The music, and the fact that servers didn’t often circulate into the remote and shadowy corners of side rooms to refill wine glasses, finally drew Samuel out into the sweep and swing of the ball. He wasn’t antisocial by nature, and he enjoyed spending time with his friends; it’s just that his friends didn’t tend to run in his father’s political circles. 

While his father had bucked the family tradition by going into politics and civil service on the wrong side of the party-line, Samuel intended to buck tradition by not going into politics at all. As such, these gatherings, for all their glitz and supposed glamour, did very little for him. He had no one he wanted to network with, no connections to build early. He longed instead for the syncopated beats of the nightclubs his friends and he loved visiting. Losing himself in hard liquor, pounding the dance floor, seeking out a bit of fun, a girl or guy to use and lose, that was a good night to be had. 

He wanted to stay up all night with his friends, and sleep the days away. To laugh and scandalise. To move so far into the heart of the Megacity that he would forget there was ever an edge, it wouldn’t exist in his world anymore. To live for himself and his own pleasure. And to forget politics with its trade deals and food supply worries and pseudo-foreign policies. 

Samuel was so close too, studying hard to develop his skills in advanced coding and technical immersion. His plan was to work in the world of virtual reality, in social immersion apps, and the tantalisingly decadent and addictive virtual worlds where so many city-dwellers plugged in for their rest, recreation, and entertainment. The ultimate escape. 

Samuel couldn’t wait! His friends and he were planning for it, their escape into adulthood and independence. He could leave his father’s world behind, and hopefully the worry about his father as well. The prospect excited him, even as it made his current surroundings seem even more prison-like by the moment. 

People’s tongues had been loosened by free wine now, the jokes muttered around-about him were less correct, the comments acidic. The guests of honour were kept safe in a bubble of bureaucratic protection, while just outside that bubble the rest of the partygoers threw barbs and scoffed. More than one barb aimed at Samuel’s father.

That was the problem living this close to the edge. There was an innate tension that existed and boiled up the nearer one got to the outer highrises of a city. Uncomfortable questions abounded as to why people would willingly choose to live another way. People who championed the ideal of city life and technological supremacy needed to prove their rightness and defend their way of life. Then there was the unknowable people who lived unknowable lives out there in the wilderness. Governments were afraid to try and count them, people remained uncertain about their motives, or their plans. 

Across the world, one of the Eurasian Megacities had tried to expand into the green-land. Terrorists from the Edge had brought down a whole suburb in retaliation. No one knew how. Millions of people had become refugees or dead overnight. 

In Australis, it was said that the customs border had become so lax that a whole sub-nation had been founded by edge-landers on the lower floors of the city itself. The border gates were now lost to myth and government control had become uncertain, if not non-existent, below the tenth floor. No one knew how many buildings this new state spread through and between and across. Maybe the whole city.

Meanwhile in Americor some city land had been voluntarily given back to The Edge, it was in recognition of the swathes of city-dwellers who were said to have abandoned the city to seek citizenship in one-or-other of the minor principalities and city-states that dotted the landscape. 

Not that any of this was public knowledge. Rather it was passed in whispers, quiet enough that they couldn’t be picked up by the layers of intrusive state surveillance that permeated the Megacities. The whispers were particularly loud at the edges of the world. Samuel had heard them. Everyone in that room had heard them. They put everyone on tenterhooks, waiting for the day their world would explode. 

Where the cities ended there lay a web of government agents, underground spy networks, the nervous, the militant, the nationalists, and those (like Samuel’s father) trying to hold it all together, trying to keep the tinder from igniting the gelignite of catastrophe and public fear.

Yes, Samuel couldn’t wait to get away, to the safe and calm of the inner cities; a place where the edge was a distant memory both figuratively and literally.

In the meantime though, as he dreamed of future happiness, he passed through the crowds. Nodding, smiling, saying hello, drinking champagne. Employing all the skills in his coping-with-crowds arsenal. Ignoring the pointed looks and whispers about his father, and the fingers that pointed him out too, as someone tainted by this connection. Wondering whispers about why the secret police and government agents hadn’t taken his family in for questioning yet, after all Councillor Martin’s behaviour was surely to the detriment of the City.

That last remark was being made a few too many times lately for Samuel to keep shrugging it off. His stomach turned a somersault and twisted a bit; he took another gulp of champagne and picked a fresh glass off a nearby tray. He should have kept track of how many he’d drunk he supposed, his father wouldn’t be happy.

He sidled on, his eyes and head slanting inconspicuously  backwards as he tried to identify the woman who’d made the comment about his father’s questioning by government agents. He couldn’t quite see her, and as he craned further and kept walking forward, and balanced his drink, and shook his fuzzy brain it all got a bit tangled. His feet got tangled, and he felt himself lurching forward. With an inelegant yelp he found himself hanging at an impossible angle, his face just inches away from Vince and his mean, hard eyes and crooked mouth.

Samuel was surprised, so was Vince. Something didn’t make sense though, he wasn’t touching Vince, so how was he still lying at this impossible angle then, and not sprawled flat on his arse in front of everyone.

