LEGACY BETRAYED (14 page)

Vector smiled kindly. “Thank you, Claire. Well. What do you two think? Would you like to be shown to your cabin? Start putting your stuff away? After all, Dax, I don’t know if the common room is the best spot for all of one’s most prized possessions. Not with this lot about!”

It was hours later that the young revolutionary returned to the cabin she’d been half-forced to share indefinitely with an ambiguous ex. Augh. So awkward. His hatred of her, however stifled, was nonetheless palpable.

In the past few hours between early evening and late night, Legacy had regaled the group with tales of her triumphant infiltration of
CIN-3
(
“Last seen advancing in the direction of the aerial docks,”
reports since had come in,
“where her trail has now gone cold”),
eaten a hearty dinner of potent vitamins, and taken a bath in a cold barrel of clean water. It had been nothing like the bath Legacy most recently recalled, trailing steam and rose petals, not to mention the complementary orgasm, but at least she was free here. Or, rather, she was fighting here. As much as she longed for the luxuriant existence of a duchess, or simply for Kaizen, it was impossible, no matter whom she loved. No matter whom she slept with in the oil dens of Groundtown.

              Gustav’s cabin was sweltering with heat due to its proximity to the engine room, the bed vibrated (one bed), and there were resounding clanks and groans every few minutes. Legacy had suspected that this would happen.

              She began removing her garments. She unstrung the white scarf from her neck and let it fall onto the bed. She shrugged off the inside-out frock coat, puddling at her feet. Next came the metallic vest, the boots, and the harem pants. Only her blouse was left, but the room was too stifling for such trifles. That had to go too, and Legacy was unfastening the third pearl drop button when the cabin door shuddered open and Dax stepped in.

              He glared, and the cool blue eyes ticked from her face to the exposed cleavage and back again.

              “Well –don’t look!” Legacy sputtered, whirling and pinning her blouse shut again.

              “I wasn’t! I don’t care!” Dax scoffed. “I’ll just . . . take a short walk, so you can finish up, all right?” he snapped. The door shuddered shut again.

              She unfastened each button, fingers trembling, and crawled into bed. She tugged the sheet up to her neck and rolled onto her side, so that when the door shuddered open again, she didn’t have to look at him. She smoldered instead at the square of light falling in from the narrow corridor, smoldered instead at his silhouette thrown against the panels of the wall. Then the door shuddered closed for the last time, and it was dark.

              The sheets stirred and the mattress shifted as Dax climbed into bed beside her.

              For awhile, her heart thundered in her ears and neither said anything. She was somehow sure, gauging from the tension in the air and the stiffness of both their bodies, that neither was sleeping in spite of the heavy silence.

              “Dax?” she finally whispered.

              “Yeah,” he replied.

              “I saw Mudflower.”

              There were a few beats of silence.

              “Yeah,” he said again.

              “I didn’t know you still had it after all these years.” Still, Legacy stared into the wall and refused to face him. “I don’t even remember what happened to him.”

              “It’d not been working all day, and you asked me to take a look at it for you,” Dax explained, voice flat. “I worked on it –for weeks –and then . . . then your dad gave you Flywheel, and you forgot all about Mudflower. But I kept working on it, anyway, because I thought it’d be a cool surprise, sort of sweet, even, if I could just –give it to you one day. Just give you back this cruddy old automaton from when we were, what? I’d just turned fifteen. And it’d be functional, and have all these old messages to play for you, and old alerts to go through, and –yeah.” The tempo of his voice shifted again, from accidentally happy to waterlogged again. “Anyway . . . I thought it would’ve been sort of sweet. But . . . I never could get it to work.” He sighed. “Kind of . . . symbolic, isn’t it?” he asked. “Me, trying to get something fixed that is totally beyond repair. And you . . . not even realizing or remembering what you lost.”

             
Ouch.

              Legacy wanted to respond to this, but what could she say?

