Helda and I took a commercial flight to Diesha, traveling like civilians, doing nothing to attract attention. Although Kurj had made no stipulations about how I was to arrive, it was obvious he wanted a low-key approach. Why? What was he up to?
We landed far from any terminal at the starport. The passengers all gathered in the cubicle some generous person had dubbed the ship's lounge, a chamber with three chairs and a table bolted to what served as the deck in a gravity field. Glancing out a porthole, I saw a flybus approaching from the distant terminal, speeding on its cushion of air like a black and silver bullet silver.
"Prepare to disembark," the steward said over the com, his pleasant tone a marked contrast to the clipped computer voices on the military transports I usually took to Diesha.
We queued up at the airlock and the steward appeared, a young man in a blue uniform. When he opened the batch, fresh air flooded the ship, a relief after our days of canned air during the flight.
The flybus pulled alongside the ship. As it rose to the airlock, an officer came to stand in its open doorway, a woman in the dusky red uniform of the military police. She carried a laser carbine. Here on the planet dedicated solely to functions of Imperial Space Command, ISC controlled everything.
An accordion bridge unfolded from the flybus to our airlock. After the steward clamped it into place, he smiled at us. "Welcome to the Dieshan Air and Starport, Civilian Terminal. We hope you enjoy your stay here."
The bored police officer didn't look as if she cared whether we enjoyed or loathed our stay. She checked each of us as we entered the flybus, running her scanner over our bodies and luggage. When we finished boarding, the bus retracted its bridge, closed its door, sank down, and headed for the terminal. We all sat in nervoplex seats staring out the windows, the walls, the floor, anywhere but at each other.
A second flybus met us halfway to the terminal. While the two vehicles sat on the tarmac like giant bullets conferring with each other, we disembarked and boarded the second, going through the whole blasted security procedure again.
Helda grumbled as we waited in line to be scanned. "Never again," she muttered. "Never again I come to Diesha as a civilian."
The second bus took us to within ten meters of the terminal. We walked the rest of the way between poles that blinked and beeped at us. The path ended at a security arch framing a doorway. A burly man and a heavyset woman in ISC uniforms staffed the counter beyond.
As I walked through the arch, the man motioned for me to stop. "Baggage check."
I slung my duffel onto the counter. The woman touched a panel on her console and holos formed above my bag, rotating to show the interior, every last detail, including my underwear and other privates.
"Open it," the man said.
Gritting my teeth, I undid the flaps and the duffel fell open. As the man ruffled through my belongings, data scrolled across the woman's console. "Valdoria, Sauscony," she read. "Jacob's Shire, Eos, Foreshires Hold." She glanced at me. "Far from home, aren't you?"
"Yes," I said.
Someone nudged my shoulder, pressing me into the counter. I glanced back to see another passenger pushing by me as she entered the terminal. Although she was dressed as a civilian, the patches on her shoulders indicated her commission in the military. I recognized her from the ship, a woman who had been at the end of the line when we queued up here. Outside, other civilian passengers stood in line, squinting in the harsh sunlight as they waited.
I turned back in time to see the security officer take my wallet out of my duffel. He flipped it open and the mini-album activated, cycling through holos. One of Jarith came up, several of us both, then Helda and Jarith, and finally one of my mother. The man stopped the display, leaving a holo of my mother floating above the wallet screen so it looked as if she was standing on his palm.
"Who is this?" he asked.
None of your damn business. "My mother."
"You're kidding." He handed the wallet to the woman behind the counter, his arm creating ripples of light when it pierced the security field around her console. "Can you get an ID?"
She set my wallet on a flat screen. My mother floated there, smiling and golden. She blurred as a laser played over the holo.
"Correlation complete," the computer said. "Name: Cya Liessa. Occupation: dancer, Parthonia Imperial Ballet. No address given."
"Ballerina, huh?" The man smiled. "She's pretty."
Pretty? That was all he had to say after they invaded my mother's privacy as if we were just some page in a holozine they were reading?
The woman dropped my wallet into my duffel, then closed up the bag and handed it to me. "All right. Move along."
Clenched the handle, I slung the duffel it over my shoulder as I stalked into the arrivals gate. People crowded the chrome and glass area, standing, talking, sitting in chairs, watching the holovid in the corner, boarding speedwalks.
Helda came up next to me. "Pah."
"They give you a hard time, too?"
She scowled. "They are lucky we have orders to be as quiet as mumblemice."
I smiled at the incongruous image of Helda as any kind of mouse. I wouldn't want to be the cat that went after her. "How long until your connecting flight?"
She tilted her head, the familiar blank look flashing across her face as she accessed her node. "Twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes. Then she was off again. "I wish you were staying."
Helda laughed. "Heya, Soz, you getting sentimental?" She motioned at a speedwalk. "Come to my gate."
