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Authors: Vernor Vinge

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“I, Marget of Sandros, do claim the crown and my dominions.” Tatja stood boldly on the uppermost tier, her arms akimbo. Behind her, and invisible to those below, sat a small animal with large ears. The startled bureaucrats stared at Tatja, the beautiful
woman who had turned a ceremony into a coup. Then their eyes turned to the regent. The gaily dressed dictator advanced six ominous steps toward Tatja. His pale eyes reflected hatred and complete disbelief. For twenty-five years he had ruled the most powerful country on Tu—and now a lone girl was challenging him at the very center of his power. Benesh gestured angrily to the guardsmen—the sleek professionals with thousands of hours of target and tactical experience, the deadliest individuals in the world.
“Kill the impostor,” he ordered.
W
hen they came, Svir was ready.
He and Cor had lain quietly in the darkness, telling each other their stories in frightened whispers. As Cor massaged the numbness from his arms, Svir told her of his one backstop against Tatja’s treachery. Brailly Tounse—who seemed to hate Tatja as much as Svir did—had provided him with five pounds of Michelle-Rasche powder. Now that powder lay in the heavy weave of his jacket.
“It’s safe until the cloth gets twisted tight,” he whispered to Cor. “Then almost any extra friction will set it off.”
He struggled out of his jacket. Cor helped him wedge the fabric into the door crack. Though only a small portion of the jacket could be jammed in, it would be enough to set off the rest of the powder. Then they retreated to the far corner of the cell. there was nothing more they could do. He hadn’t said so to Cor, but
the best they could hope for was a quick death. If they weren’t killed in the explosion or by the guards, then the next stop was the torture chambers. Their present cell was a carefully contrived filth-pit, designed to prepare prisoners psychologically for what was to come. Somehow the prospect of torture and death no longer provoked absolute terror in him. Cor was the reason. He wanted to hide his fear from her—and to protect her from her own fears.
He put his arm around Cor’s waist and drew her to him. “You came out here to save me, Cor.”
“You did the same for me.”
“I—I’d do it again.”
Her reply was clear and firm. “I, too.”
When they came, there was plenty of warning. It sounded like a whole squad. The heavy footsteps stopped, and when they began again, there were only two or three men. Svir and Cor slid under the filthy straw. The footsteps stopped at the door. Svir heard the key turn, but he never heard the door open. For that matter, he never actually
heard
the explosion. He felt it through his whole body. The floor rose up and smashed him.
He forced himself to his feet, and pulled Cor up. Svir was scarcely aware of blood flowing down his jaw from his ear. The doorway was a dim patch of light beyond the dust and smoke. They gasped futilely and ran for the opening.
The blast had destroyed the bottom hinges and blown the rest of the door into the ceiling. In the hallway lay the two guardsmen. Both were alive, but in much worse shape than the prisoners. One, with a severe scalp cut, tried ineffectually to wipe the blood
from his eyes. Svir and Cor stepped over them and ran down the hall. Then they saw the men at the end of the passage—the backup section. The two prisoners came to a sudden halt and started to turn in the other direction.
A guardsman smiled faintly and twisted a lever mounted in the wall. A weighted net fell onto the two escapees. As the guard approached, Svir lashed out at his legs, hoping to provoke lethal retaliation. The guard easily avoided the extended hand, and grabbed it with his own. “You know, fella, for someone whose life we’re supposed to protect, you’re making things damn difficult.”
Svir looked back blankly. He couldn’t make sense of the words spoken. The net was removed, and the guards marched Svir and Cor down the hall. The couple looked at each other in complete confusion. They weren’t even treated to the paralysis the guards had used before. It was a long uphill walk, and the guards had to help Cor with the last part. Svir wondered if he had gone crazy with fear and was seeing only what he hoped to see. They came to the final door. The guard captain went through. They could hear him through the open doorway.
“Marget, the individuals you requested are here.”
“Fine,” came a familiar voice. “Send them out. I want to talk to them alone.”
“Begging your pardon, Marget, but they have repeatedly offered us violence. We could not guarantee the safety of your person if you interview them alone.”
“Mister, I told you what I wanted.” The voice took a tone that brooked no argument. “Now jump!”
“Yes, Marget!” The captain appeared at the door. He gestured
courteously to Svir and Cor. “Sir and Madam, you have been granted an interview with the queen.”
