by Rick Shelley
Henri Caffre angled his bug to the left, between two dead feria trees. It’s a good idea, he thought. The mark on the veranda couldn’t give them a precise heading, even if The Windsor had made it. And it certainly wouldn’t do to ride blithely past the wreckage without seeing it.
“Ah, perhaps a trifle more space between us?” George said after the initial maneuver was complete. “Say, fifteen to twenty yards between walkers, as the terrain allows?”
“You don’t think we’ll really find survivors, do you?” Marie asked her husband once the formation was spaced to the satisfaction of Prince George.
“They may have been lucky. But observe. Whether or not we find survivors is of only minor consequence, as heartless as that might sound. We find the wreckage. Perhaps we can determine to whom it belongs. We leave a message to tell the people there“—he pointed to the sky—”that we are here. If they come to investigate the crash, voilà, we are rescued.”
“No matter who the ship belongs to?” Marie asked.
“After seven years? I think even The Windsor would accept any rescue. And who is to say what the alliances might be now?”
“How much farther do you think we have to go?”
“I have no idea. We might stumble on them momentarily. Or they might be twenty miles away.”
“We could still miss them, even spread out like this.”
“C’est possible,” Henri conceded. “But perhaps not likely, if they held a straight course after we lost sight of them. In a clearing we would have little trouble spotting them, even at a distance. In this jungle … well, there will be trees felled, perhaps many trees. And even if we do miss the shuttle on our way out, we merely go east or west and spread out for the trip back toward the hotel.”
“I do not think that The Windsor will make that mistake.”
They went on for several minutes before Marie asked, “Henri, will we ever get home?”
He hesitated before he replied. “More important, perhaps, will we have a home to go to?” His voice was softer than it usually was when he spoke to her these days.
Jeige and Mai McDonough were alone in the jungle. Jeige had no idea why his wife had consented to this trip so far from the hotel’s bar—sometimes she seemed to be physically chained to the Savannah Room—but she had come, and he would take full advantage of the rare opportunity.
I might never get another chance, he told himself.
“This looks like a good place for lunch,” he said, stopping the safari walker under the crown of a large pumpkin tree. The branches were long and heavy, sagging, giving the area beneath the appearance almost of a tent.
“Any place’s good,” Maid said, her voice slurred. She waved a bottle of whiskey. “Any place at all.”
“You’re right, dear. “Jeige masked any trace of his usual disgust and embarrassment at her incessant drinking. He popped open the bubble of the bug, got out, and then helped her to alight. Mai almost fell. Jeige led her to the tree trunk so that she could sit in comfort—not that she was in any condition to judge comfort.
There’s no hurry, he thought. Show a little class. Wait for the perfect moment.
“Which do you want, dear, the beef or the chicken?” he asked as she slid to the ground, ending up seated with her back against the trunk.
“I’ll start with the scotch and finish with the gin.” Mai laughed raucously.
Then again, the sooner the better, Jeige decided.
He spread a blanket by his wife. He set the picnic basket on the blanket. Only then did he drop to his knees next to her, as if he were in the process of sitting. Mai paid no attention to him, as usual She hardly seemed to notice when he put his hands around her throat and squeezed. By then, it was too late.
I’ll tell everyone that a keuvi got her, Jeige thought as her struggles diminished, then ended. They’ll believe that. They remember what’s-his-name. Perhaps a keuvi will remove the evidence. Something will. Camerein has plenty of scavengers….
… Jeige blinked rapidly and looked around. He was still keeping station with the others, but not as precisely as he should have. His egg had drifted to the left.
“Damn, I’ve got to watch it.” He wiped a hand across his forehead. Daydreams were fine, but he couldn’t let them get out of control, not with so many of the others around. He couldn’t let anyone suspect his fantasies, even though he knew they would always remain nothing more than that.
“Sometimes I wish I could do something like that,” he admitted in the privacy of his safari bug. “I guess I’m still too civilized.” That was easier than admitting that he still retained much of his once-fiery love for Mai.
He glanced at the bug’s trip odometer. “We’ve come nine miles. It seems like we’ve been all day.” According to the clock, it had been only ninety minutes since they had left the hotel.
He clicked his transmitter on. “How far off do you think they might be?” he asked.
In the next forty-five minutes, they traveled another four miles.
“Could the shuttle have veered off to the side?” Vepper asked.
“Not high enough to have gone far,” George said. “I had an excellent view of their course until they were at treetop level.”
“We’ve gone more than thirteen miles.”
“Yes. The shuttle can’t be overly distant now. No more than another three to six miles, perhaps considerably less.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The radio, Vepper,” George said. Vepper pressed the transmitter button.
“You might start watching the treetops, where that is possible,” George said. “Clipped tops might be our first clue to the site of the crash.”
Vepper had scarcely released the transmitter button when the prince leaned forward, pointed over his shoulder, and said, “There! What did I tell you?” It was unmistakable. The tops of two pyon trees had been clipped. The raw wood was a clean pale tan against the dark gray of the bark.
“The radio,” George snapped. When the transmitter was open, he said, “There, do you see? The trees. The trees.”
