Confronting the Princess · Part 2 (2/2)
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We blinked, and were standing at the end of a long hallway. Brieanna's home hadn't changed much in the past six centuries. Designed with typical Pendorian thoroughness and typical Terran idealism, it smelled of old wood and leather and a light tracing of dust. The hallway was carpeted in dark brown. Light came in from the large window at our backs and from small incandecent bulbs set in ornamental holders made of copper and glass. As I walked down the hallway the floor echoed. "Drac?" I said aloud.
"Good evening, Kennet," the house computer said. I turned around and motioned for Anni to follow me.
"Telephone, Drac. For… " I tried to remember the AI's name, found it. "Roberta Majors Masters Reedhon."
"Hello?" said a pleasant but professional female voice.
"Roberta? It's Ken."
"Ken!" she replied, the professionalism replaced with an easy familiarity. "Why aren't I getting any visual?"
"I'm at Castle Hidden, sweetheart."
"Ah, that explains it. What can I do you for?"
"Who's home?"
"William."
"That it?"
"That's it. Why, do you need Richard?"
"No, that's okay. What I really need is an aspect shifter that can interface with a new design by induction. Can do?"
"Full two-way?"
"Yes."
"Not one of your designs, I take it."
"I'll ask Will." There was a long pause, and Roberta said, "Can do. Four hours."
"I'll call back." There was an audible click as the line disconnected and Drac announced "Call terminated."
I turned to Anni, who was running her fingers along the bannister of the stairs leading up to the second floor. I watched her for a second and said, "I like doing that too."
"Doing what?" she asked.
"Touching. Learning the textures of things. Like you."
She closed her eyes briefly, then said, "It is so hard to accept."
"Come with me," I said, leading her to the front door. The well-maintained lock slid out of it's slot easily and the door opened. After the short, brick platform immediately outside, the small grassy meadow that was all of Brieanna's home lay before us. To the left were the garage and the stables, looking as rainwashed and ancient as always. I knew if I looked there would be two horses in the stables. I could smell them from here.
"Where are we?"
"I don't know. This place is called Castle Hidden, and only two people are allowed to come here. Myself and Brieanna Flanders."
Anni smiled and said, "I have read that story."
"Yes, that one is publicly available, isn't it? What did you think of it?"
"I am not sure what to think. I know that the human in those stories and you are supposed to be the same person, but those stories are always five centuries out of date. You could have changed in those centuries."
I nodded. "Come on. I'll show you what our tech can do." I threw the garage doors wide open. "There it is," I said. "The Powered Armor that almost killed me."
She walked in ahead of me. "Is it safe to touch?"
"Should be," I said. "Power's off."
She ran her hands over the ceramic armoring carefully. "We have nothing like this on llerkin."
"More important than that," I said, reaching in for the hidden key access and pressing the 'open' latch, "you don't have this." The chest panel fell open and I reached in, grabbing the remote control. I flicked a few switches on the battery back-up, and closed the hatch again.
"What is that?"
"You'll see," I said. "Come outside with me." I walked over to a tree with line-of-sight on the garage and sat down. I put the remote in my lap, put the old b/r headband over my temples and hit the 'on' switch. The world righted itself again and I was staring at the ceiling of the garage, painfully aware that I was still down.
My body had changed. I thought to myself and my fusion-powered heart began humming again. I felt electricity course through my myomer sheaths, each tiny link tightening against the next, preparing for action. My senses expanded, and I decided it was time to stand. With one quick motion I was on my feet, looking out of the garage. From where I stood I could see Anni and my human form. She stood next to me, and I could hear her speaking. "Why are you silent? Your suit has started to move!" She did not sound happy.
From my electronic throat I said "Because that's not me anymore, Anni."
She turned, her eyes wide. "Ken?" she said. Somewhere in the back of my head a small celebration ensued. She had called me 'Ken.'
"Yup, it's me. I'm in the armor now."
"It's that easy?" she said.
