Everyone looked at the steep stairway that disappeared upward. There was a pause, and then Prince Felix started speaking again.
Delia raced up the steps, taking them two at a time. At the top there was a small latch, locking the door. Delia hardly remembered hitting it with the hilt of her sword.
“For a new dawn will shine over your planet.” Prince Felix’s voice was sure and full of pride.
She burst through the door with her sword in front of her, ready to battle, but the room was empty. Prince Felix was not here. Instead, there was a modest kitchen and eating area. The windows were covered with dark cloth. Muffled yells echoed from outside. The only light was from the infoscreen.
“No longer will Astor want for anything.”
Prince Felix’s image filled the screen. He was on the balcony of the palace. Her palace! Two Trellium guards stood at attention on either side of him. Winnie was nowhere to be seen. Delia listened with a numb detachment as he detailed how Astor would become the pearl of the Four Quadrants, housing the most sophisticated and lethal military base.
“The days of your dual existence have ended. It’s time to come out into the light.” He spread his arms wide. “Not only will Astor be the most protected, but also the most feared and admired.”
Then a vision of the new Astor was superimposed over the present planet. The Dark District was to become an industrial area, all housing removed to make way for weapon-making facilities. The canyon was to be used as the refuse dump for all the waste from the factories. The mountain with the great tree vanished, only to be replaced with the military base.
Her heart almost stopped when she saw the tree no longer there, but instead a behemoth steel structure.
“Demolition of the great tree will commence at the rising of the twin suns tomorrow morning to commemorate the birth of a new Astor.” Then Prince Felix raised both his fists in the air.
The live video stopped after Prince Felix nodded to the crowd and disappeared inside the palace. The newsfeed continued to scroll across the bottom of the screen, once again, announcing officially that Delia was dead. Prince Felix and his military had successfully taken control of the palace.
“They think I’m dead,” she said to the empty room. Delia felt like all of her bones had liquefied. She had no structure, no strength to even stand. She froze, like a statue, or an android whose battery had run out.
I will stay like this forever, she thought dizzyingly.
There was a clatter as her sword hit the floor. She didn’t remember dropping it. Everything in her body had gone numb.
She felt like Aidan, her chest ripped open wide with its insides open for people to inspect. Her home was being destroyed and there was nothing she could do. Delia was dead in more ways than they ever suspected. She was Astor. Her whole life had been based on what was best for her home planet.
And now it was being killed.
The tree would be destroyed.
The mosaics in the tunnel would be removed. No one would know the connection to the moon. She thought of the selfish king in the canyon. “Maybe this is his revenge,” she said out loud in a daze.
“What is the plan?” Tookah asked softly.
Delia turned around. She had no idea the others had followed her, she’d been so focused on the screen.
“Plan?” She laughed, but it came out sounding more like a sob. “There is no plan, Tookah.” She waved a hand at the infoscreen. “Astor is fulfilling its destiny as a military base.”
Quinton winced as he lowered himself into the nearest kitchen chair. Nazem and Tookah exchanged uneasy glances.
“Do you think Griff is a wizard?” Shania asked the room. “He looks like a wizard, or what I’ve always thought a wizard would look like. Maybe that’s why Aidan seems so human, maybe it’s magic.”
No one said anything.
“We can leave on our ship,” Tookah offered.
“Aye,” Nazem said as he nodded. “Captain is staying out of the mess, but he’ll risk coming back for us.” He fished a small black sphere from his satchel. “Rest easy, this here is a beacon, not a bomb. They know we’re here. I suspect the crew is circling until there’s a gap in the patrol ships. Then they’ll send a few gliders down.”
“We could go to another section of the Four Quadrants and make a plan, maybe build an army,” Tookah suggested to Delia. “We could leave tonight.”
“Maybe Delta Kur?” Quinton suggested. There was a lift to his voice that seemed abnormal in all this despair.
Delia could barely reply. There was a hollowness that seemed absurdly heavy. When she raised her gaze, she realized they were all looking at her, waiting for her to decide.
“Do whatever it takes to save yourselves. I have nothing to offer you.” She let this last sentence hang in the air. She had no words of comfort for them. An image of the statue of Arianna, the first queen, surfaced.
Bravery.
Wisdom.
Love.
Delia had lost all three in one day.
The truth was a cold slap against her face. No one would ever use those words to describe her. She was not a queen, no matter how many crowns she tried on. It was ridiculous to think she’d ever be able to replace her mother.
“I failed you,” she whispered to her ancestors, picturing her mother’s face. “I failed Astor.”
