The techman replaced Taratus’s “gift” with a temporary collar that clicked a prong into Kelric’s neck socket. Then he went to work on his palmtop, sending IR signals to the collar’s picoweb, which in turn sent commands to Kelric’s biomech web through the prong.
At first Kelric felt nothing. Then, with no warning, he went blind.
He grabbed the edges of his stool. “What happened?”
“Kelric?” Tarquine said. “Can you hear me?”
He made his voice calm. “Yes.”
“Try another channel,” Tarquine said. She sounded annoyed.
He sat in the dark, wondering what the hell they were doing to his optic nerve.
Suddenly the room reappeared. A heavy silence surrounded him. Tarquine’s mouth moved as if she were speaking, but he heard nothing.
The techman appeared in front of him and spoke, exaggerating his words so Kelric could read his lips: Can you hear me?
“No,” Kelric said. At least, he thought he said no. He couldn’t hear his answer.
The techman worked on his palmtop, then glanced at Kelric. “Now can you hear me?”
With relief, Kelric said, “Yes.”
“Good. Please stand up.”
The techman put him through a series of exercises, doing various tests. The collar blocked signals sent from Bolt to Kelric’s hydraulics and so prevented him from using his enhancements. He had forgotten how heavy and slow he felt without the augmentation. As far as he could tell, though, the hydraulics were still functional, as was the microfusion reactor in his body that powered them.
Finally the techman packed his tools in his black valise. Then he bowed to Tarquine. “My honor to serve you, Minister Iquar.”
She nodded, still comfortably ensconced in her chair. She had watched Kelric exercise with an appreciative silence, as if he were providing erotic entertainment instead of doing biomech tests. He stood near the wall now, breathing heavily, which he wouldn’t have been doing if he had use of his enhancements.
“Do you have any more checks to suggest?” Tarquine asked the techman.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I need to study the data I’ve accumulated. His systems have a lot of damage.”
She didn’t look surprised. “Let me know the results.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What about the rest of what came with him?”
“Ah.” The techman set his valise on the stool and reopened it. He withdrew Kelric’s gold armbands and the pouch of jeweled dice. “These have no picotech. They’re valuable, though. Some of the bands are as old as the guards. The others are more modern, but all of them are at least four or five centuries in age. The jewels are natural, not synthetic. Unusually high quality. They’re worth far more than their synthetic counterparts.”
Her curiosity flickered. She indicated the nightstand. “Leave them there. I will look at them later.”
The techman did as she said. With various bows and accolades to Tarquine, he withdrew from the room.
The Minister stretched, then stood up and walked over to Kelric. She wore glossy black boots with square heels, adding another two inches to her height, bringing her eyes almost level with his. “Come. Let us meet my guests.”
“Tarquine—” He wondered if he would always experience this soul-splintering pull, simultaneously hungering for her and wanting to curse everything she represented.
She laid her palm against his chest. “You will be all right. In time, you will heal.”
Again she surprised him. Did she mean his physical injuries would heal? Or his grief? Neither made sense. As far as he knew, her medics hadn’t yet examined him. When it came to the emotions of others, such as grief, Aristos were like anti-empaths. He had doubted she could see how he hurt, nor had he thought she would care, more than in an abstract sense of wanting her provider at his best so he could better serve her. But perhaps he had been wrong.
“Heal?” he asked.
Dryly she said, “Our gleefully amoral Taratus is not so clever as he believes. I never had any intention of registering a false claim. I reported the full fourteen million.” A slow smile spread across her face. “Now Taratus has a problem.”
Surprised, Kelric said, “You know about my condition?”
“Yes. All of it.”
“How?”
“I suspected right away. So as soon as you entered my shuttle, its spy scanners began to check you.” She motioned to the bed. “When you were sleeping, my medics examined you.”
“I’m surprised you’re not angry.”
“Ah, well.” A cold smile touched her lips. “If I report Taratus to the authorities, he will find himself in more trouble than even he can dismiss. If I say nothing, then he owes me. ‘Big time,’ as the Allieds would say. It will prove extremely useful.” She rubbed her palm along the plush velvet of Kelric’s shirt. “And he has no idea what he really gave me.”
He wondered if Hightons spent their entire lives plaguing one another with these intrigues. As Tarquine slid her hand along his chest, he held back the urge to embrace her. The sense of her thoughts that she projected suggested he had misplaced his hope that she would understand his grief. Right now he couldn’t bring himself to hold a Highton.
“So you won,” he said.
She gave him an appreciative smile. “Indeed.”
The antechamber to the banquet room had a wall of one-way glass that let Kelric and Tarquine look out at the banquet, which was already in its initial stages. The big room was too long to have the usual hexagonal shape, but it still had six walls and a vaulted ceiling. A number of hexagonal alcoves were set off from the main room, almost hidden, shadowed and full of pillows.
A puzzle occurred to Kelric: Did Aristos think differently because they lived in a universe of polygons and curves? Or maybe it was the reverse, that their penchant for such architecture reflected an innate difference in their minds. He would build Quis structures of it to study later.