“The—
Queen?
” Cor asked incredulously. She got no answer. They were pushed past the door and found themselves standing on the top tier of the Conciliar Facet. By the light of waning Seraph they saw a beautiful girl in a full-skirted dress.
Tatja turned to them. “You two look like hell,” she said.
Svir started angrily toward her, his fright and pain transformed into hate. There was a scuttling sound on the floor, then a tugging at Svir’s clothing. A soft wet nose nuzzled his neck. Ancho! Svir’s hands reached up and petted the trembling animal.
“Marget?” asked Cor. “Queen? Really you are the Lost Princess of Crownesse?”
Tatja looked beyond them, at the departing guards. “You might as well know the truth. You can’t do anything about it. I was no more Marget of Sandros than you; now I am incontrovertibly the queen. My footprints match those of the infant princess which are kept in the crown room. You should have seen the look on Benesh’s face when the Lord High Minister announced that I was heir to the crown. The regent had the royal children murdered twenty-five years ago. The job was botched and he couldn’t produce bodies that would pass an autopsy. He knew I was a fraud but there was no way he could prove it without revealing his own guilt.”
Svir looked across the curving dome of the keep at the city. The crowd sounds came clear and faint through the air. The crowd had moved away from the waterfront. There would be no sacrifices tonight—the people had been told that the crown had
been claimed. Crownesse had a queen. That called for the largest of festivals, a celebration that would go on for many days.
Svir turned to Tatja Grimm. “You had to lie and cheat and steal and—probably—murder to do it, but you certainly got what you wanted. You control the most powerful country in the world. I wondered what could make you as vicious as you are. Now I know. The hidden motive that mystified me so much was simple megalomana. Female ‘Tar Benesh’ has taken over from male. Is this the end of your appetites,” he said, the hate rising in his voice, “or will you one day rule all Tu?”
Tatja smiled at Cor and Svir, the scornful smile that was now so familiar. “You never were very bright, were you? It’s possible that I’ll take over the world. As a matter of fact, I probably will. It will be a by-product of my other plans. I chose Crownesse very carefully. The country has immense physical resources. If there are large heavy-metal deposits anywhere, they are in Crownesse. The government is talented and dedicated. Most administrative posts are awarded on the basis of civil service tests. And the entire bureaucracy is fanatically dedicated to one person: the legal holder of the crown. They served Tar Benesh and his evil for twenty-five years, and they will serve me just as faithfully. I will not be bothered with coups and elections, as I might be if I took over one of the archipelagates.
“We’ve reached a critical point in the development of civilization, in case you haven’t noticed. In the past century there have been a number of basic scientific discoveries. The pharmacists of the Sutherseas have developed drugs which control most of the major diseases. A physicist in the Osterlai Archipelagate invented
that picturemaker we use. All over the world, revolutionary advances are being made. Rey Guille was right, you know: Organizations like Tarulle are responsible for this. For centuries they spread ideas from island to island until finally scientists stopped thinking of them as fantasy and actually invented what writers described. I’m making a gift of that
Fantasie
collection to Tarulle, by the way.”
“How magnanimous.”
Tatja ignored him. “These inventions and techniques are going to have effects far beyond what is obvious—just think what that picturemaker will do for parallax astronomy, If they all were brought together and worked over intensively, the changes would be even more spectacular. But you people on the islands are too lazy to do that. The people of Crownesse are not. They’ve had to work awfully hard just to stay alive here on the Continent. They will take your inventions and use them and develop more inventions, until they control the entire planet.”
She looked up into the sky, at Seraph and the bright star Prok. “I’ve had five years on the Tarulle Barge, enough time to sail the world, enough time to guess what this place really is. Myth and standard archeology agree that we originated somewhere deep in The Continent, that man moved to the islands recently—just before the rise of civilization. What else could explain the absence of prehistorical remains on the Islands? But every year the biologists and the explorers come closer to the true answer. That truth would be known around the world if I published all the stories I am getting at
Fantasie:
the human race
originated
in the islands—and in the historical past.
“Do you understand me? This is a world of shipwreck, where people lost their memories and their minds.” Her arm brushed at the sky. “And Seraph is too near; any fool can see that. Out there must be empires so vast they can ‘lose’ whole planetary systems.”
