The Golden Queen (18 page)

By evening, Maggie’s work allowed her to isolate a defective gene and thus learn the gene’s purpose in the great act of controlling the development of dronons.

The dronon technicians congratulated her and rewarded her by letting her work late. Her Guide fed her a sense of rapture, and she felt thrilled to be engaged in such a great and noble cause. Thus it was that she finally stumbled to her cubicle.

She opened the window, smelled the fresh night air, listened to the sound of the river lapping against the living walls of the city. A hundred thousand stars filled the night sky like white sand, and she looked up at a great swirling galaxy, wondering at its beauty.

She set the temperature of her bed higher, took a quick shower, then put on a thin robe and lay down to sleep. Out in the hall, she could hear the comforting sound of a dronon vanquisher’s feet clicking as it patrolled the hallways of her sleeping quarters.

In the middle of the night, Maggie woke to a consuming lust that rolled over her in waves. She knew Avik was coming, and she did not think she could fight the Guide’s commands anymore.

She was lying on her stomach, and the air stirred behind her. She realized that Avik must already have entered the room; the light did not go on, but she felt the weight of his body as he climbed on the bed. He moved quickly. She could hear his heavy breathing, and feel his weight as he straddled her back.

She whimpered softly. He pulled at the Guide on her head, thrust what felt like a chisel against the base of her neck. There was a searing pain, and hot blood spurted down her neck, and suddenly she was free from the Guide.

Maggie’s only thought was that Avik had decided to kill her. She screamed, twisted to her side so that she could wrestle the knife away.

Gallen sat atop her, knife in hand, lit only by the starlight shining from the window. He thrust the Guide in a sack, then hit the sack sharply against the wall so that it made a sickly crunching sound, like breaking bones.

Maggie’s head was reeling from fatigue, from a sudden overwhelming sadness. She couldn’t think what was happening. “Get out,” she whispered. “Avik is coming.”

“Who is Avik?” Gallen whispered.

“A rapist,” Maggie said, and behind Gallen the door whispered open. Light from the corridor shone in. Gallen surged from the bed so quickly that Maggie hardly saw him move. He seemed almost to fly across the room, a black shadow in his robes, a gleaming silver knife in his hand.

Gallen’s knife fell just as Avik began to cry out. Gallen tossed the body to the floor with a thud.

In the corridor outside her door, the dronon guard shouted and scrabbled to come to Maggie’s rescue.

Gallen slammed the door and locked it, saying, “Quick! Out the window! Jump in the water!”

Maggie staggered off the bed; horror overwhelmed her—not just horror at the thought of the dronon guard racing to the door, but a horror at all that had happened here.

In one instant, she realized what kind of work she had been engaged in, and an image flashed in her mind—a vision of the bloated sacklike mothers she had helped engineer, the remembered smell of dronon body parts stacked like cordwood in bins.

Her hands felt filthy; her entire skin felt filthy, and Maggie dropped to her knees and simultaneously cried from the core of her soul and tried to keep from retching up her dinner.

With a squeal of rending metal, the dronon guard hit the door, peeled it back with one chitinous claw, tearing it from its hinges. It held its black incendiary rod forward, pushed it through the door, and Maggie could see the wicked serrated edges on its forward battle arms. Gallen and the beast were dancing shadows in the light thrown from the corridor. As Gallen rushed to the torn door, the dronon’s wings buzzed in anticipation.

Gallen grabbed the dronon’s incendiary rod, twisted it away and spun, firing through the rent door. He was far too close to shoot the weapon, and Maggie hoped that the thin metal door would shield them from the heat.

The chitinous black flesh of the guard squealed as its body temperature rose above boiling, and smoke roiled from its carapace and crawled along the ceiling. It became a blazing pillar of white fire. Intense heat filled the room, and the broken door caught flame. Gallen threw up his arms and staggered back to her.

