“You were angry before you left,” the queen said. “So eager for independence, and yet so unwilling to accept it.”
“Independence?” Bascal said darkly. “At Camp Friendly? Surely you’re joking. Rebellion turns adults away from my cause, Mother. The children understand exactly.”
With a rustle of fabrics, the queen stood up, raising a hand that might have pointed, or gestured angrily, or balled into a fist. But instead, she dropped it and turned away. “I see the day when you and I can speak cordially is gone. Have it your way, then.”
She stepped off the dais, on the opposite side from where she’d mounted, and strode briskly to the other arched doorway, disappearing around a corner of wellstone-emulated plaster. Conrad heard a knock, and the mock creak of a mock door opening. Then hushed voices that reminded him of his own parents, when they closed themselves in their bedroom for an argument.
It was weird, to see the Queen of All Things acting just exactly like somebody’s mom. Conrad couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, not only as an undermined authority figure but as a flesh-and-blood woman who loved and missed her son, and had been hurt by him once too often. He could understand that, you bet. Part of him wanted her to demolish Bascal’s arguments, to point out their foolishness, to poke wise and gentle fun at the very idea. Not that Conrad’s own interests would be served by that, but it’s what he expected.
What did it mean, that she couldn’t muster her queenliness? Could it be that she was simply in the wrong, and had no leg to stand on?
Conrad spared a glance at Bascal, who was looking evilly smug, having gotten the better of the worlds’ most important person. He also peeked back at Xmary, who was standing there with her arms behind her back, trying to be as invisible as her clothes and her girl-ness would allow.
The guard robots had disappeared with the queen, and one of the Tongan courtiers had vanished at some point as well, leaving only the other one to watch over the boys. She was staring after the queen, and presently stepped into the hallway behind her, stopping at the corner.
Conrad, deciding to risk it, turned and spoke to Xmary in quick whispers. “What are you doing here?”
“Be quiet,” she whispered back, not looking at him.
“But why—”
“Be quiet,” she said, then met his eyes for a moment and added, even more softly, “We’re shaking things up. I’m here because someone else isn’t—the opportunity presented itself, and we can both take advantage. Now be quiet about it.”
Was that what she thought? Did she have visions of Feck the Fairy, brave confidant of the prince, scrabbling around the underside of Denver, quietly fomenting revolution? Conrad nearly laughed out loud at the idea, and even more nearly giggled. He settled for a smirk she would probably misinterpret. He tried to get it off his face, but the effort only made their situation seem that much funnier. Most likely, even if Feck didn’t get caught he would turn himself in to his parents before the sun had even risen.
Conrad was about to say something about it to Peter Kolb, standing between himself and the prince. Crack a joke, something, but the Tongan lady had turned back toward them again, and was making little “come here” motions with her hands. “Boys, come. The king will see you in his study.”
The two neat lines broke up into a kind of V formation as Bascal strode toward her, with Conrad and the rest of the boys trailing uncertainly behind. Meeting the king was less scary somehow, and the prospect of actually standing in his study was strange indeed, because Bruno de Towaji—once a declarant-philander, a genius and royal consort and knight of the realm—was the inventor of everything from collapsium to the blitterstaff, from the fax transport grid to the pub game of Shuffle Acrostics. He’d also saved the sun from collapse or something during the Fall, hundreds of years before Conrad was born.
Bascal led them into the hallway, pausing for half a step to thank the courtier, whom he called “Tusité.” The office door was just a slab of wellstone, folded out from the faux-solid material of the wall, but it was made to look like an ancient thing of wood and iron, more romantic than spooky.
The room itself was unadorned, and cluttered with mysterious objects and diagrams. The king was an inventor still, deeply and constantly concerned with the Queendom’s technological underpinnings. Unfortunately, his study was rather small inside, and as the boys (and girl) shuffled in behind him, Conrad found himself squeezed up against Bascal, and against the room’s only chair, which held a hairy, rotund, vaguely unkempt figure. It took a second or two for the figure to register in Conrad’s addled brain as His Majesty, the King of Sol, unprepared for audience.
The king held a stylus in each hand, and seemed absorbed in the moving images his desk was projecting. With visible effort, he looked up into Conrad’s face.
“Er, hello,” he said, scratching at his beard with one of the styluses, then dropping it on the desktop and holding out a hand. “I’m Bruno.”
Feeling distinctly weird about it, Conrad took the hand and shook it. “Conrad Mursk, sir.”
The king nodded and withdrew his hand. “Ah. Well. It’s ‘Sire,’ actually. One must observe the proper forms. It’s the only real purpose the office of king serves in a Queendom, and it is a real purpose. Kindly keep it in mind.”
“Um, sorry. Sire.” Conrad blanched inwardly, and probably outwardly. He wished there were some way for him to step back, without toppling his fellow campers like shuffleboard pins. He also wished he could shut up, but that impulse thing was going strong, and words were rising out of him like gas bubbles. “What is that you’re working on? A planette?”
The diagrams before the king showed various cross-sections of some layered, spherical object many hundreds of kilometers across.
Bruno’s gaze flicked from Conrad to the desktop and back again. He seemed to study Conrad’s expression. “It’s the moon, lad. Luna. The Earth’s moon.”
“Oh. I thought Earth’s moon was bigger than that.”
Again, that studying look. The king’s head was nodding slowly. “So it is, lad. And what do you think would happen if we squeezed it?”
“Um, it would get smaller? Sire?”
“Smaller, indeed. Bringing its surface closer to its center. With what effect on its gravity?”
Conrad racked his brain. “Um, um, to make it smaller?”
“Smaller?” the king seemed astounded. “We bring a planet’s outside closer to its inside, and the surface gravity is smaller ? I shall have to think about that. An interesting theory indeed! It puts rather a kink in my terraforming and settlement plans.”
Fortunately, Bascal came to the rescue, cutting in with a “Hello, Father. I’ve missed you at camp.”
King Bruno turned his head a bit and noticed his son, and seemed to ponder his words for a couple of seconds. “Hmm. Yes, well we’ve missed you as well. But that’s hardly the point here, is it? You’ve misbehaved, and will be punished for it.”
“Yes, Father,” Bascal agreed, his voice maybe a bit too chummy.
Bruno frowned at that, and tried for a moment to rise from his chair, before looking around and realizing that the room was packed, that Conrad and Bascal weren’t smooshed up against him out of pure admiration. He scanned the assembled faces, looking almost puzzled. Finally, he directed his attention at Bascal and spoke again. “Your mother and I would like to know why. You understand this? We’ve invested a great deal of time and love and energy in a creature which has become highly resentful. An explanation would help.”