The Summer Prince (31 page)

“Ueda,” I mouth, and he frowns. Maybe he harbors some lingering resentment over Enki’s involvement with the ambassador, but I think it more likely that he worries what I’m up to. I glance back at my fono: one hour until the afternoon session starts. Should I run back home and change, maybe into something that shows off my light-tree? But no, too revealing if something happens at the trial that upsets me. Enki says he can see half my thoughts in those lights.

At least, he would if he were still talking to me.

The school’s fields don’t allow for much fono communication, but I figure if Ueda was able to get a message to me, then I should be able to respond. I tell him yes and he says to wait in the public entrance to the parliamentary hall. I wonder what Enki will think if he sees me there. That I’ve changed my mind about Auntie Maria? Will he stop hating me?

I grit my teeth. Forget him. He’s too far down the path of his own death to see what it’s like for a waka with centuries ahead of her. He thinks I can just sacrifice everything I might have in the world for the sake of some abstract justice, but it isn’t that simple, as Auntie Yaha would say. As Mother would say.

What is right, Valencia?
my papai says in my mamãe’s voice.

Shut up, João
, I think, because I could never have said it if he were still alive. I’ll win the Queen’s Award, I’ll become a famous artist, and
then
I’ll do good — when I have a position and influence and a life to do it with. If I make this one futile gesture, then what? I never get to see my home again? I get to stay, but I never have any professional success because I’ve been blacklisted?

“No.”

I didn’t mean to say this out loud. The teacher looks up from the English text he was reading to the class.

“You have such a strong objection to Atwood, June?”

Bebel, a few rows ahead, turns to look at me. “You okay?” she whispers.

My stomach lurches. God, I wish I could still hate Bebel. It was so much simpler.

“I need to leave,” I say, and now the whole class stares at me.

He sighs. “Another unexplained absence? Do what you will, June.”

He returns to the text. I pick up my things and head for the door. I have to watch this hearing. I have to prove to Enki that I’m fine with my decision. And maybe prove it to myself.

“
He’s
the one who’s being judgmental,” I mutter as I stalk through the deserted hallway. “The one who doesn’t have any empathy.”

But the words feel absurd as soon as I speak them. For all our summer king’s faults, he certainly doesn’t lack empathy. I’m nearly at the outside doors when I hear the echo of canvas shoes running through the hallway.

“June,” Gil says, “wait!”

I wait for him with resignation and relief. I’ve missed him so much. And soon he will hate me as much as Enki does.

“You’re doing something with Ueda-sama?” he says when he’s caught up with me. He almost touches my elbow but then pulls his hand back, stuffs it inside his pocket.

“He invited me to the hearings.”

“Oh.”

We stare at each other. Gil shuffles his feet, an awkward samba, but somehow still achingly graceful. My lights strobe hot and cold. Gil is my brother, my best friend. Why are we acting like strangers to each other?

“Gil —”

“June, I’m sorry —”

“I did something … I shouldn’t have, when Ieyascu pulled me out of the exam. I was too ashamed to tell you.”

He smiles suddenly. “I’ve been so wrapped up lately, I just didn’t know what to say to you. It seems so silly …”

“Wrapped up?”

The smile fades a little, and I see that face, the one I’d mistaken for derision. It’s that deep sadness that I glimpsed weeks ago in the park.

“I can’t stop hoping,” he whispers.

“About … saving Enki?” The phrase sounds nonsensical. You can’t save a summer king any more than you can save a mayfly.

Maybe he sees my disbelief, because he sighs and changes the subject. “What happened to you?”

In the end, it’s a relief to tell him. “I let the Aunties help me cheat on my exams to stay in the running with Bebel.”

He freezes and stares. “Oh, June.”

“I’m sorry.” My eyes are hot, but I can’t cry here.

“Will you tell Bebel?”

“But if I do —” I cut myself off, ashamed to even finish the sentence.

