The Wellstone

Chapter twenty. The arena sentence

Finally, an official summons arrived, and when Officer Boyle came down to let Conrad out, he was accompanied by a pair of gleaming Palace Guards. The fax was up a flight of stairs and through a couple of doorways, and once he got there, stepping through it felt no more or less fateful than any other such journey. Conrad was killed and reborn, his memories and identity copied into a different bit of matter.

Where he ended up was a surprise, though—not the palace at all, but some sort of outdoor amphitheater, ringed by palm trees all around, beneath a bright blue sky full of puffy, flat-bottomed clouds. The smell of flowers leaped into his nose, and he was greeted at once by a familiar-looking woman, one of the Tongan courtiers from the queen’s staff, in a tapa-patterned dress of red and brown and glowing white. She glanced at Conrad, then at the sketchplate in her hand, then back at Conrad again.

“Mursk?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“This way, please. My name is Tusité, and if that doesn’t strike a fear in you, then get tricky with me, and you’ll find out why it ought to.”

She led him down one of two staircases. The seats here, enough for a few thousand people, were mostly empty—except for one knot of a dozen or so kids sitting in the center of the first three rows. One of them was Bascal, dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and pants of a purple that was not quite the forbidden royal shade. He wore the wellstone scarf Robert M’chunu had cut for him from Viridity’s sail, and around his head rested a thin crown of wrinkly aluminum foil—clearly his idea of a joke. He was laughing loudly at something.

And then, without warning, the whole gang down there burst into Conrad’s favorite stanza of the Space Pirate Song:

Well they can’t tell us to shape up and they can’t tell us to ship out,

And they can’t come do our laundry though we sometimes wish they would,

And they’re never gonna catch us ’cause we won’t do nothing stupid

So we’re sailing toward salvation in an angel made of wood!

This didn’t seem like the best foot to be putting forward at a sentencing hearing, but the boys pressed on heedlessly into the chorus:

We’re the pirates of the Queendom; we’re the pirates of the spaceways.

We’d be pirates of the Nescog if they ever let us on.

So we’re flying through the Kuiper Belt and steering just with starlight,

And we’ve nothing else to do all day but sing this pirate song!

With a shock, Conrad saw the boy Bascal had his arm around: Peter Kolb, last seen on the surface of Camp Friendly, running away with his eyes full of tears. But today he was looking not only joyous, but downright smug. His eyes found Conrad and brightened further as the song broke up, with each of the boys trying to throw in a different verse. Bascal melted back into the mob, suddenly talking to someone else.

“Hi!” Peter called out.

“Um, hi,” Conrad answered uncertainly, as he and Tusité drew near. “You seem ... cheerful.”

Peter shrugged. “It’s our day.”

Conrad frowned. “Our judgment day, you mean.”

“This is your place,” Tusité told him. “Stand here and be good.”

Her hand left his arm, and she was on her way back up the stairs, with another Tusité trailing behind.

“So what happened to you, anyway?” Conrad asked Peter. “Did you get killed?”

“Me? No.” Peter sounded surprised. “Though I was marooned for six weeks. Pickings got pretty lean; that rainstorm washed out a lot of the plants and stuff. By the time the navy showed up, I’d gotten very skinny. I was tired all the time, not really doing anything. It sucked.”

“I’ll bet!”

“Well, it’s done. The navy people were astonished when they found me there. We were already famous for having departed.”

“We?” It was Conrad’s turn to sound surprised.

“Hey,” Peter said defensively, “I helped a lot with the planning. It was my mission, too.”

“And mine,” said Martin Liss beside him.

“Little gods,” Conrad exclaimed softly. “I tried to save you, Martin. I really did. Twice!”

“Hey, don’t fret. We all knew the hazards; we all took the chance. I’m just happy to have been a part.”

“Me too,” said Jamil Gazzaniga and Raoul Sanchez together.

Bloody hell, what was going on here? Why was everyone so happy? Especially the dead, the betrayed?

“Hey, bloodfuck,” said Ho Ng, clapping Conrad on the shoulder in a distinctly comradely fashion. Steve Grush clapped his other shoulder, and then James and Bertram and Khen and Preston and Emilio and Karl were all crowding around him, smiling, patting, shaking his hand.

“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Half you guys were murdered! By me, by Bascal! Why are you so cheery about it?”