              In truth, she didn’t want to say anything, except maybe that she was sorry. She just wanted to hold him. To go back in time, to when things were simple. When it was just them. Before the Companion test. Even just to that night in the brass forest would’ve been fine. But she didn’t say any of this, because it all sounded so stupid and pointlessly dreamy, the very brand of logic she herself despised as well, and was still trying to put her feelings into decent words when she slipped off to sleep, her back still turned to Dax, untouching.

              The floating cities of New Earth, big and small, had been separately inflamed with the speculation caused by this stranger’s voice cutting across their afternoon of labor, so husky and yet tight with controlled rage. Before nightfall, even the busiest of factory technicians in Heliopolis whispered the rebel leader Exa Legacy’s name. It was especially Kaizen Taliko who regretted using the news network of
CIN-3
as such a political crutch. It had only been his recent mistake, but one his father had made the entirety of his term, and never before had it backfired like this. They’d trained the local people to turn to Dyna Logan for the answer to their every question, comment, complaint, and now, someone else – someone not so easily bought, even with love itself – had grabbed the mic. All of Icarus had heard. All of New Earth, if they had not heard firsthand, had heard second.

              And so Kaizen had spent the next twelve hours holding court.

He’d fallen asleep sitting up in his own throne three times now. Sunrise was approaching. He couldn’t remember Malthus ever doing these things. Had Malthus’ thumb always been so much stronger than his own? Or perhaps this tension had been building beneath that thumb for a long time.

              The steward, Claude, was talking. He seemed like a nice guy, but . . . did he always have to be talking? “The likelihood that the monarch, Ferraday–”

              “I know who the monarch is,” Kaizen snapped, massaging his temple with his middle finger.

              Claude cleared his throat. “–will personally come to Icarus is . . . certain, now,” he finished. “Even in spite of the duration of the voyage. I know you’ve expressed wishes to quell this insurgence yourself, but–”

              “Why would he come?” Kaizen demanded, sitting forward with eyes that flashed the mania of exhaustion. “He doesn’t know anything. Isn’t he busy enough? As far as he knows, it’s fine. We had an accident –an assassination –and he offered his own interrogatory force, and they’ll be arriving next week, and that’s all fine. As far as he knows, nothing more has happened. Icarus has been quiet. Still. Calm. Tranq–”

              “My lord,” Claude interrupted, “even if he did not hear Exa Legacy’s original broadcast, he certainly would’ve been alerted at some point thereafter, and honestly . . .” Claude winced. “The tone of the show, even today, even this past night, has dramatically shifted. Dyna put callers with comments on the air in an attempt, bless her, to defend the regime. But . . .”

              “But?” Kaizen prompted.

              The scribe, Kristoff, dug through his notes for those which contained questions to relay, found cropping up on
CIN-3
throughout the course of the prior evening. “They, uh, some of them wanted to know if public sanitation was a human right? Or if they were entitled to a certain amount of personal space in their living conditions?” Kristoff cleared his throat uncomfortably. “A lot of them accused her of lying and knowing support of a corrupt official –that being . . . you, and a lot of people wanted to know where these imports were coming from, if Old Earth is a dead planet. Oh, and . . .” He hesitated again, glancing up at Kaizen as if the young duke might behead him if he continued.

              “Well?”

              “Ahem. One citizen commented that, to them, the castle had always seemed like another reality altogether, until they heard Legacy’s words on the matter and realized . . . that the archipelagos should be part of greater Icarus, made public, and . . . shared.”

              Kaizen closed his eyes.
I want. To sleep. This off.

             
“So, you see, my lord,” Claude reiterated.

              “Yes I see!”

              “May
I
offer to you some advice?” Trimpot volunteered. Kaizen had included him in the court against his better judgment. He needed guidance about Chance for Choice, and for that, Trimpot was his man. Or his rat. “On how to deal with this crisis?”

              Kaizen nodded, eyes still closed.

              “The problem is that the grip on the media has been lost. The CC was always portrayed as unrealistic, and childish, and rash, even insane. That worked really well before Legs proposed such . . . eloquent tenets. She really was a great speechwriter–”

              “That’s not advice, Trimpot!” Kaizen yelled. “That’s just criticism! I don’t have a bleeding time machine, do I? The propaganda was good! It worked! It’s over!”