There was a thickness to the room. It seemed to hold them in place, like water, but invisible. Shania looked about, and her eyes seemed to catalogue every detail of the modest kitchen. Then she took notice of Nazem’s braids. “I like your hair,” she told him, trying to keep her own bundle of hair in her arms.
Having her sister’s hair unkempt and wild was another sorry sight for Delia. It seemed nothing was sacred anymore.
Nazem stood a little taller as Shania continued to talk with him. He motioned to Tookah. “He did it,” he said.
Shania’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
Tookah nodded, but the soft glow under his skin hinted at a sense of humbleness.
She went to him and put a hand on one of his biceps. “So many muscles,” she said, in her dreamy voice. “I hadn’t thought about the advantage of a man having more than two hands.”
There were footsteps on the basement stairs; then Morgan appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands with a cloth. “I can give you a meal and a change of clothes if you need.” He looked pointedly at Delia and Shania whose dresses were hardly proper wear for escaped royalty. Then he added, “But after that, you’ll have to leave.”
“We are grateful.” Tookah nodded and gave him a smile.
Delia glared at Morgan. She pointed to the infoscreen showing images of Trellium’s military patrolling the Dark District. “You helped this happen.”
He stared her down. “And you were doing nothing to prevent it from happening.”
Her mouth fell open. “Everything I’ve ever done since I was a little girl was for Astor! My only passion has been what was best for this planet!” She felt the hot sting of tears. “They might as well build the base directly over my dead body, because that’s what it means to me when I see this.”
Biting the inside of her cheek, Delia rushed out the archway and down a narrow hallway. She ended up in a small porch. There was a cot against the wall. She crumpled on the bed and let the tears come.
It couldn’t be for nothing, she kept thinking. Every decision I’ve ever made couldn’t be meant for it to end like this.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed on the cot, but when Shania found her, it felt like she’d aged a hundred years. Her sister’s hand was firm but loving on her shoulder. “I can’t stop thinking about something,” Shania said.
Delia sniffed and rolled over to face her sister. “Oh my goodness, your hair!”
Shania gave a soft laugh. “Tookah is amazing! He did this in only five minutes.” She patted her elaborate hairdo that was composed of many small braids. Part of her hair was swept up in a design on the back of her head, while the rest flowed down her back in a complicated design of knots.
“How did he even…?” Delia was in awe.
Shania closed her eyes. “I never imagined how a man’s hands in my hair would feel. So much better than having an android do my hair.”
“Shania! Your brashness knows no bounds! How are we even related?”
“I ask myself that question nearly every day.” Then she pulled her sister into a hug. “I’m sorry.”
That one phrase seemed to encompass the entire day.
“What is it you can’t stop thinking about?” Delia sniffed into her sister’s shoulder.
“If Aidan didn’t know he was an android, that would mean when he shot himself, he was willing to sacrifice his life to save yours.” There was a thoughtful pause. “I don’t know much about robots, but that seems like something someone with a heart would do. A very big and unselfish heart.”
“You saw his chest,” Delia said. “There is no heart.”
“Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.” Shania gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Remember in the legend when Arianna gave her hair to the moon? I always thought it was because it was her greatest treasure, just like the legend says, but when Mother took me down into the tunnels, when it was my turn to see the mosaics for real, she said it was because of power. We gain power not by what we take, but by what we are willing to give up.”
Delia let her sister’s words soothe her. “I’m scared,” she finally said. “I don’t know what to do. Mother always told me my best asset was my instinct, to allow our ancestors to guide me. But…” She paused because it felt foolish to say it now. “They told me to pick Aidan. I sensed choosing him was the best thing for Astor.” She waited for her sister to recite some quote about romance, but it was Morgan’s voice she heard instead.
“These should fit.” He put an armful of folded clothing on the bottom of the cot. “At least they’ll do until you reach wherever you’re going.”
Delia sat straighter and wiped her face.
“You found his room,” Morgan said. His earlier look of contempt had softened somewhat.
“Aidan’s?” Delia studied the area. It was bare and nondescript, only a small window in the back door. Two of the panes were broken. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed.
Then she saw the shelf, taking in the small trinkets. “These were his?” she asked.
“He was only programmed to become familiar with the palace layout,” Morgan said. “To be someone who wouldn’t raise suspicion if they saw him in the hallways, a servant really. Nothing more than the kitchen chore boy. Someone who would easily slip his way to be close to the queen if need be.”
Delia turned and gave him a hard stare.