I didn't want to go with her. I had no idea why, other than an odd sense that if she left, I would never see her again. As we boarded the speedwalk, I spoke quietly. "You and Rex, and Taas at the end there—I was used to being with you day and night. Half the time we were one mind. Now that's gone." I struggled to express feelings that swirled like mist at the edges of vision. "Something is ending, Helda. I don't know what."
"Ending?" The wall behind her slid by as the speedwalk whisked us toward her departure gate. "You sound strange today."
I made myself smile. "I guess so."
We talked about lighter matters after that. She told me what she knew of Taas, who was flying with another squad and developing a reputation as a skilled pilot.
"When you see him again, wish him well for me," I said.
"If you want." She shrugged. "It is more likely you see him first, here at HQ."
"I know. But do it for me anyway. Just in case."
"In case what?"
I didn't know the answer. So I forced a laugh. "You never know what diversions I'll find."
At Helda's gate, passengers were queued up for another flybus. After Helda got through the security arch, she waved at me. I stood inside, behind the bulletproof, laserproof, shatterproof, fist-thick wall of tinted glass and waved back. Then she boarded the bus. Within moments it was just another bullet humming across the tarmac like all the other chromed bullets out there.
I returned to the speedwalk, and this time I strode along, adding my speed to its own so I whipping along. I had no idea I why I was in a hurry, I just wanted to get away from the starport, from this place of leave-takings and endings.
The Magrail platform outside perched on a casecrete tower as tall as the starport. Giant rails arched in the sky, came down to the platform, ran level with it, and then swept up again, over the port in a great curve of silver. The Magtrain hurtled toward the platform, a string of bullet cars, their blue, silver, and black chrome gleaming. As I joined a handful of other travelers, the train stopped and its doors slicked open like a camera shutter. Within moments, we were rushing up and out of the port.
Most of the civilians disembarked in the suburbs. At the perimeter of Headquarters City, we stopped at a platform secured by guards with laser carbines. Armor encased their bodies, making them eight feet tall, giants of black and silver metal, faceless, with opaque screens instead of eyes. By this time I was the only "civilian" on the train.
As the guards entered the car, we all stood. One giant strode over to me, boots ringing on the metal floor. He or she—I didn't know which—spoke through a voice filter that made it sound like a machine. "Identification."
I turned over my hand and tensed my arm, pushing my ID chip out of its sleeve into my palm. The socket on my wrist glinted, marking me as a telop or Jagernaut. I couldn't read the officer's reaction; the armor hid body language and expressions, and the filter took emotional nuances out of the voice. The guard just slid my card into a box at the waist. Although I had been through these checks before, the procedure felt strange today, as if I were being distilled into that small square.
Everyone in the car received clearance to enter Headquarters City. No surprise there. Only someone very naive or very foolish would try to enter the city without proper ID. I disembarked at a platform in the heart of downtown. As the train pulled away, a swarm of automated taxis swooped in, vying for the fare. I ignored them, instead choosing an airtube at the edge of the tower. It lowered me with air jets that slowed my descent. Getting blasted with air that way unsettled many people, and few trusted the tubes not to drop them, but I liked it, probably for the same reason I liked doing loops and rolls when I piloted an aircraft, something about the challenge or maybe just the boost of adrenalin.
I needed a boost. Kurj's odd summons, the impersonal security procedures coming into Diesha, Helda's leaving, the faceless guards in their armor—it all left me with an uncomfortable sensation, as if I were turning into a machine, my humanity strained out and condensed into an ID chip.
At the dispenser in the bottom of the tower, I bought a mirrored visor. It was translucent to my vision, letting me see the city through an amber tinge that muted the harsh sunlight. Anyone looking at me would see only a dark, mirrored strip across my eyes.
Heavy traffic hovered along the streets, but I rode speedwalks instead of flagging a taxi. Pedestrians were everywhere, military personnel. Their visored eyes were blank masks, unreadable, like Kurj's face when his inner lids were lowered.
The tower where I lived had no lobby, just a door that whisked open in response to my ID chip, admitting me into a glass shaft. The lift took me to the top floor and let me out into a corridor with walls of amber glass. Outside, the downtown spread out in a relentless pattern of squares and rectangles both horizontal and vertical, no softening touches of green, just black and silver and white. A flyer appeared from behind the tower, winging so close to the window that the glass vibrated. Then it curved away and out above the city.
Only two people had quarters on this floor: myself, and a retired general who still acted as one of my brother's top advisers on espionage. My door checked my ID chip, fingerprints, and retinal patterns before it opened. The living room looked the same as always, all chrome and glass, with white furniture and gleaming tables.
"Welcome home, Primary Valdoria," a voice said as the door closed behind me.
