The Wellstone

Chapter five. The battle in the throne room

Some sort of portable fax machine was set up right there at the crime scene, and the boys were processed through it. Conrad’s injuries were healed almost as a byproduct; the fax filters compared his body against his genome and the standard human template, concluded that the damage wasn’t ornamental, and sent on a corrected pattern to the other end. That these operations were performed on a snarl of quantum entanglements, rather than on a person or even the image of a person, did not impress Conrad in the slightest. Indeed, he’d experienced the process many times before, and barely noticed it at all.

He ended up in a windowless interrogation room—or rather, an atomically perfect duplicate of him ended up there, while he himself had vanished. Died, if you like, although people rarely talked about it that way. He’d also been through this experience almost daily throughout his life, and thought no more about it than about the dead skin cells he was supposedly shedding every moment of every day.

At any rate, here he was, in this windowless room with a human being and a robot. The robot didn’t speak—they rarely did, except in emergencies—but it also didn’t move, which gave it a vague air of menace. Especially since it was positioned between Conrad and the exit.

The human being, seated across from him on the other side of a table, was named Leslie Jones. She told him gently and repeatedly that she was here to help him. He was not restrained in any way, and the interrogation room’s door, not closed all the way, betrayed a sliver of light at the edge. But he’d seen enough to know that Leslie Jones wasn’t a lawyer or a social worker, and seemed in fact to be some species of cop, so he played as dumb as he figured he could get away with. Lying to the authorities would be worse than useless—they’d spot it before the words were even out of his mouth—but they were also unlikely to respect his intelligence, nor to be surprised if he didn’t display any.

“Why did you leave the camp?” Leslie asked him, for the second time.

He shrugged. “We weren’t prisoners.”

“You could have requested a pass. And an escort. And permission from your parents. Instead, we have a counselor assaulted and a Palace Guard vandalized.”

“I didn’t do any of that.”

“But you were there when it happened.”

Conrad didn’t answer. They knew he was there. Between sensor records and skin cells and ghostly electromagnetic imprints, the Constabulary could probably trace just about every move he’d ever made.

Smiling, Leslie tried a different approach. “Conrad, you’re not in trouble. Not very much trouble. No one was seriously hurt, and there’s no evidence you did anything other than follow your friends and then witness a crime. We just want to find out what happened.”

He shrugged again. “You already know.”

“Well, yes. But I’d like to hear it from you.” She was wearing a green sweater with buttons made from what looked like live dandelion heads. Her hair was coppery red, and very short. He supposed she was beautiful—he’d never met anyone who wasn’t—but she spoke and moved like the women of his mother’s generation. Two hundred years out of date; born into a mortal world, and then “saved” from it by the rise of the Queendom. He wondered if faxes of this same woman were interrogating all the other boys as well.

“You don’t know anything,” he told her, not in a nasty way but just factually. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t explain it to you. There’s not even anything to explain.” Then he disappointed himself by adding, “I want my mother.”

Leslie just nodded, with a sympathy that seemed annoyingly genuine. “Both your parents have been briefed on the situation, and have asked to send copies of themselves here. The request is under review. However, as I’m sure you can understand, the involvement of Prince Bascal is a complicating factor.”

Again, Conrad had nothing to say that would actually help the situation, so he said nothing, and Leslie simply started her questioning again, from the top. They went around and around like that for nearly an hour. Finally, when Conrad was halfway nuts with the repetition, a disc of yellow light appeared on the tabletop, and a little speaker formed beside it and emitted a soft chime.

“Well,” Leslie said, eyeing it, “we tried, anyway. You seem like a nice young man; you should try opening up a little.”

“Oh yeah? Why?” Conrad couldn’t help asking.

To her credit, she thought about that for a couple of seconds before replying, “Because childhood doesn’t excuse rudeness, not at your age. Whatever problems you believe you’re facing, communication is really the only way to tackle them. You’ll understand this someday, when you and your friends are the ones in charge.”

Conrad didn’t even try to suppress his sneer. “What day is that, Leslie?”

