The Wellstone Read Online Free Page A

live on with no purpose at all—is appalling and obscene.”
    Finally, Bruno de Towaji matches Radmer’s anger, and meets his gaze. “You think so, do you? Smug bastard. Speak the name of your peril, then, and begone from my sight.”
    Radmer does as he’s told, and has the grim pleasure of watching the old man’s face light up with a terrible mix of wonder and righteous anger and, yes, even fear.
    Now de Towaji is fully awake, blinking, looking Radmer up and down. “Lune, you say? The collapsiter grid is gone. Did I dream that? Between the stars we travel no more. How did you get here, lad? And ... how will you return?”
    Radmer feels the corners of his mouth begin to stir. Seeing Bruno again has brought back a lot of memories, a lot of old grief. With the clarity of hindsight, he does feel some understanding of his bonds to this man, but they were formed and broken long ago, in events so huge that from the inside they hadn’t looked like anything at all. Joyrides and camp riots, the green virile fires of youth.
    But this is too practical a question for a man who wants to be left alone. Radmer senses that a hurdle has been crossed, a new cascade of events set in motion. He will be taking this man, this intellect, this trove of living history back to Lune with him. And in that moment he dares, for the first time in months, to hope.
    This is an island, with birds and a tree.

The island is a mountain in the middle of the sea.

One person lives here, but it isn’t me.

I wouldn’t like to live in the middle of the sea. 1
    —“The Island”
BASCAL EDWARD DE TOWAJI LUTUI, age 4

chapter two
    camp friendly
    Conrad had never seen an angry mob before, much less been a part of one. Like an ocean wave it seemed to offer two alternatives: ride along or be smashed under. And the ride, truthfully, was fun. Since the raid on the boathouse, and with it the capture of canoe paddles, the counselors were actually
afraid
of them.
    Of a bunch of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds! Barely out of diapers, some might say, but even “Rock” Dengle was on the retreat, falling back along the side of the Arts and Crap Cabin and casting a worryingly broad shadow on its clay-and-log wall in the slanting light of a fake and miniature sun.
    “What the hell you boys doing?” he demanded.
    “Busting out,” Bascal answered lightly. Cheers rewarded him, from Conrad as much as anyone. “Prince Bascal! All hail Prince Bascal, the Liberator!”
    “This a summer camp,” Rock pointed out. “Recreational. You here for fun, right?”
    “Had enough,” Bascal replied. Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui, Crown Prince of the Queendom of Sol.
    The badder boys—Steve Grush and that Ho kid whose last name was spelled “Ng” but sounded more like “Eh”— were flanking Rock on the left, flicking cigarette butts and hooting, and you’d better believe
that
got his attention.
    “I gotta hurt someone?” Rock wanted to know. He looked capable of it—strong and pissed off, but in control. Taking care of “troubled” boys was his job.
    “We got to hurt
you
?” Ho Ng shot back, and gave him a whack on the skull with the paddle. Tried to, anyway; Rock deflected it with a sweep of his arm. But since that left Steve an opening to jab him in the nuts, it didn’t do much good. Rock doubled over with a froggy kind of sound, but stayed on his feet. Taking on
fifteen
troubled boys was a bit beyond his faculties.
    There was a definite satisfaction in seeing a big guy humbled like that, but then it looked like Ho or Steve might hit him again, maybe harder this time, and that made Conrad afraid, finally, of the consequences. And ashamed to be a member of this particular mob, yeah, because Rock Dengle was definitely not a bad guy as jailers went. He kept the rules without treating you like a little kid, which was more than Conrad could say for most of the others.
    But fortunately, Prince Bascal stepped forward, into what would have been the line of fire.