by Eden Wolfe
The sequence of Queens takes its course. Not one of us is exempt from its effects. None, except perhaps the first... Rose…
Maeva physically shook the thought away, not allowing her to take it any further. Ariane saw it and came back into the present moment.
“Come, Mother. Let’s walk.”
Ariane took Maeva’s arm as she used to do in the days when she was first announced. In spite of herself, Maeva felt her shoulders relax and her heart calm. This was how it was always supposed to be.
They walked together in silence to the main gate of the fortress, out into the Geb City Square. It was relatively quiet. A morning soup seller in the corner and a small group of children taking lessons on the south side. Ariane led her towards Central Tower.
“How would you advise me, Mother?” Ariane asking, looking straight ahead toward the Tower.
Maeva thought carefully, her words would either grow their closeness or push Ariane even further. She had to start with something safe, something even expected. She could not jump straight to Cork Town; it would fall on deaf ears. Maeva knew it too well; she would have been the same.
In fact, she had been the same. When she’d been Queen.
Maeva started, “The Tuesday Briefings I used to give provided consistency for the people. They could rely on information and communion with their Queen at a specified time and place. The practice is outdated on some level, but on another, it is a tried and tested method for –"
“The Tuesday Briefing? I invite you to give me any advice on any subject, and that is your great counsel?”
“It is a starting point.”
“A starting point for what? You had nearly forty years of reign. And Tuesday Briefings is what comes to mind? What about the scouts? What about the deviants? What about the traitors living within our own walls? Need I mention Archer, that dreaded code of kings? How close you came to complete failure because of a man, and not just any man, but the man you knew was designed to overthrow us?”
“He wasn’t designed to overthrow. It was well within our scope of control. It had been from the time the Directive –”
“Don’t throw these antediluvian Directives at me. They are as good as the wood chips on which those Queens wrote them. They are crude, and you know it as well as I. You bought into an ideology to which I cannot ascribe Mother.”
I am offending her; she’s right to be offended. She saw right through me. I must not try to outwit her. She sniffs it out like a lion to the deer.
“You are right, Daughter.”
Ariane’s head tilted, but she did not speak.
“Let me come right to the point. My advice is this: Listen to the people. Listen to what they don’t say. There is much unrest across this country now. The shortages have exacerbated it again, they always do. But if you hear what they don’t say, and then speak it back to them in terms which show your solidarity, then you will find fierce loyalty even in the places where they have the greatest suffering.”
Ariane re-took Maeva's arm and guided her again into a slow walk before Central Tower.
“This is worthy advice, Mother. Thank you.”
Maeva nodded.
“I shall heed your advice.”
Maeva smiled involuntarily.
“You shall go to the outer counties.”
Maeva stopped, released Ariane’s arm, and looking her in the eye. “Me?”
Ariane smiled. “It makes perfect sense. You have this experience. You are my most loyal subject, are you not?”
Subject.
Maeva felt the voices scratching at her throat.
“Of course, I am.”
“Then you are best positioned for this most important act. You shall leave in three days' time; that’s plenty to prepare. We’ll make sure you have everything you need. I believe a voyage of three months should be sufficient, don’t you?”
She’s sending me away so that she can clear out Cork Town in peace.
Maeva saw the strategy in Ariane’s eyes, and recognized it. The vision of her so clearly Maeva's own reflection.
Ariane placed her hand on Maeva’s cheek.
“These are difficult times, Mother. Your act of loyalty will not be forgotten. Indeed, it may be the very spark the people need to light the fire of devotion in them again.” Ariane brought her hand to the lava amulet around Maeva's neck. "They must remember where they came from. That we all landed on this rock, and that it's the Royalty who breathed life when they were all but extinct.
Maeva called on all her resources not to speak the words that were screaming inside her brain. She calmed her blood and brought her focus to a laser point in Ariane’s eyes.
“Indeed, Daughter.”
“You’ll call me Queen on your travels.”
“Of course, my Queen.”
Ariane smiled but not with her eyes.
Maeva inhaled deeply to crush the rising anger. “I’ll go prepare.”
Ariane nodded in what Maeva understood was a dismissal. She left Ariane in the square, restraining her steps so they did not betray her emotion as the voices clawed at her veins.
5
Roman
Roman rubbed his forehead, the skin pulled forward and folded on itself. He’d become thinner since the incubation program had been in place. Anxiety. When he sat on a hard surface, he felt it through to his bones. He was into his fifties, without the signs of degradation that his contemporaries had shown at his age. But he didn’t dare rely on that. He’d long ago learned not to count on anything. It could come any day for him; it didn’t have to be a drawn-out process the way it had been for Isaac, or still was for Lucius. One day to the next, it could begin.
The fact that he was losing weight, despite it being for a side effect of lack of sleep and a tendency to skip meals, was actually a good sign. No one degraded by withering away. No, degradation was accompanied by muscle breakdown to fat. Obesity was the most powerful, visible indicator.
