The Wellstone

Chapter seven. Freedom blast

The sheet weighed three tons, and took twelve people two whole days to fold up. When they were done, it was forty layers thick, bulging chest-high with air pockets, and still bigger than the furrowed field of the Hobby Farm, some eighty-five meters across. With its waterproof liner gone, the lake drained alarmingly during this time, finally bottoming out at about half its original depth, and there were reports—unconfirmed by anyone reliable—that the hills and plateau on the planette’s eastern hemisphere had begun to slump as well. Meanwhile, Xmary and her crew were canning food and fermenting jugs of cider and cutting/pasting/sealing the fifteen space suits, which everyone agreed were a good idea in case the ship sprang a leak or something. Bascal had to help with that part, though, because it turned out he and Conrad were the only ones who knew the first thing about matter programming.

It began to dawn on Conrad that they were going to get caught. There was no way to hide this much activity, even from an apathetic Queendom that considered them helpless. At some point, the Palace Guards were going to report all this. Hell, even a telescope would reveal the changes in the planette’s appearance. At any moment, the fax gates would pour out a sea of Constabulary officers, or broadcast new instructions to the robots that were already here, and it would all be over. Again.

“We need to sabotage the gates,” Bascal said to him, as if reading his thoughts. The two of them were up on the easternmost rock formation, overlooking the nowlandlocked boathouse and—just barely peeking over the horizon—the docks, which stood now in only a meter of dirty-looking water. In theory the two of them were surveying the launch site; to the south, D’rector Jed’s cabin was also just barely visible, and the guy ropes would sprawl from there to the docks, with the balloon itself curling off to the northeast, almost reaching the paved path they facetiously referred to as the Holy Fuckway,⁴ which circled wide around the lake.

“Where will we get our supplies?” Conrad asked. His voice sounded higher and squeakier than usual; they were almost six meters up, and the air was thinner.

Bascal waved a hand impatiently. “Not the fax machines, the gates. The telecom hardware that links them to the Nescog. There are only two of them on the planette.”

“Oh. So how do we sabotage them?”

“With a crowbar, idiot. Or a sledgehammer. Anything, really. They’re wellstone, but they’re not programmed to withstand an attack. Circuitry is delicate.”

“You’ve smashed one before,” Conrad speculated.

Bascal nodded. He was looking up now, at the sky, at the “sun,” and at the dull, starlike speck of Sol that, from up here, could readily be discerned in broad daylight. “Yeah. Twice.”

Then he looked back at the ground, picked out Ho Ng in the not-so-distance, cupped his hands, and began calling out directions. “Ng! Ng! Get a crowbar or something and meet me by the boathouse!”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Conrad asked. The knot of unease in his stomach had not loosened. If anything, it was getting tighter. “If we smash the gates, we’re really committing.”

“Committing a crime?” Bascal said. He could turn a sneer into something friendly, an assurance that you were smart enough and raw enough to see the error in your statement. For some reason, Conrad suddenly found this power vaguely frightening.

“Well, y... it is a crime, yes. But we’re in plenty of trouble already. What I meant was, it commits us. There’ll be no other way off the planette, and if we’ve made any sort of mistake...” His voice withered under Bascal’s glare; it took real effort to finish. “This could be very dangerous. We could be killed.”

“That’s what backups are for. The Friendly Products Corporation took an image of you on your way up here, right?”

“I don’t want to be restored from backups.”

Bascal studied him quietly, for several seconds. “Are you losing your nerve?”

Conrad couldn’t keep himself from shrugging. “Not losing it, I just ... What is it again, that we’re trying to accomplish? Suddenly I’m not sure. Revolution?”

“Revolution,” Bascal agreed.

“But that’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, we can’t win. We can cost them time and money and stuff; we can make a statement. But we can’t overthrow them or anything. Not by building a sailboat.”

“You don’t understand,” Bascal said, and he sounded a little sad.

“So explain it.”

