"I am an Upper. By birth I am kin to the best of the Uppers. Only the finest lineage was considered precious enough to merit the protection of the cage." Odic's mouth twisted in a burst of bitterness. He stopped to choke and cough.
"As I say, I am an Upper," he continued. "So, though they know I belong to you, I hear things. Lady, they are plotting against you. Be on your guard."
Leaf was unimpressed. She did not lift her hand from the hand that was propping it. "That is nothing new," she answered. "I can look into men's hearts."
"Yes, but Lady, you have the Lowers to fear also. Do you not understand about people like that? So long as they are held down they are pitiable. But when they become freer they are full of hate. People who have suffered as much as they have are always bad.
"Already they talk against you. Already there is muttering in the streets. If you fail them, they will tear you in pieces. Lady, forgive me." Odic clasped his hands together before his face and gave her one of his wild, supplicating glances. "But do you intend to give them unpolluted food, make the surface of Viridis habitable?"
"Yes, Odic."
"Forgive me! But, Lady, how?"
The question seemed to reverberate in the air. Queen Leaf hesitated. It was not that she was in any degree shaken; but she seemed to hesitate. Bonnar sprang to his feet.
"My Lady, Queen Leaf," he said in a tone that was heavy with a perfectly sincere respect, "I am not even a council member. I live only at your will. But may I speak?"
"Who—? Oh, it's Bonnar." Queen Leaf had, he perceived, forgotten the man who had been sitting at her feet. "Speak, then. But be brief."
They were all looking at him—whispering, identifying him as a man who had been important in the old government and gone over at the spectacular last moment to the Green Queen. Bonnar was not displeased. He turned to Odic.
"Who are you," he demanded, "to ask your Queen questions? Are you her equal? She is the queen, and she is not accountable to anyone—to anyone—for what she does or does not do. Not to the Lowers—" here Bonnar laughed—"or to you, Odic."
He turned to the Queen before the former KG could answer. "My Lady," he said, speaking with his head respectfully bowed, "It is not right that you should be vexed by discontented Lowers. People like that are never satisfied. If they talk against you, they must be stopped.
"The old government had means of stopping them. Those means still exist. Igon is dead, but the secret police could be revived. It has been a long time since a verbal mask has been implanted, but that maskart still lies ready to the Green Queen's hand.
"My Lady, you may use what means you will. If you choose to send the Lowers down Stairs again—or re-erect the barrier—who has the right to complain?" Leaf had made a gesture of repugnance; Bonnar hurried on. "You must have time to carry out your plans. In the end, you will free the whole planet and give us all unpolluted food. Until then, it is your right—almost your duty—to rule.
"Forgive me, Lady." He bowed very low. Then he sat down at her feet.
"I am the queen, yes," Leaf answered. "I will not rule in that way."
She stood up. The pale blue halo about her had grown stronger. "I am grateful to Odic—and Bonnar—for having tried to help me solve my problems," she said. "But they are my problems. They will be solved, and solved soon. "The council meeting is dismissed."
She sat down again. The council members rose and filed past her. Each, as he passed, bowed almost to the floor. If this council meeting had done nothing else, it had rendered more complete her ascendency.
The big room grew empty. Leaf remained sitting, her head resting on her hand. At last Bonnar said, in a soft, flat voice, "My Lady, what will you do now?"
He had spoken so softly that she may have thought his voice a part of her own thoughts. "I will find my consort," she answered. "I am going to my tree."
THE RESOLVE, announced only to Bonnar, had somehow spread through the city. It brought with it an immediate lessening of tension. The complaints, the muttering, ceased. A tender expectation took their place. Strangers spoke to strangers, smiling, and their talk was always of the good days that were coming. And over and over again one heard the words, "The Queen ... her consort ... the tree ... the tree ... the tree ..."