"Heya, Mak." That name was the closest I had come to personalizing the ISC-MA4K Evolving Intelligence that took care of the place. I dumped my duffel on the floor and collapsed onto the couch. "Any messages for me?" Although Mak had forwarding my mail to Foreshires during my stay there, everything might not have come through yet.
"Two messages," Mak said.
"Is either from Imperator Skolia?"
"No."
Maybe Kurj didn't know I was here. That seemed unlikely; if he wanted me back as badly as Helda indicated, he would have kept track of my arrival. Given his measures to keep his summons secret, I doubted he wanted me to announce my presence.
"Mak, send a message to my parents at the palace." They weren't there; neither liked coming to Diesha. Kurj probably was, though, unless some crisis required him to stay in the city. The palace was the only place secure enough to let him dismiss his bodyguards. High in the mountains, surrounded by wilderness and numerous deadly installations dedicated to protecting it, the place was completely automated. It needed no human staff. That seemed lonely to me, but it gave him what he treasured: privacy—complete, utter privacy.
"Text of message?" Mak prompted.
I rubbed the back of my neck. "My greetings, Mother and Father. I'm back on Diesha to visit Rex. Let's get together while I'm here. Love, Sauscony. End message. Send."
"Sent."
Belatedly, I remembered the girl from the hospital Kurj had "invited" to the palace. What was her name? Cyliessa? No . . . Charissa. That was it. Charissa Deirdre. If she found the message, she might actually forward it to my parents. "Mak, who is living at the palace?"
"Imperator Skolia."
"Anyone else, either now or in the previous five months?"
"A woman named Charissa Deirdre stayed with him for one hundred and six days."
One hundred and six. She must have pleased him. I wondered how she felt about it. Did he repulse her? Had she grown to love him? I supposed it was possible. Love was a bizarre enough emotion to strike in the most unlikely places.
"Where is Deirdre now?" I asked.
"She works in the nursery of the ISC Hospital maternity wing and lives with her parents in Suburb Fourteen."
Her parents? "How old is she?"
"Seventeen."
Gods. That was below the age of legal consent. Someone ought to flaming well remind Kurj that he was bound by the law, too, even if no one had the boldness, or perhaps the imprudence, to enforce it with him. Had her parents known why she vanished? I wondered which would have been harder for them, not knowing where she went or discovering she was a prisoner of Skolia's ninety-year-old warlord. She was free now, though, and besides, none of this was my business. She had resumed her life, after all. Maybe she even liked Kurj.
Then again, maybe not.
"Mak—do you have any more information about Deirdre?"
"Checking." Then: "Prior to her stay with Imperator Skolia, Charissa Deirdre was an honor student at a vocational college in suburb eight, where she was studying to become a caregiver for children. Earlier this year she won an award for outstanding academic performance. She was secretary of a community services club and belonged to an athletic club. A boy named Jayms Procal applied for a permit to marry her when they reached their twentieth birthdays."
It didn't sound like she had much in common with Kurj. "What happened after she went to the palace?"
"She was expelled from the college for absenteeism and refusal to respond to administration summons. The expulsion was changed to 'missing person' status after her parents contacted the school. At the Imperator's request, she was reinstated at the college after she returned home. Her grades have plummeted, and she is currently doing work below the level considered acceptable for continued attendance. However, no attempt has been made to dismiss her."
Of course not. No sane person was going to dismiss a student who had been reinstated by order of the Imperator. "What about her other activities?"
"She lost her job at the hospital, then was reinstated by Imperator Skolia. Her community services club membership is active but she let her athletic membership lapse. She has no record of participating in either club since her return home. The boy who applied for the marriage permit had his application denied."
"Did her name also appear on it?" He could have applied without her knowing, hoping to have an approved permit to offer if he were the one making the proposal. But without both their signatures, the permit was worthless.
"Both names appeared," Mak said. "The permit was initially approved. However, the approval was revoked the day after her tenure at the palace began."
"What's its status now?"
"They reapplied eleven days ago. The permit was denied."
"On what grounds?"
"That the previous permit had been denied."
No surprise there, either. If Kurj had stopped the first one, no one would risk putting through a second. I wondered if he had any idea how much he had screwed up her life. I couldn't heal her emotional wounds, but I could do one thing. "Mak, link into the Marriage Bureau and have approval sent to Deirdre and her young man, on my authority." Of course Kurj could override it. But I knew him. If he had tired of the girl, he wouldn't pursue it, particularly if she left him with fond enough feelings that he had acted on her behalf at her school and job. I was the one he would come after.
"Approval sent." Mak paused. "Even a brief analysis of this situation suggests Imperator Skolia will not appreciate your intervention in his private life."
