The Wellstone (28 page)

With the clank of equipment and the rustle of fabrics against the corridor walls, the Refugees launched themselves foreward, toward the baffle and the hold and the airlocks. Karl trailed sullenly behind them, and turned off to one side just as they were rounding the corner out of sight.

“Interesting bunch of people,” the prince observed.

Conrad nodded. “Very.”

Together they drifted to the bridge, entered, and socketed themselves into the seats like puzzle pieces snapping into place. In front of them was a holie screen, which Bascal addressed. “Display Robert M’chunu’s video signal, please.”

Obediently, the screen showed them a corridor scene, jumping and jostling, the view apparently from a sensor in the wellstone of Robert’s helmet dome. The Refugees were at the inner airlock, and presently its door whooshed open in that too-fast way it had. At first Conrad thought there was no audio in the signal, but as the space-suited figures glided one by one into the airlock, Robert’s voice called out crisply, “Secure handholds and prepare for hatch closure.”

And then Agnes’ voice: “Atmospheric pressure nominal. The bleed valve lights are green.”

And then Robert again: “Acknowledged, bleed valves green.”

And then they were silent again, although now that he was listening for it Conrad could make out the sound of Robert’s breathing over the hum and hiss of the bridge equipment itself.

The operation was interesting to watch: everything happened slowly and with crisp precision, yet none of the spacewalkers were idle for long. Once the lock was depressurized and the outer hatch opened, they began clearing away sections of sailcloth, and setting up tripods in little depressions around the lock which appeared to exist there for exactly this purpose. And then pulleys were attached to the tripods, and cables to the pulleys, and hooks and carabiners to the cables.

Then Robert and Money were standing guard at the airlock’s lip, held down against it by magnets in their boots, while the others carefully rappelled along the hull, in the direction of
Viridity
’s remains, ignoring the handholds Conrad and the others had used. He supposed those were only for the most desperate of emergencies, of which there were no doubt very few. Still, it took the Refugees longer to reach the cabin than it had taken the Camp Friendlies to reach the airlock from it. When they got there, they began attaching still more cables to it, and clearing away more of the sail, and attaching more tripods to the hull, until the whole area began to look like the inside of a grand piano.

And yet, despite these fascinations, the process was deliberate and methodical enough to be boring at the same time. Conrad found himself glancing at the scene rather than staring—his mind dividing it up into a series of still images, a few every minute. Meanwhile, his attention wandered, taking in the walls and the floor and the ceiling, the bridge controls, the wellstone edges of the holie screen itself. This cramped little bridge was an interesting exercise in its own right, with hardly a millimeter wasted anywhere.

“Hey, look,” he said at one point, eyeing the control panel in front of him. “There
is
a button to dump the neutronium.”

Bascal rubbed his nose. “You noticed that, eh? You knew there had to be one. Robert can talk all he wants about the barge being less valuable than the cargo, being essentially a protective cocoon for it, but this is a semi-crewed vessel, and certain safety concessions have got to be made. There’s also a self-destruct and a cargo-destruct, although they look complicated to operate.”

“Why would they need a self-destruct?”

“I dunno. Loss of helm control, on a direct course for a population center? Fully loaded, these barges are bringing in a hundred gigatons; that’s a tenth of a good-sized planette. Imagine dropping that in the middle of the Irish Sea.”

“Hmm. I suppose.”

On the screen, the Refugees were assembling some kind of sled, with pulleys of its own that hooked onto the cables linking cabin and airlock.

“Of course, if that were going to happen the navy would just vaporize the barge with a nasen beam, releasing all that mass-energy as far from humanity as possible. But
having
to would not amuse them.”

“I don’t think they amuse easily,” Conrad said.

Bascal seemed to find that funny.

And then, on the holie screen, the space-suited figures were packing it in: stowing equipment on their belts and backs, and slowly rappelling back in the direction of the airlock again.

“They didn’t get it,” the prince said, sounding surprised.

