The abrupt subject change puzzled him. “At the Orbiter?”
“Yes. They’re rendezvousing with the ISC forces that will be your escort.” She tilted her head. “You must go to Earth. Soz is right. You’re safer there.”
“Roca and Ami will go. I’m needed here.”
“You should go too.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
“Please, Eldri. Do it.”
He touched her arm, sensing more to this. “What else did you see in these equations?”
She swallowed. “If you stay here, you also cease to exist.”
He smiled uneasily, unsure what to make of this. “I certainly have no desire to stop existing.”
“It would be a loss.”
Dryly he said, “I’m glad you think so. There have been more than a few times I’ve wondered.”
Her smile sparkled, reminding him of less somber times. “Ah, well, think how boring our lives would be if we didn’t have each other to argue with about whether the inheritance of power should go through male or female lines.”
He glowered at her. “I seem to be losing that argument lately, what with all these Imperators and Pharaohs and Empresses everywhere. I’m outnumbered.”
Her voice gentled. “Then let us both survive to argue it another day.”
In truth, he saw the logic in splitting up the Triad. The danger of all three Keys being in the same place was too great, and Earth was a sensible place to go, neutral ground, an unlikely target if the war escalated. His emotions, however, refused to acknowledge his logic.
“I can’t leave you to support the Web alone,” he said.
“Soz is here.”
“The Triad link isn’t stable.”
“Even so. You have to go. You’re too valuable to risk.”
“So are you. You go to Earth.”
“Eldri, hear me.” She looked genuinely frightened. “Kurj didn’t stay on Skyhammer. He died. I don’t want you to end.”
He shifted his weight. “You truly believe my life will end if I stay here?”
“Cease to exist.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you will start to exist again later.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “Dehya, do you think perhaps you spend too much time with these equations of yours?”
“Eldri, please.”
His voice gentled. “When does Taquinil arrive?”
“In a few days.”
“And my son Eldrin will be here with you?”
“Yes.”
He knew if he tried to stay, he would also have to fight the Inner Assembly over it. For all that his tornado of a daughter disconcerted them, they agreed with her in this matter. Strange how life went, when the children began to protect the parents.
“Eldri?” Dehya asked.
He exhaled. “Very well. I will go to Earth.”
Her relief suffused the chamber. “Good.”
“Do your equations say whether or not my leaving helps Eldrin and Taquinil?”
“I don’t know. It’s buried in the noise.”
He made an exasperated sound. “You keep saying this. The ‘noise.’ How can equations make noise?”
“It’s like static, but in the numbers. So much static I can’t find the solution.”
The comm in the chair chimed. Eldrinson frowned at the interruption. “Yes?”
His bodyguard answered. “Lord Valdoria, we just had a message from First Councilor Tikal. The Allied flotilla has arrived. They’re rendezvousing with the ISC forces that will accompany you to Earth.”
He raised his eyebrows at Dehya. He doubted she had “calculated” the flotilla’s arrival before Tikal let anyone know it was here. More likely, her spy monitors had told her. He spoke into the comm. “Have you notified my wife and daughter-in-law?”
“Yes, sir. They went to meet the Allied commander.”
“Very well.” Eldrinson closed the link and grimaced at Dehya. “Knowing Tikal, he will try to bustle us off right away.”
She smiled. “Probably.”
“I haven’t even packed.”
“He’ll send people to do it for you.” Softly she said, “You have to tell me before you go. What am I missing? What happened with Soz?”
“Did you ever think,” he said, “that knowing answers may cause more damage than not knowing them?”
“What answers?”
“I have none for you. I’m sorry.”
She stood up, her gaze intent as she leaned her hands on the arms of his chair. “And if those answers you don’t have could save the lives of people we love? Eldrin and Taquinil?”
The comm chimed again. Eldrinson resisted the urge to growl not now and instead flicked it on. “What is it?”
His bodyguard answered. “First Councilor Tikal requests you meet him and the Allied commanders in the Strategy Room.”
