I’ve spoken with Althor, Kurj said. I will make the announcement tomorrow.
Eldrinson nodded. Your mother and I will come to Diesha.
Kurj almost told him it was unnecessary. But in this he relented. Both he and his stepfather had lost a person they loved. He felt Eldrinson’s grief in the very fabric of the web.
Roca and I are also having a memorial service on Lyshriol, Eldrinson thought. We would like you to come.
Normally Kurj resisted visiting Lyshriol, his stepfather’s home world. Although pleasant enough in its own rustic way, it was Eldrinson’s dominion. However, this was different. I will attend.
Your mother will be glad to see you. Eldrinson faded from the grid.
Kurj resumed his walk. At another grid square he thought, Open, and once again sank into a bare gray room.
You have 653 messages, Mail Server 1 thought.
That surprised Kurj. It had been less than an hour since he last checked his mail. Delegate.
Done. The queue now contains 102 messages.
Prioritize. Relay first on list.
Hieroglyphs appeared on the wall, scrolling downward, a list of who had received this particular message.
Address map, Kurj thought. The list vanished, replaced by a holomap with a network of nodes joined by filaments. It showed every address that had received the message, millions of sites, so dense with lines it was impossible to distinguish individual addresses.
Text of message, Kurj thought.
The map moved to the upper corner. Three-dimensional glyphs appeared on the wall, their height and width containing their primary information, their depth adding shades of meaning. As Server 1 read the glyphs, Kurj studied them, verifying that the server’s interpretation matched his own. Although he had fine-tuned its psiware, he still often checked its work.
The message was surprisingly blunt and free of propaganda, given its source: His Exalted Highness, Emperor Ur Qox of the Eubian Concord, declares war on Imperial Skolia.
Kurj snorted. Skolia and the so-called Concord had been having an undeclared war for centuries. This changed nothing. But since it had become known that Emperor Qox’s heir had died while a prisoner of ISC, Kurj had expected this.
Who else has received this message? he asked.
Server 1 answered with a metallic thought: All government offices on the planets and habitats of the Eubian Concord, Skolian Imperialate, and Allied Worlds.
Kurj accessed an image of Ur Qox, the Trader emperor. A tall man appeared in front of Kurj, lean and gaunt, with red eyes and shimmering black hair.
You think you grieve, Kurj thought to the image. Don’t come to me with oaths of war over your ill-bred spawn. You will pay for my sister’s death, Qox. You will pay, until the blood of the Trader Aristos runs red across the sea of stars.
3
Jeremiah, stop being provincial. Why do you find it so hard to believe humans have settled 2700 worlds and habitats? Yes, I know, our Allied Worlds have only have 300. But I came to know the Imperialate much better during my studies at their institute on Parthonia. It’s true, they have over 900 colonies. And that’s nothing compared to the Traders. The Eubian Concord—what we call the Traders—they have nearly 1500, some with billions of people. Think of it! Humanity numbers over 3000 billion people. Only 400 billion live among our Allied Worlds of Earth. Skolians number almost 1000 billion and the Traders a full 1700 billion.
But here’s a sobering thought, Jeremiah. Except for a few hundred Aristos, those 1700 billion Traders are all slaves.
—From the collected letters of Tiller Smith to his brother
Soz knelt on the ground in front of the valise-shaped box that contained their computers. She was wearing only the shirt from Jaibriol’s prison uniform, which reached to her thighs, but the warmth of the night required nothing more.
Jaibriol had turned off the quasis screen and was standing in the cave entrance, in his trousers, looking out at the night. His presence both soothed and agitated her. He was a beautiful sight, his broad chest smooth with muscles, his classic face in profile as he gazed into the darkness. But he was strange too, unfamiliar, Imperial Space Command’s worst nightmare, an Aristo who could power a psiberweb.
He glanced at her. “Did you find anything?”
“Erin left a file in GeoComp.”
“Erin? You mean the pilot who brought us here?”
