The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card Page A

rough bark felt good on his hand; the needles pricked him but he needed the pain. Needed the pain so he could sleep, with his mind newly crowded with memories of what he never did, and what he had just done. His mother was not sane—he knew that better than anyone, having seen directly how she lost touch with reality, how she lived in the constant hope of Homer Worthing coming home. But how was he any less mad himself, with the vision of his dying brothers before his eyes? Why do I remember it this way? Why can't I see it as a story that happened to someone else? Why does my mother's face blend so easily into these memories? He could not separate what he knew he had done from what he knew he had not done. If he could shrug off Radamand's acts, then would he lose the guilt for what he had done to his mother? He was not willing to do that. Painful as it was, what he had done, he had done, and would not give up his own past, even at the cost of keeping someone else's. Better the madness of keeping Radamand within me than the worse madness of losing Jason.
    So he slept with the prickling needles clasped lightly in one hand, the other hand resting on the bark of the tree. I am what I have done, he said to himself as he dozed off. But he awoke saying, I was what I did. I am what I will do.
    It was a whole day's walk, up the endless stairs, not daring to palm the public elevators, along the corridors, taking a slide-walk when he could. He reached the Fleet recruiting station just before closing.
    “I want to join,” said Jase.
    The recruiter looked at him coldly. “You're little and you're young.”
    “Thirteen. I'm old enough.”
    “Parents' consent?”
    “Ward of the state.” And without giving his name, he punched in his personal code, calling his data into the air above the recruiter's desk.
    The recruiter frowned at the name. Worthing was a name not soon to be forgotten. “What, planning to follow in your father's footsteps?” he asked.
    Jase said nothing. He could see the man wished him no ill.
    “Good scores, strong aptitudes. Your father was a great starpilot, before.”
    So there were other memories of Homer Worthing. Jase probed, and found something that surprised him. The world that Homer destroyed had refused him permission to draw water from their oceans. They had kept him there until the Fleet could catch him. They were not wholly innocent. The Fleet did not hate Homer as the rest of the universe did. Jase had grown so used to being ashamed of who he was that he did not know what to do with this new information, except to hope there would be a place for him in the Fleet. Perhaps, at last, he had a patrimony.
    But the recruiter only shook his head. “Sorry. I just applied you, and you've been rejected.”
    “Why?” asked Jase.
    “Not because of your father. Code Nine. Something abut your aptitudes. I'm not allowed to tell you more.”
    He told Jase more whether he meant to or not. Jase was being refused entry into the Fleet because of his scores at school. He was too bright to be admitted to the Fleet without consent from the Office of Education. Which he would never get, since Hartman Torrock would have to approve him.
    “Jason Worthing,” said a man behind him. “I've been looking for you.”
    Jason ran. The man behind him was one of Mother's Little Boys, and it was arrest he had in mind.
    At first the crowds in the corridors helped him. They were moving quickly, and Jase could dodge among them, moving faster than his pursuer, and always out of sight. Gradually the man chasing him was joined by more, until a half dozen were working their way through the crowd. He could not keep track of them all. It was too hard, to look out of their eyes and try to guess, from what they were seeing, where they were.
    They caught him when the crowd was slow, for then he was too small and weak to force his way through. His size was no longer an advantage, the Swipe was no help to him, and he found himself sprawled on