“You won’t win,” Gil finishes, and he touches my elbow. His disappointment is like a flashing sign above his head, but he doesn’t let go. That’s enough for now.

We look at each other for another moment, then he pulls me forward, very gently, and kisses me on the forehead.

“If you think of a way to save him, June, do you promise to tell me? Do you promise to let me help?”

I don’t understand how someone as smart as Gil can’t see this is a fantasy. “Enki made his choice. There’s nothing we can do now.”

He turns away and I’m overwhelmed with an echo, with the sense that the words in my mouth aren’t my own. But of course they are. Gil is being foolish, and someone had to tell him so.

Just like your mamãe told you, when Papai died?

I gasp. “I’ll try,” I hear myself saying, before he can walk away.

It’s all the reward in the world when he turns around and smiles.

Ueda-sama has a secretary meet me at the public entrance and escort me to our seats at the front of the giant parliamentary hall. No one important enough to be at these hearings would ever conspicuously snub him, and yet he stands as though alone in the sea of Auntie
turbans and colorful dresses. He wears simple trousers and a shirt — perhaps the bird design around the collar subtly evokes his home, but perhaps not. He looks older than the last time we met. Exhausted in a way that goes beyond the dark rings under his eyes.

He smiles at me after I push my way through the milling crowd to find my seat next to him.

“I’m so glad you could come, June,” he says. I’m here just in time — a second later, Auntie Isa calls the meeting to order.

Enki doesn’t invoke the proceedings with a prayer this afternoon. He just sits quietly with the head Aunties and Oreste. He acts as he has for the last two days: like a model summer king from a moon year, beautiful and obedient. I try to catch his eye, but he looks straight ahead. Maybe he doesn’t know I’m here, or maybe he’s just ignoring me. Just looking at him makes me short of breath, makes me want to cry, makes me want to rage and scream. How dare he hold me in such contempt for having the temerity to control my own life?

There’s some hubbub on the floor as the remaining two Aunties and one Uncle take their seats on the committee. In the audience, murmurs swell into a chorus, cloth rustles. Ueda-sama bends his head toward me and whispers, “Are you all right, my dear?”

I nod and take a deep breath. “Yes, of course,” I say. “Thank you again for inviting me.”

He shrugs. “I just had a sudden thought that you would like to see this. Perhaps almost as much as I do.”

I wonder how much Ueda saw from his cage that day. I wonder if, amid the teeming confusion of the protesters and the nanocloud and the security bots, he saw those bullets tear through Wanadi and Regina. What would that look like to someone from Tokyo 10, whose citizens have forsaken death altogether?

“Do you think this will …” But I realize that he doesn’t know about Auntie Maria, and I don’t dare tell him in this space.

But still, he seems to understand. “We’ll see, June,” he says.

“The special investigative body is now in session,” says Auntie Isa. The sudden silence is like an intake of breath. I look at Enki again. His smile would look smug if I didn’t notice the sadness at the corners. In his stillness, he nonetheless conveys volatility, as though he must either sit still or explode.

“The goal of today’s inquiry,” says Auntie Isa, “is to continue investigation into ethical breaches that may have allowed the infiltration of war tech into our city.”

And killed two people
, I think, but of course the Aunties want nothing so grisly as fact to intrude on their sanitized hearings.

But, “Also,” says Enki, leaning forward a few gentle centimeters, “resulting in the deaths of Wanadi Dias and Regina Silva.”

For a second, Auntie Isa breaks her infamous calm — she glances at Enki, startled, before serenity returns to her ageless face and she nods once in solemn acknowledgment.

“Of course, as the king says, resulting in the tragic deaths of two of our citizens. And for our first testimony, we call Auntie Maria before the committee.”

