by C. J. Ryan
Fifty thousand voices roared their approval. But Gloria could only stand there and smile wanly as the altar slowly rotated to let everyone view the Church’s newest Avatar.
Holy shit, she thought.
FOLLOWING THE CEREMONY, GLORIA JOINED with Church officials and the media at a reception. She sipped wine and nibbled canapés while a procession of naked men and women shook her hand, offered their congratulations, and wished her continued Joy. Many, it was clear, wanted to share that Joy with her; a few seemed ready and willing to do it then and there. Gloria graciously declined.
She wondered if it was going to be this way from now on. She had mixed feelings about the public reputation she had acquired in the past year or so. At times she adored it, but there were others when she wished she could go back to being plain old Gloria VanDeen, anonymous Avatar of Nothing and Nobody’s Sweetheart.
But no, that was ridiculous too. She was, after all, the former wife of the man who was now Emperor, and royals didn’t wed anonymous nobodies. Gloria was a member of a wealthy and prominent family and her beauty had attracted boys and men ever since she first blossomed. She had a face that could probably launch about 990 ships, if not a thousand, and a body that could launch a thousand more. With a genetic heritage from six continents, she boasted a flowing blond mane, flawless skin the shade of coffee with a little cream, and arresting, exotically angled eyes the color of polished turquoise. Her lips were perhaps a little thin for perfection, but they curved upward slightly at the sides, in a hint of a permanent, bemused smile. Her body was slim and athletic, her breasts not large but firm, globular, and tipped by erect, cylindrical nipples. Her navel was artistically whorled; thanks to her genetic enhancements, it was—like her nipples—as erotically sensitive as the primary sexual features of any normal woman. She could achieve orgasms in mere seconds, if she chose, or drag them out endlessly until sheer exhaustion finally brought them to a halt. Sex with Gloria VanDeen was an experience no one ever forgot.
She was inescapably special, and knew it. But still…an Avatar of Joy?
Gloria sighed, shook her head slightly to clear away the reveries, and tried to focus on the next person who wanted to meet her. This one, anomalously, was wearing clothing, Visitation Day notwithstanding. And not just any clothing—he was decked out in the Imperial livery of the House of Hazar.
The young man leaned close and whispered in her ear. “Pardon the intrusion, Ms. VanDeen, but the Emperor would very much like to see you, at your earliest convenience.”
Gloria had been afraid of this. The Emperor’s main Residence was in Rio, and Charles was bound to have been aware that she was in the city.
“My earliest convenience? Tell him that would be in about five years, give or take.”
The messenger, unsmiling, shook his head. “That won’t do, ma’am. His Imperial Highness was quite clear that I was not to take no for an answer. There’s a limo waiting just outside, and the Emperor instructed me to tell you that there will be absolutely no media present. You can come and go in complete privacy.”
“There are media reps in this room right now,” Gloria pointed out. “If they see me leaving with you…”
“They will report nothing, ma’am. The Household will see to that.”
And, of course, the Household could. The Empire might have had nominal freedom of the press, but in some areas, that freedom was more theoretical than actual.
Gloria bowed to the inevitable. “Let me make my apologies to the Archbishop,” she said.
THE LIMO DEPOSITED GLORIA AT THE ENTRANCE to the Imperial Horticultural Gardens on the grounds of the Residence. Here, exobotanists had assembled a unique collection of plant species from all over the Empire, and had somehow gotten them to grow in harmony without annihilating either each other or the native species of Earth. The result, one critic had noted, looked as if Salvador Dali had taken up gardening.
Gloria wandered through the gateway, past a bright blue hedge, and under the drooping boughs of a quaking willow from DeSantos IV; when she brushed against its fronds, they drew back as if in fright. She spotted Charles strolling along a pathway between a fragrant, carnivorous gluetree from somewhere in the Pleiades Cluster and a pygmy sequoia that was all of four feet tall from a high-gravity world. The Emperor smiled and nodded at the sight of her, and casually walked onward in her direction.