Soz nodded. “According to this, an automated Allied probe discovered this planet a few days ago.” Actually, days was inaccurate. During their escape, they had never quite managed to engage the stardrives, racing instead on the edge of light speed. It had made their time dilate, eighteen minutes going by for them while almost three months passed for the rest of the settled galaxy.
“The probe transmitted its discovery to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on Earth,” she said. “No one had yet downloaded the data when President Calloway’s routines found it.” Reading the file, she whistled. “Calloway must have some system. She got in, copied the data, and then wiped out all trace of it. Aside from us, only she and Erin know this place exists.”
“And your father,” Jaibriol said.
Soz swallowed, thinking of the tears in her father’s eyes as he had bid her good-bye. Loving a Rhon psion himself, her mother, he understood Soz’s decision to free Jaibriol. So he had used his hot line to the Allied president to request sanctuary for the lovers.
Her eyes hot with unshed tears, knowing she would probably never see her father or family again, Soz leaned over the computer. “These files have some data on the planet.”
Jaibriol gentled his voice. “How about the length of the night?”
Soz flicked her finger through a holicon above the screen, the tiny icon of a world. A much larger holo appeared floating in the air over the computer, showing a star system. “Prism orbits a red dwarf star, which orbits a blue-white star.” She paused, studying the data. “This is all referenced to Earth. The red star pulls on Prism with a force more than twenty times that of Earth on its Moon. That ought to drag Prism into a tidal lock, which means it would always keep the same face toward the red sun. But either it isn’t locked yet or else it’s in some sort of resonance. It rotates three times for every orbit it makes around the red sun.”
“Three days per year?” He stared at her. “How long until we see sunlight again?”
Soz brought up more data. “For every three days that pass relative to the red sun, four days pass relative to the blue-white sun. So sometimes we have no suns in the sky, sometimes we have one, and sometimes two.” She grimaced. “What a flaming mess.”
Jaibriol laughed. “Does that last have a scientific translation?”
She gave him a rueful smile. “Unfortunately, yes. Right now we’re at the start of a 135-hour night. We get a long night because we’re on the side of the planet facing away from the red star when red is between us and the blue-white star.” Peering at the data, she said, “When day comes, it will last 243 hours, with both suns up for 135 of them. Then an 81-hour night. Then a 486-hour day, when Prism passes between the blue-white and the red sun. While red is up, blue-white sets and then later rises again. After both suns go down, we get another 81-hour night, followed by another 243-hour day. Then the whole mess starts over again.”
“Gods,” Jaibriol said. “Do we get cooked during the days?”
“I don’t think so.” She studied the glyphs on the screen. “Both suns have to be up for the planet to receive as much light as Sol shines on Earth. We’re more in danger from flares on the red star. But the atmosphere offers protection. It also does a reasonable job holding heat, which is probably why it’s warm right now.”
She glanced at him standing in the entrance, his chest bare to the balmy night. Distracted by his husbandly attributes, she lost her train of thought. It was a moment before she could refocus on the GeoComp. “We can determine the north celestial pole from how the stars move in the sky.”
“How do you know it’s
north?”
She looked at him, pleasantly distracted again. “It?”
“Why call this the north hemisphere?”
“We have to call it something.”
“I just wondered why you picked north instead of south.”
“If you want to call it south, that’s fine.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to call it south.”
“All right. North.”
“That’s not—never mind.” He looked outside again. “So what is our latitude?”
She hesitated. “We’re pretty far north. Or, uh, south.”
“North is fine.”
“About sixty degrees north of the equator.” She squinted at the screen. “This is all relative to Allied standards. ‘The same latitude as Sundsvall.’ Whatever the hell that means.”
“It’s in a place on Earth called Sweden.” Jaibriol rubbed his palm across his chest. “I guess we’ll have to get used to the dark.”
Seeing him touch himself, she smiled. “I could get used to long nights.”
He glanced at her, then flushed and looked away. Once again he rubbed his chest, this time with a self-conscious motion.
