The Summer Prince (25 page)

“Mamãe?”

“Get him,” she says. “Go find your summer prince and stop this.” The Aunties have taken to calling Enki that — as though to call him
prince
instead of
king
takes away some of his power. But in Mother’s voice, that
prince
carries all the power in the world. It carries hope.

I nod, kiss her forehead, and run for the door.

A swarm of disaffected camera bots awaits me alongside a few human casters.

I start to push my way past them, then pause. Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. I persist in thinking of my newfound notoriety as a problem, but perhaps if I’m clever, I can turn it to my advantage.

I give a little smile my mother might see if she watches the feeds. I hope that she trusts me.

“Enki and Gil and I are going to speak to the protesters in Royal Plaza,” I say.

“Do you think you can stop them?” It’s one of the casters, someone I don’t recognize, probably third or fourth tier.

“From doing what?” I ask. “Hurting Ueda-sama? I hope they weren’t going to do that, anyway. From wanting access to the world’s tech? I don’t think anyone can stop that, do you?”

“So it’s true you side with the technophiles?”

“Did you design the graffiti?”

“Are you sleeping with Enki?”

I can’t answer these questions; I wouldn’t even if I had the time. So I just shake my head and run the rest of the way through them,
laughing a little like I’m chasing a football in the park after school. If they follow me, I don’t really mind. Gil and Enki will find me at Royal Plaza and we’ll save Ueda-sama from those strange bots that worried my mamãe so much. I haven’t felt this in control — this
sure
— in months, at least since Enki and I made our roda viva for the city. For once, the sensation of a million eyes judging my every breath and thought and gesture is a pleasure, not a burden. I want to jump and flip and cartwheel from the exhilaration of it, from the power and the privilege.

And I realize that I now understand Enki a little better than I did before.

Someone offers me her pod on the local platform, so I don’t have to wait to call one. I hardly see her, though I hope I remember to say thank you. A few of the casters try to ride with me, but I only allow the woman who asked me the first question.

“Did you recognize those bots swarming above the crowd?” I ask her. “They didn’t look like cameras.”

The caster’s back goes rigid and she glances at the half-dozen bots that flew in with us. Maybe a few are hers, but who knows. I start to doubt she’ll answer me, but then she shrugs and leans back against the curved chrome wall of the pod.

“Weapons,” she says. “A defensive nanotech cloud developed by the Pernambuco militia in Salvador. At least that’s everyone’s best guess. Your side is in some deep trouble, June.”

“They’re not my side,” I say reflexively. “And Salvador? How could they ever get through our security?”

I remember Enki’s story of how his mamãe had to bribe the Aunties to live here. If a pregnant, destitute refugee could hardly make it, how could lethal weapons?

“They could if someone let them in,” the caster says. “Probably someone high in Royal Tower, with ties to Salvador.”

She leans in as she says this, as if she’s expecting some sort of reaction. It’s that, more than her actual words, that makes me understand her implication.

But it’s so absurd that all I can do is laugh. “Enki?” I say. “Enki is the most nonviolent person in this city. He loves Palmares Três.”

“His mother —”

“Loved it too.”

The pod glides to a stop. The doors open on to a press of people so dense I wonder how I’ll find Enki and Gil, let alone get through to Ueda-sama. The caster and I share a worried look, but the crowd doesn’t seem particularly violent. In fact, aside from the people closest to the pod, they aren’t paying any attention to us at all. I start to push my way through them. I look back for the caster, but she’s pressed against the back wall of the pod, crossing her arms over her chest. Her chin juts out with a mixture of stubbornness and fear.

“Not coming?” I say.

She shrugs in a fair approximation of nonchalance. “Looks dangerous.”

“Could make your career,” I say.

“Not everyone has to be famous, June.”

I wince. “Of course not.” My rush of delight in my newfound power fades, leaving behind a more familiar weariness.

Just beyond the pod doors, people start yelling for the summer king. “Is that him?” someone says. “And his lover?”

I look over my shoulder. “Last chance.” But I know what her answer will be.

She just smiles. “I think their pod must be on the other side of the platform. Be careful.”