"Not exactly." I walked over to her easily, feeling the soft soil give way underneath my 1.09 mTon steps. "You see, we can't move souls, only senses and orders. I feel through these fingers," and I flexed my fingers, capable of rending a building in two, "and I hear through these ears. But there is my brain, and my mind, and if I were to close these fingers around that skull, I would die. You could shoot this armor all you wanted and I would never be harmed. But," I said, reaching into my insides and pulling out the.45 I kept stored in there for my human form to carry, "if you were to point this at that body and pull the trigger, it would be all over. There is no AI here to stop you, nobody watching you but me." I held the pistol out to her.
She shook her head. "I no longer want to kill you."
The ears on the armor flexed upwards, my somatic equivalent of a smile in armor. I sat down on the ground, and with a single command I turned the armor off. I was myself again, just another human with too much hardware coursing along his bones. I took off the command tiara and looked up at her. "So?" I said.
She smiled and said, "Okay, I believe you. Why do you have people inside your armor when it is so much safer that way?"
"Because the armor's pretty indestructible anyway. Although it has yet to be tested, Pendorian PA can theoretically survive ground zero from tactical nuclear shells. And the link between me and the armor is not capable of being jammed."
"There were no radio signals being transmitted to or from either you or Aaraon that night. The Palace security would have found them. How do you communicate?"
"Encoded gamma-ray transmissions rendered into gravitic signal patterns by artificial singularities."
"I am not a scientist," she said, smiling.
"It's call gradio. Basically, we use gravity waves. It takes a radio wave to generate one, and we use gamma rays because the high frequencies allow for encoding, tagging, and throughput."
"That I understand." I smiled. "And anyone using a gravitic weapon, such as the Shriaa-"
"Would screw up our commands, right. Not to mention having direct access to the brains of our soldiers. Not a happy thought."
"No," she said, smiling. "You said there was no AI here? Who was that you spoke to at first?"
"Drac?" She nodded. "Drac is an SI, a simulated intellegence. He isn't capable of independant thought; he only follows orders."
"Is not that unusual? I thought one of the definitions of a Castle was that it housed an AI."
I shrugged. "Depends. This is just Castle Hidden. Come, there is one more experiment I want to show you. A story that isn't available to you yet. But, since we've got two or three hours before it's ready, would you like to have dinner?"
"Here?"
"Why not? Brieanna keeps a good larder, I think. And I tend to be a reasonable cook."
She shook her head. It took me a second to remember that that meant 'yes.' "Okay," I said.
It took me a while, and Anni stood a corner, sometimes smiling, sometimes laughing as I set about cooking, listening to everything from Phillip Glass to Paulos Madhsenger to Nosinik, the last being a llerkin composer I had postively fallen in mad infatuation with. Sometimes I would sing along, especially when the Riffkin arrangement of Hendrix's Purple Haze for violin came over the speakers. She found that particularily funny, even if she didn't speak English.
"Why are you laughing?" I asked.
"I am sorry," she said, "but you seem so easy."
"Comfortable?"
"Yes. I wonder what allows you to be so silly when you know you are being watched."
I shrugged. "After a while you have to accept what you are, Princess. I'm just being me."
Anni found the lasagna "interesting," the salad palatable "but a funny color," and neither wine nor soda was too her liking, so we drank water.
"Telephone," Drac announced.
"I'll take it."
"Ken, I've put the hardware you asked for on the SDisk, so if you'll clear it, it'll be at the Castle," Roberta said.
"Drac, clear path along present t-line for cargo."
"Path cleared."
"Drac, accept."
"Cargo transit," Drac announced. "In the hallway."
"Thanks, Drac," I said. "Anni, could you wait here?"
She said yes, and I excused myself to go and find the hardware in question. There it was, a small box about the size of a loaf of bread, two Brace headbands dangling over one end. I returned to the kitchen.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Brace hardware. Come outside with me," I said, cocking my head in the general direction of the doors. She rose gracefully. "Anni," I said, "I don't know if you beleive me fully yet, but I still think you're very beautiful."
She smiled and said, "Thanks."
"My Gods," I said with a laugh, "You used an informal."
"I am trying," she said, laughing along.
We walked outside, into the night air with the grass under our toes. The armor sat where I had left it, in the grass, looking for all the world like an oversized lost child picking at flowers. I sat down next to it. "Sit down," I said, "please."
She nodded, sitting down about a meter away from me. I handed her a Brace headband and said, "Look out that way," pointing to the building. She turned and I crawled through the grass, putting the customized headband over headband between her ears and down onto her skull. My fingers caressed the soft skin of her head gently. "What?" she asked.
