Though the exterior of the vehicle much resembled horseless carriages of old, with its trim, metallic front and automata chauffeur enclosed beneath a bell jar, the back reminded one more readily of the luxurious wedding carriage of a royal family. Plush seats lined the circular cabin, its centerpiece a shuddering display of champagne, grapes, and other delicacies, including crackers and cheese. Kaizen loved cheese. Augh. The nectar of the gods. Of course, there was also champagne. But tonight, the Earl of Icarus sipped neither, because he was in a mood.
His father, Malthus Taliko, sat opposite him, utterly oblivious to this fact. He blew through the entire store of crackers, then snatched up the opened bottle of champagne and poured himself one glass, downed it, and poured another. Only then did he fuss over the crumbs in his tawny beard, and commence rambling to his forty-two-year-old wife, Olympia, who was examining her dewy cuticles.
“I don’t think that fellow was Leopold Comstock,” he snapped, as if someone in the cabin had just stated the contrary.
“Of course he was, darling,” Olympia murmured. “He’s a registered citizen.”
“Yes, he was Leopold Comstock,” Malthus amended bitchily. “But he was also Neon Trimpot.”
Olympia smiled. “You can’t possibly know that. You’ve never seen Neon Trimpot. No one has.”
“We were only holding Comstock for questioning, and he escaped the holding cell.”
“Well, I mean, really, Malthus,” she replied. “One of your sentries left a window open. What could you possibly expect? The girl and some boy and a drunk escaped with him. Are they Neon Trimpot, too?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not Neon Trimpot, they’re just—conspirators, is what they are! You can’t tell me it’s sheer coincidence that the drunk needed a window opened, and at that exact moment, one of Trimpot’s cronies arrived with a grappling hook. And the girl! Don’t even get me started on the—Someone threw a pastry at me! Ruined my tie!”
This dragged Kaizen’s gaze from the fogged window.
“The girl you jailed? You mean . . . Exa Legacy?”
“That was her name, yes,” Malthus replied. “God, it’s just so embarrassing. The lot of them were no older than you. This was supposed to be the damn annual.”
Kaizen weighed whether or not to confess to his father that he had met the girl. Finally, he blurted, “I met her, you know.”
“You met her?” Malthus repeated. “When? You spent all your—godforsaken time in that right-front tower!”
Kaizen grimaced. His father never seemed to understand how it felt . . . when your only experience of the world was complete solitude, save once or twice a year, when you were then thrust head-first into a madding crowd of grabby strangers, all with questions, questions, questions. What’s your favorite place for a vacation. Do you agree with your father’s policies. Have you ever been in love.
“She was in the tower, too,” Kaizen replied.
“But what about Johannes!”
“I suppose he went to get a drink?”
“Well, that’s bloody rich! You could’ve been killed! She’s in the CC!”
Kaizen rolled his eyes. “I really doubt it,” he sighed. He braced his chin in his open palm and wedged his elbow against the padded wall of the carriage. “She didn’t recognize my name.” Although Kaizen was twenty-four, he had very little experience with women. He’d seen some, particularly of the genteel persuasion, but the difference engines were finding him impossible to match with any of them, and his father was aghast at the prospect of widening the pool any further—or “lower,” he might say. The duke was very particular about the ramifications that such “looseness of standard” would have on the class system. But the last time the Compatible Companion Selection Services lab had tried, their pistons had pumped so furiously, the thing caught fire.
“Humph.” Malthus turned a thought over in his head.
Not that it matters whether or not some foolish girl knew my stupid name, I mean, if she wants to be a complete fool, that’s her decision, I’m going to be duke someday, she should know, but if she wants to be completely ignorant of politics, which are important in all our lives, that’s fine, that’s her—
“We’ll put a star next to her name on the blacklist, then,” the duke interrupted thoughtfully.
Kaizen refocused and found a self-satisfied smile on his father’s face.
“What for?” Kaizen demanded.
“Well, she escaped from a holding cell, and she created complete mayhem in that concert hall, which you would know if you’d seen it,” Malthus snapped back. “I think she may have ties to the damn CC, that’s what for!”
