by C. J. Ryan
Or, she could become Empress.
She held out her hands, palms up, and mentally weighed her options. In her left hand she put the advantages of being Empress. Immense power. A huge responsibility along with it, true, but still…
There were the perks. Having been wealthy all her life, Gloria seldom thought about money, but she did appreciate the luxuries it could buy. As Empress, she could have every luxury imaginable, and then some. Her left hand sagged a bit lower from the weight of the thought.
But would it really be…fun, fun, fun? Surrounded by Imperial Security, hounded incessantly by the media, some sort of living goddess to the adoring but demanding masses? All of that had a certain appeal to her, she had to admit, but it might become tiresome after the first twenty or thirty years.
In her right hand, she put Dexta. Dexta, dexter; Empress, sinister. Had she meant something by that?
Dexta…all the fun, fun, fun a girl could ask for. Like being terrorized by the Pack Dogs and her superiors when she was a Fifteen. Like having people try to kill her. Like being butt-fucked by Cornell DuBray. Like having to face the ugly little realities of life in the glorious Empire—attempted genocide on Mynjhino, and the smell of the fires in the park, where the Jhino troops were cremating the bodies of thousands of Myn. Or the camp at Pizen Flats on Sylvania, strewn with the remains of people who had been her friends.
But in the end, she had been able to redress the balance on those two worlds, though not without cost. She had made a difference. The Empire was a marginally better place than it would have been without her. That counted for something.
On the other hand, consider how much more she could do as Empress. And as Empress, she would have no Quad Admins standing in her way. She would not have to deal with Cornell DuBray. Only Charles…
She stared at her hands for a few moments, then threw them up in the air in defeat. She was damned if she knew which hand Charles should go in.
She had been young and stupid when she married him. Was she still young enough and stupid enough to marry him again? Spirit, hadn’t she learned anything? Of course, it was different now. Back then, Charles had not been Emperor and was unlikely ever to be; she was simply his wife. And being his wife had not been all bad, in honesty. Charles, who had the male version of the enhanced genes Gloria boasted, was probably the best bedmate she’d ever had. And in spite of being an essentially selfish bastard, there were times when he had shown some dim signs of intelligence, compassion, and generosity.
Could she rule the Empire at his side? Have a son with him?
Gloria found herself standing in front of the gnarled glashpadoza tree, the one that absorbed the sins of its owner. An appropriate item for an emperor to have. And what, she wondered, would Dexta’s glashpadoza tree be like? How big, how ugly would that one be?
At least she didn’t have to decide between them at once. No, she could brood about it for weeks and let it eat up her life, instead.
Fun, fun, fun, she thought.
GLORIA’S ROUTE TO THE RESIDENCE TOOK HER past the swimming pool, where she found an unpleasant surprise. Laurence, Lord Brockinbrough—Charles’s detestable cousin and heir—was camped out poolside, shielded from the fierce Rio sun by a purple robe and a broad-brimmed straw hat. He raised a hand to her and waved it idly. “Gloria,” he called. “Grand to see you again, milady. Or should I say, my Empress?”
Gritting her teeth, Gloria managed a smile and a cool, “Hello, Larry.”
It had been seven or eight years since she had seen him. He had put on weight. There had always been something snakelike about him, Gloria thought, but now he more closely resembled one of those plump lizards that lie around on rocks and wait for a meal to walk by. He was in his fifties and could have looked thirty, but the additional weight had pushed him into some nebulous zone of indeterminate middle age. His cheeks were full and round, his lips fleshy, his eyes still dark and impenetrable.
“I intend to be best man again,” Larry told her, smiling impishly.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Larry,” Gloria replied. “Nothing has been decided.”
“Playing the reluctant virgin, are we? I have to say, the role ill becomes you. I know you better than that, after all.”
He knew her entirely too well. She and Charles had spent much of their marriage roaming the Empire in his luxurious yacht, and on some of those jaunts, they had been joined by Cousin Larry. Joined, even in bed. Charles enjoyed experimentation.