“What’s this?” he asked, pointing at her. “Clothing? On a Visitation Day? I would have expected better from an Avatar of Joy.”
“It may be a Visitation Day, and this may be Rio,” Gloria replied, “but back home in Manhattan, it’s still January.”
“Indeed. Tell me, have you had any snow there yet? The Imperial Climatologist tells me we’ll see it in our lifetime.”
“Not that I’ve noticed. But I hear they had a little up in Poughkeepsie last year.”
“Something to look forward to, then. What fun, waiting for an ice age.” Charles stopped in front of Gloria and held out both hands to her. She hesitated a moment, then took them in hers. They held each other and stared in silence for what felt like a long time.
Charles, at twenty-eight, was looking more like an Emperor with each passing year. His medium-length dirty blond hair was artlessly tousled over the tops of his ears, and his closely trimmed beard emphasized rather than concealed the arrogant thrust of his chin. His nose was characteristic of the Hazar Dynasty, being rather long and bony, and his watery blue eyes seemed to radiate condescension. He was still slim and fit, and was tall enough to look down on most people with lofty nonchalance.
It had been nearly a year since Gloria had seen him face-to-face. Upon her return from Mynjhino, Charles had seen fit to award her a Distinguished Service Medal; having been embarrassed and frustrated by her performance during that episode, he had concluded that the only way to deal with it was to reward her. On the other hand, her service on Sylvania had inspired no award, only icy silence.
Charles finally released his grip on her hands and gave her an appraising once-over with his eyes. She was clothed now, true, but only minimally, in a pale blue wrap dress that was loosely fastened at the waist, exposing far more than it covered.
“You’ve done something to your hair,” he said at last.
“Oh…yes, something was done to it,” Gloria admitted. Her hairdresser in Manhattan had performed some creative first aid on her damaged ’do following her return from Cartago, and her long, Dura-styled mane now flowed halfway down her back in apparent good health.
“So I heard,” Charles said. “Dammit, Glory, if Mingus keeps sending you to these two-crown shit holes, sooner or later you are going to get seriously hurt. And for what? So a bunch of provincials can water their fucking lawns?”
“People live on those shit holes, Charles,” Gloria responded. “They have rights and needs, the same as anyone else in the Empire. Dexta does what it can to see that they receive the respect and attention they are due.”
“Spoken like the career bureaucrat you’ve become,” Charles snorted.
“Thank you.” Gloria smiled. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years.”
Charles shook his head in evident disgust. “I cannot fathom why you are at Dexta. I never could. It’s a barbaric environment, as I’m sure even you would admit, considering everything that was done to you when you started out there. And now you’ve become Mingus’s Girl Friday, which I find appalling.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“He’s a hundred and thirty years old!”
“A hundred and thirty one,” Gloria corrected. “Why, Charles, are you jealous?”
“Please, don’t be disgusting. If you are fucking the old coot, I’d rather not know about it.”
“Actually,” said Gloria, “I’m not. By his choice, not mine, I hasten to point out.”
“Wise of him,” Charles said. “He’s too old to handle an Avatar of Joy.” Charles looked upward toward the treetops and the sky and shook his head. “An Avatar of Joy, Spi
rit save us! You know, don’t you, that if it weren’t for the damned Spiritists, you’d probably be spending the rest of your life on a prison world for what you did on Sylvania?”
“Me?” Gloria asked innocently. “What did I do?”
“You know damned well what you did! You ruined a quadrillion crowns’ worth of Fergusite. Only I can’t touch you for it, because of the fucking Voice and the idiot Spiritists who think the whole thing was divine intervention, instead of a plot—a goddamn conspiracy—by you and Mingus! Don’t deny it, Glory. I don’t know how you managed that business with the Voice, but—”
“Oh, ye of little faith!” Gloria laughed.
