The Green Queen

by Margaret St. Clair

  Bonnar, again ignoring the temptation to give up, kept after him. At last the old man grew pettish. "How do you expect me to think?" he said crossly. "I'm hungry all the time. Nobody can think who's always hungry."

  Bonnar restrained an impulse to chastise him. He was too important a man now to strike a Body-servant personally. "We are all hungry," he said with dignity. "I am hungry too. After we win and the legitimate government is back in power, food from the automatic farms will start coming in again. We may even lay out some new farms."

  The old man laughed. "Even before the lady came, we didn't get enough food. Some Body-servants are hungry all their lives ... Well." He rubbed his lip and mumbled. Bonnar waited patiently. "There used to be a sort of manhole that went out under the walls. If you don't mind a way out that's uncomfortable and pretty dangerous."

  "Dangerous? How?"

  "Radiation. It goes pretty deep down in the soil, and it's not lead-lined."

  Bonnar felt a surge of the profound, almost instinctive horror that the idea of unshielded contact with the soil of Viridis always aroused in natives of the planet. He had to inhale and swallow before he could reply. "Show me the manhole or whatever it is. I'm willing to risk it."

  "It's like a tunnel," the old man said, "but most of the time I guess it's too small to crawl in."

  "How long is it?" Bonnar demanded. His heart was thudding dreadfully.

  "I don't know. Long. I think it comes out this side of the Great Square."

  He'd have to do it, Bonnar decided, or at least try it. But he'd always had a touch of claustrophobia; the thought of the black, poisonous passage sickened him.

  "Why was it built?" he asked.

  The old man shrugged. "Something about the migration. Maybe it was a place of refuge in the persecutions."

  He'd make himself do it. They'd all be dead tomorrow if he didn't. But he didn't think he could make himself do it without a protective suit.

  THE TUNNEL was not so bad at first. Bonnar felt reasonably safe inside his suit, and he had had a stiff shot of benz before starting out. The test-tube—the glass knife—was strapped next to his skin just above the hip bone of his left side. The technician had assured him over and over again that the complicated release mechanism on the tube made accidental premature release of the fungus absolutely impossible. The torch in his right hand gave a bright, reassuring light.

  But how narrow the tunnel was! Through the happy haze of indifference and optimism the benz had given him, Bonnar felt a recurrent wisp of fright brush him at its narrowness. As the old man had said, most of the time the tunnel was too small to allow the ease of crawling; Bonnar had to worm his way along in it.

  He was sweating heavily inside the suit. The paint that the make-up specialists had used when they had applied his realistic-looking ulcers (Bonnar was going to masquerade as a Lower once he was out of the tunnel) was waterproof. But would it be proof against all the sweating he was doing? His body itched with sweat.

  For a little while he was able to crawl. He had come a long way. Then the tunnel narrowed suddenly. He had to lie flat on his belly and writhe forward inch by painful inch. Remotely at first, and then with a growing sense of nearness, the question came to him: if the tunnel got too narrow for him to go forward, would he be able to work his way back?

  He pushed his doubt aside. But the effect of benz is apt to wear off without warning. Bonnar had wriggled his way well under a bulging overhang of the tunnel roof when he was suddenly coldly and nakedly aware of what his situation was.

  He couldn't go forward; he would never be able to get the bulky air tank on his shoulders past the overhang of the tunnel. Could he go back? He didn't think he could. To get as far as he was now, he had had to work his way past half a dozen places where only the light of the torch had enabled him to know which shoulder to depress, which knee to move. He might be able to writhe backward for fifty or seventy-five feet before he would tug and strain and pull, and nothing would happen. Seventy-five feet of painful motion. And then he'd be caught.

  He was caught now, with slow death waiting for him from the long, poisonous, somehow elastic embrace of the tunnel, and quick death—the glass knife—strapped ineluctably to his side.

  Horror shook him. He gave a gasp. It turned into a scream. In an instant he was screaming uncontrollably.

  His screams echoed inside his helmet so loudly that they hurt his ears. As the screams went on he had moments of odd, hallucinatory pity for them. They were trapped inside his helmet, just as he was trapped inside the tunnel, and neither he nor the screams could get out.