Roman looked down, remarking how his clothes hung on him as though he were made of sticks, and resolved to improve his nutrition.
Sunlight streamed into his office on the nineteenth floor of Central Tower. He pulled down the shades and then went back to the report of the recent incubation program.
The figures before him made no sense.
The sequence they’d used was tried and true. They’d implemented it in phases, using best practices only, not taking any risks.
And yet there he was, staring five years of effort in the face, inching towards some kind of failure.
He stood up and paced the floor, rubbing the lava amulet around his neck. He used to believe that just touching it would channel some of the power of the settlers. But now that he was the Great Geneticist, nothing seemed to help. His office spanned the entire width of Central Tower, a quarter of the nineteenth floor.
Roman let out an ironic laugh.
Great Geneticist. I’ve been borrowing a title that never should have been mine.
It had seemed logical at the time when the new Queen had offered it to him. He’d occupied Lucius’ office for many years by the time the Ariane instated him at the head of the Tower. He’d demonstrated his skill, his management, his loyalty. And he'd done it many times over. To his rational mind, the title came with the job description. Except for what he now saw was his greatest flaw. He walked to the small mirror near the door and saw the circles under his eyes that had developed in the past few years.
I’m not good enough.
He didn’t hold a candle to Lucius. Lucius, stripped of the title or not, was even in his absence still the greater scientist. Roman returned to his desk, trying to channel some of the Great Geneticist energy at it.
Give me just a tenth of Lucius’s skill. Is it even skill? It’s as though he was born with it.
Roman paused.
Maybe he was born with it.
That would certainly explain it. Though he had no reason to believe Lucius had been designed from anything more than the common c
ode of Man.
The reports continued to swim in front of his eyes. They’d used the strongest sequence they had for the incubation program. The best balance between intellect, physical endurance, and longevity. They’d applied everything he knew from their documentation on past incubation programs, limited though it was. There didn’t seem to be anything exceptional about their newest efforts of implementation: a change of device, modification for first days' security. Feeding, comfort, and milestone monitors. The fetuses had all been born healthy in their glass wombs.
Everything had been done as it should have been done. Roman was a stickler for project management. The embryos developed as normal; became physically adept as expected. They'd met every critical development milestone.
And then it all fell apart. There had to be a solution for it; they’d adapted the sequence in small adjustments as necessary during the period between phases. They’d built that into their planning. Perfection in the first phases of implementation was unrealistic, but the results they saw now were unexpected. And alarming. The incubates, all female, simply weren't behaving the same as girls born through the Willing Woman program. They were insolent. Caustic. Rebellious. And they weren't yet five years old.
Unexpected, the report says. I can't stand unexpected. This whole incubation program has been designed for regular, ongoing, evolution. Not the unexpected.
A knock on the door caught Roman by surprise. He needed to focus before his briefing with the Queen.
“What? I made it clear I didn’t want interruptions!”
“Sir?” Carole popped her head in the door. She was almost the only person in the Tower who could bring Roman some good news.
“Carole. Fine. Come in. I’m looking at the figures, and I hope to the heavens you’ve got some way of explaining the behavioral variations.”
Carole hugged the folder into her chest and made a sucking sound through her teeth. “I have a way. But I don’t think it’s going to help.”
“Just give it to me, I’m exhausted of this. We’re on ninth round implementation. What the hell is going on, Carole?”
She walked to his desk, her tight pantsuit making crinkling noises as she walked. Carole was always about practicality. Her hair cut to her shoulders, her nails cut short, her shoes always of the same practical style. She laid the folder on the stack of papers he’d arranged. She opened it, revealing several pie charts that compared the various behavioral markers widely accepted as the new normal.
There was no arguing with it. Fewer than ten percent hit the expected behaviors, despite exceptional cognitive development.
“Damn it, Carole.”
“I’m just the messenger.”
“Who’s seen these?”
“No one."
“Are you sure?”
“Yes."
“How can you be sure?”
“Roman, no one runs these reports but me. They don’t even have access to the software. It’s safe. I haven’t even shown it to Uma.”
“Fine, fine.” He closed his eyes. “I need to think this through.”
Carole waited, but Roman had nothing more to say to her. He opened his eyes and looked down at the charts.
He heard her walking away. “I’ll be on the twelfth floor, Cork Town blood processing, if you need me.”
He gave a half-nod, keeping his eyes on the comparisons. The door clicked closed and he let out a sigh.
I’m going to have to be straight with the Queen. Give her the details, there’s no point in keeping them from her now. We need a strategy that’s beyond the bounds of the Tower.
He was relieved that he'd already raised the red flag nearly eighteen months earlier. The Queen appreciated early notification. Queen Ariane listened carefully and asked all the right questions. Roman watched as her eyes would process, ticking left and right before providing direction that was always precisely right for the moment. She exuded calm, remained collected even in the face of difficult news.
So much more reasonable than Maeva had ever been.
