Now Radmer is angry. “I’m not here to debate the semantics of it, Sire. People are dying as we speak, and still others are being enslaved. Millions more are at risk, and there’s an ill thing to allow into our past, if it’s within our power to prevent it.”
Bruno tries to pull away. “I’m in the past as well, lad. Leave me.” Then, more regally: “Leave me.”
“I won’t,” Radmer tells him. “Not yet—not until you’ve heard me out.”
Resistance ceases; a kind of bitter calm settles over de Towaji. He is waking up, yes, and he doesn’t like it. The look is clear in his eyes: a fear of being needed again, of bearing up under that burden after being free of it for so very long. Radmer understands, suddenly, that the old man’s isolation and senility did not come upon him by accident.
His grip tightens, and his voice is almost cruel as he says, “Even if you were dead I would make you listen, Sire. Because I fancy you can help us, and I don’t much care if it pleases you. Where else have we got to turn? Nowhere. And when I speak the name of our peril, I think you might even want to help.”
“Unlikely. You have no idea how wearily I washed up on this shore, lad. Not the least beginning of an idea.”
Tightly: “I fancy I do, Sire. I’ve been depended on a time or two myself. And we live on, don’t we? Never too old to be bothered, to be mined for blood and sweat, to be dusted off and put to use again in one way or another. Not even a grave to rest in, not for the likes of us. But the alternative—to live on with no purpose at all—is appalling and obscene.”
Finally, Bruno de Towaji matches Radmer’s anger, and meets his gaze. “You think so, do you? Smug bastard. Speak the name of your peril, then, and begone from my sight.”
Radmer does as he’s told, and has the grim pleasure of watching the old man’s face light up with a terrible mix of wonder and righteous anger and, yes, even fear.
Now de Towaji is fully awake, blinking, looking Radmer up and down. “Lune, you say? The collapsiter grid is gone. Did I dream that? Between the stars we travel no more. How did you get here, lad? And ... how will you return?”
Radmer feels the corners of his mouth begin to stir. Seeing Bruno again has brought back a lot of memories, a lot of old grief. With the clarity of hindsight, he does feel some understanding of his bonds to this man, but they were formed and broken long ago, in events so huge that from the inside they hadn’t looked like anything at all. Joyrides and camp riots, the green virile fires of youth.
But this is too practical a question for a man who wants to be left alone. Radmer senses that a hurdle has been crossed, a new cascade of events set in motion. He will be taking this man, this intellect, this trove of living history back to Lune with him. And in that moment he dares, for the first time in months, to hope.
This is an island, with birds and a tree.
The island is a mountain in the middle of the sea.
One person lives here, but it isn’t me.
I wouldn’t like to live in the middle of the sea.1
—“The Island”
BASCAL EDWARD DE TOWAJI LUTUI, age 4
Chapter two.
Camp friendly
Conrad had never seen an angry mob before, much less been a part of one. Like an ocean wave it seemed to offer two alternatives: ride along or be smashed under. And the ride, truthfully, was fun. Since the raid on the boathouse, and with it the capture of canoe paddles, the counselors were actually afraid of them.
Of a bunch of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds! Barely out of diapers, some might say, but even “Rock” Dengle was on the retreat, falling back along the side of the Arts and Crap Cabin and casting a worryingly broad shadow on its clay-and-log wall in the slanting light of a fake and miniature sun.
“What the hell you boys doing?” he demanded.
“Busting out,” Bascal answered lightly. Cheers rewarded him, from Conrad as much as anyone. “Prince Bascal! All hail Prince Bascal, the Liberator!”
“This a summer camp,” Rock pointed out. “Recreational. You here for fun, right?”
“Had enough,” Bascal replied. Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui, Crown Prince of the Queendom of Sol.
The badder boys—Steve Grush and that Ho kid whose last name was spelled “Ng” but sounded more like “Eh”— were flanking Rock on the left, flicking cigarette butts and hooting, and you’d better believe that got his attention.
“I gotta hurt someone?” Rock wanted to know. He looked capable of it—strong and pissed off, but in control. Taking care of “troubled” boys was his job.
“We got to hurt you?” Ho Ng shot back, and gave him a whack on the skull with the paddle. Tried to, anyway; Rock deflected it with a sweep of his arm. But since that left Steve an opening to jab him in the nuts, it didn’t do much good. Rock doubled over with a froggy kind of sound, but stayed on his feet. Taking on fifteen troubled boys was a bit beyond his faculties.
There was a definite satisfaction in seeing a big guy humbled like that, but then it looked like Ho or Steve might hit him again, maybe harder this time, and that made Conrad afraid, finally, of the consequences. And ashamed to be a member of this particular mob, yeah, because Rock Dengle was definitely not a bad guy as jailers went. He kept the rules without treating you like a little kid, which was more than Conrad could say for most of the others.
But fortunately, Prince Bascal stepped forward, into what would have been the line of fire. “Steady, men. Nobody wants to get hurt over this. We just need the fax gate.”
“Can’t leave without your parent or guardian,” Rock said, attempting to straighten. “Regulations, no exception.”
“Except today,” Bascal said, and Conrad had to marvel at the casual, agreeable tone of this kid’s voice, trained from birth in the art of persuasion. It wasn’t going to convince Rock or anything—not after he’d been whacked in the balls with a canoe paddle—but it did put a vaguely legitimate face on these proceedings. Made it sound like their side of it had some validity.
Which it did; this wasn’t a jail, strictly speaking, but neither were the boys free to leave, or to do as they pleased while “guests” of the camp. Which might be great if you were twelve or something, but sucked hugely when you were old enough to want female companionship and other assorted contraband. But there was no one to complain to, no cops or social workers to call. No one here at all who was not in the immediate employ of Camp Friendly, and therefore an extension of the parents who’d banished them here.
So here in the twenty-ninth decade of the Queendom of Sol, on a miniature planet orbiting in the middle depths of the Kuiper Belt, far from the sun and planets, young men were forced—literally forced—to reenact the squalors and deprivations of a less civilized era. So it made perfect sense for them to respond in an uncivilized way.
“You kids in a lot of trouble,” Rock cautioned. From his tone he was worried for them as much as because of them. He wasn’t going to offer any further resistance; he couldn’t win if he tried.
On the horizon, twenty meters away, three more counselors materialized. One Conrad recognized but didn’t know; he worked with the younger kids on the other side of the world. The other two were D’rector Jed: two faxed copies of the same individual, each holding the electric cattle prod he’d often warned about.