  He stopped at last and lay exhausted, sobbing weakly, his face pressed against the cheek-piece of his helmet and saliva running in a long thick strand down over his mouth.

  Slowly composure, wincing and precarious, returned to him. There was, after all, a way out of a lengthy dying. He still had the glass knife.

  His hand moved toward it. Then he thought, I might be able to get past the overhang of the tunnel ... if I were out of my suit.

  It was a struggle like a dying man's struggle for air to get out of the suit. The catches worked all wrong; the suit had never been designed to be removed by a man lying on his belly in a tunnel like a grave shaft. Sometimes as he strained and wrenched at the tough lead-impregnated fabric, he wondered whether he was fighting for life or for death. How long could he live without the protection of the suit?

  He left the discarded suit lying behind him, a solid plug in the length of the passage. Now that he was out of it he had a strange and not displeasing sense of bodily lightness, of easy, almost slippery, mobility. The tunnel surface beneath him was smooth and moist and the air, though earth-smelling, was fresh enough. Of course, what he was afraid of in the air had no smell.

  The tunnel broadened. He crawled forward for what seemed a long time. Suddenly a faint breath of air in motion touched his cheek.

  Instantly he switched off his torch. The draught of air meant he must be getting near the end of the tunnel, and he did not want anyone to see light coming out of the ground.

  Utter blackness settled down. It had been late at night when he started, and he did not know how long he had been in the tunnel, but Viridian nights were always bright; the heavy darkness indicated that the opening to the tunnel was shaded or covered in some way. But there must be an opening. He clung to the thought. His limbs were shaking with relief.

  The draught of air was stronger now. He put his fingers across the globe of the torch and flashed the light briefly. Yes, it was the end of the tunnel, as he had thought. It slanted up to the surface not two feet ahead of him. But a heavy tree root was growing across the opening.

  It wasn't going to stop him, he wouldn't let it. He crawled to the obstruction and began digging around it with his hands. He tried to be quiet, but in a little while he was working in a sort of frenzy.

  It was nearly dawn when he got out. He had come up in the midst of a clump of thick trees; his body bore long scratches from the rough surface of the roots. Where was he, anyway? Oh, yes, Tandis Park. As the old Lower in the Tower had said, it wasn't far from the square.

  He had done it, gotten away from the siege, But he was worn out. He'd have to rest, sleep a little maybe. Before he killed Leaf.

  He felt above his hip bone anxiously. He still had the glass knife.

  It was seven or eight in the morning before he emerged from the clump of trees. The painted pustules and ulcers of his disguise had stood up wonderfully well, and the dirt and scratches he had picked up in the tunnel added realism.

  He hailed a passing Lower and asked him where he could find the Green Queen. In the Renfrew Palace, the man told him, adding, with an appraising look at Bonnar's sores, "You look like you could use some help from the Lady."

  Bonnar thanked him and started limping off in the direction of the Palace. One hurdle had been passed successfully; he had spoken to a Lower, and neither his speech nor his garb had given him away.<
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  The Renfrew Palace had been built by James Renfrew, the leader of the first wave of the triple Jovis religious migration. It was a big flat building with a snouted, curved Chinese roof, and a quite un-Chinese emphasis on the vertical elements below it. Early as the hour was, the wide Vermillion doors of the palace were open, and a long line stretched away from it and down the street Bonnar took his place at the end of the line.

  He looked at the people in front of him. Lowers, mostly, with a Body-servant or two. Most of them had pustules and ulcers, sometimes quite spectacular, and all of them looked wan and sick. Immediately in front of Bonnar a man and a woman were standing. The man held a baby in his arms. There were no sores on the baby, but it cried continually.

  The line moved forward steadily and at a fair speed. Bonnar felt an intense nervous apprehension. His throat was dry. He had to keep swallowing. Perhaps he should have had something to eat, and rested a little longer, before the undertaking. But every minute's delay increased the risk of detection. And it was quite in character for him, as a Lower, to look faint and weak.