She really looked at him then, rolling her tongue around behind a set of pursed lips. Finally, she said, “Look, we’ve all made adjustments. Nobody said life was perfect. But we do have forever to work it out, yes?” She rose to her feet then, and motioned for him to do the same. “Come on. As I feared, the case has been placed under palace jurisdiction. Back to the fax with you, I’m afraid.”

For some reason, Conrad felt a shiver of fear. “Why? Where am I going?”

“To the palace. Didn’t I just say that? Best behavior, Conrad; you’re going to meet the king and queen.”

The throne room of Their Majesties, Bruno de Towaji and Tamra-Tamatra Lutui, looked exactly like it did on TV. The same reed mats over wellstone floors, the same Catalan tapestries over wellstone walls, the same gilded wellstone scrollwork along the ceiling and floorboards and high, vaulted doorways. It was daytime here; the ceiling was clear at the moment, and light streamed down through it from a blue-white sky, much paler than the sky of Camp Friendly.

A pair of vaguely familiar women stood at ease, with the black hair and walnut skin of South Pacific ancestry, and the elaborate wraps and hair fans of Her Majesty’s court. With prim nods and subtle gestures, the two of them gathered the boys out of a pair of fax machines, and lined them up two rows deep in front of the empty thrones.

Lucky for Conrad, he got to stand two spaces from Bascal, near the middle of the front row, not four meters from the raised dais on which the thrones themselves rested. Lucky, lucky. His heart was hammering wetly in his throat; his knees were knocking. He’d never been so nervous in his life, even the first time he’d spoken face-to-face with the Poet Prince. Conrad had been arrested once before, for throwing rocks at a cat, and had been called to the principal’s office many times, and of course detained and grounded and singled by his parents on a regular basis. But this was a whole new realm of trouble, the prospect of an angry king and queen far more frightening than the bland, dutiful sympathy of any police or petty officials.

The Queendom’s royalty were technically figureheads, without any official political or legal powers. But they were also beloved, and brilliant, and so absurdly wealthy that they could buy the planets outright if they chose to. So in the end it hardly mattered: in the spiritual hunger of the Restoration and the perils and tragedies of the Fall, these two had been chosen as humanity’s penultimate leaders, second only to God. Whether or not Conrad liked or understood it, they could dictate his fate, and no one—not even his own mother and father—would challenge it.

Still, this mortal fear didn’t keep him from noticing that the “boy” to his left in the row behind him was actually Xiomara Li Weng, from the café, and that the fifteen assembled children did not include Feck. In a way, this made sense: Feck had been in the ’soir when the building came down, and if he’d had the sense to get rid of his Camp Friendly shirt, then at first glance there’d be no reason for the Constabulary to connect him with the events on the balcony, or to distinguish him from the café’s regular customers. Whereas a quantum reconstruction of the collapse would show Xmary standing right next to Bascal, on the balcony with the other Friendly campers.

But despite her short, dark hair and rail-thin figure, Xmary did not resemble Feck in the slightest. Conrad didn’t even see how she could be mistaken for a boy, although she’d rubbed the makeup off and lost the low-toe shoes, and even somehow taken off the nail polish. And she’d turned her party dress into a pair of beige trousers and a white shirt—though not a Camp Friendly shirt or even a tee shirt. But then again Ho Ng was out of uniform too, having somehow traded his tee for a shiny gray pullover and quilted vest, although he still had the pants: beige culottes that completely destroyed his efforts to look raw.

Even so, the error was alarmingly stupid. Had no one checked the biometrics or the DNA, or even peeked under her shirt? Had the ire of king and queen so disrupted police routines that even the Constabulary could somehow arrest the wrong person? Hand her over in a moment of confusion? It was a chilling thought, and a reminder of why the Old Moderns had murdered off their royal families in the first place, leaving only the Princess of Tonga and the swashbuckling Declarant-Philander of Spanish Girona to lead them into the future.