Tatja’s voice changed, lost its authority and its spite. She turned to look at Svir and Cor; her eyes were soft. For a moment she wasn’t the master of all events, but a young girl, very much alone. “You call me megalomaniac. That is to laugh. What is worth having here? Ruling this world does not interest me, except for one thing: I’ve never found anyone I can talk to, anyone who can understand the things I often want to say.”
Svir suddenly understood the meaning of her scornful smiles: hopeless envy.
“And that is why I am going to turn this world upside down, and make of it a fire so
bright
that someone real will notice.”
The fallen goddess turned from the parapet and the gay crowds. She didn’t look up as she walked away.
THE FERAL CHILD
T
he astronomer royal was all wet. At Bayfast the Waterfall lasted more than forty days: nearly a fifth of the year. For the last thirty-eight days and nights it had rained without pause. The city’s troughed streets were filled with swiftmoving water. Behind all sounds was the rumbly hum of myriad droplets striking stone and wood and water. After four years, the astronomer royal was still not accustomed to the monsoon climate of the Continent. At the back of his mind was the irrational thought that when the rain stopped, Seraph might be washed from the sky.
Svir Hedrigs considered returning to his carriage. It wasn’t worth it; he was already too wet. By the Bayfast logic, if the rain is warm—why stay dry? With a mixture of irritation and envy, he watched the guardsmen on the pier. They appeared to enjoy
being wet to the skin. They wore their black uniforms with a cockiness that said being soaked was the height of fashion.
His carriage was parked on the roadway at the root of the pier. Beyond the roadway were the naval warehouses, constructed of marble bricks and rock paste. The quarries on the inland cliffs seemed inexhaustible, and the Crown’s Men had used them to build one of the most beautiful warehouse districts in the world. Architects claimed that this part of the port could survive artillery attack and was absolutely nonflammable. Svir wasn’t so sure about the first claim, but he was certain that during the Waterfall no fire would start outside the warehouses. The pier had an inch of water on it even though it was more than ten feet above the bay.
Perhaps he should have stayed in the dryrooms of the keep. But as astronomer royal, he felt this was a job which could not be delegated. The fastboat they expected was to bring the latest reports from the Doomsday observatory, four thousand miles upcoast and more than twenty-nine thousand feet above sea level—above the monsoonal precipitation. During the Waterfall, the Doomsdaymen were the most important source of astronomical information the crown possessed. Svir’s job was to arrange such reports for Marget’s consideration. And since Marget really needed no help in the interpretation of astronomical data, the astronomer royal frequently felt superfluous. So it did his ego good to come down to the most restricted area in the naval district and welcome a fastboat that was—incidentally—from a war zone.
In fact, thought Svir as he glanced around, he was the highestranking officer in the area. The only other first-level officer was a vice-admiral from naval intelligence. The broad band on Svir’s
sleeve identified him as a high minister. He generally tried to conceal the tiny crown above that. The crown indicated he was an appointee rather than a member of the civil service.
The astronomer royal squished unhappily across the pier, toward the admiral. The navy woman saluted. “Good day, m’lord.”
Svir suppressed some sarcasm as he noticed there was no humor in the admiral’s blue eyes. “I was told the fastboat would arrive by twenty-five hours.”
“That’s right, sir. But unless the wind is steady, the hydrofoils are useless and the boat is as slow as any other.”
Svir didn’t point out that, except during the Turnabouts, the Monsoonal Drag always blew right for high-speed travel along the coast. The admiral seemed worried enough. Svir casually covered the crown on his left sleeve with his right hand. Four years ago, who would have guessed that one day the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world would address him as their superior? Even more fantastic, who would have guessed that he would be married to someone as wonderful as Coronadas Ascuasenya? Ever since that night in Krirsarque, his life had been like the story of the Little Sailmaker: success piled upon fantastic success.
But he did not delude himself. He was riding the bow wave of the most spectacular success story in the history of the human race: the career of Tatja Grimm, aka Marget of Sandros, Queen of Crownesse. Tatja’s rise to power had been miraculous, and her progress since even more so. Many of her projects seemed pointless, extravagant, half-witted. But a half-wit she was not. For every person who despised her, there were now three who
worshiped her. And that ratio was improving. Her fastboat program had seemed ridiculous. Who wants to know what’s happening on the other side of the world within twenty days of the event? But that program had already repaid itself five times over. With a comparatively instantaneous picture of the world’s markets, Crownesse merchants came close to their wildest dreams of avarice. Such success gave people an excuse to overlook her other projects. As far as Svir knew, there were only two people besides Tatja who knew her ultimate purpose—and he was one of those two. He often thought his present post was pay for his silence. Marget was merciful.