“Explain it? It ought to explain itself. Our revolt isn’t something they’ll lose; it’s something they’ll regret. They have such an easy time forgetting about us, putting us off. Which is ironic, considering the cultural patterns they’re working from. If you asked the Old Moderns about paradise, some would have said it was a tropical stone age full of gatherers and hunters and fishermen. Some would say a network of small farming towns, or a medieval pocket monarchy straight out of fairy tales. Others, maybe a Modern, democratic nation-state held together by information technology. But Tonga was unique in the Modern world: it was all these things at the same time, in the same place. It was everyone’s paradise.

“By the end of the Modern period, the entire human race had its eyes on the Kingdom as, I dunno, a model for a new kind of civilization. Really it was all the old kinds, living right on top of each other. And to be fair, those Utopian ambitions genuinely have succeeded. They’ve smothered the original and lost its spirit—they’ve practically enslaved my parents—but along the way they’ve created something ... else. Something better, at least for them. They just forgot about their unborn, is all. You have to remember, the Old Moderns are still alive, and always will be, walking around in a state of constant amazement. But their paradise was built at our expense—happy children as part of the scenery, the hoped-for future, not part of the machine itself. Not part of the present.

“So, we’ve got to remind them every day, that we’re current human beings, not future ones, not potential ones, not pretend ones. What do people fear when they can’t die or be maimed? Slavery. Oppression. Meaninglessness. Even in the old days, most people would rather die than live by the will of someone else. Even for a decade or two. They fought wars to prevent it. They murdered their own children in their beds. With eternity ahead of us, do we dare to be timid? We need a place in society, a set of roles to grow into that aren’t bogged down by the weight of bureaucracy and prior humanity. We deserve a chance to live and breathe, as our parents have done, and if we die a few times—nobly and defiantly—it only strengthens the point.”

Conrad sat down. He had to think about that, to think it over in those terms.

“Do you hear what I’m saying?” Bascal pressed.

“I do. Yes. You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Every day of my life.” The prince nodded, considering and then agreeing with his own words. “Last summer I got sent to Niuafo’ou, the remotest and old-fashionedest of the Niua Islands, at the northern extreme of the old Kingdom. The name means ‘Exotic Coconuts,’ and believe me, it’s not referring to a fruit. Those people are serious: no gates, no wellstone, no TV or fax machines. You eat what you catch, and wear what you grow. And what you grow is one hundred percent Earth Original, no recombos or faxable mods. I used to love that island—I learned to sail in its central crater when I was five—but last year all I could think of was how small it was. How narrow-minded and closed. I had a boat; I could’ve sailed it to Vava’u in a couple of days. But there was never a right time to start, and soon the season was over and I was back at school. Opportunity lost.”

Conrad kicked some dirt off the gray cragginess of the rock. He wasn’t a coward; he knew that much. And what Bascal said was ... well, it put words to the feeling that had driven him into so much trouble already. Conrad had never tried to put it in words, didn’t even realize it could be done. But: if the words were accurate, did that necessarily make them true?

“How long,” he finally asked, “will this journey take? Seriously.”

“Two months,” Bascal answered.

“Two months? With fifteen of us in a log cabin? That’s crazy. That’s a long time.”

“If it were easy, there wouldn’t be much point. Think of the statement that makes. Not boohoo, I hate summer camp, but fuck you if you think this is over. It isn’t over. The system needs shocking, and we simply will not be controlled.”

Conrad let out a breath. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay. Let’s do it. Fucking space pirates.”

“All right! That’s the spirit! That’s the Conrad Mursk I know,” Bascal said, throwing an arm over Conrad’s shoulder and breaking out in probably the widest grin Conrad had ever seen on anyone.

Two days later, they were ready to fill the balloon. Ready to pile into D’rector Jed’s cabin, ready to launch. Ready to face the dangers and deprivations of their long voyage.

Except that Peter Kolb didn’t want to. Peter Kolb and four other boys, actually, but it was Peter who was doing the talking.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he insisted. “Our term will be over by the time you get there. We should wait.”

“For what?” Bascal asked calmly. “For them to come and arrest us?”

“For them to come.”

“Peter, the gates are down. If the authorities left today—which they may very well have done—even the fastest rescue ships would take nearly a week to get here. And the fastest ships are small, more like ambulances than troop carriers. Would they waste their ertial cruisers on us? That would take two weeks.”