              Trimpot sighed. “Yes,” he allowed. “We need a . . . disaster, don’t we? We need a disaster to
blame
on them.”

              “Maybe we should make all mention of the CC illegal? Any bearing of the colors of its logo, et cetera?” Constable Wesley suggested helpfully.

              Kaizen cringed and retreated behind his eyelids again.

              The chancellor, Jonathan, spoke next. “We must make note for future sessions that I’ve also received inquiries regarding the viability of the CCSS, both as an employer and as a trusted institution. These inquiries made statements such as, ‘Might the Companion Laws be overturned in the future?’ Others wondered at their eligibility status potentially being frozen or reset, their records in the archives being edited or resubmitted, even suggestions that the CCSS protocol be adjusted to allow for walk-ins, complaints, reviews . . .”

The chancellor’s low voice rumbled and became a pleasant burble, a stream, the waterfall, and Sophie was there. Sophie was there without the scar on her face any longer. She was happy now.
“I asked the chancellor if I could go with Daddy to Heliopolis this winter,” she prattled merrily. A porcelain doll was in her lap. Its face had a long gash down one cheek . . . “And he said that, technically, I may have existed, but then the monarch came and insisted Exa Legacy and I were both accidents . . .”

BANG!

Kaizen jolted awake, legs spasming, and sucked in a lungful of air. He rubbed his eyes vigorously. The throne room doors were settling together again and Constable Wesley was entering with a militant walk, as if these five men were in fact the culprits he sought. Hadn’t Wesley been there the whole time? What time was it?

“That’s the second workplace riot I’ve been called to,” he snapped. “The city prison is about to be at maximum capacity, Duke Taliko.”

Duke Taliko is my father’s name,
Kaizen thought with a sleepy glare. Sunlight was pouring through the arched windows of the throne room.

“Perhaps we can use the dungeon tower on the archipelagos, but bear in mind that it would pose a security risk for you and your family, I’m afraid.”

“Duke Taliko?” Claude ventured cautiously. “While you were –resting –we received a message from the Duke of Celestine, Mont–”

“I know who the Duke of Celestine is!”

“R-right.” Claude cleared his throat. “Montgomery Lovelace,” he murmured, as if he secretly did not believe that the duke truly knew. And in truth, Kaizen had always thought it was Mortimer. “Would you like to hear it now? It came via Hermetic transmission.” He must have only just heard about the militant infiltration of the media outlet earlier in the night, and released the transmission then.

Claude lifted the Hermetic device and depressed its button. The ball emitted light in rhythm with Duke Lovelace’s voice. It was a kind, fatherly voice. Not like how Kaizen remembered Malthus’ voice, of course, but like Kaizen had always imagined a father was supposed to sound.

“
Hello, young Duke Taliko,
” Lovelace greeted. “
Did you know that I had promised Malthus many times that I would visit Icarus and allow him to ferry me about the wonders of your city as I have ferried you about mine? And yet, it did not come to pass until the date of your coronation. I have been visiting the forests of Old Earth which are near to you, holding counsel with some progressive scientists there. Our interview has been curtailed due to unsavory weather, and so I will be approaching Icarus in the mid-morning of Friday and would love nothing more than to visit. I hope that this message finds you in time so that my arrival is not ill-received! I look forward to speaking with you, young Kaizen, on many things. My condolences in regards to your father. Malthus held little as dear to him as he held his responsibility to his people. May your rule be as steadfast. I will see you soon. If this is not preferable, please inform my transmitter promptly.”

“I have no idea how close he is,” Claude clarified. “But it bears the timestamp of one minute prior to our reception of it. Of course, by airship, this would still take him an hour or so to travel, and if you wish to return the message in the negative, he will certainly not dock at the palace as he intends. Though, being on his airship, he’s likely not heard yet of Exa Legacy’s speech.”