Maeva had been committed to results, regardless of the means. She demanded dedication and loyalty, but she didn’t seem to understand what they were up against. New instructions would come from out of nowhere from Maeva, and the Tower was expected to do an about-face to meet her unrelenting demands. The incubation program was a perfect example of yet again how she had led him down a rabbit hole. Implementation en masse was premature, but she wouldn’t hear of it. For her, there was no alternative. Maeva had to have what Maeva wanted. And if that was a massive program of incubation births, without testing, without control groups, without moderate phasing to ensure success – it didn’t matter. She had to have it.
And look where that got them.
Thousands. There are thousands of them out there. And most without any sense of ethical barometer to guide them. How do you teach that? If morality isn’t infused from the start… Cognitive and physical ability aside – there’s no controlling a population who cannot recognize right from wrong.
He closed his eyes.
Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe we’ve misunderstood the behavioral markers.
But he knew in his heart that it wasn’t the case. The markers had been designed with pre-Mist inputs. The documentation went far enough back that they didn’t have to recreate it from scratch.
If the subjects weren’t meeting the behavioral markers now, all predictions were that they never would meet them.
That would create an exceptional problem during a period of military preeminence when they required all women to fall in line to protect Lower Earth against Upper Earth's attack.
And yet that's what they were born for.
Roman let out an audible groan.
What good is an army of rebels? I need the old team. Imagine us all… Lucius, Isaac, Adam, Uma, Carole, and Sara. We could have overcome this. We could have found the keystone in the genetic code.
He walked to the window; activity in the Geb City Square was light. He saw the Queen walking with Maeva nineteen floors below, unmistakable in their robes. He brought his hand back to his forehead, massaging his temples.
Queen and former Queen separated, each taking a different route back into the fortress.
We’re only half a team now. Half a team, half the competence, half the success. Half the success is as good as no success at all. If only Lucius would hear me out –
He quit the thought. Lucius would never hear him out. Not again. Not after the "culling". Lucius had sent every message back unanswered, the closest thing to a slap in the face the newly appointed Great Geneticist would have.
Great Geneticist. I suppose there’s no title for Mediocre Geneticist. I’m a manager, damn it. Hadn’t I done well as the Primary Overseer of Central Tower? The keeper of the Great Geneticist, without taking the title myself? Expectations were realistic then. No one looked to me for a breakthrough. If I can make it through this life and keep the title of "Great" until my degradation begins, I’ll be the first one to admit surprise.
Mary's voice rang out on the screen, "Good afternoon, people of Geb! I bring a warning today of incoming inclement weather, so bring preparations - "
He glanced up at the clock, his throat tightening. He gathered up the charts and files, careful not to drop a page in the mass. The Queen would be waiting for him. He hated to keep the Queen waiting as much as she hated to wait.
6
Leadon
Leadon hugged her knees into her chest, willing the river to swallow her up for a while.
Just until this madness has passed.
Three days had gone by since Leadon gave the news, the dreadful, shocking news to Batrasa. She’d prepared all her words in advance, knowing that this could be the last push to put Batrasa over the edge to the afterlife. Leadon didn’t have any gift of life-giving. Not like Aria. Aria had understood the body so well, heard its inner workings. What a miracle when she’d saved Priyantha, everyone had borne witness to it.
Aria. Poor, aban
doned Aria.
Batrasa had sat back against the hut wall as Lea recounted the story of all she’d seen in Geb. The imposter standing in Aria’s place.
Batrasa had nodded, Lea had thought she was in some kind of shock, but when she’d spoken her words were measured and calm.
“You had to see it for yourself, my child. I’m sorry that this was how you learned of it, but there would have been no better way.”
It didn’t make sense.
Batrasa knew? How did she know?
“Let me explain.”
The others in Gana didn’t know. No one else had ever been close enough to Aria to recognize any difference, and those who were allowed to Geb at all certainly knew nothing of Aria’s disappearance.
Disappeared. Aria. How much better she deserved than that.
Leadon took in the sight of the river. Blessed river. How many times had she spied on Aria as she sat by the river, her fingers in the currents, closing her eyes, interpreting them? The memory was so real, Leadon thought if she closed her eyes, she could reach out and touch her. Though she never would have. Even when Aria had been there, to disrupt her was to leash an angel in flight.
A thick raindrop landed on Leadon’s hand. She let it come down on her, light at first, a gentle layer coating her skin. It intensified, the sky growing darker. Clouds swirled overhead in the growing wind, and Leadon watched as the wall of storm arrived upon her. She inhaled the smell of dust becoming mud, of leaves drinking, and the river hurrying against the banks. The rapids grew, and Lea had half a thought to move away, as the river was known to build to a roaring rush when the autumn flash storms came.
With regret, she stood and slowly walked with drenched heavy steps back to the village. She entered the warming hut to find ten or so other women there who’d come from the fields and forest having gotten caught in the rain themselves. All conversation stopped when they saw Leadon enter. They stood silent before the crackling fire, the rain beating down on the hut’s roof around them.