I grimaced. I had certainly found a more effective method for letting him know I had arrived than pretending my parents were at the palace. I put my feet up on the table in front of the couch, trying to relax. It didn't work. I was wound as tight as a coil. "Read the two messages in my mail queue. Don't bother with headers."
"Message one." A click sounded, followed by a bland voice. "Attention all residents. Air lifts will be turned off on three-eight-three-point-six from one to three hundred hours for maintenance. Do not attempt to use the lifts during this time."
"Mak, delete it." The message was several months old.
"Deleted. Message two." A man's voice floated into the air. "Hello, Primary Valdoria. I wasn't sure where to send this, so I posted it to General Inquiries on Diesha. I hope it reaches you. I thought you might like to know my interview with you and Secondary Blackstone did the trick. The University at Athens gave me a grant to come to Parthonia for testing. And guess what? I'm 7.2 on your Kyle scale. Of course, I don't know what to do with it yet. But the Parthonia Institute admitted me for training. Anyway, thanks. Tiller Smith."
"Well, how do you like that?" I said.
"I have no emotional reaction to the message," Mak said.
I smiled. "I do. A pleasant one. Why didn't you forward this to me on Foreshires? How long ago was it sent?"
"It reached General Inquiries fifty-three days ago. General Inquiries routed it to Military Inquiries, which routed it to Officer Inquiries, which routed it to Unsecured Documents, which routed it to Civilian Documents, which routed it to General Inquiries, which—
"Mak, can you abbreviate it a bit?"
"The message cycled through General Inquiries three times, after which a watcher flagged it, and sent it to Investigations. From there the sender went through a security check—"
"Wait a minute," I said. "Security did a check on Tiller just because he sent me a letter?"
"Yes. Do you wish the results of the investigation?"
"All right. But keep it brief."
"Tiller Smith, age twenty-six; Citizenship, Allied Worlds of Earth, Delos resident. No record of subversive activities. He was ticketed two years ago for leaving a flycar in a no parking zone at the Arcade during a parade, and when he was four years old he had to be removed from the premises of an Arcade bar he had wandered into."
"For flaming sake." Didn't Investigations have anything better to do? "When did they finally get around to giving me the message?"
"After Investigations approved it, they routed it to Central Military, which sent it here. It arrived four days ago, at which time I submitted it to Offworld Clearance for transferal to Foreshires. I'm still waiting for the release. Shall I cancel the request?"
"Please do." I rubbed my chin. "Can you access the data banks of the Parthonia Institute?"
"Yes. What do you wish me to find?"
"Who is sponsoring Tiller."
"Connecting to offworld-transfer node."
I had received my Kyle training from private tutors when I was a child, so I wasn't familiar with Institute procedures. But I was pretty sure Tiller needed patrons to attend the school. As an Allied citizen, particularly one with little or no standing even among his own people, let alone among mine, he wouldn't find many sponsors. Without them, he wouldn't last long on Parthonia. The Kyle-Mesh was power—political, military, academic, social, and economic—which meant anything concerned with it involved high stakes and a set of unwritten rules. Tiller was way out of his league.
"Information received," Mak said. "Tiller Smith has one patron, a woman named Marya Pulivok, the tester who determined his rating."
One patron? And one with no political clout. They would eat him alive and spit him all the way back to Delos. "Add me to Tiller's list of sponsors."
"Message sent." After a pause, Mak added, "And acknowledged."
"Good." With an Imperial Heir as a patron, Tiller would have them fighting for the honor of taking him as a favored student.
I went over to a bookcase against the wall. The book Tiller had given me was where I had left it, stuck between the statuette of a jade dragon and a ponderous text on mystimatical theories of alternate dimensions. I pulled out Verses on a Windowpane and opened it to the page Tiller had been reading that day in his office, the poem he had marked with the Arcade ticket:
A frame of stone.
Silvered glass
frosted with icy tears.
My fist closes
on the mirror;
flesh traps ice.
Brittle snaps
of breaking tears.
I see you now
standing behind me;
always watching,
always waiting,
never satisfied.
I sheath my heart,
its bare softness
guarded by ice.
I wondered why he had marked the poem. Was I doing that, guarding my heart with icy fortifications that grew colder and thicker, until someday I became Kurj? I closed the book with a snap. No. I wasn't Kurj. I wouldn't become him.
Would I?
I didn't have the energy to wrestle that nightmare. Although it was only midday on Diesha, I was exhausted. The flight had thrown off my internal clock.
I left the living room and went to what I called my memory hall. As I walked down the corridor, my footsteps activated its subtle screens and holos appeared. They showed the countryside around my father's house: blue-capped mountains against the sky like the backbone of a giant; plains of silver-green grass under the great dome of the sky; trees with glasswood trunks that released tinted spheres into the air. Home.
Then I was at the end of the hall and the holos were gone, vanished after I passed. I touched a panel and the door opened onto my bedroom.
