I shook my head at him. "I'm meeting Professor Lou Haldren, the son of the late Professor Lorento Haldren, who happened to be the only botanist to research the Silver Princess. Everything I know about her came from his research. I hope his son has journals that his father didn't share with the university. That's what the meeting is about, so get your mind out of the gutter and pester your granddaughters about their fellas."
"Oh, I do, Your Highness. What other joy remains for an old man like me? Needling my grandchildren is my favorite pastime."
He was still grinning when he pulled the hover-car to the curb outside the café.
It was an ordinary vehicle with no royal insignia, so no one paid it any notice. I didn't want to draw attention, and I was successful most of the time because people didn't recognize me without the elaborate makeup and hairdos. On the rare occasion that I appeared on television, it was in full paint and lacquered hair and a gown in the pale blue and silver of our house. The woman who stepped out of the hover-car bore almost no resemblance to the televised version of me. I wore loose slacks, a soft shirt, and flats, my hair was gathered in a single plain braid, and my face was clean of makeup. No one spared me a second glance, not even appreciative looks from young men, which was a little disappointing even though I was not supposed to care. Most days I counted it a blessing.
I went in and scanned the place for the professor.
The café was the usual midday crowd of students hunched over notes and cooling teas and caffs, all of them young. Professor Haldren was in his fifties, and since no one there looked that age, he must be running late. I found a table near the window and ordered a caff.
I'd read every paper the late Lorento Haldren had ever published on the high-altitude flora of the Tarina-Elucia border, and there was a great deal of it, decades of rigorous research. The man had cataloged dozens of rare species, and together with Professor Lubina Graff, the famous pharmacologist, had derived many uses from them. The Elucians had a long tradition of healers who knew how to use their native flora to treat all kinds of afflictions, but they were recluses who didn't share theirknowledge freely, and, in truth, we Elurians were too conceited to ask.
I had studied all his writings, but nothing had caught my interest like the Silver Princess.
He'd written that a tincture drawn from her silvery roots appeared to ease melancholy and the gripping kind of fear, the affliction the physicians called anxious prostration. If it were true and could be made reliably, it would mean a better life for a great many people who currently had no good options. The medications we currently had for those afflictions came with difficult side effects, trading one kind of suffering for another.
The problem was that he'd died without leaving a record about how to keep the Silver Princess alive, or even whether he'd managed to grow her this side of the border, and if so, how. He'd had living specimens, that much was clear from his descriptions, but he could've conducted his experiments up in the mountains where the Silver Princess grew and thrived.
His son, whom I was meeting today, was a historian, not a botanist, which made him an unlikely source of cultivation notes, but he'd inherited his father's estate, and if Professor Haldren Senior had kept any journals at home, I hoped the son had preserved them.
I didn't know much about him even though we worked in the same university. We'd never even crossed paths, or if we had, it hadn't been memorable. The history faculty was located on the far side of the complex, and I never ventured there.
When I'd telephoned and explained that I was researching the Silver Princess, he'd agreed to come to my side of the campus. I'd told him who I was, because it was the decent thing to do, but I'd explained that most students didn't know who I was and I liked to keep it that way. I asked him to keep it quiet, and he'd promised he would.
He came through the door and stopped, peering around the room, and I knew who he was instantly because he was his father's photograph come to life. The same round middle, the same balding dome, the same spectacles pushed up a nose that had clearly been built to hold them. He scanned the tables, and his eyes slid right over me without the faintest snag of recognition.
I smiled and lifted my hand, and he hurried over, already apologizing before he reached the chair.
"Your Hi—" he started, caught himself, glanced around, and dropped his voice to a flustered murmur. "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. I was caught by a pair of students at my door with questions about their dissertations, and I simply cannot send students away, it's a genuine failing of mine." He sat, a little out of breath. "I do apologize."
"Please don't." I gave him one of my most charming smiles in an effort to put him at ease. "You are a good teacher who cares about his students. That's nothing to apologize for. You are a rare find."
He went pink to the top of his shining head. "That's very kind, Your...Very kind." He fussed with his spectacles. "I confess I didn't expect, that is, I was looking for, well…" He gestured vaguely at the air, where presumably the gown and the silver slippers were hovering.
"The woman you've seen on television doesn't come to cafés." I lifted my caff. "In fact, she doesn't exist outside of those televised events." I leaned forward. "This is the real me, and I'm very happy nearly no one knows this version so I can move around freely without people stopping me and asking what I'm doing having an actual life outside of court."
He nodded sagely. "I understand. Completely."
"Can I order something for you?" I asked. "The caff here is very good."
"That would be lovely. I do need a little pick-me-up."
Once the caff was in front of him and he had something to do with his hands, he seemed a little less flustered.
"I'm a great admirer of your father's work, and I've read everything he published," I said. "His work on the frontier species is the foundation of my research, and I'd put him only a step below Elurion himself in the botanical canon. Professor Haldren discovered species, and together with Professor Graff they found uses for them that are still saving lives. I'm interested in his fieldwork along the border, and about the Silver Princess in particular."
Something shuttered in his face, and the fluster came back.
"The Silver Princess. You said over the telephone that you were interested in her." He turned his cup a quarter circle on its saucer. "I should tell you, Your, ah, I should tell you plainly. I'm not fond of that flower. It is the reason my father's legacy is tainted by mockery."
"Mockery?" I set my cup down. "I don't understand. Your father is revered to this day."
"My father's early and middle work is revered," he corrected. "And no one remembers what he worked on toward the end of his days. But back then it was a different story." He sighed. "He began as the most rigorous botanist of his generation, and he ended chasing fairy tales. The Silver Princess consumed him, and instead of collecting botanical specimens, he started collecting stories. Shepherds' and herders' tales, the tales of mountain people. Stories about the flower having magical powers, about shimmering lights and apparitions. In the beginning, I thought he was interested in the folklore, and I even helped him catalog the stories according to regions, but then he started to believe in them." Lou's voice dropped. "He stood up at a symposium in front of every botanist of standing in three provinces and told them the flower held power. That was theend of his career. They said that he got the elders' affliction, and perhaps they were right. Some elders start seeing apparitions toward the end of their days."
I knew what he was talking about firsthand. My grandmother suffered from elders' affliction before she died. Toward the end, she hadn't remembered who my mother was and had been speaking to people who weren't there. The truly sad part was that her own mother had been still alive and sharp, but she'd deteriorated after her daughter had died. No mother wanted to outlive her child, even if that child passed in her eighties.
"I'm so sorry," I said. "I know how terrible it is when a loved one loses their coherence."
