As if Tarquine needed more money. She was already one of the wealthiest human beings in the history of the human race. In fact, including the finances at her disposal as empress, she might be the richest. So why did she need to commit fraud on an interstellar scale? Keeping watch on her was a major headache, and it didn’t help that she was so blithely unrepentant.
Yet for all that, she lacked the cruelty inherent to most Aristos. Several decades ago, she had destroyed her ability to transcend. Despite what Aristos vehemently claimed—that transcendence was their exalted right—she had come to the conclusion it was nothing more than animalistic brutality.
“Are you going to sit there all night?” she asked. She raised her eyes halfway, her eyes glinting like red gems under her black lashes. She languidly traced her finger across his thigh.
Jaibriol slid down next to her. As he pulled her into his arms, she undulated against him with an unconscious sensuality. He knew she didn’t realize it because with Tarquine, he could lower his empathic barriers. That such a powerful, alluring woman had so little idea of her own eroticism made her even more addicting. Eleven years of marriage had done nothing to dull his desire.
Later they lay together, tangled in the satin sheets. Tarquine dozed in his arms like a deadly wild animal momentarily subdued, until she awoke and resumed prowling. He knew the truth he wanted to deny: he would always be prey to her. She could no longer transcend, but the drive was buried so deep within her that it survived even if the act no longer brought her the ecstasy that had turned the entire race of Aristos into sadists.
The drive that the child they hoped to make would inherit.
“Well, this is it,” Aliana said, ushering Red into her home. “It’s not much. But it’s mine.”
She lived in a hive of hexagonal units stacked up in a hexagonal building. Her home was about halfway up the structure. Its only entrance was a door shaped like an elongated hexagon. Inside, she had a combined living room and kitchen, with food processors along the right wall and a media smart-center on the left. The ceiling and floor were horizontal edges of the hexagon, and the walls on either side sloped into points. A table with a few semi-smart chairs stood by the wall, and a couple of cheap recliners were arrayed around the media smart-center.
Smart, bah. Calling the center’s tangle of filaments a brain was generous. As Aliana entered with Red, the center started some propaganda holo about the greatness of Muze Aristos. Of course she would never say propaganda out loud. She wasn’t important enough that anyone would bother to bug her home, but you never knew what words might tip off some generic monitor in the tech that Aristos sold low-level taskmaker slaves.
The Muze Line owned her. Not that she ever saw them. She doubted any of them even lived fulltime on the planet, despite its name, Muze’s Helios. The only person who “owned” her was Harindor, even if he wasn’t the one who put the collar around her neck and the guards on her wrists. He had far more say in her life than the supposedly godlike Muzes, given that she had never even seen one exalted hair on their exalted butts.
Red looked around at her cubicle. “Small.”
“Yeah, well, it’s better than what you had,” she said, suddenly defensive, knowing how paltry it all looked. “Don’t diss my home, drill-boy.”
Red swung around to her. “No call me that!”
“Hey, sorry.” She flushed.
He hesitated, his glance flicking to the kitchen. “Food?”
“Sure.” Aliana went to a wall panel and punched in a meal order. She didn’t have much, just the usual, but it was all right.
“You not provider,” Red said behind her.
Bemused, she turned around. He was standing in the center of the room. It startled her to realize she had trusted him enough to turn away; on principle, she never showed her back to anyone.
“Of course I’m not a provider,” she said. “Most people aren’t.” Only a few thousand providers existed. Most of Eube’s two trillion citizens were taskmakers, all slaves, but with complicated hierarchies. Taskmakers at the top had a great deal of wealth or power; those at the bottom, like her, were nobody. Providers weren’t in the hierarchy. Their entire reason for existence was to please their Aristo owners. They lived in incredible luxury, but she doubted it was worth it. Pain for your entire life? No thanks.
Red hesitated. “You provider. Aristos just not know.”
She gave a snort. “I’m too ugly to be a provider.”
“Beautiful. Pretty gold skin.”
Right, sure. The wall beeped at her, and she said, “Time to eat.”
