The knock on the bedroom door came again. Toby blinked and raised his head to look groggily around. He’d slept … that’s right, he’d kissed Corva last night. It had been hard to get to sleep after that, thinking about her, and also about—
—More than two years passing in one night.
He sat up, rolling Orpheus aside. The denner crawled into some bunched-up blankets and went still again.
“Garren?” It was the voice of Corva’s father. The knock came again.
Toby looked around, then down at himself. There was no sign that more than an ordinary night had passed. Intellectually he knew this was the result of vast amounts of work by bots and biomedical systems; if he’d slept for two and a half years, it was mostly in a semifrozen state. The room would have been warming up for weeks, the bots and hibernation systems working day and night to restore his body and reverse all signs of decay within the room. He shuddered at the thought, then said, “I’m here!”
“Can you come outside, son? Something’s … well, we’ve got visitors.”
Toby had been climbing out of bed; he stopped and stared at the door. Then: “Give me five minutes.”
There was no point even wondering who it would be. Whoever it was, things were out of his control again. All he had that was his were his few minutes of freshening up in the suite’s little bathroom. He could pick out his own clothes, ruffle Orpheus’s fur. Then he took a deep breath and put his hand on the door latch. Time to let go of the dream he’d spun with Corva last night.
The Keishions were waiting in the hall, faces grave. Toby walked past them and downstairs. Corva stood by the front door, hands clenched in front of her. They made eye contact, then he stepped outside.
Ranks and ranks of military bots stood on the Keishions’ lawn. He’d seen this kind of vista before, but never in real life. Armed quadcopters hovered in the air above the mechs, and farther off gray airships sat in the sky like condensed clouds.
A delegation of men and women stood in front of the bots. There must have been at least twelve of them, all in fancy uniforms. A woman in the center stepped forward, her face shining with some kind of excitement, and as she bowed deeply to him, so did all the others. As did all the bots. The copters dipped as well. Past these dipping heads, Toby could see the astonished faces of the neighbors he’d been partying with last night.
“Welcome,” said the woman in a husky voice. “Welcome, Tobias Wyatt McGonigal, to the lockstep of your creation and to the world of Thisbe!”
And all those in sight murmured their wonder and bowed even lower.
Sixteen
THE LUXURY AIRCAR WAS whisper quiet, and this made it awkwardly obvious that nobody was talking. Outside the tinted windows, the sky suddenly went bloodred, as if to reinforce Toby’s mood.
During all the bowing and speechifying in front of the Keishions’ house, Toby had spotted Halen lurking about on the edge of the delegation. Toby had ignored the bowing multitude and walked up to Corva’s brother.
“You just had to tell them, didn’t you? You just couldn’t wait for me to make up my own mind what to do. You had to force my hand.” Nobody else but the immediate family had known his identity—except for Shylif and Jaysir. Somehow, Toby hadn’t doubted for a second that it was Halen who’d told the government.
He didn’t even try to deny it, simply stepped back and shrugged. “I told them, yes, but they’d promised to leave you alone.”
“This is leaving me alone?” Toby swept an arm to show the massed army and the groveling politicians.
“I know,” said Halen. “But something’s changed.”
Toby glowered out the aircar window now, thinking furiously about what to do. Halen’s betrayal was trivial—and maybe justified—given what he’d told Toby next.
Evayne was on her way to Thisbe. And according to the government telescopes, she was bringing a whole fleet.
“Where are we going?” he demanded of the senior government official who sat opposite him.
“It’s a place called Leaning Pines,” she said brightly. “It’s a resort. It’s the best environment we could find. I hope you like it.”
“Like it? What am I supposed to like about any of this?” He glared at her, then Halen, who sat next to her; then he felt Corva’s hand on his arm.
She leaned in close and whispered, “Can’t you see she’s terrified?”
Toby blinked and suddenly got it: these ministers and representatives, seated chatting but glancing at him every few seconds—they weren’t escorting him as a prisoner, much less a guest. Toby was a McGonigal; they were all his guests, for Thisbe was his world. They were desperate to make a good impression on an absentee landlord unexpectedly making an inspection.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the woman, who smiled uncertainly. Equally uncertain, he stuck out his hand. “I’m Toby.”
Her face held wonder as she let him shake her limp fingers. “Calastrina de Fanto Esperion,” she said. “Appointed proxy of Demographic Twelve of the Great Byte.” The Byte, Toby had learned, was Thisbe’s C-shaped southern continent. That made Esperion the representative of about six hundred million people.
“Appointed proxy?” He’d worn his glasses and could do a search on what she’d just said, but these people knew who he was and would expect his ignorance. “Not elected?”
To his surprise, Esperion blushed. “I’m a proxy, not a representative. I didn’t want the appointment, but it turns out that I vote, mod, and buy exactly like about fifty million other people. I can be relied on to think and vote the way they would if they were in the council. At least until I get jaded or compromised. I’m only here for another year,” she added, as though apologizing.
So this place was based on one of the demarchy models. He probably should have studied local politics earlier, but for a change his mind had been on the bigger picture—the whole history of the locksteps and the place of the McGonigals in them. He looked out the window and sighed, a little ruefully.
They circled a long, sinuous mountain lake. A collection of truly huge tents lay tumbled across one end of it. “The resort,” Corva said, when she saw where he was looking. “They keep it boxed while we winter over and rebuild it every time. The landscape changes too much for a permanent installation.”
“It’s pretty.” The curving sheets of tenting were colored in a whole rainbow of tones.
Corva was very close to him; he could almost feel the heat of her skin on his cheek. “Toby?” she said quietly. “Why did you insist that I come?”
Again he sighed. “Because you’re the only person who knows who I am and isn’t afraid of me. —well, except for Shylif and Jaysir, maybe.”
She laughed and sat back. “And Orpheus.” But she seemed pleased with his explanation.
They landed on a gravel beach next to a cold lake—but a real lake, under a real sky, even if that sky was fluorescent green right now. Toby had brought Orpheus with him, and together they crunched down to the edge of the water, distracted by its reality and beauty. The air was crisp and cold.
“M-Mister McGonigal?”
He turned to find Corva hiding a smile, and past her a half circle of dignitaries were waiting patiently for him to get over the view. Halen was frowning, his arms crossed, but Toby could tell he was excited, too. Well, this was what he’d wanted.
“Okay,” he said, walking back up the beach to stand next to Corva.
“What can I do for you?”
“YES,” HE ADMITTED A few hours later. “I can override every cicada bed on the planet.”