Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (28 page)

Human.
The answer came at a level deeper than surface thought, almost subconscious.
Human and more.
What are you?
he asked.
The answer again came without words:
Yourself.
"Kelric?" Bolt asked.
Relief washed over him. Whatever the gauntlets made him, he still had Bolt. "It's good to hear you."
"Kelric, think your answers," Bolt said. "My link is to your brain. I do also have a link to your vestibulocochlear nerves, but right now I'm using those resources in my attempts to solve the problem with your optical nerves."
What the blazes are my vesti-whatevers?
Bolt's voice had the sound of a smile. "Vestibulocochlear. The nerves that carry impulses from your ears to your brain."
Oh.
He paused.
It's better this way anyway. If I walk around talking to a disembodied voice, people will think I'm crazy.
Bolt actually laughed, a deep rumbling. Then it— he— said, "Hold up the gauntlet and put the comm next to your ear."
He raised his arm, bringing a mesh on his inner arm to his ear.
Try it now.
"How is this?" Bolt asked in a low voice.
Perfect.
Kelric smiled.
Smart computer.
"I haven't had much to do for the past eighteen years," Bolt admitted. "I occupied myself by developing my EI."
You sound human.
"Thank you."
It intrigued him that Bolt considered it a compliment to sound human. He doubted all EIs would give that response.
"Can you see at all?" Bolt asked.
Nothing. Any luck with my optic nerve?
"Not yet. I will continue trying."
Someone is waiting for me.
Kelric lowered his arm.
You better not talk too much if we're around people.
"All right. Good luck."
Thanks.
Moving his hands in front of him, he stepped forward. His palms brushed a bulkhead, then the air-lock panel. He fumbled in the exit sequence and was rewarded by the hiss of a hatch retracting. As he stepped into the docking tube, he moved his hands around, to make sure he didn't hit anything. His fingers brushed the tube on either side.
He wished he had a robot to lead him or a sensory net linked to his biomech web. Walking along the tube, he felt unprotected. He had never realized before how much he took his sight for granted.
At the end of the tube, he cycled through the air lock and entered decon. This was easy. He just stood while the chamber went through its paces. When it finished, he went forward until he touched a wall. He felt along the curved surface to the exit. Taking a breath, he opened the hatch.
Voices assaulted his ears. People filled the area. Their moods washed over him, concentrated and agitated. Despair. Many had no tickets, yet desperately wanted a berth on an outgoing ship. Others had just arrived, refugees, exhausted, confused, and hungry. The babble of voices, languages, and emotions surged over him. Officials were calling out directions. The clamor beat against his ears.
He froze in the hatchway, caught in his darkness. Now what?
"Kelric Garlin?" a woman asked.
He knew that gravelly voice. It was the woman from the PA. She sounded different from anyone he had heard recently, with neither the too smooth tones of an Aristo nor the designed sensuality of a provider. She spoke with a unique, refreshingly natural quality. It appealed to him.
Kelric turned in her direction. "I'm Garlin."
Her appreciation flowed over him. He captivated her. His size startled her, though. She would have felt more comfortable with a man closer to her own height. She had a warm personality, far more so than she had let show during their interchange on the comm. Shy and unassuming, she would never have expected her work shift to end with her meeting such a man. She had a deep curiosity about providers, a wonder that bordered on awe.
Despite his attempt to barrier his mind, it responded to her warmth and gave it back to her, magnified by his Kyle strength. He tried to clamp a lid on his empathic reaction, but it did no good. His neurons fired, creating fields associated with his feelings; his Kyle organs magnified and modulated those fields; the fields affected her brain. With so few mental defenses, he couldn't stop his mood from flooding her. His rock-headed brain had a mind of its own, regardless of what he wanted it to do— which was, when he considered it, a bizarre thing to think.
She wasn't a psion. She had no idea what he was doing. It affected her anyway, softening her even more toward him. Having never before met a provider, she had an unrealistic idea of what it meant to be one of those rare, legendary favorites of the Aristos.
Her thoughts about herself were far less kind. She pretended she didn't care that people considered her ugly, but it bothered her far more than she let anyone know. She was nowhere near as tough as she acted. She also assumed that under normal circumstances a man like Kelric would never deign to notice her.