What had she said? They were married, after all. It wasn’t as if she were drooling over him in an erotica arcade. Then again, she also found her reaction to him unsettling. She hadn’t responded this way to her former fiancé, Rex Blackstone, another Jagernaut. After being injured in combat, he had withdrawn his proposal for fear of what the war would do to their marriage. She had died inside then, for the loss of their newly acknowledged affection. Yet in all the years she had known Rex, she had never felt such an intense passion as Jaibriol had stirred in her from the moment she met him. Like knew like. Rhon.
Jaibriol swatted at his arm. “That’s odd.”
She flushed, afraid he had picked up her thoughts. “Odd?”
He scratched his arm. “My skin itches.”
She stood up and went over to him. “Where?”
“Everywhere.” He rubbed his cheek. “It hurts.”
Soz drew him back into the cave. “Maybe you should—”
“No!” He jerked away from her. “I can’t come in here. If I have something on me, it could hurt you.”
“I’m going to turn on the quasis screen.” The thought of his being unprotected outside stirred an intense emotion in her. She wasn’t sure how to define it, but she knew she wanted him here with her. Safe.
As she reactivated the screen, Jaibriol made a strangled noise. Turning, she saw his face go pale. She grabbed the medkit off a crate and pulled out the diagnostic tape. When she set the flexible strip against his chest, holos formed in front of it, views of a man’s body, red and blue veins on one, the nervous system on another, ivory for his skeleton. Glyphs scrolled across the tape.
“Oh, hell,” Soz said. “Do you have any allergies?”
He heaved in a strained breath. “None I know of.”
“You’re having an allergenic reaction.” She took an air syringe out of the kit, dialed in the antihistamine recommended by the tape, and injected his neck.
“I can’t—” He choked and sagged against the wall.
“Jaibriol!” Soz caught him as he collapsed. His weight knocked them over, but her hydraulics kicked in and she controlled their descent enough to lay him on his back. The red alert icon on the tape gave the story: he was in anaphylactic shock. His larynx had swollen, blocking his respiration, and his blood pressure had dropped far too low. Tipping back his head, she tried to breathe air into his lungs. Without breaking the rhythm of her efforts, she pressed the end of the diagnostic tape against a receptor square on the syringe. When the syringe beeped, she injected his neck again, all the time breathing air into his lungs.
Blow in. Wait. Blow in. Wait. Over and over she tried, praying the swelling would recede enough for him to take in air.
Don’t die, Soz thought. Gods, don’t die.
With a shuddering gasp, Jaibriol heaved in a breath. As Soz jerked up her head, his chest rose again. She watched, ready to resume, but he continued to breathe on his own. His long lashes twitched and his eyes opened.
“Thank you,” she whispered, she wasn’t sure to whom.
He spoke in an almost inaudible voice. “Soshoni?”
She drew in a shaky breath. “We can call it south. East. West. Anything you want. I promise. Just don’t die.”
“North,” he whispered. “North is up. South is down. North is optimism … That’s why I wondered why you chose it.”
Then he passed out.
* * *
After hours of watching Jaibriol sleep, Soz finally let herself doze. When he stirred, she snapped awake, afraid he was having a seizure. But he was only sitting up.
He rubbed his eyes. “How long was I out?”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He looked so normal, just sitting there. “Ten hours.”
“What happened?”
“You had some kind of reaction to something.”
He smiled. “That’s a precise diagnosis.”
Soz managed a laugh. “As near as I can tell, some pollen dusted across your skin, nose, and mouth. You know the rest.”
His smile faded. “If I have that reaction every time pollen comes along, how will I survive here?”
“I have the computer working on an antidote. It also says you may develop immunities.” She indicated the shimmering quasis screen at the entrance. “For now, that will keep you and the pollen apart.” Although on a macroscopic scale the screen was a rigid barrier, it didn’t actually “freeze” the slice of air it contained. The air molecules continued to rotate, vibrate, and otherwise behave as they had when she activated the screen. What the quasis, or quantum stasis, did was keep the molecules in the same quantum state. Any penetration of the screen, even by one particle, involved a state change. So nothing penetrated. A few hits from a high-energy weapon could break it down, but against pollen it would work just fine.
