The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 11

not realize he was concealing the full details of Peregrine and Charity’s history. The lesson might be, never protect those you love from the truth. I had learned much. I had always known that Father had an unhappy life; I had learned enough from Israel to begin to see that Father had, and had made himself have, a crippled life.

The dumbwaiter was cleared. We were spotted loafing. We scooted back to the triteness of hauling sweetmeats. The rush of guests swept us into a pace that did not abate for hours. I could only smile at Israel as we passed each other with trays. When I did get a chance to think again, it was because Rinse ordered me to the wine cellar to deliver a special key. I weaved through the Great Hall toward the back stairway, and thus enjoyed my first close look at the ball.

The crowd dazzled me, the men in their tapered black coats and brilliant white linen and the women in all colors and cuts of gown. They danced stately waltzes around me. They seemed well loved, well pleased. There was a particular group—taller, healthier, more arrogant—that I guessed were Americans. This was my first exposure to what Israel called the ruling class of my paternal people, so I set a long course to pass by them. The women were diverse, some fair like most of Sweden, others dark and more alluring to me. It is true that one young woman did fascinate me to the point that I stopped to study her as the crowd separated between us. She was sleek, large-boned, tall, olive-skinned, and had thick black hair down to her waist, which she had filled with combs. She had a pouty doll’s face, black almond-shaped eyes, with a large mouth and a long smooth neck, like a swan’s. I thought her beauty itself. It is an image that I have treasured all my life, and though it does not replace my last picture of Cleopatra, it remains supreme.

The dancers closed about me, and I was forced on. The wild smell of the gathered disoriented me. I stumbled against a side table. I knocked off several glasses, a flower arrangement, and a pile of papers. In the mess was a blue booklet like the one I had seen Peregrine grasp. It was entitled “Meet the Laureates.” I made my escape with it. It had finally come to me, slow-witted youth, that Israel had identified Charity Bentham as a guest of honor at the ball.

She was a Nobel Prize winner. I found the entry, which I did not have time to read until after I delivered the key to the King’s retainer in the wine cellar and been told to get quickly back to my post. I was intimidated, rushed through the service corridors, missing many turns. I thought myself clumsy. I was actually overexcited by my discovery. It was luck that brought me to the lift bank—good luck or bad, I am not sure—and as I waited for the lift, I read.

Charity Bentham was born and raised in Chicago, in the American Middle West. Her father, Increase, was a Presbyterian minister; her mother, Dorothea, was a professional choir singer. Her three younger sisters, Constance, Chastity, Hope, were married and were either attorneys or business executives. Her baby brother, Trinity, was deceased. Charity Bentham graduated from Yale University’s law school and had a doctorate in economic science from the University of Chicago, where she was at the time a member of the faculty. Her list of publications was very long. Her books included Brave New Benthamites, which won an honor I cannot recall, and The Pleasure and Pain Principle in World Markets. Her most famous work was The Greatest Good, which seemed to have won every major award and to have been translated into every major language.

Charity Bentham was a celebrity, the hostess of a television series called The Twenty-First Century; and there was a paragraph about the United States government committees that she had either served upon or chaired. The committee I recall most ironically was The President’s Special Commission on Resettlement Crises.

And Charity Bentham’s relationship with the American government was not simple. She was married to an architect and builder named Cesare Furore, the brother of a former senator from the Middle West who had been nominated as his party’s candidate for the presidency of the American Republic. Cesare Furore was described as the developer of futuristic urban communities around the world; the most famous was in Mexico—called Cleopatrium.

There was mention of Charity Bentham being descended, through her German-American mother, from the Royal Family of Great Britain. Of course, there was also prominent mention of her being descended, through her father, from the family of Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth-century English philosopher.

Also, Charity Bentham was the mother of one daughter, Cleopatra, and the foster mother of several Spanish-American sons.

Charity Bentham was said to be either the first or second woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize exclusively, and was by far the youngest woman, at forty-four, to be so honored. The Nobel Prize selection committee citation read:

“In awarding Professor Bentham the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, the committee cites her tireless work assisting the developed nations in dealing humanely with less fortunate nations, and her profound and far-reaching contribution to international harmony.”

If my memory is correct, this quotation is irony to an appalling extreme. Charity Bentham, as I was to learn, was the philosopher in the late twentieth century who most concerned herself with the despair of the vanquished, the outlanded, and the exiled. And yet she did so as a privileged member of the community that cast out the unwanted. I shall not explain further here. There is a story to tell that makes my opinion come alive in infamy and reversal. But I feel I must emphasize that nothing about what that woman did and said to achieve her Nobel Prize is unimportant to my life, and to my