Conrad checked a chronometer. “Their forty minutes are up.”

“They should let us work the LIDAR for them. If we get a clean scan, they can stay out longer.”

“I’ll bet there’s some reason they won’t do things that way. Otherwise they’d’ve stationed one of their own people in here to do exactly that, right?”

Bascal didn’t reply, just watched the screen as the spacewalkers climbed back into the airlock again, and reentered the barge.

“You didn’t get it,” he said to Robert, when the mob of them arrived in the corridor outside the bridge.

Robert’s helmet was under his arm. He looked content enough, and smiled at the prince. “We weren’t trying to. We can’t fit all that into one space walk, not safely. That was just our setup run.”

“I see. So what happens now?”

“Now we take a LIDAR scan, pick up some more equipment, and go back out again.”

“Because you don’t have enough equipment out there already.”

“Right,” Robert said, unfazed by the irony. “Oh, before I forget.” He dug a gauntleted hand into a pouch on his belt, and pulled out a carefully folded square of wellstone film, several dozen layers thick. “A little souvenir from your journey.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Bascal said, sounding pleasantly surprised as he accepted the gift. “This is from the sail?”

“Yah. I thought you might want some. We’re trying to minimize the damage, in case you still need it for something, but these pieces had to come out.”

“You’re very thoughtful,” the prince commended.

“Funny, that’s not what the prudes back in TSA used to say.”

The second space walk was, if anything, even slower and more methodical than the first, although there was slightly more talking as the work progressed into areas outside the routine. The Refugees found it necessary to slice away large pieces of D’rector Jed’s shattered cabin, and to carry them around to the fore end of the barge for disposal in the great, all-consuming maw of the mass crusher. Luckily, there wasn’t a snowball storm while they did this, although—of course—there was no luck involved. These people knew the location and course of every snowflake within five million kilometers!

It occurred to Conrad that Martin’s lifeless body, along with the missing Palace Guard, must be among those cataloged objects. In the hours since the crash, they probably hadn’t drifted far. For all he knew, the guard might still be alive, an angry monster adrift in the nothingness, struggling in vain to return to its prince. Or maybe it had swept in front of the barge and been eaten.

“If we have to dispose of any evidence,” Bascal noted, obviously thinking along similar lines, “that crusher would be the place. Neutronium tells no tales, and preserves no information about the atoms and molecules which formed it.”

“Great,” Conrad said, just loving the sound of that. The Poet Prince was drinking in every sight and sound, every datum, every stray thought anyone had given voice to. He was scheming, and the gist of it was already unsavory.

And then, once again, the spacewalkers were stowing their gear and climbing back inside.

“They
still
didn’t get it,” Bascal grumbled. Then later, to Robert: “You people are awfully patient.”

Money Izolo smiled at that. “We got time, Your Majesty. The machine is secure, and as far as we can tell your boy is safe in there. So we got nothing but time.”

Fortunately, the third space walk hit pay dirt almost immediately, as
Viridity
’s fax machine was winched aboard the little sled, webbed and strapped in place, and transported without further fuss to the airlock. After that it was just the anticlimactic—ha!—disassembly of all the cables and pulleys and trusses and tripods, which for some reason went much faster than their setup had.

And then Robert’s jolly crew were carting their prize through the hallways on a complicated sort of hand truck, and soon enough they were back at the inventory again, grinning and thumping each other, and tossing heaps of equipment back into the fax machine.

“Well done,” Bascal told them sincerely. “Very, painfully well done. You’re an example to us all.”

And then, while the Refugees got naked again and chatted about their various adventures outside, Bascal took Conrad by the elbow and led him back into the corridor, stopping halfway between the inventory and the bridge.

Conrad groaned inwardly. Conspiracy time. “What is it?” he asked.

“I have a plan.”

Wearily: “I know you do, Bascal. But for crying out loud, why don’t you just ask these people for help? They might give it. If you trick them or force their hand, and something goes wrong ...”

“Yes?” Bascal was annoyed again, impatient.

