“No,” Bruno admitted, “but I grew up in a back-to-basics community where primitive skills like that were highly prized. I’m adaptable. Don’t worry, son; I intend no unwarranted risks, and you’ll be held blameless for any foolishness on my part. I do think this merits my attention, though. And yours, Marlon, if you feel up to accompanying me.”
“It’s my house,” Marlon said unhappily. “Of course I’ll go.”
“And I,” Tamra said, stifling Shiao’s protest with a stern look. “It’s my Queendom at risk. And I have had spacesuit and spaceship training—in fact, I’m a level-one instructor.” Shiao looked surprised at this, which only made Her Majesty grow sterner. “You think I’m a twit, like my dear departed Queen Mother? All my life I’ve had the finest doctors, the finest fax programmers, the finest tutors and trainers. I’m as fit and as fast and as wise as modern science can make me, and I’ve been certified with more tools and vehicles and weapons than you’ve probably ever heard of. It’s not Tamra Lutui who’ll step aboard that cruiser, but the Queendom of Sol itself, and your approval, Lieutenant, has not been solicited.”
Bruno noted that Marlon, who’d been Tamra’s childhood mathematics tutor long before he’d been anything else, swelled with pride at these remarks. Shiao, though, gasped, bowed his head, and dropped to his knees.
“Meaning no disrespect, Your Majesty! My concern is only for your safety!”
“And appreciated as such,” Tamra conceded. “But overruled. Vivian, have you retained any spacesuit training?”
“Um, I think so.”
“Excellent. Will you accompany us?”
“Sure.”
Bruno watched Shiao’s down-turned face, thinking he’d never seen someone actually bite back a protest before. He dered if it was anywhere near as uncomfortable as it looked.
It took less than fifteen minutes for the Constabulary wardrobe to dress them all in custom-fit, top-of-the-line vacuum-safety equipment, by which time Shiao admitted that his docking maneuvers were complete and that he was dutifully awaiting the Royal Committee in what remained of Sykes Manor.
Bruno flexed his fingers and elbows and knees experimentally. The silvery-blue garments weren’t nearly as heavy or stiff as they looked, and the helmet dome, when he commanded it to swing shut over his head, was optically superconducting, invisible except for faint silver marking dots applied to it— he supposed they were there so he’d know where the dome was, so he wouldn’t accidentally try to put his gloved fingers through it.
They each had their name emblazoned on their rebreather backpacks—literally emblazoned, in dully glowing red letters. Bruno’s said TOWAJI, an error or abbreviation he hadn’t seen fit to correct. And here around him, as they crowded into the fax atrium, were SYKES and SKETTERING, a miniature RAJMON and a couple of hulking SHIAOs.
Tamra’s suit alone was nameless, bearing only the royal seal, but it was unmistakable from any angle, being purple in color, with bright gold trim that seemed to—possibly did— glow with its own inner light. It also managed, despite its bulk, to look sexy on her, the cut somehow exaggerating the hourglass of her waist, the curve of her calves, the gentle swell of rump and bosom. Crisscrossing reinforcement straps, their placement engineered to look coincidental, contrived to emphasize each perfect breast in a way that made Bruno feel almost as though he were imagining it, as though he were a lecher and a boor unworthy of the Virgin Queen’s chaste presence. Doubtless, she’d downloaded the pattern from her palace wardrobe, which had designed it for exactly these qualities. Of such silly but powerful subtleties was court life constructed. Perhaps it was a kind of joke.
The royal bodyguards alone remained undressed, looking almost vulnerable alongside their armored Queen. Nonetheless, pistols at the ready, they stepped through the gate to prepare the way for her. She followed closely; Bruno, right in tow, felt compelled to study the heart shape of her purple armored behind.
Seven minutes’ travel time vanished in a faxed instant; stepping through a curtain would have provided a greater sense of travel.
The inside of the police cruiser was surprisingly large, a gravity-free cylinder twice as wide as Bruno was tall, with token “floor” and “ceiling” of waffled rubber and all the rest an expanse of wellstone, smooth gray panels set with deep, breadbox-sized niches every couple of meters, and larger, coffin-sized ones interspersed less frequently. The thing appeared to be about a hundred meters long, somewhat larger than the shattered sphere of Marlon’s house visible outside the round, di-clad portholes. The ship’s setup was enviable and no doubt expensive—a complete laboratory that could, on a moment’s notice, be reconfigured for nearly any purpose, and that could simultaneously protect or confine dozens of human beings, be they SWAT troopers or prisoners or refugees plucked from some civil disaster.
A Cheng Shiao stood, waving uncertainly, in the aisle a dozen meters ahead, next to what was probably an air-lock hatch. Tamra, with her robots on either side, advanced toward him, her improbably swiveling dernere beckoning Bruno to follow, which he did. The others appeared behind him one by one, clearly visible in the small rearview mirrors projecting forward from each of his shoulders.
“Any warning lights in your suit collar?” Shiao asked anxiously. “Any unfamiliar noises or sensations?”
“No,” Tamra answered him with apparent good cheer. Their voices rang in Bruno’s helmet as intimately as if they were right in there with him.
“Er, no,” he said, though in fact the weightlessness—despite the fax filters that had conditioned his body against space sickness—was already making him a bit queasy. The food and drink Marlon had served him earlier now seemed to be rocking back and forth as a single, fluid mass in his stomach.
“Nope,” Vivian said behind him.
“No,” Marlon said more sullenly, echoed by an even more sullen Deliah van Skeltering. Why she’d insisted on accompanying them Bruno was not at all sure—she’d seemed to regard the prospect with a mix of resentment and dread. But she’d died already; little worse could happen now. Perhaps she just wanted to feel included, to be present in case anything important happened. Or perhaps she had something material to contribute—she was, after all, a Laureate in the sciences and a Director in the bureaucracy. But that didn’t mean she enjoyed the idea. Like Bruno, she had no space-suit training of any kind, so her obvious fear of space’s vacuum was well founded, more sensible really than Bruno’s own nonchalance.
He flexed his hand, trying somehow to feel the absence of air around him. He realized, with a twinge of worry, that he’d once again neglected to leave a copy of himself behind. He wouldn’t want to ‘t>e left behind, so the idea hadn’t occurred until now, to make a copy and mistreat it that way. Was this unwise, given the risks he was taking? Ah well, done was done, and the fax machines at both ends should retain his pattern in their buffers, at least until something else overwrote it.
He followed Her Majesty around the corner and into the airlock, both of whose doors stood open. Beyond it was some crude hardware—a kind of metal tunnel that seemed to have been jammed straight through the hull of Marlon’s home. Bruno’s sense of up and down did a little cartwheel, making him queasier still. Where the floor of the police cruiser had been “beneath” him and the airlock “in front,” now the airlock and its hatchway seemed to point “up” through the floor of Sykes Manor. And Bruno was clinging to the wall by the grapples on his boot soles! If the police hadn’t stopped the house’s spin “gravity,” he’d be falling backward right now, pivoting on broken ankles—his boot soles still clinging—until he finally bashed the back of his helmet against the wall below. But if not for the weightlessness, he wouldn’t be so disoriented in the first place. He’d be climbing a ladder or something.