Somewhere in the building, an alarm sounded. Gallen threw his robe over Maggie’s face. She struggled up, thinking that they would die any moment, but Gallen scooped her into his arms and staggered to the window.

“I can’t …” Maggie cried, weeping bitterly.

Gallen pushed her out. The building was sloped, and for a moment she slid out in the darkness through air that felt pleasantly icy, then hit the black water. It was far colder than she would have guessed. She thrashed vigorously and floundered for a moment, found herself underwater. She bobbed to the surface again and called for help. She looked up. Gallen was clinging precariously to the windowsill like a spider, and she wondered if he had somehow gotten stuck, then he splashed into the water ten feet away. Maggie thrashed her legs, went under again. A moment later, Gallen grasped her neck.

He pulled her to the surface, holding her head up from behind. She kept struggling and tried to spin, grab him. “Help! I can’t swim!”

“Can’t swim?” Gallen asked. “Your father and brothers all drowned. I’d think you’d learn to swim.”

Maggie gasped, part from the cold, part from the fear that she would slip under again. Gallen reached around, put something in her mouth. It felt like the mouthpiece to a flute, but it was attached to two small bottles.

“Breath in and out through this,” Gallen panted. “It’s an oxygen exchanger. It recycles air. As long as you breathe through this, it doesn’t matter if your head goes underwater. In a minute, I’ll start pulling you to shore. We will have to dive underwater. Don’t fight me.” Maggie tried breathing through the machine. She had to exert extra force to inhale, as if she were breathing through heavy cloth.

Gallen fumbled to put on his own oxygen exchanger, then dove and began pulling her toward shore. He did not try to hurry, just made a leisurely swim of it, so that by the time they came up, they were far downstream from Toohkansay and had rounded a bend in the river. The lights from the city gleamed over the water, and a lighted barge sailed past them, heading downriver. Gallen swam to the mouth of a small creek, and they waded upstream till they reached a bridge that arched above them darkly, shutting out the powdered light of the stars.

Under the bridge, Gallen stepped from the water, pulling Maggie after him. He bent and opened a cloth sack that was lying in some tall grass, pulled out a single blanket. Maggie was shivering vigorously, shaking from more than the chill night air. Everything that had happened to her over the past few days slammed into her like a giant fist.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, feeling ill to the core of her soul. “I’m so sorry.” She wanted to explain why she was so sorry but did not know where to begin. She was so cold, she could not feel her fingers. Gallen wrapped the blanket around her; he was shivering violently. She wrapped her arms around him so they could share the blanket.

“You—you had this planned?” she asked between chattering teeth. His golden hair gleamed in the starlight, and she could make out little of his features. The brackish odor of the river was heavy on them both.

“Aye,” Gallen said. “I’ve got some food in the pack, dry clothes. I found a trail along this creek. We can follow it up into the hills, then circle back north of town to where Orick and I set camp. I think we should stay off the road.”

The blackness still hung over Maggie, and every few moments the images of her work over the past few days would flash in her mind. The demented gleam in Avik’s eye. Sorting the tagged feelers of the dead dronons, the images of the twisted people she had built.

There were no signs of pursuit, but she was sure that the dronons would come after them soon.

The cold, the fear, the darkness of it all was too much for Maggie, and she sank to her knees. Wild vetch grew in a tangled mass here in the shadow of the bridge.

Gallen knelt, hugging her to keep her warm.

“Everynne?” Maggie stammered, and it seemed to her that her thoughts were now unnaturally clear, bright and well-defined, like the chemical fire from an incendiary rifle.

“We found her this morning,” Gallen said. “She was heading north for another gate. The dronons were on her trail. She plans to fight them. She asked us to come with her, but …”

Maggie looked up, studied his face. It caught only the slightest touch of starlight, and she could not see his eyes. But one thing was clear: he could have gone with Everynne, but Gallen had chosen to stay and rescue Maggie.

