“The details are complex,” Tamra said, taking a sip of lemonade and glancing approvingly down at the glass. “I’m not entirely sure I understand them.”
“Is Declarant Sykes still in charge of the project?”
“He is, yes.”
“Then I shall get the details from him. But the ring is falling again? And our previous methods are unable to save it?”
She nodded. “I’m told that’s so.”
“Will it take six months, this time? Or is it free-falling under pure gravitation? Have I time for a night’s sleep before faxing myself downsystem?”
Tamra appeared to consider for a moment, then nodded. “We have some time, yes. It’s ten months before the crisis comes to a head, and I’m inclined to think we’re in very deep trouble if you need every moment of that. So the answer is yes, you may remain here until morning. I’ll send a copy of myself down with news of the delay.”
“Where are your robots?” Bruno asked again. It was they who should do such messenger work, as well as their primary function as bodyguards. In truth, Her Majesty looked almost naked without them.
She laughed musically and rose from her seat. “Do I need them here, Philander? From whom are they to protect me? There are… times… when even the most discreet witnesses are unwelcome.”
Bruno frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Oh, Bruno,” she said, stepping around the table to plant her lips on his.
Chapter Eight
in which the nature of time is explained
Bruno never could say no to her. Or rarely, anyhow, and last night they’d fallen together like randy teenagers, their decades apart like some kind of annoyingly long weekend. Still in love, damn them; all their fighting and sulking was for naught, a moment’s tantrum in the long, long morning of their lives. But today—despite the way it had begun—was not about the two of them, but about the Queendom itself. Today was business sans pleasure, and what Queen and Philander didn’t know how to separate the two? Formality seeped and hardened between them as they dined, dressed, and finally, traveled.
If Bruno expected to fax through to a work platform suspended picturesquely beneath the Ring Collapsiter, he was disappointed. Where they ended up instead was a vast, gloomy chamber of hulking gray machinery that hummed.
Tamra slipped her fingers from his, completing the separation. Bruno’s hand felt curiously empty.
He sniffed. The atmosphere was thick and dry and warm, and reeked sharply of wintergreen and burning feathers, a sign that PCBs or other heavy, chlorinated oils were overheating in strained electrical transformers. A trouble sign, to be sure, but not half as troubling as that hum. Most of the basic tones were subsonic, sensed in the bones rather than the eardrums, but there were overtones and harmonics aplenty, a cacophony that somehow managed to seem both too bass and too shrill for comfort. The noise didn’t seem loud until he tried to speak and found he almost had to shout.
“Where are we?”
Behind Tamra, a hemicylinder of gray metal hulked seamlessly atop a seamless metal deck, rising up into the slightly hazy air like a bald mountain.
“Grapple station,” she replied in much the same tone.
“Ah.”
The hum and reek now made sense: this place was an enormous gravity generator, a kind of God-sized cable winch holding up the Ring Collapsiter.[5] It had best keep holding, too; black holes inside the sun, even miniature “semisafe” ones, would collapse it to a cinder, assuming they didn’t first tear it to shreds. But despite everyone’s best intentions, despite precautions and failsafes and contingency plans, the ring of crystalline collapsium had slipped sunward again. And this grapple station, whatever its capability, was clearly straining past any reasonable endurance to slow the descent.
“Big,” he said, unnecessarily.
“Quite,” Her Majesty agreed.
The fax gate behind them quietly disgorged a pair of dainty robots, all silver and platinum and chrome. White caps adorned their heads, and white frilled collars adorned their necks. Their sexless torsos and faceless faces were smooth, unadorned expanses of bright metal. Their silver hands gripped ornate pistols of delicate—but nonetheless menacing—design. The robots bowed to Her Majesty and placed themselves at respectful distances on either side of her.
“You’ve changed guards,” Bruno observed. “They used to be gold.”
Tamra smiled, a bit wistfully. “That’s right. They used to be taller, too, and thicker around the middle. But times change, you know. Fashions and preferences change. Even if yours do not.”
“Oh, humph,” he replied, walking past her leftmost guard, around toward the huge gray hemicylinder. He placed a hand on it, felt its desperate hum. “Who says I haven’t changed? How would you know?”
She shrugged. “It’s not an insult, just an observation. Your clothing, your words and mannerisms—all are decades out of touch. Your hair is different than last time, I suppose. Less wild, less gray. It suits you better. When I’m with you, though, I feel almost as if no time has passed at all. You bring my distant decades back to life.”
Bruno humphed again. “What you call ‘time,’ Majesty, is more a social than a physical phenomenon. You don’t perceive this, because you’re inside the social structure that creates it. But watching clocks and calendars, indexing your memories by popular music—these are learned, unnatural behaviors. Mark my words: living alone is the ultimate exploration of inner truth. It’s one thing to see yourself as a web of changing relationships: to others, to society, to material things and places. It’s quite another to see simply yourself, to be your own companion, to talk to yourself and answer back honestly. Your times change because others change them for you. My changes come purely from within.”
“Wait. Be quiet.”
“Why,” he chided, “because your illusions can’t withstand a moment’s scrutiny?”
She waved a hand in annoyance. “Bruno, be quiet. Someone’s coming.”
He followed her gaze. There in the distance, walking the kilometers-long avenue between hulking machines, was a pale young woman with tightly braided hair the color of metallic platinum. Bruno’s vision was quite good—whose wasn’t?—and for a moment he inspected her distant features, trying to identify the face. Was this someone he’d known, in the days before his exile? If so, it wasn’t evident, but then again appearance was a malleable thing, programmable through any fax machine. She looked young but mature, which of course meant nothing at all.
“Oh,” he said. “Do you know her?”
Tamra shook her head. The robots beside her faded back into the shadows of machinery, their blank faces turned toward the approaching woman.
“Hello!” Bruno called out.
“Hi,” the woman said back, closer now, well within hailing distance. “Welcome. I was told to expect you.”
“Told? By Declarant Sykes?”
“Correct,” she said, then made a skittish, nervous little laugh. The toss of her shining braids was, he thought, calculated for nonchalance. “I’m Deliah van Skeltering, Lead Componeer for the Ministry of Grapples. Good day, Your Majesty. And you, sir; you’re Bruno de Towaji? It’s an honor, truly. I’ve studied collapsium engineering my whole adult life. In fact as a student I used to keep a statue of you on my desk for inspiration.”