by Susan Grant
He spread his hands. “Where else will you go?”
Her chin jutted up. “Home.”
“Where is that? Somewhere in the UCE?” He said the name with disdain.
The United States is no more. Bree tried to keep her face blank of the emotions swirling inside her.
The wall once more formed into a view of the world. Kyber re-aimed his beam of light at the map. “My kingdom is a land of peace and prosperity.” His eyes turned smoky; his voice deepened and warmed. Bree couldn’t help thinking he’d use that tone of voice in bed with a lover. His light caressed all of Asia, circled a shrunken Indonesia and Philippines, slid up to Siberia, Mongolia, and around the eastern half of Russia. “We have the highest literacy rate, the lowest infant mortality rate, and the longest life span in the world. There is no better place to live than here.”
“You make your kingdom sound perfect,” she said.
“It is.”
“Don’t you wish?” she said under her breath, giving in to a fit of petulance. Finding out that you’d lost just about everything you had, and then learning the little you thought was left didn’t exist either—well, it made a girl grumpy.
“Actually, I do wish, Banzai. Let me say rather that my kingdom is perfect most of the time—but that is another matter, one that has to do with politics, of which I had my fill last night.” He glanced at both Drs. Park, who had been following the conversation and Bree’s distress with physician-ish disapproval. “Parliament troubles in Australia. Macao again. Greedy energy brokers. It’s been this way since my grandfather’s reign in the thirties,” he told Bree. “I have yet to decide on a solution.”
“The thirties?” She tried to trap him. Math could catch the best of liars. “That was almost eighty years ago. Your grandfather would have been a little kid, if he was born at all yet.”
“It has been only forty years, Banzai.”
“How’s that?”
“The 2130s. Not your 1930s.”
He’d done it again. The perfect answer.
“If you’re the prince,” she asked him, “who’s the king?”
“My father is the king.” A few seconds of silence ticked by. “He lives here in the palace with my mother, the queen. But his condition leaves him unable to rule.”
“His...condition,” Bree hinted, looking for more.
Kyber was fond of long-winded answers, but on this topic his reticence was obvious. Family issues. Bree let it go at that. “You’re a hereditary leader, though. You hold no elections. Your people have no choice in leaders but you. You’re a dictator.”
She knew she was being reckless with her words. Kyber held all the cards; she had none. With a wave of his royal hand, he could have her head lopped off right where she stood. And yet, it didn’t scare her. Nothing did anymore.
She felt empty. No fear, no grief. Thrust into a strange new world, she had nothing to lose but her principles. She wouldn’t sacrifice those; they defined her. She was an American soldier, even if there was no more America. She’d hang on to what she believed until the end.
She waved her hand at the luxury surrounding them. “I joined the air force to rid the world of so-called leaders who live in luxury while their population suffers.”
“Suffers!” He reared back. “My people are happy. Blissfully so. If I opened the borders, none would leave. I’d have to fight back a tide of refugees from everywhere else.”
Bree snorted. “I’m sure Genghis Khan said the same thing. And Stalin.”
Too bad Joo-Eun hadn’t returned with the vodka. Bree needed that shot. Maybe the whole bottle. Or, maybe her grief was coming out as anger, and she was taking it out on Kyber.
The emperor-prince puffed out his chest. “I am not your average despot. I’m...an autocrat with a heart, a tyrant with a conscience. Come, Banzai, surely this is as obvious to you as it is to my own people.” To his full-of-himself stance, he added a killer smile.
The man was hot, Bree decided. The trouble was, he knew it. If only she were as convinced of the facts of her situation as Kyber was about his looks.
Kyber turned to the doctors for support. He spread his hands wide. “She does not believe me.” Sighing, he strode over to where Bree sat on the bed and hoisted her into his arms.
“Oh...” She grabbed his shoulders for balance.
“My people are happy, Banzai. They do not suffer. I will prove it to you now!” The room spun as he swung her around and carried her out the door.
