The Collapsium

Appendix D Marlon

When Tamra was an eight-year-old princess and all but innumerate, her parents had sought an overqualified tutor, using the carrot of housing and stipend, plus full scholarship to any University in the solar system once the job was complete. Marlon, who’d been among the top mathematics students in North America’s preparatory schools, had answered the ad while summering in Tonga, and to his considerable surprise had been accepted for the job. His higher education plans had been indefinite anyway—many offers, none of them satisfactory—so it had been easy enough to put them on hold for two more years of sun and fun.

He hadn’t counted on the princess herself, though—her rages and giggles and thick-headed retrenchments, her merciless taunts, her utter lack of interest or respect or mathematical insight—and once his contract was up he’d been only too happy to light out for the Mexico City School of Physical Sciences to enjoy his eight-year free ride at the expense of Their Majesties Longo and Piatra Lutui.

He was as surprised as anyone when Piatra died, and Longo drank himself after her, and drowned, and Tamra was groomed to be not only queen of Tonga, but Queen of AH Things. He was even more surprised to note, in her increasingly high-profile network appearances, that his shrill, malicious little girl had become a wry and arch and frightfully alluring young lady, unfazed by crowds and cameras, unhindered by any appearance of self-consciousness or doubt. So when her post-coronation dick hunt was announced, he’d answered that ad and, to his even greater surprise, had been accepted for that job as well.

It hadn’t lasted long: just six months of fighting, of constant maneuvering, of discovering she hadn’t changed so much after all. And yet, that time Marlon hadn’t been so eager to leave; he’d had to be thrown bodily from the palace by a pair of dainty robots before he’d realized he could not, in fact, smooth things over this time. And oh, how he wanted to smooth things over! In exchange for her virginity, she’d apparently taken something from him, some essential ability to be satisfied without her.

At first he’d tried to ignore it—his status as deposed First Philander of Sol made him popular enough with the ladies— but as time wore on… In her search for the next Philander, Tamra seemed much more selective, appearing in public on the arms of many gentlemen but taking—it was rumored— few or possibly even none of them to her bed. Marlon couldn’t help but take heart from this, to approve of his being so difficult to replace. Where, after all, could a better man be found? So, cautiously and with utmost attention to his dignity and self-respect, he began once more to court her: to drop short messages into her queue, to send inexpensive but thoughtful gifts, to arrange to be “caught” by tabloid reporters in the company of this or that desirable creature at this or that noble gathering. Not so much to make her jealous as to provide the opportunity for her to reflect on his various merits.

It was working, too; Queen Tamra began replying to his messages, and over time there grew a wistful, vaguely flirtatious overtone in their conversations which he was careful to respond to only with rue and good-natured regret. // only it were that simple, my dear… Another year or two and he’d have been straddling her again, possessing the possessor of the human race, taking his pleasure from her as once he’d taken her girlhood. And filling, yes, that awful hole she’d left in his existence on the day the robots threw him out.

But then that bastard de Towaji had showed up, with his collapsides and his boyish, hat-in-hands charm and his rapidly mushrooming fortune. Also orphaned at the age of fifteen! He’d had more years to get over it, of course, and maybe that, finally, was what really drew Tamra to him. Either way, Marlon had found himself facedown once more on the greasy boardwalk of love. Bruno had moved in quickly, establishing his territorial claims with an ease that seemed calculated to infuriate. And he stayed, first six months and then twelve, and then twenty-four, forty-eight, then months without number, Tamra snuggling in the arms of her little pet genius. Declarant-Philander, well well.

It was hard to be sure just how big a role spite had played in Marlon’s discovery of superreflectance. Not zero, certainly, and he’d approached his Declarancy with grim smugness, a sense that vindication was at last on its way. But that bastard de Towaji had been right there for the ceremony, a step below and behind his lady love, and Tamra’s eyes had shown Marlon a sort of polite recognition and nothing more.

That was the day he knew he hated her, hated them both, hated everyone who’d ever lived. Marlon’s evils were many decades after that in coming, but it was that night, bitterly humping some socialite or other, that he’d officially crossed Humanity off his list of things to bother worrying about.

Like most of history’s monsters, Marlon Fineas Jimson Sykes leaves us all to wonder how things might have turned out, if this or that chance detail of his life had chanced the other way. But looking back on it, most in the Queendom would probably change nothing, even if they could. There is broad agreement: it has all ended well enough.