by AnonYMous
“His Highness is unconscious.”
Her stomach clenched—not so much at his words, but at the fear in his eyes. “What does that signify?”
“Every one of his earlier health collapses had been preceded by a bout of unconsciousness that came out of the blue.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment. “What happens next, then, if we are looking at a collapse?”
“Once he regains consciousness, for the next day or so, he will appear fine—better than fine. And then . . .” The chamberlain took a deep breath. “But it may not be that.”
He was not lying, only wishing. But they all knew better. This was the big one, the collapse that his physicians feared would end his life.
“Should the collapse begin soon, would he last until the Pax Cara event?”
Her words sounded calm, normal. The chaos was only wreaking havoc inside her head.
“No one can say for certain.”
“Probability?”
“Not very good.”
She thanked him, greeted the physicians, and asked the lead physician, a woman named Betria, whether there was anything they could do now for their prince.
Betria shook her head.
“In that case, I would like to have some time alone with my husband.”
*
Should she pray, she who had never believed in the gods, even as a child?
Slowly she stroked the recovery tank, first with only the pad of a thumb, then with her entire hand. The way she might have caressed him between bouts of lovemaking, had he been a healthy man—learning the texture of his skin, delighting in his nearness, letting physical contact express the sentiments she was reluctant to voice aloud.
But her touches were prayers, too. Wordless pleas sent out into the universe for time, faith, courage—and more time.
Vaguely she became aware of footsteps pounding in her direction. But only when the recovery tank began to tilt upright did she realize that she was half sprawled on top, her arms spread wide.
She scrambled off. When the tank was fully vertical, the door opened to reveal a beautiful man who looked as if he’d never been ill a day in his life. Her heart leaped before dropping like a satellite in a degrading orbit.
Once he regains consciousness, for the next day or so, he will appear fine—better than fine. And then . . .
“You are awake,” she heard herself say.
He stepped out and shrugged into a robe. “I have been for some time.”
She recalled the running footsteps—his physicians rushing toward the recovery tank. “You told your doctors not to come.”
“I told them to wait. I didn’t want to disrupt our moment.”
She blinked.
He smiled. “Remember, the tank is touch-sensitive. You never hold me like that when I am out of it—I wanted to savor your embrace a little longer.”
She hesitated. But hesitation was for people who had the luxury of time.
“Who said I don’t hold you when you are out of the tank?” she countered softly, wrapping her arms around him.
*
They couldn’t avoid the physicians for long.
After what seemed barely a minute in each other’s arms, there came polite but insistent knocks on the door.
“Tell them to fuck off,” murmured the prince.
Vitalis emitted a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. “No, you’ll meet with them, but I’ll sit next to you and hold your hand under the table.”
As it turned out, the conference room in the bunker didn’t have a central table, only a circle of padded chairs. The one reserved for Eleian was wider than the others and easily accommodated them both, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Vitalis was unsure about the etiquette of hand-holding without the concealment of a table, but her husband took her hand in his and that was that.
“Your Highness,” began Betria, “based on current data, there is a high probability you will see a catastrophic decline in your health and wellbeing. We had hoped that it would be forestalled by the radiation burst of the Pax Cara Event. But that is still eleven standard days away. Our most pressing decision now concerns whether you should undertake the trip at all.”
Vitalis’s hand tightened on her husband’s.
“My chance of surviving the next collapse is at best ten percent,” said the prince. “Shouldn’t I hasten to Pax Cara? We are gambling on the theory that a strong dose of Pax Cara radiation can cure me. If that’s the case, then the background radiation might keep me alive until then.”
Betria shook her head. “In a state of collapse, Your Highness, your chance of surviving both the trip and the days remaining until the Pax Cara Event is no better than that of staying here and weathering the storm.”
Vitalis stopped breathing—she had underestimated the severity of the situation.
“It is my professional opinion, and that of my colleagues,” continued the lead physician, “that you should forego the trip to Pax Cara. No dead man has ever been revived by a dose of radiation, however strong or unique. Remaining on Mundi Luminare has its drawbacks, but we’ve fought the same battles before and we’ve always won.”
“I understand the preference of the medical team,” said her husband quietly, but without hesitation. “I owe my life to your dedication and hard work and for that I can never be grateful enough. Under any other circumstances, I would defer to your judgment. But on this matter, my mind is made up. I will accompany Her Highness to Pax Cara.”
She stared at him. Were she one of his physicians, she would have advised the exact same thing. Stay put. Keep doing the tried and true. They were not talking about taking a chance on the Pax Cara Event anymore, not when there was a ninety percent chance he would die before the event even began.
Betria looked unhappy but unsurprised. “Your Highness is sure about that?”
“Yes.”
Again, an answer without any vacillation.
“In that case, the medical team’s opinion is that we should leave as soon as possible for Pax Cara, before Your Highness’s condition further deteriorates.”
“How soon can we leave?” the prince asked his chamberlain.