The main hall glittered. A sparkling white carpet covered the floor, and white velvet cushions lay in piles everywhere. The tables were hexagonal columns that rose from the floor for about half a meter. Made from black diamond, they were large enough so each of their sides comfortably sat one diner. Aristos reclined in white loungers at the tables or among piles of the pillows.
Providers moved among them with platters of predinner morsels. The girls and youths wore nothing except G-strings made from diamonds. A girl with pale blond hair rippling down her back knelt next to an Aristo lord. Sprawled in his lounger, he watched with half-lidded eyes while she poured him a glass of wine. When she finished, he put his arm around her slender waist and pulled her into his lap. Stroking her breasts, he tugged on the ring in her nipple. Then he kissed her, his hands exploring her body. The other diners continued to converse as if nothing unusual had happened.
Kelric grimaced, wondering if the Aristos had any restraint on their behavior at all. After watching for a while, though, he realized an unspoken code existed. They fondled the providers as much as they pleased, but that was as far as it went in view of the main hall. The lord holding the girl eventually stood up and took her to one of the shadowed alcoves. As he went inside with her, several of his table companions rose and followed them. Kelric hoped she would be all right.
Even as Kelric scowled, he knew that part of his reaction came from a different source than his conservative background or an outraged sense of probity for the girl. If he were offered so many beautiful, compliant women, all unclothed, he doubted he could have kept his hands to himself either. He didn’t know if he liked what that said about him, but he filed the insight as a Quis pattern.
One thing was obvious. He would be the only provider in the room wearing clothes. Granted, his were sexualized, with their snug fit and rippling gold velvet. But compared to the others, he was dressed for a snowstorm.
Tarquine stood at his side, studying the scene with the same intensity she had shown earlier when she asked him to spy on her
guests. After he had watched her for a moment, she glanced at him.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I wondered why you wanted me to dress this way.”
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s fine. I just wondered why.”
As slight smile touched her lips. “Why I covered you up?”
“Yes.”
She motioned at the providers softly padding around the banquet hall. “When people are used to seeing as much as they want, whenever they want, mystery becomes all the more alluring.”
Kelric supposed it made sense. He still didn’t like it. On Coba, in the Calanya, he had been forbidden to everyone except his wife, his honor guard, and the few dice players he lived with. No one else was even allowed to look at him. He hadn’t realized how much he had come to appreciate that privacy.
He wondered how the providers felt about their lives. Unlike him, they had no referents for comparison. Did they understand the concepts of self-determination and control over their own bodies? He created another Quis pattern, this time about the providers, and filed it with the previous one about himself and the Aristos.
Tarquine indicated a table where eight men and women sat drinking wine. “Those are delegates from Sapphire Sector. I’m interested in anything you can tell about them.” She pointed out a dais at the end of the hall. It had only one table, obviously the position for honored guests. “Most of the time you will be up there with me.”
Relief trickled over Kelric. The dais was set off from the other tables. His mental interaction with the Aristos depended on fields produced in his brain and theirs. With those effects dominated by Coulomb’s Law, the more distance he had from them the better. The table on the dais offered a much-needed separation.
“Will being up there make it more bearable for you?” Tarquine asked.
“Yes.” He didn’t know else what to say. Was it kindness she showed, or cunning in optimizing his ability to spy for her? He thought perhaps a combination of both.
Tarquine considered the banquet again. “It is time to greet my guests.” She touched the wall by the window and it shimmered. An archway appeared in the insulated wall, opening into the banquet hall.
Without insulation, the impact of the massed Aristos hit Kelric like a tidal wave. As he and Tarquine entered, heads turned. A surge of interest formed, with him and the Finance Minister at its focus. His mind jumbled its perceptions, unable to settle on an interpretation: he was plummeting, drowning, smothering …
Somehow he had fallen behind Tarquine. He must have stopped without realizing it. No one seemed to find it odd, though. He rejoined her, but this time he deliberately stayed back, trying to deflect some of the interest from himself to her.
The Minister stopped at various tables to greet her guests. She spoke in a quiet manner, but her entrance couldn’t have been more effective if she had come with synthesizers playing and lights flashing. She had made no attempt to hide her sale; everyone in the hall knew about Kelric, a phenomenon unmatched in Trader history.
She and her guests conversed in innuendo-laden Highton, a form of speech so different from her direct manner with Kelric that it sounded like code to him. A flowery compliment conveyed hidden insults. An exchange of pleasantries provided veiled references to political matters. The act of ignoring a person could be a tacit agreement with him or her, an indication of respect, or an insult, depending on context. It amazed him that Aristos ever got anything done, given the time they spent twisting one another into knots with their words.
Observing them like this was an opportunity no other Skolian with his rank and empathic abilities had experienced. The linguistic experts among his people grappled with Highton nuances of language, struggling to learn at a distance, never able to see and hear Aristos interact in their own milieu. He was beginning to realize that in diplomatic interactions with Skolia, the Aristos weren’t as condescending as they sounded. They used Highton forms of discourse. Yes, they were arrogant, manipulative, and opaque. But for all their assumptions of superiority, they were, incredibly, dealing with their Skolian counterparts as.
