He did not notice when her vast face vanished from the clouds above, and the cheers changed into sea-wave sounds of more ordinary mirth; but suddenly it was dim on the balcony again. She tilted up her finely-boned chin. He could not help but look at the red arc of her full lower lip, the tiny crease between chin and lip. What was that line called? Did it have a name?
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked gaily, waving her gloved hand to the winter midnight horizon, the houses and fields below aflame with fireworks and colored torches.
Since he did not know what she was talking about, he nodded and said, “Very.”
Rania said, “I was told by my fathers, the men who raised me, that my mother died bringing me into the world—my world, what you call a ship. Madalena, they said her name was. One memento I had from my mother was a picture of the Virgin Mary, crowned in stars, and with the moon beneath her feet. I did not know what it was, so I thought it was a picture of ‘Mother Earth’ of which the crew so often spoke, the world that once beamed a whole library of messages to us, and then fell silent. You see, I did not know your world was a globe. I had never seen a living globe. And so I loved this world because I pictured her as a beautiful mother, crowned in stars. Can you say, in truth, my picture is worse than those who think this world is merely a rock in space, coated with a thin film of water and air?”
She looked dreamy, thoughtful and melancholy, yet the shadow of a smile touched her scarlet lips. Menelaus decided now was not the time to tell her that her mother was a Petrie dish.
Menelaus shrugged with one shoulder. “I like the world just fine, mountains and trees, all that good stuff. Plague, I even like the Alaska wastes where I was snowed in not long back—hunting and ice-fishing. I just don’t like the people, mostly. You got a rotten set-up here, Princess, and it sounds like you were the setter-upper, not Blackie.”
“Perhaps the people of the world have not been as kind to you as they have to me. It would be ungrateful of me to feel less than love, after all the warmth this world has shown. A world of wonder! Do you ever smell the air, feel the flowing wind, and simply marvel at it? You have breathed bottled air, I know. But you were not born breathing it.”
Menelaus had seen simple joy shining on the faces of children; but this was different. This was intelligent joy, adult and profound. It was a strange thing to see. In his life, the people he met did not rejoice—if that was the word for it—in the simple act of breathing.
“I was born breathing free, alright. I would prefer to live in a Democracy.”
“If the people also preferred it, so should we all be. I was not born in a crown, or surrounded by fine things—these were pressed upon me by a grateful world, relieved from the endless tears and horrors of war. You know, I did not even know what war was at first, or murder? I lived among elderly scientists.”
Montrose thought now was not the time to tell her that those elderly scientists were very well-acquainted with murder indeed, having killed the Captain and more than half the crew.
Instead he said, “I don’t believe people don’t want to be free.”
“Nor do I, but there are two kinds of freedom: license to indulge any desire, base or noble, natural or unnatural, provided no one and nothing hinders you is the first kind, and it is deadly to men. The second kind is the freedom that comes of fulfilling or completing the work of nature that is half-formed in us. Men who are free in the first sense of the word will freely vote their freedom away, in return for lucre, prestige, and safety. In the early days, the Senior Del Azarchel simply bought the elections he needed, until the free nations of the world had prime ministers and parliaments composed of his creatures, who joined the Concordat willingly.”
A strange look came into her eyes, which Montrose did not know how to interpret. Nostalgia? Sorrow?
“It was proud and stubborn kings and warlords of small or backward nations, which had returned to a more personal and less bureaucratic form of government, that held out against him. They had the second type of freedom, not the first: They were not dehumanized. Bad as they were, those kings regarded their subjects as their children, not as their customers or patients or wards or subjects of their latest experiments in sociopolitical engineering. But they lacked the first type of freedom, and those subjects were not free enough to resist us.”
Montrose wondered where the Princess had gotten her notion of what princesses acted like. Where else? From the royalty she defeated, the princes who treated their subjects like children. The strange look was one of admiration.
“What did you offer them?” he asked.
“Honors and offices—the Copts and Manchurians and Boers form the backbone of our officer cadre, and they are allowed forms of dress and address denied other men, and in the wild areas of the world, they rule unchecked. The Concordat allows them indulgences the Church denies to others, such as divorce and contraception: They do not replace their numbers, and in a generation their vestige must find another fate. Much evil is done in my name that I abhor. If I were free to be ungrateful, I would flee my post. As it is, here I am chained as if with chains of gold, fair and gleaming, and only the terrible voice of a stronger duty can call me away.”
Montrose said, “What’s this talk of chains? Aren’t you in charge?”
“I have all the power a Captain might have over her ship, if her sails were in darkness.”
For a moment, he thought she meant a seagoing ship, sailing at night. But, no: in her world there was no night, only the darkness between stars. “A lightship out of her guiding lightbeam is in free fall, Princess,” he said.
Rania nodded. “Exactly so. Such a Captain is merely trapped in an elaborate construction of steel, and merely carried along. The power of the Sovereign rests on the consent, tacit or open, of her subjects. Either they love her, or she does not lead. You know that. I was not born of this world: Every breeze and breath of air is a gift to me, not something I made for my own. I must repay as best I may, not counting the cost.”
He squinted at her. This sounded like the kind of thing men facing danger told themselves.
“What cost are we talking about? You said you wanted my help. Are you in trouble?”
“I expect you to be fearless, in any of your aspects or avatars.”
He was taken aback. “What does that mean? What exactly are you aiming I can do for you?”
“Learned Montrose, you surprise me! You know where you excel.” Her tone seemed playful. Or perhaps he was imagining it.
“My jobs, in no particular order, were weaponsmith, pony-soldier, duelist, lawyer, a short stint as a spacehand, and a shorter stint as a xenomathematician. Oh, and human guinea pig for self-inflicted brain experimentation. I am not a failure at two of them.”
“I have no need for your counsel as an attorney, being well-supplied with staff in that regard. It is your other professions that interest me.”
“Great! Who do you want me to kill?”
“There is a dragon, O my champion, I require you to slay.”
“What? I mean, begging your pardon? Did you say you wanted me to kill what again?”
“Come. Walk with me.”
Rania merely tucked her shoulder under his arm, and wound her slender hand around his, so that he found himself half-embracing her as he had just been imagining.