“I’m sure he’s heard; that’s probably the real reason he’s stopping here,” Kaizen countered. “It’s an airship, not another planet.” But he craved the guidance of the experienced duke. It was better than the inevitable reception he’d be providing an embittered monarch next week. He was certain the man must have already set off in an airship for Icarus. And the most modern of airships could travel fast . . . “Let him come,” he went on, focusing again. “Let me see his transmitter.”

Kaizen depressed the device button and spoke into the flickering beam of light. “Duke Lovelace,” he addressed. “Thank you dearly for those kind words. I look forward to the time we’ll spend. The guidance of an experienced superior is . . . would be . . .” Kaizen’s eyes went unfocused as he imagined himself a duke famed for fumbling away an entire monarchy within, what, a week’s time? “. . . greatly appreciated.”

The airship of Duke Montgomery Lovelace was prepared to moor on the exterior archipelagos dock within a few hours, as it so happened. Named
The Greatness of Celestine,
this was the only airship Kaizen had ever seen that had actual flora onboard. Vines traced over the rigid blimp, which was vibrantly colored with a mural: a sunset and a child and a bird on his finger. Its gleaming gold propellers whirred to a halt as it anchored and bopped in the gentle winds of the Friday afternoon.

The cabin swept wide, and a ladder of silk and pearl tumbled down. The Duke of Celestine was grand, but not in the abrasive manner of Neon Trimpot, or even his own father, Malthus Taliko. Duke Lovelace was grand in the way that clouds were grand. He simply was breathtaking, and had invested no effort in the nature of his being. He wore a tufted top hat of pale lavender and a silken suit of deeper purple. Unlike Malthus, Lovelace’s smile was genuine, and his wrinkles were those of laughter rather than frowns.

Kaizen, with Claude in tow, promoted to primary advisor by default, received Duke Lovelace on the exterior dock of the main archipelagos island. Whipped by the gentle, chilled winds of the Friday afternoon, the older duke approached and stuck out his hand to be shaken.

“Duke Taliko,” he greeted warmly. “It’s such a pleasure to see you again so soon. How has the dukedom been?”

“Not quite what I expected,” Kaizen replied.

Lovelace smiled sympathetically. “That is, regrettably, what I hear. There was some movement from the rebel faction only yesterday? A broadcast of sorts, I’m told?”

Kaizen darkened. “Yes,” he said. “We had a rebel broadcast which, in short, defined the principles of the sect and threw a harsh light on the aristocracy itself. It . . . it was . . .” Kaizen searched for a term to vilify this course of action, but could find none. After all, had Legacy lied? Had she lied even once? “. . . not good,” he finished lamely.

Lovelace nodded. “I may have a solution to your quandary,” he said. The three men – Kaizen, Lovelace, and Claude, followed by a retinue of servants – turned to stroll back toward the doorway that would lead from the exterior dock to the interior of the archipelagos dome. “We meet with the rebels at
CIN-3
,” Lovelace suggested. “This Legacy? The one in the broadcast?”

“Yes,” Kaizen verified with a pang. “That’s her.”

“Issue a public invitation to her. Welcome her to the
City of Icarus News-3
station with the promise of total safety, the promise of her safe departure, and host a debate there as soon as possible. The people will all listen. And let us present the salient points of the monarchy, so that her perspective is not without combat.”

“Hmm.” Kaizen had to admit that he liked the idea. And not only because it would restore the integrity of the monarchy. He hadn’t seen Legacy since that fight, and it . . . would be nice to see her again. He wondered how much time she was spending with Dax, now that they were on the run together. Dax . . . who had dreamed up that entire catastrophic coronation plot.
A coronation I only agreed to in order to save HIS damn girlfriend!

“Yes!” Claude piped, meanwhile. “Perhaps even some sort of agreement could be reached between these people and your lordships?” he went on. “After all, we would want to see a happy populace, wouldn’t we? Should not real concerns be truly addressed?”

“Of course,” Lovelace agreed. “Of course the debate would be an honest gauge of the situation from the perspective of the common man. Let us admit, Duke Taliko, that you and I may not have the same experience of a factory worker or someone who takes issue with their potential Companion’s eligibility.”