They used direct language only with slaves, simply stating what they wanted. He sensed that in private they were also more direct with each other, particularly with sexual partners. But that was private. In public they might indulge in foreplay with a provider, even have sex in semiprivate alcoves during a banquet, yet they would never dream of using forthright language with a peer.
The insight stunned Kelric. When Aristos dealt in a direct manner with the Skolian Assembly, they were offering a severe insult. Yet the Assembly reacted far better to forthright discussion than to the masked convolutions of Highton discourse. But the hidden penchant for secrecy veiled their intent. No wonder their peoples had such trouble interacting: they were speaking different languages even when they used the same tongue.
It astonished him that the Aristos could exist in the same room with their providers and occupy such a different universe. He felt as if he were gripping the edge of a mental wind tunnel, struggling to keep from pulled into its maw. Yet the Aristos relaxed in comfort, oblivious to the mental violence their combined presence inflicted on their providers.
It didn’t take him long to realize they were all transcending at a continual low level. He didn’t understand: none of them were doing anything other than caress and kiss the providers. So why were they all transcending?
His own discomfort gave the answer. Their transcendence came from the strain on the slaves serving the meal. Although none of the providers was a psion as strong as Kelric, the presence of fifty Diamonds in one place affected them all. The providers were also physically uncomfortable. Their scant thongs were made from solid gems and hurt to wear.
On a conscious level, most of the Aristos didn’t notice what was happening. Surrounding themselves with providers made them feel good, so that was what they did. Only Kelric drew their actual attention, his crumbling defenses and sheer mental power pulling them like a magnet. He could barely hold his own against the current of covetous regard that dragged at his mind.
Mercifully he and Tarquine soon went to the dais, where leaders from the seven most important delegations were already seated at the table. As he moved away from the other tables, the pressure on his mind eased. On the dais, Tarquine motioned him to the place next to her lounger, where extra cushions and carpets had been piled. He sat down, cross-legged, surrounded by pillows. He also made a discovery: the mental pressure from the Aristos receded when he used Tarquine’s mind as a bulwark. When he was close to her, the interactions between his neural processes and hers swamped out the other Aristos. Having filled her own mental cavity, she provided him with a defense against her peers.
After Tarquine took her seat, the main dinner began. During the meal, the Aristos parried their way through debates and discussions. Kelric listened. As aware as they were of his physical presence, they otherwise paid him little heed. He doubted they had any idea of the scrutiny he had turned on them.
He coded it all into Quis patterns.
Tarquine offered him a gold fruit. It tasted sweet and fresh. He was hungrier than he had realized. Starving, in fact.
No place had been set for him, but throughout the dinner she gave him food from platters on the table. It was an odd way to dine; he was the only provider eating with the Aristos rather than serving them. He supposed he was serving Tarquine in another way, by enhancing her prestige. The other providers deferred to him, similar to the way they treated the Aristos, with one difference: they didn’t fear him.
After a while, when he had eaten his fill and drunk too much wine, he began to nod off. It seemed like more than fatigue. If he hadn’t been eating the same food as Tarquine and her guests, he would have thought he’d been drugged.
He raised his head to see the Minister watching him. She spoke in a low voice, laying her hand on her thigh. “Go ahead. Put your head down.”
Kelric almost refused. It was too strange,
an Aristo offering him a place to sleep at the high table in the middle of a banquet. Then he thought, what the hell. If the other Aristos didn’t like it, tough.
He lay down, resting his head on her thigh, his shoulders sinking into the cushions of her lounger as he closed his eyes. Her seat was on an elevated portion of the dais, so his shoulders and head were a little higher than the rest of his body, on a level with the table.
His simple gesture had a startling effect on the other diners. Their emotions surged in currents. Envy. Covetous admiration. Desire. Resentment against Tarquine, that she flouted her success. They responded with such intensity, he saw himself through their minds: a gilded provider with flowing curls, dressed in gold velvet, the only color in a room of stark black and white. He lay stretched out on his side, white velvet cushions tumbled all around him, his long legs half hidden in the piles of cushions, his collar and guards gleaming gold, his eyes closed, his head in Tarquine’s lap. Even he could see the sensuality of it.
But he was past caring. He was too damn tired.
And sleep was a form of escape …
15
Transition Metal
… The flow and flux of verbal discourse has been elevated tonight. Subtle. Sharp. I will study the recordings …
Kelric slowly came awake, disoriented by his dream. Had he been inside Tarquine’s mind? If so, he now knew she was monitoring the banquet, spying on every Aristo here. It didn’t surprise him. Later she would analyze the recordings for any advantage they might provide.
He drifted in and out of sleep while the Aristos conversed. They spent a lot of time predicting what they expected to happen when Eube had a psiberweb. Avoiding words like conquer, they spoke instead of how they would “free” settled space from the “tyranny” of Kelric’s family and bestow upon them the benevolent guidance of Eube. He had heard it all before. But now he detected a difference. Fatigue. The Radiance War had drained Eube. No one wanted another conflict. For all that they finally had victory within their sights, many of them wished the Lock had never been captured.