Svir glanced at the admiral, and wondered what her explanation of the Marget Mystery might be. The officer was staring across the bay at the inland cliffs. On the ridge line stood the signaling mosaic that relayed messages from the seaward cliffs: the Somnai. through the rain, Svir could barely see the shifting patterns on the mosaic. “That’s it, sir!” the admiral said. “The Somnai batteries have spotted the fastboat … . It’s entering the bay right now.” Her relief was plain. The expedition sent to put down the Picchiu rebellion had been lightly equipped. It had been Marget’s idea to use fastboats to transport two thousand troops for a surprise pincer attack in cooperation with the Loyalists. This insurrection was the only blot on the queen’s record. Forty days earlier, fastboats from the north reported rumors claiming Marget was an impostor and that her accession had been accomplished by fraud. This claim was especially disturbing because it was true. Four years had passed since the accession, and except for the deposed Tar Benesh, no one had protested
before (though Svir suspected that the highest members of the bureaucracy guessed the truth). Then the rumors blossomed into armed insurrection. Marget’s shock troops had departed just ten days ago. The returning fastboat would bring news of the battle as well as the astronomical reports that Svir was interested in.
A half-hour passed. The fastboat appeared in the rain-grayed distance. The bay was comparatively windless, and the boat’s crew was rowing it slowly toward the pier.
Svir shook his sleeves, hoping to free the sticky linen from his skin. He had had about enough of feeling like a drowned rat. He squinted, trying to get a clearer view of the fastboat. Its boom masts were in the vertical position and its sails were reefed, but there was something strange about it, nevertheless. Then he realized that the boat’s port side had only three masts while the starboard had four. He could see the stub of the amputated boom still hanging in the extended position. The boat listed slightly to port.
He pointed to the boat. “Admiral, that boat’s been shot up.”
The old woman stared for a few seconds. Then she glanced back at the astronomer royal, noticed the crown on Svir’s sleeve. “So it has.” Apparently the admiral reserved “sir” and “in’lord” for her real superiors: civil service people. She turned and walked quickly away, toward the end of the pier. Svir followed.
There were two large holes in the fastboat’s hull, barely above the water line. A suspicious brown stain covered portions of the foredeck. The Guardsmen made way for Svir as he walked to the edge of the pier. Now he was only a yard from the little craft. A sickly smell came from below-decks. He looked at the sailors.
They were busy making the boat secure. They moved quickly, efficiently, but their faces were strained and their eyes fixed.
Finally the main hatch opened and the commanding officer appeared on deck. His uniform was as sharp as fatigues ever are, but his arm was in a sling and the left side of his face was a smear of medicant and blood. Following close behind him came a sailor carrying the strongbox that was the fastboat’s cargo: the reports from upcoast, from the war zone.
Svir felt a bit nauseated. He knelt to give the wounded man a hand up. The fellow saw the gray band on his sleeve, came to attention, and saluted.
“Lieutenant Mörl reports return Fastboat One Nineteen, in’lord,” he recited.
“Gods, man, what happened?” Behind him, Svir felt the admiral trying to maneuver him away from the edge of the pier. High minister or not, Svir’s question was a substantial breach of protocol—if not security. But the wounded Lieutenant Mörl was too exhausted to notice much beyond the rank on Svir’s sleeve.
“The Rebels have artillery, sir. I don’t know how. They wiped out our main force in half a day. My recon group followed the Rebels into the Doomsday area. They fought the Loyalists at Kotta-svo-Picchiu. The city was razed. We left then. Apparently they saw us. Overtook us in one of our own fastboats.”
The admiral gasped, and Svir could imagine her surprise.
Artillery?
Reliable, accurate artillery? So the Crownesse military no longer had a monopoly on the ultimate weapon.
But the admiral was shocked by the wrong thing. Kotta-svo-Picchiu had housed the second-largest telescope in the world. The insolent Doomsdaymen often insisted that the queen use the Kotta Eye for her projects, rather than the High Eye at the top of Heavensgate Mountain. Marget was not going to be happy about this turn of events.

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