“Ertial?”

“Yeah, ertial. Inertially shielded. I thought you were smart, boyo. They put a collapsium cap on the bow, and the black holes inside it deflect the vacuum energy which causes inertia. You can accelerate as fast as you want without feeling it. But it’s expensive, right? There aren’t many ships equipped with it—especially large ones. So if they send a fusion boat—which is what they’ve probably done—then it’s eight weeks or more, possibly sixteen.”

Peter crossed his arms. “They’re not leaving you out here for sixteen weeks, Bas. They’re not.”

“Look, we’re leaving. Get used to it.”

“I’m not leaving,” Peter said. He gestured behind him. “James and Raoul aren’t leaving. Khen isn’t.”

Khen shook his head to emphasize the point, while James and Raoul just looked hangdog, unhappy at defying their pilinisi. Bertram, whom Peter hadn’t seen fit to mention, looked blank, as if the question didn’t interest him and he just happened to be standing there. But that couldn’t be right, because Bertram and sailing were practically synonymous. He even had a fucking reentry vehicle tattooed on his foot—now there was a high-maintenance way to travel. What did it mean, if Bertram had seen the fetula math—had tacitly approved it, by failing to object— and yet was backing out at the last minute?

“Bert,” Conrad said, glaring pointedly. “What’s this about?”

Bertram shrugged. “I just don’t want to.” He was a large-framed kid, not fat or force-grown but still vaguely solid, as if he were carved from wood. He’d probably cultivated the look, thinking it was dashing. Or his parents had.

“Afraid your family will disapprove?” Bascal sneered, in that way of his.

“No. That I will. This is getting out of hand.”

“Out of hand, yes,” Bascal agreed, nodding. “You grasp the essence. Even now, the authorities probably have no clue what we’re up to.” He made a sudden, explosive gesture, slapping a fist into an open palm. “Bam! The launch will shock them, and if we pipe light around the cabin and keep the sail turned edge-on to the Queendom—to Sol and the major planets—we should be fairly invisible. We’ll simply disappear, and they’ll wonder where we’ve gone, and why.”

The five of them stood there, and now Khen and Raoul were crossing their arms as well. Bertram was cool, barely there. James just looked uncomfortable.

“And why have we done it?” Peter asked.

Bascal scowled for a moment, balling his fists, but then the tension suddenly went out of him, and he smiled. “This isn’t a pissing match, kaume’a. If you want to stay, be my guest. I’m just a figurehead—technically speaking I can’t give legal orders, much less illegal ones. I can’t override your better judgment. But stay out of our way, hmm? Because the rest of us are going.”

“Um, that may not be wise,” Conrad felt compelled to point out.

Wordlessly, Bascal grabbed him by the meat of the elbow—hard, so it hurt—and dragged him to a stand of trees a few meters away for a private conference.

“What.”

Conrad shook free. “We’ll be using up several tons of lake water to make hydrogen. I’m not sure how much will be left in the lake when we’re done. We’ll also dump a lot of oxygen into the atmosphere, and then burn it out again when the bag ignites. The simulation shows a big shockwave, around the whole planette, and then heavy rain. I mean heavy, and probably hot. There’ll be no place to hide.”

“So?”

“So, they could be badly hurt. We’d be leaving them on a ruined planette, with no food supply.”

Bascal shrugged. “They’ll be fine. Rescue is on the way.” “And if they aren’t fine?”

The prince’s eyes glittered coolly. “That’s what backups are for.”

Conrad was aghast. Risking your own neck was one thing, but risking someone else’s without permission ... They were children, fundamentally. Children whose play-time had gotten too rough. “That’s not your decision to make, Bas. That’s murder.”

“Murder five, negligent denial of memory,” Bascal said. “A misdemeanor.”

Conrad shook his head. “Uh-uh. This is—what do you call it?—premeditated. You can’t lie to the Constabulary; they’ll know it wasn’t negligence.”

“Only,” Bascal said, with rising anger, “because you’ve just told me all this.” He turned toward the Palace Guard that dogged along two or three meters behind him at all times, and snapped officiously, “You there, guard: put a cone of silence on this individual, Conrad Mursk. We’ve heard enough from him for a while. I want nothing audible. Also prevent him from writing messages, or gesturing elaborately.”

