Yet despite this, she was much more beautiful than the Empress. Or any of the women he’d just seen at La-Shangri. And she was a lot younger, too.
Hunter recognized her right away.
It was Princess Xara.
She smiled. “You didn’t really want to stay there, did you?”
Hunter began fumbling for a suitable reply. “Well, I thought that maybe your mo—”
Xara just shook her head. “My mother was trying to entrap you. And La-Shangri? Please. Half the people are dead in that place.”
She spread her arms to indicate the beautiful landscape around them. The flower-covered cliffs, the green seas crashing below. The sun, still bright, going down. The sweet breeze. It was stunning. And natural.
“Isn’t this place a lot better?”
Hunter had to agree with her. “It is.”
She smiled. He saw lots of teeth.
“But why did you bring me here?” he asked her directly.
“Do I have to have a reason?” she replied. Her gown went up a bit, showing her well-shaped legs.
“Yes, you do, because I don’t think anyone in your family does anything without a reason.”
She placed her hand in his. One thing about the Specials, Hunter mused, they weren’t afraid to get touchy-feely.
“Okay, you’re right,” she said. “And I confess. Ever since I saw you at the race today, I wanted to talk to you — and I wanted to do it someplace where we could be alone. Really alone.”
Hunter looked around. He could see nothing but forests and beaches and sand and water for many miles.
No châteaus. No palaces. No enormous bodyguards.
“I think you picked the right place,” he told her.
“Of course, I’m not sure you want to discuss what I have in mind,” she said.
“And that means?”
She slid a bit closer to him.
“I’ll be up front with you: I know the circumstances by which you were found. I know what happened during the attack on the BonoVox. I know that you can’t remember who you are. Or where you came from. Is that correct?”
Hunter nodded uncertainly. “Well, no one has really asked me about any of those things since I’ve been here on Earth,” he replied. “So I’ve kept my mouth shut about them.”
“Another art that we lost as a race sometime ago,” she said. “The art of holding one’s tongue.”
Hunter looked deep into her eyes. There really was something very different in there.
“I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’m probably the smartest one in my immediate family,” she said, her lips hovering somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “I don’t know why — it’s my burden to bear, I suppose. But I care deeply about things. Things I consider important, and not just ‘interesting,’ or ‘sacred,’ or reveling in self-gratification—”
She caught herself, and put her hand to her mouth.
“Oh, my,” she said with a gasp. “I must sound like the biggest snoot!”
Hunter squeezed her hand. If possible, she was getting more beautiful by the moment. Her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks — they all seemed just a bit bigger than what would be considered “perfect.”
And when she smiled…
Suddenly there was no other place in the Galaxy he wanted to be.
“I don’t think you’re a ‘snoot’ at all,” he told her. “In fact, you’re the most interesting person I’ve ran into since landing here. Well, the most interesting female, anyway…”
She tilted her head slightly. “Is there a compliment in there somewhere?”
They laughed. “Well, maybe,” he said. “But tell me, what are these things you care so much about?”
She looked very pleased to answer that question.
“I care about history, for one,” she declared. “I think it’s important to know what went on before — well, before all this…”
She waved her hand across the sky. The sun had not set, yet many stars were already twinkling above them.
“I mean, my father is the leader of the Fourth Empire,” she went on very earnestly. “There have been three empires before us. And yet what we know about them wouldn’t fill a single nanodisk. There are some things left over from the Second Empire, and apparently traces from the Third. But we know just about nothing about the First Empire — or anything that happened before it.”
She looked over at him.
“Am I boring you yet?” she asked.
Smile. Teeth.
“Impossible,” he replied.
She laughed sweetly and went on. “What bothers me most is that my family, the Specials and the Very Fortunates, they’re all so quick to take credit for all of this. But the truth is, they stumbled upon it. They didn’t invent any of it — it invented them. Yet they feel it’s their duty to exploit it, to take advantage of any chance they get.”
“Your father must care about the Empire, though,” Hunter told her, wondering which one of the Emperor’s three incarnations would actually be considered her father.
“Frankly, I’m not sure anyone can tell,” she replied slowly. “Don’t get me wrong — my family, the military, the Very Fortunates — they all care about the Empire. They care about keeping it going. How to make it bigger, better, no matter what the cost. Now, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I just think we should learn as much as we can about the past so—”
“So we can avoid the same mistakes in the future,” Hunter finished for her.
She looked up at him. Her face was a mixture of surprise and delight. “So you actually understand what I’m talking about?”
Hunter had to think a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I believe I do.”
She gave him a very spontaneous hug, then let go and fiddled with her hair a moment. A warm wind blew by them. More stars had come out above.
“I actually envy you in a way,” she told him. “You know, you’re in a very unique position here. Not being like us…”
“How so?”
She looked out at the sea. The sun dipped lower into the water.
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we are a Galaxy full of obsessive behavior,” she said. “Everyone needs whatever they can get, as fast as they can get it. Sure, there is wealth beyond comprehension. But whether you’re my first-first cousin, or some space pirate robbing old bag planets out on the Fringe, everyone wants a piece. And they want it now. And if they can’t get it, they’ll drive themselves nuts trying to get it. It’s not the best way to be… at least I don’t think so.”
She fiddled with her hair again. Hunter could have sat here and talked to her for days.
“And our biggest obsession, of course, is this thing where everyone is an expert on their family ancestry,” she went on. “They know their bloodlines, their origins. Who married who, on what planet, and when.
Everyone must keep track of who they are, or they just go batty.”
“Is knowing where you came from such a bad thing?” he asked her. “I wish I knew…”
“Yes, but that’s my point: You want to know who you are — they want to know what they are—”
Hunter shook his head. “And that means?”
She sighed. “No one has told you about the Holy Blood, I suppose?”
“Nope.”
She slid even closer to him.
“My family, the Specials, are the descendants of the people who ruled the Galaxy in the Third Empire,” she began. “That dynasty collapsed about eight hundred years ago. We know very little about those people. Only that they were called the Specials, too — and that at one time they had control over every planet in the Galaxy. Billions? Trillions? Whatever the number is, every last one of them was under their control.