"Shh…" I said. "Just a second." I hit the 'establish' button on the interface and about three seconds later it read "READY." I put the other headband over my head and said, "Are you ready?"
"For what?" she asked, nervously.
"For this," I said, hitting the 'go' button. The world spun about again. I felt someone at my back twitch, spasm, and fall over. I tried to turn around and found my body arguing with me about it. But I perservered, and turn around to look at Anni, now in my body, looking up at me. I was sure that if she had had control and understanding of my facial muscles, the look would have been fear. "Anni," I said in her voice, "easy."
"What?" she asked. I was thankful that Dick had long ago mananged to improve the interim control routines.
"Take it slow and easy. You're in me, now. And I'm in you. Take it easy. I don't want you breaking something."
The eyes cast back and forth for a few seconds, and then she said, "Put me back."
"Okay," I said, reaching out carefully with her thin and delicate hand to hit the switch down to 'off.' Immediately, I was back. Looking up at her, I could see her shivering.
"That… That was…"
"What?"
"Frightening. The ease with which you did that. How do you control it all?"
"Nobody tries to. People who abuse it tend to end up with one of these through their heads," I said, picking up the.45 where it had fallen in the grass and pulling back the slide, releasing a bullet.
She shivered again. I eased over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. The feel of the light cloth she wore felt rough and ungentle in my hands. "Anni," I said.
"What?" she asked, looking at me.
"Enough demonstrations. I've frightened you, and that's not what I meant to do. I wanted to take you with me and have fun, not scare you."
She nodded. As I got up and offered a hand to help her to her feet, she said, "Wait." I didn't say anything for a moment, so she continued. "When you came to llerkin, I wanted you, although I still do not know why." I sat back down on the grass. "Now I find myself torn between knowing just how easy it is for you and your kind to control us, or destroy us." She smiled wanly. "It is not unlike, not unlike knowing that there are Gods, very close, and very powerful."
"Anni," I sighed. "I'm not a god, nobody on Pendor is."
"Compared to me you are. You all live forever, you live in whatever form you choose, your universe is whatever you make it. Pendorians raise mountains and divert rivers with their hands. And while you reserve the power to yourself, you rend stars and make life. What am I compared to that?"
"Alive," I said. "And therefore, important." I sighed for a second and said, "Anni, the fact that in my heart I happen to like you makes a lot of difference."
She looked up at me and said, "What?"
"I'm just a Human being, Anni. Someday, your people will share the power of Pendor. All it takes is a little patience and a lot of science. In the meantime, we're just equal." I reached out to touch her face.
She touched the back of my hand gently with her fingertips. "I still want you," she said.
"Excuse me?" I replied, taken aback.
"There are two Ken Shardiks," she started. "There is Vatare Ilye Pendoro, the one who made Pendor. And there is Ken, who smiles and delights in seducing young Princesses."
"Can I change hats?" I said. She looked at me, confused, and I explained the expression.
She smiled and nodded. "I wanted to know I was wrong. I wanted a reason to not hate you for what I now know you were at the Treaty."
"I'm sorry if knowing the truth makes you more frightened."
She shook her head and said, "There was a melHuman in my bedroom one night, a handsome and dashing melHuman."
"Come on," I said, standing up again, "This was a mistake, taking you to Castle Hidden." She looked at me and accepted my hand. I helped her to her feet. I made a sweeping gesture with one hand and said, "This place once helped me remember that the ability to do everything doesn't mean everything's been done. Now it only reminds me of the time and the task before, and I don't need to be reminded." I walked over to the front of the armor and opened the chestplate. Replacing the round I had cycled out of the.45, I took careful aim and fired seven rounds into the controls of the Shirow, destroying as completely as I could the armor's computer, radio, and fusion plant. Then I dropped the pistol onto the grass. As we walked away, I looked back. I had left the chestplate open, to the wind, the rain, and the snow.
— "Confronting the Princess" The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., And Related Tales are (c) 1989, 1990 Elf Matheiu Sternberg. May be freely distributed by cybernetic media; hardcopies are limited to single printings for personal use.
Confronting the Princess · Part 2 (2/2)
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