“Hi, Tarn,” he said lamely, then sighed and threw himself to his knees.
Chapter Two
in which an urgent plea is heard
She was a figurehead, by the way. She couldn’t literally destroy him, have him killed, have his pattern erased and his name stricken from every stone and pillar, but she could make his personal and professional life difficult enough that he might wish she had.
“Don’t ‘Hi’ me,” she snapped as he knelt there before her. “Rise. Approach.”
Ground moisture had soaked through the knees of Bruno’s trousers. Rising, he wiped them absently with his hand, then caught himself and wiped the hand on his vest, in case she demanded to shake it or something. Approaching gingerly, he spread his arms.
“My world, Your Majesty. Welcome.”
She nodded regally. “Yes. Your world.” Then she cocked her head, looked at him strangely. “Are you all right? Why are you leaning like that?”
He blinked. “Leaning? Ah, it’s the curvature. The planet being so small, local vertical swings a full degree every six meters. Your ‘up’ is not the same as mine. The trees—” He pointed. “—seem to tilt away from you as well, more so the farther away they are. You see how they’re angled?”
The Queen of Sol surveyed the horizon, nodding absently. “I wondered about that. The way the ground slopes away, I feel as if I’m standing on a mountaintop. Is that your house down there?”
“Er, yes,” Bruno replied, following her gaze. “It isn’t ‘down,’ though; the ground’s quite level here. Shall we go inside?”
She nodded. “Somewhere we can sit, yes. There’s much to discuss.”
“I’d gathered.”
He led her back across the meadow, dainty robots trailing behind. Her velvet skirts smoothed a trail in the grass as she walked, the sunlight full in her round face. Even her long shadow was more regal than lanky, a Queen among its kind. Bruno couldn’t keep his eyes forward. Didn’t try.
“It’s closer than I thought,” the queen remarked as they approached the house. “Smaller. You’ve dwelt in a shack all these years? A hovel?”
Bruno shrugged. “The planet size again. If the house were any broader, the curvature of the floor would become apparent. You couldn’t roll a ball bearing on my floor—it’s gravita-tionally flat—but indoors I find the eye prefers straight lines and right angles.”
“Add another level, perhaps?”
He shook his head. “The upper story would feel less gravity, and a lot less air pressure. Thirty percent less. The gradients are steep on a planet this small.” He pointed to the snow-capped Northern Hills. “The air’s thin up there. And cold.”
She smiled. “Those little things?”
“My Himalayas. I’m quite comfortable, Tamra, really, and I don’t think you’ve come here to remodel the planet.”
Bruno waved for a door as they approached. It opened,and they stepped through. The house had remodeled itself in his absence, throwing down trails of red carpet joining furniture more elegant than he’d normally employ. Chandeliers of gold and diamond hung from a ceiling striped with stained-glass murals of green and tan and blue, stylized scenes from Her Majesty’s native Tonga. They moved and changed, almost too slowly to see.
Presently, a ring of speakers formed along the walls at chest level, and began playing “Thank God for the Revival of Monarchy,” which was the Queendom of Sol’s quite popular unofficial anthem; the official one was the dreary “Praise upon Her,” which was almost never played. Or hadn’t been, anyway, when Bruno’s network gate last functioned. He supposed fashion had probably overtaken such musical preferences by now, along with all the clothing and furnishing styles he knew best. Fashion was always doing things like that, making the most ordinary things seem ridiculous and the most ridiculous seem ordinary. Immortality had yet to bestow any higher aesthetic upon the Queendom, although he supposed that, too, could have changed in his absence.
It was nineteen years since he’d quit Tamra’s court, eleven since he’d quit civilization altogether, trading it for this silence, this peace and solitude. Out here, he wasn’t peerless or depended on. Just alone.
He realized he should speak, behave as a host. “Uh, refreshment? Food, drink? I have vegetables fresh from the soil.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Still doing that, are you? Thank you, no. A glass of water, perhaps. Shall we sit?”
“Oh. Yes. Forgive me.” He indicated a chair beside a low table, waited until she’d seated herself, waited until she’d nodded permission for him to join her, and finally sat in the chair across. A gently clicking robot appeared, whisked a pair of glasses of ice water onto the table between them, and was gone. “You look well, Tamra. I mean that.”
“You look good yourself,” she said, her voice betraying a hint of pique. “You always look good.”
Shrug. “Everyone does. But I’ve dressed up!”
She studied him for a few moments before replying, “Yes. Actually, you look like you’re playing yourself in a melodrama. The gray hair is new. It suits you, I suppose.”
Her tone, while sharp, was not unkind. Like her expression and her too-correct posture, it bespoke a mingling of amusement and ire and haste, as well as a kind of bruised dignity. He’d left her court without permission, after all. Without even a proper good-bye, for he’d feared his resolve would crumble. It had been a cowardly, disrespectful, unkind thing to do, and whatever business drew her here now… Well, he’d made her jump through hoops for it, hadn’t he? What urgency would permit a queen to beggar herself before such a determined expatriate?
“Something’s happened,” he prompted. “Something awful.”
She shook her head, but her eyes looked nervous, uncertain. “Not awful, no. Inconvenient. A… project of ours has gone somewhat awry. No one’s been hurt, but there’s a… cleanup effort that isn’t progressing well. I thought perhaps you’d have some advice for us.”
Bruno wasn’t sure he understood, and said so. “My so-called expertise is in collapsium engineering, Highness. Industrial accidents are hardly…” He caught her expression. “Oh, I see. It is a collapsium accident.”
She nodded, pursing her lips, and for a moment Bruno felt paralyzed by her beauty, unable to think, unworthy to speak. The human brain was said to be wired for monarchy, for hierarchy, for the elevation and admiration of single individuals, and now the truth of this hit Bruno like a heavy gilded pillow. There wasn’t any one thing about Tamra Lutui—not her long black hair or the tilt of her head or the gentle swell of her hips and thighs and bosom—that should affect him so. He knew her very well indeed, well enough that her pout shouldn’t fill him with this boyish, trembling awe. But she was Queen, and that made all the difference in the worlds.
Her Majesty, being well familiar with this reaction, this social allergy, waited politely for it to subside.
“Yes,” she said finally. “A collapsium accident. You should be proud of us, Bruno; we’ve finally attempted something big. Too big, evidently.”
Bruno clucked and shook his head. “Ambition has to im ply some willingness to fail, Tarn. It isn’t a stretch, otherwise. You mustn’t regret your mistakes.”
“This one I regret, Declarant,” she said coolly. “That we can hope for a favorable outcome is immaterial. Some errors are inexcusable.” With these words she fixed a mild glare on him: Had he no regrets?