On the morning of the day after the scene in the council room, Queen Leaf left the city. She had refused all company on her mission except Bonnar's; he was even to pilot the 'copter for her. At first he had been almost tremulous with happiness at her preference for him; then it occurred to him that she wanted him with her because he offered her the sort of companionship an unusually intelligent dog would have given her. Later, too, he wondered whether there had not been a sort of prescience in her insistence that no one but he should be present when she met her divine consort.
The 'copter lifted smoothly and was out through the opened section in the Dome. The clear green light of day came brightly through the molded gelglass cabin. Bonnar stole a glance sideways at Leaf. She was sitting quietly beside him with her hands in her lap. The nimbus shone wanly around her head.
How different this was from the other trip he had taken with her outside Shalom! She had been still a woman then, or only a little more than a woman, and she had worn one of the protective suits. (Today she had refused the suit, saying that she didn't need it, and that perhaps soon no one would need it.) Horvendile had been with them then; the cabin of the plane had been crowded and small.
And yet there were similarities, too. Today, as on that day so many months before, he was helping Leaf to hunt something. What, and where it was, then as now only she could tell. "The tree." Yes, but what did that mean? Who, except Leaf, could tell what was meant by "The Green Queen's golden tree of life?"
Almost as soon as the 'copter was clear of the city she had him go south. He obeyed quickly, proud of his skill in piloting. They beat a wide path back and forth, due south, for perhaps a hundred miles. Then she had him turn so they were headed west.
The beating back and forth continued. He was not the least tired, not the least worried, but he wondered about the Queen. But her orders were always given in a calm, low voice, and her hands, when he looked at her, were resting quietly in her lap.
Once he sighed. She must have thought him impatient, for she said, as if in explanation, "It isn't easy, Bonnar. It is like trying to locate the source of an echo in a big, empty, echo-resounding room. You could stand at a hundred different spots along the smooth walls, and hear the echo loud and clear, but it would be always an echo, not the first voice.
"It is that way with the tree. Again and again I feel the tree strongly, but it is always an echo, never the thing itself. Something in the air of Viridis sends the—tree impulse echoing back."
At noon she had him stop. She sat quietly in the cabin while he stretched his legs in the open, drank nutrisoup, and relieved himself. Then they went on with the search.
They had been going west for a long time when she had him turn south once more. Bonnar, looking at the moving green line on the map that marked their airline distance from Shalom, saw that it was rather more than a thousand miles. They had come much further than that, of course.
Darkness came on, and still they had not found what she was hunting. Something—not quite a fear, perhaps an uncertainty—was beginning to stir in him.
He set the 'copter down in a clearing, as she bade him. He drank nutrisoup for his supper; Queen Leaf ate a little fruit, saying that since she had been Queen, she had not been hungry. "I miss being hungry, sometimes," she said.
The night-glow, as usual, filled the sky. Bonnar said, "Forgive me, Lady. But could we not go on with the search, now that we have eaten? I think there is plenty of light."
"Queen Leaf shook her head. "No, it's no use. As soon as the sun sets the air becomes filled with echoes and confusions. I could be two feet from the tree, and not know it at night."
He passed the night on the ground outside the 'copter. He did not worry
about Felodons or Crotalidi, since he was with the Queen. Once he heard her cough and stir within the cabin, and wondered sleepily whether she slept.
Next day was bright and pleasant. Leaf had him pilot the 'copter due south again. The pleasant, gentle landscape of Viridis slid by beneath the molded nose of the ship, Low hills, slow, winding rivers, glinting in the sunlight, a long volcanic slope crowned with a plume of gray smoke, once one of the deadly "hot" radiation areas. They had come much further from Shalom today.
Today Leaf seemed restless. She rubbed her hands back and forth over her eyes, moved in her seat, shivered. It was some two hours past noon when she said to Bonnar suddenly "I do not understand this."
His heart was pounding. He didn't know what he was afraid of. "What, Lady?" he asked unceremoniously.
"That—let the ship hover, Bonnar. Just here. Yes. Set it down."
He obeyed. Leaf opened the left-hand cabin door and stepped out. She seemed to sway a little as the sunlight fell on her. Her face was pale.
