The huge door of a docking bay in the Orbiter hull rolled open. The shuttle pilot fired a burst from the rockets, using chemical fuel to maneuver, rather than the antimatter drives adapted for more open space or the inversion stardrive.
After the shuttle moved into the bay, robot arms clamped around it, anchoring the ship in place while the great door closed. As soon as an atmosphere tube fastened onto the shuttle air lock, the craft emitted its only passenger: Kurj Skolia. The Imperator had boarded the Orbiter.
Kurj found the Assembly councilor he sought in a lodge shaded among a grove of trees within Valley, the private mountain retreat of the Ruby Dynasty. Silent and unobserved, he stood on the wooden balcony that bordered the second level inside the building. The room below was also wood, mellow and gold, with an antique quality to it, a luxury here where they used almost no wood. Bars lined one wall and mirrors another. A golden woman in a blue leotard, pink tights, and a filmy blue dance skirt was spinning across the room in pointe shoes, her movements as light and graceful as the tendrils of hair that had escaped her bun.
Kurj had always loved to watch his mother dance. A memory came to him; he was five, going with his father to see her perform with the Imperial Ballet under the stage name Cya Liessa. It had been a magical night, with a small boy enthralled by his beautiful, beloved parents. Strange how he had forgotten that.
Roca stopped in midspin and looked at the balcony. “My greetings, Kurj.”
“Mother.” He went down the wooden steps that descended from the balcony. “You dance better than ever.”
A smile gentled her face. “You’re being kind.” She wiped her face with a towel she took from a wooden chair near the wall. “I never have time to practice anymore, with my Assembly duties.”
His voice cooled. “And when did your Assembly duties extend to my private life?”
She stopped toweling herself. “Barcala talked to you about the wedding.”
“You knew about it?”
“Only after they made the decision. They wanted me to tell you.” She sat down and began untying her toe shoe. “I told them it was their decision and their funeral, so they could flaming well tell you themselves.”
Kurj rather enjoyed the image of his diplomat mother, usually the essence of tact, cussing at Barcala Tikal. He settled in the chair next to her and stretched out his legs. “Have you talked to Dehya recently?”
“This morning.” She pulled off the shoe and began winding its ribbons around it. “In web mail.”
“I mean in person.”
“It’s been a while.” Roca stopped winding her ribbons. “A long time, actually.”
“How long?”
“Months?” She stared at him. “That can’t be right.”
“What do you think she’s doing?”
Dryly she said, “With all those paras of hers, who knows?”
Kurj understood the reference. Some schools of thought in neuroscience held that the greater density of neural structures in a psion’s brain could enhance intellect. It depended on the structure and distribution of the paras. Dehya’s brain apparently maximized the effect. No one knew the full extent of her intelligence. The last tests, done in her adolescence 150 years ago, had put her into the genius range. Since then her mind had continued to evolve.
“She sent me a strange message,” Kurj said.
“Strange how?”
“It said, ‘You are right.’”
Roca laughed. “From Dehya to you, that is strange.”
“She meant I finally picked the right icon.”
His mother took off her other shoe and began wrapping its ribbons. “What icon?”
“She’s trying to tell me something.” He blew out a gust of air. “For all we know, she’s dead and she left an EI running on the web to simulate herself.”
Roca nearly dropped her shoe. “You think she’s dead?”
Before he realized what he was doing, he had laid his hand on her arm, the first time he had touched her in years. It felt like an electric shock. She went rigid, then pulled away from him.
Disconcerted, Kurj withdrew his hand. “She’s not dead.”
Roca spoke uneasily. “What is all this about icons?”
He tried to frame an answer for something he wasn’t sure he understood himself. “Making peace. I think.”
“With ESComm?”
“No. Myself.” Kurj stared across the room. For a century he had focused his existence on building ISC. He had given up all semblance of a normal life, hardened his mind, crippled his capacity to love, all to make ISC what it was today. And it wasn’t enough. Even the Assembly wanted more from him.
“Do you remember the ruins we used to visit with Father when I was a boy? Before he—” The word died stopped on his tongue. “Before he was gone?”
“SunsReach? I remember.”
“I had the entire planet classified as a wilderness sector.”
“Whatever for?”
“To keep it untouched. No one can go there without my permission.” He made himself turn to face Roca. “You and I have too many ghosts. We need to make peace before it’s too late. But I can’t here. Too much history lives in this place.”
She watched him as if he were a cipher. “I’ve never heard you talk like this.”
“Come to SunsReach with me. Help me settle the ghosts while we still can.”
“Kurj, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Talk like you’re about to die.”
“I’ve no intention of dying, I assure you.”
She looked at her shoe, turning it over and over, watching its ribbons flutter. “I don’t think it wise I go alone with you to such a remote place.”
“I won’t—trespass against you. You have my word.” It was the closest he had ever come to acknowledging the labyrinth of emotions he negotiated where she was concerned.
“Eldri will object,” she said.
Kurj suspected that for his stepfather Eldrinson, “object” would be a mild word for his reaction to Kurj’s request. “I will swear your safety to your husband as well as to you.”
She looked up at him. “I need to talk to him.”