One of the Tongan ladies, gliding back and forth along the front row like a dolled-up drill sergeant, paused suddenly in front of Bascal. Placed a finger under his chin and lifted slightly, commanding his attention. Conrad couldn’t make out what she murmured to him, but he did hear the prince’s incongruous reply: “Lemonade. Please.”

Then a chill settled over the room. To the right of the dais, a figure had appeared in the doorway. She had the same walnut skin and raven hair as her courtiers, but her wrap and drapes and hair fans were of purple, streaked and patterned with Polynesian tapa-styled highlights of glowing white. She was flanked on either side by ornate Palace Guards of gold and platinum, and news cameras buzzed and flickered in the air behind her like fireflies. She wore a diamond crown and was using the Scepter of Earth as a walking stick, and somehow she brought the whole thing off as casually as any jogging suit or camp uniform. No friend or relative ever had a face so familiar, so instantly readable.

The queen was furious.

She was also controlling it tightly, which made it even scarier somehow, and it was all Conrad could do to keep from flinching or even cowering as her gaze swept across him. In theory, she could order his head chopped off and his backups erased, and it would probably happen.

But Tamra-Tamatra Lutui, the Queen of Sol, had eyes only for Bascal as she ascended the dais and settled comfortably into her gilded wicker throne. Her robot guards, armed with tall, ornate, flimsy-looking axes, assumed positions on either side of the dais. The news cameras drifted out into the room, documenting the scene from all the most dramatic angles. Conrad wondered if he was on television, or would be later, in some carefully edited scene. Maybe these were simply the palace’s own archival cameras, storing holie video into a library somewhere.

“All right,” the queen said. “Let’s hear it.” There was no question whom she was addressing.

“Malo e lelei, Mother,” Bascal replied amiably. “I’ve missed you.”

“Tali fiefia. And I you,” she said, with apparent sincerity. “But you’re back a little early. And in trouble again. And this time, you’ve brought friends.”

“Yes, Mother.”

It was hard not to side with her. People always sided with her, in any dispute. She was just too beautiful and too funny and too ... Correct? The cynics might accuse her of manipulating public opinion, but the truth was she didn’t need to, and had nothing to gain by trying. She simply had a knack for taking the right side of every issue. Not the simplistic quick-fix side, but the actual best answer. And she then explained it so well, so quickly, with such effortless and devastating wit!

But not today, apparently. Today, she raised her eyebrows, tapped a foot, and finally spoke in tight, parental tones. “Bascal, don’t try my patience. Please. You know I love you, but what you don’t seem to understand is that I will make an example of you.”

“On the contrary,” the prince said. “I’m counting on that.” His voice was still friendly, but his at-attention pose struck Conrad as both a rebuke and a mockery of his mother’s authority.

Tamra shook her head a little, and sighed. “You think you’re so clever, Bas. This isn’t a chess game, where it helps to look three or four moves ahead. It’s more like the tide, which comes in when the moon drags it in, regardless of what anyone thinks or says. Or wants.”

“Then I’ll plant a neuble on the beach,” Bascal answered smoothly.

This was metaphor, Conrad realized at once. A neuble was a billion tons of liquid neutronium in a two-centimeter diamond shell, and would drop through beach sand or even solid rock like a cannonball through wet tissue paper. But it would affect the tide, you bet.

“Enough,” Tamra said coldly. “This isn’t a debate. You’ve injured nearly a hundred people, and destroyed a building. Someone could easily have been killed, in which case you’d be going to prison.”

“I have been in prison,” Bascal answered, finally betraying his anger.

“No,” she said. “You haven’t. You’ve been at summer camp.”

“It’s winter here, Mother.”

“And summer in Europe, yes. When I was a girl, most of the world lived in conditions much worse than your Camp Friendly, and never thought twice. If you can’t see the difference, then perhaps you should spend some community service time in the actual punitary system.”

“Fine,” Bascal snapped. “None of my tutors have been criminals yet. It’s a real gap in my education.”