Kaizen fumed silently at his rain-spattered carriage window for the rest of the ride home, though in truth, he was torn on the matter. On the one hand, Legacy had seemed fine to him. Sweet, in fact. She hadn’t even wanted to be there. Just like him. Not some rebel. Not intent on rending him from his future throne. On the other hand, if she was arrested, he might get to see her again.
The carriage lurched to another stop and the sound of a toneless hum moved over the carriage, signaling to its occupants that they had reached the first checkpoint on the drawbridge. At this gate, the chauffeur was verified and scanned, and the exterior of the carriage was scanned. They lurched and were off again.
The drawbridge was the connector between the city of Icarus and the royal grounds of the Taliko Archipelagos. The heavily plated trail tethered the castle to the mainland, but could also retract in the event of an extreme emergency. The emergency would have to be extreme. After all, there was no tether to the Old Earth on their end; the Taliko family would become immediate refugees, seeking the assistance of any city who would have them, subsisting on rations of stock. There were some reasons why this would be dangerous for them.
The second checkpoint occurred a minute later, and was only possible to be cleared from within the castle’s keep. An appointed sentry would raise the gate remotely, from within the secure walls. This would ensure that, if rebels somehow overcame the first checkpoint, they could not overcome the second without paradoxically being inside the castle already. But to Kaizen, all this meant was an annoying lag between this stiff cushioning and his much softer mattress. It was after two in the morning now.
At the third checkpoint, a grip tool would infiltrate the interior of the cabin and physically scan the space. By far, this was the most invasive, and for an intruder, it would only end in certain death. The grip would do exactly that—crush—any bodies within which did not match the genetic makeup of the royal family.
Kaizen glared as the metallic clamp roved the surface area of the carriage, pausing only to clip a lock of his hair before retracting, satisfied. Kaizen let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding—deep down, that thing creeped him out so very much—and the wheels rolled again, through the last gate and across the drawbridge, onto the main isle of the Taliko Archipelagos. Here, it was not raining.
Lights stationed throughout the property revealed a small castle, although the words “small” and “castle” didn’t seem to quite fit together, even in Kaizen’s mind. It was the sole structure in Icarus—although it wasn’t technically in Icarus—which had a lining of authentic, blossoming bushes, was even traced by a tentative vine or two. The Taliko Archipelagos could have qualified as a separate ecosystem for this very reason. It was different from the city of Icarus, and from the Old Earth, in that it was the lone atmosphere possessive of the color green. People weren’t supposed to have the color green anymore. It hadn’t been an agreement, but it had been an acceptance all the same, one that the newest generation wasn’t even cognizant of having.
A servant staff seven strong rushed to greet and aid the Taliko family as the cabin door opened, a metal set of steps tumbling down from the idle carriage automatically.
“How was the ball, my Lord?” The duke’s primary advisor, Abner, cropped up.
His porcelain footman, Valkenhayn-2, coasted to his arm and guided hi
m down the trembling stairs, then removed his frock coat. “One message marked priority from Dyna Logan, CIN-3 anchorwoman,” he announced.
A shifty-eyed guard flanked the space at Malthus’ back, otherwise unnoticed.
Olympia emerged next, one wind-up maid and one guard both taking hands as she traipsed to the ground, glancing at neither.
“Oh my god, Malthus, what a debacle, am I right?” Dyna’s voice squawked out of Valkenhayn-2’s mouth. “Look, I’m going to be honest here, you didn’t look great tonight, but I’ll do all the damage control I can. I think we should set up an interview as soon as possible. I can clear tomorrow out for you if you can make it to the station? Anyway, never fret, Malthus. It’ll be fine; we’ll run a nice human interest profile on you. Bring your son! Girls LOVE—End of reel. Please clean tape. Thank you.”
“Goodnight, darlings,” Olympia called over her shoulder to her husband and her son, neither of whom she intended to see again tonight, disappearing into the high castle walls.
“Goodnight, Olympia,” Malthus said. “Valken, initiate response to—” Newton-2, Kaizen’s automaton footman, and Johannes, Kaizen’s body guard, stepped forward to receive him as he clattered down the carriage steps. Malthus turned sharply, lifting a hand as if to still his automaton, though it was he who was in mid-sentence. “Johannes! I was informed that you were caught abandoning your post at the annual!”
