The Wellstone

by Wil McCarthy

  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 p
robably 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.”