Conrad blinked. He blinked again. “Princess. Bascal's daughter? He never told me about . . . he never said . . . my goodness. How old are you, girl? When were you born?”
“Yesterday,” she said, as though it were a point of pride.
Conrad digested that. Yesterday? Little gods, the faxwise birthing of fully formed teenagers had always seemed sensible enough to him—why bother with the awkward preliminaries, just because nature commanded it? His own early childhood had been mostly dull—he could barely remember it now—and anyway lots of other animals were born mature, able to walk and eat and communicate. It was only an accident of biology that the human birth canal was so much narrower than the fully grown human brain.
But then again, Conrad was usually introduced to these fax children in their fifth or eighth or tenth year of actual physical life. Newborns belonged at home, right? Confronted with one now, a baby already in the full flower of sexual maturity, he found himself offended on her behalf. Something important, if intangible, had been denied this girl. This thought was not to his credit, surely—it would mark him a naturalist pig in some circles—but there it was.
His voice was careful. “What can I do for you, Princess Wendy? Shouldn't you be at home studying entry-level humanities? Dressing, hygiene, that sort of thing? Gathering up the love of your new parents?”
“I do what I want,” she said simply. “The job of youth is to shake things up, and I can't do that from home. All my life I've felt a higher purpose calling, and when I heard Father complaining about you, it just felt right. It seemed important that I meet you. You're a space pirate; you defied the Queendom of Sol.”
It was Conrad's turn to laugh. “That was centuries ago, little girl. I'm an architect now. The greatest architect in the world, owing to there being so few people in it. I challenge society through my work, striving for that perfect balance of beauty and strength and functionality. And always on a limited budget. It's been a long time since I shook things up any other way.”
She was looking him over again, studying every detail of him with weird intensity. Behind her eyes Conrad could sense a hungry brain, frustrated with its own limitations and absorbing knowledge through every available channel, however imperfect. And there was, yes, a sexual component to her scrutiny as well. The clumsy sexuality of a child, laid open for him to see. He felt ashamed at that, as though she were naked and didn't even know it, and he had not found the decency to avert his eyes.
“It sounds as though I've arrived just in time, then,” she cooed. “It sounds like you need a little shaking up yourself.”
“Stop right there,” Conrad said, holding up his hands. “No one has taught you how to behave, and how could they? But my dear, this isn't proper. There will be no touching, no attempts at clever innuendo. Believe me, this scene will later embarrass you if you don't quit it.”
She studied him some more, looking wounded but brave, and very quietly angry. Finally, after uncomfortably long, she said, “What do you know about death?”
“Death?”
“Death. Maté. The end of life.”
“It's to be avoided,” Conrad said carefully. “I've died a couple of times myself, and it's always a wrenching experience. You lose a great deal, and the worst is that you never know exactly what you've lost. Precious things, surely. Irreplaceable.” And thinking of her, he added silently, You can lose things you've never even had, baby girl, and miss them all your life.
But she was shaking her head. “No, I mean real death. The kind where you don't wake up.”
“Aren't you a little young to be thinking about this?”
“I'm a good judge of what's important,” she lectured. “I've been listening to my father, and I hear the worry in his voice. He's building some kind of freezertorium down in the south, on the Peninsulum Pectoralis. For bodies. Dead bodies.”
“But only one person has died,” Conrad pointed out. “Why would we need a ‘freezertorium'?”
“One person? Is that what he told you?” Now her laugh was knowing, and raw with the sting of his rejection. “It's more than one person, Mr. Greatest Architect in the World.”
“Really?” he asked skeptically. “How many, exactly?”
She didn't answer, and he took that as a sign that she didn't know. Kids were always spouting off, trying to sound important. It didn't mean a damned thing.
Then a bit of plaintiveness crept into her voice. “Don't you want this body?” She cupped her breasts, her crotch. “It's fresh. It's intact. You have a reputation, sir, and a girl has needs.”
Conrad shuddered. “My dear, I may be a womanizer. I may even be a cradle robber, but I do have my limits. My scruples. For God's sake, you were born yesterday. And anyway you're the daughter of my best friend, which in polite society means no fuffing of any kind. You'll understand things like this when you've had more time to . . . take your bearings.”
That made her angrier, but there was an impotent quality to her glare. She couldn't force the issue, and she knew it. “I'm too much for you anyway. And you're a naturalist pig.”
“I'm calling your father,” Conrad told her. Then said to the ceiling, “Call Bascal.”
Evidently, the king was busy; it took nearly half a minute for the call to patch through. When it did, the king answered with a full hologram, appearing like a saintly vision in the space between Conrad and Wendy.
“Yes? Ah, Conrad. Good to hear from you. You haven't seen a young girl wandering around by any chance, have you?”
“She's here with me now,” Conrad said.
“Hi, Daddy.”
Bascal's translucent image turned, eyebrows arching with surprise. “Malo e leilei, Wendy. You must tell us before you leave the house like this, all right? You had us worried, and we don't like to worry.”
“Don't try to control me, Daddy. I do what I want.”
“Hoy!” the king said. “Do you indeed? We'll just see about that, girlie. We shall just have to see about that.”
“Oh, Daddy. You can't hold on forever. I've got business to attend to, a pair of wings that need spreading. Don't make me hate you, please.”
Bascal turned to Conrad with an exasperated look. “They grow up so fast, don't they? Keep her there, please, if you would. I'm sending the Guards to fetch her. In fact, scratch that. I'll come with them. I complain that you don't visit me enough, but when was the last time I came to see you? Give me about fifteen minutes.”
The hologram winked out. It would've been nice if he'd asked to come over, but Conrad supposed a king—even the tin-pot king of a pair of overgrown villages—was not accustomed to having to ask. Where in the world would he be unwelcome?
In the ensuing silence, Conrad and Wendy looked at each other, neither one knowing what to say.
“You make me feel old,” Conrad offered finally.
“You are old,” she replied without venom. “I checked.”
“Did you? Very enterprising. With proper maintenance, the energy of the body never fades, but I suppose the energy of the soul is a different matter. I can feel the verdant fires burning inside you from all the way over here.”
Warily: “Is that a compliment?”
The glib answer would have been yes. But was it true? Deciding there was little point in lying to children, he answered, “I don't know. Just an observation, I guess.”
And then for some reason her lower lip was quivering. Her eyes began to redden, to leak tears, and in another few seconds she was bawling. “I just wanted to go out . . . I just wanted . . .”