The queen slammed the metal butt of her scepter down on the tiles of the dais with a sound like a heavy door slamming shut. “For pity’s sake, young man. Must you battle us on every front? At every step? Do you despise us because we’re your parents? Because we’re the First Family? Because we’re older? You’ve made your little statement, all right, but you know very well it turns people away from your cause, not toward it. I miss your poetry, Bascal, I really do. But I suspect that’s the very reason you stopped writing it.”

Bascal’s stance never changed. “The rainy seasons here used to inspire me. I truly loved them. But then you sent me alone to Girona. Tending sheep. And then it was coconuts on Niuafo’ou, and finally peach pies and onions in the outer solar system. And you wonder why I’m angry?”

“You were angry before you left,” the queen said. “So eager for independence, and yet so unwilling to accept it.”

“Independence?” Bascal said darkly. “At Camp Friendly? Surely you’re joking. Rebellion turns adults away from my cause, Mother. The children understand exactly.”

With a rustle of fabrics, the queen stood up, raising a hand that might have pointed, or gestured angrily, or balled into a fist. But instead, she dropped it and turned away. “I see the day when you and I can speak cordially is gone. Have it your way, then.”

She stepped off the dais, on the opposite side from where she’d mounted, and strode briskly to the other arched doorway, disappearing around a corner of wellstone-emulated plaster. Conrad heard a knock, and the mock creak of a mock door opening. Then hushed voices that reminded him of his own parents, when they closed themselves in their bedroom for an argument.

It was weird, to see the Queen of All Things acting just exactly like somebody’s mom. Conrad couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, not only as an undermined authority figure but as a flesh-and-blood woman who loved and missed her son, and had been hurt by him once too often. He could understand that, you bet. Part of him wanted her to demolish Bascal’s arguments, to point out their foolishness, to poke wise and gentle fun at the very idea. Not that Conrad’s own interests would be served by that, but it’s what he expected.

What did it mean, that she couldn’t muster her queenliness? Could it be that she was simply in the wrong, and had no leg to stand on?

Conrad spared a glance at Bascal, who was looking evilly smug, having gotten the better of the worlds’ most important person. He also peeked back at Xmary, who was standing there with her arms behind her back, trying to be as invisible as her clothes and her girl-ness would allow.

The guard robots had disappeared with the queen, and one of the Tongan courtiers had vanished at some point as well, leaving only the other one to watch over the boys. She was staring after the queen, and presently stepped into the hallway behind her, stopping at the corner.

Conrad, deciding to risk it, turned and spoke to Xmary in quick whispers. “What are you doing here?”

“Be quiet,” she whispered back, not looking at him.

“But why—”

“Be quiet,” she said, then met his eyes for a moment and added, even more softly, “We’re shaking things up. I’m here because someone else isn’t—the opportunity presented itself, and we can both take advantage. Now be quiet about it.”

Was that what she thought? Did she have visions of Feck the Fairy, brave confidant of the prince, scrabbling around the underside of Denver, quietly fomenting revolution? Conrad nearly laughed out loud at the idea, and even more nearly giggled. He settled for a smirk she would probably misinterpret. He tried to get it off his face, but the effort only made their situation seem that much funnier. Most likely, even if Feck didn’t get caught he would turn himself in to his parents before the sun had even risen.

Conrad was about to say something about it to Peter Kolb, standing between himself and the prince. Crack a joke, something, but the Tongan lady had turned back toward them again, and was making little “come here” motions with her hands. “Boys, come. The king will see you in his study.”

The two neat lines broke up into a kind of V formation as Bascal strode toward her, with Conrad and the rest of the boys trailing uncertainly behind. Meeting the king was less scary somehow, and the prospect of actually standing in his study was strange indeed, because Bruno de Towaji—once a declarant-philander, a genius and royal consort and knight of the realm—was the inventor of everything from collapsium to the blitterstaff, from the fax transport grid to the pub game of Shuffle Acrostics. He’d also saved the sun from collapse or something during the Fall, hundreds of years before Conrad was born.