“Stay away from Aristos,” Red persisted. “They find out.”
“Don’t worry.” She pulled two trays of food out of the delivery module. “I’ll avoid that big crowd of Aristos hanging around here.” She set the trays on the table. The pseudo-steaks smelled great, and the vegetables lit up the white tray with sprays of green, red, orange, and blue.
Red dropped into a chair, his gaze avid. She laid a knife, scoop, and fork next to his tray, but he just picked up the steak with his hand and tore a huge bite out of the meat, eating so fast he hardly seemed to chew.
“Hey, slow down. You’ll make yourself sick.” Aliana pushed his hand, making him plunk the steak back into its dish. She stuck the fork into the meat. “You know how to eat civilized, right?” She offered him the knife. “You know, cut up your food, use a fork.”
He stared at the knife, then at her, then at the knife. Whatever bothered him must have been big, because he stopped trying to eat.
Aliana spoke awkwardly. “Red, I seem to freak you every other minute, hell if I know why. I mean, is it really that crazy for me to think you can use a fork and stuff?”
“Knife.” His face paled. “Me not touch. Get punished.”
“Why?”
“Not allowed weapon. Not ever.”
A terrible feeling was growing in Aliana. She sat next to him and cut a piece of his steak, then speared it with the fork and offered it to him.
Red took the fork and ate the meat.
“Okay,” Aliana said. “We’ll do it this way.” As she sliced up his food, she said, “You need better clothes than that jumpsuit.”
“Clothes fine.”
She finished cutting his meat. “There. All done.”
With no further hesitation, he dug into his meal. He practically inhaled the food, never even pausing to drink his water.
Aliana ate more slowly. “So. About your jumpsuit.”
He finished his last bite. “Not need clothes.”
“Yes, you do. Yours are filthy. You can borrow a pair of my trousers and a shirt.” She touched his arm. “You might have to roll up the shirt sleeves, though. They’re probably too long.”
Red yanked away his arm. “Clothes fine!”
Her sinking feeling was growing worse. “You’ve covered up your wrists and your neck,” she said softly. “Your wrist guards and your collar. All the signs of who owns you.”
He crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders. “Not have to show.”
“I want to see them.”
“No!”
“Show me,” she said. “Or I’ll put you out, and no more food for you.”
“No.” He met her gaze defiantly. “Not cut off my hands.”
Good gods. “I’d never do that! Never.” She almost stuttered. “No matter what you got there on your wrists. Not even if it’s worth more than this entire hexagon.”
“Even if worth more than city?”
Aliana went cold. “Even that.”
At first he just looked at her. Then he pushed back his sleeve, uncovering the grimy skin on the back of his hand. He pushed his sleeve farther, above his wrist—
“Gods,” she whispered. Even expecting something unusual, she wasn’t prepared. So brilliant. A slave guard several centimeters wide circled his wrist, made from what looked like solid diamond.
“Is that real?” she asked.
Red jerked down his sleeve, coverin
g the sparkle. “Real diamond.”
“You got that around your neck, too?”
“And ankles.”
“Do the guards and collar include a mesh system that networks into your body?”
His face paled. “Yes.”
“So no one can take them off without killing you.”
“Except Admiral Muze.”
“You’re Admiral Muze’s provider?” Flaming hell! “You mean the Highton Aristo who heads the Muze Line? The joint commander of Eubian Space Command?”
He watched her with his large eyes. “Yes.”
“But how?” She motioned at him, taking it all in, his raggedy hair and dirty clothes.
“He throw me away,” Red said. “I crawl out of trash processor before it process me.”
“He threw you out? Like garbage?”
“Yes. I garbage. He tired of me.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Aliana stood up and went to a sink by the wall. As she leaned over it, the sink’s excuse for a brain sort of figured out what she wanted and turned on a fountain of water. The liquid hit Aliana smack in the face. It was so ridiculous, she choked on a laugh and forgot to be sick.
“You feel bad?” Red asked.
She turned to him, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I’m okay.” Lowering her arm, she said, “Are you all right?”
