PRIMARY
INVERSION
Catherine Asaro
www.facebook.com/Catherine.Asaro
www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/asaro.htm
Copyright © Catherine Asaro 1995, 2008
First Hardcover edition, 1995
First paperback edition, 1996
First eBook edition, 2008
The eBook edition is a rewritten version of the original book.
Cover design: Catherine Asaro
Cover art: Fractal Planet by Michael Michelitsch (fractal Graphics), commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:W038.jpg
Books by Catherine Asaro
Skolian Empire/Ruby Dynasty
CARNELIANS
DIAMOND STAR
THE RUBY DICE
THE FINAL KEY
SCHISM
SKYFALL
THE MOON’S SHADOW
SPHERICAL HARMONIC
THE QUANTUM ROSE
ASCENDANT SUN
THE RADIANT SEAS
THE LAST HAWK
CATCH THE LIGHTNING
PRIMARY INVERSION
Solo Science Fiction Novels
ALPHA
SUNRISE ALLEY
THE PHOENIX CODE
THE VEILED WEB
Fantasy Novels
THE NIGHT BIRD
THE FIRE OPAL
THE DAWN STAR
THE MISTED CLIFFS
THE CHARMED SPHERE
CHARMED DESTINIES (“Moonglow” one of three included stories)
Novellas
Aurora in Four Voices (Skolian Empire)
A Roll of the Dice (Skolian Empire)
Walk in Silence (Skolian Empire)
Moonglow (Fantasy)
Stained Glass Heart (Skolian Empire)
The City of Cries (Skolian Empire)
The Spacetime Pool (solo science fiction)
IRRESISTIBLE FORCES, anthology edited by Catherine Asaro
AURORA IN FOUR VOICES, collection of stories
To my husband
John Kendall Cannizzo
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the people who gave me input on my research and writing for this book:
Alis Rasmussen, Al Chou, Deborah Wheeler, Jim Brunet, Shawna McCarthy, Gerald David Nordley, Florrie Michaelis, Geoffry Landis, Kate Elliott, James Cannizzo, Marianne Dyson, Lawrence Schmiel, Susan Shwartz, Dave Truesdale, Joan Slonczewski, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Sheridan Simon, and everyone who answered my questions in the research topics on the GEnie SFRT. A special thanks to Clair Maier, who gave me extensive benefit of her expertise in neuroscience, and most of all, to my editor David G. Hartwell.
Author’s notes:
Lightning Strike, Book I and Lightning Strike, Book II are the same story as told in Catch the Lightning, but substantially rewritten and expanded for the eBook form.
The eBook version of Primary Inversion is rewritten from the original and is considered the best version.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Catherine Asaro
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author's Notes
Part One: DELOS
I - Island of Sanctuary
II - Tams Station
III - Psibernaut
IV - Lucifer's Legacy
V - Denials
VI - Blackstar Squad
VII - Aftermath
Part Two: FORESHIRES HOLD
VIII - A Time To Search
IX - A Time To Weep
X - A Time To Heal
XI - A Time To Speak
XII - A Time To Plant
Part Three: DIESHA
XIII - Fist Of The Web
XIV - Mind Of The Web
XV - Chains And Silk
XVI - Heart Of The Web
XVII - Until Tomorrow
Characters & Family History
Time Line
About Catherine Asaro
Contents
Part One: Delos
1. Island of Sanctuary
2. Tams Station
3. Psibernaut
4. Lucifer’s Legacy
5. Denials
6. Blackstar Squad
7. Aftermath
Part Two: Forshires Hold
8. A Time To Search
9. A Time To Weep
10. A Time To Heal
11. A Time To Speak
12. A Time To Plant
Part Three: Diesha
13. Fist of the Web
14. Mind of the Web
15. Chains and Silk
16. Heart of the Web
Part One
-
DELOS
I
Island Of Sanctuary
Although I had known about Delos since I was a young woman, this was my first visit to the planet. Delos was a member of the Allied Worlds of Earth, who steadfastly maintained neutrality in the undeclared war between the Traders and my people, the Skolians. Despite the fact that we were all human—Allieds, Traders, and Skolians alike—we had little in common. So Earth declared Delos a neutral zone, sanctuary, a place where Trader and Skolian soldiers could walk together in harmony.
Right. Harmony was their word, not ours. You’d never catch one of us walking with a Trader soldier, in harmony or otherwise.
However, Delos was the planet easiest to reach in the region of space where my squad had been running drills to integrate our newest member, Taas, into the group. So Delos was where we went for our rest and relaxation.
The evening was warm as the four of us strolled the Arcade. A hodgepodge of stalls and shops stretched along the boardwalk, their eaves hung with wooden chimes that clacked in the wind. At the apex of each turreted roof, a pole reached toward the sky. Metal plates hung from the poles, clanking heartily as the wind tossed them against one another, their chatter melding with the voices of crowds milling below. It was a place of festival and laughter, a haven for the bright women in their flutter-yellow skirts, and for the strapping young men in billowing trousers who pursued them.