There were more clipped trees, the breaks lower. Then entire trunks had been felled. The damage radiated to the sides. One wingtip had been cast aside, the first wreckage the searchers found. The natural debris became so tangled that the eggs had to detour to reach the crashed shuttle.
“Stop,” George said. He was out before the bug’s legs had folded to set the pod on the ground. The other eggs came to a stop as soon as their drivers saw that The Windsor had alighted.
George took several steps toward the wreckage, then stopped.
It could have been worse, he decided. Most of the front two-thirds of the fuselage was intact. The nanofactured skin and frame would survive all but the most extreme of traumas. But the wings and tail had broken off. One of the two engine pods had bellied out as if there had been a massive explosion within the housing. There was no sign of fire at the crash site, though, no scorched trees or burned-out underbrush.
The prince did not recognize the shuttle model. The anomaly of reflective metal was explained, though. Looking at it from so close, it was obvious that the skin had been scoured by a laser or particle beamer, destroying the dark energy-absorbing surface layer. The only visible mark on the near side of the shuttle was an anonymous serial number: 47683.
“At least we know they were human,” Marie Caffre said.
That seemed to penetrate George’s studious trance. He turned toward her, a frown solid on his face. “Have youever met any other type of creature that could build and fly spacecraft?”
Marie would not be put off by The Windsor. “Not yet, obviously, but who the hell knows what’s turned up in the last seven years? Do you have a crystal ball?”
“If I did have, I would hardly have been caught here, now would I? But one doesn’t need crystal balls for some things, such as knowing that humans are the only beings who fly spacecraft.”
“Are we going to stand here talking, or do we check the inside of that
thing?” Jeige asked. He was eager to cut off the arguments. He got enough of them from his wife.
“Of course,” George said, turning to face the wreckage again. He took one hesitant step forward. Just for an instant, he felt his resolve weaken, and he paused.
Once we go inside and confirm that there are no survivors, what then? he asked himself. One more faint hope would have been dashed. He took a deep breath and strode toward the gaping hole near the middle of the shuttle, just forward of the engine pods. Any survivors or—more likely—bodies would probably be found in that section.
The others followed The Windsor forward.
Part 1
1
(X-DAY MINUS 2)
The night had been freezing and blustery, rare for Westminster past the middle of February. The morning remained cold and breezy. There were still patches of ice. The sky had cleared, though, with only a few fair-weather cumulus clouds, scattered puffs of white in a brilliantly blue sky. The surface winds swirled and curled, seemingly unable to decide on a direction. To the southeast a bank of low clouds appeared to frost the horizon, marking the cold front that had moved through overnight.
During most of the drive in from home, Captain Ian Shrikes, Royal Navy, had kept the window open in the rear compartment of the staff floater. The bracing chill was welcome, a reminder that he was ashore. He enjoyed feeling weather of any sort. There was no weather aboard ships of the RN in space. And he would be back in space soon. Even when the cold became uncomfortable, Ian kept the window open, to the clear discomfort of his driver, a Shore Patrol petty officer.
“It could be worse, Mr. Boothe,” Ian said after they cleared the security check at the gate to St. James Palace. “His Highness might have decided to go to Haven. I understand they had three inches of snow last night, and a low of twenty degrees.”
Petty Officer Boothe glanced at the captain in his mirror and tried to grin, but had trouble keeping his teeth from chattering. Boothe had the floater’s heater on full blast to try to counter the cold.
“I’m from farther south myself, sir. To me, cold is anytime the thermometer drops below fifty.”
Ian smiled. “At any rate, you’ll be rid of me soon and can get back to basking in the heat.”
St. James was the oldest royal residence on Buckingham. Its location had been specified on the original plat, in the center of the city, on the south bank of the river Thames. The main building covered seven acres. Another thirty-seven acres surrounded it, a landscaped oasis in the middle of the capital city of the Second Commonwealth. Parliament and the offices of His Majesty’s Government were on the north bank of the river, just opposite.
The floater took Shrikes to a small entrance on the west side of the palace. Two Royal Marines stood to attention. They were a wartime addition to the king’s security staff. A constable sergeant of the Metropolitan Police, the traditional security officer, opened the door from inside.
“Good morning, Captain Shrikes,” the constable said while the Marines held their salutes. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Ian returned the Marines’ salute, smiled and nodded to the constable, and went in. “A beautiful morning, isn’t it, Sergeant?” he asked after the constable had closed the door.
“Indeed it is, sir.” The sergeant grinned. “Makes one think that perhaps Westminster has a little weather after all.”
Ian laughed. “I know exactly what you mean.” The first few times that Ian had come to the palace, he had been quite nervous, but in the year that he had been aide to Prince William, the king’s youngest brother, there had been many visits. Ian rarely felt truly comfortable at St. James,
but the prospect no longer tied his stomach in knots.
He took off his overcoat and handed it to a waiting servant. “Thank you, Alec.”
A butler dressed in livery that had been antique before the Windsors left Earth came out of a door a few paces along the corridor and waited for Ian to reach him. “His Highness the Duke of Haven is in the Emerald Room, sir. If you will follow me?”