Bascal led them into the hallway, pausing for half a step to thank the courtier, whom he called “Tusité.” The office door was just a slab of wellstone, folded out from the faux-solid material of the wall, but it was made to look like an ancient thing of wood and iron, more romantic than spooky.

The room itself was unadorned, and cluttered with mysterious objects and diagrams. The king was an inventor still, deeply and constantly concerned with the Queendom’s technological underpinnings. Unfortunately, his study was rather small inside, and as the boys (and girl) shuffled in behind him, Conrad found himself squeezed up against Bascal, and against the room’s only chair, which held a hairy, rotund, vaguely unkempt figure. It took a second or two for the figure to register in Conrad’s addled brain as His Majesty, the King of Sol, unprepared for audience.

The king held a stylus in each hand, and seemed absorbed in the moving images his desk was projecting. With visible effort, he looked up into Conrad’s face.

“Er, hello,” he said, scratching at his beard with one of the styluses, then dropping it on the desktop and holding out a hand. “I’m Bruno.”

Feeling distinctly weird about it, Conrad took the hand and shook it. “Conrad Mursk, sir.”

The king nodded and withdrew his hand. “Ah. Well. It’s ‘Sire,’ actually. One must observe the proper forms. It’s the only real purpose the office of king serves in a Queendom, and it is a real purpose. Kindly keep it in mind.”

“Um, sorry. Sire.” Conrad blanched inwardly, and probably outwardly. He wished there were some way for him to step back, without toppling his fellow campers like shuffleboard pins. He also wished he could shut up, but that impulse thing was going strong, and words were rising out of him like gas bubbles. “What is that you’re working on? A planette?”

The diagrams before the king showed various cross-sections of some layered, spherical object many hundreds of kilometers across.

Bruno’s gaze flicked from Conrad to the desktop and back again. He seemed to study Conrad’s expression. “It’s the moon, lad. Luna. The Earth’s moon.”

“Oh. I thought Earth’s moon was bigger than that.”

Again, that studying look. The king’s head was nodding slowly. “So it is, lad. And what do you think would happen if we squeezed it?”

“Um, it would get smaller? Sire?”

“Smaller, indeed. Bringing its surface closer to its center. With what effect on its gravity?”

Conrad racked his brain. “Um, um, to make it smaller?”

“Smaller?” the king seemed astounded. “We bring a planet’s outside closer to its inside, and the surface gravity is smaller ? I shall have to think about that. An interesting theory indeed! It puts rather a kink in my terraforming and settlement plans.”

Fortunately, Bascal came to the rescue, cutting in with a “Hello, Father. I’ve missed you at camp.”

King Bruno turned his head a bit and noticed his son, and seemed to ponder his words for a couple of seconds. “Hmm. Yes, well we’ve missed you as well. But that’s hardly the point here, is it? You’ve misbehaved, and will be punished for it.”

“Yes, Father,” Bascal agreed, his voice maybe a bit too chummy.

Bruno frowned at that, and tried for a moment to rise from his chair, before looking around and realizing that the room was packed, that Conrad and Bascal weren’t smooshed up against him out of pure admiration. He scanned the assembled faces, looking almost puzzled. Finally, he directed his attention at Bascal and spoke again. “Your mother and I would like to know why. You understand this? We’ve invested a great deal of time and love and energy in a creature which has become highly resentful. An explanation would help.”

Bascal remained polite this time. “You’ve heard the explanation, Father. I’ve been shouting it from the rooftops for years. It’s the seriousness of it that always escapes you.”

Bruno’s frown deepened. “Seriousness? My boy, I’ve lived a long life, and these are the least serious times I’ve seen. War is a memory, crime is in sharp decline, and there’ve been remarkably few disasters—natural or otherwise—to threaten lives and infrastructure. You’ve never seen a time of strife, lad. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“No, you just refuse to see it. The strife is all around us.”

“Pish,” Bruno said, waving a hand. “You kids. You think teenage angst is a new invention? What you need is a squozen moon.” Then he paused, and added, “It’s awfully small in here. Perhaps the dining room would be better. Have you boys eaten?”