“The Pax Caran government is expecting you, sire, but not for another two-and-half standard days. This isn’t an official visit but we must still alert them to any changes in your itinerary via diplomatic channels—and receive their formal response. I’d say not before the middle of the night.”
“Then let’s set the departure at dawn,” said the prince.
*
“Did you not hear what your lead physician said? You have a ninety percent chance of dying before the Pax Cara Event even begins!” Vitalis was shouting and she didn’t care. “Remember you told me that you found one instance of someone accompanying the Chosen One to the Elders’ Temple? I can tell you exactly what happened. It was a standard millennium ago. They were sisters—the Chosen One was the younger sister and the older sister decided to go with her. Touching story, right? Well, their remains washed up a day after they set out.”
They were sitting on a black sand beach at the base of an enormous cliff—or rather, he sat and she paced furiously, kicking up sprays of sand behind her. Elsewhere on Regia Insula the sea was locked in a permanent spat with the landmass, but here a deep cove shut out the roaring surf, and the turquoise water was as maddeningly calm as her dying husband.
“I never really had much hope for the companion,” he said softly. “If people regularly returned from such a trip, there’d be a crowd following the Chosen One at every Pax Cara Event.”
“Why? Why go for such odds then? Why choose a ninety-percent-fatal trip just so that you can do something that is almost one hundred percent guaranteed to kill you?”
He sighed. “You have the most beautiful gait, but will you please come and sit next to me so I can put my head in your lap?”
She groaned but did as he asked. “If you weren’t an invalid, I’d probably hit you.”
He reached up an
d touched her cheek. “And if I weren’t an invalid, I’d gladly take it.”
“So that’s it?” she grumbled, even as she took hold of his hand and pressed it to her lips. “That’s my answer? Please come and cradle me?”
“I’d have thought that the real answer is blindingly obvious.”
“I must be especially obtuse today, then. Enlighten me.”
He sighed again. “Did you not notice that Betria didn’t bother to argue with me? She could see that I’m a fool in love who wouldn’t have listened.”
Her heart thudded heavily. “You barely know me.”
“Name a person who knows you better than I do.”
She couldn’t.
He grinned, apparently gratified by her silence. “See?”
“You are just a newly deflowered virgin carried away by sexual infatuation.”
He laughed softly. “I’ll admit to being a newly—and happily—deflowered virgin. I’ll also admit to thinking that I’d willingly spend half of my life in the recovery tank, if I could spend the other half in bed with you. But neither of the above disqualifies me from being in love.”
“Well, you said it yourself, you are a fool in love. A fool.”
He pulled her down and kissed her, a long, lingering kiss. “Let me tell you a secret: it wasn’t my idea to go to the Courtship Summit. The physical toll it would take was quite enough to give me pause, let alone the fact that I would be proposing marriage to a stranger. And this is before we take into consideration that one, we had no idea what would happen to a Chosen One’s companion, and two, we had even less certainty that a huge dose of Pax Cara radiation wouldn’t kill me outright rather than turn me into a healthy man.
“My staff argued and argued the point. They were terrified that if I didn’t try something drastic, I’d die. I yielded only when Alchiba broke down in tears. And I thought I was doing it for them. So that when I’m no more, they wouldn’t berate themselves for failing to persuade me to make this last-ditch attempt.”
She would have been on her feet with shock if he hadn’t held her in place, his hand soothing on her arm.
“But when we met, something fell into place. I began to feel that you were the reason I stayed alive far longer than I ever expected me to. Of course, when you left, I felt exceedingly stupid.”
A surge of shame made her look away. His hand on her chin, he tilted her face back so that she met his gaze again. “Have I ever told you that in my late adolescence, when I realized that the people of Terra Illustrata had begun to place their hope in me, I became so terrified of the mission they wished to entrust to me that I secretly prayed to die in my next collapse? That was me running away in my mind, because I wasn’t capable of the actual physical act.
“I never believed you would abandon the people of Pax Cara. The burden was settled on you before you were old enough to understand what it meant. You needed to run away, if only for the time and space to make up your mind, at last, whether you were ready to accept the Task.
“I thought there would be chaos, dismay, and widespread panic on Pax Cara, but then you would arrive at the last minute to walk the path of the Chosen One. What I had not expected, not in the very least, was that I would ever see you again. But then you came back and you were there in the garden . . .”
There was such gladness in his eyes, such luminous joy, that she felt both tears and laughter well up within her.
“I knew then I was right all along—that we were meant to meet,” he continued. “And I also knew without a doubt that I would go to Pax Cara with you. That it was the right thing to do.”
He kissed her again. “That it was the only thing to do.”
*
After the beach, they visited a set of sparkling caves with a deep, clear pool at its center. And then, a secluded valley ablaze with wildflowers, its air as sweet as warm honey.
He seemed a different person, matching her pace everywhere. He brought the cane she’d given him but didn’t need it at all; she was the one who huffed and puffed a little, climbing up the slopes. A number of times she caught herself staring at him, at what he could have been, had he been born with the kind of health the vast majority took for granted.