Chapter Eight
Dr. Park protested. “Your Highness! She must rest. She’s been up too long as it is.”
Kyber shifted Bree’s weight in his arms, but he didn’t put her down. “Dae, you act as if we haven’t spent the past week trying to keep her awake!”
Bree settled the argument. “I feel fine. I’m going.” It was a chance to get past the locked doors. She didn’t care about the specifics.
Granted, it felt a little weird: Kyber holding her. As a rule, men didn’t carry her places. But she sensed nothing untoward on Kyber’s part. He acted like a perfect gentleman.
Also, working with men all her life, she’d mastered the tricky art of compromise—when to give in, and when not to, to preserve the egos of Mars and Venus.
She slipped her arms around Kyber’s broad, leather-clad shoulders. “As soon as we’re out of sight of Dr. Park, you can put me down. I can walk, but if they think I’m having trouble, they’ll try to make me rest.” Whether it had been one year or 170, she’d been in bed too long.
“Dae is not happy with me,” Kyber admitted. “I have no doubt I will hear about it later.”
Bree craned her head to peek over Kyber’s shoulder. The women watched him carry her swiftly away, their faces pinched in varying degrees of concern. “Are they sisters? The younger ones look like a set of sextuplets.”
“No. They’re clones, not sisters.”
“Clones.” Good Lord.
“But not Dae. She was my father’s muse.”
The slight change in Kyber’s tone hinted that the physician might have been more than a muse to the king.
“My father considered her so brilliant, so beautiful, he had to have more of her. So he had more made. Nine altogether. But as in any reproduction, I’ve learned, the copies are never as good as the original. Dae’s first clone was also brilliant, but not right to be a surgeon. Hand-eye coordination concerns. But her talents suited the field of psychiatry, where she has done quite well. The second genetic copy made an excellent medical technician. The other fourth, fifth, and sixth, in decreasing levels of abilities, were fit to be servants only, as you saw.”
“You said nine? Where are the others?”
“They were put to rest in childhood. Inadequate brain function.”
“Put to rest? You mean euthanized? Killed?”
“That is correct.”
Bree stared straight ahead. “They were people...”
“No, Banzai, they were clones. But the topic spurs debates all over the kingdom—and the world, as I understand it. In your time, people debated whether or not those still in the womb were people. This is no different. As our machines become self-aware we will undoubtedly debate their humanity, as well.” His voice turned thoughtful. “They are important, those debates. What decisions we make will ultimately define us as a civilization.”
Her impression of Kyber so far had been of a big, good-natured, good-looking—and maybe a bit simple—man who loved his power and status. Two new qualities made her rethink her original opinion: ruthlessness and razor-sharp intelligence.
The clone issue, however, nagged at her. “What did Dr. Park think of your father making copies of her?”
“I don’t know. I never asked.” He pondered that for a moment. “I would think she’d take it as the compliment that it was.”
Bree wondered what Dr. Park thought about Kyber’s father killing off versions of herself. Weren’t doctors supposed to respect life, any life? Maybe Kyber’s father kept presenting copies
of Dae to Dae as gifts, and she liked having the extra help around. Bree could think of a few times when a clone of herself would have freed up some time and gotten her out of a few annoying obligations. And maybe the king kept secret the ones he had to return to the store.
Kyber set a fast pace. Two men dressed in black body armor followed him and Bree. Bodyguards, she guessed. But they seemed invisible to Kyber, as did Joo-Eun and the other three subservient sisters in the hospital room.
“We are leaving the medical wing now,” Kyber told her. The hall they entered was enormous, its floors and walls made of creamy marble shot through with honey-colored veins. “The area is sealed off from the rest of the palace. It exists as a hospital to serve my family, and for the isolation of infections, if required.”
“No cures for disease?”
“We have cures for most of them. But new diseases appear every year, designed by the terrorists in their labs. Those cause us trouble, from time to time.”
“The terrorists or the diseases?”