“Of course.” He stood up. “I leave for SunsReach tomorrow. If you decide to come, I will be in the Skyhammer ruins.” He bowed to her and left the studio.
The sun was setting as Kurj walked out into the rustling glades of Valley. It took only a few minutes to reach Dehya’s home. Built into a hillside, the house stood shaded within a grove of trees. Colors from the sunset glowed on the pale door, like a soap bubble film.
Kurj touched a gilded leaf on the door and a bell chimed within the house. After several moments he tried again, with no more success. But as he was about to leave, the door opened. His half brother Eldrin stood in the archway, rubbing his eyes.
“Kurj?” Eldrin blinked at him. “My greetings.”
“Did I wake you?” Kurj asked. “I can come back later.”
Eldrin smiled. “Don’t do that.” He stood to the side. “Come in.”
Goldwood furniture set with white satin cushions graced the airy living room. Sunshine sifted in through the windows, dappled by the trees outside.
Eldrin went to a faceted crystal cabinet in one corner. “Would you like a drink? Rum?”
“No. Just water.” Kurj knew how Eldrin had wrestled with alcohol in his youth, during his troubles adjusting to life on the Orbiter. Eldrin never drank now, a choice Kurj respected.
His brother poured water into two crystal goblets and brought one to Kurj. Sitting on the couch, Eldrin studied his face. “You look tired.”
“A little.”
Are you all right? Eldrin asked.
“Fine.” Kurj didn’t want to shut him out, but he couldn’t relax his barriers.
Even so, his half brother’s presence soothed him. Roca and Eldrinson had named Eldrin for his father, dropping the “son” rather than inflicting “Eldrinsonson” on him. For the first year of Eldrin??
?s life, Roca had lived on the Orbiter without her husband. So Kurj had watched Eldrin grow. He had rocked his brother to sleep in his arms, comforted him when he cried, fed him, even cleaned him. In one of the more painful ironies of his life, it was his love for Eldrin that had finally convinced Roca it was safe to return to her husband, that Kurj would never harm the father when doing so would harm the son.
Tonight they talked about a ballad Eldrin was working on, improvements to the house, and a letter from his son Taquinil, an economics professor at Imperial University on Parthonia.
“He talks ‘meta’ this and ‘micro’ that,” Eldrin said. “I’ve no idea what he’s saying. Dehya seems to understand, though.”
“She saw the letter?” Kurj asked.
“Well, yes. Of course.”
“Then you’ve talked to her?”
Eldrin smiled. “I hope so. I live with her, after all.”
“When was the last time you saw her? In person, I mean.”
“This morning.”
Tension eased out of Kurj’s muscles. Until this moment he hadn’t realized the doubts he harbored about Dehya’s life. “Is she all right?”
“Well, yes.” Eldrin looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“No one else has seen her for months. Years, even.”
His brother laughed. “That can’t be true.”
“She’s always in the web,” Kurj pointed out. “What is she doing?”
“I’m not sure, actually. Lately she’s been talking about mathematics and precognition.” Eldrin rubbed his chin. “She claims it’s impossible to tell where mathematical extrapolations of the future leave off and precognition starts. Then she told me that she would always find an escape route for us.”
Kurj went very still. “An escape from what?”
He shrugged. “When I asked, she laughed and said it meant nothing, really, that she just thought I might like to write a song about that theme.”
“That doesn’t sound like what you write.” Most of Eldrin’s songs were folk ballads about his homeland.
“When she’s ready, she’ll tell me what she means.”
“Let me know what she says,” Kurj said.
Eldrin gave him a dry smile. “If it makes sense?”
“Even if it doesn’t.” Over the years Kurj had become adept at deciphering the often cryptic results of Dehya’s accelerated thought processes.
Eldrin regarded him curiously. “Any news with you?”
“It seems I am getting married,” Kurj said.
“What! Who is she?”
Kurj scowled. “The Assembly has several candidates in mind, women of the appropriate style, diplomacy, and charisma, none of which it seems I have, according to our esteemed governing body. My input isn’t required.”
Eldrin’s smile faded. “Oh.”
“Yes. My reaction.”
“Perhaps she will please you.”
“Perhaps I won’t do it.”
Eldrin spoke carefully. “Legally, you have no power to refuse the Assembly. Their law is the law of the Imperialate.”
“So they say.”
Eldrin paused. “Have you decided what you will do?”
“Perhaps.” Kurj left it at that.
After their visit, Kurj walked through the growing dusk to the magrail station. It was dark when his magcar reached his destination, one of the less upscale apartment complexes in City, if any building in that architectural work of art could be called anything but upscale. He went to a bronze door graced by delicate gold leaves. When he touched the bell, a chime came from inside. He waited, then tried again.
No response.
“Steel acknowledge,” Kurj said.
“Attending.” The voice belonged to a City-wide computer that answered only to him, that indeed no one else knew existed, except probably Dehya.
“Open this door,” Kurj said.
The door slid open. Kurj entered a living room decorated in gold and bronze, all in shadow except for light sifting through the open doorway.
“Shall I turn on the lamps?” Steel asked.
