Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

He nodded resignedly. “When circumstances demand it, ah. This isn’t a social visit, then.”

The shaking of her head was gentle, apologetic. “No. Did you expect otherwise?”

“No,” he admitted. “Why should I? You’ve visited exactly once in sixteen years, and only then to tell me the Ring Collapsiter was falling into the sun.”

The Ring Collapsiter: an annulus of collapsium encircling the Queendom’s parent star, its interior a supervacuum shortcut through which telecom packets—such as the signals comprising a faxed monarch—might pass much faster than the vacuum speed of light. Only a third complete when last Bruno had seen it, the Collapsiter had already been the most breathtakingly beautiful of all the works of man. An impressive project to be sure, almost impressive enough to make him stay. A Queendom capable of such grandeur might have use for his peculiar drives and talents after all!

But in the end, he’d been lured back up here by the promise of an arc defin , an arch through which the end of time itself might be observed. His bones quaked at the very idea. Here was an even grander project, so grand in fact that he expected to spend thousands of years working out the details. And yes, conducting those dangerous experiments—such as the Onion—that might eventually lead him there. Experiments even a bold Queendom could never tolerate in its midst, and rightly so.

Her Majesty smiled tightly and brushed a lock of hair from her face in precisely the way that had inspired the love of billions. “That was no trivial matter, Declarant-Philander Bruno de Towaji. You make yourself difficult to visit, and then complain that no one takes the quite enormous trouble to visit you anyway? We do have other concerns, you know. A whole society’s worth. If a thought is spared for you every now and then, it’s certainly not because you’ve encouraged it.”

Bruno felt his irritation meter rising. Human genetics, though, had always included a mechanism for awe in the face of celebrity. This was the very reason for the Queendom’s founding, the reason for all the peoples of all the worlds to demand that the tiny Pacific nation of Tonga yield up its young princess to be the Queen of them all. And against so deep an instinct, what chance did mere irritation have? He knew her as much more than a figurehead or celebrity, of course, but he’d long ago discovered just how little this mattered.

Bruno bowed his head. “You know me too well, Highness. Thus, you’ll know that my apology is sincere. Have I wronged you? Questioned your right to demand audience? I have no explanation, save the lateness of the hour and my surprise on seeing you here.”

“Accepted,” the Queen said evenly, with a slight nod of the head.

Able to resist his hunger no longer, Bruno picked up one of the little dishes his servants had left and began popping peeled grapes into his mouth, one by one.

“Excuse me,” he said around a mouthful of them. “I’m quite famished. Will you join me in a meal?”

She shook her head, but touched one of the glasses on the tray. “A drink, perhaps. This is lemonade?”

“Indeed,” he said proudly, “fresh squeezed. Faxed juices may be identical to the taste, but who says taste matters more than principle? I grow the sugar, as well.”

She smiled. “Your father would be proud. Your robots grow it, though, I hope.”

“Well,” he admitted, “I sometimes help. At any rate, it’s clear you haven’t come here to discuss agriculture. I’ll waste no more of your time. What is it you require of me?”

Her Majesty sighed, looking suddenly tired and unhappy. Looking, actually, like she’d been concealing these things for far too long, and was relieved, finally, to let them out. “It’s your expertise with the Ring Collapsiter, I’m afraid.”

“Ah.” Bruno nodded, only a little surprised. “ ‘Also grow teVe,’is that it?”

She flared visibly at the proverb, taking his meaning immediately. How many times had that hardy, bitter weed sustained Tonga’s people in times of famine? The wise farmer set aside a little plot for it—the damned stuff needed no tending, just a bit of clear ground to stretch its leaves across. Bruno’s barb was double pronged: On the one hand, Tamra was treating him as a kind of Royal Teve, which seemed a fine way to repay his decades of adoration. On the other hand, he was the one who’d insisted on maintaining a palace vegetable garden, teve and all, and he had little doubt it had vanished under shrubbery and elephant grass within a month of his departure.

Tamra eyed him silently for a few seconds before replying. “ ‘Plant a coconut and leave it alone.’ ”

“Hmmph,” he said, and suddenly he was fighting off a smirk. A coconut was tough and hairy, difficult to reach without a good climb, and took years and years to produce anything useful when planted in even the best of soils. Bother it, Tamra was good at this sort of repartee—she’d have him tied up in neat little bows if he tried to outproverb her again.

His spasm of good humor quickly faded into worry. He’d left the Queendom with a solution, a means to stabilize the Ring Collapsiter and prevent any recurrence of the accident that had knocked it free. And once completed, once its final intricate shape obliterated all gravitational trace of its existence, the structure would be no more capable of falling into the sun than the Earth was of falling out of its orbit. But so long as it remained unfinished, the Ring Collapsiter was inherently perilous, inherently difficult to protect from the vagaries of time and space and chance. Every collapson weighed eight billion tons, after all, and even at a range of forty million kilometers, the sun’s gravity was considerable. Precautions or no, nature wanted the two to come together.

“The details are complex,” Tamra said, taking a sip of lemonade and glancing approvingly down at the glass. “I’m not entirely sure I understand them.”

“Is Declarant Sykes still in charge of the project?”

“He is, yes.”

“Then I shall get the details from him. But the ring is falling again? And our previous methods are unable to save it?”

She nodded. “I’m told that’s so.”

“Will it take six months, this time? Or is it free-falling under pure gravitation? Have I time for a night’s sleep before faxing myself downsystem?”

Tamra appeared to consider for a moment, then nodded. “We have some time, yes. It’s ten months before the crisis comes to a head, and I’m inclined to think we’re in very deep trouble if you need every moment of that. So the answer is yes, you may remain here until morning. I’ll send a copy of myself down with news of the delay.”

“Where are your robots?” Bruno asked again. It was they who should do such messenger work, as well as their primary function as bodyguards. In truth, Her Majesty looked almost naked without them.

She laughed musically and rose from her seat. “Do I need them here, Philander? From whom are they to protect me? There are… times… when even the most discreet witnesses are unwelcome.”

Bruno frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Oh, Bruno,” she said, stepping around the table to plant her lips on his.

Bruno never could say no to her. Or rarely, anyhow, and last night they’d fallen together like randy teenagers, their decades apart like some kind of annoyingly long weekend. Still in love, damn them; all their fighting and sulking was for naught, a moment’s tantrum in the long, long morning of their lives. But today—despite the way it had begun—was not about the two of them, but about the Queendom itself. Today was business sans pleasure, and what Queen and Philander didn’t know how to separate the two? Formality seeped and hardened between them as they dined, dressed, and finally, traveled.