Eldrinson scowled. He had experienced enough of Tikal’s “requests” to knew the councilor would continue haranguing him until he did what Tikal wanted. “I will be out in a moment.”
“Very well, sir.”
As he closed the link, Dehya said, “We can never know the answers for certain. But if making better guesses protects the people we love, isn’t it worth it?”
He thought of Eldrin, his firstborn, the son most like him; of Taquinil, the vulnerable genius, the grandson he loved. Standing up, he said, “Put Jaibriol Qox into your equations.”
“I already have.”
Softly he said, “Not in the right way.”
She watched him, her eyes green behind the sunset. “What is the right way?”
“Gently.”
“Gently?”
“Yes. Gently.” He took her hands. “Take care, my sister.”
She squeezed his hands. “And you, my brother.”
23
It was three in the morning when Seth Rockworth walked into the living room of his house. He found Jai standing in front of the glass doors that opened onto the patio, looking out at the Appalachian Mountains.
“Couldn’t you sleep?” Seth asked.
Jai turned to him. At sixteen, Jaibriol Qox Skolia stood six-foot-two and was still growing. His shoulders had filled out, and he had the strapping vigor of a youth who thrived outdoors. The horizontal ribbing on his sweater made his chest look even broader. His jeans were old-fashioned denim, which had been popular for centuries. Gold highlights streaked his black hair, looking for all the world as if he had done it on purpose, after a style popular among young people now. Although his red eyes were hidden behind lenses that turned them brown, anyone familiar with Eubian aristocracy would recognize his features as Highton. But who would think to look for such in an American schoolboy?
“I still have trouble with the length of the day,” Jai said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it being so short.”
“Are you worried about tomorrow?” Seth asked.
Jai shrugged. “The tests said we’re ready.”
“More than ready.”
The three older children had taken exams for the private schools where Seth had arranged to send them. They all placed beyond their age level in academic subjects and tended to shyness in social situations. Jai was entering school as a senior, thirteen-year-old Lisi as a freshman, and seven-year-old Vitar as a first grader. Del-Kelric would stay home with Seth and a nursemaid, an older woman who soothed the toddler when he cried for his parents. Seth knew the older children cried as well, but in private, with no one to see.
He had told the authorities they were his wards, Skolians who lost their parents in the war. He hadn’t known what to call them. He certainly couldn’t use Qox Skolia. He finally gave them his own name, which they accepted as if he had done them an honor, becoming Jay, Lisa, Peter, and Kelly Rockworth.
Jai walked into the darkened living room and picked up the remote for a holoscreen on the wall. He clicked it on and a news broadcast appeared, one he had apparently recorded earlier
. He turned off the sound, so the newscaster spoke in silence. Her image faded and a scene of the Assembly Hall on Parthonia filled the screen.
Seth saw why Jai had recorded the broadcast. In one corner of the image, at a bench assigned to the Ruby Dynasty, the Skolian Imperator sat listening to the Assembly proceedings, the lights on the bench where she “sat” indicating she was present as a holographic simulacrum.
“It must be hard to see them on the news,” Seth said.
Jai turned off the broadcast. “Do you think it’s true, what the Allied leaders say? That the Ruby Dynasty overstates their case against the Hightons?”
Seth spoke carefully. “There was a time when I would have said no. People change, though. Trader pirates no longer prey on our ships. Their leaders appear to have a genuine interest in allying with us.” In truth, he doubted the Hightons would ever change. But what could he say to this boy whose father ruled from the Carnelian Throne?
Seth had no doubt Jai’s father wasn’t Highton. No Aristo could have raised the four miracles Seth had cared for these past months. Gentle, intelligent, loving, well-adjusted, with a deep compassion for humanity and an innocence that belied the cruelty of the universe that had born them, they astonished him. He had agreed to take them, and hide their secret, out of honor to the dynasty whose judgment in matters of family he trusted, even if he found them otherwise impossible to live with. He honored his oath now out of love for the children.
