born. Nothing could prevent him. He only got bigger at every reincarnation.
During that terrifying day’s journey from the cabin to embattled Portland, when they were bumping over a country road in the wheezing Hertz Steamer, Heather had told him that she had tried to suggest that he dream an improved Haber, as they had agreed. And since then Haber had at least been candid with Orr about his manipulations. Though candid was not the right word; Haber was much too complex a person for candor. Layer after layer might peel off the onion and yet nothing be revealed but more onion.
That peeling off of one layer was the only real change in him, and it might not be due to an effective dream, but only to changed circumstances. He was so sure of himself now that he had no need to try to hide his purposes, or deceive Orr; he could simply coerce him. Orr had less chance than ever of getting away from him. Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment was now known as Personal Welfare Control, but it had the same legal teeth in it, and no lawyer would dream of bringing a patient’s complaint against William Haber. He was an important man, an extremely important man. He was the Director of HURAD, the vital center of the World Pla
In this light, he had remained completely true to the man Orr had first met, jovial and remote, in the dingy office in Willamette East Tower under the mural photograph of Mount Hood. He had not changed; he had simply grown.
The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more. As there was no visible limit to the power Haber wielded through Orr’s dreams, so there was no end to his determination to improve the world.
A passing Alien jostled Orr slightly in the crowd on Morrison Mall, and apologized tonelessly from its raised left elbow. The Aliens had soon learned not to point at people, finding it dismayed them. Orr looked up, startled; he had almost forgotten about the Aliens, ever since the crisis on April Fools’ Day.
In the present state of affairs—or continuum, as Haber persisted in calling it—he now recalled, the Alien landing had been less of a disaster for Oregon, NASA, and the Air Force. Instead of inventing their translator-computers hastily under a rain of bombs and napalm, they had brought them with them from the Moon, and had flown about before they landed, broadcasting their peaceful intention, apologizing for the War in Space, which had all been a mistake, and asking for instructions. There had been alarm, of course, but no panic. It had been almost touching to hear the toneless voices, on every band of the radio and every TV cha
The only thing left of that terrible first of April, in fact, seemed to be the return of Mount Hood to active-volcano status. No bomb had hit it, for no bombs had fallen, this time. It had simply waked up. A long, gray-brown plume of smoke drifted northward from it now. Zigzag and Rhododendron had gone the way of Pompeii and Herculaneum. A fumarole had opened up recently near the tiny, old crater in Mount Tabor Park, well within the city limits. People in the Mount Tabor area were moving out to the thriving new suburbs of West Eastmont, Chestnut Hills Estates, and Su
Orr bought a tasteless plateful of fish and chips with African peanut sauce at a crowded counter-restaurant; while he ate it he thought sorrowfully, well, once I stood her up at Dave’s, and now she’s stood me up.