"Are you ill, Lady?" he asked breathlessly.
"No, not that. But it is very strange. I don't understand."
"What? What, my Queen."
"Why, the tree is here. Just here." She made a gesture and for a moment he could see a tall, shadowy tree reaching up toward heaven, while golden globes shone with a steady, mysterious light among its branches. "And yet there is nothing. There is nothing here at all except grass."
It was true. They stood on a long, sloping plain that might have been the talus of a volcano. The grass blew away from them in long ripples as the wind stirred it. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing like a tree.
Their glances met. Bonnar swallowed. He said, "It has been a long time. Many things could happen to a tree."
"Yes ... Go back to the ship's cabin, Bonnar. I will sit here and wait."
He did as she told him. She had seated herself in the deep grass. It came up so high around her that only her head and shoulders were visible. The moments passed.
Section Three: The Tree
Chapter Seven
"THE LONG grass made a sighing noise," said Bonnar ...
IT WAS nobody, only the wind, but Leaf had risen to her feet and was looking about her anxiously. After a little while she sat down again. The pale blue nimbus flickered around her with surprising brightness.
How many times had she got to her feet and looked about her while they had been waiting? It had been early afternoon when Bonnar had put the 'copter down on the slope, and now the shadows were beginning to lengthen. Time after time she had started up, hopefully and eagerly, and it had never been anything except the wind.
Bonnar, who was still sitting in the 'copter, gave a long, trembling sigh—a sigh that was partly fatigue, partly nervous tension, and partly slowly-emerging fear. Suppose—it was only a supposition—but suppose that the mask he had created about the Green Queen had been wrong in this one respect: that the Green Queen's consort did not exist. What would happen if Queen Leaf went back to Shalom without the divine spouse she had been supposed to meet?
That she had not been able to find the tree she sought meant nothing, since only Leaf and himself were aware of her failure. But would she be able to solve the problems of her government without at least some semblance of the consort legend assigned to her? She had averted serious domestic difficulties only by setting out to find the tree. And most of the Uppers were still opposed to her; her absence from the city would have given them time to organize against her. He must try to think.
Leaf had risen to her feet again, and this time she did not sit down. Her gaze was fixed on a point behind Bonnar, a spot toward which the opaque portion of the 'copter walls prevented him from looking. She was leaning forward a little, very serious and intent. Was it—did she—?
Bonnar jumped from the 'copter and ran toward her. His heart was thudding heavily. When he reached her, he turned and looked where she was looking.. A man was coming toward them, around the long, grass-covered slope.
He was still a long way off, but even at that distance Bonnar found him puzzlingly familiar. When he got a little nearer, Bonnar recognized him. It was Horvendile.
The historian was taking long, quick strides through the deep grass. Like Leaf herself, he wore no protective suit. He was carrying something in his right hand that dragged behind him in the grass.
Bonnar stiffened. He glanced at Leaf—Queen Leaf—and saw that though she was watching Horvendile intently, her face was expressionless. He laid his hands nervously on his guns.
Horvendile was winded when he got up to them. "Hello, Leaf," he said gaspingly. "I've come—if it isn't down too deep, that it—to help you dig up what you might call your tree." He showed them what he had been carrying in his right hand. It was a spade.
Bonnar stepped forward. "She's the Queen, the Green Queen," he said roughly. "You'll address her respectfully, as she deserves."
Horvendile paid little attention. He seemed to be sniffing at the air. "It's about here, I guess," he said. He set the spade in the grass and stepped down on it with the weight of his body. "As far as Leaf's being the Green Queen goes, she isn't. Not, that is, unless her name is Merakis." He smiled as if he had made a little joke.
Bonnar felt the hot blood burn in his face. He pulled one of his blasters half way from the holster. Leaf made a gesture that seemed to push him into the background. "Be quiet," she ordered.
"Horvendile, what did you mean by that?" she asked. "How did you get here? What are you doing here?"