“No. Just close the door.”
The bedroom was small, filled by the bed, with a wardrobe crammed against one wall and a console in one corner. The shadowed form of a small person made a mound in the big bed.
Kurj sat on the bed and touched the woman’s shoulder. She stirred, and sighed in her sleep. He removed his boots, then undressed and set his clothes in an ordered pile on the floor. Then he slid under the covers and drew the woman into his arms. Her filmy nightdress felt soft under his hands. As he took it off, she spoke sleepily. “My greetings, Kurj.”
“And mine, Ami.”
Her face had matured in the eleven years since he had first seen her as a page in the War Room, but it had never stopped mirroring her gentle nature. It wasn’t beauty that kept him coming back to her, long after he usually forgot his favorites. If that had been all he wanted, there were far more spectacular women he could have taken to his bed. Ami was the only person he knew who liked him exactly as he was. She wasn’t a politician, an actress, a highborn noblewoman, or a diplomacy adept. She was simply a page who loved him with uncomplicated affection.
They made love in the bronzed shadows. When they finished, the Imperator of Skolia asked his sometimes mistress, an orphan with the most common birth imaginable, to be his wife.
* * *
Althor met Syreen and their daughter Eristia in Syreen’s apartment. They all stood in the airy living room, drinking cider and making small talk. Eristia gleamed in her silver jumpsuit, with the Dalmer Shipping logo emblazoned in blue on her shoulder.
“So, Captain Valdoria.” Althor heard the catch in his voice and took a swallow of cider to hide it. “How does it feel to have your own ship?”
Eristia laughed, her eyes as green as a forest. “It only has a two-person crew.”
“Only?” Syreen waved her hand. “Twenty-four years old and already she has her own ship. And she says ‘only.’”
“Oh, Hoshma,” Eristia said.
Althor smiled at the familiar Oh, fill-in-title-of-parent phrase. But he was breaking inside. For twenty-four years his daughter had lived only a few hundred meters away from him. True, in the past few years her duties with the shipping line had taken her on extended trips. But always she came back. Today ended that. Today she became captain of her own ship and left home forever, to make her way in a universe she wasn’t ready for.
Actually, in his more candid moments, he had to admit his daughter was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If anything, the universe wasn’t ready for Eristia Leirol Valdoria. He had given her the Valdoria name, acknowledging his paternity, never really understanding that part of his paternal duty meant letting her go when the time came.
After they finished the cider, they walked to the magrail and rode out to the Orbiter hull. Eristia and Syreen chatted and Althor listened, afraid that if he joined in his voice would catch again. He had never been good at small talk anyway. Syreen and Eristia had never seemed to mind his taciturn inclinations, as if they knew the affection he felt even if he couldn’t express it well.
In an observation module above the docking bay, he and Syreen waited while Eristia donned her environment suit. It fit her like a skin, with a power module in the belt. Then she grinned and saluted them. “Captain Valdoria reporting for duty.”
Althor smiled. “I used to be Captain Valdoria.”
“Not anymore.” She gave him a hug. “Come ride on my ship sometime, Hoshpa.”
“I will.” His voice caught, despite his efforts to stop it.
“Oh, Daddy,” she murmured, her eyes filling with tears. “I love you.”
“And I you, Podkin.” Realizing what he had said, he added, “I mean Eristia.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “You can call me Podkin.”
Eristia hugged Syreen next. And then it was time for her to go.
As they watched their daughter stride out
to her ship, Syreen spoke gently. “She’s like you were at that age, Althor.”
He swallowed, hit again with a familiar surge of relief that his daughter had chosen a civilian route to her dreams. How had his own parents endured it, knowing that every time he went out he could die in combat or be captured? More than ever he understood their relief when Kurj put him behind a desk.
After Eristia’s ship left, Althor and Syreen rode the magrail back to City. They were quiet for most of the ride, but toward the end Syreen said, “She turned out well.”
“Yes,” Althor agreed. “She did.” He could hardly contain his swell of pride.
After another stretch of silence, he asked, “Will you stay in the building?” With Eristia gone, Syreen was free to go where she pleased. As much as Althor had wanted them to live near him, he had made clear from the start that he would never force Syreen to remain in City against her will or use his influence to take Eristia away from her if she left. That she had chosen to stay for so many years meant more than to him than he knew how to say.
Her face gentled. “It’s a good building. Besides, Eristia will come home for visits.”
Althor grinned. “Then we’ll have to listen to her say, ‘Oh, Hoshma,’ and, ‘Oh, Daddy.’”
Syreen laughed. “That we will.”
They parted at City, having affirmed that their friendship remained strong even without the glue of a daughter. Althor rode to the other side of the Orbiter and went to his office within the hull. He strode through the spacious outer rooms, nodding to his multitude of assistants, crossed the expanse of his own office, and entered his private web chamber. As he settled into the control chair, its exoskeleton folded around his body and snicked psiphon prongs into his spine and neck, through pores in his uniform. Then he entered psiberspace.
The web spread around him in hills and valleys made from a grid, the crisscrossed strands varying from cables of intense activity to filaments on the periphery of his awareness.