Morgan motioned to the shelf. “But the trinkets, the pickpocketing for cash to buy a ticket to Delta Kur, that was all him.”
Memories flooded her mind. “I don’t understand,” she said, thinking it sounded like the understatement of the galaxy. Her fingers lightly touched all the objects; the broken chain from a necklace, glass marbles, a rolled-up page from a book—then she saw it.
The rubis berry, now dark and dried up. And beside it, the cork from the pirate bottle of wine. She brought it to her nose and inhaled. She didn’t even remember him picking it up.
Delia looked at Morgan. His prematurely lined face hinted at a life of hardship. “Tell me everything about him,” she said.
For the next hour Delia listened to Morgan. She stayed quiet, making a list of questions in her mind, keeping them for when he was finished, partly afraid that if she interrupted him, he wouldn’t continue.
“I was brought onto the team last year,” he said. “Aidan was still in testing at that point. They had already gone through six hundred and two other versions … all ended in flames with overheated circuits. Gail Babineau was in charge until a few months ago when Corporal Langdon became suspicious of a telecom message he’d intercepted.
“He found out she was considering sabotaging Aidan, worried he was too advanced for our own good.” Morgan hesitated, his mouth in a hard line. “After her untimely death, the project was pushed forward. She had left behind a twelve-step program where each new directive to the plan required a new SHEW to be implanted. Aidan was unaware of any of this.”
Again, Morgan let the silence linger. When he spoke next, he addressed Delia directly. “Every time we replaced his SHEW, it erased some of his real memory and filled in fake ones. But there was one constant we weren’t prepared for—his connection with you.”
She stiffened. “He was programmed that way. He had me fooled too.”
“It’s impossible to be programmed to love,” Morgan answered.
“Exactly,” she said. “It wasn’t real.”
“I sense you miss the meaning of my statement,” he replied. “Aidan’s directive was to assassinate the queen, which we didn’t realize was going to be you … until it was.” Then a sheepish look came across his face. “I wanted to get there before the shot was fired. I foolishly thought I could stop the whole mess. You see, Griff and I started out working for the resistance, but … well, it seemed Aidan had changed our minds about what it meant to be a human being.”
The crack in Delia’s broken heart began to bleed. She stared at the wine cork still in her hand. They’d shared a kiss that night, her first real kiss, and now she realized, his as well. She put the cork back on the shelf with the other treasures. “Treasures,” she whispered.
“They were to him.” Morgan nodded. “When he first started bringing them from the palace I thought it was a glitch in his programming, but it continued even after his SHEW was replaced. I suppose it was because he wanted to have something of his own. Those trinkets were the only things he had.”
Delia reached up and felt the medallion under her dress. She wondered where it really came from. A courtier he’d stolen it from? Something about it bothered her. It was on the edge of her memory. Frustratingly close.
Morgan continued, “He has evolved independently of any kind of programming. He is one of a kind … or rather was.” He pulled a pained expression. “After I found you on the balcony, I brought him here because I thought this was the best place for him to be fixed. But I hadn’t factored in the drain to his energy stores.”
Shania had stayed quiet the whole time, but now she asked her question with a desperation Delia could feel in her own heart. “Can you save him?” she asked. “Can you bring him back?”
He looked away, and Delia thought she saw a glimpse of regret or sadness. “After I found him, I removed his SHEW. I wanted to erase his prime directive. But even if his internal circuits are fixed, he needs that component to hold the life cell energy. No SHEW, no power. No power, no Aidan. I didn’t realize until I saw his diagnostic readouts. We’ve always replaced the SHEW, so it’s never happened before. And I never anticipated that I would miss him after he fulfilled his prime directive.”
“So even if you fix his circuits, Aidan will never wake up again?” Shania asked.
Morgan shook his head. “Griff and I are no match for Gail Babineau’s work. Even if we had all the materials to rebuild him, he’s impossible to replicate. She made sure of that in his programming. But Griff is going to try to reuse the SHEWs we already have. None of those have enough battery life to give him much time, though.”
Shania hung her head.
A spark lit inside Delia. She thought of the line of SHEWs on the workshop table in the basement room. Something triggered her memory, but she couldn’t quite grasp the image. “So Aidan would need a new SHEW that was specifically made for him, correct?”
Morgan gave her a sad shrug. “There is only one person who had the knowledge to build it, and she’s dead.”
At once a connection was made. Delia felt an immediate sense of urgency. “I have to see him … right now!” She read the hesitation in Morgan’s expression. “Please,” she said.