“Why do I talk to you, Bas? Never mind. Let’s hear it.”

“Thank you so much, me boyo. Just out of curiosity, if I really do get us back to Denver, against all odds, against all hope ... If I do that, will you bow down to me as your monarch?”

Conrad sighed. “It isn’t the deed, Bas, it’s the means. If you can do great things without losing your honor, that’s when I’ll bow. I’ll stand on my
head
if you do that.”

“I see. Hmm. So you, a paver’s boy from County Cork, are giving
me
advice on how to behave nobly. Is that it?”

Conrad thought for a moment before answering, “Absolutely. It’s my right as a citizen. Your job as monarch is to fulfill my expectations, however unreasonable. These people seem to have their shit together. Why can’t we?”

“Ah.” Despite his impatience, Bascal actually smiled at that. Actually seemed interested, even maybe a little bit grateful, for the observation. “Promise me you’ll never change, Conrad.”

“I will change,” Conrad answered. “That’s the whole idea. That’s the very right we’re fighting for.”

“Oh, so now we’re fighting again? How curious. Does that mean you’re ready to hear my plan?”

“Sure. Enlighten me.”

“I’m thinking we rebuild
Viridity
, then dump this vessel’s neutronium overboard. We hide behind a rigidized sail, right? Then go back into fax storage and detonate a neuble. The energy release will be
huge
. It could push us back into Queendom space in just a few months.”

Conrad sighed. “Bascal, you’re crazy. I mean
crazy
. Never mind the danger—to these people as much as ourselves—or the legal ramifications. Think of the
cost
. Even your splendid allowance doesn’t cover these kind of big-ticket items. Does it?”

“It doesn’t need to,” the prince said, his eyes sparkling merrily.

But at that very moment, there was a sound from the bridge: a shrill, insistent pinging.

Bascal stiffened. “Proximity alarm. Shit. Something’s approaching from the stern. Probably stealthed, or the scans would’ve—”

Then came a huge, hollow groaning noise from one end of the barge to the other. And its walls shimmered for an instant, and then laid themselves out in a series of broad metal traces against a green-white insulative background. Something was reprogramming all the wellstone, making connections through it, tracing out the Queendom’s largest circuit board. Then the barge groaned again, and Conrad heard clanking noises from far away, as if something very large were attaching itself very firmly to the barge’s other end.

They were back on the network.

And then the fax machine in the inventory gave off a sizzle and a flash, moments before a swarm of armored, black-and-bronze SWAT robots began pouring out of it— literally
pouring
like a fluid, rolling and swirling through the inventory chamber and the corridor beyond it, flowing onward and outward to fill the human spaces of the ship. An army of beetle-black, statue-bronze man-things, overwhelming in number, built up from the eight hundred tons of base matter in the ship’s mass buffers. Faxborn for this very moment, this very instance, this very fight.

One of the bronze troopers restrained Conrad, grabbing him gently but firmly by the wrist and ankles. Another pair grabbed Bascal, and a struggling, space-suited Robert M’chunu drifted by with three of them attached, swarming and grabbing at his arms and legs.

“Please remain calm,” said a high, mechanical voice in Conrad’s ear. “By authority of the Queen’s Navy and the Royal Constabulary, you are under arrest on suspicion of vandalism, hijack, and space piracy. You have the right to consult with an attorney. You have the right to be interrogated by disposable copies. As a minor, you do not have the right to commit suicide without entering a plea, but you do have the right to blame your parents. Do you understand these rights?”

“Fucking
finally
,” Conrad snarled at the robot that held him. “Thank you, you’re welcome, and Jesus H. Bloodfuck. What took you guys so long?”

chapter nineteen

single-celled life

Conrad half expected to wind up in the same interrogation room as before, with Officer Leslie of the Dandelion Sweater. It seemed like a very Queendom-of-Sol way to handle the situation: assign a caseworker to each unruly child, build a rapport, write a series of lengthy analyses.... But instead he was led to a windowless holding cell: larger and darker, with an actual cage door that slammed shut with the clang of metal and the mirrored gleam of impervium bars.