“We have,” Bascal agreed, although it was just nachos and beer. Truthfully, Conrad didn’t think another bite or two would be unwelcome.

“Maybe a snack,” he said stupidly, just as he might to any other friend’s father. Then more contritely added, “Sire.”

“Snack,” Bruno said, pinching his chin and musing, as if this were some bold new theorem he was hearing for the first time. “Hmm.”

Five minutes later, the boys were arranged around a wellwood dining table, with Bruno at one end and Queen Tamra at the other, and Bascal squarely between them on the long side. The table would have been huge with just the three of them, but with fourteen boys and a girl it seemed cozy enough. Everyone was solemnly drinking lemonade from delicate-looking crystal goblets, and nibbling on tiny peanut-butter-and-vanilla sandwiches, and gazing out the picture window at the white sand and coconut palms, the ocean surf throwing itself against the beach, which sprawled for a hundred meters along a gentle, gently groomed slope.

It looked sultry-hot out there, but this dining room was cool in both the literal and metaphoric senses. Her Majesty was less icy than before, but still reserved, impatient and unhappy with her wayward son. She did spare some attention for the other boys, and actually spoke with the ones closest to her—Steve Grush and Jamil Gazzaniga.

“Such a pleasant day. Have you been to the islands before, boys?”

“The Tongan islands? No, ma’am,” Steve said, as politely as you please. It seemed strange to Conrad, that a bully as transparent and tedious and predictable as Steve should be sitting right next to the queen, essentially ignored by her bodyguards. Even stranger that he should look good doing it. It seemed like at any moment he might leap from his chair, grab her by the head, and start delivering noogies. But here was how the worlds really worked: act like a complete asshole and you could lunch with the queen. Jamil, for his part, looked pale and sweaty and terrified, and could only manage to grunt a reply.

“Well, do enjoy them while you can,” Queen Tamra said, glancing briefly at the ocean, and her voice was finally tinged with some amusement. The boys were her captives in every sense of the word.

Xmary also looked terrified, probably because she was seated only two places away from Bruno, and could be caught out at any moment. But the king wore a distracted, lost-in-thought kind of look, and like the queen he was mostly interested in Bascal anyway.

“So,” he said to the prince, tearing himself out of some internal reverie. “You were explaining these trying times to me. Perhaps the vanilla has sharpened your righteous fury. Would you care to continue?”

And yes, Bascal did look angry when he answered, “This is precisely my point.” He gestured around the room, at the table, at the tiny sandwich in his hand. “You connive a scene here to make me look like a little kid. In front of my peers, no less.”

Bruno reflected on that, then nodded across the table to his wife. “Dear, is it childish to eat a sandwich?”

“I eat them every day,” she answered.

“Really, every day. I didn’t know that.” He popped one of them into his own mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.

“Your father,” the queen added, glaring mildly at Bascal, “does not connive. The very idea makes me laugh. Have you two met? Shall I introduce you? Bascal, Bruno. Bruno, Bascal. This is good lemonade, by the way.”

“The cooks have been playing with the pattern,” Bruno said. “I’ll let them know you like it.”

“Do, please.”

But Bascal wasn’t finished. He glared back at his mother and said, “You know perfectly well what I mean.” Then, to the king: “You were already at university by my age, learning physics. Emancipated. Adult.”

And Conrad could see how it was in this house: emotional appeals in one direction and logical ones in the other, with human servants as well as robots and household intelligences to serve as neutrals. But really they were all together, a unified front against which Bascal was busily throwing himself.

“Orphaned, lad,” the king said sadly. “Living on earthquake charity. People died back then, and not on any convenient schedule. I wasn’t an adult; I’d much rather have been learning archery and canoeing.”

“Mother was queen at fifteen.”

“Also orphaned. And thrust into power without warning, by people who did not have her best interest in mind. It’s nothing to envy, Bascal. Here you’ve returned from your adventures to the arms of a loving family. Tamra and I never had that option.”