The boardwalk, however, bothered me. Its nervoplex surface shifted under our feet constantly, until I was gritting my teeth. Nervoplex supposedly heightened comfort and pleasure. The network of molecular fibers and nanochips woven into it reacted to the distribution of weight it experienced, letting the boardwalk analyze and interact with pedestrian traffic as if it sensed moods. A lot of people liked it, but it drove me nuts.
The four of us—Rex, Helda, Taas, and myself—walked alone. I wished we had civilian clothes. We weren’t on duty, after all. But we just had our Jagernaut uniforms: black pants tucked into black boots, black vests, black jackets. In these bright crowds, all that dark leather drew attention like rocks falling into water. The river of pedestrians split around us as if we were big, hulking boulders. They were mostly Earth citizens, who weren’t likely to have seen even one Jagernaut before, let alone four.
Rex glanced at me, his wickedly handsome face flashing with a grin. “You should start yelling and foaming at the mouth, Soz. That would clear this place out fast.”
I glared at him. The “Jagernaut goes amok” plot was a favorite in the holomovies. We were bioengineered fighter pilots, elite officers in the Imperial Space Command of Skolia, or just ISC. The prospect one of us would go crazy and attack everyone in sight had made a lot of holomovie producers annoyingly rich.
“I’ll foam your mouth,” I grumbled.
Rex laughed. “That sounds interesting.”
Helda spoke in her throaty accent. “You remember Garth Byler?”
Rex said, “He entered the Dieshan Military Academy as a cadet the year I graduated.”
Helda nodded. She was as big as Rex, towering over Taas and me. Her
thick hair hung around her face like honeycorn straw. “He went to a heartbender.”
The nervoplex under my feet stiffened. I slowed down, trying to relax. I had no reason to tense up. None at all. Heartbender was just the slang we used for psychiatrists who treated Jagernauts that broke under the strain. But if one of us did snap, and it happened more often than ISC admitted, we did it quietly. Any violence was almost always directed inward, not at other people.
“What happened to him?” Taas asked.
“Went to the hospital,” Helda said. “Then he retired.”
I rubbed the back of my hand across my forehead. My breathing and pulse had sped up for some reason, and sweat gathered on my temples, dampening curls of my hair. It was bizarre.
Then I saw it. Across the Arcade, two people were watching us, a young man and woman dressed in imported jeans and glittery hotshirts. They looked like students, maybe lovers out for a stroll. Both stood staring at us, their snack-sticks dangling forgotten in their hands.
Tightness constricted around my chest. I stopped walking and took a breath. Block, I thought.
All I should have seen when I gave the Block command was a psicon, an image similar to the icons on a computer, except that psicons appeared in the mind. For some reason, a menu formed in my mind instead. I closed my eyes and the menu wavered like the afterimage of a bright light on my lids. When I opened my eyes, the menu seemed to hang in front of me like a holographic image:
Transfer
Block
Exit
The letters were in my personal font, which made them look as if they were carved out of amber. An image next to Block showed a neural synapse with a wall between the axon and dendrite. Huh. That was the Block psicon I had expected to flash in my mind. Instead here it floated, distracting me. Rex and Helda stood next to me talking, oblivious to the list of words I saw superimposed on them.
For flaming sake. Why was this menu hanging in the air? Well, all right, I knew why. The mesh node implanted in my spine had accessed my optic nerve and produced it when I sent the Block command. Except it shouldn’t have happened. I had set my systems to bypass this procedure. It was far too inefficient, not to mention distracting, to go through this process every time I gave a command to my spinal node. I should have just seen the flash of the synapse-and-wall psicon letting me know the node was working.
I formed another thought. Switch to Brief mode. I didn’t refer to my spinal node by a name. Although I did for other nodes I worked with, doing it for one inside of me would be too much like calling myself by someone else’s name, as if I were doubling or splitting my personality.
My node responded in its usual bone-dry verbiage. Recommend Verification mode. Too much time has passed since you last confirmed blocking operations.
So. It wanted to run a check. I knew the routine; it would show me every step it followed to execute the Block. Usually the process went at close to the speed of light, which was the limit to how fast signals could travel the fiberoptic threads in my body. Now it wanted me to plod through the whole routine to make sure it had no errors.
All right, I thought. Do the check.
The menu faded and a new image appeared, a blue silhouette of the two students staring at us. The node overlaid the image on the students so they seemed to glow with blue light. Input from these two sources exceeds safety tolerances.
I know that. For an empath like myself, the “input” was their fear: I felt it so intensely that sweat had formed on my temples. It’s why I want you to block them.
My node thought, I am releasing a drug to inhibit the action of psiamine on the neurons in the para centers of your brain, including attachment to P1 receptors. Inhibition will continue until external input drops below your default safety tolerances.
Can’t you just say you’re blocking them? I grumbled.
I am blocking them, it obliged.
