That charge took some serious gall, Conrad thought. But it seemed to have the desired effect; Robert and his people shrank back ever so slightly, cowed by the imaginary authority of a figurehead prince. But then again, the threat of the Palace Guard was real enough. Conrad was frankly surprised the thing had reacted as mildly as it did. Emotionally, it must be in some robotic equivalent of righteous fury, prepared at any moment to lash out against these looming figures who dared to threaten. But something stayed its hand, some impulse of curiosity or diplomacy or decorum, some intuitive balance between danger and opportunity. There was no point trying to understand these monsters; Conrad watched them and watched them, and yet their inner machinations remained inscrutable. Not human, no, but not simplistic either.
It was the man to Robert M’chunu’s right who answered, “We’re castaways as well. The South African Territories are no place for a child these days.”
Bascal considered that. “You brought children with you?”
“We are children. We were.”
And then a look of understanding bloomed over Bascal’s features, and he smiled. “Runaways! Ah! You left copies at home, yes? Nobody knows you’re here.”
Warily, resignedly, Robert nodded. “Correct, yah.” He was nursing his hand, which sported angry, growing welts on the palm and fingers.
“Why here?” Xmary asked.
He shrugged. “No place more remote. We jam the gates, why, we’re on our own until the holds are full of neubles and the barge heads back to the Queendom. Twenty years, maybe. A lifetime.”
Still grinning, Bascal shook an accusing finger. “You’ve got your own little Bluetopia here. No leaders, no clothes ... Or did we blunder into the middle of something? An orgy? A ceremony?”
“We’re nudists,” Agnes confirmed.
“It’s restricted in TSA,” Robert explained. “You have to be twenty-five before you can even apply for the permits. I tried a different body plan for a while—two extra legs and a short coat of hair to cover the naughty bits. Never got ticketed—the cops thought it was cute—but I needed this big horse’s behind to fit the legs on, and I just got tired of it. I want to be me, not some creature. They just don’t want a young man’s dongle hanging out.”
“Unconscionable,” Bascal said. “So you escaped! Went as far and as free as the Nescog would carry you, and cut yourselves off. When you finally return, and reintegrate with your original selves, you’ll be gifting them with the precious memory of twenty years of freedom . There might be some fines and penalties involved, but that’s okay— your selves will never be the same. Nobody who even hears about it will ever see their lives in quite the same way. This is brilliant; this is great! How many of you are there?”
Robert examined his injured hand, then glowered at the prince. “Don’t pretend to understand, Your Highness. This is our private business.”
“And ours,” Bascal said, spreading his arms a bit. “We’ve lost our only transportation.”
“Robert,” Agnes said, “I don’t think he’s Tamra’s perfect little Poet Prince anymore. He said it himself: he’s a runaway, too.”
“You have been away a long time,” Xmary observed. “He’s well known as a troublemaker.”
“If nobody knows they’re here,” the other woman said menacingly, “we can safely put them out the airlock.” The Palace Guard, turning its head with a faint click and whirr, rewarded this comment with a hard, faceless robotic stare. Try it, lady.
Bascal, for his part, chose to ignore her. “What time of the day is it here? I suggest introductions, and then a tour. Well, maybe a bathroom break as well.” He looked around at the surviving campers, as if gathering consensus. “We’re very eager to see what you people are up to.”
Agnes Moloi turned out to be “not Robert’s girlfriend” in the same way that Robert M’chunu was “not the leader” of this band of expatriates. Robert’s not-a-lieutenant was Money Izolo—Conrad didn’t catch whether that was a nickname or if his parents had simply had a sense of humor. The angry woman was Brenda Bohobe, and the other man was named Tsele or something. There were twenty people here altogether, and once upon a time they’d all gone to the same school—Johannesburg Prep. They’d left it in their middle teens, in a cleverer, quieter way than Bascal’s crew had chosen.
The corridor Robert was leading them down had a kinky, dogleg shape to it. It ran from one end of the barge to the other, he told them, but there were “certain machineries” it had to divert around. “These corridors are just access ways for maintenance. It’s not supposed to be pretty.”
“Are there other inhabited barges?” a visibly excited Bascal was asking.
“Must be,” Robert said with a shrug. “We didn’t invent this plan, just heard about it. The first two barges we tried had already dropped off the net.”
“I see,” Bascal said gleefully. “A plague of mysterious gate failures. Never fully investigated, or they’d’ve traced you here by now. All they have to do is fly some gate hardware out here, dock it, and poof! You’re back on the network. But if that costs more than just paying the fines, the shipyard’s parent corporation has probably just written it off. Fix ’em when they get back.”
Maybe it was just Conrad, but he found it vaguely offensive to be following behind two naked men in a weightless (or nearly weightless) corridor. Their dongles hanging out, yeah—it wasn’t exactly the view he wanted, especially because the women were bringing up the rear, so to speak, along with the other man, Tsele. There was a smell, too—not dirt or sweat or anything like that, but some vague spiciness he couldn’t identify, and couldn’t ignore. A crude perfume or something—surely not another genome amendment. Here were people who’d abandoned Queendom hygiene standards—and decency standards, and presumably other standards as well—in the push to build some weird culture of their own.
“Does your fax machine work?” Karl inquired. “We’ve been eating a really limited diet.”
“Oh, they work,” Robert said. “We have two: a big and a small.”
Then the woman named Brenda—the surly one—cut in. “You people have authorities looking for you?”
“One never knows,” Bascal hedged. “Our fetula was as invisible as we could make it.”
“You leave copies behind? Are you officially missing?”
“I don’t know if they’re looking for us or not.”
She rolled her blue eyes. “Wonderful. That’s exquisite. If they don’t find you, even then they might find us.”
“Listen, lady,” Bascal said. “We didn’t even know you existed until ten minutes ago. Even if we had, I’m not sure we could’ve done anything different. We’ve been clever enough so far, thank you very much.”
Unless you count the seventy percent casualty rate, Conrad thought.
“You expect to fit in here? Hide here? Stay indefinitely?”
“I don’t expect anything,” Bascal answered. “We were going to Denver.”
“We’ll show them around, Brenda,” Robert said. “Show them how we do things here. Then talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” Brenda demanded. “They can’t leave! We’re stuck with ’em!”
“I wouldn’t be so quick about that,” Bascal told her. “We’ve gotten out of tougher places. There’s nothing preventing us from repairing our ship, or building another.”
“Oh, hell. Hell with you. Damn royalty.”
“You may have to live here with us,” Robert echoed. “It may not be so easy. There may not be a choice.”