Kaizen frowned, and there was a moment of deliberation as he weighed how honest he should be with his father, as his bodyguard stood still and wide-eyed. Finally, Johannes found his voice. “I—”
“I told him to,” Kaizen confessed. “I told him to leave me alone for a while.”
Malthus turned the glare, then, on his son. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
Kaizen couldn’t help but think how he never would’ve met that girl—the cautious movement in the shadow, the soft voice which didn’t seek to take, take, take from him—if Johannes had been guarding the stairwell. She’d called him a real person. A fact he’d come to doubt himself.
“It was—it was illegal, Kaizen! You can’t be left alone! You’re my son!” the duke went on. He really only hit his stride when he was laying into his son. “If anything were to happen to you—”
Kaizen glowered. His father’s indignation wasn’t about protecting his high-profile family. It was about preserving the social order. “Yeah,” he said. “If anything were to happen to me, Icarus would be left without its next duke.”
“That’s right,” Malthus seethed.
Kaizen shook his head and set off from the castle grounds, toward the smaller island to the right. Both Newton-2 and Johannes stepped automatically after him, but Kaizen whirled, flinging a hand away from him as if to throw the lot of them into the air with telekinesis. “Leave me alone!” he commanded.
Newton-2 obeyed, but Johannes looked imploringly between his two masters.
“Let him go,” Kaizen heard Malthus growl behind his back. “It’s fine.”
Kaizen thundered over the bridge which linked the smaller island on the right to the Taliko Archipelagos castle grounds. Its bolts and chains didn’t whine and squeal like everything else in the industrial city, because this particular bridge was crafted of the exotic material known as wood. Although the citizens of Icarus may have found that amazing, Kaizen hardly paid it any mind.
He’d left the archipelagos less than twenty-four times in his twenty-four years. He knew them unbearably well. He knew how moss felt against his fingertips. He knew of the faces made by fish underwater. And it was beautiful. Objectively, he knew that. But subjectively, he hated it.
Kaizen moved through the elaborate greenhouse of this second island, blind to the flowers, deaf to the echo of birdsong. He exited the greenhouse from its other side, striding further still to the right, following another insulated wooden bridge to a circular lake on the rightmost and second smallest island. A brass pipe fed into the lake, and circled the bottom of the dome, plugging into a thick cloud bank directly below. This cloud bank was constantly created and recreated by the manufactured waterfall on the rim of the island’s glass plating.
Standing at the very edge of the dome stood a young girl with long, fair hair, the outline of her slender fingers silhouetted on the glass.
“Hey Sophie,” Kaizen greeted, going to join her at the edge. This was her favorite place—not that she had many from which to choose.
Down below, they could see the way the water coursed into the air, a dark ribbon which then bloomed into a swath of pearl, only to be sucked back into the domed lake, never to be free on the wind. No wonder it was her favorite place.
“How was the ball?” Sophie wondered bleakly.
“Oh, you know. Awful.” Kaizen smiled, but Sophie didn’t see it. “There was a small, small riot.”
Now Sophie smiled, though she still did not tear her eyes from the glass.
“But!” Kaizen went on. “I met somebody.”
Now the girl pulled her eyes from the glass. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah—the one who caused that small, small riot.”
Sophie nodded. “She sounds nice. A member of the gentry, I presume.”
“Of course. What are you doing up so late?”
“Oh, I’m just . . . thinking.”
“Dad would throw a fit if he knew you were out of bed alone.”
“I think he might understand,” Sophie countered, and Kaizen supposed she was right. He didn’t know if his father favored his little sister because he’d secretly always wanted a girl, or if it was because he pitied her for the life she’d been forced to lead: a prisoner in her own home. While Kaizen’s ventures to Icarus were rare, and rarer still were his ventures to any of the neighboring cities, at least he’d been off of these four tiny islands.
Sophie had, too. Once.
Her only friends were the servants. And the servants were ninety percent ball-jointed porcelain and killed with the turn of a key.
