Лю Цысинь - Supernova Era

“Gentlemen,” said the band conductor, “the next song is dedicated to these ten queens.”

The band struck up “Für Elise,” and in its hands the gentle piano tune remained as touching as ever, even more absorbing than the piano version. Awash in music, the children felt that the world, life, and the future would be as beautiful as those ten suns, and as adorable.

When it finished, Davey asked Green politely, “So what about the queen’s husband?”

“Also decided by election. The prettiest and most adorable boy, of course.”

“Any candidates?”

“Not yet. There will be once the queen is elected.”

“Oh, right. You’ve got to listen to the queen’s opinion,” Davey said, nodding in agreement. Then, with that particular brand of American pragmatism, he said, “One more question. How can such a young queen give birth to a prince?”

Green snorted rather than answering, as in contempt for Davey’s lack of breeding. Few of the other children present were well-versed in the specifics, so they all just pondered the question and for a while no one spoke. Eventually Pierre broke the silence: “I imagine it’s like this. Their marriage is just, well, what’s the word, symbolic. They’re not going to live together like adults do. They’ll have kids after they grow up. Is that it?”

Green nodded, as did Davey, to show he understood. Then Davey cleared his throat, seeming suddenly shy. “Um… about the pretty boy.”

“What about him?”

Davey tugged at his white gloves and gave a self-conscious shrug. “I mean… there’s no candidate yet.”

“That’s right, there isn’t.”

Davey crooked a finger back toward himself and said, “So how about me. Do I qualify?”

The surrounding crowd tittered, to the annoyance of the president, who barked, “Quiet!,” then turned back to Green and waited patiently for his response. Green turned slowly toward the banquet table and picked up an empty glass, and then made a subtle motion for a refill to the server beside him. When his glass was full, he carried it over to Davey and waited until the surface was still. Then he said, “Why not see for yourself?”

The group burst out laughing. The laughter spread until even the servers and army band members were cackling uncontrollably at their president, chief of staff Benes the giddiest of all.

In the center of it all, the president’s face contorted. In point of fact, he wouldn’t have been found wanting; what disqualified him was his lack of British citizenship. The international mockery annoyed him, of course, but he was most irritated by Green. As he had met with the heads of NATO countries for the past several days, it had been the prime minister who had bothered him the most. No sooner had he arrived in the United States than he began asking for things—steel, oil, and above all, weapons. Three five-billion-dollar Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and eight two-billion-dollar ballistic nuclear submarines, in one fell swoop, as if angling to re-create the Royal Navy of Admiral Nelson’s time.

Even worse, he wanted land. Just the return of a few former colonies in the Pacific and the Middle East at first, but then he rolled out a stinky old seventeenth-century parchment, a map with no lines of latitude or longitude, nothing at all at the north and south poles, and brimming with errors in Africa and the Americas.

Pointing out areas of the map, Green informed Davey of all the places that once were England and remained so (only omitting any mention of North and South America prior to the revolutionary wars). He felt that due to the special relationship Britain had with the US, even if the US was unwilling to aid it in recovering those lands, it should at least permit it to reclaim some of them, since the measly territory it now occupied was tremendously disproportionate to the immense contributions it had made to Western civilization through the ages. The United Kingdom had been a cherished ally of the US in two world wars, and in the second had exhausted its national power to protect the British Isles and prevent the Nazis from crossing the Atlantic, only to suffer such a precipitous decline as a result.

Now the cake needed to be redivided; surely Uncle Sam’s children would not be as stingy as their fathers and grandfathers! However, when Davey made the demand that once conditions were ripe, NATO would place a dense installation of medium-range ballistic missiles in Britain to prepare for an advance to the East, he immediately turned as tough as the Iron Lady and declared that his country, and all of western Europe for that matter, would not become a nuclear battlefield. No new missile installations; as a matter of fact, he was going to dismantle some existing ones.

Now on top of that, making jokes at the expense of the president of the United States, in the manner of a fallen aristocrat who can’t resist grandstanding like a fool. Davey’s anger bubbled over at the thought, and he threw a fist into Green’s jaw.

The sudden punch sent the skinny prime minister, smugly holding a wineglass up as a mirror for Davey, tumbling backward over the banquet table. The hall erupted into chaos. Children pressed around Davey shouting angrily, and the prime minister managed, with some help, to get to his feet. Ignoring the caviar and mayonnaise on his clothes, the first thing he did was straighten his tie. He was helped up by the foreign secretary, a brawny boy, who made a dash for Davey but was held back by the prime minister. Even before he stood up, Green’s mind had made the transition from overheated to cool, and he understood that now was not the time to lose sight of the bigger picture. Amid the chaos, he was the only one who retained an enviable calm. With aristocratic grace, he extended his right index finger and said to the foreign secretary, in a tone entirely unchanged from usual, “Please draft a diplomatic protest.”

Reporters’ flashbulbs popped, and the following day, large photos of Green, in evening wear covered in a spectrum of ice cream flavors and raising a genteel finger, ran in every major newspaper, informing all of Europe and the Americas of the prime minister’s noble demeanor as a politician. He exploited this stroke of luck to the full, while Davey could only blame drunkenness. Now, facing a crowd of furious young heads of state and sneering reporters, Davey began to defend himself: “What’re you calling me? Hegemonic? If America’s hegemonic, what about the English? Just wait till you see how hegemonic they can be!”

Green raised a finger to the foreign secretary again. “Please draft another diplomatic protest against this shameless attack on the United Kingdom by the president of the United States of America. This is our statement: We, and our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers, are the most courteous people in the world. They have never, and will never, take such uncultured barbaric acts.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Davey said, waving both hands at the crowd. “I’m telling you, back in the tenth century, England called itself King of the Seas, and they called all the waters they could navigate the British Seas. On these seas, when another country’s ship met an English ship, it had to lower its flag in salute, or else the English navy would fire on it. In 1554, Prince Philip of Spain sailed to England to wed Queen Mary, and because the salute was forgotten, he was fired upon several times. In 1570, again because of the naval salute, the English navy almost fired upon the Queen of Spain’s ship. Ask him if it’s true!”

Davey remained Davey, and his fiery retort rendered Green speechless. He continued, “You want to talk hegemony? That’s a word invented by adults. But it’s really just a simple thing. A few centuries ago, England had the world’s biggest navy, so what they did wasn’t hegemonic, it was glorious history. Today, America has the world’s biggest navy. We’ve got Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, planes as numerous as mosquitoes and tanks as numerous as ants. But we’ve never forced anyone to lower their flag to salute US ships! How dare you call us hegemonic? One of these days—”