She leaned her shivering body against Gallen, felt the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt. His breath warmed her neck. She realized he’d planned the escape in every detail: two sets of dry clothes, two oxygen exchangers. But only one blanket. He’d planned to share this moment with her.

The residual emotions stimulated by the Guide were still affecting her somewhat. The night before, she’d staved off Avik’s advances by fantasizing about Gallen, and now she found that an edge of lust still lingered.

Maggie was painfully aware of her thin nightgown, her nipples tight, protruding against the hairs of Gallen’s chest. He shivered. She wrapped both hands around his neck, kissed him firmly on the mouth. Gallen pulled away slightly, gasped as if surprised by her action.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, aware that he was shaking harder. She recognized it for what it was. He was shaking with desire. “Don’t you want this?”

“You’re still too young,” Gallen said, his voice husky.

She grew so angry, she wanted to hit him. “We don’t all age at the same rate, and some things make you old before your time,” she said. “Watching your family die, that ages you! Working—working day and night just to stay alive, that ages you. Wearing a Guide—hell, Gallen, I, I can’t even begin to tell you what that thing did to me. It’s like a vice, crushing you. It teaches you and it rapes you all at the same time, because the things it teaches you shatter all of your deepest hopes—and if it didn’t play games with you and make you feel like you were in heaven, you would gladly cut your own head off to be rid of it!”

Maggie began sobbing and trembling. She imagined that she could feel the dronons’ black sensor whips on her arms, cold and rough like cornstalks, fouling her. “Gallen, you don’t even begin to understand what kind of place we live in—”

“I know—” Gallen said. “I put on a teaching machine in the city. It taught me.”

“Did it teach you about the dronon, about their plans?”

“No,” Gallen admitted. “The teacher only showed me how the dronon conquered this world.”

“In other words, this teacher taught you only what the dronon want you to know!”

Maggie was shivering and angry. Gallen put his arm around her, and she desperately wanted to be loved, to be comforted, for at that moment, it seemed that love was the only token that could be put on the scale that might balance out all the pain and despair that threatened to overwhelm her. Even then, she wasn’t certain that love would be quite enough.

At that moment, something touched her back, and Maggie realized that Gallen held something long and hard in his hand. She reached around with her palm and touched the incendiary rod. Amazingly, he had managed to carry both it and her through the water.

And in that moment, she knew what else she needed to balance out her pain. Revenge.

“You said Everynne plans to overthrow the dronon,” Maggie whispered. “Do you have any idea what her plans are?”

“No,” Gallen admitted, “but I know where her gate is.”

Maggie nodded softly and whispered, “Let’s go.”

But at that moment, a great circle of light shone on the bridge above them. The bridge rumbled and shook, so that bits of dirt rained down.

In horror, Galled clapped a hand over Maggie’s mouth. She could think only one thing:
they found us!

Overhead, a voice sounded from the sky. “You there: put up your hands!”

Chapter 10

The light shined all around the bridge, bathing every grass blade in a brilliant glow. Gravity waves shook the bridge, making it thunder and vibrate so that bits of dirt and paint rained down. Maggie hugged Gallen. Overhead, Gallen heard someone shout, “I’m not armed! I’m not armed!”

Someone’s up there, Gallen realized.

“I was only out for some exercise,” a man called. “There is no harm in that.” Gallen recognized the voice. Veriasse.

The flier hovered nearer. “Citizen, have you seen anyone pass you on the road?”

“Indeed,” Veriasse said. “A magcar flashed past me not five minutes ago.”

“Can you describe its occupants?”

“It carried only two—one was a woman. I cannot be sure of the sex of the driver.”

Without another word, the flier darted south. Gallen peeked out and saw a second white, saucer-shaped flier that had been zigzagging over the far side of the river do likewise.

Veriasse whispered, “Gallen? Maggie?”

“Down here.” Gallen started to climb up. “What are you doing back? I thought you were gone?”