Horvendile was digging steadily, throwing the big, long-grassed clods to one side. "Why, to answer your questions a little out of order, my dear, I've been waiting for you nearly a week, out of sight on the other side of the talus of the volcano. I knew you'd come here sooner or later, hunt the tree. It's really the original Green Queen's message beacon, you know, and it's what you were hunting the first time you left Shalom, when you saw the space ship after the earthquake had shifted it."
Queen Leaf pushed her long, bright hair back from her face. "Why—what are you doing here?" she asked.
Horvendile's face changed a little. He stopped digging for a moment. "Oh, I wanted to see you again," he said with an airy wave of the hand. "We used to be friends, Leaf."
"That was a long time ago. I am the Green Queen now."
"No, you're not," said Horvendile, going back to his excavation. "The original Green Queen came to Viridis about 22,000,000 years ago—notice the time, Leaf, and bear in mind that the half-life of neptunium is 20,000,000 years—when the surface of Viridis was, h'um, shimmering with radioactivity. There was even a little plutonium around then. The original Green Queen didn't come here on purpose, though she had a cargo of small, useful life forms in the hold of her ship and intended to colonize a suitable planet; she was shipwrecked. I rather suspect—we'll know better after we dig up the beacon—that the cause of the wreck was a revolt among her servants. She had a great many servants. I also imagine she had four or five consorts, at least, not just one."
"But—"
"Why couldn't you be she, or a sort of reincarnation of her? Well, in the first place, Queen Merakis not only wasn't divine, she wasn't even particularly good or moral. In the second place, and a more cogent objection, she wasn't a human being at all. She was a sort of winged ant."
Bonnar had listened to Horvendile's discourse with growing apprehension. What he himself thought of its content he scarcely knew; he was wholly concerned with its effect upon Leaf. It would be bad enough for Leaf to return to Shalom without her divine lover. That would be a misfortune that might lead to a catastrophe in the end. But for Horvendile to convince Leaf that she was not the Green Queen would be disaster unqualified.
For a moment he thought of drawing his blaster and shooting Horvendile as he dug. The little historian's back was half turned toward him; he would be dead before he could defend himself. But Leaf might resent it, and she was, after all, the Queen, with the po
wer of instant death in her hands.
"He's lying," he said hoarsely. "Don't believe him Leaf. He's an agent of the Uppers. They've sent him here to persuade you so they can get back into power again."
Leaf shook her head. The blue radiance shimmered around her wanly. "Be quiet," she told Bonnar once more. Then, to Horvendile, "I don't think that you are lying. And yet I know now that I never was the queen—why did you teach me that I was?"
Horvendile's face twitched. He threw down his spade on the edge of the hole he had been digging. "I wish you hadn't brought that big selfish blockhead with you," he said bitterly. "His damned ears soak up everything. Why, Leaf, don't you know why I did it? I was—I was crazy about you—"
He swallowed. "I never had a girl like you before," he said difficultly. "Really a woman. Most girls are a little bit men, I think. I wanted to keep you. I thought you'd like me better—that I'd have more of a hold on you—if I taught you to be the queen.
"I broke my promises when I did it. Serious promises, too." He made a little twisted smile. "Nothing could have been more serious. But I wanted to keep you. I was in love with you, Leaf."
"Promises?" Queen Leaf questioned.
"Yes." He had picked up the shovel and was going on with his digging. "I was one of the inner circle of the Apple Pickers, the elect. We had dedicated ourselves to finding out the truth about Viridis and setting it free. I was supposed to teach you to play, as a conscious thing, the part of the Queen. We had come to believe that radioactivity was not a serious danger on Viridis. You were to lower the barrier, just as you did, and declare that the surface of the planet was habitable. But I fell in love with you. I wanted you to have real power. And I taught you that you were really the Queen."
"Don't you see why he's saying this?" Bonnar broke in desperately. "He's jealous. He wants you back. He thinks that if he can convince you that you're not really the queen in the legend, he can get you back in bed with him again."
The Green Queen Page 9
