“What is that structure?” he asked Merlin one day as he, Galois, and his family were out on tera-bikes, surveying the rest of the land with a crew of engineers and officials he had appointed to land marketing. “I know it from studying the race of aliens my father cloned.”
A bit of sadness crossed Merlin’s face as he watched his people file into the circle and touch the electric-glowing stones with their android hands. “With the part of them that is machine, they may connect themselves with those towers and communicate with the ones on our home planet. Being clones, they have never seen it and can only catch a glimpse through that binary connection. It is technology from Avalon, my planet.”
“Could a human use it?” Uther wondered. “Have you?”
Merlin shook his head. “Not in some time. I am not like those androids. And no, you cannot use it. You are human with no android or Avalonian in you. They would be as standing stones to you.”
“It’s beautiful,” Morgause mused.
“Could we become like you?” Lot asked of the D.R.U.I.D.
Merlin searched Lot’s face carefully. “Why would you want to sacrifice that part of you which is human?”
“Humans are so limited,” Lot exclaimed. “Think what we could do if all we had to do to communicate with another planet light years away was just plug ourselves into a great circular computer?”
“Yes,” Merlin said flatly. “Imagine what humans could do.”
Above them, the moon Lothian loomed. Just below it, too small for humans to see, the twin colony ship floated silently where Vortigern watched.
3
Betrayal
Uther found himself traveling to watch the D.R.U.I.Ds walk to and from the circle often. At last, he had the courage to ask Igrain to come with him while Galois carried out the task of making plans to purge the land of the D.R.U.I.Ds and seclude them in their own plots of land and cities at Uther’s orders.
Igrain and Uther took two tera-bikes and raced each other across the open planes of Camelot. Uther had never been out this way and eagerly wanted to find what the D.R.U.I.Ds called the Humming Meadows. Camelot was small, but hosted many hidden miles of land they had not seen in the weeks they spent on the surface of the planet. He took expeditions every day and began to think they would never explore the entire planet. His people had moved, taking land as they willed, creating maps, duchies, and settlements.
“They say it is entirely wild flowers and a kind of blue bee attends all the flowers,” Uther explained as the wind rushed past them. “That’s why it’s called the Humming Meadow. Because of the bees.”
Igrain laughed excitedly over the noise. “I cannot wait to see wild Camelot flowers!”
This made Uther’s heart leap. Igrain was a warrior at heart, but moments like that reminded him she had more on her mind than weapons and combat. He had felt so bogged down by all of his duties recently that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to be excited. In fact, aside from the quickly dispatched excitement he’d felt on first seeing Camelot, he could not remember ever being excited. It had been that long.
“Watch!” Uther called as he sped his bike faster, the sweet-smelling grass parting for him and his speed. He drove the bike towards a large yellow lake. Perfectly clear but tinged by the sunny color of the odd plant-life that grew underneath, the lake appeared yellow from a distance. As he drew nearer, Igrain wanted to call for him to stop, but instead she watched in awe as his bike went right over the surface. He played with the gears and turned tightly to the left creating a great yellow wave that glittered in the sun and then came back towards her.
When he made a second pass by the shore where she watched him, she called, “You show off, Uther!”
He put on the breaks and set his feet down, pushing his goggles up to his forehead. “It’s so full of sodium and magna-rocks that metal like this doesn’t sink at all. Merlin said something clever about the polar opposites of this metal and the magnetic pull of the lake, but as usual, I don’t see needing his ego-puffing sermons on the geological properties of the water.”
“And you have no idea what it all meant?” Igrain guessed, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Hardly,” he laughed, glad to see her enjoying herself. “I’m still learning how to give orders and shut him up.”
At this, a kind smile pulled her eyes into happy wrinkles. She let her eyes rest on him thoughtfully. Then, deciding she wanted to show off, she pulled her plasma pistol from her hip and said, “Watch this!” as she fired across the lake at some growth hanging from a tree.
To Uther’s amazement, she hit it dead on. The thing shook and trembled before falling to the ground.
“Right in the center!” he beamed. “You really are a sharp shooter. Galois was not kidding.”
She spun the gun around on her finger for his amusement before sliding it back into her holster on her thigh. “He knows he must always be honest when he discourses on my talents. But we’re both soldiers. We butt heads on everything. So, I have to make sure I am that good.”
He smiled at her. He loved her this way: Shaved hair on the sides with bright, brown eyes, pistols on her sides, and straddling a tera-bike. He knew that back in their academy days they had been on opposite sides of the fence. She in combat school and him in logistics classes and the like. He had never been the fighting type. Now, with his new command, he wished he had been.
“I suppose someday I’ll have to learn to fight like you and Galois,” he said as he started his engine again. The light grass pulled away from the pressure of the hovering bike. “I never thought
