Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (28 page)

“Sent.”

Belatedly, I remembered the girl, the one from the hospital
that 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 have it forwarded to my parents. “Mak, who is living at the palace
right now?”

“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 Kurj. I wondered
how she felt about it. Did he repulse her? Had she grown to like him? Love him?
I supposed it was possible. Love was a bizarre enough emotion to strike in even
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. She was three years away from being a legal adult. I
wondered if Kurj cared about all the laws he had broken by taking her up there.
Had her parents know why she had vanished? It was hard to imagine which would
have been harder for them, not knowing what had happened or knowing she was a
prisoner of Skolia’s ninety-year-old warlord.

But Deirdre was free now, 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 the Vocational College in suburb
twenty-three, where she was studying to become a caregiver for small children.
Earlier this year she won a college award for outstanding academic performance.
She was secretary of a community services club and also belonged to an athletic
club. A boy named Jayms Procal applied for a permit to marry her when they
reached their twentieth birthdays.”

It sounded like she had nothing in common with Kurj. “What
happened after she went to stay at 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 to the college when she returned home. She has made
failing grades since then, and is currently doing work below the level
considered acceptable for continued attendance. However, no attempt has been
made to dismiss her.”

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 still active but
she has let her athletic membership lapse. I have no record of her
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.”

Well, that was no surprise. If Kurj had meddled with the
first one, no one was going to risk putting through a second.

I wondered if Kurj had any idea of how badly he had screwed
up the girl’s life. I couldn’t heal her emotional wounds, but there was one
thing I could do. “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 grown tired of the girl, he wasn’t going to pursue
it, particularly if she had left him with fond enough feelings that he was
willing to intervene on her behalf at her school and job. I was the one he was
going to 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 far more effective
method for letting him know I was here than pretending my parents were at the
palace. I put my feet up on the table in front of the couch, trying to relax.
But it didn’t work. I was wound up as tight as a coil. “Read me 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 383.6.30 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. “My
greetings, 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 that 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 psi scale. Of course, I don’t really know what to
do with it yet. But the Parthonia Institute admitted me for training. Anyway,
thanks. My pleasure at your time. 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 this get
forwarded 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. “You mean 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 thirty-two; citizenship, Allied Worlds of
Earth, Delos resident. He has no record of subversive activities. However, he
was ticketed two years ago for parking a flycar in a noparking 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 pugging sakes.” Didn’t Investigations have anything better
to do? “When did they finally get around to letting me know I had 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 transferral to Foreshires. I’m still
waiting for the release. Shall I cancel the request?”

“Yes, of course.” I considered a moment. “Can you access the
data banks of the Parthonia Institute?”

“Yes. What do you wish me to find?”

“I want to know who is sponsoring Tiller.”

“Connecting to offworld-transfer telops,” Mak said.

I didn’t know details of Institute procedures; I had
received my psiber training as a child, from private tutors. But I was pretty
sure Tiller needed patrons to attend the Institute. Unfortunately, as an Allied
citizen, particularly one with little or no standing even among his own people,
let alone among mine, he wouldn’t get many sponsors. Without them, he wouldn’t
last long on Parthonia. The psibernet was power—political, military, academic,
social, and economic power—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 called Marya Pulivok, the tester who determined his rating.”

One
patron? And one with no political clout. They
would eat Tiller 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 on as a favored student.

I went over to a bookcase against the wall. The book Tiller
had given me stood snug between 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.

What had Tiller been thinking of when he looked up this
poem? Was I doing that, guarding my heart with icy fortifications that would
grow colder and thicker until someday I truly became like 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 with 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
place, a corridor with hologram screens on the walls. As I walked down the
hall, my footsteps activated lasers that played across each screen, making
holos appear. They showed scenes of the countryside around my father’s house:
blue-capped mountains jagged against the sky like the backbone of a giant;
fields of silver-green grass that rippled for kilometer after kilometer under
the great dome of the sky; forests with trees that grew wide and stout in the
heavy gravity, their foliage forming a canopy that speckled the ground with
light and dark patches.

Home.

Then I was at the end of the hall and the holos behind me
were gone, vanished after I had passed. I touched a panel on the wall and the
door opened onto my bedroom.

Within moments after I went to bed, I was asleep.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “Secondary Blackstone isn’t
here.”

She “stood” on the dais in my holobooth. Behind her, holoscreens
curved around the booth and fiberoptic cables connected them with my computer.
I sat on a much smaller dais where lasers played over my body, producing interference
patterns that my computer sent to hers. It would let her holobooth produce just
as detailed an image of me as mine did of her.

I had no desire to look at her image, 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? What if he were really
right there with her, but asked her to say otherwise? Oh, hell. This was
getting me nowhere. “Yes. Tell him Soz called, that I’m staying at my quarters
here.”

“All right. I’ll do. Bye.” Her image faded from the booth.

Bye?
Bye?
What was it with these young people
nowadays, saying things like “bye”? What was wrong with proper Skolian phrases,
like “My pleasure at our discourse, ma’am”? “Bye” was an Earth word, for
pugging sakes. Young people had no appreciation for their culture. What was Rex
doing with a nurse like that?

The console beeped, calling my attention to a blue light
that now glowed in one corner. When I touched the light, 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. But which one? True, Diesha didn’t have many. Water
was too valuable to spend on growing nonessential plants, so each suburb was
allowed only one park. But there were nineteen suburbs, which meant he could be
nineteen places. Maybe he didn’t want me to know where he was.

“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 came to
see him. “I was wondering—I mean, I know I’ve been gone a long time ...”

Rex’s voice relaxed a bit. “It does seem like more than five
months.”

“I was just wondering ... well, how you were doing.”

“Better.”

“I’m glad.” What would he say if I asked to visit him?

“Soz ... ?”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you might—I’m over 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 that for a moment I couldn’t answer.
Then I said, “Yes. I’d like to come see you.”

It was hot in Fifteen, white glaring heat. Broad avenues of
casecrete marked off lawns the color of dying 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 cac-tree. I left the speedwalk and walked toward him across the lawn, my
boots crunching on the stubbly 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 made from a metallic net.