“I’m sorry about that,” Conrad told him sincerely. “I had no way to contact you.”
“We’re very proud,” his father added, a bit tentatively. And that made no sense: proud of him for running away? For breaking the law? For being implicated in nine deaths?
“Of what?”
“Well...” Donald ran a hand through his hair. Like everyone else in the Queendom, he looked like a strong and confident young man, but here was a gesture that suggested otherwise. It belonged with a balding scalp, a bulging gut, a hat clutched between nervous fingers.
“Naturally we’re angry with you,” his mother said.
“Right,” Donald agreed. “Angry. But it’s a strange thing you’ve done, isn’t it? A strangely compelling thing. All sorts of people have been coming up to us and, well, complimenting. I mean, it’s illegal—”
“But not antisocial,” Maybel finished for him. “You’ve done a thing a bit like the Republican hunger strikes: powerfully expressing a viewpoint people can relate to. Mere words don’t compare.”
Conrad sighed. He was tired, and while he’d missed his parents terribly, this was not at all the homecoming he’d envisioned. “We destroyed property. We got people killed.”
“Oh, that may be,” Donald agreed seriously. “But you should hear from the dead boys themselves, before you pass judgment. In the old days we knew, there’d always be some bitter affliction keeping pace with our joys. But we knew there’d be joys. You should give your friends a bit of credit, lad.”
Conrad processed that, not knowing what to think.
“We know you and Bascal disagreed,” Maybel told him. “His letter was very clear on that point, and the visual records from the Palace Guard support it. We know you did your best.”
But Conrad was shaking his head. “No, don’t say that. I helped him. I waffled occasionally, but he always had his way in the end, every step. I deserve my equal share of blame.”
“Or credit,” his father said. “And that’s the way the law sees it, too. You’re to be severely punished, never doubt it. Your point is well made, but now there’s little else the Queendom can do except punish. Unless it wants to encourage more of the same, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”
Listening to his parents’ voices, their faint but unmistakable accents, he considered the strange fact that the two of them lived and worked and socialized in the very town of their birth. Donald looked after the roads, yes, which few people and fewer vehicles ever used. Maybel was a housing inspector—one of six for the county. Neither of them traveled much outside of southern Ireland, or needed to.
Conrad himself gave little thought to geography; he was used to moving between his school on the European continent, his home here in Cork, and the various educational and entertainment facilities they trekked him to in Asia and North America. Except for concerns of daylight and weather, the physical locations of these places hardly seemed to matter. It was only when you got out to the moon and planets that true barriers—like the speed of light—created any genuine sense of distance. But Donald and Maybel Mursk didn’t see it that way. At heart they were yokels, provincials, born into the actual country of Ireland, during a time when travel was arduous and borders were tangible. There was no Queendom, anywhere.
And yet, when Donald spoke of the Queendom, his tone was full of apology and acceptance and even complicity. If he saw himself as something slightly apart from the monarchy, it was not for lack of approval. Whereas Conrad, who was truly and fully a creature of Tamra’s worlds, nevertheless chafed at their confines.
“Mom, Dad, were you rebellious in your youth?” he asked suddenly.
Maybel clucked, amused and embarrassed by the question. “I’m tempted to wash your mouth, lad. We snuck around our share, yes, although it was different in those days. The things we wanted were ... simpler.”
“Sex?” he pressed, not caring if the question was appropriate. “Drugs?”
“Oh, all of those things,” she agreed shyly. “All the things that people want. There has to be some age when you’re too young for it, and that puts you in immediate conflict.”
“You do have to understand,” his father cut in, “we thought our lives would be short. You were born in those days with death staring you in the face. You had to make your time count. Your mother and I were no more than twenty years from the grave when these fax filters came along. And our parents, why, they were gone already.”
He ran his hand through his hair again. “It’s why we’re such fools, lad. We didn’t want any school, or any hard work. There’s been a lot of catching up for us, a lot of adjustment. We don’t want to be poor and ignorant, not forever. I think we’ve done all right, but for you we wanted a better start.”
“Huh.” Wow.” It was a perspective Conrad had never considered. It was interesting. Would it have changed anything, if he’d heard this six months ago? Should it have changed anything?
“Apparently we’ve failed utterly as parents,” Maybel said sadly. “Whatever it is you need, we haven’t provided. Lord, we sent you to that camp you keep you out of trouble.”
“Don’t cry for me, Mother,” Conrad told her, surprised at the guilt in her face. “I can make decisions, right? I have free will. The problem is nothing to do with our family. It’s a ... I dunno, a structural problem with the Queendom itself.”
“Perhaps that’s so,” Donald said. “But it’s you and yours who’ll bear the brunt of it.”
“Well,” Conrad agreed. “We always knew it was a gesture we’d have to pay for. Nothing’s free, is it?”
Donald’s smile was pained. “No indeed, Son. In all the world—in all the universe—there’s not a thing worth having that comes any way but dear. You choose what you want, and spend the rest of your life paying. And now that life’s eternal, why, that’s a high cost indeed.”
Half a world away, with the painful light of dawn shining through a different set of bars, a similar conversation was progressing even more smoothly.
“Xiomara, dear, is there nothing we can do? Will you magically appear in the midst of every trespass and misdeed in the Queendom?”
“Sorry times call for sorry deeds, Mum.”
“Do they? Really. Playing space harlot is a political strategem, I suppose.”
“Harlot? To hell with you, Mummy. That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said.”
Like she didn’t have enough troubles. She was a rioter, yes, and now apparently also a space pirate. And these two halves of herself were having a hard time integrating. How could her life be so wrapped up in the affairs of people she hadn’t known she knew? How could Yinebeb Fecre—“Feck the Fairy”—be such a dashing figure around Denver, and yet such a clownish and contemptible one in the eyes of his peers? Had they ever really met him? Had she?
And then there was the Prince of Sol, who wanted her heart, who accused her of toying with him. There was a problem she’d never expected to have. And this damned Conrad Mursk, who’d had the temerity—the gall!—to save her life. A piece of her life she wasn’t sure she wanted. Oh, it was intense. It was a break from her humdrum existence, not least because he was part of it. But did Xmary want to be that person? Bitter, used? Seasoned? Too late now, of course. She already was.
So she didn’t know what to think. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to think. The reintegration was eleven hours old, and still not taking! She was still of two minds! The old days must have been easier: everyone singled for life, without any of this crazy ambivalence weighing the spirit down. Decisions must have been effortless.