And then, as quickly as the robot had launched itself, it froze in place, assuming its usual statuesque pose with arms hanging down at its sides. And then, maybe a second after the opening of the hatch, all the seams had a chance to separate, and everyone’s space suits were peeling open like clear plastic flowers.
Was the air good? Hell if he cared; Conrad drew the deepest breath of his life, then let it out, then drew it in again. He was fighting his way free of the space suit, stripping it away from his sweat-chilled arms and legs, away from his tee shirt and shorts, away from his shoes. He was yanking it off and kicking it away like it was hot or poisonous, and he was breathing deeply of the barge’s air. And yeah, it was good.
“Fuck,” he said. “Oh, fuck. Oh fuck. We almost didn’t make it.”
“Almost, hell,” Bascal said, throwing himself at the wall and kissing it hard. “It’s a fucking miracle.”
And it was, too. They’d left eleven brothers behind— nine dead and two missing—but they’d pulled off a journey of such daring and gall that even they themselves couldn’t believe it. How amazing, how amazing it was to be standing inside a neutronium barge 140 million kilometers from the ruins of Camp Friendly. No one had caught them, stopped them, probably even seen them, and the fact that anyone had survived at all was ... well, miraculous.
“Today we make fuckin’ history,” Ho Ng said, with a greater depth of conviction than Conrad would have imagined he could muster.
And Karl and Xmary were hugging each other and laughing, and Bascal came forward and slapped Conrad on the cheek twice, just hard enough to convey a sense of manly camaraderie.
“We did it,” he said. “We fucking did it.”
“Well, congratulations,” said a deep, loud, unfamiliar and quite angry voice in the corridor behind them. “Just who the hell are you?”
Chapter seventeen.
The secret garden
Conrad turned around, expecting to see navy troopers or Royal Constabulary there. He even raised his arms partway in surrender, before noticing it was a bunch of naked human beings. Blue ones, with the pastel shade of artificial skin pigment rather than paint, and the kinky hair and broad features to suggest their natural coloration would be rather darker. But any reassurance he might have felt at this comical sight quickly evaporated when he noticed the weapons: dart guns and heavy wrenches.
“Jesus!” Karl squawked.
“Greetings, naked people,” Bascal said, with remarkable aplomb. He pushed off with a foot, then caught himself with a hand, positioning himself in front of the others, in good light where his face could be clearly seen.
“Who are you?” one of the naked men repeated. He looked about twenty or twenty-five years old, which could mean anything. There were two other men beside him, and two women lurking behind them at a bend in the corridor. Both were painfully pretty despite their blueness (or because of it?), and although one had a wrench and the other a dart gun, Conrad couldn’t keep his eyes off their faces and breasts, the darker blue of their lips and nipples and pubic hair.
“I’m the Prince of Sol,” Bascal replied, sounding surprised.
“Sure you are,” the man answered tightly. His voice was very deep, and it seemed to Conrad that that was a natural feature as well. The Queendom was full of poseurs who altered their looks and sound and smell with special fax machines and genome appendices, but unless it was subtle you could always kind of tell. So: natural voice, natural hair, natural facial features, all packaged in a decidedly unnatural skin. The guy sounded angry, too, and kind of scared. The gun he held wasn’t aimed at anything specific, but he was ready with it. And his blue cock and balls, now that Conrad noticed, were shriveled up against him, cowering.
“Wait a minute,” one of the women said. “I think he is.”
“Stay out, Agnes,” the man answered nervously.
“No, really,” the woman said. “That’s Bascal Edward. He’s just older, is all. That robot is his bodyguard!”
Seizing the initiative, Bascal said, “I’d move very slowly if I were you. It’s a state-of-the-art Palace Guard. So when exactly did the neutronium industry go Blue Nudist? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Cute,” the man said, gesturing a little with the gun. It was the wrong thing to do; immediately, the Palace Guard raised a finger and nailed the little weapon with a bolt of energy. The man screamed, flinging the piece away, and Conrad thought for a moment that he saw quicksilver drops of molten metal splashing where it hit the wall.
“Ow! Crap! What are you doing here? Who sent you?”
“Sent?” Bascal’s mask of certainty slipped a bit. “We came here to use the fax. We’re castaways.”
“From what? Prison? Piracy?”
“Summer camp.”
The naked people stared back blankly, unable to process that comment into anything useful.
“Maybe you should explain,” the man said finally. He was holding a rail with his uninjured hand and another with his free, naked foot. The hand that had held the gun now trembled against his chest.
“Who are you people?” Bascal couldn’t seem to help asking.
The man’s gaze narrowed. “What? You first, kid. Prince. What are you doing here? Why did you attack our ship?”
“Your ship?” Bascal repeated.
“Attack?” Conrad said. “We crashed here. Well, sort of crashed.”
There was another brief silence, and then Xmary said, “You seem nervous. Sir. We’re not here on any sort of official business. We were marooned on a planette, and escaped in a homemade fetula.”
One of the women said something in a clicky, guttural language Conrad was certain he’d never heard before. Something angry and menacing, which included the English words “Jolly Roger” and “magnet ray.”
“We came here to use the fax,” Bascal said again. “We’re trying to get to Denver.”
“Why?” the man demanded.
The prince held up a hand, his voice hardening. “All right, look. What’s your name?”
The man’s frown deepened for a moment, and then partially relaxed. “I’m Robert. Robert M’chunu.”
“Our leader,” said the woman named Agnes, in a half-joking tone.
“There are no leaders here,” Robert called back over his shoulder, in a weary way that suggested he said this often, and would be happy if he never had to say it again. Then, turning back, he seemed for the first time to notice the Camp Friendly tee shirts that everyone except smelly Ho had on. He rubbed his lips with his gun hand, thinking about that. “Summer camp. You came to use the fax? There’s no network gate, you know. We sabotaged it a long time ago.”
“No gate?” Bascal said. “No gate? Why the hell not? That’s the whole reason we came here!”
“We didn’t want anyone following us,” Agnes said. “We didn’t want to be found.”
Bascal digested that for a couple of seconds, and then said, “I think it’s time you explain this to me. Why are there naked stowaways on a Mass Industries neutronium barge? Vandalizing a neutronium barge, and threatening visitors?”