Capitol

"A brilliant stroke," Locken Bishop said. "Do you know what it means? If we qualify, we can sleep for five years at a time and wake up for five years at a time. We'll live for another century beyond what we would have otherwise."

"But will we qualify?" Bergen asked.

His parents laughed uproariously. "It's pure merit, and the boy asks if his family will qualify! Of course we'll qualify, Bergen!"

Bergen was quietly angry, as he usually was with his parents these days. "Why?" he asked.

Locken caught the edge in his son's tone. He turned authoritarian, and pointed at Bergen's chest. "Because your father provides jobs for fifty thousand men and women. Because if I went out of business half this planet would reel under the impact. And because I pay more taxes than all but fifty other men in the Empire."

"Because you're rich, in other words," Bergen said.

"Because I'm rich!" Locken answered angrily.

"Then, it, you don't mind, I'll wait to go on somec until I qualify by my merit, and not by my father's."

Selly laughed. "If I waited until I qualified on my own, I'd never get on somec!"

Bergen looked at her with loathing. "And if there were any justice in the world, you never would."

It surprised Bergen, but neither his mother nor his father said anything at all. It was Dal who spoke to him, later that night, as the two of them sat together putting finishing touches on art pieces-- Dal, a miniature, in oils; Bergen, a massive, almost mural-sized portrait of the houseson the estate as he thought they ought to be, with the house much smaller and the barns large enough to be of some use. And his whiptrees were beautiful.

Weeks later, Bergen slipped off and paid the examination fee and tested high enough in basic intelligence, creativity, and ambition that he was given the right to go on somec for three years and off for five years. He would be a sleeper. And he did it without money.

"Congratulations, son," his father said, more than a little proud at his son's independence.

"I notice you've scheduled it so you wake up two years before us. Time to play around, I imagine," Selly said, looking and sounding more bitter than ever.

Dal said only one thing when he heard Bergen was going on somec. "Free me first."

Bergen looked startled.

"You promised," Dal reminded him.

"But I'm not of age. I can't for a year."

"And do you think your father will? Or that your mother would let him? My contract lets them forbid me to paint, or lets them own anything I produce. They could make me clean the stables. They could make me cut trees with my bare hands. And you won't be back for three years."

Bergen was genuinely distressed. "What can I do?"

"Persuade your father to give me my freedom. Or stay awake until you come of age and can give me my freedom yourself."

"I can't forfeit the somec. You have to use it when you get it. They only have so many openings a year."

"Then persuade your father."

It took a month of constant badgering before Locken Bishop finally agreed to release Dal from his contract. And the contract had a stipulation. "Seventy-five percent of your income above room and board comes to us for five years or until you have paid us eighty thousand."

"Father," Bergen protested, "that's gouging. I would have freed him eleven months from now anyway. And eighty thousand is ten times what you paid for his contract in the first place-- and you didn't pay it to him."

"I've also fed him for twenty years."

"And he worked for it."

"Worked?" Selly interrupted. "He just played. With you."

Dal spoke, softly enough that they quieted down to hear him. "If I give you that, I won't be able to get enough money to take the somec merit examination."

Locken set his jaw. "That makes no difference. It's that or you stay under contract."

Bergen put his face in his hands. Selly smiled. And Dal nodded. "But I want it in writing."

The words were soft, but the effect was electric. Locken rose to his feet, towering over Dal, who was seated. "What did you say, boy? Were you saying you expected a Bishop to make a written contract with a bastard contract worker?"

"I want it in writing," Dal said softly, meeting Locken's fury with equanimity.

"You have my spoken word, and that's enough!"

"And who are the witnesses? Your son, who'll be asleep for three years, and your wife, who can't be trusted alone with a fifteen-year-old servant boy."

Selly gasped. Locken turned red, but stepped back from Dal. And Bergen was horrified. "What?" he asked.

"I want it in writing," Dal said.

"I want you out of this house," Locken answered, but his voice had a new emotion in it-- hurt and betrayal. Of course, Bergen thought: if Dal really meant that, and Mother certainly isn't denying it, of course Father is hurt.

But Dal looked up at Locken with a smile and said, "Did you think that territory where you trod wbuld always belong to you?"

Now Bergen refused to understand. "What does he mean, father? What is Dal saying?"

"Nothing," Locken insisted, too quickly.

Dal refused to be stopped. "Your father," he said to Bergen, "plays the strangest games with five-year-old boys. I always urged him to invite you to join in, but he never would."

The uproar didn't die down for an hour. Locken kept uselessly pounding his left fist against his thigh, as Selly gleefully attacked him to take the opprobrium for her own dalliances from her shoulders. Only Bergen could honestly grieve. "All those years, Dal. This was happening all those years?"

"To you I was a friend, Bergen," Dal said, forgetting to say sir, "but to them I was a servant."

"You never told me."

"What could you have done?"

And when Dal left at the end of the hour he had the agreement in writing.

When Bergen woke from his first time under somec, he learned from a kindly man in the Sleeproom that his father had died only a few days after Bergen had left home, and his mother had been murdered by a lover two years later. The largest estate on Crove, besides the emperor's, was now Bergen's.

"I don't want it."

"Along with it, you should know," said the kindly man, "comes a five years under and one year up somec privilege."

"I'd only have to live one year in every six?"

"It's the Empire's way of expressing the value of certain large forces in the economy."

"But I want to paint."

"Paint then. But unless you want to visit your parents' graves, the managers of your businesses are doing a remarkably good job, according to the government auditors, and you can go back under to complete your two years of entitlement."

"I have someone I want to see first."

"As you wish. We can put you back under any time within the next three days. After that, you have to complete your year up, and you will have lost two years of sleep."

Bergen spent the first two days trying to find Dal Vouls. He finally succeeded when he remembered that Dal would still be bound by the contract with his father-- the executors of the estate were able to locate him because he was sending in occasional draughts to complete the seventy-five-percent clause.

Dal opened the door and his lice lit up with immediate recognition. "Bergen," he said. "Come in. It's been three years, then, hasn't it?"

"I guess so. Dal, it feels like yesterday to me. It was yesterday. How have you been doing?"

Dal pointed to the walls of the flat. Forty or fifty paintings and drawings hung there. For twenty minutes there was little conversation except "This; I like this" and "How did you manage that?" And then Bergen, thoroughly awed, sat on the floor (there was no furniture) and they talked.

"How is it going?"

"Sales are fairly slow. I don't have a name yet. But people do buy. And the best of it is, the emperor has decreed that all government offices are to be moved to Crove. Even the name of the planet is changing. To Capitol. It seems that if all goes well, every damn planet's going to orbit politically around Crove. And that means customers. It means people who know art instead of the military and commercial bastards who've had a stranglehold on money on this planet since time began."