Standing, smiling, the prince slid forward along the edge of a stone bench, parting the boys around him like a drop of soap in oily water. “Conrad, my man! Haven’t you turned on a TV?”

“Um, no. Why?”

“You’re fucking famous!” somebody shouted.

“Conscience of the revolution!” said someone else.

“What?”

Bascal nodded. “It’s true. We space pirates are the particular heroes of the Children’s Revolt. We’re its heart and soul, its inspiration.”

“What revolt? Us? Camp Friendly?”

The prince rolled his eyes. “Did you ask anyone? Did you read a headline? Did you hear anything? There were riots in three cities, boyo. Takeovers and ransoming on a bunch of neutronium barges, plus three other acts of space piracy, including the theft of my mother’s own grappleship. It was a general, systemwide uprising. What were you, in a cave?”

“Um. Well, almost.” They would have brought him a TV or newsplate if he’d asked for one. The king’s letter could probably have told him these things as well. Should it have occurred to him to ask?

“It was all because of us, Conrad. All inspired by us. And with the Palace Guard’s memory dump, you’re the most famous of all! Well, after me. And Xmary too, but she’s a special case, being in two of the crucial places at the same time.” At Conrad’s blank stare he explained, “Because she helped orchestrate the first August riot? With Feck? Oh, never mind, you dolt. Just stand there, all right? Look heroic.”

Conrad blinked. “This is a joke, right?”

But even as he was saying it, he could see Feck and Xmary walking down the steps together, shaking their fists in the air in gleeful defiance. And behind them were other people, other young people who looked vaguely Denverish somehow. The stands were filling up in clumps and clusters, but Feck and Xmary, with Tusité leading them, came right down to the row behind the last of the space pirates.

“Conrad!” Feck said happily.

“Hi, Feck. So you started a riot, did you?” The only answer was a grin so wide it must have been painful.

And then Xmary was there, waving her fists. But her grin was not so wide or self-assured, and it collapsed entirely when she looked into Conrad’s face. She stopped in front of him. “Hello, you.”

“Hi. Do you, um, remember ... I mean, which Xmary are you? Both?”

“Both,” she confirmed, then patted him on the cheek. “Yes, I remember you, you darling fool. How could I forget?”

Bascal stepped forward, taking one of Xmary’s hands and kissing it. At her arrival, his own smiles had collapsed as well. “Xiomara,” he said. “Hello. So very good to see you.”

And then, with a kind of sour look on his face, he took her hand and transferred it solemnly into Conrad’s grasp.

“Huh? What?” Conrad said, brilliantly.

The prince huffed. “I have eyes, don’t I? And ears, and the sense to know when it’s time.” To Xmary he said, “You’re right; we’re not a romantic match. And since I’m the Prince of Fucking Sol, you’ll be easy enough to replace.”

“What a rotten thing to say,” Conrad noted with sudden, rising irritation.

“Shut up,” Bascal snapped. “I’m doing you a favor. Treat her right and maybe we’ll still be friends.” And then he melted back into the stands, taking refuge behind Ho and Steve and the others.

Conrad looked at the hand he’d been given, and then at the young woman attached to it. Behind her, Feck was looking on with a sour, wounded expression of his own. Xmary the heartbreaker? Leaving a trail of bodies and shattered dreams in her wake? He could see it in his mind’s eye: a Xiomara Li Weng who’d stayed home with her parents on that fateful night, waiting for a secret copy of herself that never came home. Did she suspect she’d met the prince? Been arrested? Smuggled herself to an all-boys summer camp, and then escaped? Who could possibly suspect a thing like that?

But then she’d somehow encountered this Yinebeb Fecre, this runaway who knew people in high places. Who knew missing people—revolutionaries on a mysterious voyage. How exciting! How intriguing and suggestive! He tried to imagine what that Xmary would be like, how she might react. That experience was so wildly different than the events aboard Viridity—less dirty and smelly and crowded, less frightening. A truly romantic adventure, to balance out the deprivations and indignities of space.

But did he know her well enough to speculate like this? Would his guesses be wildly inaccurate? He was pretty sure the Conrad Mursk on board Viridity bore little resemblance to the one that had left Cork County three months before. It was hard to be yourself, in conditions like that. Or perhaps the very notion of “self” was a contextual thing—a collection of learned responses to a particular environment. He found the idea oddly cheering: the human spirit shining through adversity.

