Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (35 page)

I pushed a corner of
the table and its glossy surface swelled in the center, accompanied by a
humming noise. It formed into a sphere about half a meter across that opened
into a Net console. A flat section of the table shimmered, clearing to reveal a
holoscreen.

I turned to my father. “I
need the name and security codes for your Prime account.”

“The account name is Valdor.
The codes are the names of all you children converted into code by EMl6’s
level-four security file.”

I nodded, managing to
act as if what he had just done—revealing the Prime’s prized security codes in
the presence of the Highton Heir—was completely normal rather than the act of
treason we both knew it to be.

I first accessed his
regular account, and from there I set up the protocols that would link him to
his Prime. Three Prime computers existed, one for each member of the Triad,
each machine independent of the others. As I waited for the security processes
to clear, I heard footsteps. Glancing back, I saw Jaibriol standing behind me.
But he wasn’t trying to see what I was doing, which is what I would have done
in his position. Instead he was watching my father.

My father frowned at him. “Yes?”

“I was wondering why you needed to see doctors,” Jaibriol
said. “You look so healthy.”

“I have epilepsy.”

Jaibriol stared at him.
“How can that be? There is no hint of it in our files on you.”

“Why should I tell any of you?”

“I’m just surprised our intelligence hasn’t discovered it.”

My father hardly seemed
to hear him. He was concentrating again, probing at Jaibriol’s mind. Then he
spoke in a gentler voice. “My family died when I was an infant, killed in a
rock slide while they traveled. I had my first seizure then. The doctors
believe my mind hadn’t yet separated from my mother’s, so that the shock of her
death injured my brain.”

I stared at him. What
possessed him to reveal that? He rarely talked about it. If the neurons in his
brain became overstimulated, they sent out an abnormal flood of electrical
discharges, causing him to pass out while his body stiffened and his jaw
clenched. Then he turned blue and stopped breathing. When his neurons began to
tire his body convulsed, until eventually they all fatigued and he went limp.
When he finally woke up, he was always tired and confused.

The first time I had
seen it happen, as a child, I had been terrified he would die, or that the wild
spasms meant he was in horrible pain. The doctors later told me he turned blue
because the vessels in his skin constricted so that more blood could flow to
his brain. My father said he never remembered the seizures, let alone felt any
pain.

What they didn’t tell
me, what I didn’t learn until I was older, was that his attacks were the most
violent his doctors had ever seen. The extra neural structures in his
brain—those magnificent paras that made him such a gifted telepath—also made
him agonizingly sensitive to the neural overload of a seizure. By the time his
paras had finished maturing, in adolescence, his attacks had become so severe
that without treatment he probably would have died from their intensity and
frequency. He survived untreated to eighteen only with the unflagging attention
of his guardian. But they had both realized he would probably never reach
twenty.

My mother had only
needed to see one convulsion to realize that what he believed were “spirit
afflictions” were some kind of brain seizures. Even now, when he knew epilepsy
was a treatable condition that didn’t prevent him from living a normal life, he
spoke of it only with family members or the few doctors he had come to trust.
That he would reveal anything at all about it to Jaibriol astounded me.
Something was going on between the two of them, something I couldn’t follow.

“It isn’t hereditary, Lord Qox,” my father said.

Jaibriol spoke quietly.
“That wouldn’t change my feelings for Sauscony. But if she and I go into exile,
it’s unlikely our children will have access to the kind of medical treatment
you receive here. If this could kill them, we should know.”

For pugging sakes. We
were about to die and Jaibriol was worrying about our nonexistent offspring. It
was a sobering thought, though. Our children, if we were able to have them,
would be both Rhon and Qox. Gods only knew what that birthright would mean.

A light flashed on the
console, accompanied by the beep of a pager. My father glanced at me. “Is the
Prime ready?”

“No.” Damn! “It’s Kurj.
He’s trying to reach you.” I activated the com, but left off the visual mode.
Then I motioned my father over and pointed at the Acknowledge panel.

