Expendable - James Alan Gardner [91]
“Pretenders have been legion,” the man admitted. “Many a child,” he gestured toward Oar, “has tried to usurp the throne, clad in borrowed rags.” I realized he meant glass people wearing artificial skin. “Another who dwells in this place appears to have the proper bloodline, yet has knitted himself to unliving metal and is therefore discounted.” That had to be Tobit, “knitted” to his prosthetic arm; the League disapproved of cyborging, and had obviously programmed the AI to disqualify anyone equipped with any augmentation.
“Some too,” the man continued, “have arrived with unverifiable claims, hidden as they were behind impenetrable armors.”
“Ahh!” The other Explorers to pass this way had all been wearing tightsuits. The suits must be sufficiently shielded that the AI couldn’t tell whether the wearers were fully human. I, on the other hand, in my knee-high skirt….
“Why are you laughing, Festina?” Oar asked.
I answered, “How many women ever became queen because of their legs?”
Probably a lot, I reflected. Especially if kings had anything to do with it.
The Powers of the Queen
“What does being queen entail?” I asked the little man.
“All this realm’s resources lie at your command,” he replied.
“Which realm? This dome? Or the entire planet?”
“All that lies beneath this most excellent canopy, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof—”
“The dome,” Oar explained.
“I got that,” I nodded. “Not much of a kingdom,” I told the man-image. “And not much of a distinction either. What can a queen do that a commoner can’t? Anyone can work the synthesizers to get food, artificial skin, you name it. What else is there?”
“Only one thing more. Follow me, your majesty.”
I shrugged. “Lay on, Macduff.”
The man rose gracefully from his knees and after a courtly bow, led us forward, keeping to the circumference of the dome. Although his legs were half the length of mine, he had no trouble walking at our pace, since his image could skim over ground as quickly as necessary.
As we walked, I passed the time scanning the area for the projectors creating the man’s image; but I soon realized my search was pointless. Whether the machines were mounted on the dome, on a tower, or shining straight through the walls of nearby buildings, it didn’t make a real difference. He was here. He was projected. Everything else was a technicality.
After another minute of walking, the man turned to the outside wall of the dome and threw up his arms, shouting, “Behold, O Queen!” A moment later, a section of dome wall thirty meters wide and twenty high popped backward with a soft hiss. I tensed, fearing a deluge of water might suddenly pour through the breach. No such flood occurred; and as we watched, the wall dropped back four more paces, then slid sideways on guide tracks, revealing a large, well-lit chamber.
Or more accurately, a large, well-lit aircraft hangar.
Daggers Before Me, Handles Toward My Hand
Five fliers stood in a perfect line before me, each fashioned to look like a chiseled glass bird. The closest was a goose, wings and tail outspread, head stretched straight forward; it ran twenty meters long, with space for two riders, side by side in the middle of the bird’s body. The next plane was an eagle, then a jay, then an owl, and lastly a generic songbird which the little man said was a lark. All were stylized, their feathers mere suggestions, their shapes trimmed and streamlined for better aerodynamics…but then, the same was true of Oar. Like her, these craft were Art Deco versions of living creatures.
Yet they were also working airplanes: jets, by the look of them, though the tiny engines were artfully incorporated into the wing structures to look like fluffed regions of feathers. I counted four such engines on each wing, plus two more on the tail. Each was small, but their combined power must pack a kick if you really needed propulsion.
Only one thing spoiled the planes’ sleek, birdlike appearance: each had four charcoal-gray cylinders mounted on their bellies. Fuel