Kabatu whistled. “That it would.”
Only I saw the orange light that flickered around Althor. The color of deception. It wasn’t that his words were false; he did fear assassination and intended to honor his promise to me. But that wasn’t his only reason for wanting the contract. He was also guarding his own interests.
“I don’t have any guardians,” I said. “They’re dead.” Centuries dead.
Stonehedge pushed his hand through his hair. “If we can verify that, I might be able to sign in their place. I’ll have Legal check into it.”
Ming was watching me closely. “Are you positive this is what you want?”
Althor’s thought came into my mind: Perhaps I should leave, I think she wants to make sure you’re agreeingfreely and not because my presence intimidates you.
I couldn’t process her words with Althor uploading to my brain. As I shook my head, the Jag thought, Carrier attenuated. .Mercifully, my hyperextended awareness of Althor and the others receded.
“Tina?” Ming said. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. “Yes. And yes about marrying Althor. It’s what I want.”
“Have you had time to make preparations?” When I shook my head, she smiled. “I probably have a dress you could borrow, if you’d like.”
“We don’t need to change our clothes to sign a contract,” Althor said.
Kabatu snorted. “You’re not selling her real estate in the Orion Nebula, man. You’re marrying her.”
I thought of my mother’s wedding dress, the huipil hanging in another universe and time. “Althor, I’d like a dress.”
He folded his hand around mine. I’d rather we didn’t separate.
Stonehedge chuckled. “Commander Selei, I can show you around the station while they do all that.”
“What?” Althor turned to him, his confusion buzzing like an agitated bee. I could actually feel the fragmentation of the neural subshell that allowed him to converse with people while his brain interacted with another psion.
The Jag’s thought brushed past me. Althor, your interface is degenerating. I need you back here to do more work.
“Commander Selei?” Stonehedge asked. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve a minor biomech problem,” Althor said. “Nothing serious.” To the Jag, he thought: I can’t do anything when you take me down for repair work. I won’t have Tina alone with them.
My analysis yields a 98.9 percent probability that these people had no link to the assassination attempt on your life.
I don’t care, Althor thought. I’m not trusting her with anyone while you turn me off.
Stonehedge was speaking to Althor. “Can we do anything to help?”
“No,” Althor said. “I mean, I’m fine.”
A thought from the Jag coiled around me, discreet, hidden from Althor. Tina? Can you convince him?
Didn’t you already fix him? I thought.
I didn’t have enough time to stabilize him. My patches have been decaying since he left. Disruption of his language ability and higher reasoning is minimal, but increasing. Motor coordination will go next, then internal organ junction. Ultimately, he could die.
Doesn’t he realize the danger he’s putting himself in? I asked.
Tes. He did not wish you to know.
“I recommend rest,” Kabatu was saying to Althor. “And food. For both of you.”
“We can provide dining arrangements,” Stonehedge said.
Althor suddenly spoke in a cold voice. “Doctor Kabatu, you can put that clip away.” He crossed the room so fast, I barely had time to catch my breath before he was looming over the doctor, holding a blue med clip in his hand.
Kabatu looked at his empty hand, then back up at Althor. “I had heard Jagernauts were fast, but I had no idea.” He blinked. “Why did you do that?”
Althor was studying the clip, essentially a sliver and firing mechanism. “This is set for… Perital. Perital?” He scowled at Kabatu. “Who are you planning to knock out?”
“No one.” Kabatu paused. “I loaded the syringe when we first learned you were coming on board. As a precaution. I took it out just now to deactivate it.”
Althor’s wariness intensified. I detected no deception from Kabatu, but that was no guarantee it didn’t exist; empaths have a heightened ability to pick up emotions, but it is neither infallible nor always straightforward. Still, my sense was that Kabatu told the truth.
The Jag sent me a thought. I had already estimated a 98 percent chance that he would have taken such a precaution for exactly the reason he gives.
Okay. I got up and went over to Althor. “You can go back to the Jag. I’ll be all right.”
Althor looked down at me, his hair disarrayed, his face creased with strain. “Tina—”
I took his hands. “Please.”
