The man said nothing. He stared intently, as if sheer force of will could make my words intelligible.
"Oar," I said, "you'd better fetch Tobit. He might know how to deal with our friend. If Tobit has lived long enough in this town, maybe he's learned Osco-Umbrian."
"Tobit…" the naked man whispered.
"Ah," I said, "a name he recognizes."
"Tobit," the man repeated.
"You're friends with Tobit, right?" I said. "Maybe you two get lit up together."
"Tobit," the man answered. "Tobit. Toe… bit… toe… bee… or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—"
"Shit," I said. "Or rather, Zounds."
Speaking Trippingly From the Tongue
"Hail and well-met!" the man said with a flourish of his hand. "I have in timely manner found your tongue within my mind."
An ugly anatomical image, I thought. Aloud, I replied, "You've finally identified my language in your data banks."
The man nodded. "This blessed talk, these words, this speech, this English."
"What is wrong with him?" Oar asked in a whisper. "Is he simply foolish, or is there something chemically wrong with his brain?"
I shook my head. "The League of Peoples obviously drops in now and then to update the local language databases. The good news is that the records are recent enough to include English; the bad news is—"
"It is a foolish kind of English," Oar finished.
"Let me not to the intercourse of true minds admit impediments," the man replied. "My tongue may be rough and my condition not smooth—"
"Enough," I interrupted. It annoyed me he understood my contemporary English but continued speaking his Elizabethan version. That's an AI for you: probably trying to "uplift" me by setting an example of "correct" speech. "Let's keep this to yes-or-no questions," I said. "Are you a machine-created projection?"
"Yea, verily."
"So I'm essentially talking to an artificial intelligence?"
"Aye, milady." The little man displayed a smile of delight — the indulgent smile a pet-owner wears when the family dog rolls over. As I said, AIs are all smarmy.
"And there's some good reason you've approached me?" I asked.
"E'en so."
"What reason?"
"To lay this thy kingdom at thy feet. To bid you take up the scepter. To hail you as lord, and queen hereafter."
And he knelt before me, lowering his head to the pavement in respectful submission.
The First of My Kind
I had never been offered the title of queen. I did not want it now.
"Do you say this to everyone who comes by?" I asked.
"Only you," the man replied. "You are the first of your kind to walk here since the dawn of this era."
"He means you have occluded skin," Oar said helpfully.
"A diplomatic turn of phrase," I told her. Turning back to the man, I said, "I'm not the first of my kind to come. What about Tobit? Or the other Explorers who've visited this town?"
"Pretenders have been legion," the man admitted. "Many a child," he gestured toward Oar, "has tried to usurp the throne, clad in borrowed rags." I realized he meant glass people wearing artificial skin. "Another who dwells in this place appears to have the proper bloodline, yet has knitted himself to unliving metal and is therefore discounted." That had to be Tobit, "knitted" to his prosthetic arm; the League disapproved of cyborging, and had obviously programmed the AI to disqualify anyone equipped with any augmentation.
"Some too," the man continued, "have arrived with unverifiable claims, hidden as they were behind impenetrable armors."
"Ahh!" The other Explorers to pass this way had all been wearing tightsuits. The suits must be sufficiently shielded that the AI couldn't tell whether the wearers were fully human. I, on the other hand, in my knee-high skirt…
"Why are you laughing, Festina?" Oar asked.
I answered, "How many women ever became queen because of their legs?"
Probably a lot, I reflected. Especially if kings had anything to do with it.
The Powers of the Queen
"What does being queen entail?" I asked the little man.
"All this realm's resources lie at your command," he replied.
"Which realm? This dome? Or the entire planet?"
"All that lies beneath this most excellent canopy, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof—"
"The dome," Oar explained.
"I got that," I nodded. "Not much of a kingdom," I told the man-image. "And not much of a distinction either. What can a queen do that a commoner can't? Anyone can work the synthesizers to get food, artificial skin, you name it. What else is there?"
"Only one thing more. Follow me, your majesty."
I shrugged. "Lay on, Macduff."
The man rose gracefully from his knees and after a courtly bow, led us forward, keeping to the circumference of the dome. Although his legs were half the length of mine, he had no trouble walking at our pace, since his image could skim over ground as quickly as necessary.
As we walked, I passed the time scanning the area for the projectors creating the man's image; but I soon realized my search was pointless. Whether the machines were mounted on the dome, on a tower, or shining straight through the walls of nearby buildings, it didn't make a real difference. He was here. He was projected. Everything else was a technicality.
After another minute of walking, the man turned to the outside wall of the dome and threw up his arms, shouting, "Behold, O Queen!" A moment later, a section of dome wall thirty meters wide and twenty high popped backward with a soft hiss. I tensed, fearing a deluge of water might suddenly pour through the breach. No such flood occurred; and as we watched, the wall dropped back four more paces, then slid sideways on guide tracks, revealing a large, well-lit chamber.
Or more accurately, a large, well-lit aircraft hangar.
Daggers Before Me, Handles Toward My Hand
Five fliers stood in a perfect line before me, each fashioned to look like a chiseled glass bird. The closest was a goose, wings and tail outspread, head stretched straight forward; it ran twenty meters long, with space for two riders, side by side in the middle of the bird's body. The next plane was an eagle, then a jay, then an owl, and lastly a generic songbird which the little man said was a lark. All were stylized, their feathers mere suggestions, their shapes trimmed and streamlined for better aerodynamics… but then, the same was true of Oar. Like her, these craft were Art Deco versions of living creatures.
Yet they were also working airplanes: jets, by the look of them, though the tiny engines were artfully incorporated into the wing structures to look like fluffed regions of feathers. I counted four such engines on each wing, plus two more on the tail. Each was small, but their combined power must pack a kick if you really needed propulsion.
Only one thing spoiled the planes' sleek, birdlike appearance: each had four charcoal-gray cylinders mounted on their bellies. Fuel tanks? I wondered. No — they were impractically long and slender. Rockets for extra boost in emergencies? Sensor arrays?
Then the explanation came to me — an archaic concept dating back to the earliest days of aviation. The cylinders were missiles. Weapons. Designed to be shot at other planes or ground targets where they would explode on impact.