He touched the panel. “Yes?”

Kurj’s voice snapped into the air. “Eldri, have you seen
Soz?”

My father stiffened.
His full name was Eldrinson Althor Valdoria. Eldri was a child’s nickname that
only my mother, his former guardian and Kurj used now. My father liked it from
my mother and didn’t mind it from his guardian. But Kurj was another matter.

He spoke coolly. “Yes,
she is here.”

Jaibriol stared at him
like a man betrayed. But as he started to speak I grabbed his wrist and shook
my head. The pilots who had intercepted our flier would have reported it. My
father didn’t dare deny I was here.

“Put her on,” Kurj
said.

I leaned over the
speaker. “Yes, sir?”

“I want you to stay
there with him,” Kurj said. “Until we find Qox.”

My shoulders relaxed.
So. He thought I had come here to protect my father. It was a logical
conclusion, or would have been had I known my father was here. Even with the
extensive security that guarded the palace, it made sense that Kurj wouldn’t
want a Triad member alone right now. What better bodyguard could my father have
than a Jagernaut Primary with far more than a military interest in his safety?

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Good. Out.” Kurj cut
the connection as abruptly as he had initiated it.

I looked at my father. “He
seemed to think I had known you were here.”

“Didn’t you? Your
message came in to the palace yesterday.”

I had forgotten about
that. “It was a ruse. I was trying to let Kurj know I had arrived on Diesha.”

He smiled. “Well, I was
all set to answer it. I was going to suggest we have dinner after Kurj made the
announcement.”

“What announcement?”

“Sauscony, you needn’t
be modest.”

“Modest about what?”

“He hasn’t spoken to
you yet?”

“About what?”

He exhaled. “I’m sorry.
I assumed you knew.”

What the hell was he
talking about? “Knew
what
?”

“He made his choice of
heir,” my father said. “You.”

I felt like a MagRail
train that had just slammed into a casecrete wall at three hundred kilometers
per hour. “What?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I’ve seen the documents. He signed them this morning.”

I just sat there, staring at him. Then I put my elbow on the
table and rested my forehead against my palm. My mind was like a dry sponge
with water running off it. I couldn’t absorb his words. It just wouldn’t sink
in.

But slowly, gradually, the sponge responded. Bit by bit the
realization soaked into my mind. Choice. Kurj had made a choice. It wasn’t a
battle anymore. I didn’t have to fight my brother Althor any longer. I didn’t
have to spend every day fearing the time would come when we were forced to make
Kurj’s choice for him. It was over. I had won.
Won.

The timing made sense. I couldn’t image a more effective way
to weaken Trader morale than for Kurj to announce he had chosen his own
successor in the same speech where he revealed that he had captured the Highton
Heir. It would make Ur Qox’s dramatic announcement of Jaibriol’s existence pale
in comparison.

Except there would be no triumphant speeches now. Only betrayal,
treason, and rage.

“I don’t ...” My voice cracked. “Oh, Gods.”

My father sat in the chair next to mine. “I know I fought
your decision to join the military. But you must understand, it was difficult
for me to accept.”

I just shook my head. What could I say? Besides, he and I
had long ago set that issue to rest. Or more accurately, we had grown tired of
arguing about it.

“Sauscony, listen to me.” He took hold of my arm, making me
look at him. “I’ve watched you these past years. I’ve seen what your life has
done to you. What you’ve done with it. You aren’t Kurj. You never will be.”

I stiffened. “And you don’t think I can do his job?”

“No. That’s not what I meant at all.”

I had to struggle not to grit my teeth. “Then what did you
mean? That you think Althor would have been a better choice? Because he’s more
like Kurj?”

“Being like Kurj hardly guarantees that a person is suited
to lead.”

“Then I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“What I am trying to say, not very articulately I’m afraid,
is that I think Kurj made the right choice.”