Within moments, I was asleep.
"I'm sorry," the nurse said. "Secondary Blackstone isn't here."
She "sat" on the dais in my holobooth with its curving screens. I sat on a much smaller dais where lasers played over my body, producing interference patterns that my system sent to hers so her booth could produce as detailed an image of me as mine did of her. I had no desire to look at her holo, detailed or otherwise. She was too damned pretty. What was Rex doing with such a beautiful nurse?
"Do you know when he'll be back?" I asked.
"Sorry, I don't." She smiled. "He went to the park. Shall I tell him you called?"
What if he didn't want to see me? Maybe he was right there, but had asked her not to tell me. Oh, hell. This was getting me nowhere. "Yes. Tell him Soz called and that I'm here on Diesha."
"All right. I'll do. Bye." Her image faded from the booth.
Bye? Bye? What was it with these young people, saying such words? What was wrong with proper Skolian phrases, like "My pleasure at our discourse, ma'am"? Bye was an Earth word. Young people had no appreciation for their culture. Rex didn't need a nurse like that.
My console beeped at me. I touched a blue light in one corner, and a familiar voice came out of the speaker. "My greetings, Soz."
My pulse jumped. "Rex?"
"Blossom paged me about your call."
"Blossom?"
"My nurse."
It figured she had a name like Blossom. "Are you there with her?"
"No. I'm in the park."
The park. Which one? Diesha didn't have many. Water was too valuable to spend on nonessential plants, so each suburb was allowed only one park. But Diesha had nineteen suburbs, which meant he could be nineteen places. Maybe he didn't want me to know.
"Soz?" Rex asked. "Are you still there?"
I flushed. "Yes."
"When did you get in?"
"Yesterday. I came to—" To what? My cover was that I had come to see him. "I was wondering—I mean, I know I've been gone a long time . . ."
His voice relaxed a bit. "It does seem like more than five months."
"I was wondering how you were doing."
"Better."
"I'm glad." What would he say if I asked to visit him?
"Soz . . .?"
"Yes?"
"Maybe you might—I'm in park Fifteen. If you'd like to come down." Quickly he added, "If you're too busy, I understand."
I closed my eyes, so relieved I couldn't answer for a moment. Then I said, "Yes. I'd like to."
Park fifteen was hot and glaring. Broad avenues of casecrete marked off lawns the color of autumn leaves. As I rode a speedwalk through the park, people in uniforms strode by me, their eyes protected with mirrored visors.
Rex was exactly where he had described, sitting in the shade of a prickly tree. I walked toward him across the lawn, my boots crunching the grass. He looked so relaxed and healthy. The only indication of anything different was a silvery mesh that molded around his body from the waist down like trousers designed from a metallic net.
When he saw me, he raised his hand. As I waved back, he put his hand against the tree. When he jerked it back, I felt the puncture from its needle as if it jabbed my own palm. He tried again, this time leaning his weight into the tree without mishap.
Then he stood.
I stopped and gaped. Then I set off again, striding the last few meters that separated us.
"Heya, Soz," he said.
"You're standing up!"
His face relaxed into a smile. "Seems so."
"How?" No, that sounded stupid. "I mean—I thought—"
He turned and indicated the base of his spine. Looking closer, I saw a psiphon attached to the mesh, with its prong plugged into his spine.
"It goes in above the broken sections," he said. "Links to optical threads that run to my brain."
That didn't sound safe. "The doctors said it could hurt you if they tried any more manipulations with your biomech web."
"The operation had some risk, but the procedure was simple enough that they thought it would be all right. They just repaired some threads in my body and grew another socket higher in my spine." He tapped a tiny disk woven into the web. "When this chip intercepts a signal from my brain, it shunts it to the mesh." He took a stiff-legged step away from the tree and held out his hands. "The mesh moves and takes me with it."
I grinned at him. "You're walking!"
He laughed, took another jerky step—and lurched to the side. I grabbed for his arm, but he pushed me off and fell to one knee, his face knotting with—what? Anger? Frustration? Slowly, he stood up. For a moment, when he said nothing, I thought I had offended him somehow. Then he smiled ruefully. "I'm still learning to make it work."
"You'll have it obeying you in no time," I said.
"I hope so."
So we stood, looking at each other. I said, "How's Diesha?" in the same instant Rex said, "How was Foreshires?"
We laughed, a brief explosion that quickly died away. I said, "It was good," while he said, "Just fine."
This time my laugh felt more natural. "My mother came to see me."
He grinned. "I'll bet that shook up everyone."
I smiled, remembering Jarith's reaction—and immediately blocked the memory. But it was too late. Jarith's image had jumped into my mind.
Rex spoke quietly. "It's all right, Soz."
"We said goodbye. He stayed on Foreshires."
