by Kage Baker
She had, like all the rest of her race, the power of absolute concentration on what interested her at the moment, fixation to a degree that would baffle one of the big people. So intent on her game was she, it mattered nothing to her that the dead slave trembled abruptly, that his mouth opened and fastened on the neck of the bottle, that he proceeded to gulp down the water.
“Good little baby,” Tiara sang approvingly. “Such a good baby, he drinks it all gone. Isn’t he clever! Mummy’s very pleased with him.”
The slave lay still, gasping for breath. She lifted the bottle away and he moved his lips as though he were speaking, but Tiara couldn’t hear anything. “Oh, he’s parched, he’s parched and dry, he needs a whiskey to tell that story!” she sang. “Does he want a whiskey, then?”
The slave might have nodded, or it might have been a shiver. Tiara decided to play it for a nod and jumped up, running off to the spring for more water. She returned in triumph and settled back down, lifting his head and holding the bottle for him. “Drink, drink!” she chanted. “And grow up big and strong.”
He finished the water and sighed, and his head sagged back on her arm. His lips moved again and this time she heard him speak, distinctly, a whisper of thanks.
“He can talk to me,” she squealed in delight. “Talk to me more, slave!”
His eyes opened. She exclaimed, and leaned down to peer into them. They were a lovely shade of twilight blue, the prettiest eyes she had ever seen. All the kin had eyes like black water, except for some of the smarter Uncles; none such a nice color as this slave’s eyes. They did not seem to see her, though. His lips moved again and the voice was clearer:
“… I have been a word in a book,
I have been an eagle,
I have been a ship on the sea,
I have been the string of a harp,
I have been bespelled a long year inthe foam of the sea … “
“Oh, no you haven’t, silly,” said Tiara. “You’ve been only here for years.”
The slave blinked, looked confused. At last, “Little girl?” he inquired.
“You have to call me Princess Tiara,” she informed him.
“Princess Tiara,” he repeated. “Where are we?”
“You’re in my hill, slave-baby,” she said.
His face screwed up as though he were going to cry. “God Apollo, help me,” he moaned, turning his face away. She took his chin in her hands and turned his face back.
“Don’t cry, little baby. Mummy will take care of you. And we can play kin and you can talk to me and get me presents.”
He took a deep breath, blinking his eyes. “Why, I would love to, Princess Tiara,” he said at last. “But I’m hurt, you see. I can’t move my arms or legs, and I’m afraid I can’t see you, not in any spectrum.”
“Oh!” Tiara dropped the game. “You know why? Because Uncle Ratlin killed you.” She leaned back and studied him, puzzled. “How did you come alive again, slave?”
He appeared to be thinking about it. “I must have reset, or rerouted, and I’ve been in fugue all this time,” he guessed, as though he were talking to himself. He turned his head in her direction. “Little girl? Princess Tiara. Are we in your uncle Ratlin’s room?”
Tiara shook her head and then remembered he couldn’t see. “Oh, no. We’re in the room where the dead big people get thrown away.”
“Ah,” he said, shuddering. “So I’ve been thrown away? How long have I been in here?”
“Always,” Tiara said. Her tiny brows drew together in a frown. “Uncle Ratlin will be mad. You were supposed to be dead.”
“Oh, but—” How rapid the slave’s breathing became. “You don’t want him to be mad, do you? And if you tell him I’m still alive, he’ll want to kill me again. And if he does that, I won’t be able to talk to you. You see?”
Tiara saw. “It’s a secret,” she decided.
“Oh, yes, Princess Tiara, it’s our secret. Please?” The slave’s voice shook. “You won’t tell anyone I’m alive in here, and I can talk to you, and play all the games you like.”
“But you’re broken,” Tiara pointed out.
“Well, that’s true, but I might get better. I’m sure I would, if I had enough time,” the slave argued earnestly. “I couldn’t even talk or think before, and then you gave me water to drink, and just listen to me now! I’m talking and thinking like mad.”
“I’ll get you more water,” Tiara announced.
