The Golden Queen

Chapter 7

Gallen wandered the pale green hallways of the city. The air was warm, moist, like the air inside a house-tree. The very city was alive, growing.

Windows in the roof let in some light, while glowing gems overhead provided the rest. As Gallen moved deeper into this living catacomb, he twice came upon open-air bazaars where merchants in colorful swirling robes sought to sell him fabulous merchandise: a pair of living lungs that could attach to his back and let him breathe underwater; the seeds to a flower that could be planted one day, grow six feet overnight, and break into glorious blooms; a hood that would let him talk to a dead man; a tiny plug that he could place in his ear so that he could always listen to music; a cream that not only removed wrinkles and blemishes from skin but also left the wearer pleasantly scented for a number of years.

Gallen recognized that much of it was junk and gadgetry, trifles for a people who had everything. But still vendors hawked their wares, trying to engage his attention in odd ways. At one shop, a beautiful woman appeared out of thin air. She was tanned and strong and wore only the slightest scrap of clothes. She smiled at Gallen and said, “Why don’t you come in here and try me on?” Then she walked into a shop. Gallen followed, and she went to a stack of pants, pulled a pair on and wriggled into them, then disappeared.

Gallen found himself staring at a display of pants, looking about for the woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly he realized that she had been created only to lure him into the shop. He left, found that similar devices were at nearly every store. Voices would speak from nowhere, demanding that he buy here and now in order to save. Spirit women would appear, begging him to purchase something from the shop, and always they were so beautiful as to make him dizzy.

A manic glee fell over Gallen, and he wandered the long corridors as if in some intoxicated daze, sampling confections that tasted of ambrosia, yet always declining to buy.

In one square, he found a beast that looked like a huge gray toad sitting in a chair, surrounded by bright containers filled with colorful powders. The toadman wore an immense wig of silver with many ringlets and triangles that cascaded down his shoulders. On his back he wore a number of tubes, and each tube had dozens of tiny appendages rising up from it-some with hairs on them, others with clamps or scalpels. All these appendages rose overhead and by use of various joints managed to converge on a small table in front of the toad. Children had gathered around, and Gallen stopped to look.

The toadman’s limbs all pointed to a small object at the center of the table, and Gallen stood breathless, watching. A purple dragonfly sat on a thin reed there, motionless. Dozens of tiny needles, or perhaps hairs, met at the focal point of the device, and Gallen saw that the hairs seemed to be stroking one of the dragonfly’s wings. Part of the dragonfly’s wing was missing, but the toadman’s machines were stroking it, creating a new wing.

Gallen’s jaw dropped open, and he walked around so that he could watch over the toadman’s shoulders. The old gray fellow was looking at writing that appeared in the air, fiery red letters that blossomed and departed so fast that Gallen couldn’t read them. An image of the dragonfly, magnified many times, sat in the air above the toadman’s head, and every few moments the toadman would look up at the image whenever a new layer of wing had been placed. He would stare at the image a moment, until new veins and an expanded portion of wing appeared, then glance down. His machines would begin constructing the rest of the dragonfly.

Within five minutes, the toadman finished. “Now, children, which of you would like this dragonfly I have formed?” he asked, and the children clapped and pleaded.

The toadman reached out with one warty gray finger, touched the dragonfly, and it climbed onto his long nail. He held the dragonfly aloft for a moment, then turned to Gallen.

“I think I will give this one to the child who looks like a man.” He extended the dragonfly to Gallen.

Gallen touched the toadman’s finger, and the dragonfly crawled to Gallen’s thumb and sat, wings pulsing. It was vivid purple with touches of red under its belly and in its wings. The children walked away, disappointed.

“Thank you,” Gallen said.

“It is nothing. In a few moments, its wings will dry, and it will fly away,” the toadman answered.

Gallen studied the toadman. He had yellow eyes, warty gray skin, and a mouth wide enough to swallow a cat whole. His arms and legs were thin, with baggy skin.

“You have never seen a Motak,” the toadman said.

“Is that what you are?” Gallen asked.

“Yes,” the toadman answered. “And if you knew of us, you would know that you are supposed to avert your eyes and not stare. On Motak, we stare only at those who are ugly.”

“I’m sorry,” Gallen said. “I didn’t mean to imply that you are ugly.”

“I know.”

“I was simply curious.”

“I know that, too,” the toadman said. “It has been ages since I have seen an adult so interested in the doings of a creator.”

“Is that what you do?” Gallen asked. “You create life?”

“Not true life. Only viviforms, artificial beings. Still, they look true enough, and they don’t know that they aren’t living creatures.”

“Can you create people?” Gallen asked.

“For a price. I can make a viviform that looks and acts any way that you like. Between jobs, I create pets for the children.” The dragonfly began flapping its wings.