He was in a basement somewhere; he didn’t know what city, or even what planet. Could be Venus for all he knew; there were towns there now, on the highlands, and the gravity was indistinguishable. Why they would ship him there he had no idea, but he also had no idea why they’d separated everyone, and locked him up alone. This wasn’t the Denver police station, he knew that much, but the cool, processed air provided no other clues.

How long they left him there alone was something he never learned, because in point of fact he was exhausted. It had been a
long
day, commencing with the fax deaths and ensuing argument aboard
Viridity
. More than a week had passed since then, and though he’d been stored as data for most of that time, he’d still lived through twenty or thirty hours of it, all in one big subjective push. He was running, he realized now, on a pure adrenaline high.

But with the action suddenly over, the fear and uncertainty ended, and the heavy
Refuge
breakfast still weighing him down, he simply stretched out on one of the cell’s bunks and went straight to sleep.
Ah, night,
Bascal had said to him once in the early days of Camp Friendly.
That
puts to rest the work of men.

His waking came harshly and too soon: a brightening of lights, a clanging open of the cage door.

“Hello,” said a man’s voice.

Conrad rolled over onto his side, facing the wall. “I’m sleeping.”

“Lad, we need to talk.”

Oh, shit, he knew that voice. His father’s. And presently his mom’s chimed in. “We came as soon as possible. Dear, you have no idea how worried—”

“Please, I’m so tired,” Conrad complained, but his voice sounded too whiny in his ears, too childish. After everything they’d been through—the daring, the recklessness, the sacrifice and deprivation—he had earned the right not to sound like that in front of his parents. He wasn’t a hundred years old, all right, but he didn’t feel seventeen either. And with a shock, he realized he wasn’t: it must be August by now. Since Denver, he hadn’t paid any attention to the calendar, and his late-July birthday had come and gone unnoticed. He was
eighteen
now, and since Bascal was a few weeks older, so should he be as well.

He didn’t feel eighteen any more than he felt seventeen, but that number at least seemed less jarring, less alien to his recent experience. Did eighteen-year-olds make credible space pirates?

“All right,” he said in a deliberately deeper voice, and hauled himself up to a sitting position. He rubbed his eyes blearily. “Hi.”

Maybel Mursk smiled, and rushed forward to crush him in a hug. “Oh, my brave, clever boy. Welcome home, lad.”

“Where am I?” Conrad asked.

“City and County of Cork,” she said, still squeezing him. Her auburn hair was a frizzy mess that tickled his face. Her company blazer was rough against his bare arms. “Very near to the house, about ten kilometers. We could almost have walked from there, on your father’s own roads.”

When she finally disengaged herself, Conrad found himself staring at his father’s hand, held out for him to shake. He did so.

“We’ve worried,” Donald Mursk said. “We’ve worried a great deal.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Conrad told him sincerely. “I had no way to contact you.”

“We’re very proud,” his father added, a bit tentatively. And that made no sense: proud of him for running away? For breaking the law? For being implicated in nine deaths?

“Of what?”

“Well...” Donald ran a hand through his hair. Like everyone else in the Queendom, he looked like a strong and confident young man, but here was a gesture that suggested otherwise. It belonged with a balding scalp, a bulging gut, a hat clutched between nervous fingers.

“Naturally we’re angry with you,” his mother said.

“Right,” Donald agreed. “Angry. But it’s a strange thing you’ve done, isn’t it? A strangely compelling thing. All sorts of people have been coming up to us and, well, complimenting. I mean, it’s illegal—”

“But not antisocial,” Maybel finished for him. “You’ve done a thing a bit like the Republican hunger strikes: powerfully expressing a viewpoint people can relate to. Mere words don’t compare.”

Conrad sighed. He
was
tired, and while he’d missed his parents terribly, this was not at all the homecoming he’d envisioned. “We destroyed property. We got people killed.”