  The line moved forward steadily. Along the sidewalk, up the steps, through the doors. Into a hall. Bonnar, among the tatters of his kilt, fumbled with the elaborate release mechanism of the test-tube. Through the hall. Into a room. And there Leaf was.

  She was wearing a simple green robe that followed the lines of her body closely, and her dark red hair was loose about her shoulders. The faint bluish nimbus that flickered around her head was undoubtedly a piece of stagecraft, but Bonnar had a moment of genuine shock when he saw that her sandalled feet were not resting on the polished floor. She seemed to be floating some two inches above it. Magnets, magnets of course. (What sort of magnet?) Magnets.

  The line moved toward her. Leaf's technique in dealing with those who had come for help was simple. She spoke a few words to them, in a voice so soft that Bonnar couldn't hear what she was saying. Sometimes she would smile a little. Then she passed her hands lightly above the surfaces of their bodies, not touching them.

  Simple, but wonderfully effective. The ulcers seemed to lose their dusky color and began to granulate. The bowed bodies straightened, the shrivelled skins filled out and assumed a healthy flush. Faith-healing, of course. But a wonderful thing.

  The moment Bonnar had been dreading came. He stood in front of Leaf, the test-tube in his hand. Its gray flocculence was hidden by his fingers. He fumbled with the last twist of the releasing mechanism. He kept his eyes down.

  Leaf said quietly, "Bonnar, did you really think you could make yourself kill me like that?"

  Horribly startled, he looked up. His heart was thudding like a hammer, shaking his whole body. Leaf was smiling rather sadly at him.

  "You—yes!" he cried. "I can. I will." He wrenched wildly at the test-tube's cap.

  Leaf shook her head. "You cannot. While you were waiting in the line, your fingers broke the release mechanism. You cannot evacuate the tube now."

  With shaking hands he raised the tube close to his eyes and examined it. He pressed the trigger hard. Nothing happened. She was right.

  "I'll—break it!" he panted.

  "It would do no good. The culture is dead. Look at it," Leaf said.

  Trembling, he obeyed her. And she was right again, the deadly flocculence within the test-tube had changed to a slimy, fluid green.

  "I killed it," Leaf said. "I can kill by looking, you know. Don't you understand, yet, Bonnar? You made up a mask about the Green Queen. But the mask is true, not a mask, but reality. I am the queen."

  He stared at her for a moment, his mind a whirlpool, a swaying chaos of belief and disbelief. Words came to his lips; he babbled something, he didn't know what. She was still smiling at him, sadly and a little tenderly.

  A moment longer he stared at her, torn by doubt and a growing will to believe. Then a great wave of conviction swept over him. He could not stand against it. He surrendered to it, to an extraordinary happiness. The test-tube fell from his fingers. With a cry of rapture he threw himself at her feet.

  Chapter Six

  "I THINK she was lonely. She let me stay near her," Bonnar said ...

  "I CANNOT sleep," Leaf was saying. She pressed her hand over her eyes wearily. "I've been awake all night, and it is nearly morning. It is strange, isn't it? I am the Queen. And yet I cannot sleep."

  Bonnar had sprung to his feet the instant she came out on the balcony. He had been sleeping there, across the entrance to her rooms, guarding it. Ever since that morning in the Renfrew Palace he had clung to her—from devotion, from awe and reverence, and a little from a half-unconscious belief that clinging to her would in the long run be to his benefit. He had clung to her, and she had tolerated him.

  She advanced to the edge of the balcony. Shalom lay at her feet; after her triumph she had taken a suite at the very top of the Tower, beside the council room. The moon-bright night radiance filled the sky; only scattered lights were showing in the streets. The city scarcely seemed to breathe.

  "How the city has changed in the last three days," she said musingly. "Was it only three days ago, Bonnar, that I let down the barrier? Yes, only three days. I had them break the big barrier projecting screens—there was no other way to shut it off—and for the first time in a hundred years the barrier around Shalom was down. Some people were frightened, but most of them welcomed it. They danced in the streets, they were so glad. Nobody slept that night."

  Bonnar said nothing. He had been tormented by inner doubts at the time, despite his faith in the Queen; but Leaf had broken down the barrier and, it was true, nothing disastrous had happened.