The butler turned and started to walk away. Ian wasn’t certain of his name. The palace had at least twenty butlers, all looking alike in scarlet and white livery with powdered wigs. The only deviation from the ancient was the small complink that hung discreetly from the man’s belt.
Although there were a dozen lift tubes in the palace, Ian was led up a wide flight of stairs past portraits of King Henry’s predecessors as monarchs of Buckingham and the Second Commonwealth. The succession had been unbroken, father to son, since the Founding. Although there was no constitutional or family prohibition, there had never been a reigning queen. No king had ever been without at least one son.
On the second floor, the butler led Ian along a mezzanine that overlooked the grand ballroom. The Emerald Room was on the north side of the palace, facing the river. The butler knocked at the door, which was quickly opened by a servant standing on the inside, waiting to perform just that function. As Ian reached the doorway, the doorman turned and announced him formally, as if he had come for a royal reception.
“Captain Ian Shrikes, Royal Navy.”
“Come on in, Ian!” Prince William called from across the room. He turned from the windows and started toward Shrikes.
The Emerald Room was sixty feet by forty. One long wall was completely window, from floor to eighteen-foot-high ceiling. The other walls were lined by bookcases, holding actual bound books. Perhaps ten percent of the four thousand volumes in the room dated from more than a halfmillennium before, and about half of those had been printed on Earth. Several small tables were scattered about, with groups of comfortable chairs.
“Good morning, Your Highness.” Protocol required the full honorific the first time. After that, “sir” was sufficient.
“A lovely morning.” William clapped Ian on the shoulder. “Come over by the window. Tea is on the way. You look as if you’ve had a bracing morning. Your face is red from the weather. What did you do, walk?”
Ian smiled. “No, sir, but I kept the window open all of the way in. That made my driver quite uncomfortable, I fear.”
One servant pushed the cart that held the tea service. Another walked alongside and did the serving once Prince William and Captain Shrikes were seated. The cups and saucers were the finest porcelain in the Second Commonwealth, imported from Lorenzo. The tray, flatware, teapot, and the rest of the service were of delicately etched silver. Aboard ship, Ian was accustomed to more practical tea carts, automated beverage dispensers. Along with the tea, here, was a platter with a selection of food treats appropriate for early morning.
“I hope you weren’t planning to attend the lilac festival this spring,” William said softly after the two servants had left. Only the doorman remained, and he was forty feet away.
“You think we’ll be gone that long, sir?” Ian asked, following suit and speaking softly.
“The war has been going on for seven years. We won’t end it in seven weeks.”
Ian looked into his cup. As always, everything was perfect about the serving, the tea, and the food. “I’ve had my hopes, sir. But I’ve also had my worries. Do you really think that it will be possible to make an honorable peace with the Federation?”
“I think so. I pray so. Both sides have suffered, Ian. The last few years have been brutal. You know that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It should be obvious to anyone that neither we nor they are likely to achieve total victory, if for no other reason than that neither side can afford the effort such a victory would require. We have received … certain signals recently that the leaders of the Confederation of Human Worlds are almost as eager for peace as we are.”
“If we can agree on terms.”
William nodded. “I doubt that the negotiations will be simple. The issue of sovereignty will likely remain the sticking point. The Federation does not want to withdraw its claims over all settled worlds. Other than the doctrinaire aspect, they must fear that if they make
an exception for the worlds of the Second Commonwealth, it will loosen their hold on every other world that they claim, even those that recognized that sovereignty in past.”
“And we can’t accept any settlement that does not recognize our sovereignty?”
“Our practical sovereignty in any event, but it might take quite some time to get to that position.”
“Yes, sir.” In his year as Prince William’s aide, Ian had learned a considerable amount of diplomacy. Negotiating with politicians on more than a score of Commonwealth worlds had been good practice for negotiating with an armed enemy. The Second Commonwealth existed only through a voluntary association of independent worlds. Only Buckingham had the dual link. It’s king was also constitutional monarch of the Commonwealth. Even in the former role the king’s powers were limited, though not so thoroughly as his ancestors’ powers had been limited on Earth. Still, the greater part of King Henry’s influence came through his ability to deal with the politicians who ran the government from Parliament. Across the river.
“Have you packed yet?” William asked after the two men had silently attended to their tea and food for a few minutes.
Ian smiled. “I believe that my wife is attending to that this morning, sir, probably has it nearly completed by now.”
“My brother hasn’t told me our exact departure time yet, but I suspect that that is what this morning’s conference is about.”
“I had the same suspicion,” Ian said. “I told Antonia that she would probably only have to make up the one side of our bed after this morning.”
William laughed. “How does one make up only one side of a bed?”
“Hardly even that. She scarcely disturbs the sheets on her side. I doubt that a corpse moves around less than Antonia does while she sleeps.”
The prince laughed again, more expansively, but cut it off abruptly when the doorman turned to open the door.
“His Majesty,” he announced.
Prince William and Ian both stood and turned to face the door as the king entered.