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he would ve been eternally fuffed. It was natural enough to feel angry about
such a circumstance, and Bascal, when they d met at summer camp, had latched
onto that anger like a supermagnet. Without that influence, Conrad would
probably never have been more or less than a foul-mouthed delinquent.
Unbeguiled by the Poet Prince, he would never have turned pirate, never have
joined the Children s Revolt. Knowing the way things went for him, he probably
wouldn t even have heard about it until after the fact.
But once you started defying an abusive authority, it was a small step to
defying any and all authority, on any point you happened to disagree with.
Maybe that was a good thing and maybe it wasn t, but Conrad felt in those
dreamy days after Wendy s funeral that it was certainly anirreversible one.
Standing up for what you believed in . . . Well, it was a learned art, wasn t
it? Like riding a bicycle. And once it was in your head, you couldn t unlearn
it. Or maybe you could, with some subtle Queendom technology in the hands of
the right sort of expert, but here on Planet Two onSorrow, he reminded
himself you were stuck with yourself for life. However long or short that
might be.
And so . . . Conrad could pretend to be whatever he liked: an architect, a
naval officer, a hermit scientist. A paver, for crying out loud. But he would
drop it all when his true calling beckoned: rebellion. The longer he lived,
the more betrayal and strife he would see, would invite, wouldcause through
his own dogged efforts.
Damn.
In the first few weeks he did almost nothing but mourn the very different
lives he might have led.How did it come to this? he would ask himself.How did
I become this person? How did we, collectively, become this place? Sorrow,
yes; wasn t that a thing worth rebelling against? Or, alternatively:I caused
all this to happen. If not for me, it would have worked out differently. Maybe
better; it could hardly be worse. Did he have a responsibility to make good on
his errors? Or was this merely the start of a new cascade of mistakes?
Later, when he began drawing up plans for a new Cryoleum and Data Morgue, the
vague outlines of a plan began to take shape. It wasn t a great plan in fact
it was disappointingly lacking in any sort of subtlety or finesse, and would
not by itself improve humanity s lot. Like the Children s Revolt, it was more
a call to action fraught with the potential to inspire than an action in its
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own right. But it did at least have the virtue of being readily achievable.
As with his previous mutinies, he felt no sense of hurry. In fact, at the age
of 330 older than his hidebound parents at the time of his birth! he was
inclined to take things very slowly indeed.
There is psychological value, he told Bascal as the project unfolded, in
placing the dead so far from the living, as you ve already done. Pectoralis
makes a good resting place, suitably remote. But this constant traffic in
coffins creates bottlenecks and logjams along the tuberail network.
Embarrassing, right? There d be benefits if it were possible to bring the
entire facility or parts of it anyway a bit closer to the cities for brief
periods.
Deaths did tend to cluster in the Ides of Dark, the hundred-hour window
between Barnard s midnight and the long, slow breaking of dawn. Sunrise
funerals were therefore the norm, and it was not uncommon for two or three of
them to fill a train, leaving other mourners waiting on the platform for a
shift or more, as if they didn t have enough problems already. But by their
nature these things could not be planned in advance.
Fine, Bascal told him, through the haze of grief that seemed these days to
separate him from the rest of the world. He was sitting at his writing table,
tapping a stylus against its surface, which was dark with scrawled lettering.
If the voyage to Barnard had silenced his muse, then Wendy s death, for
whatever reason, had reawakened it. Verily, it gushed! The Poet King now a
single, without copies to spread his presence around spent as much time
crafting songs and sonnets as he did running the government or visiting with
the kingdom s grieving people. And these creations were astonishing in their
honest, unpretentious elegance. In The Freezing of Our Dreams he wrote,
Dear,
If peace there be (and peace there must!) it lies beyond these jagged bluffs,
through efforts (ours!) of faithful (us!)
And paradise there be (there will!) then it s a thing that we must build,
Ere frozen dreams themselves are spilled,
I fear.
And when at last we find them thaw, these children s parents children, raw,
upon the skin of Sorrow s Fin and won from sin to life and limb,
rejoice we shall! thatwehave brought them . . .
Here.
But the hope behind these comely words was a distant thing, as false as the
promises that had led Conrad astray so long ago. Youcan be an architect, yes!
All it will cost you is . . . well, everything. And damn him, Conrad would
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