“I’ll bet reintegration was a shock,” he said to her.

A flicker of smile came and went. “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the stands behind them. “So, uh ... you and Feck?”

She sniffed. “In a manner of speaking, yes. But I believe he had his share of ... contacts in the underground.”

Indeed, the boy was mobbed by female admirers up there, and seemed to know them all. Was that really Feck? Had he and Xmary really ...

“Oh.”

She scratched her neck. “Look, Conrad, it was—” “Exciting?” he offered sullenly. “Romantic?”

“I was going to say, none of your business.”

He nodded. “Okay. I deserved that. And do I inherit this legacy? Am I next in line?”

“Now that wasn’t smart,” she said, pulling her hand away. Her cheeks reddened—she still had that marvelous blush, so surprsingly easy to trigger. “You can’t trade hearts around like coupons, Hero Boy. Or didn’t you know? Thanks to you and your friends I’ve lost my parents and my home. Anyway, what makes you think I want to have this conversation here, in front of the world? I suppose my charms have driven you mad, but believe it or not, we are about to be sentenced.”

“Um, right,” he said. Then, mustering a bit of sincerity: “Sorry.”

That seemed to soften her. She touched his cheek again. “Oh, my. Twenty years, Conrad Mursk. Maybe thirty. They say the heart remembers. Maybe someday, when we’re out of prison, a little bird will whisper my name, and you’ll think of me, and maybe even look me up. I believe I’d like that.”

He could feel his own cheeks coloring now, warming. How absurd, this myth of his heroism! He’d been selfish and frightened through every minute of an ordeal he’d personally helped to create. And even now, in the relative safety of the Queendom, the touch of a soft hand was all it took to unravel his courage. “I’m an idiot,” he warned. “I really am.”

“Go. Sit,” she said, waving him away with an expression he couldn’t read. She moved back, taking a seat among the Denverites, and Conrad had the uncomfortable sense that a piece of him went with her. Blindly, eagerly, heedless of consequence. He hoped she would treat it kindly.

The crowd—tended by half a dozen Tusités—was growing thicker and thicker: not only a Denver section almost two hundred children strong, but a Calcutta section as well, and another smaller one for ... Athens? He also recognized the TSA Africans from Refuge. They were clothed for the occasion, but even so their blue skin really stood out. And around them stood many dozens of others, in a variety of colors and manners of dress.

Theoretically, the Queendom was one big society, freed by the Nescog from the tyrannies of time and space and geography. That had certainly been Conrad’s unexamined view. But he could see now that there were other yokels in other provinces, preserving their own little bubbles of regional culture. These kids over here had a vaguely Martian look: hair teased high over loose-fitting blouses and pastel slacks. Those over there had the squinty, buttoned-down look of Antarcticans—a look he’d had no idea he could even recognize.

It occurred to him that before the start of whatever happened next, this stadium was actually going to fill up. Two thousand people? More?

“What is this?” he asked out loud, of no one in particular. “Who are all these people? Revolutionaries, all of them?”

It was Peter Kolb who answered. “Revolutionaries, all. Not all space pirates, obviously, but rioters and saboteurs.”

“But ... wow, this must be a tenth of the children in the Queendom.”

Peter shrugged. “More like a thirtieth. But yeah, it’s a lot, and the ranks of sympathizers are even larger. Our exploits really struck a chord.”

Conrad nodded, thinking about that. It seemed important: could any society really lock up a thirtieth of its own children? Especially if their crimes were more celebrated than reviled? Maybe there would have to be a just solution, a Restoration-style rearchitecting of the social order. And then, in one of those little moments of grown-up awakening, it occurred to him that he didn’t really have any idea what that would mean. What did a perfect world look like? If anyone asked him, he could only stare back at them, slack-jawed and simple.

Great. Just great. He’d fought and struggled and made a mark on the universe, for no clear purpose. For the hell of it. Amazingly enough, he had no list of demands to nail over anyone’s doorway. Did Bascal? Did any of them? Would Their Majesties even ask, or care?

He took his seat, feeling morose. And since he seemed to be the only one in a crowd of thousands who felt that way, he felt it even more keenly. Did these people imagine some culmination of a prince’s clever plan? How disappointing for them.

And the amphitheater really did fill, getting louder and rowdier as it went, until finally the queen’s courtier, Tusité, mounted the stage and glared out at them all.