Only to realize that this newfound vitality scarcely mattered—it turned him into a better hiking companion, but couldn’t make him an iota more beautiful or charismatic.
“Oddly enough,” he said, “the last time I was here, I thought of you—specifically that scene from The Quiet Girl in which you spoke about how the citizens tasked with deciding the Chosen One do the best they can—and then it’s up to the Chosen One to prove them correct. That was about six standard months ago, before my staff ever brought up the idea of the Courtship Summit, and I remember wondering whether I’d still be alive at the time of the Pax Cara Event—and how I would feel if you were to perish before I did.”
She looked up at him.
“Do you ever think about the selection committee?” He met her gaze. “About how they made the choice that determined the entire course of your life?”
They were seated on a picnic blanket, making garlands from the summer eternity flowers that bloomed all around them, she tentatively, he with surprising dexterity. And just before he spoke, she had been asking herself whether she dared think of the snuggly feeling in her heart as happiness.
She was almost glad for the distraction. “Funny you should ask. The Chosen One’s presence is requested at certain state functions. Two years ago I found myself seated next to the woman who headed the selection committee for my batch. I asked her, naturally enough, how exactly did they pick one from among all these children, as it’s extraordinarily difficult to predict what a given child will grow up to be.
“She gave me the usual spiel and I pretended to be satisfied with the answer. But some weeks later, she visited me at Pavonis Center—a citizenship privilege that very few people ever exercised, out of respect for the Chosen One’s privacy. We took a walk on the beach and that was when she told me that contrary to the belief of the public, indeed to my own belief in the matter, she felt that the selection committee had a very easy choice to make.”
Vitalis braided six long stems together, then glanced at her husband’s garland to make sure that she was proceeding correctly. “What everyone failed to consider was that the selection committee was given only a dozen candidates. And of those, some, to use her words, ‘you wouldn’t pick to lead a nursery school line to the commode.’ The committee still agonized and argued and wept, because they were, after all, choosing someone to die. But according to her the final choice was blindingly obvious from the beginning.”
He handed her another handful of long-stemmed flowers to add to her garland. “Which begs the question of how exactly the initial candidates were chosen.”
“That’s something everybody on Pax Cara knows—or think they know—because everyone has gone through the process. Around age five, everyone is given a physical exam and an intelligence test. The results are fed into a sorting algorithm and stored. The day after the Pax Cara Event has taken place, the algorithm spits out a batch of names.”
“I see. I’m going to guess that no one knows exactly how the algorithm works.”
“And everyone agrees it should be kept secret to prevent the knowledge from influencing the children’s performance.”
What she didn’t tell him, because she wasn’t sure she could accept the idea yet, was that ever since she saw the sigil on his arm, she had been wondering whether she too might possess such a thing. His only manifested itself before a health crisis. She’d never had a health crisis, so neither she nor anyone else would have seen it. But what if it had been discoverable by the physical examination part of the selection process?
She remembered sticking her arm into a tube-like device. And if it had scanned her with a bit of Pax Cara radiation stronger than the background amount . . .
But if she continued along that line of inquiry, it would mean the prince too was a Chosen O
ne. Why should a Chosen One be born a kiloparsec away, where no one would be looking for him?
Or, to approach it from a different angle, had she actually run away, would her health have begun a precipitous decline? In fact, the reduced pace of her morning run, the burning thighs and labored breaths during part of this outing, and now—she glanced down at her largely untouched plate of picnic delicacies—an uncharacteristic lack of appetite . . .
Had the deterioration already started?
And if she thought still a little more on it, there was the matter of his unusual-for-him vitality the night they met. Was it possible that she, a lifelong resident of Pax Cara, carried enough residual radiation to briefly reinvigorate him? And that now she was no longer radioactive enough to make any difference?
“What are you thinking?” he asked gently.
She wished she could braid all her half-notions and conjectures into a semi-coherent theory, but they remained loose bits of uselessness. “I’m not sure. Just distracted, I guess.”
He smiled. “Well, your garland looks good.”
He was right. For all her distraction, it had turned out rather decent. They exchanged garlands—and a few kisses—and lay down on the picnic blanket to watch clouds amble across a cobalt blue sky.
Yes, she thought, she would call this happiness.
*
In the evening they dined at the audience hall with the entire staff. The prince spoke with and gave gifts to each person. Those who wouldn’t travel with him to Pax Cara wished him luck, tears shimmering in their eyes.
In her years as the Chosen One, Vitalis had attended a number of grand state functions. She’d thought this little gathering would pose no challenge at all—and was ill prepared for the outpouring of gratitude.
Toward her. And not just because she represented his last and however minuscule chance at wellness.
One after another, his staff thanked her for making him happy. She scarcely knew how to respond, so she thanked them in return, with a catch in her voice, for everything they had done for him.