She got up and ran from the room, not noticing his cries of: “Wait! Little girl! Princess! Oh, please, for gods’ sake, don’t leave me!” When she came back after refilling the bottle, he turned his face at once as he heard her come in. “Princess Tiara?” he called desperately.
“Don’t cry, little baby,” she said, putting the bottle to his mouth. He gasped and drank again, so quickly some of the water spilled and ran down like his tears.
“Thank you, sweet little princess,” he gasped.
“I like that.” She smiled. “Tell me I’m a sweet little princess again.”
“Oh, you are! You’re the dearest, sweetest little princess there’s ever been.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you!”
“And I love you,” she emoted, clasping her hands together and tossing her head back. “You are my perfect treasure, and I die for wanting you!”
The slave’s mouth worked oddly. “My dearest love, you must never die,” he cried. “Surely if you die the stars will all go out!”
“That’s nice,” she told him, her eyes shining. “You talk beautiful.”
“I will always talk beautifully for you, Princess, I promise,” said the slave. “I just wish I could sit up and play, too. If only I could see! Will you look for me, dear little princess, and tell me: have I still got both my legs?”
Dutifully Tiara leaned over and looked, though she knew perfectly well. “Yes,” she sang. “Ten fingers and ten toes, why, he’s perfect!”
“Both my feet are still there, then? And my arms and hands?”
“Yes, my treasure.”
“Apollo be thanked. Am I cut, my dearest? Have I wounds anywhere?”
“My poor brave hero.” Tiara pretended to weep. “They have murdered you entirely, there is blood in your beautiful golden hair.”
“Is there?” The slave blinked, frowning. “Yes. I remember that. He tried to open my skull. So there’s a wound in my head, my love?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ha. Well, don’t trouble your heart, my darling.” The slave ran his tongue over his lips. “If you’ll look after me—if you’ll bring me water and food—my body will have what it needs to begin repairing itself. I don’t know how badly I’m damaged, but if I can regain some function—any function—” The slave began to tremble, and calmed himself. “Why, what a grand time we’ll have. And I can tell you stories—do you like stories, Princess Tiara?”
“Oh, yes,” she assured him.
“Well then! Do you know, I was a Literature Preservation Specialist—” The slave’s voice broke. He swallowed hard and went on, “And what that means is, I know every story in the wide world. I will be your own storyteller, princess dear, and nobody else will have such fine stories told. Only to you will I tell them. Will you like that?”
“More than anything, my prince,” said Tiara and sighed. Then, in a completely sensible voice, she added, “Except you aren’t really a prince. You’re just my slave.”
“Ah! Yes, but only your slave,” he insisted. “I would be slave to none but the beautiful Princess Tiara. I’m afraid if you tell anybody I’m here, they’ll come take me away from you.”
“Nobody will do that,” Tiara told him, patting his cheek. She knew how to keep secrets.
There was no time, inside the hill; except in Quean Barbie’s chamber, where there was a chronometer of ingenious design to remind everyone when her favorite programs were on. With that exception there was no day or night, no sense of days or weeks passing or what that mi
ght mean.
But there were the stories, and the little rhymes the slave knew. For a long while there was Cinderella and Puss in Boots and Hickory Dickory Dock, intoned in his weary patient voice from the moment Tiara yawned and sat up until the moment she’d yawn and snuggle down beside him. She had dragged her scraps of blanket and dead-leaf nesting into the bone room and made a cozy place there against the slave’s body. She left it only to find food and drink for them.
Plenty of water from the spring, and pale fish blind as the slave was blind from the dark pool under the rock. From the world outside there were berries, and hazelnuts, and bird eggs. There were snails. The slave had shuddered at these, at first, and then made a game that they were escargot with garlic butter in white wine sauce. Sometimes Tiara would creep down to the farm and take anything that appealed to her from the big man’s kitchen, and sometimes things from his yard. Once there were towels left out to dry on the line overnight, and Tiara carried them away gleefully; for as her slave began to get better he could feel the cold, and she liked to wrap warm things about his shivering body, or wad them between him and the stony floor.