“No more hungry,” he said, as if that were enough.
“Does Admiral Muze know you ran away?”
“Not run away,” he said matter-of-factly. “Thrown out. Am trash.”
“Aren’t we all,” Aliana said bitterly. “A bunch of rejects. I’m the bastard no one wants. My fight instructor is a decommissioned Razer. And here you are, a thrown-away provider. Don’t we make a great crew.”
He regarded her warily. “I not understand.”
“Neither do I, not really.” She sat at the table. “Listen, Red. You say, ‘I don’t understand.’ ”
“I did say.”
“You used different grammar.”
“You teach me to talk good. Yes?”
“I’ll try.” She winced. “Not that my speech is all that great. But it’ll do.”
He looked as if he had his doubts. But he said only, “Bath here?”
Aliana motioned to a hexagon portal across the room. “In there. You go clean up. I’ll get you some clothes.” Softly she said, “With long sleeves and a high collar.”
His stiff posture eased a bit. “I thank.”
“Sure.” She wondered what the blazes she was going to do with her new provider—and what would happen if Admiral Muze found out she had Red.
VII
Triple Strike
WELCOME
It came to Dehya as a sense of greeting rather than an actual word.
Welcome, she answered.
The Kyle mesh spread out like a silvery web, undulating within a blue universe that enveloped her thoughts. Her mind saturated the mesh.
Had Dehya been one of the 999,999 out of every million people who didn’t have enough telepathic ability to access the Kyle, she wouldn’t have known how a person could mold the web. Had she been just a telop, or telepathic operator, she still wouldn’t have been strong enough to notice the changes as the mesh evolved. Were she that one in a trillion who might be sensitive enough, the changes would still barely register. Even some of her own family, the most powerful psions alive, might not notice the more subtle shifts.
Dehya didn’t just detect the changes—she caused them.
The Kyle rumbled through her with a power that would kill almost anyone. Yet it had never bothered her. She loved it here. Sometimes she wished she could stay forever. The web itself greeted her, no interface, no links, no nodes. She spoke directly to it, for she created and evolved that mesh until she became a part that ever-growing entity.
Carnelians Finale, she thought.
The blue around her morphed into a meadow speckled with white flowers. Earth. She stood beneath the yellow sun that had shone on the birth of her race. Her people could no longer call Earth their world; they had lost that birthright thousands of years ago when unknown beings had stolen her ancestors from Earth and left them stranded on another world with barely the ability to survive. It had taken those lost humans five thousand years to find their home again, but when they had finally arrived, the people of this blue world hadn’t welcomed them.
She supposed it was no surprise. By that time, her people had fractured into Skolia and Eube, two belligerent empires that dwarfed the Allied Worlds of Earth. The only reason Eube didn’t try to conquer Earth was because they couldn’t spare the resources from their relentless drive to subjugate the Skolian Imperialate. In her more honest moments, Dehya had to admit that if the Eubians didn’t exist, demanding all the resources Skolia commanded, her own people might have also arrived on Earth as conquerors rather than lost children seeking their origins.
As Dehya crossed the meadow, grass rippled around her knees, green filaments glistening with picoware. Codes flitted within the translucent blades, flicking into existence, then disappearing to some other state of being. The sunlight had a vivid quality, almost vibrant, and a faint smell of flowers scented the air.
A heartbeat underlay it all.
The pulse was so much a part of the landscape that at first Dehya barely noticed. Gradually it increased in power until it shook through her. Not a heartbeat. Drums. As she walked up a hill under the cloud-flecked sky, musical chords joined the drums. They glistened like waves in the air, pulsing through different colors.
She stopped at the top of the hill. The slope rolled away from her feet in a meadow of rippling filaments glinting with a trillion data pathways through the Kyle. Musical data. A song thundered, and Del’s voice soared on the notes:
I’ll never kneel beneath your Highton stare.
I’m here and I’m real; I’ll lay your guilt bare.