* * *
Vitar and Lisi ran to Soz. She knelt in the grass, reaching out her arms. Her children collided with her and they all fell into a laughing heap. Jaibriol and Jai came out of the forest at a more sedate pace, grinning, bathed in sunlight …
Soz opened her eyes into the dark. “What?” she mumbled. A tear ran down her face.
I have a page from Admiral Jon Casestar, her node repeated.
She wiped the tears off her cheek. How long have I been sleeping?
Three hours.
Three hours? She had intended to take only two. Tell Jon I’ll be in the War Room in ten minutes.
Soz limped to the bathroom. What she wouldn’t give now for a eighty-one-hour night where she could sleep as long as she needed. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her body had recovered from her last pregnancy, become too thin even. She brushed the stretch marks on her abdomen. They were all she had now of her children. Even if she had wanted to remove the marks, which she didn’t, she couldn’t have done it. She never let doctors examine her and she kept her shadowmaker active all the time. If anyone found out she had children, they would ask what happened to them. And who fathered them.
She took no one into her confidence. She declined all friendship. She attended social functions only as duty demanded. But she did look up the files on the Jag squadron she had commanded seventeen years ago. Taas, the youngest member, had continued flying and was now a Secondary. Helda had earned many promotions, leaving active duty to become an administrator.
And Rex.
Her best officer and her best friend, he had been injured in unexpected combat with ESComm just hours after he had revealed that he wanted to retire from ISC and marry her. After the battle, in pain both physical and emotional, he withdrew his proposal. They never had the chance to find out if time could have healed the wounds of war and grief that so scarred them.
Although Rex never regained full use of his natural legs, advances in surgery and synthetic enhancements made it possible for him to live a normal life. He became a diplomat for the Office of Planetary Development and eventually married a prime minister on the world Foreshires Hold.
Soz exhaled. That part of her life was gone. She knew the Assembly thought she was too single-minded in her pursuit of ESComm. That she stalked through the Orbiter always shrouded in a shadowmaker added to their disquiet. It didn’t matter. Better they thought she was driven by an obsession to bring down Jaibriol Qox than they knew the truth.
She finished dressing and went to the War Room. As she took her place in the Command Chair, Jon Casestar swung up on a crane. Starlight bathed them. Fake starlight. The holodome over their heads produced it, rather than a genuine window to the stars. Given that the War Room was near the Orbiter’s equator, the outer hull actually formed the floor of the amphitheater rather than the dome.
“We’re ready,” Casestar said.
Soz nodded. “Good. Let’s do it.”
Casestar swung in his crane to a monitoring station on the periphery of the dome. Submerging into the web, Soz extended her mind through the Orbiter web and then outward to the stars. She was traveling in deep space with eight Jag fighters. Only seven pilots joined her in the link; the eighth Jag was a drone piloted by its EI brain.
Ready. That came from seven minds at once.
Proceed, Soz thought. The word rumbled with the Rhon power of her mind.
The eighth Jag twisted out of reality and disappeared.
At first Soz noticed no difference. She was linked to the EI of the vanished ship, and it continued to send stats on its condition within the giant Klein bottle in complex space where it now existed.
Then a curious effect manifested; the data were dripping into her mind.
I am loooosing coheeeesion, the Jag’s EI thought.
According to the chronometer on her mindscape, the Jag had been in its bottle for only three minutes. Continue test, she thought.
Coooooontinuuuuuuuuuuuu …
Soz waited. JG-8, respond.
We still have it on monitor, Jon Casestar thought. It just isn’t transmitting.
Soz frowned. If an EI computer couldn’t maintain contact, how would a human? Fifteen years ago she and Jaibriol had kept their mental cohesion for eight minutes in complex space on a ship with a far less sophisticated EI than a Jag fighter. Their speed had been complex, though, rather than their mass or charge.