“What—” Conrad shouted, but even as the word was forming, he felt the air around him beginning to thicken, to crawl up the pathway of his voice and into his throat, silencing all. The robot was facing him with its blank metal face, training a speaker on him, focusing sound waves. Sympathetic vibration: it observed him, predicted the quivering of his vocal cords, and sent out a canceling wave. The silencer effect.

He tried again: what, WHAT ARE YOU DOING! But it was like a two-man trampoline bounce, when your partner stole your energy and went soaring higher and higher into the air, leaving you glued to the fabric no matter how hard you jumped.

It was like being smothered. Conrad began to hyper-ventilate, breathing in and out and in and out, much too fast. He knew the process didn’t actually interfere with his breathing, but tell that to his muscles, his lungs, his throat, which was already getting hoarse and yet could produce nothing more than a faint squeak or click. The robot advanced, taking up a position immediately beside him. Conrad shrank away, but of course the robot followed right along.

Bascal watched him with great interest. “Feels weird? I’ll bet it does. Sorry it has to be this way, boyo.” He studied Conrad for several seconds, not looking sorry, and when he finally spoke his voice was impatient. “Fuck, man, just breathe. It’s not hurting you. I’ll take it off as soon as we seal the hatches. I just don’t want you blowing our ride over ... what, a guilty conscience? I’ve liberated you from the possibility of action. You can’t affect anything. The guilt is all mine.”

“What’s going on?” Peter called out, from beyond the trees. He was coming in here. Behind him, Ng’s crew was dragging the electrolysis hardware along the Holy Fuckway, up toward the docks.

Bascal gave him a cheerful thumbs-up. “Nothing, just a discussion.”

Peter wasn’t buying that. “What’s wrong with Conrad?”

“Got something in his throat, I think. He’s breathing, though, so he must be okay.”

Conrad glared with a feeling beyond anger. This wasn’t a prank, or even a cruel humiliation. This was invasive, like a rape, except really it was a murder, and Conrad was the accessory. He put a level hand up across his neck, and would have drawn it sideways in a “you’re dead” gesture, except that the robot—with bullet-quick movements— caught his forearm in a cool and painless grip, and eased it gently but firmly back down toward his side.

Murder, Conrad mouthed at Peter. Death. Kill. He’s going to kill you.

But Peter wasn’t getting it, wasn’t looking closely at Conrad at all. “You punched him,” he said to Bascal, who shrugged and didn’t deny it. “That’s mean. He can’t fight back, not with your bodyguard holding him. You’re the only man on this planet allowed to throw a punch.”

“Oh, I’m not allowed,” Bascal said, with a cryptic little smile. Then he strode off in the direction of the docks, and Peter, with a quick glance in Conrad’s direction, turned and followed him, intent on discussing the point further.

Conrad could only watch as the solar panels were set in place and the cables were dipped in the muddy lake, and the water around them began to fizz and boil. Four boys dragged the end of the folded balloon/bag/sail into place, and it billowed as if in a breeze. A bubble appeared in the material, and soon it was swelling, filling. Boys were arranging themselves underneath it, lifting it up so the hydrogen would travel down the length of the bag rather than spilling out the open mouth.

“This’ll take a while,” Bascal observed, to no one in particular. He was polite enough—if you could call it that—to stay away from Conrad, to keep from rubbing his nose in what had happened.

Or maybe it wasn’t politeness at all. Maybe he just didn’t want to draw attention to the issue, to get people wondering why Conrad wasn’t moving or talking, and had a personal robot guard following him around. The alarming thing was how easily everyone took this in stride. Nobody sought him out, asked him a question, even looked at him for more than a moment or two. It occurred to him, with foolish shock, that he was no major figure in these boys’ lives, any more than Peter Kolb or Raoul Sanchez were in Conrad’s own. They weren’t aching for his opinion. They weren’t pausing in their hurried work to fret about his well-being, any more than he ever had for them. And these were his friends, right? Probably the best friends he’d ever had.