“My dance I think?” a resonant and warm voice washed over him. He and Vince both looked back behind Samuel’s shoulder, following the voice to its source. The look of shock, and recognition, was the same on both their faces as they found themselves standing next to the Prince, Nikolaus.

Well, Vince was standing, Samuel was leaning, the source of his unusual posture now revealed. The Prince had his upper arm in a vice-like grip, holding him up and refusing to let him fall; meanwhile in his hand was Samuel’s nearly-full wine glass that he’d somehow managed to simultaneously sneak out of Samuel’s hand as he’d fallen forward, not even spilling a drop.

Samuel didn’t know what to say, but words didn’t seem to matter just then. The Prince’s question had in fact been a statement. Without waiting for any reply, he righted Samuel and put him back on his feet, downed the wine in the glass, handing it to a passing waiter without looking, and frog-marched his new dance partner away from Vince and onto the ballroom floor.

Samuel’s brain struggled to catch up with what was going on. It still wasn’t making sense of anything as the Prince gathered him into his arms and began leading him around the dance floor. Samuel moved in-step, going where he was directed, keeping up as he’d been taught to. It was strange, the feel of some sort of cage beneath the prince’s clothing pressed onto his legs at times. It was flexible and didn’t cause any problems with their dance, but at least it explained how the fabric stayed out so wide. No, the thing that was causing problems was the dance itself.

All around the room people had stopped what they were doing to stare. It was unprecedented to think that a citizen would dance with someone from out beyond. He would be labelled a sympathiser, put in the same camp as his father. It was scandalous.

“What are you doing?” Samuel hissed quietly under his breath.

“Dancing.” The reply seemed to be given in such a way as to question Samuel’s mental state.

“But why?”

“It was the only way I could think of to get you away from that boy. I had to think on my feet.”

“Boy? Who? Vince?” This made no sense to Samuel.

“Perhaps, if you hadn’t been quite so addled in wine, you might have noticed that… Vince did you say? He was making a beeline for you with murder in his eyes.” Samuel had the grace to blush, he really wished he’d kept count of those drinks now.

“I take it he’s the one I found about to kick you into oblivion earlier today?”

Samuel’s mouth set in a line and his eyes shuttered. He didn’t need anyone fighting his battles for him, or suggesting that he was too weak to fight them himself. His body became rigid and he tried to pull away, to leave the dance. The Prince was having none of it though, he tightened his grip, shook his head, held Samuel’s eyes in his and simply kept Samuel moving through the steps without so much as a momentary pause. Samuel would have sworn then that even if he’d tried planting his feet and refused to move another millimetre, the man he was dancing with would simply have picked him up and kept moving him about like a rag doll in the air. The strength that Samuel could feel in the arms that were holding him would be more than enough to throw him up without even breaking a sweat.

“Just get to the end of the dance, then you can leave.”

“But everyone’s watching,” Samuel whined.

“So?” said a man whose every action had been watched since birth. An audience wasn’t a threat, it was simply a fact of life. Although, speaking of threats, “What will he do? Who is he and what could he do?”

After a moment Samuel clarified, “You mean Vince,” and with the nod of confirmation Samuel’s guts turned to ice and he faltered in his dancing once more; not from any planned rebellion this time though, and sure enough the strong arms beneath him just kept keeping him up and moving him around, as he thought they would.

“I suppose that answer’s my question,” Nikolaus acknowledged.

“He recognised you?” Samuel squeaked.

“Not when I walked in. I spotted him in a moment but he was too wrapped up in himself. He’d never have put two-and-two together; but then, I hadn’t planned to get so close to him that I’d have to withstand a personal examination.”

Samuel hung his head, “His father is one of the hyper-nationalists, militantly opposed to any commerce with the Edge.” Something snapped into place in Samuel’s consciousness. “Your father told everyone, loudly, that you were walking in the park this afternoon. That was a cover wasn’t it. To hide you visiting those people where you took me. If Vince tells his dad that you were on that platform, levels and levels away from the park, he’ll look into it. If he tells them you were with me, my whole family could get dragged in for questioning.” Samuel was tense now, a bowstring drawn tight. He didn’t know how he was still dancing. Beneath his hands he could feel the prince falter too, although only for the barest second, a single momentary shiver. Samuel’s eyes stayed locked to the slight dip in the broad chest in front of him. It all seemed hopeless, he couldn’t bare to look anywhere else.

“Too late!” Nikolaus breathed resignedly. 

Samuel turned his head, followed the Prince’s laser-gaze. There, in the corner, Vince was half-hidden rattling on into his father’s ear. It wasn’t Vince’s cold eyes that Samuel and Nikolaus found themselves looking at. No, they were held in place by the calculating grip of Councilman Tain, who stared at them both, and listened to every word his son was saying.

The dance came to an end. The onlookers continued to gawk at the couple now come to rest on the dance floor. Samuel found his father in the crowd. The concerned look on Martin’s face, the worried question in his eyes. Samuel brushed past the Prince, ignoring the guiding arm offered to him. Schooling his face, desperate, determined, he walked across the room, up the stairs, and headed straight for the door. He was going home.

Behind him the Old Prince conferred with his advisors who hung their heads. The Young Prince held his dignity. And in a whirl of speculation, the room exploded in a frenzy. This had definitely not been agreed.