“Shhh … talk softer. The gate we sought was guarded, so Everynne and I were forced to retreat. Don’t climb up here. The night scopes on the vanquisher’s flier can spot a man at forty miles. It is likely that I am being watched. Stay hidden and speak softly. The fliers can discern loud sounds, but softer sounds are masked by the fluctuation of air molecules that are disturbed by the fliers’ gravity waves. I’ll meet you at your camp at dawn. For now, follow the creek, keeping under heavy cover, then circle back through the woods. As an information manager for Fale, I’ve taken the liberty of issuing you false identifications. If you are captured, feign innocence. You will not be harmed.”

“I wondered how I got credits on that empty chip,” Gallen whispered. “I knew I had a hidden ally.”

“Good luck,” Veriasse whispered, and he hurried away.

Gallen led Maggie through the ravine into the hills. They crept under the starlight, more anxious to keep under cover than make good time. They reached camp before dawn, so they took shelter in a deep grotto to sleep.

At dawn, Veriasse woke them with a whistle. He stood at the top of a small rise, holding three bundles tied with string. He was gazing north. It took Gallen a second to realize that Veriasse was calling to Everynne and Orick. Gallen got up and stretched. In the distance, he could discern Everynne and Orick making their way through the woods. He wondered at the old man’s uncanny ability to walk softly in such heavy growth, to find them no matter where they hid.

Gallen shook Maggie awake, then walked up the rise. “Thank you again for your help last night, Veriasse. How did you know we were under the bridge?”

“I watched you from a distance,” Veriasse said. “I saw you enter Maggie’s room and effect her escape. I was impressed at the last, when you closed her window as you leapt out. I’m sure that it confused the guards, forcing them to search for you within the compound. In fact, they are probably still concentrating their main search inside. Anyway, I saw you leap into the river, and by gauging the flow of the current was able to guess where you would exit. I would say that you planned your escape fairly well, although your lack of education was almost your undoing.”

“In what way?” Gallen asked, perplexed.

“You didn’t know about the capabilities of modern pursuit vehicles. That was my fault, for not warning you. But you also tried to beat the motion detectors. I suspected you would, so I went to Maggie’s window and put jammers down before you arrived.”

“You mean you were there?”

“Just for a moment.”

“Why didn’t you rescue Maggie yourself?”

“And expose myself to unnecessary hazards? As long as you were willing to take the major risk, it seemed reasonable to let you. Besides, if you had failed, you would have needed me to rescue you both.”

Gallen stared at the ground, annoyed. Veriasse’s argument made sense, but an hour ago Gallen had felt like a hero. Now he felt like a child who had been caught doing something stupid. The older man must have guessed what he was thinking. “You are a talented and courageous young man. I’d like to imagine that I was as good when I was your age, but I was not. I have trained many guardians in my time. Would you like to be one of them?”

Gallen nodded.

Veriasse began unwrapping his bundles. He had brought a black cloak for Gallen, with black boots and gloves and a lavender mask. The outfit bore two scabbards, one for an incendiary rifle. Gallen stared at them in awe, for it was the attire he had seen worn not five nights ago by a man he had thought to be a sidhe.

“Those are the clothes of a Lord of Fale, but who wears these colors?” Gallen asked.

“I wore these colors when I was young,” Veriasse said. “They were my colors as Lord Protector. Lord Oboforron purchased them from me a few years back, but he was executed by the dronon recently, so I bought the title back last night. I told you I had issued you a new identity. You will need clothes to match the part. Put on the robe.”

Gallen put on the outfit. The boots shrunk around his feet as soon as he pulled them on, and he robe seemed massive, thick enough to foil a dagger blow, but was actually very light and comfortable. There was some type of metal padding in the gloves on the knuckles and at the palm and edge of the hand. Gallen imagined that if he landed a blow while wearing the gloves, it would be devastating. He strapped on the weapons.