Somebody struck up the chorus of the Fuck You Song, and within a few bars everyone was singing, the whole camp ringing and echoing with it. All except for Conrad, who had never felt lonelier in his life. Weirdly, he found himself wishing Feck were here, or his parents, or even that lady from the police station. Somebody uninvolved in this conspiracy.

He jabbed an elbow into the Palace Guard’s impervium side, and even this was ignored. Bascal might as well have made him invisible, intangible, a ghost. He considered dropping his pants, just to get some attention, then wondered if his escort would even allow it.

While the song rolled on, the Palace Guards had begun to gather on the dock. One of them said something, in a voice that was loud and polite but not quite distinguishable over the noise. The song faltered and died.

“This activity is dangerous,” the guard repeated. “You must desist.”

Bascal snorted. “Dangerous? This activity is necessary.”

The robot turned. “Spectral analysis of the gas in this enclosure indicates an explosive.”

“Not at this altitude,” Bascal countered. “Too much xenon. It’ll just burn.”

And that was true: you could light a match or campfire or barbecue grill with no problem, although the flames were reddish and somewhat sickly. But the boys’ research had indicated a problem with the more rapid forms of combustion. Xenon atoms were just too heavy; heating them soaked up all your energy. And they were large, swarming among the smaller oxygen and hydrogen molecules like elephants at a dog-and-cat show.

The robot considered this for a second or so, and then said, “Network confirmation is not available. However, internal simulation supports the assertion. What is the purpose of this activity?”

“It’s a balloon,” Bascal answered, obviously seeing little point in lying.

“It is anchored to a structure whose foundation has been undermined. The structure’s weight may not be sufficient to counteract buoyancy.”

A cautious look came over Bascal’s face. “Guard, are you programmed to interfere with educational activities?”

“No,” the guard replied.

“What are your exact instructions?”

The robot, faceless, considered Bascal. It seemed to understand that something important was happening, that Bascal was up to something. Detecting bad intentions was the thing’s entire purpose. That, and protecting the prince—even from himself. Anyway, they’d been overhearing all the important conversations, and surely must understand at least the gist of it all. Finally, the robot said, in King Bruno’s voice, “Hold to the camp schedule, and keep these kids from hurting each other. The fax is for camp activities only.”

“That’s all?”

“Other than built-in directives and prior standing orders, yes.”

The two of them faced one another—a Poet Prince versus the quantum computers of a brilliant but obedient machine.

“Guard,” the prince said carefully, “we are leaving this planette. I’ll go crazy if we don’t. Kindly support us by staying out of the way.”

The guard digested that, and replied, “You may not perform any activity without accompaniment.”

“Very well,” Bascal said, nodding. “One guard will accompany us.”

“A minimum of two guards are required in the presence of royalty.”

“Two, then.”

The robot did not reply. Did that mean it agreed? Assented? Conrad wanted to scream his objections. But the cables in the water bubbled on, and the bag slowly filled.

At first there was just a gas pocket, swelling down here at the bag’s lower end, but the boys did a fair job of teasing it along, driving it up the length of the wellstone tube. Eventually, the middle of the bag gained buoyancy and lifted into the air, forming a great arch like a rainbow over the planette’s northern hemisphere, while teams of handlers held the ends down firmly. This was impressive, considering how enormous and heavy the thing was. The wellstone film was translucent and microscopically thin, but there was a lot of it, folded over on itself several dozen times.

Then the rainbow itself began to swell and fatten, and Bascal gave the order to release the upper end, which shot up like a cork in water. It swelled as the pressure around it eased, dropping off rapidly with altitude. Now the balloon was the size of a small cabin, rippling slightly in the convection breeze, and the growing team of handlers was having more and more trouble holding it down. There was a lot of nervous joking, nervous laughter, boys calling for assistance or complaining that their fingers were tired.

“If you’re not a handler,” Bascal called out, over the rising commotion, “get in the cabin. Now! Now!”

And it was really happening. They were leaving, soon, in the next couple of minutes.

“There may be danger to any person left behind,” one of the robots said. “You may not leave any person behind.”

“Danger?” said Peter. “What danger?”

“The men staying behind are volunteers,” Bascal said. “They’re awaiting a rescue craft.”

