“Oh, uh, okay.” I nodded and tugged at the diaphanous white robe I was wearing, trying to make sure it was straight. After so many days of not wearing clothes—except on O’nagga Nine—it felt strange to have them on now.
Not that the robe I was wearing could really be said to hide anything. It was a diaphanous, translucent white which clearly showed my body beneath. The fabric was softer than silk and studded with diamonds as big as my thumbnail—it would have been priceless back on Earth but Sir had whipped it up for me in the Matter Synthesizer as though making diamonds was just a matter of course. Which, for the Korrigons, I supposed it was.
The dress was cinched in the middle with a golden belt that Sir had told me sternly it was necessary for me to wear at all times while I was here on Korrigon four.
Now he looked down at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Is your gravity belt bothering you?”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “I’m just not used to wearing clothes anymore—that’s all.”
I touched the dial on the belt, making myself a little lighter so that I rose up onto my tiptoes—I almost felt like I could float if I adjusted it just right. The gravity belt was necessary, according to Sir, because the gravity on Korrigon Four was much higher than it was back on Earth—which made sense, since it was a planet about five times as big and massive as my own home world.
Sir had been living in what he considered a “low-G atmosphere” all this time just for me, so I would feel comfortable. But now that we were here on his home world, I would have to wear the belt in order to walk upright and not feel like I was being crushed.
He was dressed rather splendidly himself today. He had on his usual tight black trousers and tall black boots and a crisp white shirt with a rounded collar. But over all this he was wearing a deep purple robe edged in gold. I thought he looked like an alien version of a Roman emperor, riding in a triumph.
“Little one,” he murmured warningly, as I played with the dial some more. “Don’t touch the belt controls, please—I don’t need you either floating off into the atmosphere or being weighed down to the ground with crushing amounts of gravity.”
“All right.” I took my fingers away from the belt and curled them over the scrolled, golden side of the chariot instead. “Um, how far do we have to go to reach the palace?” I asked.
Sir looked down at me in apparent surprise.
“I thought you knew—we are already inside the royal palace. This entire cityisthe palace.”
“It is?” I looked around me in wonder. We were whizzing soundlessly down the vast, gold-paved street with tall, spotlessly white buildings flashing by on either side. “And where is it located? In the Northern Continent or the Southern Continent?” I asked.
“On the equator,” Sir said promptly. “So that neither continent may claim it—though Gra’multh has long lobbied to have the royal residence moved to the South, no doubt thinking he would have greater influence that way,” he added grimly.
“If we’re on the equator, why isn’t it hot?” I asked, looking around. “Back on Earth the equator is where all the jungles and rain forests are located.”
“We’re inside a vast atmosphere bubble,” Sir told me. “It keeps the temperature comfortable year-round. If you look up at the sky at just the right angle, you can sometimes catch the shimmer of the bubble.”
I did as he said, looking up into the pale green sky. (Did I mention the sky was green? Because it was.) And sure enough, after a moment of tilting my head back and forth, I caught a kind of subtle twinkling or sparkling in the corner of my eye.
“Oh, I see it!” I exclaimed, pointing.
“Yes.” Sir gave me his one-sided smile. “The skies of my home world.”
“So how far does the bubble go?” I asked. “Or maybe I should ask how far the city that is also the palace goes?”
“Oh, it extends around the entire equator of Korrigon Four,” Sir said casually.
“What? It’sthatbig?” I exclaimed. “But that’s enormous!”
Sir nodded.
“It is indeed. But you must consider, little one, that a vast bureaucracy is needed to run the entire galaxy. Some say that the palace should be moved to one of Korrigon Four’s many moons in order to grow even larger, but the Sovereign dislikes the idea of leaving the planet entirely—even for the sake of more room.”
“Wow, that would be one hell of a big move,” I muttered, looking around. It wasn’t like the vast city we were in was one narrow strip—I literally couldn’t see the end of it in any direction I turned. Though Ididsee something that made me look twice.
One of the tall buildings we were passing by seemed to be only half finished. It was being worked on by a lot of aliens that didn’t look too different from humans, except they all had bright pink skin and four arms apiece. They were all working steadily and methodically on the building but thewaythey were working looked odd to me. They all seemed to be doing the exact same thing at the exact same time—it was almost like all of them were puppets and the same puppet-master was pulling all their strings.
“What people are those and why are they acting like that?” I asked Sir, pointing as we passed by.
Sir glanced to where I was pointing and, to my surprise, the golden chariot stopped its forward motion and floated backwards instead. He studied the pink-skinned people through narrowed eyes, watching their perfectly coordinated movements suspiciously.
I was about to ask my questions again when a big Korrigon (well, they were all big, but this one had kind of a pot-belly) slouched around the side of the half-finished building, yawning and scratching his gut.