“A side issue at best, Father. Don’t try to sidetrack me and then walk away feeling you’ve won the argument.”

The queen sighed. “Can we stop this posturing, please? If you want to make a statement, Bascal, try speaking it. The power to change society sits right here in front of you.”

He nodded. “Yes, but not the will. You both understand my point well enough, and even acknowledge its truth. But you see it from a past perspective, and so regard it as a minor issue. Which it isn’t.”

Bruno, gesturing with a crust of bread, opined, “By its nature—its naïveté—youth challenges old assumptions. As you say, we agree on the parameters of the issue but not on their relative weighting. You’re a bright lad, and you have a point. However, there are other savants who draw different conclusions from the data, hmm? Can’t experience provide some context for these judgments? Can’t societies evolve at their own pace? The very fact that you sit here, disagreeing with us, shows off one of the engines of change.”

“Debate,” Bascal groaned. “Certainly, you’d like to keep it neatly Socratic, for centuries if possible. To quench the fires through simple exhaustion. But change is generational, Father; it occurs in painful spasms. A mutant is born into environmental chaos, and thrives amid the broken bodies of its ancestors. That’s your story, right? That’s mother’s. But the cycles of renewal which birthed your Queendom are suffocating beneath it. There’s no changing of the guard, no retirement of old ideas. Every error gets entrenched, until a shock to the system is necessary to effect any change at all.”

“An interesting accusation,” Bruno mused, thinking it over.

But the queen merely chuckled. “Ah, the praise of death. It began the moment our terrors were shelved. But it’s always the death of others, never ourselves, that we look to for renewal. The early martyrs drew a lot of admiration—deservedly so—but where are their arguments now? Their clever rebuttals? Their example for others to emulate? Swallowed up by the silent earth. You know how many suicides last year cited ‘future generations’ as a reason for leaving? Zero.”

Zero? Ouch. Shit. This confirmed Conrad’s worst suspicion: that his age bracket wasn’t so much oppressed as invisible. To neglect a thing in the criminal sense, you had to know it was there!

“It’s not that we don’t sympathize,” Bruno told his son gently. “Your body and mind are screaming for the respect they’re due, by the old organic schedule. You should be a hunter, a warrior, a man. But this problem isn’t new, either. Imagine the plight of the Old Moderns, leaving graduate school in their thirties with dim prospects for advancement, and the first signs of death already creeping into their bodies.”

“But what’s to be done?” Bascal asked, putting his elbows down and leaning forward across his plate. Looking friendlier and more engaged. “The Moderns responded by conquering death, which helped not at all. Now the problem simply lasts forever.”

“Long, perhaps,” Tamra answered. “Not forever.”

“Long enough to crush all hope,” the prince said firmly. “And I ask again: what is your solution?”

Bruno had finished the last of his sandwiches and was toying with a little fork. “If you like, Son, I can promise you the moon. Literally. Come back to my study and I’ll show you the plans.”

“A bribe?” the prince said disdainfully. “Give me some credit, Father. It’s all of posterity that concerns me.”

“Well, crushing the moon would be a huge project even by Queendom standards. The combined effort of thousands, perhaps millions, of people. And later a home for even more.”

“Ah. And then what? Most of your subjects have yet to be born. What happens when forty billion people become eighty billion? A hundred billion? What circuses will you devise for their amusement? Your offer is tempting but misguided. The Queendom’s monopoly admits no competition, and therefore offers no escape.”

“There’ll always be other projects,” said a visibly irked king. “If you don’t like mine, go devise your own. You’re neglecting the real irony here: that your mother and I were drafted for these roles, to put a human face on the consensual hallucination of government. You were simply born. Understand, Bascal, the Queendom’s real power isn’t here in the palace at all, but in the hearts of her people. If you can’t make your case there, then you”—he scanned the faces around the table—“and those you speak for, should find some other mountain to climb.”

And here Conrad felt a flicker of sympathy for Bruno, who really was trying to address this problem, though he didn’t quite believe in it. And in the addressing, he’d dreamed up an enterprise—a good one—for his son to inherit. You had to give him points for that much, even if everything else was wrong.