“Thank you. I’m very grateful,” Gallen said, and he cupped the dragonfly into his palms, determined to carry it back to show Maggie.

“I thank you in return,” the toadman said. “It is good to see such light in the eyes of an adult again, especially during such hard times. May joy burn brightly in you.”

When Gallen returned to the cantina, patrons of the restaurant were freeing Orick from a net, and Maggie was nowhere to be seen.

Orick growled at those who freed him, “Why didn’t you stop him, lads? Why didn’t you stop him?” No one answered.

“Stop who?” Gallen asked, setting the dragonfly free. He pulled out a knife to cut at the fine webbing. Each tiny thread was tough as a nail and seemed to be glued to the wall.

“A man named Karthenor kidnapped Maggie!” Orick shouted. As Gallen helped cut through the last thread, Orick urged, “This way, Gallen!” and rushed down a corridor toward the heart of the city.

Orick barreled down the hallway, navigating by smell. Sometimes he would come to an intersection and stop, testing the scent in both directions. At other times, he would lunge down a corridor and then come up short, only to test the scent of some side passageway. After a few minutes, they reached a hallway that led to a dead end.

“They came here,” Orick said. “They came at least this far.” Orick sniffed the creamed-colored wall, stood up on his back legs and smelled the ceiling.

Gallen took Orick by the shoulders. “Now,” he said, “tell me everything that happened.”

Orick told Gallen of the visit by the vanquisher and how a man named Karthenor, Lord of the Aberlains, put a silver band around Maggie’s head and took her captive.

Gallen considered. As in any battle, he took stock of his assets and liabilities. He had his wits, his skills as a fighter, and two knives. Yet he did not know his enemies or their weaknesses. One old sheriff down in County Obhiann had often warned: “When you are confronted by an outlaw, always take stock of the terrain. Look for what cover you can find, watch to make sure he doesn’t have a bowman or a couple of lads sitting in the same bush you might want to hide under.”

Obviously, when it came to terrain, Gallen was at a phenomenal disadvantage. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you under some cover. If we go hunting for Karthenor together, he’ll spot you a mile off. But he’s never seen me. I will leg it back here and study the situation.”

They made their way back to the highway. The road was filling with people-coaches floated over its ruby surface. Some people had shoes that floated in the same manner, and they skated over the road faster than any horse could run.

Gallen and Orick walked north along the river for a mile until they came to some low wooded hills. Here they slipped into the brush and made camp. Gallen worried about Maggie. Every few moments he would verify some details. “This Karthenor said that Maggie would be working for him? Did he say where?”

“No,” Orick answered, yet Gallen felt more easy. If Karthenor needed workers, then Maggie should be all right. Karthenor wouldn’t want to harm a servant.

“I’ll have to find Maggie,” Gallen said. “To do so, I’ll need to sneak through the city. You can’t come with me.”

“But what should I do?” Orick asked. “I don’t want to just sit and wait.”

“I still need your help. We know Everynne came through the gate before us, but we don’t know where she may have come out. I’d like you to hunt for her trail. Maybe you can find her. I want you to make a thorough search, then come back here in two or three days.”

Orick agreed reluctantly, headed south. He looked over his back. “You’ll get her out all right, won’t you?”

“I’ll do my best,” was all Gallen could promise.

When Maggie woke in the morning, her head burned with a fever. She wondered at the pain. A voice whispered in her mind, “It is I, your Guide. I have been creating neural pathways into your brain and spinal column all night, and this causes your discomfort. By nightfall the process will be complete, and we will become one.”

Maggie tried to get up but could not move. Instead, the Guide let her lie abed for a few moments and began feeding her information at an incredible pace. “If you have questions,” the Guide said, “ask.”

The Guide began by showing her the structure of DNA in all of its intricacy. In brief visions, it revealed the function of each set of genes in the human genome, and how these genes were affected by variations. It showed her machinery and taught her how to run the tools that aberlains used in their work-chromosome readers, gene splicers, tissue samplers, DNA dyes. She learned how to remove egg cells from women and sperm from men, divide them into lots based on desirable characteristics that the cells would transmit, and then infect each lot with tailored genes to ensure that all progeny were properly upgraded to standards set by the dronon overlords. Once a batch of eggs and sperm were perfected, they could be mixed and incubated for sixty hours, then the resulting zygotes would be implanted into a woman’s womb.

The lesson lasted for nearly an hour, then the Guide forced Maggie from her bed, had her shower, and let her go down to the dining hall for breakfast. Maggie sat at a table with other aberlains, men and women who all wore Guides like hers. And though none of them spoke, she could hear their voices in her mind as they discussed the tasks that each would need to complete that day. She ate greedily, but the Guide forced her to stop just before she felt satisfied.