I nod and elbow my way through the crowd. I don’t attempt to cover my face but no one pays me much attention. They’re all too busy surging to the far end of the platform. The private pod bay isn’t very large in Royal Plaza, so I don’t have to go far to see what has so captured everyone’s attention.

Enki and Gil stand on top of a pod. Enki holds Gil tight around the waist and whispers something in his ear. Gil looks scared and Enki looks like even he might be getting close. I struggle through the crowd,
but the nearer I get to Enki’s makeshift podium, the more people push back. Everyone wants to see.

Enki straightens and faces the people shouting his name. He raises his hand. The roar of voices quiets to a river of whispers. I lean forward and wait with the rest.

And then something curious happens: He opens his mouth, but his voice comes out of the city’s emergency speakers.

“Palmarinas,” his voice says, though his lips hardly move. “I can’t know what you think of me. I can’t know if you’re technophile or isolationist. At the moment, I think it doesn’t matter. The ambassador from Tokyo 10 has nothing to do with this. I’d like to save him, but I can only do that if you let me through.”

The speakers cough out an abrupt burst of sound and Enki wobbles, just slightly. I shout his name and try to shove my way closer. They’ll never see me.

“Please let the summer king through,” says the city’s more familiar voice, over her emergency speakers. She has somehow matched his inflections, conveyed the warmth and the abstraction and the imperiousness. How have I never noticed the way the city and Enki resemble each other? Or perhaps they’ve grown together over the months, like a young vine curling up the trunk of an ancient tree. Enki climbs down from the pod, agile as ever, but maybe only I see the careful way Gil watches him, makes sure he doesn’t fall.

As one, the oddly silent crowd surges back far enough to clear a path for Enki and Gil. The crowd’s momentum nearly crushes me as I try to push against them. When I’m almost at the front, someone blocks my way. He turns to yell at me, pauses, and then smiles.

“Hello, June,” says this complete stranger, this grande in engineer’s clothes.

“Hello?” I say.

“Summer King,” he hollers when Enki passes close by. They both turn — Enki with relaxed curiosity, Gil like he’s ready to hit someone.

“Found something for you,” the man says. He lets me through.

“We thought you got stuck somewhere,” Gil says, hugging me.

“I nearly did.” I turn to Enki. He’s walking fast; I have to jog to keep up. Ahead of us the crowd parts like the old biblical sea. The gap points us to Ueda-sama like an arrow.

I’m so happy to see them both I could dance. Everything that felt overwhelming and frightening on the pod feels manageable, maybe even exciting. Together, the three of us are invincible, maybe the strongest weapon this city has ever had.

“What are we going to do?” I say.

“I thought we’d try to talk,” Enki says. “Whoever wants to speak for them, can.”

“And what should we say?” I ask. “Please be nice and give Ueda back, he can’t do anything? He can do
everything
, and they know it.”

“He doesn’t deserve to die,” says Gil.

“They’re not going to kill him!” I say, shocked. “They wouldn’t. He’s too valuable as a hostage.”

Enki shrugs. “For the leaders. But the mob might hurt him anyway.”

I want to argue with him. Instead, I say, “Have you talked with Oreste?”

He shakes his head. “There’s some sort of dampening field over most of Royal Tower. The city feels it like a cold spot. It’s new defensive tech.”

“Like the cloud?”

He just nods. Gil takes a few steps away from me and curses. “Who would do that, Enki? Who could have smuggled this tech into the city?”

Enki raises an eyebrow. “Someone who stands to benefit? An Auntie, or someone close enough to negotiate a deal.”

This surprises even Gil. “An
Auntie
?”

Enki laughs and caresses the edge of his lover’s ear. “We’ll know soon enough, meu bombril,” he says, softly enough that it feels wrong I can hear him. “I know how much she means to you.”

He means the city, threatened by a mob and weaponized nanotech. No mention of poor Ueda-sama, caught in the middle of this conflict so far away from anyone he loves. Even Enki, with all his mods, probably feels less for Ueda than he does the plants in my mother’s garden.

The crowd thins as we move away from the transportation hub and toward the main square of Royal Plaza. A combination of security bots and human officers have cleared away most of the people not actively protesting. This makes it easy for us to see what has changed since the last chance I had to look at a holo feed: a cage, suspended above the crowd, topped by something giant, metallic, and spiky. It looks the way I imagined stars when I was a child, but more dangerous.