Charles seemed about to respond, but stopped himself abruptly and reeled in his rage. He walked down the path a few paces and pointed at a large, gnarled tree a few meters away. “Know what that is?” he asked.
“Beats me.”
“It’s a glashpadoza tree. The native species on Belonna V believe that the glashpadoza absorbs all of the sins of the clan that grows it. That’s why it’s so hellishly ugly.” He turned to look at her. “Would you care for a cutting?”
“Are you suggesting that I need my own glashpadoza tree?”
“Don’t you?”
Gloria considered the question seriously. She had committed many sins on Sylvania, and the business with the Voice and the Fergusite was far from the most serious. A spaceship with five evil men in it had never reached its destination, and only Gloria knew the reason.
She looked again at the tree. “I might have a good spot to grow one of those at my place on Long Island,” she said finally.
“I thought you might,” Charles said. “I’ll have the Imperial Gardener see to it.”
Charles went over to her, stared into her face for a moment, then carefully put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. She didn’t resist.
“I know more about what happened on Sylvania than you think I do,” he said softly. “I’m not saying you were wrong. If it had been me, I’d have done the same—or worse, probably. But tell me, Glory, are you planning to make a habit of that sort of thing?”
She looked up into his eyes. “What if I am?” she asked.
“Then don’t just play at it,” he said. “Don’t think you can go around dispensing justice and righteousness, ad hoc, on behalf of Dexta, because you can’t. Sooner or later it will catch up with you, and not even Norman Mingus—not even I—will be able to save you from the consequences. If you’re going to do it, do it right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t do it as a Dexta drone, Glory. Or even as an Avatar of Joy. Do it as Empress!”
GLORIA WAS TAKEN ABACK BY CHARLES’S PROPOSAL. A year and a half ago, just before she left for Mynjhino, he had made it clear that he wanted her back; but she had long since chosen another path and had no intention of retreating into Charles’s waiting arms.
They had married young and divorced young. At the time, Charles was seventh in line to the throne, then sixth after old Darius finally died, and seemed unlikely ever to be Emperor. He seemed unlikely, in fact, ever to be much of anything other than a wealthy, privileged wastrel. He had persuaded her to suspend her education, and together they had spent much of their marriage gadding about the Empire in his luxurious yacht. But in her travels, Gloria had become fascinated with exosociology: the study of the lives and cultures of the Empire’s many denizens, human and otherwise. When she decided to return to school and continue her studies, Charles had absolutely forbidden it. So she had left him and never looked back.
More than two years later, after Gloria had completed her studies and joined Dexta, a botched coup known as the Fifth of October Plot had killed Gregory, his two sons, and three of his nephews, leaving the Imperial throne to Charles. Gloria had sighed in relief at her narrow escape from having become Empress. The last thing she wanted was to be a useless, ineffectual ornament to the reign of Charles V. She drew immense satisfaction from her work at Dexta, and would have been miserable if condemned to spend her life in ceremonial playacting.
She broke away from Charles and began walking down one of the pathways at a brisk pace. Charles followed behind, apparently content to give her some space.
Empress! Spirit, why did he think she would want to be Empress? She had more real power now, as head of the Office of Strategic Intervention, than most Empresses ever dreamed of possessing. There had been an unbroken line of forty-seven male Emperors, dating back to Hazar the Great in 2522, 696 years ago. Unlike the kings and potentates of antiquity, producing male offspring was no hit-or-miss proposition for the Emperors of the Terran Empire. Empresses were simply the wives of Emperors, and not rulers in their own right.
Oh, five or six of them had obtained considerable power, being married to weak or dim-witted men, but they were the exceptions rather than the rule. And some Emperors had done without Empresses altogether, preferring to sire their offspring with a series of Imperial Consorts.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Charles said from behind her. “But this would be different. I’d give you real power, Glory.”
Gloria stopped so abruptly that she skidded forward a bit on the crushed stone of the pathway. She whirled around and faced Charles.
