His hand played with the window frame as if it were the the shroud of a sailing vessel… and slipped away because it was not, because it was only slick stone with no life or meaning to him. “Nobody doubted, Dennis. People we’d known all our lives came to Emath—boys we’d played with, girls we’d met at night beneath the shelter of the sail spread as a tarpaulin. And it was all King Hale this and Queen Selda that…”
“But surely somebody would have remembered,” Dennis said, letting the doubt he wanted to feel enter his voice.
Ramos smiled. “I think at first they all remembered,” he said. “But they didn’t want to, because they wouldn’t be able to understand it. I didn’t want to remember, lad. But I built the tomb with these hands—”
He raised them. They no longer shook.
“—and nothing can change that.”
Ramos glared at the floor and the filth in which he had been living these weeks, these months; longer. “Not even the liquor!”
Dennis made his decision as he stood up. He didn’t know what his new knowledge meant, but he was certain of what he owed Ramos—for himself and for his father—in the immediate present.
“You can’t stay here,” he said briskly, now the prince that he’d been raised to be. “Come on, Uncle Ramos. We’ll help you to my room for now. You can bathe and sleep there tonight while I have the servants clean—” he caught the disgust that had almost broken out into words “—clean up.”
Ramos stood obediently. He looked tired, but he was in no need of the help Chester and the boy were ready to give. The drink had burned out of him; and so had the emotion that had staggered Ramos with memories of the woman he’d loved—and had lost when his world shifted, as he’d now shifted the world of the boy who called him ‘Uncle’.
“I think…” said Dennis wonderingly. He put his arm around the older man’s in affection, not for need as they shuffled together through the debris to the door. “I think that you can wear some of my clothes, Uncle Ramos. Until we see what kind of shape yours are in.”
As Chester opened the door ahead of them unbidden, Dennis realized that—whatever might be the full truth—the world was no longer the place it had been when he entered Ramos’ room.
And in many ways, it was better.
CHAPTER 4
Dennis stretched luxuriantly in the sunlight that flooded the spare bedroom of his suite—and leaped up, shouting, “Oh!” when he realized that it was three hours later in the morning than he had intended to rise.
Hale had rowed out to sea before Dennis could demand an explanation—or a denial—of Ramos’ story.
“Chester,” the boy said angrily. “You knew I wanted to talk to Dad. Why didn’t you wake me up when you saw I was sleeping late?”
“Gentleness in all behavior gains the praise of a wise man, Dennis,” said the robot.
“But why didn’t you—” Dennis started to repeat… and caught sight of his multiple images, reflected in the prismatic walls of the unfamiliar room… and laughed instead. He had to laugh to see dozens of himself, wearing pajamas and furiously waggling fingers against an equal number of impassive Chesters.
“All right, Chester,” he said ruefully, patting his companion’s smooth carapace. “You didn’t wake me because I didn’t tell you to wake me. That was my fault.”
“You did not tell me to wake you,” Chester said. “And you were sleeping soundly, Dennis, as you have not slept in some weeks past. I am glad that you have slept.”
Dennis had snatched an armload of clothes from the wardrobe when he turned over his usual room to Ramos the night before. He’d gotten several blouses, but the only trousers were a pair that had grown too tight for comfort in the past six months.
It would’ve been simpler to keep his usual room, the larger one of the suite, and give his guest the spare; but—Dennis didn’t need Chester spouting a tag like “Do not take precedence over an older man,” to know that he owed honor as well as help to Ramos.