“Is that the cloud?” I whisper.

“Where did they get a cage?” Gil asks. “Is Ueda-sama inside it?”

Enki rests his hand briefly on the back of my neck. “They’re both the cloud,” he says. “They’ve told it to reshape itself.”

I try to wrap my head around a bot that can turn itself into anything you ask of it, that can be a cage or a star with just a bit of programming.

“This is what the technophiles want?” I ask.

Gil purses his lips, disdain masking terror. “Of course,” he says.

Enki doesn’t look at either of us. “Or what someone wants for the technophiles.”

The crowd has gotten smaller, or perhaps just denser, a screaming mass of people corralled by the encircling security bots and what looks to be the entirety of our army — four hundred women, standing at attention with stun rifles. The defensive cloud has retreated with the mob, but a few silvery oblong protrusions are aimed with frightening deliberation at the soldiers. The non-protesters who had crowded the transport platform have scattered. Not many people are keen on witnessing history when they might get shot in the process.

Within the military barricade, the technophile protesters chant with red-faced ferocity. Things like “Tech will save us” and “Adapt or go extinct.” At least Ueda looks unhurt in the silvery cage that sways slightly in the center of the crowd.

Enki strides forward, an unerring progression toward the line of human guards. As I hurry to catch him, I remember what he said about the tech: Someone had to have helped smuggle it in. Someone with clout and reach. Someone like an Auntie.

The security guards won’t let us cross the line.

“I humbly apologize, Summer King,” says an officer in the stifling black suit of a high-ranked guard. “We’re under orders not to let anyone through.”

Enki cocks his head, like a bird. “Could I order you to let me through?”

She dares a look at him, then averts her gaze. “No.”

A moment later, the bars of the cage start to ripple and pulse. Even the chanting falters as the closest protesters fall back in surprise. With the abruptness of a flock of birds lofting into air, the substance of the bars of the cage breaks apart and coalesces into a different form entirely.

Into a picture.

I don’t recognize it at first, even though I’ve seen that iconic stencil of Enki and me all week. It’s Gil who understands exactly what this means.

“They want to speak to
Enki
,” he says. “Not Oreste.”

It seems so inevitable, once I see that unnaturally flowering invitation. He’s the summer king, and because of his extreme self-modding, he has become the symbol for a legion of frustrated technophiles in Palmares Três.

Above us, the shadows move. Behind us, a few more people have dared to creep closer to the soldiers’ line, despite shouts to clear the area.

There is a moment; it is sweet and slow and quiet as a summer afternoon. I look up. The misshapen star above us has realigned its firm, metallic points so they all face in our direction. Its skin wavers like a heat sheen.

Enki turns and shouts something to the people behind us. I can’t hear him; there’s too much thunder in the plaza and I wonder why, because I hadn’t seen a storm coming. Something hits me. From the ground, I see Enki’s silhouette on the side of an impossible prison, and a huddled shape just beyond it.

Gil lies on top of me. We are covered in blood. Enki has fallen a few feet away from us. The blood on his hands stains the yellow shirt of the girl gasping in his lap.

“Oh, God,” I say. I can barely hear my own voice past the hollow drone in my skull. Guards swarm around us. Gil closes his eyes, averts his face from something I understand a moment too late. A boy, a waka, lying right beside me on the flagstones with a hole in his head.

I have his blood in my hair. I crawl over to Enki, shake off restraining hands as if they are gnats. Sound returns gradually: screams, mostly, peppered with shouts and sobs. The girl in his lap has stopped moving.

“She’s dead,” I say.

He looks up at me and keeps her in his lap.

From beyond the barricade, people start to chant his name.
Enki. Enki. Enki.
I wish the thunder would rain on
them
. I wish I couldn’t smell another waka’s blood.

“Are you what they think you are?” I ask.

Enki gives me a look that isn’t long, but drags at me. A
What am I to you?
and an
Are you ready?
and
love
and
love
and
love
. He puts the girl down. His eyes roll white; Gil catches him before he falls. A second later, through the holo and the emergency speakers, I hear the city.