“And so you have,” Dehya murmured. A deeply intense part of her wanted his song to go on forever, shouting the atrocities of the Hightons. The other part, the sovereign who wanted peace, knew they had to stop its spread.
PROCEDURE? the Kyle asked.
Isolate the pathways that this song is taking through your mesh, Dehya thought.
WORKING. Within barely a moment, it thought, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ISOLATE ALL THE PATHWAYS WITHOUT DAMAGING MY NETWORKS.
Dehya walked down the slope and filaments rose around her, flashing with the thoughts of a billion minds listening to “Carnelians Finale.” Damage how?
OBSERVE.
The lights within a nearby reed faded. As they disappeared, the reed crumpled and turned black. Some person in the mesh had just lost their stream of “Carnelians Finale.”
Stop, Dehya thought. Release the block around that pathway.
LINK REESTABLISHED. Lights flickered erratically within the reed. It turned green, but with a withered look. Somewhere, someone was probably cursing the vagaries of the mesh.
The wind rustled Dehya’s hair and sent the filaments whispering against each other. Do these pathways all originate on Earth? she asked. All transmitting the song into space?
YES.
She thought of all the other “meadows” throughout the Kyle, trillions upon trillions for every planet, star system, and interstellar community. It would be impossible to eradicate this song; it had become too intertwined with human civilization. Even crashing the Kyle mesh wouldn’t stop it; the music would continue in smaller communities until the Kyle re-established itself.
THE SONG WILL KILL IF NO ANTIDOTE IS FOUND, the Kyle told her. IT IS A PLAGUE OF ANGER THAT INFECTS AND INFLAMES.
Show me.
The meadow blurred until it all ran together. She stood in a vague universe of green with lights glittering in the distance. The green shaded into red as the scene resolved into a room. Telop chairs with empty virtual reality suits were arrayed in the ruddy shadows, set before panels blinking with lights: red, gold, blue, purple. A solitary man occupied one chair, a
telop who received messages from non-Kyle webs and sent them through Kyle space. He was listening to “Carnelians Finale” as he worked. Stirred by the song, his anger blasted into the Kyle along with the messages he was routing, like a dark red wave that struck Dehya with great force. She doubted he even realized he was broadcasting his fury.
Dehya surrounded herself with a bubble that filtered six channels: sight, audio, vocal, tactile, smell, and empathy. The red cast of the scene faded as the filter muted the power of the song.
What would happen if we disrupted his stream of the song? she asked.
THAT WOULD ANGER HIM AS MUCH AS THE SONG INFLAMES THOSE WHO RECEIVE IT FROM HIM.
It might be possible to ameliorate—
Dehya never finished the thought. The bubble around her exploded as pain slammed through her mind. She screamed in the dark—
Command centers honeycombed the hull of the Orbiter space station, functional spaces that contrasted with the beauty of the Ground and Sky interior. The most active center was the War Room. Consoles filled its amphitheatre, staffed with telops in VR chairs, their bodies encased in black suits with opalescent sheens, their heads covered by visored helmets. No space was left unused; robot arms with console cups at the end carried other telops through the air as they worked.
Kelric entered high above the amphitheatre, several stories up, on a walkway that circled just below the holodome ceiling. Four catwalks stretched from the walkway to the center of the domed area like giant spokes on a wheel. They terminated at the “hub,” a gigantic Command Chair. The dome arched above it, glowing with holos of the nebulae visible in space outside of the Orbiter. If anyone in the amphitheatre looked up, they would see the massive chair silhouetted against that starscape like a technological throne suspended among glittering star fields.
Kelric limped along a catwalk, and it swung slightly with his weight. His leg felt worse than usual today, stiff and unresponsive. When he reached the chair, he lowered himself into it and laid his large arms on the blocky armrests. Lights glinted inside the chair’s translucent black surfaces. A hum came from above him as a hood lowered, forming a cavern for his head. A web of conduits settled into his hair, extending threads into his scalp. The chair’s exoskeleton closed around him and inserted prongs into sockets in his wrists, lower spine, and neck. A visor clicked into place over his eyes, submerging him in darkness.