“Both.” Kyber carried her to a pair of massive double doors. There, the guards who had escorted them from the hospital wing stopped to confer with guards behind the doors. The woodwork around the frame looked like teak, carved intricately with scenes from Korean folklore. It fit the theme of the palace: an odd mix of ultramodern West and ancient Oriental.
The guards pulled the doors open, revealing another vast hall. The same marble that covered the floor in the hospital wing formed benches and sculptures that seemed to rise up out of the floor, fully formed. Doors off to each side looked like they led to bedrooms. Bedrooms upon bedrooms. She thought of the tiny little house in Chestnut, New York, where she’d grown up. The wood floor under the carpet squeaked. The radiators clanged early on winter mornings when her mother turned up the heat, waking Bree to the smell of breakfast cooking. That was a home. How could this palace ever be a home...to anyone?
Kyber’s palace was a castle in the truest, fairy-tale sense of the word. Outside the grand windows, she saw towers and turrets. Beyond were mountains and forest. But it was very clearly summer. The sky was robin’s-egg blue; birds flitted back and forth. Freedom, she thought, her chest constricting. Would she ever taste it again?
Art prints lined the walls of the grand hallway of the residential area. The Persistence of Memory, The Hallucinogenic Toreador, and more—all prints by Salvador Dali. So, Kyber was a fan of the artist. In a way, it figured: She felt the same way around the paintings as she did with the emperor-prince. Dali art always made her a little uncomfortable, as if she were peeking at the artist’s private fantasies, and seeing in them a few of her own to which she’d rather not admit. And there was that one of the melting clock. The Persistence of Memory. How apropos, considering what he’d told her about her situation.
“You like Dali,” Kyber noted in his deep voice.
“I find him...interesting. Disturbing, sometimes.” She let it go at that. “Your reproductions are fantastic.”
Kyber chuckled. “They are not reproductions.”
He owned the world’s supply of Dali paintings? As she worked at absorbing what he’d just said, he carried her through another set of open double doors and into a vast chamber where a foyer of black granite danced with reflections of lavish tapestries, pieces of oriental furniture, and towering celadon vases—all ancient and priceless, she’d bet. In the center was an indoor fountain that was large enough to be a swimming pool. The grandeur was breathtaking.
“My private quarters,” he announced, carrying her finally into a somewhat smaller living area that still had to be at least two thousand square feet. Pale orange covered the walls. Bree’s sister, a decorator, would have wrinkled her nose at Bree’s choice of words and called it “pumpkin.”
There was no marble in sight. A floor of rough-hewn wooden planks bore the muted sheen of hand waxing. Plush rugs lay scattered here and there, with an enormous white flokati rug holding the place of honor before a massive, rugged fireplace made of river rock. Stale wood smoke and a faint incensey smell scented the air. It was as if she’d entered the lair of a barbarian forest king. Maybe, Bree thought, that’s exactly what she’d done.
He carried her to a pair of French doors that opened to a balcony, and swept her outside with him. There he set her on her feet and strode across the balcony to the railing. The wind was strong, and it brought a sound like the roar of the sea. Only it wasn’t the sea of water, but a sea of humanity.
For as far as she could see, people filled the square below and the streets leading to the palace. There were thousands of them gathered. Bree had no words to describe the spectacle. She’d never seen anything like it in her life.
When the crowds saw Kyber appear and raise both hands over his head, they broke into a cheer. It was deafening. The cheering took on a rhythm that pulsated in her ears. Then it became clear what they were chanting.
“Kyber, Kyber, Kyber...”
He savored their adulation for a few moments. Then he brought his arms down. The cheering silenced, and he filled his lungs with air. “Are you happy?” he bellowed.
The roar that followed was louder than before. Bree grabbed hold of the railing behind her, worried that the vibration shaking the balcony would cause it to fall.
Kyber glanced at her over his shoulder. “See? They’re happy.”
Bree swallowed. “Yeah. I see that.”