He wrapped his arms around me, his hands clenched with tension. A snap sounded by my ear. Althor let go, and I drew back to see him staring at the broken remains of the clip in his hand. The sliver stuck out of his palm.
Althor looked at Kabatu. “Give me the antidote.”
“It was on one of the clip’s other settings,” Kabatu said. “Then get a new clip.”
Kabatu stood up. “They’re in my office—”
“The console.” Althor’s words slurred. “Or nano… take only… seconds…”
As Althor fell backward, Stonehedge jumped to his feet and brought up his arms, catching him under the armpits. The director stumbled under their combined weight and hit the couch-with what had to be a jarring impact against his legs. Then he eased Althor down on the floor.
“Damn,” Kabatu muttered, stepping over Althor’s outflung arm. He knelt next to him and took a cylinder from his belt. The cylinder unrolled into a reflective tape, which he lay across Althor’s neck. Symbols scrolled across it and small holos appeared, rotating to show views of a man’s body.
I knelt next to Kabatu. “Is he going to be all right?”
“He’ll sleep for a few hours.” Kabatu exhaled. “I really was about to deactivate it.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Can you take him to his ship?” Stonehedge spoke behind us. “Take him to the hospital.”
“No.” I got up, facing the director, wishing I were bigger. I felt like an otter challenging a bear. “He has to go to his ship. It’s repairing him.”
“Repairing?” Stonehedge smiled. “That’s an odd way to put it.”
“Max, she’s right.” Kabatu stood. “If he’s malfunctioning, his ship is better equipped to work on him. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“You talk as if he’s a piece of apparatus,” Stonehedge said.
“Jagernauts are,” Kabatu said. “We don’t know much about them; Imperial Space Command keeps it under wraps. But I’ve never heard of one with as much biomech in his body as this man. Especially his legs. All of it is biomech. None of his own bones at all.”
“All right,” Stonehedge said. “Have the techs let the ship know he’s coming.” He paused. “Unless it knows already?”
“I doubt it,” Kabatu said. “Kyle interactions fall off with distance, and his ship is at the hub. It’s unlikely even human Kyles could communicate across so much distance. I don’t see any way the El brain in a ship could.”
“Selei isn’t just any operator,” Stonehedge said. “He’s Rhon.” I watched them curiously. It was my first indication of how much more advanced Althor’s people were in the Kyle sciences than the Allieds realized.
“I doubt a Rhon psion could do it,” Kabatu said. “But who knows about the Rhon? From what I understand, you can get tossed into prison just for making a holo of one of them.” He glanced at Althor. “I doubt it would go over well if the Imperial authorities found out one was sprawled unconscious on our floor while we discussed Kyle interactions.”
Stonehedge winced. “No, I doubt it would. You better take him to his ship.”
Within moments, four medics arrived. They suspended Althor on a
floating stretcher and sped out of the house, accompanied by Kabatu.
Tina, the Jag thought. You must do something else.
Yes?
Make sure they notify no one about Althor’s arrival. No one must know he still lives.
What about his commanding officers?
No, the Jag thought. I calculate a 99.5.percent probability that the assassins have a link to ISC. A 99.9 percent probability exists that they have high-level access to the galactic nets. If he uses either the psiber or spacetime webs, he may alert them that he survived. I will take you both to a planet owned by Althor’s family. From there we can use secured channels set up precisely for crises such as this.
I wasn’t sure that sounded better. How do we know someone in his family isn’t in with the assassins?
I calculate a 99.999 percent probability against it.
What makes you so sure?
They are Rhon, the Jag answered, as if that explained everything.
“Ms. Pulivok?” Stonehedge asked. “Why are you staring at me?”
“I was thinking about the nets,” I said. “Please don’t tell anyone Althor is here. If the assassins discover he’s alive, they may try to kill him again.”
Stonehedge nodded. “Don’t worry. We won’t.”
Good, the Jag thought. Its intensity lightened, almost as if it were experiencing relief. And I will see if I can civilize your groom. It uploaded an exaggerated image of Althor to my mind, a Jagernaut growling at everyone in sight, his hair in wild disarray, his uniform splitting at the seams. It may be hopeless. But I will try.
