The Earth Dwellers

I groan.

~~~

There was no car waiting for us when we exited the secret cave onto the streets. Roc apologized for forgetting to arrange it, calling me “Your Highness.” I told him he should keep doing that.

So we’re walking, which is fine by me. I need time to prepare myself for the uphill battle I’m about to face. The streets are dark, lit only by the artificial moon and stars, which look so pathetically inadequate after seeing the real thing. The buildings, on the other hand, seem so grand compared to the tents and basic shelters used by the Tri-Tribes. And yet I can’t hear the crying of any babies or the shushing sounds made by their mothers. Lifeless. Empty.

When we arrive at the palace gates we get guns in our faces. So Roc was wrong—not all three—swords and guns and fists—just the guns. But when they see who I am, the guards apologize quickly and profusely and let us in, asking if we’d like them to send a car down.

“We’ll walk,” I say.

The road snakes through the palace gardens, and after seeing so much sand and rock and brown, the trees and plants and flowers almost look impossible. I have to take deep swallows a few times to catch my breath.

As if reading my mind—like he does—Roc says, “At least we have some happy memories of this place,” and he’s right, because when I think of the gardens I’m always happy.

We reach the main entrance, framed by a half-dozen black-marble pillars. White, spike-like spires rise up toward the lofty cavern roof, pointing at the fake moon.

As I stride inside, I remember: I’m the President. Here I have power, and it’s my responsibility to use it the right way. “Gather all the generals together,” I say.

“But it’s the middle of the night,” Roc says, feigning concern.

“Then wake them up.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Tawni, can you try to get Adele’s mother on the main video screen?” I ask.

“I’ll do what I can,” she says.

While Roc scurries off to pound on a few generals’ doors and Tawni goes to the communications office, I make my way to the place my father always liked to refer to as “the throne room.” Lavishly adorned walls flash by on either side, but I barely notice them. After all, I grew up in this kind of luxury. It doesn’t mean anything, not to me.

When I enter the throne room, it’s empty, save for the dozens of black-marble pillars holding up the balcony above and surrounding the lone, grand seat in the middle. The throne, constructed with a thick, sturdy oak-wood frame and cushioned with generous red-velvet pads on the seat, back, and armrests, stands as a reminder of the difference between my father and me. The old President Nailin would spend as much on a place to rest his rear as a moon dweller miner made in ten years. The new President Nailin has the urge to take an axe and chop the chair into splinters to be used for firewood.

Distorted shards of memory slice through my head and I see this room as it was on the night my father died. The floor slick with blood. Steel weapons flashing, clanging, killing. Bodies falling. Trevor falling, dying. My father’s great victory, cut short when Adele shot him in the head not long after in his grand council room.

The fall of a tyrant. One down, one to go.

Although I’m tired from the trek across the desert and the midnight stroll from the hidden cave to the palace, I resist the urge to sit in my father’s plush throne. The generals would probably respond well to that kind of normalcy, but I just don’t have the stomach for it, not when so many of the decisions that exacerbated the inequality in the Lower Realms were made from this very chair.

I remain standing as a video screen lowers from a crack in the ceiling. Evidently Tawni found a palace technician to help her get things set up. Hopefully General Rose isn’t too angry with me for waking her, although I take comfort in the fact that you can’t kick someone through a screen. Even my father wasn’t able to develop that kind of technology.

I hear the first grumbling voice, echoing from a hall outside of the throne room. “If this is some kind of a joke, I’ll have you whipped a thousand times!”

I almost laugh, but the thought of facing the generals makes me feel slightly ill. I may be the president, but these are men who have done things a certain way for a long time. They’re used to wi

A large man with a thick, gray beard stomps in wearing a heavy frown. His eyes widen when he sees me. “Good God, it’s President Nailin,” he says. I don’t miss the mockery in his tone. Not a good start. “You do exist.”

“General,” I say, not taking the bait. When all the generals are here I’ll make things very clear.

Three other men enter behind him, blinking sleep out of their eyes and registering surprise when they see me. They whisper to each other behind their hands.

“We ask for meetings with you a dozen times, and then you roust us from our beds in the middle of the night?” says the large, sarcastic man, General Aboud. “All hail, President Nailin!” He almost sounds drunk. Maybe he is. Maybe he passed out, rather than going to sleep.

I ignore him, watch as six more generals shuffle in, standing beside their comrades. Roc steps in behind them, winks at me. I rest an arm on the top of the throne. Even if I don’t have the audacity to sit in it, perhaps just having it near me will set the right tone.

I start to speak, but General Aboud beats me to it. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve got a war to fight and your own generals can’t even get an audience with you.”

This is one question I’ll most definitely answer. “Above,” I say. The men stare at me with blank faces.

“Above?” Aboud says. “There is no above. We are the above!”

“No,” I say calmly, although the red-faced man before me makes my blood boil. “We are not.” I go on to explain everything to them; everything my father would not. The secret project my great-grandfather started, recruiting the best and smartest engineers, keeping them separate from the rest of society, monitoring them to ensure no one talked; the early failed expeditions to the earth’s surface, everyone dead; the continued attempts, the construction of the Dome, reengineering the air filtration system to allow for life on earth; the slow but effective wresting of power from my father by Lecter. As I speak, there’s utter silence. Even Aboud knows when to just shut up and listen.

At some point Tawni comes in and gives me a nod, holds up a controller. She’s ready with General Rose.

“Any questions?” I say as I finish.

A bald man with blue-tinted glasses says, “Why didn’t your father tell us? We were his most trusted advisors.”

“Well, General Marx, you’ll have to ask him,” I say.

“What kind of answer is that?” Aboud bellows. “Your father is dead.”

“He took a lot with him to the grave,” I say. “I can’t answer for him. I’m not my father, or my grandfather. They kept things from you, secrets. I refuse to do that.”

“Why?” Aboud again, his frown deepening.

“Because I think you’re more than what my father made you into. You’re more than mindless killing machines who see missions of murder simply as missions, lines on a page with checkmarks next to them. You were chosen because of your brains, not your hearts, but that doesn’t mean your chests are empty.”

“What are you asking of us?” General Marx asks.

“Just to listen. Make up your own minds. If you disagree with what I propose, we’ll take a vote. This is not a dictatorship. That was my father’s way, not mine.”

There are raised eyebrows and more whispers, but no one, not even Aboud, objects.