“Oh, that may be,” Donald agreed seriously. “But you should hear from the dead boys themselves, before you pass judgment. In the old days we knew, there’d always be some bitter affliction keeping pace with our joys. But we knew there’d be joys. You should give your friends a bit of credit, lad.”

Conrad processed that, not knowing what to think.

“We know you and Bascal disagreed,” Maybel told him. “His letter was very clear on that point, and the visual records from the Palace Guard support it. We know you did your best.”

But Conrad was shaking his head. “No, don’t say that. I helped him. I waffled occasionally, but he always had his way in the end, every step. I deserve my equal share of blame.”

“Or credit,” his father said. “And that’s the way the law sees it, too. You’re to be severely punished, never doubt it. Your point is well made, but now there’s little else the Queendom can do except punish. Unless it wants to encourage more of the same, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”

Listening to his parents’ voices, their faint but unmistakable accents, he considered the strange fact that the two of them lived and worked and socialized in the very town of their birth. Donald looked after the roads, yes, which few people and fewer vehicles ever used. Maybel was a housing inspector—one of six for the county. Neither of them traveled much outside of southern Ireland, or needed to.

Conrad himself gave little thought to geography; he was used to moving between his school on the European continent, his home here in Cork, and the various educational and entertainment facilities they trekked him to in Asia and North America. Except for concerns of daylight and weather, the physical locations of these places hardly seemed to matter. It was only when you got out to the moon and planets that true barriers—like the speed of light—created any genuine sense of distance. But Donald and Maybel Mursk didn’t see it that way. At heart they were yokels, provincials, born into the actual country of Ireland, during a time when travel was arduous and borders were tangible. There
was
no Queendom, anywhere.

And yet, when Donald spoke of the Queendom, his tone was full of apology and acceptance and even complicity. If he saw himself as something slightly apart from the monarchy, it was not for lack of approval. Whereas Conrad, who was truly and fully a creature of Tamra’s worlds, nevertheless chafed at their confines.

“Mom, Dad, were you rebellious in your youth?” he asked suddenly.

Maybel clucked, amused and embarrassed by the question. “I’m tempted to wash your mouth, lad. We snuck around our share, yes, although it was different in those days. The things we wanted were ... simpler.”

“Sex?” he pressed, not caring if the question was appropriate. “Drugs?”

“Oh, all of those things,” she agreed shyly. “All the things that people want. There has to be
some
age when you’re too young for it, and that puts you in immediate conflict.”

“You do have to understand,” his father cut in, “we thought our lives would be short. You were born in those days with death staring you in the face. You had to make your time count. Your mother and I were no more than twenty years from the grave when these fax filters came along. And
our
parents, why, they were gone already.”

He ran his hand through his hair again. “It’s why we’re such fools, lad. We didn’t want any school, or any hard work. There’s been a lot of catching up for us, a lot of adjustment. We don’t want to be poor and ignorant, not forever. I think we’ve done all right, but for you we wanted a better start.”

“Huh.” Wow.” It was a perspective Conrad had never considered. It was interesting. Would it have changed anything, if he’d heard this six months ago?
Should
it have changed anything?

“Apparently we’ve failed utterly as parents,” Maybel said sadly. “Whatever it is you need, we haven’t provided. Lord, we sent you to that camp you keep you
out
of trouble.”

“Don’t cry for me, Mother,” Conrad told her, surprised at the guilt in her face. “I can make decisions, right? I have free will. The problem is nothing to do with our family. It’s a ... I dunno, a structural problem with the Queendom itself.”

“Perhaps that’s so,” Donald said. “But it’s you and yours who’ll bear the brunt of it.”

“Well,” Conrad agreed. “We always knew it was a gesture we’d have to pay for. Nothing’s free, is it?”

Donald’s smile was pained. “No indeed, Son. In all the world—in all the universe—there’s not a thing worth having that comes any way but dear. You choose what you want, and spend the rest of your life paying. And now that life’s eternal, why, that’s a high cost indeed.”