Auntie Maria makes her way from her seat in the front row of the audience to the solitary chair facing the committee, who sit in a half circle around her. It looks horribly intimidating to me, but Auntie Maria wears an expression of calm determination I’m sure she practiced in front of the mirror. My pulse speeds — no Aunties would give confirmation of who they would call for testimony today. I hadn’t dared hope I might actually get to see Auntie Maria accused of her own crimes. I start to grin, but then stop when I catch curious glances from some of the people seated nearby.

I sometimes forget that I’m no longer the anonymous student I used to be.

“Good afternoon, Maria,” says Auntie Isa in a convivial tone that sets my teeth on edge. “I trust you understand your presence here.”

Auntie Maria doesn’t move, except perhaps to straighten her already perfect posture. “There was an egregious breach of security, and I have been entrusted with our city’s safekeeping. I would have volunteered myself had you not called me here.”

“Then perhaps,” says Auntie Nara, from the far end of the table, “you could begin by explaining to us, in your own words, how such dangerous tech not only got into our city, but into the hands of technophile extremists?”

Auntie Maria nods at Auntie Nara, grave seriousness tempered with just the right dash of self-recrimination. She looks just like a holo, even in real life.

Enki flashes that delightful mocking smile, but just for a moment. Then he’s back to staid, perfect King Enki. What game he’s playing I don’t know, but he still hasn’t noticed me.

“The trouble,” says Auntie Maria, “is that I trusted the wakas too much. Lucia in particular, I’m afraid, and the others who were so enamored of new technology. I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined them capable of trading with guerrillas for such abominations.”

Auntie Nara nods. “I understand, Auntie, but the question still remains: With all the myriad ways at your disposal to watch over this city, when these technophile terrorists chose to go outside the city for tech, how could you have missed it?”

Another Auntie whose name I’ve forgotten clears her throat. “I second the Auntie’s question. This was a security breach of flabbergasting proportions. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that you had no inkling of the technophiles’ plans beforehand.”

I think I gasp — at least, my mouth hangs open — but any sound I might make is drowned by the noise of the audience. A few people rise from their chairs and shout in disapproval, while others clap. Auntie Isa purses her lips.

“Quiet, please!” she says, her voice booming through the acoustically calibrated chamber. “Auntie Cleusa, I hope you don’t mean to imply any collusion on the part of our head of security?”

I watch Oreste, seated between Auntie Isa and Enki, hoping for the slightest twitch of emotion on that iconically impassive face. But her hands remain in her lap, her head turns slightly to the side, more like a beautiful robot than a human. Is there a mod for that, I wonder, and then choke back a laugh. At least that’s one I can be sure Enki would never use.

The Auntie who asked the question clears her throat. “I think,” she says, far more tentatively this time, “that the question should at least be raised. The time line the distinguished Auntie has provided us with has many confusing gaps. There are many errors in judgment that —”

Auntie Maria leans forward slightly, as though physically pained. “I am the first to admit my lapses, honored Auntie Cleusa. But I have served this greatest city, our light on the bay, I have been a true Palmarina for over one hundred and twenty years and an Auntie for fifty of them. Surely even a
political
opponent such as yourself wouldn’t accuse me of betrayal?”

Shouts of support momentarily drown out even the carefully amplified members of the committee. I glance up at Ueda-sama, shocked. I would never have imagined Auntie Maria to have such support, even among the crowd that can attend parliamentary hearings.

“You make many friends in a long life,” Ueda-sama whispers, close in my ear. I remember that he is more than three hundred years old, a technological Methuselah, and think,
Well, wouldn’t he know?

“So she’ll get away with it,” I say softly, and Ueda-sama gives me a sharp glance.

“Could you explain,” says Enki in a voice that booms through the hall, “how it is that a group of loosely affiliated technophile wakas came to travel hundreds of miles outside this city over dangerous terrain to make agreements with guerrillas who would just as soon shoot them as give them nanotech?”

Oreste turns to Enki and raises one chilly eyebrow. He grins at her. “Honored Auntie,” he adds, a perfect grace note of withering disrespect.