"You don't have to apologize."
"Rex . . ." Rex, what? Why did I have to be so stupid with words?
"Want to go for a walk?" he asked.
I almost said, Can you? But I caught myself before it came out. "Yes."
He took a step. Pause. Another step. I walked next to him, peering at the mesh. It contracted around his right leg, carrying that limb forward, then moved his left leg forward. "That looks more comfortable than mechanical legs."
"Not as strong, though. I thought about getting the hardware."
I tried to imagine him with his legs sheathed in exterior mechanicals. "What made you decide against it?"
"I'm not sure." He took another step. "My body is already so full of biomech. The idea of putting more on the outside didn't feel right."
"A biosynthetic marvel."
He glanced at me. "What?"
"Someone called me that once. I wished they hadn't."
"I don't blame you." He indicated a bench a few meters away. "Want to sit?"
"Sure."
When we reached the bench, Rex sank onto it and exhaled. "I never knew walking could take so much energy."
I smiled. "Well, you've got to do something with all that energy."
As soon as I said it, I wanted to fold up and blow away. It was a joke we had shared a hundred times before, a reference to his many girlfriends. It came out before I thought about it. Damn, I was an idiot. It was like hitting him with a sign announcing, Hey, look how insensitive I am!
Don't be so sure, Soz. Rex smiled. I have more energy than you think.
I blinked, embarrassed by how transparent I was to him. Are you eavesdropping?
It's hard not to, when you shout like that.
I reddened. I wasn't shouting.
He smirked at me. You most certainly were. At the top of your mental lungs.
I glared at him. You're as ornery as ever.
So my nurse tells me.
Pah. I refused to share my mind with his nurse. "You mean the esteemed Miss Blossom?"
"Miss? What does that mean?"
"It's an old fashioned Earth word." After all, Blossom was the one who liked Earth words. "It refers to a women's marital status." I squinted at him. "Or lack thereof."
His voice gentled. "If you want to know, just ask."
"I don't mean to pry. It's none of my business."
"Would it make a difference to our friendship?"
Yes, damn it. No, that wasn't fair. Why shouldn't he have a lover? Because. Why did he want her and not me?
Rex watched my face. "Soz—she's what I can deal with right now."
Like Jarith. After a moment I said, "I understand." Then I snorted. "But can't she do something about that awful name?"
"I like it."
"You would."
He laughed good-naturedly. "Still the same Soz."
Despite myself, I smiled. "I guess so." But I wasn't. Foreshires had changed everything.
We spent the afternoon walking, sitting, talking. Neither of us mentioned Jarith, Blossom, or Delos. Someday we would sort it out. Now it was enough just to have his companionship again.
It was late when I reached home. The living room was dark, but as soon as the door opened I knew someone was inside. My hand dropped to the belt of my jumpsuit, where I had hidden a dart thrower. "Lumos up," I said.
The room brightened, revealing my visitor: Kurj. He stood in an inner doorway leaning against the frame, his arms folded, his shielded eyes directed toward me.
I closed the door. "My greetings."
"Why did you send approval for Charissa's marriage license?"
Well, that was subtle. "Because otherwise no one would have ever let that girl get married."
"She could have come to me. I would have taken care of it."
"Given your—former relationship with her, she probably didn't feel she could ask."
He studied my face. "What advantage did you see in helping her?"
Advantage? "I didn't."
He considered me. "Who is Tiller Smith?"
"He worked in the Delos police station. He took our report about Jaibriol Qox."
"And?"
I didn't see what he was looking for. "That's all."
Kurj raised his eyebrows. "Then why did your spinal node flag on a book he gave you when your squad was leaving for Tams?"
What was he doing, keeping notes on everything I did? "It was a book of poems. It made me think about how combat affects me."
He stood silently, like machine crunching data, analyzing, filing. Then he said, "That doesn't explain why you became his patron at the Institute."
"If I hadn't, they would have eaten him alive."
"I can see the advantage to him. But not to you."
"I don't see your point." I did, in fact, see it perfectly well. But it angered me enough that I had no intention of acknowledging it. So what if no advantage came to me in helping Tiller or Charissa?
Kurj went to the bookshelf and pulled out Verses on a Windowpane. It fell open to the page marked by the Arcade ticket. As he stood reading, I could almost hear him filing the words in his brain: Always watching, always waiting, never satisfied.
He smiled dryly. "Poetry like this would inspire me to send him far away."
A joke? No, it couldn't be. But why not? Kurj could have a sense of humor buried in there. Just in case, I smiled. "Well, it's different."
"That's not a reason to become his patron." He slid the book on the shelf. "Did he please you?"
"If you're asking did I bed him, the answer is no."
"Did you want to?"
"No."
Kurj frowned. "I assume he has no holds over you?"