In those days, Charles had been nothing but a callow and superfluous member of a fecund dynastic clan, far from power or the prospect of it, and Larry an older and even more superfluous embarrassment to the Hazars. Somehow, they had latched on to each other and become what they described, in drunken giggles, as coconspirators in a Plot Against the Empire. They both affected a pose of being cynical young rebels, contemptuous of the dynasty that imprisoned them, although Larry was already getting a little old to be credible in the part. Charles had seemed to be studying his cousin, picking up pointers for what promised to be a life of idle merriment and utter uselessness.
A loud splash from the pool drew Gloria’s attention. She saw a naked young man cavorting there with two equally naked young women.
“You remember my son, Gareth, of course,” said Larry.
“That’s Gareth?” Gloria asked in genuine surprise. She remembered him as a ten-year-old brat. He was the product of Larry’s union with his first wife. The wife he had beaten to death in a drunken rage.
Such things happened, of course, even in the best of families. It was the media’s scandal du jour for a time, but then Larry was packed off to a Rehabilitation Clinic for a year, and no more was said about it. And nothing at all was said about the second woman he killed, an anonymous nobody on some distant outworld. A little more rehabilitation, a little less booze, and Larry was once again fit to be seen in public.
“I wouldn’t have recognized him,” Gloria said, looking toward young Gareth in the pool.
“He had a rapid and successful puberty,” Larry said. “He’s eighteen now. Smart as a whip, too.”
“Just a chip off the old block, huh?”
Larry smiled. “I’d like to think he’s better than that.”
“He’d almost have to be, wouldn’t he?”
Lord Brockinbrough gave a minimal shrug. He must have been well aware that Gloria despised him; most people who knew him did. He simply refused to let that bother him.
“Gareth!” Larry called. “Come on over here and say hello to Gloria.”
The young man dutifully swam over to the side of the pool, hauled himself out of it, and stood before Gloria, naked and dripping water from various appendages. He was tall, slim, and well formed, with the same serpentine eyes as his father. “Hi, Gloria,” he said happily. “Been a long time.” His eyes made a slow and deliberate inventory of everything revealed by Gloria’s flimsy wrap dress, which was nearly all of her.
“Hello, Gareth. You’ve grown up, I see.”
He glanced down at himself, then looked into Gloria’s eyes and grinned. “Yes, I have,” he said. “You might even like me now. Are you going to marry Charles again?”
“That remains to be determined,” Gloria said formally, wondering if everyone in the Household was aware of Charles’s proposition.
“Well,” Gareth said, “if you don’t, I’m available.” He winked at her.
“I’ll make a note of that,” Gloria told him.
“No, really,” Gareth persisted. “If marriage is out, maybe we could just fuck sometime. I mean, I know you did it with my dad, and I’m better than him. Isn’t that right, girls?” he called to the young women in the pool. “I’m better than my dad, aren’t I?” The girls grinned and nodded enthusiastically.
Gloria glanced at Lord Brockinbrough. “Is there a gene for narcissism?” she wondered aloud.
“Back in the pool, son. You’re embarrassing Gloria, who is a woman of refined sensibilities and lofty pretensions. Anyway, you’re
getting a hard-on, staring at her like that.”
Gareth laughed. “Seeya later, Gloria!” He dived into the pool and porpoised his way back to the girls.
“All the grace and charm we’ve come to expect from the Brockinbroughs,” Gloria observed.
“He still has a few rough edges,” Larry admitted, “but I’m proud of him, I truly am. He may yet redeem the family name that I so thoughtlessly besmirched. I have great hopes for him.”
“Hope is a wonderful thing,” Gloria agreed.
“Charles has high hopes, too,” Larry said. “Don’t disappoint him, Gloria. Marry him. Give him a son. As things stand now, I’m his heir. I don’t like that any more than the rest of the House of Hazar does. We would all be thrilled and gratified if you were to become Empress and relieve me of the burden and embarrassment of being next in the line of succession.”