Half a world away, with the painful light of dawn shining through a different set of bars, a similar conversation was progressing even more smoothly.

“Xiomara, dear, is there
nothing
we can do? Will you magically appear in the midst of every trespass and misdeed in the Queendom?”

“Sorry times call for sorry deeds, Mum.”

“Do they? Really. Playing space harlot is a
political
strategem
, I suppose.”

“Harlot? To hell with you, Mummy. That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said.”

Like she didn’t have enough troubles. She was a rioter, yes, and now apparently also a space pirate. And these two halves of herself were having a hard time integrating. How could her life be so wrapped up in the affairs of people she hadn’t known she knew? How could Yinebeb Fecre—“Feck the Fairy”—be such a dashing figure around Denver, and yet such a clownish and contemptible one in the eyes of his peers? Had they ever really met him? Had she?

And then there was the Prince of Sol, who wanted her heart, who accused her of toying with him.
There
was a problem she’d never expected to have. And this damned Conrad Mursk, who’d had the temerity—the gall!—to save her life. A piece of her life she wasn’t sure she wanted. Oh, it was intense. It was a break from her humdrum existence, not least because he was part of it. But did Xmary want to be that person? Bitter, used?
Seasoned?
Too late now, of course. She already was.

So she didn’t know what to think. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew
how
to think. The reintegration was eleven hours old, and still not taking! She was still of two minds! The old days must have been easier: everyone singled for life, without any of this crazy
ambivalence
weighing the spirit down. Decisions must have been effortless.

“Your mother is upset, Mara,” Da told her gently.

But Mummy pressed on. “No, dear. Upset doesn’t begin to describe what I feel. Betrayed, undermined, humiliated. Did our reputations matter to you at all, young lady? If you’re so intent on this wickedness, then perhaps it’s time we give you the liberty you crave. Darken our windows no more with your brooding silhouette. We’ll turn the lockouts around. When they let you out of here, you’ll be free to go anywhere you please. Anywhere but home.”

Conrad stayed in the cell another thirty-six hours, and slept almost twenty of it. A pair of local cops—both male and not very talkative—took turns bringing him meals when he rang, and even brought an exercise machine when he complained of boredom.
They
weren’t here to punish him, or pass judgment in any way. They’d simply been asked to hold him and care for him while preparations were made at the palace.

Preparations for what?

He was in the exerciser, thrusting his arms against the resistance of a spring, when Officer Donahue brought a letter for him.

“Lad,” it said, in the voice of the King of Sol, “a trial at this point would be wasteful. We know most of what you’ve done. Will you grant us the courtesy of pleading guilty?”

“On what charges?” Conrad probed.

The letter chuckled. “Fair enough. The willful destruction of a Friendly Parks planette; the theft of resources from same; the operation of an unregistered spaceship; the operation of a spaceship without identity beacon, running lights or other visibility provisions; the negligent homicide of nine human instantiations; the breaking and entering of a Mass Industries neutronium barge, and misappropriation of resources from same. The king owns those, by the way.”

Considering for a moment, Conrad said, “Most of those deaths had nothing to do with me. I was personally negligent in maybe three of them. And we didn’t break into the barge; your Palace Guard let us in. And we certainly didn’t ‘destroy’ the planette.”

“I’m afraid you did,” the letter said. “A quantity of water seeped into the core, shorting out circuitry and altering key mechanical properties. A complete dismantlement will be necessary.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Noted. So you’re guilty, then?”

“Well, yes. The rest of it is true.”

“Er, you have to say it.”

“What? Guilty?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Guilty.”

The letter paused, then said, “Thank you. Our Majesties will be in touch with you shortly.”

“Great.”

He would have left it at that, but the cop who’d delivered the letter was already gone, and the letter itself was just sitting there, full of unknown information. When a minute had gone by he asked it, “What’s going to happen to me?”

“You’re to be sentenced,” it answered, not entirely without sympathy.