“Besides,” she went on, “what’s the harm, really? The islands are secure. No one will ever know.” No one will ever know that I exist, she meant. “Just like when we went to Celestine last year. Remember that?” she added. Sophie often spoke of Celestine in a wistful, distant tone. As if she were back on the family’s airship again, coasting around the diameter of the metropolis. Celestine was a great, beautiful city. It was even larger than Icarus, and vibrant with color. Sophie hadn’t been allowed off the airship, though. “Maybe . . . maybe we’ll go again soon. Or maybe even to Heliopolis!”
Kaizen grimaced at the bright expression on his sister’s face, knowing that the likelihood of their father allowing her to attend a vacation to Heliopolis was very low. That was the bustling capital center of New Earth. The risk of someone sighting the girl—especially a superior to Duke Taliko—was too high.
“Maybe,” he offered.
But Sophie had seen his grimacing reflection in the glass, and pulled her hand away from the dome, turning.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said, walking away without a backward glance. Her lack of sociability made the girl almost ghost-like. “Goodnight, brother.” And she was gone over the wooden bridge.
Chapter Four
Legacy and Dax were lagging so far behind Trimpot and Gustav, they almost completely missed the trigger for the hidden door of the Chance for Choice headquarters. The two rebels were standing at the automaton statue of Archibald Ferraday, a rotund, flaky-cheeked, balding figurine with half-moon glasses welded to his ears. Archibald Ferraday had been the first of the line of monarchs in Heliopolis, and he was in the middle of his famous coronation speech.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Gustav hissed, scouring the park for intruders.
“. . . always be a people whose strength and perseverance was prepared to pay the price of freedom . . .”
“Yes!” Gustav kicked down into the Ferraday plaque with zeal, and the plaque depressed beneath the pressure.
Incredibly, the eastern face of
the copper mountainside beyond them—a long, flat rock partially shielded by copper brush—sank and slid to the right, revealing a narrow entryway.
The four escapees rushed inside, and the door snapped into place within seconds, a system of locks clapping and clicking over its hinges.
“All right, there’s only so much you can ask of a man. I’m going to wash up,” Gustav announced, departing toward a familiar-styled screen in the back corner. “I had to force myself to throw up only, like, three or four times.”
Legacy’s eyes shifted to Dax, drawn by the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His complexion seemed waxy and bleached. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
He nodded and waved her off, though she could see his oxygen filtration had been overworked by the physical strain of the run. He needed a new filter. The damn rebreather was constantly cycling through parts. Legacy stared at him a moment longer, her eyebrows twisted with concern, until Trimpot’s words called her away.
“Home, sweet home,” he announced, gesturing with flourish to the expansive workshop. He clearly wanted attention, and perhaps he deserved it. After all, the CC headquarters were hidden entirely within what Legacy had always assumed was nothing more than some sort of decoration to stave off a deeper ennui.
“How can this place be?” she asked herself, following Trimpot down the center row of an expansive workshop.
“It was always hollow,” a voice answered from her left. Stooped over some type of glass cannon was a bespectacled boy with black dreadlocks much like her own braids, his wrapped into a bun and speared with a writing utensil. He didn’t look up from his work, and so could not track her expression as it went through various states of confusion. It wasn’t that the concepts were so difficult to grasp; it was that he was talking so fast. “It only needed to have the opening cut, and the mechanisms in place to open and close, and then, of course, the plaque on that statue needed to be modified, and that was the hardest part, if you ask me, because we had to forge a work order for the plaque to be refitted, then intercept its delivery with impeccable timing, and this all had to be finished within a certain time frame, obviously, but once we got all the parts working together, which was a matter of frequency, you know, the frequency of the signal between the device installed on the backside of the plaque, which had a dual trigger, that is, the vibration of the statue speaker on the word ‘freedom,’ in conjunction with the application of force, and then the device attached to the spokes and pulleys on the other side of this ‘mountain’ or ‘door’ would also awaken for exactly four seconds before snapping shut again, as you’ve seen, so all in all, it’s quite simple, if you ask me. It’s just a matter of synchronicity, the wrong person could easily stumble upon it, you know, but I doubt they’d understand what they’d seen or its correlation to their own action.”
LEGACY RISING Page 5