“Someday,” Tamra said, “you’ll have children of your own, impatient for you to step aside, and this debate will come back to haunt you. Your whining would carry more weight if you simply delayed it a hundred years. Your internal clock runs fast. This much is in the wiring; we’ve considered amending the genome to correct it, although a great deal more study is needed before we dare unleash a solution. In the meantime, young man, you really are going to live forever. A bit of old-fashioned patience would improve your character enormously, and bring you closer to the day when you are fit to rule.”

“Easy for you to say, Mother! If I lack character, then surely, as a corollary, I lack the patience to seek it. And whose fault would that be?”

“Fair enough,” the queen agreed, in her only concession of the day. “Your concerns—representative of a small but pivotal demographic—are noted. We shall ponder them further while you finish your term at camp.”

“We’re going back, then,” Bascal said. “To the dumping ground.”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” she chided. “You may learn to appreciate the comforts of our age. Of civil discourse, perhaps even of dining with your parents. If not, then it may be that your camp isn’t rugged enough. Shall we arrange some bad weather for you?” She touched a napkin to her lips and stood up. “I have meetings, I’m afraid.”

“Send a copy,” Bascal snapped.

“I have,” the queen replied evenly. “Several. But the day is fluid, and things keep coming up. I’ll spare you the good-bye kiss.” She looked around the table. “A pleasure meeting you, children. Your companionship is appreciated. In the future, though, do kindly stay out of trouble. If we have to do this again, I’ll be most disappointed. His Majesty will now escort you to the dumping ground. Dear?”

She nodded to her husband, and then with a swishing and rustling of fabrics, she was gone. Conrad felt bemused, and yes, somewhat torn. She was so easy to love. It was part of why she’d been elected—or drafted—in the first place, and the effect was even more pronounced in person than it was on TV. But she was belittling her son’s grievances, and with them an entire—and much-aggrieved—generation.

“We won’t cooperate,” Bascal said to his father. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“No?” the king replied, thinking about it. “We’ve pulled all the humans off the planette, and replaced them with Palace Guards. From this point on, your cooperation and approval are rather moot. You’re only seventeen, lad.”

“Yes. And someday I’ll be ‘only a hundred,’ and then ‘only a thousand.’ Why is it—how is it—that adults forget so quickly what it means to be powerless? When exactly does your attitude fossilize? Mine is still living, still breathing and growing, despite all attempts to petrify it. I’ll always be younger than you, Father. My approval will always be moot.”

Patiently: “By the time you’re a thousand, the difference in our ages will be comparatively small, and you’ll have no excuses left. What a sad day that will be. No one is asking you to grow up at this moment, lads. No one is forcing you to take on responsibility before you’re ready. Relish that, hmm? You’re going to live forever, and once you’ve left childhood behind there’s no reclaiming it. You have my word on that.”

He mused for a further moment, and said, “You know, that camp of yours is gorgeous, probably the finest planette ever built. Did you know there are seven thousand tunable environment variables? Ultimately, the project funding came from my own pocket, so I’ve kept an eye on things. When I was your age I would have loved ... would have ...” His voice trailed away wistfully. Then his gaze jumped up suddenly, and settled on Xmary. “Egad, child, are you a girl?”

“No,” she replied, sounding indignant. Sounding just exactly like an indignant nineteen-year-old girl.

“Hmm,” the king said, studying her for a moment. “All right. No offense meant. Your friends will tease you for it, but the error is mine. Shall we go, then?”

Bascal held his arms out, roadblock style, and looked around warningly. Nobody move.

Seeing this, Bruno nodded. “Hmm. Yes. Well, if you won’t cooperate, you won’t cooperate. I was young once; I remember how it was. We’ll have the guards drag you kicking and screaming through the fax, all right? We’ll all preserve our honor that way.”

Then he looked right at Conrad and winked—a conspiratorial gesture of such portentous friendliness and condescension that the lad would, in some small way, never be the same again.