As Tiara got older and more skillful she learned to milk the big beasts into a jar, and would carry it back to her slave with scarcely a drop spilled. Then they’d feast on the cream, and with his throat refreshed the slave could go on with the astonishing stories, about Jason and the Argonauts, about Odysseus, about Rama and Sita.
Tiara loved her slave. With just a little food and care he became much nicer to look at: the wound in his head healed over and he regained use of one of his arms, dragging himself upright to lean against a wall. Nor was he loud, as the big people were, but soft-spoken, and as self-effacing as the stupids that served Quean Barbie. Tiara assumed this was because he was a slave.
The only trouble she would ever have with him was when he would cry. Sometimes he’d begin to cry and be unable to stop, and shouting at him or stamping her feet never helped; so she learned those were the times to play Mummy, and kiss the tears from his cheeks (she liked the salty flavor) and stroke his hair and sing to him. It was a strange feeling for Princess Tiara, rocking him in her arms until he’d wept himself quiet. It made her Memory come, flooding her little mind with images and words she’d never imagined. It made her heart ache.
How long does it take to tell all of the Ramayana? The Iliad? The Kalevala? All the stories of the Arabian Nights? The Cattle Raid of Cooley? Every myth and legend an immortal mind might compile in two thousand years of careful work? And telling them once would never be enough, for the devouring attention of a child. There are always stories to be told over and over, until the listener repeats them with the teller, pause for pause, breath for breath, word for ceaseless word, unappeased, unappeasable.
Quean Barbie, up in her warm chamber with her captive suitors and her silent attendants, watched game shows and soap operas and Elvis holoes. Down in the dark, Princess Tiara drank of a different brew, began to grow into another kind of Quean entirely.
Her tastes did form around romances, as she grew. Every tale of chivalry and passion the slave had ever sung when he’d been a troubadour, she loved: Tristan and Isolde, Arthur and Guinevere, Pelleas and Melisande. Every jongleur ditty about Robin and Marian. All the Shakespeare love plays, acted out in the slave’s beautiful voice and with the gestures of his one good hand. Heathcliff and Cathy, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester enchanted Tiara. When he recited Alfred Noyes’s The Highwayman for her, she wanted it every night after that for years.
Princess Tiara grew small high breasts, and began to develop a certain interest in the slave’s anatomy. No use; he couldn’t make those parts work, damaged as he was, and he explained that it wasn’t good for a little girl to start that sort of play too early anyway. Carefully, phrasing with exquisite tact, he made a request. She agreed, and the next night she went down to the farmhouse and rummaged around in the big man’s bedroom as he slept. She returned in triumph with a pair of thin cotton dress trousers, and helped the slave pull them on over his nakedness. Once his man parts were covered she forgot all about them. He did look so funny, with the big baggy trousers rolled up on his thin legs!
But the clothes made him happy, and Tiara liked making her slave happy.
Now that she had breasts, now that he had trousers, the long hours of talk changed. There were still stories, but he also told her about History. He had lived a long time and knew a great deal, and he knew how to make it interesting for her. Every king or emperor or president had had a great lady who’d loved him, after all, and a story could easily be related in terms of what Theodosia had bid Justinian to do, or Eleanor bid Franklin. And he made the big world seem such a wonderful place! It was quite a shock of connection, the day Tiara realized that all the stories he’d been telling her hadn’t happened inside the hill but must, of course, have happened in the big world outside.
Yes, that was a jump into another dimension. None of those people in the stories lived in cold rooms full of trash, or waded shivering through dewfall to steal food. There were elegant places where rain didn’t cascade down the walls in winter, where things were fixed when they broke, where nobody had to hide in the darkness.
“I want to go out there,” she informed the slave.
“I wish we could, dearest Princess,” said the slave wistfully. “We could walk in the beautiful city of London, under the blossoming trees in Regent’s Park. We could stay at Claridge’s. We could dress splendidly and go to an elegant restaurant. I would wave my hand for the seller of roses and he’d come, just like that, and lay his wares at your feet. A waiter would bring us champagne. All the men passing by would fall in love with you.”