Perhaps the EI brain is the problem, someone thought.
Identify, Soz thought.
Alis Rasmuss, Glenmarrow University.
Ah. Good. Soz had requested Rasmuss for the project. A mathematician at the Advanced Theory Institute at Glenmarrow, she was the undisputed genius in Klein containment theory.
What about the EI brain? Soz asked.
It’s sophisticated enough to know it’s in trouble, Rasmuss thought, but may be too primitive to deal with it. An EI doesn’t have the flexibility of the human mind. When reality dissolves, you may need that flexibility.
Soz directed a thought to the Jag squad leader: Primary Ko, drop the JG-8 back into normal space.
Done, Ko thought.
The eighth Jag twisted into view. It looked normal, moving in formation with the seven other Jags at 0.05 light speed.
Data poured into the Soz’s internal systems, the new array of nodes she had in her spine. She studied the JG-8 on her mindscape, viewing schematics of its interior systems.
In terms of equipment, it looks fine, a new voice thought.
Identify, Soz thought.
Jase Furlon, ma’am.
Soz’s P node identified him as an engineer with the Radiance Project, traveling on Anvil, the dreadnought following the Jags in space. Where is the data on its stint in Klein space? she asked. All I have is gibberish.
We also, Furlon thought.
The data is in there, Casestar thought. We need to unravel it from the noise.
Imperator Skolia? That came from Stellart Heald, one of the Jag pilots.
Go ahead, Soz thought.
I’d like to go in, he thought. Try the bottle.
You’re volunteering to go into Klein space? Soz asked.
Yes, ma’am.
Hold on. Soz directed a thought to Casestar: Any progress deciphering the JG-8 data?
Some, Casestar answered. Rasmuss, respond.
It’s fluid flow! Rasmuss thought. The data is hidden in noise that obeys Bernoulli’s equation for an ideal fluid with steady flow in a pipe at varying heights. The flow “speed” is the change of noise with time. Fluid “de
nsity” is the magnitude of the noise. The “height” of the pipe is the data we want, specified according to its storage in computer memory. The “gravitational constant” is the position in complex space, so it isn’t actually constant but varies according to the imaginary part of charge and mass. The only deviations from Bernoulli follow known corrections for fluid turbulence, friction, and compressibility. We can extract the data by pulling out the “pipe height” from the flow equations.
Soz blinked. That’s amazing.
The sense of a grin came from Rasmuss. Truly.
Did the JG-8 suffer any ill effects? Soz asked.
Jase Furlon replied. None we’ve detected.
Heald, do you pick up all that? Soz asked.
Affirmative, the Jag pilot answered.
That we’ve found no problems so far doesn’t mean they don’t exist, she cautioned.
Understood, Heald answered.
All right, Soz thought. Give it a try. Good luck.
Aye, ma’am. Activating Klein bottle.
His Jag twisted out of space.
Heald? Soz thought. Can you still read me?
Clear as cousins. After a pause, he thought, Hold on that. My mindscape appears to be melting.
Soz focused, trying to access the three-way link among his brain, his Jag’s EI, and psiberspace. As she made contact, his mindscape pooled in hers, melting into a blur.
Rasmuss entered the link. Heald, our calculations give you about fifteen minutes until your grid dissolves.
Understooooood, he thought.
If at any time you think you’re losing touch with our web, Soz thought, twist back into normal space.
Ayyyyyyyyye, maaaaaaaa’am. His thoughts flowed like viscous oil.
Heald, we have an idea, Rasmuss thought. We’re extracting the data you’re sending by using the Bernoulli equation. If you apply that extraction process to the data in your ship’s EI, it might compensate for the melting effect you’re experiencing.
Tryyyyyyyyyyyyyy … His thought trickled away.
Heald? Soz thought.
No answer.
She sent a thought to the dreadnought: Have we lost him?
We still have him on monitor. That came from Jase Furlon. Same as we did the JG-8 in Klein space.