With the outfit was a personal intelligence, a fine net with many triangles of silver. Gallen hesitated to put it on, for he had never worn a mantle. He was becoming familiar enough with personal intelligences that he did not know if he wanted to trust this one, but Veriasse urged, “Go ahead. It will whisper the intricacies of the protector’s art for you, and it can teach you much that will be of value.”

Gallen put on the silver mantle, felt the now familiar thrumming in his head as the intelligence established communication. Yet his mind did not flood with images like it had at the pidc. Instead, his muscles seemed to tighten involuntarily, as if he were preparing to leap into action, yet there was no tension. He felt almost relaxed, and his senses became heightened. Gallen almost felt as if … he listened, and in the distance to the south, perhaps twenty miles away, he heard a flier approaching. The vanquisher pilot was giving a report over the radio, telling his supervisors that he had found nothing in his search of the area.

“What?” Gallen said. “What is this thing doing to me?”

“This mantle has many sensors built into it,” Veriasse said. “It hears, sees, smells. It detects motions and weaponry better than any mere human ever could. If you want to see something in the distance, close your eyes and think of the thing you want to see. As long as the object is within your line of sight, its image will appear in your mind, in expanded form. Over time you will learn to access the mantle’s higher awareness without conscious thought.”

“How does this thing teach?” Gallen asked.

“When you are safe, away from harm, in quiet moments it will begin training you in earnest. But for now, you are in danger. The mantle will simply be prepared for whatever comes our way. In the early decades of your training, should anything put you in danger, just let yourself go, follow your instincts. Wisdom will flow to you in your time of need.”

Gallen picked up the mask. It looked like a thin layer of gel, but when he put it on his face, it stuck with an adhesive quality. He hadn’t fitted the mask perfectly, but like the boots, it flowed to fit the contours of his face.

For Maggie, Veriasse had a yellow-ocher robe with a pale green mask. Her mantle was large indeed, with dozens of round silver icons that flowed down her back to her waist. “I have decided to dress you as a Lady of Technicians,” he said. “You will find that this intelligence knows far more than your little Guide did, but it is a gentle servant, not a cruel master. You can remove it any time you wish.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie said, pulling the yellow robe over her thin nightgown. “These mantles must be expensive.”

“Indeed,” Veriasse said, “but I have been very wealthy for a very long time. And, so, I am free to give you these.”

“You were Semarritte’s husband before the dronon overcame her?” Gallen asked.

“Husband?” Veriasse said. “An odd word, and a very old one, and I was not her husband in the way that you think, though I husbanded her. I nurtured her and protected her as much as any man could, and I made a career of it. Indeed, Gallen, I once thought of myself as being very much like you—a bodyguard, a protector. But I think the dronon have a clearer view of what I am.

“I played the part of Semarritte’s Lord Escort, the Waymaker. Among the dronon, the escorts battle for the right to become the Golden Queen’s personal honor guard. The winner takes the title of Lord Escort. The Lord Escorts from different hives then engage in ritual combat, and the winner’s Golden Queen takes the high throne, making her Lord of the Swarm. Thus her Lord Escort is also called the ‘Waymaker,’ he who secures the path to the throne.

“It was my job to fight Semarritte’s battles when needed, to protect her from other powerful lords. But I could never have been Semarritte’s husband in the sense that you mean. Only her caretaker. Now, I am the Waymaker to her daughter, Everynne.”

“You mean Everynne isn’t your daughter?” Maggie asked.

“Not my biological daughter,” Veriasse answered. “She is a Tharrin, from a race born to rule. I am from less elegant stock. She sometimes calls me father from affection, and I call her daughter perhaps because I raised her as my own. She is, in fact, a duplicate of Semarritte, cloned from her cells.”

As Orick accompanied Maggie to the top of the rise, Veriasse said, “Our magcar can carry all five of us, but I’m afraid that you, Orick, will be easily noticed. We will simply have to take our chances, keep you out of sight. I purchased a cloak to disguise you on our drive to the city of Guianne.”

Orick hugged Gallen and Maggie, and his heart swelled with joy. “My prayers have been answered. You are safe.”