You're wrong, he thought. How could he help but notice that warmth? "I'm Garlin," he said.
"You look like your holo." Pleased surprise trickled from her mind. "I figured you'd cheat it."
"I wouldn't," he said.
That evoked cynicism, and also a flicker of hope she suppressed. After years on Spikedown, she trusted no one.
"So." For some reason her voice suddenly had a guarded sound. Wary. "You coming?"
"Yes." What had he done to put her off? He found the answer in her mind: she had held out her hand and he had ignored the gesture.
Awkward now, unsure where she stood, he reached out. After a pause, she took his hand. As his fingers closed around hers, some of her wariness eased. He squeezed her hand, wondering if she had any idea how much he needed that touch.
She gave a tug, trying to draw him forward. With a surge of panic, he realized he either had to admit he couldn't see or else walk blind into a strange place where he had no idea what he faced.
Taking a breath, he stepped forward. The low gravity felt like molasses. His foot drifted through the air and settled on the ground. The woman was on his right, so he moved his left hand in front of him, just slightly, trying to be discreet so she wouldn't notice.
They took more long, languid steps. Then a man said, "Name?"
The woman drew Kelric to a stop. "He's with me," she said.
"Heya, Jeejon," the man answered. "Who is this?"
Kelric turned toward his voice. Was Jeejon the woman's name, a word from another language, or part of the slang greeting "Heya"?
"Kryx, I already cleared him," she said.
Kryx?
Kelric stiffened. It was a common Aristo name. And this official projected a trace of the Aristo mind. He had one somewhere in his lineage, maybe a grandparent.
"Don't worry," the man said. "I'm not going to claim rights to that collar of yours."
Kelric hid his confusion. Was Kryx talking to him? Had his alarm shown? He should have covered his collar. Not that it mattered; if the woman hadn't cleared him, the Spikedown officials would check anyway. After they traced his identity, they would return him to Tarquine. Gods only knew how the Minister had reacted when she learned her fourteen-million-credit property had up and walked off. Knowing Tarquine, though, she would recoup more than her losses, by making an insurance claim and then suing the blazes out of Taratus.
"It's all right," the woman said, her voice offering comfort. "Come on. We can go through."
Kelric was fairly certain she was talking to him. He took a step— and his foot hit a barrier. Disconcerted, he moved his hand in front of him. A counter blocked his way. Sliding his palm to the right, he found its end. Then his hand bumped the arm of the woman at his side.
"Skolia be damned," Kryx said. "He's
blind.
"
"Leave him alone," the woman said. She guided Kelric to the side. In a lower voice she said, "Through here."
From the beat of minds against his, he knew people were watching them. Acutely uncomfortable, he moved his hand in front of his body, feeling his way, while he clenched the woman's fingers in his other hand. She walked slowly, shock emanating from her mind. The last thing she had expected was for him to be blind.
His vulnerability evoked her protective instincts. His mind picked up her reaction and his neural firings slipped into resonance with hers, building the positive sensations, making her want to care for him. The more she wished to help, the more it strengthened the link and created a feedback loop. His response to her was unusually fast. He almost never had this great a resonance with anyone.
Bolt, I've got to control this empath business.
He raised his arm as if to scratch his ear.
It's getting out of hand. What's wrong with me?
Softly Bolt said, "Why should anything be wrong? You
are
an empath. So you make people like you and then you like them. Is that so terrible? You seem especially compatible with this one. You need her, Kelric. If you enjoy being with each other in the process, what is wrong with that?"
"You all right?" the woman asked.
He lowered his arm. "Yes."
After that they fell silent. Kelric had no idea what to say. He felt as if he should apologize for his misbehaving neurons.
Voices flowed around them and the crowd jostled their elbows. As far as he could tell, they were moving down a concourse. It disquieted him, walking in the dark. She took the pace slow, though, which helped. It made him feel more in control.
"Is your name Jeejon?" he asked.
"That's right." She hesitated. "You didn't say you were blind."
"You didn't ask."
"You always been this way?"
"No. Only a few days. I was hurt when I escaped."