She also saw the boxy aircraft that took off vertically from a pad down below. It lifted into the sky, slow and controlled, and flew past the balcony. Bree knew on sight every airplane in the world. She’d never seen one like that. In the distance, near forested hills, cars and assorted other vehicles skimmed over a gleaming road, fully levitating.
It wasn’t 2006—she knew that much.
No, Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Kyber offered his hand to her. “Join me. They want to see you.”
“They know I’m here?”
“Yes.” He lowered his chin. “Come. Let them see that you are safe.”
She looked at the crowd, then back at their ruler. If she joined him, would it signify a betrayal of everything she stood for?
Kyber waited for her, his arm extended, palm up.
Bree hesitated. She’d had a life. Before. A good one. But there came a time when you had to put the past behind and keep going. A new beginning didn’t mean giving up who you were.
But who are you? What are you?
Bree could honestly say that she wasn’t sure anymore; and she took that first step toward Kyber. A second step brought their hands together. He stared at her so intently, for a heartbeat she thought he’d kiss her. But he pulled her to the edge of the balcony and raised their clasped hands toward the sky.
The thundering cheers surged in volume. At first it was wild cheering, and then it turned rhythmic, growing louder and louder. “Banzai… Banzai… Banzai…”
Chapter Nine
The applauding and whistling continued without signs of letting up. After a while, Bree ached to escape the noise— and the unabashed hero worship—but the cheering didn’t bother Kyber. In fact, he seemed to thrive on it.
Well, let him, she thought. He’d obviously earned their adoration. This was Shangri-la, the Garden of Eden, everything he’d said it was, obviously. She should be grateful she was here, and not with the rebel who’d tried to steal her.
She wished she were happier about it.
Her hand throbbed in Kyber’s powerful grip. He pumped his other fist in the air to thunderous applause. It was obvious they’d keep on cheering for as long as their king remained on the balcony.
Behind them, an assortment of Kyber’s staff waited at the entrance to the balcony. The men and women were of various races and nationalities, and a mix of those, as well: Asian, Caucasian, Indian. Their expressions reflected both patience and alertness. They were used to this.
Bree thought of tactfully extricating her fingers from Kyber’s hand when a flash caught her eye. Low. Of
f to the right. In the crowd. Fireworks, was her first thought. But two white streaks of phosphorescence flew toward the balcony, and the beginnings of a collective gasp from the crown muted the cheers. Bree’s fighter-pilot instincts kicked into full throttle. Not fireworks—it was an attack.
Bree jerked her hand from Kyber’s grip. She used her full weight to shove him away. But it took a foot hooked behind his legs to take him down.
Kyber’s body took the brunt of their fall. With his arms around her, he rolled her away from the railing.
There was a flash of light and then a one-two boom. His hands shielded her head. The lack of heat and shrapnel told her that the missiles, or whatever they were, had missed. The midair explosion turned the crowd’s chants to screams.
Kyber’s staff was on the move. Feet thundered on the balcony. Guards shouted, positioning themselves while the staff hurried to assist. Kyber lifted Bree to her feet and pulled her into his bedroom.
“Someone attacked you,” she gasped as he made her sit in a soft chair.
“Tried to attack,” Kyber corrected. “The balcony has a molecular barrier. Nothing can penetrate. Well, I suppose it could if a bomb were powerful enough—”
“I thought they liked you!”
“They do!”
“They sure have a funny way of showing it.” She sank deeper into the cushions. Her protective instincts were in high gear. Adrenaline continued to pump through her and made her shake.
“Those were small-time terrorists, Banzai. Hoodlums. Escapees from Newgate, Australia, or maybe malcontents from Macao. Or possibly supporters of my half brother—which doesn’t rule out the first two possibilities, and in fact strengthens the odds of a connection. D’ekkar and his supposedly shadowy friends ...”He shook his head.
Kyber obviously didn’t think very highly of his half brother if his expression was any indication. “But likely it was your appearance that encouraged them, whoever they are, to set off their daytime fireworks.”
“Oh. Blame it on me.”