Asimov's Science Fiction by Penny Publications Page A

the symrock vein, and the thought escaped me as if carried away on the breeze. The danger of what we were doing hit me in the chest, squeezing the air from my lungs like a well-placed punch, and my vision tunneled from the strength of the Imperative pounding in my skull. But I gritted my teeth and rode it out, focusing on the sound of Duyi's laugh as he wove the skimmer back and forth, following the vein.
    "Now this is an adventure!" Duyi crowed into the wind.
    The symrock vein dipped under a mossy hill and vanished from sight, so he had to navigate using only the symbionts' ability to sense it. "Perhaps you should decelerate, young master."
    "Relax, I can feel right where we need to go."
    But I can't,
I thought. "You are exposing yourself to unnecessary risk," I said, parroting the older guards.
    "And having way more fun than boring old Hatta would ever let us have," he retorted. "We're free! Enjoy it, Brother!"
    That was the first time he ever used the honorific, and I assumed it was a jest. He couldn't possibly mean it, of course, because he knew about my programming. He knew I had no choice about how I felt for him—even if I behaved as a brother should, it wasn't real. There could be no bond of friendship between us, and it was my fault, and the thought made me want to weep. To be trapped like this, shadowing but never truly close to him, was infinitely worse than being alone.
    Dry-eyed, I swore that day to master the Imperative.
    Duyi is flying the skimmer, the wind lifting his hair away from his face. We are two days out from the estate, following a broad vein of symrock northward, and the tension in his body is finally easing away. Even from behind, I can tell he's smiling into the wind—not his showy, manic grin, but the sort of smile that isn't for anyone else's benefit. Seeing him relax, I feel as if a weight has been lifted from my chest.
    Only three days left until the ceremony. The regent will be furious at Duyi's absence. It has been a tradition for almost five centuries that every member of his or her lineage swears fealty to the Regency on his seventeenth birthday—and accepts an Imperative to prove his sincerity. The Regency Imperative is designed to make them loyal to the continued prosperity of the world, and to make them good leaders by some antiquated definition of "good." In reality, it seems to drive them slightly mad: too rational, too calculating, under-influenced by emotion and compassion. But of course, every adult who has the Regency Imperative sees the logic of forcing it on the younger generations.
    Duyi swivels his seat a little, so he can talk to me over his shoulder. "There's a reason we never went off-roading after that first time, you know. She threatened to send you down to the NeuroLogic lab for a memory wipe if you ever let me do something so dangerous again."
    I hadn't known, but it is the sort of threat that never comes as a surprise when wielded by the regent. A direct and heartless tactic from a direct and heartless woman.
    I say, "And here I thought it was because you'd developed a sense of your own mortality. Foolish me." I must admit I find it a little disconcerting that he's not looking where we're going, even though I know he's been steering by feel instead of sight this whole time. At least his hand is steady on the yoke.
    He grins. "Are you joking? Off-roading is practically the only thing I can do that you can't. I was
dying
to rub it in some more. But I couldn't risk it." His smile fades. Almost too quiet to hear over the wind, he adds, "It's still a risk."
    I shrug. "What would be the point of my remembering anything if she forces the Regency Imperative on you? It's not as if you'd care one way or the other, not after the ceremony."
    "Just because I wouldn't—" He gasps in mid-sentence, and I catch a glimpse of the whites of his eyes before he snaps his head around to face the controls. He yanks hard on the yoke, and the flight harness cuts into my shoulders as we