She spent the morning working in a clinic. Couples who had sought a license to bear children were there, and Maggie took egg samples from women, sperm from men. She laboriously tagged and labeled each sample, but since the dronon would allow only people with certain body types to reproduce, she ended up throwing most of the samples away. Instead, the women were implanted with zygotes from approved parents.

Several times during the day, the women asked Maggie, “Will I really be getting my own child? You won’t implant me with someone else’s child?”

Each time, Maggie’s Guide responded by comforting the potential mother and answering, “Of course you will get your own child. We take great care in labeling every sample, and there is no chance that the samples could get mixed. We will simply invest the cells with some standardized upgrades, and you will then have your own embryo returned to you.”

Each time she told this lie, Maggie would fight her Guide, try to scream out a warning, and the Guide would respond by doing something that Maggie could only describe as “tickling” her: suddenly her head would itch, and then a sweet feeling of euphoria would wash through her, the greatest contentment she had ever known.

Once, when Maggie was away from the patrons of the clinic in a storage room, she said to her Guide, “How can we lie to them? Why should we lie to them?”

“We do them a favor. Why should we let them harbor ill feelings about a process that they cannot change? Our system maximizes efficiency and insures an even distribution of genetically upgraded offspring.”

“But their children will all be brothers and sisters, even though they come from different families,” Maggie whispered to her Guide. “They won’t be able to marry.”

“Within each hive, our dronon masters are brothers and sisters. Each queen bears a hundred thousand eggs, and vanquishers are born brothers to architects, workers are sisters to queens. The new family revels in unity; thus the hive bonds. When our human offspring discover that they are all brothers and sisters, they will revel in that kinship.”

The Guide tickled her again. A new and stronger wave of pleasure washed through Maggie. It was a mystical, magical feeling, to be involved in such a great work, a work approved and loved by and her overlords.

In the late evening, Maggie took a young woman into a back laboratory and had her lie on the operating table. Maggie took out a tissue sampler which she would use to remove egg cells from the patient. The sampler was a long, thin piece of metal with a small scoop at the end to catch a slice of ovary. Maggie was removing its sterile covering when the patient looked up at Maggie and asked, “How free are you?”

Maggie turned to the woman, unsure if she had heard correctly. The woman looked deep into Maggie’s eyes. “How free are you? Do you want to escape from your Guide? If so, blink twice.”

Maggie tried to blink, struggled until tears formed in her eyes, but she could not blink. The Guide whispered, “Do not be alarmed by this woman, the guards are coming for her.”

Maggie stared at the woman. She was small, with mousy blond hair cropped close to her scalp, and a firm chin. She was nervous, sweating, and she whispered, “I’m in danger, aren’t I? I think I’ll go.”

She leapt off the table and opened the door. A green-skinned vanquisher with large orange eyes stood behind it.

The small woman tried to slam the door. The vanquisher shoved it open, grabbed the woman by the throat and one arm. She kicked and screamed, trying to escape, but he held her tight, dragged her away.

Maggie stood, staring out the door, shocked, her heart hammering. The Guide flooded her with pleasant sensations, whispering peace to her soul.

That night, as Maggie prepared for bed, her Guide transmitted a report to Lord Karthenor, detailing her accomplishments for the day. Her Guide reported that Maggie proved to be “culturally retarded,” and the Guide had to instruct her in the use of even the simplest machinery.

Karthenor was not concerned by this. Given Maggie’s background, it was only to be expected. But the Guide also reported that it had been forced to stimulate her hypothalamus over fifty times during the day, keeping her in a state of vegetative euphoria. Such overstimulation was dangerous. Within a week, it would lead to severe depression, a depression that could not be reversed for months. Under such circumstances, the Guide could still use her, but she would become despondent, an unreliable host. If the Guide temporarily lost control of her under such conditions, she might kill herself.

Karthenor considered the report, called to one of his technicians, a human named Avik whose parents had been integrated into dronon society two generations ago. He was a young man with hair so golden it appeared to be silver, and he had a sleek, well-muscled body. Avik reported quickly.

“My lord?” Avik said when he reached the door.

“The new servant, Maggie Flynn, needs someone to help make her adjustment smoother,” Karthenor said. “I would like you to talk to her, befriend her. I’ll instruct her Guide to give her free reign during your contact.”

Avik nodded. He was a young man, with burning blue eyes. “Would you like me to seduce her?”

Karthenor considered. These dronon-bred technicians mated like animals. Perhaps because they were forced to work under the domination of Guides, they had become emotionally stunted. They tended to confuse sexual gratification with the more permanent rewards of a committed relationship.

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “I think the physical contact might be appropriate, comforting for her. However, I would like you to take her slowly, at her own pace. Don’t rush her.”

“Very well, my lord,” Avik said, giving a deep bow as he left.