“What danger?” Peter asked again.

“The explosion,” Bascal told him impatiently. “And some rain. It might get a little rough.”

“This is out of control,” Bertram said to the robot. “Stop it now. Please.”

The robot regarded him without comment. It wasn’t programmed to take orders—or even suggestions—from anyone but palace staff.

“It’s too late to stop it,” Bascal said. His voice was calm, brisk, triumphant. “The bag is an explosion waiting to happen. When we let it go, it rises and expands, and its buoyancy increases. If it doesn’t detonate immediately, it detonates when we unmoor the cabin and float a little higher.”

As if in answer, one of the Palace Guards danced forward and grabbed the bottom of the balloon. Another of them did the same.

“Guards,” Bascal said, annoyed, “in about five minutes that material is going to become very slippery. You will not be able to hold it. The balloon will rise and explode, possibly injuring me. You must escort me to a safe place: a wellstone-reinforced structure which is not anchored to the planette.”

The guards, watched closely and nervously by everyone, pondered this.

“All children must enter the structure,” they finally said.

“I’m not going up in that thing,” Peter insisted. “I’m not.”

There were guards all around now, and one of them took hold of Peter’s wrist. Preparing to drag him to safety.

“Let go of him,” Bascal said impatiently. “Do you have any instruction to protect him from himself?”

“No,” the guard admitted.

“Then let him go. He’s not welcome among us. Run away, Peter. Head for the hills. You have about two minutes.”

“You’re a shit, Bascal!” Peter screamed. He was crying now, and Conrad didn’t blame him a bit. He realized what should have been obvious all along: that Bascal was crazy. He’d inherited his father’s driving passions and his mother’s easy charm, plus an artistic sensibility that seemed to come straight out of nowhere. But where was the de Towaji compassion that had won Bruno three Medals of Salvation in the days before his kingship? Where was the Lutui common sense, or the Tongan tradition of respect?

In that moment, it seemed that young Bascal would do anything, pay any price, to shock and embarrass his Queendom. He was enjoying Peter’s fear. And suddenly there were no safe options, not for Peter, not for any of them.

“Garbage pussy bloodfuck,” Ho Ng replied, sounding outraged on his monarch’s behalf. “You better run, little fucker.”

“Yeah,” Steve Grush added. Apparently he was back on the management team again.

Peter didn’t wait to be told a third time. Taking half a second to weigh the odds and face reality, he just put his head down and sprinted off, heading east past the rock formations, presumably toward the hills on Camp Friendly’s other side. And though he faced probable injury and certain abandonment, to his credit he did not wail or look back.

“Anyone else?” Bascal asked, looking around pointedly.

Nobody took him up on it. Nobody moved or breathed.

“All right, then. To the cabin. You!” He swept a pointing finger at the boys and robots holding down the bottom of the balloon. “Hang on tight and follow me. Your lives depend on it. We’re stopping right outside the cabin door. Clear?”

Nobody questioned the order. And since Conrad didn’t have a job to do, and couldn’t object, and didn’t care to join Peter in pain and exile, he followed docilely along with the crowd. The moment would be etched in his memory forever, endlessly questioned and reexamined for manliness and sensibility and moral correctness, but the truth was, he didn’t give it much thought at the time. Didn’t have to. His choices were just too limited, his time too short.

The cabin, tightly bound in wellstone film, looked like a badly gift-wrapped toy. The only opening was a vertical slash in the film, just in front of the doorway, which had been rigged to seal itself when the air pressure started dropping. Bascal arrived at the cabin slightly ahead of the others, and bent to snatch something up from the pit of its undermined foundation. A bottle? Green glass with a concave bottom. A wine bottle? Where had he gotten such a thing? Had D’rector Jed, or one of the other counselors, kept a private stash somewhere?

“In honor of my Latin ancestry,” the prince said, “I christen this ship Viridity: the burning green stamina of youth.”

Then he smashed the bottle against the gray-black film and the logs beneath it. The liquid inside was clear, like water. And without further ceremony, he commenced an inspection of the cables—wellstone ribbons, really—that trailed down from the roof, leading off in the direction of the towering column of the balloon. And the balloon was approaching, yes, carefully carried to its launch site at the front of the cabin. The butterflies in Conrad’s stomach were restless indeed.

