She punctuated this comment by taking up Mack's trollish hand and squeezing it. Mack, for his part, seemed at ease, as though he did this all the time. They made an interesting pair, this princess and troll, for trolls were, by all accounts, unusually gifted in the arts of love, but had almost no sense of taste, culinary or otherwise. Ironically, this fit perfectly with Conrad's architectural style, making Mack a very good successor for him: passionate and direct, free of silly distractions. But when it came to subtler business, the finer things in life were said to slide right by a troll, unnoticed or taken for granted. Like this banquet? Like fair Wendy herself?
Still, in a world where death was possible, odd pairings like this might be the norm—might even be preferred. The pressure was perhaps not so much to find a soul mate for all eternity, but to find someone smart and funny and interesting, to keep you company for a few decades while entropy crept up from behind. In his mind this new world was like a dance floor, urgently beckoning: grab a partner and go, before the music stops!
“I was going to marry her mother,” Bascal chimed in with a leer. “Truly, I was. But things got more difficult after Wendy was born. It changed the dynamic, and our relationship never really did spring back. It was Nala herself who called it quits. She's a surveyor now, and happily married out in the Blackberry Belts somewhere. We wish her all the best”—he glanced at his daughter as if for confirmation—“but she resists contact, and we have for the most part respected that. Even on this fine occasion.”
A coarse, unamused laugh escaped Conrad's lips. “Funny, you didn't respect me when I resisted contact.”
And here, the king's expression darkened. “Is that so? Well. You could have been my most trusted adviser, Conrad. There was no one else for the job. But even before you left Domesville, your avoidance of me had been, I would almost say, pathological. It hurts my feelings, but more to the point, it deprives society of a trusted voice.”
“The voice of reason?” Conrad asked with uncharacteristic sourness. “Next you'll tell me that with my advice, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. As if I could have done anything. As if I know anything the rest of the world doesn't.”
To his credit, Bascal considered these words seriously before replying, “Fair enough. We're at the mercy of economic forces that are larger than any of us. But still, you could've helped. You could have tried.” He looked glum for a long moment, but then found a reserve of cheer somewhere inside himself and said expansively, “I am sorry about the kidnapping, old friend. Perhaps we should have asked, but this occasion, this one particular occasion, demands your presence. A bit of melodrama makes it all the sweeter.”
“And what occasion is that, exactly?”
“Why, Wendy's birthday,” Bascal said, sounding genuinely surprised. Another thing Conrad was presumed to know.
“I'm fifty years old today,” Wendy chirped. The look on her face was appallingly self-satisfied.
Conrad's own face fell into a gape of dismay. “You're fifty? That's impossible. After you were born, I spent a few year . . . a few dec . . . well . . .”
He had spent a lot of time out and away. In space, on the sea, in the quiet of the Polar Well. Maybe it had been fifty years. Jesus and the little gods, when Conrad was fifty he was already the architect of a world, and that was his third career! First he'd been a paver's boy, and afterward a space pirate. This little girl, this supposed child, had lived a natural human lifespan and then some. Conrad found himself looking her over, appraising her in much the same way that Brenda had appraised him earlier. He felt he should reassess her in some way, change his baseless opinions about her, but he didn't know where to begin.
Finally, he just forced a smile and said, “Goodness, how the years fly by. It's a curse of the immorbid, this putting things off, this plenty-of-time-for-that-later mentality. It causes us to miss the things that happen quickly, even important things that are right in front of our faces. Like the flowering of a delightful young woman. My apologies, Princess, and happy birthday.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking appropriately charmed.
“Really,” Conrad said, “I'm surprised you remember me at all. We saw each other, what, four times before I shipped out?”
“Six,” she replied. “But who's counting? Mr. Mursk, the people we meet in early life leave a powerful imprint. When the mind is still forming and the hormones rage, and everything is brighter and grander, a face is so much more than just an oval of skin. We remember them, oh yes, and though they stray apart from us, they never really leave.”
Conrad thought of his own parents, and of the King and Queen of Sol, and of Bascal and all the other boys he'd gone to camp with. . . . He hadn't seen some of them in a century or more, but they remained his friends, the best friends he'd ever had. He could not disagree with Wendy's point.
“I always thought,” Wendy went on, “that you were fleeing from me as well as from my father. The very sight of me seemed to drive you into a panic. As it did my mother. It's a curious thing, isn't it? Confronted with youth, we discover the lack of it in ourselves. We must face the things we used to be, and the things we dreamed of but never were, and never will be. Do I frighten you still?”
There didn't seem to be a lot of emotion riding on the question. She wasn't going to be upset one way or the other, no matter how Conrad answered. But she was honestly curious, and for this reason Conrad gave the question considerable thought. Other conversations began to spring up around the table, but finally he said over them, “I think part of it was just my own weakness, Princess. You wanted . . . something . . . which I feared I might actually provide. It would have been unseemly, and I didn't trust myself.
“But there's truth in what you say: you made me feel old, for the first time in my life. And now you're fifty, and I feel older still. You are a bit frightening, yes. Your father has always been a sort of mad genius, and the women he loves have been intelligent as well, and always . . . sharp, I guess you'd say. Hard-edged.” He cast a glance at Brenda and found her looking back at him with a blend of annoyance and curiosity.
“So you fear I'm a deranged genius as well?” Wendy asked. “A faha alapoto?”
Conrad gestured with his hands, not quite nodding, not quite agreeing. “I just . . . I remember how we were: determined to change things, determined to get into trouble. And we have, on both counts. This colony's entire population is paying for the indiscretions of our youth. With their own lives, as often as not.”
Here Bascal injected a comment of his own, in vaguely wistful tones. “Death has been a constant companion through every age. Our own parents faced it early in their lives, or believed they did. In fact, death has shaped us all; the process of apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is crucial in the growth of any organism, from the lidicara to your own self. It's what gives you your shape and structure. Without death, you'd be a mindless blob, as monstrous and misbegotten as anything that ever spilled out of a fax. With death written into our very programming, did we really believe it could be banished forever?”
“Didn't we?” Conrad shot back. “Shouldn't we? What's civilization for if not to protect the lives of its people?”