by Wil McCarthy
“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.
chapter six
camp discontent
“We’ve got to get off this egg,” Bascal said, for at least the hundredth time that day.
“Learn to fly,” Conrad replied, dropping another peach pie into his bucket. The fax gates wouldn’t open until the end of the term, and that was that. It turned out they also wouldn’t produce any food except chocolate s’mores, roasted marshmallows, and the godawful “beans and franks” slop that tasted like the bottom of somebody’s shoe. Whose brilliant idea that was was a subject of constant speculation, but Bascal’s money was on the queen, and Conrad figured he was probably right.
In any case, the prince had had to institute emergency mandatory agricultural duties—four hours a day for all campers, himself included. It was a daily calamity for the geese on Adventure Lake, who bore the brunt of the prior eight weeks’ archery practice. Also for the potatoes and carrots and cabbages in the hobby farm, which were being eaten much faster than they could grow back. Well, fuck it. The boys weren’t here forever, and they had never agreed to be responsible stewards.
But veggies and slop, raw goose and candy did not a dinner make. So here the two of them were, picking fresh pies for dessert up in the high branches of a peach pie tree, and also gathering deadwood for the fire. A ways down the row of trees, Ho and Steve were doing the same, and off in the northern part of the orchard another four or six other boys could be heard singing the Fuck You Song while they gathered apples and pecans. It was hard work, reaching the good pies, so Conrad really wished they hadn’t spent the early summer having nightly pie fights. Putting the orchards next to the Young Men’s Cabins was a highly stupid idea in that regard.
“I mean it,” Bascal said. “The toil of a troublous voyage, the bitter wind at our backs.” He reached his hand up toward the sky, grasping at its indigo blankness— much darker than Earth’s—as if he could pick that too, and carry it home in his bucket. “We’re so close. Even a tall ladder would get us out of this atmosphere.”
“Yeah?” Conrad growled. “A two-hundred-meter ladder. Then what?” His voice was satisfyingly deep—one of the few clear benefits of life on Camp Friendly. The air was full of xenon, some really heavy gas to hold the atmosphere down or something, and it was almost the exact opposite of breathing helium. Everyone here sounded grown-up and serious, with the bigger kids actually sounding like crooners and senators, or barrel-chested lumberjacks from that old American TV drama.
“Then a spaceship,” Bascal said with a shrug. “You think we couldn’t build one? All it has to do is hold air long enough to get us someplace with a working fax.”
“Which is probably a long, long way. What about propulsion?”
Bascal shook the branch beneath them. “Are you doubting me, punk?” He grinned. “We build a sail. Just a big, rigid sheet of wellstone film, superreflective on one side and superabsorptive on the other. Haven’t you ever been solar sailing?”
Conrad snorted. “Or owned my own island? No, Bas, we’re not all children of unimaginable privilege.”
The branch shook again, harder, and Bascal’s expression was less amused. “I’ll break this if you’re not careful.” He was on the trunk side, with Conrad out flapping in the breeze.
“All right, all right,” Conrad said, climbing down to a lower branch, worried about losing his balance and falling on something vital. The peach pie tree was only four meters high, but it was twisty, offering lots of opportunities to bang or snag yourself on the way down. And he couldn’t fight back, with a Palace Guard right down there at the tree’s base, watching for even the slightest threat against the pilinisi. “Solar sail, fine.”
“Fetu’ula, actually. Stellar sail.”
“Whatever. Does it steer anything like a bulldozer?”
“I don’t know,” Bascal said. “Who drives a bulldozer? You?”
“Well, yeah. Many times.”
“Sitting in Daddy’s lap?” The prince sneered goodnaturedly.
Conrad shrugged. As County Paver, Donald Mursk supervised the maintenance of quaint country roads, and had free use of all sorts of infernal machines. It was a shame to give Bascal the satisfaction of being exactly right, but Conrad was surprised and pleased just the same, to find something he himself had done which the Pilinisi Sola had not. “Haven’t you?” he sneered back, eager to rub in his petty victory. But Bascal just started shaking the tree again.
“Okay! Cut it out! What about life support?”
“Steal the fax machine out of the Piss Hall,” Bascal said. “If we’re short on oxygen, it should crank some out automatically. Along with fresh water and slop.”
Mess Hall, he meant. After the indignity of being returned here, the first thing they’d done was repaint all the signs, giving each building and landmark a proper name for the occasion. “It’s an arts-and-crafts project,” Bascal had told the Palace Guards, when they’d studied the action and looked like they might intervene. And that explanation had seemed to satisfy them. Even more so than most robots, Palace Guards were enormously intelligent and perceptive. But they weren’t human, and didn’t care about things unless specifically instructed to.
Initially, the robots had tried to impose all sorts of structured activities on the boys. Canoeing, basket weaving, group sing-along ... They were like caricatures of the real counselors, interchangeable and blank-faced, devoid of vocal inflection and bristling with the potential for violence. But it turned out they had no programming to enforce these edicts; if you told them to fuck themselves, they’d just stand there unconcerned while you went about your business.
“Okay,” Conrad allowed, finally getting into the spirit of it. “There isn’t a single spot on this planette I haven’t seen at least twice. I’m all in favor of fresh scenery. So we throw some wet dirt in a hold somewhere, as a mass buffer for the fax. That works. What about energy?”
“Capacitors,” Bascal answered. “That’s what a real sailboat uses anyway. Wellstone panels to absorb energy— mainly from the sun—and capacitors to store it.”
“You know how to make a capacitor?”
Bascal laughed. “Ask a block of wellstone, boyo. You do think too much.”
“All right, whatever,” Conrad conceded. “Are we done here?” He was still climbing down, swinging and twisting a little on every branch just for fun, though being careful not to spill his bucket. The boys would not look kindly on squooshed pies, and they had their ways of letting you know.
“Done enough,” Bascal said with a shrug. He started do
wn himself.
“So you’re actually serious about this.”
“You bet. Dead serious. Our elders need to understand they have zero ability to push us around.”
Conrad reached the ground, glanced briefly at the mirrored skin of the Palace Guard, and then set about rearranging the contents of his bucket, making sure the kindling wasn’t crushing the pies, that the pies weren’t splitting their bready coats and dripping on the kindling. Later on, he’d light the fire with his bow drill and some dried grass, just like Rock Dengle had taught him. He loved lighting the fire, and tending it, feeding in larger and larger sticks until finally it was hot enough to stew a goose. Actually tending the cooking pot was a duty Xmary had taken for herself, for what she called “Neolithic reasons.” I.e., she didn’t trust the boys to do a good job of it, and probably also wanted to make sure nobody spat in it or anything.
“What about navigation?”
Bascal hopped down beside him. “You’re speaking to a Tongan, boyo. Greatest navigators who ever lived.”
“Your father’s European.”
“Catalan Spaniard,” Bascal said. “Another great mariner race. My father invented the ertially shielded grappleship, and sailed the first one alone for over thirty AU. I think there were two of him on board, actually, but still.”
“You know what I mean, Bas. Where do we go, and how?”
Smiling, the prince made a gesture of mock humility. “I’ve sailed alone, with no electronics, from Tongatapu to Eua on a moonless night. For that matter, I’ve sailed from LEO to Luna on a Tongaless night. Steering is easy—you just adjust the transparency of the sail. A mirror here means a push there, and vice versa. Easy as cream custard. As far as where to steer, these days there’s a lot of shipping in Kuiper space. We should be able to track the emissions of a neutronium barge or something. Unmanned, or manned only part-time.”
“Track it how?”
“With sensors. A radiometer or something. Ask a block of wellstone, boyo; we live in a programmable universe.”