“You should also thank Veriasse,” Gallen said. “The rescue went smoothly because of him.”

Orick wondered at this. It seemed to him that they were in trouble precisely for trying to help Everynne and Veriasse. It was only fit that Veriasse should help them in return.

Yet as he watched Maggie and Gallen, Orick realized that this adventure was not over. It had only begun, yet by Maggie’s pale features, the lines in her haunted face, he could tell that they had already suffered casualties. Gallen, in his mask of lavender starlight, looked as if he were fast becoming a sidhe. Maggie and Gallen would never recover from this trip. And Orick felt cast off, alone. Of them all, only he had had the strength to refuse to accept this world, preferring to suffer the consequences of that decision.

From his last bundle, Veriasse brought out a cloak in colors of forest brown, then began fastening it around Orick’s neck. But the fastener would not let Veriasse stretch the cloak around Orick’s neck completely. Orick was forced to stand for several minutes, and he grumbled at being compelled into an uncomfortable position for so long. Veriasse did not hurry.

Orick looked into Veriasse’s deep blue eyes as the old man worked at the fastener, and saw in them an intensity, a deliberateness that few men carried. Here was a man, Orick decided, who had become a fanatic, a man who could be driven beyond mortal efforts.

Veriasse managed to fasten the cloak, then led them to the magcar and drove south for an hour through a winding mountain pass. In that time, they had to stop at two inspection stations where green-skinned ogres questioned them. Yet after checking the false identification for Maggie and Everynne, the ogres let them pass.

As the magcar climbed over a last mountain, Orick could taste the scent of sea air even before they saw the water beyond. The city of Guianne gleamed white below them, a collection of exotic domes that rested on a sandy beach like broken eggshells from some giant bird. Above the city, people flew lazily in the air currents, clear wings strapped to their backs flashing like giant dragonflies.

It was only as Veriasse descended toward the city that Orick began to realize how large it must be. He drove for five minutes, and though the buildings loomed larger, they were still very far away.

Just as Orick began to get used to the idea of those enormous buildings, the winged people scattered away from one quadrant of the city, then one round building lifted into the air, defying gravity, and continued climbing straight up into the morning until it vanished behind a layer of clouds.

“By Saint Jermaine’s wagging beard, you’ll not get me in one of those buildings!” Orick shouted.

“That isn’t a building,” Maggie said. “It’s a starship. All of the domes are starships.” Orick looked over at Maggie. She wore a strange expression, one of both profound awe and conquest. He had never seen her so happy, so transformed by wonder. “And I know how they work.”

Orick crossed himself to ward off bad luck. He muttered under his breath. “I don’t know why I came here. Nothing good can come of it, as I’ve said all along. You stay right where you belong, Orick. Bears need the woods like birds need sky.”

The car skimmed over the highway, then turned onto one of many branching boulevards. When they neared the city, the egg-shaped ships loomed above them. Beneath the ships was a sprawling conglomeration of tunnels and passages that seemed to wind about in meandering patterns like veins in a leaf.

Veriasse pulled up to one huge tunnel-like opening and passed under an arch. The presence of the dronon vanquishers was heavier here than it had been in Toohkansay. A dozen vanquishers manned an outpost at the gate, brandishing oversized incendiary rifles. Veriasse stopped to give his identification.

The vanquishers let the car pass. Veriasse drove down a broad boulevard beneath the covered city, a vast arching tunnel whose ceiling could not have been less than three hundred feet high. Everywhere along the sides of the street were shops with exotic displays. The scent of foods unfamiliar to Orick wafted through the tunnel. Smaller side passages led off to living areas and uncovered parkways. Veriasse drove slowly, for many pedestrians and other vehicles also negotiated the great boulevard. A dozen times, Orick was tempted to ask Veriasse to stop so that he could tryout some pastry or other dish sold by vendors, but the old man kept driving for nearly an hour, heading down at a slight angle.