"Well, I'll tell you, no more Aristos here." She spoke with a blend of satisfaction and disbelief, as if she still hardly believed her own words. "Allieds moved in with their dreadnoughts and ran ESComm out."
Well, saints almighty, how about that? Something had finally gone his way. The shift in boundaries wouldn't solve most of his difficulties, such as where he would get his next meal and how the hell could he take command of ISC when he was stuck on this asteroid. But it helped. He was no longer in Trader space.
"That's good to know," he said.
"I'm sorry about you being a provider. I won't hurt you. I promise."
Startled, he stopped and turned to her. Her curt manner hid depths he was just beginning to plumb, as his mind aligned with hers. He lifted his hand to her face. He missed and touched her hair instead. He found her cheek, then her lips. Bending his head, he kissed her, in thanks as much as desire, because he thought she might like it.
At first she stiffened. It was a moment before she relaxed and kissed him back, her lips softening against his. Then she pulled his head down and spoke against his ear, the sound of a laugh in her voice. "Not here. Later, yes?"
"All right." He smiled. More than his neurons were misbehaving.
They resumed their walk. Although they fell silent again, this time it had a companionable quality. He felt her surprise; she never softened this fast toward a stranger and wasn't sure why he evoked such a response. She attributed it to his beauty. He had the urge to ask her what was wrong with everyone. He was huge, with metallic skin. That didn't strike him as "beautiful." At times he wondered if people underwent some sort of selective insanity when they looked at him.
He understood, in an abstract sense, why his mother awed people. Her glorious, statuesque splendor outdid any provider. To him, her beauty lay in her mother's love rather than her appearance. Even so, he saw why she evoked such adoration. People told him he was a masculine version of her, muscular and handsome where she was curved and feminine. He didn't see it. He was just Kelric.
"Here," Jeejon said. She tugged him to the side, then waited as he reoriented on the new direction. They went several steps and stopped. He heard the creak of an old portal opening. She led him into a quiet area, then closed the portal. As they started walking again, he tried to fathom this new place. It felt enclosed.
"It's about two klicks to my quarters," Jeejon said. "We can reach it using these tunnels. Won't have to go in the spikelands."
"Spikelands?"
"Outside the port."
He stretched out his arm and brushed his fingers along the tunnel wall. "What's out there?"
"Was a domed city. Surrounded the spaceport."
"Was?"
"Nothing but gangs now. Last I heard, they were tearing down the city and burning the rubble. If you hadn't, uh ..." She cleared her throat. "Hadn't paid your landing fees, police would've dumped you out there too."
He felt her mood in all its nuances and details. As he lost his other senses, his Kyle awareness was becoming more sensitized. She disliked seeing herself take advantage of someone whose vulnerability had forced him into this situation. The more she thought about it, the worse she felt. It had the reverse effect on him; the worse she felt about it, the more he respected her integrity.
Jeejon pulled him to a stop. Turning, he raised his hand and searched for her face. "What is it?"
"I'm sorry." She took a breath. "You can stay in my quarters until you find a place. You don't have to— to do anything ... you don't want to do."
He bent his head and brushed his lips across hers. "I won't do anything I don't want." Then he kissed her.
Her surprise washed over him. She genuinely didn't believe he would want her, given a choice. What kind of life had she lived, that she thought such a thing? She must have been a taskmaker, one low in rank, judging from this nowhere asteroid. Given the way Traders treated such taskmakers, it was no wonder she had a poor opinion of herself.
Putting his arms around her waist, he drew her closer. She slid her hands up his back in a tentative embrace that made him suspect she had little experience with men. So he gentled his kiss. Her enjoyment suffused his mind. He gave the emotion back to her, blending it with his own desire. Yes, this was good. Maybe Bolt was right, that he should enjoy his empathic responses and quit worrying. If it made them both happy and hurt no one, what did it matter if it was a weird way for humans to interact?
As Kelric raised his head, Jeejon gave a self-conscious laugh. She took his hand. "We should get going, before someone finds us."
He smiled. "All right."
She moved forward and he went with her, through the dark. He had never considered himself a conversationalist, and now was no exception. But she was content with the silence. Small talk didn't interest her either.
Although he tried to remember the path they took, the turns blurred in his mind. They walked for about half an hour, drifting in the low gravity.