The Golden Queen (21 page)

Gallen thrust his incendiary rifle into its sheath, pulled his sword from the sand, and began to dry the dripping blade by whipping it over his head in complex patterns.

“Veriasse,” Maggie said, “I have been wondering. Even in my short time working for the aberlains, I concluded that your guardians could have been engineered better. They could be more heavily armored, could be virtually invincible. Since they were Lady Semarritte’s only police force, I find it odd that they are this weak. Orick killed one with his teeth.”

“Lady Semarritte did not rule with an iron hand,” Veriasse said. “The Tharrin rule by the will of the people. Yes, the guardians are imperfect. Part of their weakness stems from the fact that they are based upon models that are very old. But we have always known that someday, someone like the dronon could gain control of an omni-mind. Since guardian officers wear Guides and receive orders directly from the omni-mind, any usurper who controls the omni-mind also controls fleets and armies with billions of warriors spread out across ten thousand worlds. Isn’t it a comfort to know that a human has some hope of beating them?”

Gallen thrust the blade into his sheath. “Let’s go,” he said as he turned and began walking toward the distant shore.

They chugged through the warm water for the next three hours with only one brief rest. The sea had little salt in it and remained marvelously clear. By picking a trail through shallows, they spent most of their time in water that didn’t reach their hips, though they could often look out into deeper pools. In places, rock formations thrust up to create submerged islands. Here, fish swarmed in great silver schools that darted out to the depths and then raced back to the shelter of the rocks. Twice they saw great beasts swimming in the depths, chasing fish. Veriasse warned Gallen to watch for the creatures. “Puas, they are called,” he said. “They feed on fish and anything else they can swallow.”

At last they reached dry land—a beach that extended for miles. The beach was home to sand flies and some soft creature that reminded Gallen of a pinecone with eight legs. Small reddish black spiders fearlessly scuttled about carrying small rocks. If anyone got too close to the spider, it would toss a stone, flipping it over its back with its hind legs. They were fearless spiders, lords of the sand. Gallen saw no birds.

A stiff gale blew from the sea; soon it began driving water over the beach. At last they reached a stony ridge—a metallic green expanse of sculpted limestone like a chimney, flat on top. The ground here was rocky, thick with tide pools.

Gallen and Orick climbed one steeple of pale limestone, looked southeast. In the distance they saw a city built on stilts, but just below them a group of four children were hunting in the tide pools. The children had red skin and were so long of leg that they looked like cranes as they waded through the pools. They had tied colorful rags into their hair, and they wore bright tunics.

With them was a beast, striped with gold and brown scales. It had large carnivorous teeth and used its tail to balance on its strong back legs. Its front legs were small and heavily clawed. Gallen recognized the creature as a dinosaur, some type of raptor. On its back was an ornate leather saddle. Gallen watched the children and their dinosaur hunt. The beast would run through tidal pools, splashing, using a bony crest near its nose to push over heavy rocks. The children would then leap in with capture sticks and scoop up large, yellow lobsters. Some of these they put in a sack, others they fed to their pet.

At last a small child noticed Gallen’s shadow on the ground and looked up. She smiled and waved, pointed at Gallen. The other children glanced at him, then returned to hunting lobsters.

Gallen and Orick climbed back down, and the group made their way around the ridge. The children were just fishing their bag of lobsters from the water. An older boy, perhaps ten, greeted them and asked their destination. Veriasse said that they were heading to the city, and the children seemed happy to see visitors.

The two smallest children were eager to announce the strangers. The children mounted the dinosaur and headed toward the city in the distance, letting the dinosaur run in a long, loping gait. Soon they had nearly raced out of sight. The city, six miles distant, rose from the ground like some vast collection of mushrooms.

Gallen and the others walked through a maze of stony tide pools as an afternoon thunderstorm brewed, until they reached the city. They climbed a wide, winding stairway, like the stem of a mushroom.

When they reached the top, the terrain was uneven, like rolling hills. Small clusters of cement domes made up the homes. No glass was in the windows, no doors in the doorways. Apparently the temperatures here remained warm all year, and no annoying insects flew about. Each doorway led out to a wide parapet where people sat and cooked at communal fires and listened to music. Atop the dome houses were lush gardens.

