“Knowing the material is fine—it’s common—but it’s hard for one person to really move the world. Even you needed a cast of thousands in the end, Declarant, if I may say so. Turning prototype to product to end-user installed base is the real test of an idea, and knowing how to pull a team together—and hold them together when the going gets tough— is the key to that.”
Bruno could hardly argue with that; if everyone were like him, there’d probably be no commerce or progress at all, at least in the conventional sense.
“And yet,” Bruno said, groping to understand her point, “you’re still surprised to find yourself here. Far from Africa, among monarchs and Declarants, plotting the salvation of a star and all its worlds.”
“Exactly.” Deliah nodded once, emphatically.
He cleared his throat. “You, ah, do realize that the rest of us feel that way too? I myself grew up in the apartment above a little Spanish tavern.”
“I know,” she replied quickly.
Well of course she did. She’d already admitted to being an admirer, and Bruno’s life was in the public domain, open to all possible scrutiny. All at once, he was uncomfortable again, feeling exposed. Feeling far from his home, wherever that might be.
“Life is full of surprises,” he added, more sourly than was probably wise.
Suddenly, they were at the instrument room, a narrow closet Bruno might almost have missed if a pair of silk-trousered legs hadn’t been poking out of it. The walls and ceiling were of wellstone; a panoply of dials and gauges and keyboards and graphical displays raced and oozed and flickered around the flat surfaces, whose composition bubbled cubistically between metal and porcelain and various forms of plastic.
“What happened?” Deliah demanded of the legs. She was eyeing the wellstone surfaces with tired exasperation. Then, more respectfully, she said, “Can I help, Declarant?”
“No,” a voice said from beyond the legs. They disappeared, Bruno saw, into a slot at the bottom of the closet’s back wall. Big enough to hold a human torso, though probably not comfortably, not unless the space opened up back there behind the wall.
“You realize we’re going to have to restart the calibration estimates from scratch,” Deliah complained. “You do realize that?”
“I do, yes. Thank you.” Presently, the owner of the legs shuffled and scooted and rocked out of the opening. Only when the face emerged was Bruno sure that this was, in fact, Declarant-Philander Marlon Sykes. Awkwardly, Sykes straightened himself up to his full height. He wiped his hands on the blue velvet and fine, gold-white embroidery of his vest, leaving black smudges there.
“Marlon!” Her Majesty snapped. “What on Earth are you doing?”
The Queen’s robots tensed on either side of her, but Sykes just flashed an easy grin and leaned back—carelessly, Bruno thought—against the madly shifting wall of the instrument room. “On Earth, I don’t believe I’m doing anything at the moment. I do have copies on half a dozen grapple stations, probably all doing the same thing right now.”
“Which is?” Tamra demanded, arching an eyebrow.
“Retrofitting the equipment, obviously.”
Her Majesty’s suede-booted foot tapped thrice on the decking. She seemed to consider for a moment before saying, “Declarant, the Queendom pays handsomely for your services. We expect handsome service in return. This—” She waggled a finger at his stained hands and clothing. “—is the best use of your talents right now? It must be, surely, or you’d be doing something else. Correct?”
“Ah.” Marlon’s smile faltered, then deepened. “Tamra, my pay is by the job, not the copy-hour. Consequently I find it easier to send my own copies to perform certain tasks, rather than having to explain these tasks to others, particularly since our laborers and technicians are operating at full legal capacity already.”
“I’ll issue a writ to waive the copy-hour limits,” Tamra said. “I should have done it already, I see. How long has this been going on?”
He shrugged. “Not long.”
“A week,” Deliah van Skeltering chipped in, her tone supportive and apologetic. “I may have requested… that is, my requests of Declarant Sykes may have been…”
“Be silent, Laureate-Director,” Tamra said to the woman. Then, less haughtily, “All my conversations are official. Speaking out of turn is disruptive.”
Reddening, Deliah bowed her head, saying nothing.
Bruno empathized: Deliah was no practiced courtier, after all, and she was—admirably—trying to take responsibility for her own job. But Tamra’s role was equally clear: bureaucrats and functionaries must not be permitted to undermine her authority even in these tiny, offhand ways. A Queen must exude power and influence from every pore, yes? Else what good was a Queendom at all?
“Er, shall we… proceed?” he asked, when a few pointed moments had passed. It was a calculated risk: even he couldn’t talk back to her in public. Not without paying.
“We shall,” Tamra said lightly. And that was that.
“What is it you’re doing there?” Bruno asked Marlon. “Manual labor? Couldn’t robots help?”
“They are helping,” Marlon snapped, in a rapid-fire voice. “Look, wellstone devices are almost infinitely configurable, but where no pathway exists at all between components A and B, as often happens when you’re configuring large machinery for unintended purposes, we have to physically lay a line of wellstone down. Or copper, or fibe-op glass, but rarely, because we can program the wellstone to emulate those. So robots do the coarse installation, point to point, and the delicate final connections are completed by hand. And as I say, explaining the process to a technician requires refinement in both the theory and detail of what I’m doing, which would consume precious time. Until / know precisely what needs connection to what, I find it easier simply to tinker. Perhaps in another week, I’ll have gained enough experience to pass instructions along.”
“Hmm,” Tamra said, unconvinced.
A touch of sullenness graced Marlon Sykes’ features. His gaze flicked to Bruno for a moment. “His time costs you nothing, I suppose.”
“He donates it, yes.”
“I’ve little need for money,” Bruno almost said, but stopped himself, realizing in time that it would probably antagonize rather than soothe. Marlon, the father of the Ring Collapsiter, was just about as brilliant and wealthy and powerful a man as ever lived, his name writ large as any Edison or Franklin or Fuller. But through the twisting of fate, Bruno’s name had been writ much larger, ridiculously larger. Along with his bank account, yes. It was a sore point between two Declarant-Philanders, and understandably so. What he did say was, “It pleases me to visit with friends again. I do it so rarely. I almost feel / should pay for the privilege. It’s good to see you again, Marlon.”
The first reply to that was simply a glower, but finally Marlon put his smile back on and reached out a hand to be shaken. “Your manners exceed my own. I’ve been immersed here; I’m not really in a mood for interruptions. You know how that can be, I’m sure.”
“Indeed,” Bruno said, and chuckled a little. He took Marlon’s hand in his and clasped it warmly. It came away, of course, slick with machine grease, but that was of little consequence.