The onslaught of fear receded. As my shoulders relaxed, I thought, Procedure verified. Switch to Brief mode.
Brief mode entered.
I glanced around. Taas was standing next to me, staring at the students. Their fear radiated off him like heat from a red-hot ingot.
“Shut them out,” I said softly.
He didn’t move. He seemed mesmerized.
“That’s an order, Quaternary,” I said. “Initiate blocking.”
Taas jerked. Then he closed his eyes. After a moment he looked at me.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Yes.” He winced. “They caught me off guard.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
Rex glanced from me to Taas. Then he glanced at the students, and I felt him block their input. Although I couldn’t pick up Helda as easily, her brief glazed look told me she had accessed her node. None of them took more than an instant; apparently their nodes weren’t harassing them with verification procedures. Well, maybe harassing wasn’t a fair word. I was the one who had told it to warn me when too long went by without a check.
“I don’t know why I slipped up like that,” Taas said.
“It’s this blasted nervoplex.” I motioned at the boardwalk. “It’s like a mood enhancer.” Taas and I were more sensitive to the effect, he as the least experienced member of the squad, and I as the strongest empath.
Helda frowned at the students. “Why are they so upset? What they think we do to them?”
“I get tired of evoking that reaction,” Rex said. He pushed his hand through his hair, mussing up the black locks. No, not just black. More white showed at his temples every day.
But what was this? Why did Taas have that odd smile? “What’s so funny?” I asked.
He flushed. “Ma’am?”
“Why are you grinning?”
He immediately stopped smiling. “Nothing, ma’am.”
I laughed. “Taas, you don’t need to say ma’am.” In a group as tightly knit as ours, we let the formalities drop. “What’s funny?”
“That boy had, uh, a different reaction to you than he did to the rest of us.”
“Different?” I blinked. “How?”
“He thinks you’re—uh…”
I waited. “Yes?”
Taas reddened. “He thinks you’re sexy.”
For flaming sake. “I’m old enough to be his mother!”
Helda laughed. “But you look like a youngster, Soz.”
“I do not.” In truth, she wasn’t the first to tell me that.
Rex grinned, and I felt Taas relax. Our group tension trickled away. As Rex started to speak, his gaze shifted over my shoulder—and his smile disappeared like a door slamming shut. Puzzled, I turned to look.
Traders.
My good mood vaporized. Of course they didn’t call themselves Traders. They were Eubians, members of the euphemistically named Eubian Concord. Five of them had invaded the boardwalk, all in grey military uniforms with blue piping on the trousers and crimson braid on the sleeves. Although it was hard to see their faces from this far away, I didn’t think any had the red eyes of an Aristo. One did have an Aristo’s finely chiseled features, the black hair, even the arrogant stance. And his hair glinted. But it didn’t have that liquid shimmering quality so distinctive of an Aristo. He was probably some Aristo’s by-blow—which made him no less dangerous to us.
They stared at us across the Arcade as if they had discovered slime oozing over the nervoplex. The crowds continued about their business, bustling between our group and the Traders, blissfully oblivious to the tension.
An odd fear grabbed me, one with a nurturing intensity, which certainly didn’t match the Traders. Looking around, I saw a woman hurrying several children away from us. She glanced at the Eubians, then at us, and then urged her charges to speed up. The smallest boy balked, trying to head for a stall where sugar candles hung on a wire, dripping sugar confections instead of wax. The woman pulled him away, ignoring his loud protests as she sped him through the crowd. I didn’t blame her. If I were a civilian who had seen four Jagernauts and fi
ve Eubian military officers in the same place, I would have laid fast tracks out of there, too.
Taas scowled at the Traders. “They can’t just come here and walk around.”
“What, you want them to get a license?” Helda asked. “We’re harmonizing, remember?”
“They could be spying,” Taas offered.
Rex was watching me. “What’s wrong?”
“That tall one,” I said. “He looks like Tarque.”
Rex stiffened. “Tarque is dead.”
Long dead. Ten years dead. I had killed him.
“Who is Tarque?” Helda asked. “It sounds Aristo.”
Somehow I kept my voice steady. “It is.”
Rex nudged my mind. After years of working together, he and I were close enough that I could catch his thoughts if he directed them at me with enough force.
Are you all right? he asked.
I took a breath, struggling to keep my pulse steady. Yes.
Helda was watching me. “Where you know this Tarque?”
“I went undercover on Tams Station ten years ago,” I said.
“Tams?” Taas asked. “You mean the Trader planet?”
I nodded. “I got—caught.”
“They broke your cover?” he asked.
“No. I don’t mean that way.” It was a moment before I could continue. “Ten years ago the Traders installed an Aristo governor on Tams, a man named Kryx Tarque. His people were making sweeps through the cities, selecting taskmakers to serve in his estates.” Taskmaker was the generic name Aristos used for most of their slaves, which as far as they were concerned included everyone in the universe who wasn’t an Aristo. “I got caught in a sweep.”