Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

“Majesty,” he said quietly, “I believe we’ve found it.” But his words echoed from the rocks, booming, repeated and amplified by some reportant mechanism aimed at him, or perhaps by wellstone devices buried in the mountain itself and activated surreptitiously. In any case, a great cheer went up from the crowd, and suddenly everyone was thronging around him, wanting to shake his hand, and neither Tamra nor Krogh interceded this time, for they were the first two in line.

A week later, Bruno sat, chalrless and alone, on the smooth, di-clad surface of Marlon’s work platform, gazing up at what he’d wrought. That haunting Cerenkov glow was gone, super-reflected back into the body of the Ring Collapsiter, which now arched overhead as a pinkie-thin ribbon of yellow-white light, a huge smeared reflection of the sun below. Not too bright to look at, not quite; the reflecting surface was large enough to diffuse the tremendous radiance of Sol here inside the orbit of Mercury. Spaced around the ring were great circular patches, the “sails” he’d described to Marlon, but from this vantage, none reflected anything but starlight, too dim to make out in the brightness as anything but a lighter shade of black.

Fortunately, this new structure was only temporary. The collapsiter’s fall had already slowed significantly, buying time and promising to buy still more, and once the new electromagnetic grapples were finally in place… Well. He supposed the superreflector “cast” had a raw, functional beauty of its own, like the skeleton of a building turned inside-out, but of course it was nothing compared to the hidden glory of the collapsium itself. He wondered if there were more aesthetic solutions, if he’d hit by chance on one of the grimmer, uglier routes to salvation. He hoped not; the eyes of the future—his own included—would have enough to criticize him for as it was. To look back and find that he was, after all, a bad collapsium engineer …

The notion troubled him for a few minutes, but finally faded until he was able to enjoy the peace here, the stillness, the absence of pressing gratitude and curiosity with which he knew no graceful way to cope. In the last seven days he’d been wined, dined, interviewed, and applauded without end. Without purpose , it seemed, for every demanded speech reinforced what the fax had taught him long ago: that his company was dull, that he had almost nothing witty or fascinating of his own to say, that in fact he had a penchant for offending and embarrassing the very people who offered him kindness. And yet they pressed on, offering more and greater kindness, until for their own sakes he felt compelled to withdraw. He didn’t mind being distressed half as much as he minded causing it in others, and he knew no other way to prevent it.

But eventually, this thought faded as well, and it might be said that Bruno meditated there on the platform, his mind drifting among the planets, untroubled. How long he sat there is not known, but after some interval had elapsed, he became aware of another presence on the platform with him, of Marlon Sykes settling down cross-legged next to him, following his gaze upward.

“I hear you’re leaving,” he said.

“Indeed,” Bruno agreed. “My work demands it.”

“Today?”

“Probably, yes. Does that please you?”

“A bit,” Marlon said, an admission for which Bruno respected him all the more. “It’s difficult, being confronted with the likes of you. I didn’t ask to be resentful; I don’t seek it. Things would be much easier if I could count you as a friend.”

“But you can’t.”

“No. Never. Least of all now. Go back to your brilliant arc de fin project, please. I’ve followed your work, you know, sometimes convinced myself I could have done likewise if you hadn’t been there first. I hate that it isn’t true. And of course there’s Tamra, who no longer pines for me , her First Philander, if indeed she ever did. I suppose I should keep these thoughts to myself, but I can’t quite manage such courtesy. For that, I apologize.”

“Unnecessary,” Bruno said. “I respect you, and would have you speak your heart.”

“Thank you, Declarant. That means… something to me, at least.”

They were silent for a while, looking up at their collapsium arch, each man alone in thought, until finally another voice called out behind them: Tamra’s. “Marlon, blast it, I told you to get him dressed . The ceremony is dress . Formal. He can’t wear that . Is it your goal to embarrass me?”

“Not you, Highness,” Marlon said innocently. “Why should I desire such a thing?”

“Ceremony?” Bruno asked, with rising alarm. The air, he realized, had been filling slowly with the buzz of news cameras.

“It’s a surprise,” Tamra said, “and we haven’t much time. Quickly, step over to the fax! We’ll… erect a privacy screen or something.” She was wearing the Diamond Crown, he noted, along with the Rings of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and a formal gown of deepest purple. Even her perfect golden robots seemed, somehow, to have been gussied up for the occasion.

Sighing, Bruno examined himself; the clothing he’d selected this morning was casual, comfortable, no doubt long out of fashion. Would the eyes of history care about such a thing, or even notice? Did it make, really, the slightest bit of difference? He’d trimmed his foliage back a bit and combed most of the gray out of it, casting aside the ridiculous cartoon sage’s facade, leaving only that measure of maturity that—in his estimation—he’d fairly earned. Surely that was enough.

Smirking uneasily, he spread his arms wide. “If you must take me, Majesty, I think it proper that you take me as I am. For this surprise of yours, which I do not seek.”

“I’m not ‘taking’you anywhere. We’re doing this right here, in view of the collapsiter, and you do need to be properly dressed. Come on.”

He shook his head. “No, Tamra. I won’t.”

Her eyes narrowed, her expression sharpening, weapon-like. She was not accustomed to refusal; the last time it had happened, Bruno had knelt in the mud to placate her. But he was, after all, the man of the hour. He was, after all, leaving once more for his true home in the wilderness, and not in any stiff contrivance of cummerbunds and ribbon silk. She seemed, finally, to sense that he felt no compulsion to obey her. And by corollary, that she had no means to force him.

The standoff ended; she sighed. “My feral sorcerer. All right, have it your way. Do at least stand up straight. We’ll begin.”

On that cue, the sides of the dome came alive with holie screens, three-dimensional windows looking out as if from balconies, looking down on crowds of people thronging below skies of blue, of pink, of saffron yellow, beneath mirrored domes and huge, vaulted ceilings of rock, of plaster, of ice and wellstone and steel. The bottom of the work platform’s dome was soon covered; a new row started, like an igloo being constructed of video screens, until it seemed there must be at least one window open on every planet, moon, and drifting rock of the Queendom. Tens of millions of people, a goodly sampling of the Queendom’s billions, all planning ahead for this, knowing where and when to show up.

“Typical,” he muttered, looking from one screen to the next. “Everyone’s in on the joke but me.”

The responding laughter all but toppled him from his feet. Thousands of people laughing all at once, from something he’d said! Even Marlon Sykes was chuckling. Bruno could not have been more astonished. Or embarrassed—he felt his cheeks warming. And the laughter went on! The speed of light placed a moat of seconds or minutes between himself and each of these screens. But every few seconds, his remark reached another crowd, and provoked another explosion of cheer, even as the previous ones were dying out.