But every year, the last week in Saluary, they would go on one of the great ships to another world that was also not on the map. It was called New Brazillia and was in the Outer Colonies. He lived in New Brazillia too, on the island of Sao Orini, because his parents had a house there near the mine.
Outer Colonies, New Brazillia, Sao Orini, 3149
The first time he heard the names Prince and Ruby Red it was at the Sao Orini house. He was lying in the dark, screaming for light.
His mother came at last, pushed away the insect netting (it wasn’t needed because the house had sonics to keep away the tiny red bugs that occasionally bit you outside and made you feel funny for a few hours, but Mother liked to be safe). She lifted him. “Shhh! Shhh! It’s all right. Don’t you want to go to sleep? Tomorrow is the party. Prince and Ruby will be here. Don’t you want to play with Prince and Ruby at the party?” She carried him around the nursery, stopping to push the wall switch by the door. The ceiling began to rotate till the polarized pane was transparent. Through the palm fronds lapping the roof, twin moons splattered orange light. She laid him back in the bed, caressed his rough, red hair. After a while she started to leave.
“Don’t turn it off, Mommy!”
Her hand fell from the switch. She smiled at him. He felt warm, and rolled over to stare through the meshed fronds at the moons,
Prince and Ruby Red were coming from Earth. He knew that his mother’s parents were on Earth, in a country called Senegal. His father’s great-grandparents were also from Earth, from Norway. Von Rays, blond and blustering, had been speculating in the Pleiades now for generations. He wasn’t sure what they speculated, but it must have been successful. His family owned the Illyrion mine that operated just beyond the northern tip of Sao Orini. His father occasionally joked with him about making him the little foreman of the mines. That’s what “speculation” probably was. And the moons were drifting away; he was sleepy.
He did not remember being introduced to the blue-eyed, black-haired boy with the prosthetic right arm, nor his spindly sister. But he recalled the three of them—himself, Prince, and Ruby—playing together the next afternoon in the garden.
He showed them the place behind the bamboo where you could climb up into the carved stone mouths.
“What are those?” Prince asked.
“Those are the dragons,” Lorq explained.
“There aren’t any dragons,” Ruby said.
“Those are dragons. That’s what Father says.”
“Oh.” Prince caught his false hand over the lower lip and hoisted himself up. “What are they for?”
“You climb up in them. Then you can climb down again. Father says the people who lived here before us carved them.”
“Who lived here before?” Ruby asked. “And what did they want with dragons? Help me up, Prince.”
“I think they’re silly.” Prince and Ruby were now both standing between the stone fangs above him. (Later he would learn that “the people who had lived here before” were a race extinct in the Outer Colonies for twenty thousand years; their carvings had survived, and on these ruined foundations, Von Ray had erected this mansion.)
Lorq sprang for the jaw, got his fingers around the lower lip, and started scrambling. “Give me a hand?”
“Just a second,” Prince said. Then, slowly, he put his shoe on Lorq’s fingers and mashed.
Lorq gasped and fell back on the ground, clutching his hand.
Ruby giggled.
“Hey!” Indignation throbbed, confusion welled. Pain beat in his knuckles.
“You shouldn’t make fun of his hand,” Ruby said. “He doesn’t like it.”
“Huh?” Lorq looked at the metal and plastic claw directly for the first time. “I didn’t make fun of it!”
“Yes you did,” Prince said evenly. “I don’t like people who make fun of me.”
“But I—“ Lorq’s seven-year-old mind tried to comprehend this irrationality. He stood up again. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
Prince lowered himself to his knees, reached out, and swung at Lorq’s head.
“Watch – !” He leaped backward. The mechanical limb had moved so fast the air hissed.
“Don’t talk about my hand any more! There’s nothing wrong! Nothing at all!”
“If you stop making fun of him,” Ruby commented, looking at the rugae on the roof of the stone mouth, “he’ll be friends with you.”
“Well, all right,” Lorq said warily.
Prince smiled. “Then we’ll be friends now.” He had very pale skin and his teeth were small.
“All right,” Lorq said. He decided he didn’t like Prince.
“If you say something like, ‘let’s shake on it,’” Ruby said, “he’ll beat you up. And he can, even though you’re bigger than he is.”
Or Ruby either.
“Come on up,” Prince said.
Lorq climbed into the mouth beside the other two children.
“Now what do we do?” Ruby asked. “Climb down?”
“You can look into the garden from here,” Lorq said. “And watch the party.”
“Who wants to watch an old party,” Ruby said.
“I do,” said Prince.
“Oh,” Ruby said. “You do. Well, all right then.” Beyond the bamboo, the guests walked in the garden. They laughed gently, talked of the latest psychorama, politics, drank from long glasses. His father stood by the fountain, discussing with several people his feelings about the proposed sovereignty of the Outer Colonies—after all, he had a home out here and had to have his finger on the pulse of the situation. It was the year that Secretary Morgan had been assassinated. Though Underwood had been caught, there were still theories going around as to which faction was responsible.
A woman with silver hair flirted with a young couple who had come with Ambassador Selvin, who was also a cousin. Aaron Red, a portly, proper gentleman, had cornered three young ladies and was pontificating on the moral degeneration of the young. Mother moved through the guests, the hem of her red dress brushing the grass, followed by the humming buffet. She paused here and there to offer canapes, drinks, and her opinion of the new realignment proposal. Now, after a year of phenomenal popular success, the intelligentsia had accepted the Tohu-bohus as legitimate music; the jarring rhythms tumbled across the lawn. A light sculpture in the corner twisted, flickered, grew with the tones.
Then his father let out a booming laugh that made everyone look. “Listen to this! Just hear what Lusuna has said to me!” He was holding the shoulder of a university student who had come with the young couple. Von Ray’s bluster had apparently prompted the young man to argument. Father gestured for him to repeat.
“I only said that we live in an age where economic, political, and technological change have shattered all cultural tradition.”
“My Lord,” laughed the woman with silver hair, “is that all?”
“No, no!” Father waved his hand. “We have to listen to what the younger generation thinks. Go on, sir.”
“There’s no reservoir of national, or world solidarity, even on Earth, the center of Draco. The past half dozen generations have seen such movement of peoples from world to world, there can’t be any. This pseudo-interplanetary society that has replaced any real tradition, while very attractive, is totally hollow and masks an incredible tangle of decadence, scheming, corruption—“
“Really, Lusuna,” the young wife said, “your Scholarship is showing.” She had just taken another drink at the prompting of the woman with the silver hair.
“—and piracy.”
(With the last word, even the three children crouching in the mouth of the carved lizard could tell from the looks passing on the guests’ faces that Lusuna had gone too far.)