Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

“Oh, hush.”

“De Towaji?” another voice, a man’s, said. Bruno turned, saw four strangers clustered at the fax gate now. Strangers, yes; he was quite sure he recognized none of them. The man who’d spoken was tall and thin, dressed head to toe in crimson, and—if Bruno dared think it—possessed of the sort of shallow, almost effeminate beauty he generally associated with actors and politicians. Two of his associates were female, swathed respectively in yellow and green velour dresses that seemed little more than long, endlessly winding scarves. The third, a portly man in indigo, was looking wide-eyed at Bruno.

“De Towaji,” he echoed.

Oh, bother.

“Gentlemen,” Bruno said, bowing slightly. Then, with greater conviction, “Ladies.”

The ladies eyed him skeptically, this clownish figure late of the wilderness.

“My God,” the indigo man exclaimed. “Her Majesty went and got you, didn’t she?”

And the woman in green said, “You’re here to fix the Ring Collapsiter.”

And the crimson man, at a loss but apparently feeling the need to say something, added, “Er, that’s quite a handsome jacket!”

“Doctors,” Tamra said, placing a hand on Bruno’s back, “allow me to present Declarant Bruno de Towaji.”

“Pleased,” the crimson man piped.

“To meet you,” the woman in green finished, half apologetically, touching the crimson man lightly on the hand. He was, Bruno saw at once, her husband, whose sentences she was well accustomed to finishing. The love and shyness and exasperation between them radiated out in invisible rays, like infrared. Warming.

The indigo man simply nodded.

Well, they made Bruno feel less clownish, at any rate. Or in better company with his clownishness, perhaps. Nice to know he wasn’t the only awkward chap in the worlds.

Tamra looked at him sidelong and said, “Doctors Shum and Doctors Theotakos, of Elysium province.” She paused, then added, “Mars.”

And here were court nuances aplenty: Her Majesty had given these people’s titles and last names, but not their firsts, meaning she knew them, but not well. And she’d made a point of emphasizing Bruno’s rank over theirs; the Queendom’s educational system being by far the best humanity had ever known, “Doctor” was very nearly no title at all. There were more subtle levels in the exchange as well, as invisible and inevitable as the basalt pastry layers beneath Maxwell Monies’ outermost surface. That Bruno couldn’t parse them— and wouldn’t even if he knew how—didn’t mean their presence had escaped him. This much he knew: that these Martians had been smartly, artfully dressed down, acknowledged for their value but instructed in no uncertain terms to keep their distance.

It was perhaps a necessary gesture, reflexive, else Her Majesty would be mobbed at all times with admirers. Such was her job, after all: to be admired. But it was still a snotty thing to do, this enforced distance, and Bruno felt an instant sympathy for its victims.

“I am very pleased to meet you all,” he said sincerely, realizing that these were, in fact, the first people he’d met in five or six years. He bowed again, and felt a friendly smile creeping onto his face. “We’ll talk later, if you like.”

The relief on the men’s faces was palpable. Bruno wondered what sort of doctors they were, that they so craved his attention.

“Er,” the crimson man said.

“Thank you, very much,” his wife said, smiling, touching his hand again to lead him away. The indigo man and yellow woman fell in behind them, strolling down a path between the junipers, past Tamra’s guards. In a few moments, they were lost from sight.

“Ah, civilization,” Bruno said.

Her Majesty grunted. “Wiseass.”

Another figure materialized in the fax gate: a man. A smallish man in black and green, a shiny black hat cocked jauntily atop his head. It took Bruno a moment to recognize him as Marlon Sykes, prettied up for the ball, and still another moment to recognize the clothing ensemble as very nearly identical to his own. Perhaps suggested by the same piece of software?

Perhaps this was Tusite’s joke?

Sykes, it seemed, made the connection more quickly, eyeing Bruno up and down and then glaring pointedly. Tamra, for her part, looked at the two of them and burst out laughing.

“Am I to be second in all things?” Sykes muttered.

Bruno, somewhat taken aback himself, could only stammer, “It… why, it looks much better on you, Declarant.” Which was true, but it mollified Sykes not at all.

“Damn you, de Towaji,” Sykes said, then stepped backward and vanished.

Another batch of people filed through the fax gate, and in another moment Bruno felt his arm clasped again, Tamra’s strong fingers pulling him away from still another encounter, down the juniper path toward the party.

The robots, earlier so conspicuous in their duties, now seemed almost to sneak alongside them, quiet, holding to the walls and shadows. They remained ever vigilant, of course, their blank metal heads facing Her Majesty no matter how they moved, but now they followed a program of discretion, balancing etiquette against the need to protect—or perhaps protecting Tamra’s image along with her skin.

A few turns and twists later, the glass arcade opened back into a sort of dining hall, a chamber cut back into the mountain. Or possibly a natural cavern of some sort; beneath a ceiling of white-glowing wellstone, the walls retained that same rough pastry look. At the back, a staircase rose up into rock and darkness. Five long tables filled the hall, eight seats to a side and one on each end, enough for a hundred people in all. Half these seats were filled already, and from the arcade’s other side a steady stream of guests filed in. Had he and Tamra come in through some sort of VIP entrance? The crowd was certainly thicker over there, and while neither wealth nor status could be gauged from clothing, from their movements and muddled-together speech they seemed a slightly more raucous bunch. The brightly clad Martians were ahead, strolling along the nearest table, looking at place cards to find or confirm their seats.

Bruno and Tamra seemed to be right on time, at any rate. That was another thing about faxing: it left no sense of the minutes elapsed during transmission through the collapsiter grid. One could, in theory, specify longer-than-optimal packet routes, bouncing a signal to the outer planets and back as many times as desired, effectively transmitting oneself into the future. Why wait for the party, when you could—in effect— bring the party to you? But the cost was such that Bruno doubted many people had tried it; there were easier ways to skip over dull time. Sleeping, for example.

Presently, a little bald man detached himself from the crowd and strode briskly forward, arms outstretched, his attention fully on Tamra. In the corners of Bruno’s vision, the robots tensed.

“Your Majesty,” the man said, sounding delighted. “ Mcdo e lelei. Na’ake ‘i heni kimu’a ?” His hands closed on hers, enfolding; he was bigger than he looked, taller in fact than the ’Virgin Queen“ herself. There was deception in the stoop of his shoulders and the draping, nondescript grays and browns of his clothing. Deliberate deception? It seemed unlikely in such a grandfatherly figure.

“Declarant Krogh,” Tamra acknowledged pleasantly, lifting and inclining her hand for a ceremonial kiss.

Suddenly, the face clicked: Ernest Krogh, inventor of the fax morbidity filter that had all but banished death from the Queendom. The first Declarant Tamra had ever named.

“I’ve seated you next to myself,” Krogh said, “if that’s all right. Rhea is eager to speak with you about… something-orother. It escapes.” He waved a hand absently.