“I honestly haven’t made up my mind, Larry,” Gloria said.
“He needs you, Gloria. More than he realizes. He was devastated when you left him.”
Gloria responded to that with a loud horselaugh.
“Well, he was,” Larry insisted. “He may not have shown it, but he was deeply hurt.”
“I seem to recall,” Gloria said, “that after I left him, the two of you went off on an inspection tour of all the bordellos in Quadrant 3.”
“It was merely a way of coping with his grief. Charles is deeper than you ever gave him credit for. He’s an intelligent and caring man, but given his upbringing, he’s always felt that he had to hide his inner self. Growing up as a Hazar is more of a burden than you can fully comprehend, Gloria. I never managed to overcome it, but Charles has, and will only improve with age—with you at his side.”
Gloria didn’t say anything in response. But she wondered if he could be right.
CHARLES WAS FREE, AND GLORIA WAS SENT into his private chambers. There, she found him changing out of his Imperial garb and into a tee shirt and a pair of old, faded jeans.
“Where does an Emperor get worn-out jeans?” she asked him.
“He simply keeps the same pair for ten years and threatens the catacombs for anyone who dares to mend, repair, or refurbish them. I had these jeans when we were together, Glory. I can still fit into them, too, thank you very much.”
“One way, at least, that you don’t take after Cousin Larry.”
“Saw him, did you?”
“That misfortune was mine, yes.”
“He’s not as bad as you think he is.”
“He said precisely the same thing about you.”
“Really? Well, there, you see, that proves it’s true for both of us. Now, what can I do for you? The Emperor is entirely at your disposal.”
“Will I talk about myself in the third person, too, if I become Empress?”
“Probably,” Charles said after a moment’s thought. “There are times when I think of the Emperor as some other guy, some distinct entity, different from me.”
“So, you take off your robes and garters and whatnot, get into your jeans, and suddenly you’re no longer the Emperor? Is it as easy as that?”
Charles shook his head. “Nothing is easy for an emperor. But you get used to it. I did, and so will you.”
“Maybe.” Gloria sat down on the edge of the bed next to Charles as he put on a pair of sneakers. “What will it be like?” she asked him. “For us, I mean?”
“As husband and wife? Or as Emperor and Empress?”
“Both. You weren’t exactly an ideal husband the first time around.”
“I suppose we can take that as a given. Perhaps we can also assume that I learned something from the experience, and that I won’t be quite as much of a cad in the future as I have been in the past. I expect that we would both retain a certain degree of freedom, however, if that’s what’s on your mind. Far be it from me to cramp the style of an Avatar of Joy.”
Gloria nodded. She had to admit that marital fidelity was not a concept that worked well for either one of them. She had tried to be faithful to Charles after they were first married, but when it became obvious that he had no intention of cleaving only unto her, she had sown a few wild oats of her own. Well, more than a few, actually. And Cousin Larry was hardly the only person to have shared a bed with both of them.
“Mind you,” Charles added, “I don’t think it would be appropriate for the Empress to start humping beggars in the streets. But short of that, I think you’d probably be able to have as active a social life as you desire. No more trips to the Club Twelve Twenty-Nine, though. But I’ve set up a null-room here in the Residence, and as for drugs—”
“Dammit, Charles, you’re having me followed!”
“Let’s just say that I’m keeping tabs on you. For instance, I know that Cornell DuBray is giving you a hard time. And that Manko hominid…say the word, Glory, and I’ll make him disappear.”
“I can handle Manko myself,” she insisted. “And DuBray, too.”
“But why should you have to?” Charles asked in honest bafflement. “That’s the part I just don’t understand. Never have. What the hell are you trying to prove? You’re rich, beautiful, and privileged—you always have been and you always will be. Why the pretensions of being just another working girl, carrying her lunch in a brown paper bag?”