“You! Quiet! Quiet, everyone.”

Conrad couldn’t tell if the acoustics were natural or wellstone-enhanced, but in any case her voice punched right through the crowd noise like a comet fragment at twenty kips. The conversation splintered, swirling and withering into silence as her gaze swept from one side of the crowd to the other.

“Be silent, everyone. And stand up. Your king and queen will be here shortly.”

There were a couple of boos and catcalls at this remark, but they were met with waves of shushing and pushing and even—it looked like—some good, hard punches to the stomach. Whatever they might be guilty of, whatever grievances they had, these myriad kids were mostly loyal citizens at heart. This, Conrad supposed, was the very thing that separated revolutionaries from ordinary criminals: a desire to make things better not for themselves, but for everyone else. Even if the personal cost was high.

“That’s right,” Tusité said. “If you want respect, you start by giving it. We will now sing ‘Praise upon Her.’ ”

And they did, with Tusité leading them, and the sound of it was beautiful. By the age of ten, everyone in the Queendom had had at least rudimentary voice training, and the tune and lyrics were of course familiar, although a part of Conrad—at once innocent and weirdly alert— felt as though he were really hearing the song for the first time. It didn’t take long to get through the first verse, and Tusité didn’t lead them through the second. Soon the echoes were dying away, leaving behind only the imprint of memory.

Then the fax machine at the back of the amphitheater crackled, and Conrad turned just in time to see Their Majesties, Tamra-Tamatra Lutui and Bruno de Towaji, step through. They were holding hands at first, but let go almost immediately, commencing a stately walk together down one of the stairways, flanked fore and aft by pairs of Palace Guards. He could distinctly hear their footsteps, the clump clump of boot heels on the wellstone marble of the steps.

Her Majesty held the Scepter of Earth in her left hand. His Majesty held a rolled-up document in his right. The two of them looked grim, unhappy, determined. Their eyes did not survey the crowd, did not make contact, and Conrad was struck by the notion that this man and woman weren’t people at all—the parents of his friend, whom he’d spoken with personally—but animate mouthpieces for a civilization of twenty-five billion. And the hairs on his neck stood up, because it was hard enough to explain yourself to two people—to one person. To yourself. Was there any hope of being understood by an entire solar system?

The staircase led all the way down to the base of the stage, whose edge the king and queen followed around until they came to a smaller, narrower staircase leading up onto it. And then, there they were at the focal point, the physical and psychological nexus of the stadium’s attention.

The crowd was utterly silent.

“Good afternoon,” the queen said. She pointed with her scepter, sweeping it in an arc across the crowd. “You children—and the few dozen legal adults among you— have been very naughty. But you know that.”

There was scattered laughter. Ah, Queen Tamra, who always knew what to say.

“Many of your concerns,” she went on gravely, “are entirely understandable. However, as you will realize, our understanding does not and cannot equate to forgiveness. The rule of law cannot protect us from each other, and from ourselves, unless it is applied uniformly in all cases. Selective enforcement is the hallmark of a tyranny.”

That didn’t sound good at all.

She paused to let it sink in, and then continued. “In a very personal sense, we regret that your viewpoints were not presented legally. Our government includes numerous mechanisms for the redress of grievance that have operated effectively for hundreds of years. Granted, these channels are slow, as enlightened social change always should be. But impatience is one of the hallmarks of youth, and in many ways this is your argument.

“Childhood is a fleeting condition, and any justice which overruns its boundaries is no justice at all, but a service to the adults you will one day become. And your voices have been very clear on this point: that you will sacrifice the comfort and liberty of those future selves, in order to enjoy a different and more immediate sense of freedom in the here and now. Such a decision should not be—and in our estimation, has not been—made lightly. And again, we understand, even if we do not agree.”

She paused again. She had their absolute silence, their absolute attention.

“The matter of your punishment has been the focus of considerable debate and analysis. The solution we’ve arrived at is not one which comforts us, but justice can be like that sometimes. Please be aware that we love you, and wish no harm upon you. But you have brought this on yourselves.”

She pointed the scepter at the sky, and lowered its butt end onto the stage with a soft thump. As gestures went, this one was clear enough: the prosecution rests.

King Bruno unrolled the document in his hand, glanced at it, and then looked up at the audience. “Er, hmm. There’s a lot of legalese in this: the whereas and the shall and the by-the-power-vested. Let’s skip that part, shall we? And allow me to reiterate: this isn’t a desirable solution. But it appears to be a necessary one.”

