Hale’s face had been black with sun and fury as he hunched his way up the wooden ladder to the quay. Dennis bigger than his father? Probably, but… Hale had shoulders like a troll, and watching him climb had exaggerated the strength of the older man’s back and arms besides.
Dennis had a right to be frightened by someone as powerful as Hale in a boiling rage; but that wasn’t why the tears had started to bubble up when he ran from his father.
Chester stroked Dennis’ shoulder with a tentacle.
“It’s just so frustrating,” the boy said. “I must be doing something wrong, but he won’t tell me what. I don’t know what to do, and nobody will tell me.”
He wasn’t angry any more, just mentally tired from spinning between anger and emptiness.
The air was so clear that the stars glittered in reflection on the palace roof. Dennis looked at the sky and wished that he could draw himself up into it, to cover himself in a fluffy stellar mist like a feather quilt and hide from all the uncertainties on Earth.
Men came from the stars. At least all the books said they did, though not even the Wizard Serdic could explain how they had come here to Earth. The founder of Dennis’ family had come from the stars in times so ancient that even his name was lost. He was buried on the headland opposite the palace and his sword of star-metal was carried from his hulking rock tomb in the Founder’s Day parade every year.
It wasn’t Earth that Dennis wanted to leave; just the business of living on it just now.
“A time in misfortune, Dennis, does not make a good man give up,” Chester said quietly.
“Maybe there’s nobody who could tell me what’s wrong,” Dennis said. He was still morose, but he was thinking about the problem again instead of dreaming it would be nice not to have problems. “I’m not sure Dad even knows. It’s just that he’s afraid of something bad.”
In sudden suspicion, the boy said, “You don’t know what’s wrong, do you, Chester? You aren’t just waiting for me to ask, the way you do?”
“I do not know, Dennis,” the robot said. “But it may be that old friends of your father know.”
“Ramos!” Dennis blurted as he jumped to his feet. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Why indeed did you not, Dennis?” Chester replied primly. His limbs tick-whished as he followed the boy’s swift strides toward the window they’d climbed out to hide here.
CHAPTER 3
The palace walls carried light the way a wick carried lamp-oil: along their crystal courses, with only the least seepage along the surface. Dennis was so used to the effect that he walked the long corridors at a normal pace, though they were outlined only in the blue shimmer of starlight which the clear night transmitted.
The palace was huge, far larger than the needs of King Hale and his household. Most of the monocrystalline building was empty. Though the village of Emath was crowded—more so every day with immigrants and the birthrate normal to a peaceful, prosperous environment—there were no squatters lurking in the glittering back-corridors. Only those who’d been welcomed into the palace felt… welcome.
Nothing unpleasant happened to interlopers, mostly newcomers to Emath who slipped in through a window or an unguarded entrance with their bindles and ragged offspring. They just didn’t feel comfortable in their new surroundings, and they soon left.
Ramos belonged in the palace, but…
From the bottom of the stairs leading to Ramos’ tower room, Dennis could hear the old man singing in a hoarse voice. At first the boy thought the song was a chantey of some sort with a refrain. As he and Chester climbed the tight, dizzying spiral Dennis began to make out the words.
Ramos was singing, “Many the ships that sail right in…” Over and over, the same words each time, trailing off into a repetition as unmusical as the one before.
Unmusical and angry. There could be no doubt of the anger in the cracked, hopeless voice.
The doors of the palace varied. The panel standing ajar at the top of the staircase was layered in pastels and creamy richness like the interior of a shell—but the material formed a flat sheet broad enough to cover the portal without join marks.