Everynne removed her mask and pulled back the hood that veiled her face, walking into the city undisguised. The people came out on their verandas to cheer her entrance to the city with loud whistles. Gallen looked at Veriasse, wondering why Everynne was so bold here, and Veriasse explained. “Here on Cyannesse, the dronon are but a distant threat. We are over forty thousand light-years from the world of Fale, well behind our battle lines with the Dronon Empire. Their warships will not reach here for many years. Still, the people here have heard of our long war, and they know Everynne for what she is.”

So it was that by early afternoon, Gallen found himself in the ancient city of Dinchee by the Sea of Unperturbed Meditation on Cyannesse, and there tasted the peace that had once been the rule among Everynne’s people.

That evening there was music and feasting in the city of Dinchee, on the city’s uppermost tier. The suns went down in a blaze of gold, and a cool wind blew thunderheads across the wide ocean. Children roasted whole lobsters over cooking stones and brought them to the guests on great heaping trays, along with melons and roasted nuts and tubers. Gallen could not identify all that he ate, but he ate to his fill, then lay back on the grass with his mouth open, letting the wind play over his face.

Out over the gardens, three youths played mandolins and guitars while a young woman sang. Everynne sat beside them listening, while Veriasse sat beside an old Tharrin woman who insisted on being called only Grandmother, a silver-haired matriarch with small bones and a beauty undiminished by age. She sat on the stones, her long legs folded out to the sides. She wore an ancient mantle that was made of brass-colored plates with ornate symbols of knowledge. The young people of her city served her with great deference.

As Gallen sat under the oncoming night, he saw that these people were not rich. They did not have great stores of food, but instead harvested from the sea and from their gardens. Their entertainment was simple. Shops did not crowd the plazas, as they had on Fale. Everyone wore tunics in bright colors. But if they were not rich in worldly goods, they had enough, and they seemed rich in peace. Their children were strong and smart and happy.

Veriasse talked softly with Grandmother, asking for a couple of airbikes and provisions. The old woman smiled and nodded, saying that they had few airbikes. Yet she granted all of his requests.

Veriasse stopped talking for a moment, looked at Gallen, Maggie, and Orick. “Our three friends,” he told Grandmother, “would like to rest here, taking refuge with your people until they can return home.”

“They will be welcome,” Grandmother said. “As friends of the Grand Lady, we will be glad to attend to them.”

“Pay no attention to that old rooster,” Gallen said quickly. He nodded at Veriasse. “I’ll be going with Everynne when she leaves.”

Veriasse shook his head. “I have given it some thought, and I’ve decided that you shall not come. The dronon control the next two planets we shall visit, and frankly, Everynne and I will be less conspicuous without you.”

“Have you asked Everynne about this?” Gallen asked.

“No,” Veriasse said softly. “I don’t think I need to.”

“Then I will,” Gallen said. He glanced over at the singers. Everynne had been listening to them, but now she had gone. He spotted a flash of blue in the twilight, saw her walking over a small hill among the trees. He got up, made his way through the crowd until he found the trail she had taken. It led down a small gully and off into a miniature woodland where crickets sang in the evening. Of all the things on this planet so far, only the crickets reminded him of home. The path was broad and well-maintained.

He couldn’t see Everynne, so he let his mantle tweak his hearing and vision. He moved as silently as a mist down the trail, passed a pair of naked lovers rolling in a deep bed of ferns.

After a hundred yards, he reached a railed balcony at the edge of the city. There he found Everynne on a parapet at the forest’s edge, watching the suns set. The tide was rushing in over beaches they had negotiated a few hours earlier. The sea had turned coppery orange, and huge white breakers smashed against the limestone rock formations. Beneath the wild, tormented waves, he could see a vast line of green lights.