That stopped me, really
stopped me. Among my father’s people, women had never fought as soldiers, much
less become war leaders. It was far different than the more balanced culture of
the Imperialate as a whole. Although I had always known my father loved me as
much as my brothers, it was in a different way. He saw them as the warriors, me
as the oddity. The last thing I expected to hear from him was that he
considered me a better choice for Imperator than my brother Althor.

I didn’t know what to
say, so instead I hugged him. He held me tightly, resting his head against the
top of mine.

Finally I leaned back
so I could look at him. “What did you mean, you had seen what my life has done
to me?”

“It’s changing you.
Hardening you.” He swallowed. “Twenty more years of this and I won’t recognize
you anymore. A century of it and what will you be then?”

I thought of the life I
had imagined yesterday: guarded day and night by Jagernauts, often by a
cyberlock as well, except when I came here, to this cold vault of a palace;
living in constant suspicion of everyone, even Rex, who deserved better than to
remember why he was crippled every time he looked at his wife. No, I didn’t
want it to be that way. But it came with the job—and I wanted the job.

Except the job wasn’t mine to have. Not anymore.

My father scowled. “What,
you’re giving up? Deposed rulers have been going into exile since time
immemorial. You and Lord Qox would hardly be the first to flee and return when
the situation was more in your favor.”

“If we disappear, our right to our titles disappears with
us.”

My father exhaled. “I
don’t claim it won’t be difficult to return. But each of you
is
legal
heir to your position. You have a right to demand it when your predecessor
dies.”

I saw the tears in his
eyes and heard the words he didn’t say. Come back. Come back so I know you’re
alive. My own eyes felt wet. “You’re a very decent human being, you know that?”

He reddened. “I’m a
backward farmer from a backward planet.” Then he motioned at the console. “If
we don’t reach the Allied President, I will soon be a farmer minus one
daughter.”

His account had
finished setting up his Prime. I double-checked the link to Earth and then sent
the call. It would go straight through the Skol-Net, via telop links, to a
nanochip implanted in the Allied President’s body. The psiberspace pathway from
Prime to Earth was secured; the telops would never even know they had transmitted
a message.

I stood up, offering
the chair to my father. As he slid into it, Jaibriol and I stepped back, away
from the table, so we wouldn’t be visible when the Allied President came on
visual. Then my father plugged the psiphon into his wrist.

The dry voice of Prime crackled in the air. “Line activated.
Prepare to receive transmission.”

I gripped Jaibriol’s
hand. This was it. If the Allieds turned us down, we had nowhere else to turn.

“Ready,” my father said.

The holoscreen on the
table tilted up until it was vertical. An image appeared, a woman’s face and
shoulders. She looked to be in her late fifties, though I knew she was over
seventy. A few lines creased her distinguished features and gray hair curled
around her cheeks.

I had seen that face
hundreds of times, both on the news broadcasts and in person. She looked
different tonight, though, tired and drawn, as if she had been sleeping when
Prime paged her.

She nodded to my father. “Lord Valdoria.”

He nodded to her. “President Calloway.”

She spoke in Skolian, cutting straight to the point. “What
is wrong?”

“Two people here need
sanctuary. They must go to a place where no one can find them, somewhere
unknown to either Imperial or Trader intelligence.” My father paused. “Somewhere
unknown to Allied intelligence as well, if that’s possible.”

“Why?” Calloway asked. “Who are these people?”

“The why is more simple
than the who. If they don’t receive sanctuary, they will be executed.”

“How does this concern Earth?”

“If the executions take
place, it will drastically escalate our war with the Eubians.”

Calloway considered him.
“Lord Valdoria, surely you must realize that I can’t interfere with military
matters concerning the Eube-Skolian War. Were I to do so, it would be
tantamount to making a statement of alliance that doesn’t currently exist
between your people and mine.”

“And surely you realize,” my father said, “that if we fall to
the Traders, you’re next.”

“You believe the
execution of these two people threatens the Imperialate that much?”

“Yes.”

“I need to know who
they are.”

“I can’t give you
their names until we have an agreement.”

“I can’t give you any
agreements until I understand the problem.”