He paused, looking around, and now he wasn’t the avatar of a nation, or even the father of a friend, but just some nice man stepping in with bad news. “The gist of it,” he said, “is exile. You’ll be provided with a starship and the means to form a reasonable settlement in the worlds of the Barnard system, some five-point-nine light-years from Sol, which will be ceded to you for this purpose.”

A murmur ran through the crowd.

“And once this ship is commissioned and registered and this land grant is made, you will have forty-eight hours to remove yourselves from the borders of the Queendom, which you may not then reenter for a period of one thousand years.”

The murmur became a gasp.

“One thousand years,” the king repeated, “on pain of death and erasure. I can assure you, this sentence is not imposed lightly, nor in good humor. But your cooperation has been impossible to secure by other means.”

He scratched his chin, and tugged lightly at the end of his beard. “The, ah, the course ahead of you is a difficult one, and one I daresay you’ll regret. But it is precisely the course you have chosen, and precisely the one you deserve, and if there truly is a God who dwells within us, or is generated through us, or otherwise takes an interest in our affairs, then I pray that he will have mercy on your souls. Because Tamra and I, alas, cannot.”

He seemed poised for a moment to ask if there were any questions. But that was the scientist in him, the professor and declarant—an old reflex that sometimes showed through. Today he suppressed it, and remained regal.

“At this point,” the queen said, “you are all remanded to the custody of your parents, or parole officers for the adults and emancipated minors among you. We don’t yet know how long the preparations will take, as no voyage of this type has ever been attempted. But the expected cost is very high, and any further misbehavior in the meantime will be dealt with”—she peered down her nose at the audience—“very harshly.”

She paused for several seconds before adding, “That is all.”

And with that, the king and queen turned together, dismounted the stage, and began the climb back up toward the rear of the amphitheater, where the fax gates were. But they didn’t get even as far as the third row— Conrad’s row—before a purple-clad figure leaped from the stands and threw itself at them with a yell.

The heads of the Palace Guards swiveled, their arms coming partway up, weapon-fingers at the ready. But they made no other move, perhaps sensing that Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui had no harm in him at this moment. “I love you!” the prince screamed, throwing both arms around his parents in an embrace that nearly bowled them over. He was laughing and crying all at once, his strong voice quavering with emotion. “Thank you, thank you! The task of this grievous voyage has been lightly fulfilled, and I am ... I am . . . pickled with joy!”

Indeed, it was a perfect solution, and Conrad could see that Bascal had been right all along, about everything—even the pushy, malicious stuff. Tantrums and blackmail weren’t supposed to work; they just hardened parental and governmental resolve, right? But here the children were, openly reaping the benefits of it. A thousand years of freedom! A whole star system to call their own! Conrad was worldly enough—just barely—to appreciate the irony.

Bruno’s answer was soft, personal and private. He knew, probably from long experience, how to shelter his voice from the arena’s fine acoustics. But Conrad was only a couple of meters away, and could hear the king’s surprised muttering well enough. “It isn’t a reward, Bascal. It isn’t a good thing at all.”

“Oh, Father,” the prince replied fondly, hugging even harder. And they all lived happily ever after.

Like hell they did.

A: With some parallax view on the subject, I feel confident in citing “The Song of Physics” as His Majesty’s first true masterwork. Here we see the culmination not only of literary talent and real-world insight, not only of that famous wit, but also of generational outreach. The song is fundamentally a parting gift from son to father, and should be appreciated as such.

Q: It’s a much longer poem than anything he’d previously attempted, true?

A: Not only longer, but more universal in every sense. Here is a piece written with the future—not the present—in mind. With an audience which includes the Queendom, but is not limited to it. Of course, it’s the audacity of the project that truly inspires: the universe in twenty stanzas, with simple language and a compulsively tractable—one might almost say childish—cadence of melody.

Q: A gift to all of us, then. To posterity.

A: A parting gift, I would say, on the eve of a perilous exile. The poem is ebullient, but the gesture itself has an old-fashioned air, of separation and mortality. Just in case, we used to say. If this meeting be our last, have this token for thy memory of me. And so we shall.

—Critic Laureate Julia Aimes,

in a Q299 interview with FUSILIERS magazine