When he got to the d’rector’s cabin himself, Xmary was there in the doorway, holding the edges of the wellstone aside and looking out with a worried expression. “Six,” she said, touching the shoulder of the boy in front of him—Bertram Wang—then ushering him inside. Next she touched Conrad, acknowledging his solidity without really seeing him. “Seven.”

Conrad went inside, with his robot escort following close behind.

“Are they coming?” she asked with obvious distaste. She pointed to the Palace Guard, then to the corner. “All right, you, over there. Stay out of the way and try not to fall on anyone.”

Her maternal, officious tone was obviously modeled on Her Majesty’s. Clearly she saw herself in that role, at least for this particular time and place, although Conrad doubted very much that Queen Tamra had ever been involved in anything so harebrained. But the guard, for whatever reason, chose to obey her.

“Find a mattress,” she said to Conrad and Bertram. The phrase sounded rehearsed, like she’d said it several times already, and indeed, the floor was littered with mattresses, and the boys who weren’t already on one were looking for one.

Seeing his opportunity, Conrad slipped into Jed’s own room, where a number of empty mattresses lay.

“Testing!” he screeched, and the sound was audible. The robot, with its noise-canceling sonic waves, was on the other side of the wall. But Conrad’s voice was hoarse—nearly gone—from trying to shout.

“Better lie down,” Bertram said. “Fast.”

Belatedly, Conrad remembered that this room was where Bascal had put all the controls. He didn’t want to face Bascal. But how many free mattresses were there in the other room? Was there time to go back and forth, looking? The view through the window was a hazy confusion of moving bodies and gray translucent film. Right now, the film wrapped around the cabin had no orders to be transparent, but even so he could make out the last few boys straggling in to claim their spaces.

“Shit,” he said. And then his Palace Guard reappeared in the doorway, and he could say nothing more. It took up a post in the far corner, looming over Conrad’s makeshift acceleration bed like a chrome-plated angel of death.

“Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,” he heard Xmary say in the room next door. “We’re one short. Where is Peter?”

“Not coming.” Ho laughed with cruel glee.

And then Bascal’s voice: “Lanyards free! Now! Release the bag!”

There were some rustling noises, footsteps, and the slamming of a wooden door. Then the floor lurched and swung, thumped hard against something, lurched and swung again. Conrad threw himself flat.

“Oh, God,” Bertram was saying. “Oh gods and God and gods and God ...”

Conrad wasn’t a praying man, but for the first time in his life in felt the urge, felt the physical attention of the universe, personified. Dear God. Dear God. I have sinned in various ways, and I’m sorry. They—the ever-mysterious “they”—said God was nothing more than an anthropomorphic urge, an impulse of the human brain to impose pattern and personality on random events. Donald and Maybel Mursk, Conrad’s parents, had always thought so, albeit with an Irish tinge of hope and dread. But speculation was inevitable: what happened to the soul, when a body died and fresh copies were printed? Was there a soul at all? There were all kinds of theories about this, and Conrad feared he was about to learn the truth.

Ho and Bascal staggered into the room, sprawling on the two empty mattresses as the cabin swung wide arcs and began, ever so slightly, to twirl. Outside the window, the gray-white, film-obscured sky was growing dark.

“Here we go!” Bascal shouted. “Here we bloody, fucking g—”

The hydrogen ignited with a gut-wrenching whump! that was much louder than any thunder Conrad had ever heard. And the force of the explosion was directed downward, out of the bag, blossoming down along the guy ropes and the cabin roof, storming into the planette’s atmosphere in a roiling cloud of hot steam. Conrad suddenly felt as if five people had fallen on him.

Weak gasps and gurgles and screams rose up all around, and Conrad wanted to scream too. But then there were only four people on his chest, and then two, and then none at all, and he was floating off his mattress, grabbing at the safety straps he’d forgotten to tie around him. They were in outer space. They were in outer fucking space, hurtling toward the planette’s pinpoint fusion “star” at a hundred meters a second. In a log cabin.

I’m sorry, God. This was a really bad idea.