“And would I be more beautiful than their dreams and hearts’ desires?” Tiara asked.
“Oh, yes, child,” the slave replied, and stretched out his hand and found her face. He traced its contours, the tiny nose and chin of exquisite delicacy, the high-domed brow and enormous eyes. “Oh, Princess, you’ll break hearts in your time.”
“Why can’t we go right now?” Tiara pleaded.
“Time,” the slave replied. “I’m not at my best, I’m afraid, and you’re still so little, dearest. One fine day, though, you’ll be a grand lady; and if I’m lucky, one day my legs will repair themselves. Then, if you’ll lead me by the hand, we might go away together.”
“What will it take to make your legs work again?”
The slave smiled wryly. “A few months in a regeneration tank would do it, but we haven’t got one of those, have we, my love? I suppose if we could get room service in here we’d have a chance, and wouldn’t that be nice? Regular meals, so dear Tiara could grow tall and poor old Lewis’s biomechanicals had the fuel they needed to repair themselves.”
“You mean we need more food,” she said, focusing sharply.
“Mm-hm. Vitamins, minerals, and iron,” he said airily, draping his arm around her. “We’ll have them someday, I’m sure. Coquille St. Jacques, oysters creole, curried shrimp. Crème brulée, asparagus soufflé, café au lait. You’ll be lovely in watered silk and pearls, and all the splendid gallants will fall on their knees to beg you for the honor of just one dance with the rare and remarkable Princess Tiara Parakeet.”
She snuggled in under his arm, but her mind was still busy. “Will you be very jealous, when I have lots of lovers?” she wanted to know.
“Oh, a bit, I suppose,” he said, leaning his cheek against the top of her head. “But, really, how could I be greedy? I can’t keep you all to myself, a beauty like you.”
He had begun to hum a little tune, a waltz composed in a place and time very far from that dark room stacked with the moldering dead, when Tiara looked up at him and asked: “Have you ever loved anybody besides me?”
The waltz trailed off into silence.
“Once upon a time,” the slave said quietly.
There was a silence again, and Tiara prodded him. “Once upon a time?”
The slave drew a deep breath, and in the cle
ar voice with which he had recited before kings at Tara he began: “This is a story about two lovers. It is the best love story I know, because it’s true.”
“Star-crossed lovers?” Tiara wanted to know.
“Oh, yes, terribly. They suffered torment, and prison, and death. Nations and powers conspired to keep them apart. But they always found each other again, you see? And at last they went away together and were never parted anymore.
“Once upon a time … a little girl sat in a cell like this one. It was dark and cold in there, and the little girl was frightened and all alone.”
“But I’m not alone,” said Tiara.
“No, dearest. You have me. But this little girl didn’t have anybody, yet.
“Her name was Mendoza.”
Fez, 9 July 2355
The man sets the Elephant back in its place, picks up an ivory Pawn. He reflects that there had been a certain political agenda in the mind of the carver; all the white figures are clearly agents of nineteenth-century imperialism. The ivory Pawn could be a controleur, a company store accountant, a missionary: high collar and hat, pointed beard and mustaches. In pose he is stiff as a wooden idol, he has none of the dynamic lines of the other pieces. Only his face is alive. His teeth are bared in a grimace of Viking ferocity, his staring eyes round with malice.
CHAPTER 2
Hollywood, 7 August 2330
The Benthamites had finally come for Forest Lawn.
It wasn’t the first time open season had been declared on a cemetery. Centuries earlier, San Francisco had decided her civic space was at a premium and relocated her founding population (who were in no condition to protest the change of address) to a potato field some miles south of her borders. The former San Franciscans in question, however, were granted neat new plots and crypts, in fact a nice necropolis of their very own, in compensation for being evicted.
Not so the residents of Forest Lawn in Hollywood. They might reasonably have expected that politics could no longer touch them, but they’d have been in for a surprise.