Of course that created other problems. No air or light could penetrate the screen, either. Fortunately their cave had vents to circulate air. But quasis wasn’t meant to be used this way; rather, it protected starfighters and their occupants from the immense accelerations and energies involved in interstellar warfare. The generator required to produce the screen was no minor piece of equipment; only her high security clearance and familiarity with ISC procedures had made it possible to obtain this one.
Soz watched as Jaibriol sagged against the wall. “How are you?”
“All right.”
“Jaibriol.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t be so stoic. I can feel how much you hurt.” She slid over to him. “We can’t take chances here. There are no hospitals.”
He gave her a wry smile. “This business of living with another telepath may be more difficult than I realized.”
“Does it bother you?” Growing up in a family of psions, she and her siblings had learned early to keep their minds private, a mental knock expected for personal interactions. With Jaibriol, the doors kept fading, reappearing, fading again, as the two of them danced their awkward waltz of Who are you?
“Being near people bothers me,” he said. “Their emotions beat on my mind. Solitude seems more natural. It is what I’ve known most of my life. But I don’t like being alone. Solitude—it’s not the same as alone.” He drew her into his arms. “Now I have someone to share my solitude. Someone like me.”
She hesitated. “I had a sense, earlier tonight, that you didn’t like it when I, uh—looked at you.”
He made an exasperated noise. “I wanted to talk about north and south, hope and despair, new worlds and old empires. You wanted me to take off my clothes and lie down.”
“That’s not true.” When he raised his eyebrows, she amended, “I appreciate your intellect too.”
“‘Too’?”
“Ah. Well.” She flushed.
His lips quirked up. “Then again, we can’t discuss hope and despair
all the time. Perhaps we should investigate the other side of this ‘too.’”
She smiled. “Perhaps we should.”
And so they did, throughout the warm Prism night.
* * *
Kurj leaned back in a control chair in his office. The comm in his ear connected him to the team checking security on the pavilion outside. Soon they would begin the ceremony investing Althor with the title of Imperial Heir. Kurj glanced at the group in his office: himself, Althor, their mother, Eldrinson, five bodyguards, and Barcala Tikal, First Counselor of the Assembly.
Althor was standing with his parents. He wore his Jagernaut uniform, not the everyday leathers with gauntlets and boots, but his dress uniform, gold pants with a darker stripe down the outer seam of each leg, gold boots, and a gold pullover with a narrow line across the chest, accenting the breadth of his shoulders. The ISC Public Affairs Office had done an extensive analysis for its design, and Kurj approved the result. The holographic cloth made a gold nimbus around Althor, achieving the planned effect, which was to make him look like an avenging warrior angel.
Eldrinson stood next to his son. He wore civilian clothes, dark blue pants tucked into suede boots. For some bizarre reason he had chosen a shirt that laced up the front, with actual leather thongs, and long sleeves that belled out and then came in at the cuffs. His wine-red hair brushed his shoulders and his spectacles framed his eyes. Kurj thought he made an absurd picture, too rustic by far, but the public loved it. He had to admit his stepfather presented a far more palatable image of the Ruby Dynasty than he did with his own harsh appearance.
His mother, Assembly Councilor Roca, stood with her husband. She looked her heritage, a descendant of the queens who had ruled the Ruby Empire. Tall like her sons regal and graceful, she riveted attention. Her thick braid fell to her hips, gleaming gold with copper and bronze highlights. Tendrils escaped to curl around her incomparable face. Her jumpsuit covered her from neck to wrist to ankle, in the dark blue of mourning, with no adornment at all, yet still he wished she had worn something more discreet. But in truth he knew it wasn’t the clothes. Nothing short of a shapeless sack would hide her spectacular sensual beauty.