“And what is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Just what I said. Real power. We’ll work out the provisions in detail, put it in writing, sign it, and publish it. I wouldn’t be able to back out even if I wanted to.”
She stared at him, took a couple of steps toward him, then stopped and stared at him some more, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What are you up to, Chuckles?”
He grinned at her. “No good, I assure you. No good at all. But since you insist, I shall reveal to you the details of my nefarious plot.” Charles closed the distance between them and put his hands on her shoulders. “What I intend,” he said, “is to wed and bed the most beautiful and popular woman in the Empire so that we can fuck each other like crazed minks whenever we want. And what’s more, I want that woman to give me the benefit of her very great intelligence, creativity, and courage in ruling an Empire of three trillion sentient beings, every one of whom would be thrilled and delighted to have her for their Empress. There, you see? An evil plot, if ever there was one.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Entirely. You’d be, if you like, my coruler. I would retain primacy, of course—the laws would require that in any event. But you would have full authority in virtually any area that you prefer. Spirit, Glory, I have no interest in doing half the things I’m required to do, anyway! Believe me, I’d welcome sharing the load with you. And the people would love it. Together, we’d be the best rulers this old Empire has ever seen!”
“And…?” Gloria prodded. She wasn’t ready to buy into this fantasy just yet.
Charles removed his hands from her shoulders and stepped back. He nodded and said, “And…I’m under increasing pressure these days to produce an heir, one way or another. I could find an acceptable Consort easily enough, but I’d much prefer to do it with you. Host-mother, of course, so you needn’t trouble yourself with a pregnancy. And it really is necessary, Gloria. I mean, you know who’s next in line of succession at the moment, don’t you? Cousin Larry. And I know what you think of him.”
“Larry?” Gloria groaned. “Lord Brockinbrough the Detestable?”
“The very one. How did you describe him that time? Old enough to be my father, unscrupulous enough to be my brother, and immature enough to be my son? Wonderful line, that. Even Larry appreciated it. Anyway, I really need to cook up a more appropriate heir, and there is no DNA I’d rather entwine with mine than thine.”
Gloria frowned, looked at the ground, chewed her lower lip for a moment, then looked back up at Charles. “And…?”
“And,” Charles said with a laugh, “your approval numbers in the polls are better than mine. I don’t want to spend the next century competing with you, Glory. I’d rather pool our r
esources. And there’s one more and.”
“Which is?”
Charles wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to him, and kissed her with Imperial urgency. She responded with urgency of her own. Time and turmoil dissolved, disappointments and frustrations faded away; whatever had gone wrong between them, some things remained as right and inevitable as they had been in the beginning. He tightened his hold on her, and she made no attempt to resist. Moments later they lay sprawled in the grass beneath the gnarled limbs of the glashpadoza tree.
IN MIDAFTERNOON, GLORIA TRANSITED BACK to Dexta Headquarters in Manhattan, after spending two hours rolling in the grass beneath the glashpadoza tree with the Emperor. Charles had genetic enhancements of his own, and despite his essentially selfish nature, he was a marvelous lover. Whatever regrets Gloria had about their marriage, they didn’t include sex.
She walked along the main concourse, feeling every eye on her, as if people somehow knew she had just been humping the Emperor. But what an afternoon…
Empress! Spirit!
She had made no commitment, but she hadn’t said no, either. That, in itself, surprised her. It was an offer that could not be dismissed casually, if at all. Certainly, it would be a life-changing decision. Charles understood that and didn’t press the issue; they had agreed that both of them would give the matter more thought.
Gloria got into an elevator with several people she didn’t know and said, “Forty,” where the OSI had its offices. She heard two women standing behind her giggling to each other and resisted an urge to turn and look.
Another woman said, “Congratulations, Ms. VanDeen.” Gloria’s eyebrows shot upward. How could she have known?
Sensing Gloria’s confusion, the woman added, “About being selected as an Avatar of the Spirit, I mean. That’s quite an honor.”