"Of course he doesn't."
"Does Charissa?"
"I've never met the girl, aside from that day at the hospital." Shaking my head, I said, "You're looking for something that isn't there. I helped them because I felt like it. No other reason."
Kurj spoke quietly. "Then you're a fool."
"I don't see it that way."
"Why?
This was stranger and stranger. I felt more like I was being interviewed for a job than called to task for my actions. "It's better to have your citizenry as satisfied as possible with their lives. Happy people are more productive."
"It isn't your job to see to the happiness of Imperial citizens."
"These were situations where I could make a difference."
"Tiller Smith isn't even Skolian," Kurj said. "Not only does training him have no advantage to us, it could be a disadvantage. He will take his knowledge back to the Allieds."
"So we should give him reason to stay here. Then we get use of his talent instead of the Allieds." Who wouldn't know what to do with it anyway.
Kurj considered me. "Very well."
I waited, but he said no more. That was it. No warnings to leave off with his personal life, no reprimands, nothing. Instead, he settled into an armchair. Then he motioned me toward the couch.
I sat down, puzzled. Kurj sat there, silent and appraising, his inner lids covering his eyes like gold shields. I shifted in my seat. What was going on?
I want to take no risks, he thought.
I almost jumped up again. His thought was unusually clear and strong even for him, which suggested he had prepared in depth for this silent discussion. Why?
Security, Kurj thought.
You already have the best security in the Imperialate.
True. But this is an unusual situation. His thoughts had an odd flavor, a taste of triumph. We have a guest.
Who? I already knew he was the only one staying at the palace.
His smile had a grim edge to it. Then he showed me an image of our "guest."
Jaibriol Qox.
My first reaction was a reflex I had coded into my node, a program set to run whenever I heard Jaibriol's name. It initiated a procedure that shielded my mind as inconspicuously as possible, hiding my reaction. Behind that mask, though, my thoughts rocketed: how had they caught Jaibriol, where was he, what did they know? Even with my node working furiously, I couldn't conceal the intensity of my response. So I let some of it show, just enough shock that Kurj would find appropriate.
The Highton Heir is here? I thought.
Yes. He is ours now.
But how?
He was in a ship, alone, without even a Solo and Escort. Kurj leaned forward. One of our Kyle sentries registered the ship during inversion, going at millions of times light speed. The Sixth Squadron threw him into stasis and dragged him out.
I stared at him. What was Jaibriol Qox doing alone, without a single guard?
We don't know. He's told us nothing. The shields over Kurj's eyes glinted. Yet.
I didn't want to imagine what they were doing to Jaibriol. I knew what his interrogators would soon discover, if they hadn't already; mental blocks even stronger than a Jagernaut's guarded his mind. On Delos, for me, he had relaxed those defenses. But if his were anything like mine, then under duress, his conditioning would stop him from lowering those barriers even if he wanted to.
I had tried to forget why his blocks so easily dissolved for me, tried to forget the longing in his voice, the feel of his body. But one thought was all it took. I remembered and my pulse raced. Even though he was the Highton Heir. I wanted him. Like knew like.
Kurj was watching me. What's wrong?
Careful. Dangerous ground. I was thinking about my last meeting with a Highton.
Tarque.
I didn't answer and he didn't probe. It was the way we always treated the subject. I phrased my next question carefully. Why so much secrecy? Capturing the Highton Heir is a triumph. Making it public will cripple Trader morale and send ours flying.
I don't trust this good fortune, Kurj thought. It may be a trap. Until we know more I intend to take no risks.
Purpose indeed. What had Jaibriol been doing, hurtling through space with no protection? No one without access to the Kyle-Mesh could have found him. Even with it, we were lucky to have caught him. At that speed, he could have traveled for years and only an instant would have gone by for the rest of us. Fast enough, and he could have lived his entire life and died before anyone knew he disappeared.
Then it hit me. He had intended exactly that. Suicide. Except it hadn't worked. The Kyle-Mesh had caught him like a shimmerfly in a web.
I let a question reach the surface of my mind: What have you found out from Qox?
Nothing. Kurj's frustration simmered. He responds as if he has a biomech web in his body programmed to help him resist interrogation. But we've found no trace of one. His only implant is the cyberlock in his brain.
They were so close to the truth. What will you do?
Find an interrogator who can disrupt his conditioning.
I knew what would happen. Jaibriol's mental shields could block the neural processes in his brain that let him interact with people. In extreme cases—like interrogation—he wouldn't be able to communicate by any means, even speech. He couldn't answer their questions. Breaking that conditioning was no different than breaching any other defense; it required a strong enough battering ram, in this case a powerful telepath. Kurj could do it, but his blunt power would smash Jaibriol's mind. My brother Althor had more subtlety, but probably not enough. My aunt had the finesse but not the strength. Although my father had both, he had none of the military knowledge needed to do the interrogation. No one did except Kurj and Althor.