  "Next day, they went streaming out of the city," Leaf continued. "They knew there was a Jansen settlement near Shalom; they were going to live in the houses and till the soil. Being Lowers, they weren't afraid of radiation damage. The barrier had never given them much protection, and they knew I was going to make the unprotected surface habitable. Now they're straggling back, saying they're hungry. There isn't any food ... I wish I could sleep." Once more she laid her hand over her eyes.

  Something in the way she said the last words brought memory flooding up in Bonnar. He remembered—no, was ready to re-live—the days when she had been a woman and he had been her lover. She couldn't sleep; but if he were to take her by the hand and lead her back into the bedchamber, lie down by her, enjoy her ... He knew how to give her sleep.

  Leaf moved, and the dim blue nimbus flickered restlessly about her. Bonnar was shaken with shame and disgust. How could he have thought what he had been thinking? She was the Queen; he was someone she tolerated, as she might have tolerated a too-devoted dog. Had she been listening to his thoughts? She would hate him if she had. She had turned away; he could not see her face.

  "You have many cares, Lady," he said in a submissive murmur. "It is no wonder that you cannot sleep."

  "Cares? Oh, yes." She put her two hands on the rail of the balcony and leaned out over it. "What has happened to my friends?" she asked almost plaintively. "I used to have friends; now all I have is followers. The world is divided into the few who still hate me, and those who throw themselves at my feet. Isn't there anyone left who merely wishes me well? Horvendile ..."

  Bonnar felt a pang of jealous curiosity whose strength astonished him. For a moment all he could do was to bite his lips. At last he was able to say, in a carefully controlled voice, "Yes, Lady? Horvendile?"

  "Horvendile wanted to be king," Leaf answered. "He tried to tamper with the myth."

  She halted. He could see her, against the glow of the sky, pushing back the mass of her hair with one hand. "Horvendile showed me who I am. He taught me many things. I suppose—I suppose that I am grateful to him. But he wanted to be my consort, to sit beside me on the throne. I caught him bribing Lowers to tell me another version of the myth, one that would have room in it for him. It was not just ambition. But after that I had to send him away."

  So that was what had happened to H
orvendile. Bonnar felt a burst of relief. The sand-haired little historian, at least, was out of the way, done for as far as Leaf went.

  "You spoke of cares," Leaf was saying. "Food is the great one. The Lowers must have more food. Even before I can make Viridis fit to live in, I must feed them.

  "I have been trying to get more algal from the automatic sun-tank farms. I don't know how successful—I am to hear a report on it in the council today."

  She looked about her, sighing. There was a streak of faint greenish light in the sky that began to dim the lunar shining. "I must try to sleep," she said. "It will be morning in a little while."

  "Yes, Lady," Bonnar said. He bowed deeply, bending forward from the waist. "Sleep well. I wish you sleep."

  She went in, closing the balcony door behind her. For a moment Bonnar looked after her. Then he lay down in front of the threshold. He would guard her, whether or not she slept.

  EVEN an absolute monarch must have a council to advise, ministers to govern through. Leaf sat with her bent head resting on her doubled fist, gravely listening to Tinsley's report on the automatic farms. "So," she said when he had finished, "it will be at least six months before I can expect any significant increase in algal production from the farms?"

  Tinseley (she had copted him from the old Upper cabinet; he had, it seemed, long been a secret sympathizer of hers) nodded soberly. "That is so, my Lady. Even with the new tanks you have ordered, it will be six months before the supply of non-polluted algal will be especially larger. Polluted food is in plentiful supply as usual, of course."

  "I can't give them polluted food," Leaf said, as if to herself.

  There was an instant's silence. Then Odic struggled to his feet. "Lady! My Lady!" he croaked. He made one of his big flapping gestures. "May I have your gracious permission to speak?"

  "Yes, Odic."

  Odic turned red and stammered. He sawed the air with his hands. He seemed to be strangling with emotion, with sincerity. "Lady," he said when he had at last succeeded in pushing words past the block in his throat, "Lady, I want to warn you. You must be on your guard.