Everynne stood very quietly. Though she held herself erect, proud, she was so petite that he could have lifted her with one hand. Though her back was to him, he saw tears on her cheek. She shook softly, as if she tried to hold back a wracking sob. “Have you come to watch the torchbearers?” she said, jutting her chin toward the waves and the green lights beneath. “They’re beautiful fish. Each bears its own light to hunt by.”

Gallen walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. She started a bit, as if she had not expected his touch. Beneath his hands, her muscles were tense, strung tight, so he began kneading them softly.

He wanted to ask permission to follow her, but she seemed so troubled, he could not bear to do so. “I don’t want to talk about fish. They aren’t important. What are you crying about?” Gallen waited a long moment for an answer.

Everynne shook her head. “Nothing. I just—” She fell silent.

“You are sad,” Gallen whispered. “Why?”

Everynne looked off, staring at the sea. “Do you know how old my mother was?” Her voice was so soft, Gallen could hardly hear it over the crashing of breakers.

“A few thousand years,” Gallen guessed. She had, after all, been immortal, and Veriasse claimed to have served her for six thousand years.

“And do you know how old I am?”

“Eighteen, twenty?” Gallen asked.

“Three, almost,” Everynne answered. Gallen did a double take. “Veriasse cloned me after my mother died. He raised me in a force vat on Shintol, to speed my growth. He couldn’t risk that I might have a normal childhood—couldn’t take a chance that I might cut myself or break a bone. While I grew in the force vat, he used mantles to teach me—history, ethics, psychology. I feel as if I have learned everything about life, but experienced none of it.”

“And in a few days, you fear that your life may end?”

“No—I
know
it will end,” Everynne said. “My mother was far older and wiser than I. The dronon had been lurking on her borders for thousands of years. She had millennia to prepare for her battle with them, and still she died. I think my chances of winning are nil. But even if I win, I will be changed. You know what it is to fuse with a personal intelligence, the wonder and pain that all burst in on you in a moment. But an omni-mind is the size of a planet and stores more information than a trillion personal intelligences combined. I am … less than an insect compared to it. My mother and it grew to become one, and when her body died, it would download her personality into her clones. It stores everything that was my mother-all her thoughts, her dreams, her memories. And if I fuse with it, I will no longer be me in any way that matters. Her experiences will overwhelm me, and it will be as if I never existed.”

“You would still be you,” Gallen said, hoping to comfort her. “You wouldn’t lose that.” But he knew he was wrong. As far as the omni-mind was concerned, Everynne was just a shell, a template of the Great Judge Semarritte, waiting to be filled. In the space of a moment, Everynne would grow, learn more than he or billions of other people could ever hope to know. Yet her personality, her essence, would be swept away as something of no importance.

She turned and looked into his eyes, smiled sadly. “You’re right, of course,” she said, as if to ease his mind. The wind blew her hair; Gallen looked into her dark blue eyes.

“Maybe,” Gallen offered, “someone else could take your place. There are other Tharrin. Perhaps Grandmother would reign in your behalf.”

Everynne shook her head. “She is a grand lady, but she would not take my place. A Lord Judge must earn that position, but Grandmother could not earn that title. All of the Tharrin knew of Semarritte’s plan to return as a clone. I sometimes wonder if I am worthy to become a Servant of All, but the Tharrin treat me as if I am but an extension of Semarritte. They say that once I join with the omni-mind, my own short life will have meant nothing. I will be Semarritte.” She paused, took a deep breath. “I want to thank you for what you did today.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you pulled the incendiary rifle on us. I’m glad that you’re not the kind of person who would follow me blindly. Too few people question my motives.”

“Do you feel that your motives need questioning?”

“Of course!” Everynne fell silent for a moment; Gallen heard someone laugh in the distance. It was growing dark, and Gallen felt he should go, but Everynne was standing close to him, only a hand’s breadth away. She gazed into his face, leaned forward and kissed him, wrapped her arms around him.

“Question my motives,” she whispered fiercely. Her lips were warm, inviting.

Gallen took her request literally. “You’re afraid that you will die soon,” Gallen whispered, and he kissed her back. She leaned into him, her firm breasts crushing into his chest.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” she whispered. “I want to know what it’s like for
me
to be in love.”