And me.
I forced a calm into my mind that didn't touch what I felt. Why did you call me here?
He watched me with his shielded gaze. I've assigned you to Qox's case.
You have more experienced interrogators.
None of them can break him. None. Think about what that means.
He has a strong mind.
Too strong.
I said nothing, afraid to move for fear it would give me away.
He is a psion, Kurj thought.
He can't be.
Nevertheless. He is. A strong one.
I don't see how that's possible.
Nor I. Kurj shook his head. I've worked on him, Soz. I can't break his defenses.
You can break any mind.
It would take so much force, it would reduce him to a vegetable.
I didn't know which disturbed me more, knowing Kurj was on the verge of the truth or feeling his grim satisfaction when he contemplated the screams of the man he thought responsible for the massacre at Tams. It was the first time in my life I had felt the brunt of Kurj's hatred, and I hoped like hell it was never directed at me.
If you can't break him, I thought, I'm not sure what you think I can do.
You have more finesse. Get into his mind. Tell me what's there. Kurj stood up. Meet me at the palace in the morning, oh-six hundred. Make it look like a personal visit.
I wanted to refuse. But I could only stand up and say, Yes, sir.
After Kurj left, I dropped into my chair and put my head in my hands. Then I lifted it, wondering if my apartment was monitored. I didn't dare show signs of the turmoil I felt.
I understood why Kurj thought Jaibriol's capture was a trick; it was the only way Ur Qox could gain direct access to Skolia's Imperator. My brother wouldn't take the same personal interest if we caught anyone less than the Highton Heir. It was a horrible thought, that Qox would send his own son to be tortured in the hope that Jaibriol could assassinate Kurj. Yet if anyone appeared capable of that, it was the Trader Emperor. But I was sure Qox hadn't done it. He valued Jaibriol too much, and not only because of his Rhon genes. In his own way, Qox loved his son. The emperor would never send him on an assassination mission. The only person Jaibriol had meant to kill was himself.
I got up and walked to the wall. Although it looked opaque, it was a double-paned window. When I touched a small panel on it, the window's polarization changed to let me see through the glass. Flyers glided among the towers, their sleek lines the only curves in a city of corners and edges. Beyond the suburbs, the barren red desert rolled out to the horizon.
Where had Kurj put Jaibriol? In a vault under the city? Some remote base elsewhere on the planet? That prison would be guarded by layers of security. What to do? Even if I did find him, I couldn't send him back to Ur Qox and Kryx Quaelen.
I could do what Kurj wanted, but make it easy on Jaibriol. I could "discover" the Highton Heir was insane, that his father had repudiated him and his only choice was suicide. If my brother believed Jaibriol knew nothing useful, that he wasn't even capable of understanding why he was being tortured, Kurj would let him die. The advantage of publicly executing the Highton Heir would outweigh any satisfaction he might gain from keeping him alive to punish him.
Except I didn't want Jaibriol to die. I wanted him to live. With me.
I pressed my hands against the glass. Tager had forced me to face the truth. I may have never asked for the responsibilities of my heritage, but I wanted the title of Imperator so much I could taste it. Turning my back on that power—it was true what Rex had once said about me. I was no saint. I couldn't walk away from it.
Yet Jaibriol had done almost exactly that with his title. Maybe he was a better person that I. Or wiser. Or weaker. I didn't know. For some reason Tager believed I was more than what I saw, more than a bitter soldier with her heart sheathed in so much ice she had nothing left to give. He treated me as if I had a value beyond my heritage. He even made me believe that maybe, just maybe, he was right. Yet I also heard my mother's voice, soft and hurting, as she spoke about Kurj: He changed. Bit by bit, year by year, decade by decade. Until finally I lost him. How long until she lost me as well?
No. I didn't have to end up that way. I could have Tager brought to Diesha—no, that was Kurj's style. I would ask Tager. If he didn't want to leave Foreshires, I would find a heartbender here. But I hoped Tager would come. I trusted him, at least as much as I could trust anyone.
And there was Rex. With enough time, perhaps we could pick up those ends that had broken between us. With Rex by my side and Tager to keep me sane, maybe it would be all right. What my parents had done, creating a Rhon community—that was a fluke, a dream. Jaibriol and I could never give it to each other.
Even so. I could still free him. The problem of where he would go remained, though. He couldn't ask the Allieds for sanctuary. No one would have the Highton Heir. No one would believe he was as much a victim of the Aristos as the rest of us.
Unless . . .I vouched for him. If the Delos authorities didn't keel over from the shock, it just might work. But first I had to free Jaibriol without implicating myself.
I pushed up my sleeves. I had a lot of work to do.