Gloria snickered. “I’m hardly that.”
“No, but you seem to want people to think that you are—when you aren’t busy being an Avatar of Joy. It seems to me that you’re trying to have things both ways, Gloria. You want to be an honest, dedicated bureaucrat, a true servant of the people, but at the same time you want to go on enjoying all the advantages of your wealth and position.”
“I don’t see why I can’t do both. Being the glamorous Gloria VanDeen—you know, sometimes I think of her in the third person—gives me a certain power, both inside and outside Dexta. I use that power to do my job. You may not like some of the things I’ve done, but you can’t deny that I’ve been pretty effective.”
“But think how much more effective you could be as Empress.” Charles seized her left hand and squeezed it. “Think of all the good you could do for humanity!”
Gloria abruptly pulled her hand away from him. “Oh, please,” she groaned.
Charles grimaced. “Okay,” he said, “I suppose that one doesn’t work very well, coming from me. We both know that I care more about the well-being of my dogs than I do about the general run of humanity. As long as they aren’t rioting in the streets for bread, I’m not too concerned about their happiness. Spirit, Gloria, there are three trillion of them. My job is to be concerned about the welfare of the anthill, not the ants. But if you do care about them—and I believe that you sincerely do—then here’s your chance to do something for them.”
“Like what?”
“Entertain them, for one. They need that, you know, almost as much as they need the bread. Bread and circuses, like in Rome. The plebs haven’t changed in three thousand years, Gloria. They still want sex and spectacle, and who better to provide that than you?”
“I give them that already,” Gloria pointed out. “What more would I be able to do if I were Empress? You talked about real power, Charles. What, exactly, are you offering?”
Charles got to his feet and wandered out onto a balcony. Gloria followed him and took in the green opulence of Rio and the looming bulk of Sugar Loaf. The central spire of the Spiritist Mother Church impaled the nearby sky. Far below them, she noticed the swimming pool, where Cousin Larry and son Gareth seemed to be busy having sex with the two young women she had seen.
“Sex and spectacle,” she mused. “But what about power?”
“Within reason,” Charles said at last, “I can see giving you authority over virtually anything you want, with the exception of the military and the economy.”
“Those are pretty big exceptions, Chuckles.”
“And necessary ones. The military can have only one commander-in-chief, and that must be the Emperor. Surely, you can see that. As for the economy,
in a general sense, it runs itself. In a more specific sense, policies such as taxation, money supply, and resource development all involve a complex set of relationships among the Household, Parliament, and the Big Twelve. It wouldn’t do to have you meddling in that miasma. You would find it stupefyingly boring, in any case.”
“So what’s left?”
“Social welfare, in all its many guises. Food for the starving, clothes for the needy, books for the ignorant. You could play an important role in seeing to it that the Empire is not populated exclusively by hungry, naked morons.”
“If you control the economy,” Gloria pointed out, “that would leave me distributing crumbs.”
“What you get would depend on how well you play the game. It’s nice to pretend that as Emperor I can just snap my fingers and get what I want, but that’s not the way it works. I still have to fight for the programs and policies I favor, and I don’t always get my way. Neither would you. But as Empress, you would carry considerable weight with the public and, therefore, with Parliament. What you ultimately achieved would be determined by your own abilities.”
“What if some of my social welfare issues overlapped with your domain?”
“Such as?”
“The Big Twelve dominate some worlds in ways that go far beyond mere business. In some places, they are virtual feudal overlords.”
“Aren’t they just?” Charles said with a snort. “And you think you can do something about it?”
“I’d like to try,” Gloria said.
Charles thought about it for a moment. “A ticklish area,” he said at last. “But it strikes me that it might be useful if we could double-team them. ‘Sorry, GalaxCo, I’d love to help you out, but it would upset the Empress.’ That sort of thing. Together, we’d have some leverage with them.” He turned to her and grinned. “It might even be fun.”