I laughed, then stopped when Stonehedge gave me an odd look. After that the chaplain took me to find a wedding dress.
Ming lived in a terraced house, with plants hanging from eaves and balconies. Metal lace decorated the walls. In the bedroom, the quilt on her bed shimmered with designs of parrots and bonsai trees. Silhouetted against a pink sunrise, the birds gleamed in iridescent green, blue, gold, and red. The cloth was holographic, letting the designs extend out of the cloth. Three-dimensional holoart glowed on the walls, showing pagodas, gardens with cultivated flowers, trees shaped into statues. A gust of wind started in one picture and blew around the room through the others, even though each image showed a different scene.
Ming rummaged in her closet. “I have something from my friend’s cousin—here it is.”
She took out a simple dress, about knee-length, made from white lace. The cloth was holographic, its glistening rainbows shimmering above and within the lace. It made me think of the dress my mother had sewn for my quinceanera.
“It’s lovely,” I said.
Ming smiled. “You can have it. I’ll never wear it.”
I swallowed, touched by the gift. “Thank you.”
“Would you like some time to rest before the ceremony?”
“Actually—I wondered if you would mind answering some questions.”
“Certainly.” She motioned me toward a table. “I’m hoping you can help us understand too.”
I sat down with her. “Understand?”
“A Rhon heir shows up running from assassins and asks us to marry him to a child he says has no identity. We can’t help but wonder what’s going on.”
“I don’t know.” Although Althor had told me about his family, I had no feel yet for what it meant. “I still don’t really even understand who he is.”
Ming described what she knew, telling an ancient story of a dying people. Five thousand years ago the Ruby Dynasty controlled a starfaring empire. For star drives, they looted the ruined shuttles beached on the Vanished Sea, all that remains of the mysterious race which stranded humans on Raylicon. The Ruby Empire rose and fell three thousand years before the birth of Christ. It was one of humanity’s most remarkable—and fragile—achievements.
They developed star travel before they had any grasp of the physics. Then they went searching for their lost home. They never found Earth, but they did settle many planets. Necessity forced them to learn genetic engineering, both to adapt colonists to new worlds and in an attempt to expand their gene pool. But their empire was too fragile to survive; they had neither the scientific background nor the population needed to sustain such accelerated development. So it collapsed, stranding the colonies for over four thousand years.
Desperation finally drove the Raylicans back to the stars. They were dying, succumbing to a gene pool too small to remain viable. They hoped an influx of genes from rediscovered colonies would save their race. But the colonies had either perished— victims of inbreeding—or else self-induced genetic drift now divided them from their lost empathic kin. Kyle genes often produce lethal abnormalities; the colonies that thrived did so because their gene pools had lost the empathic traits.
The Kyle genes didn’t disappear completely, however. Althor’s parents are Rhon psions, a class of Kyle operators named for the geneticist Rhon. The Rhon project was dual-pronged: using DNA derived from the Ruby Dynasty, Rhon engineered for increased empathy and produced Althor’s family; using other DNA, he engineered for increased pain resistance and produced the Trader Aristos.
Aristos are the reason genetic research on Kyle operators is now illegal. In a sense, they are reverse empaths. They can receive input, but their “receiver” is abnormal: it picks up only pain. The signal must come from an empath, someone whose brain amplifies it enough for the Aristo to receive. An Aristo’s brain, in trying to lower his or her sensitivity to pain, relays the signals to neural centers that register them as pleasure.
“Do you think the Aristos are the ones who tried to kill Althor?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” Ming said. “They would probably give anything to capture him alive.” She spread her hands. “Maybe someone wants to stop the marriage. Essentially he’s asking us to establish a treaty between his government and ours, the kind that usually take years to arrange.”
“Why should my marrying him involve a treaty?”
She smiled. “It’s one of the oldest stories in the book. Two powers establish an alliance through an advantageous marriage.” Her comments puzzled me. I didn’t know then that Althor’s people view lineage as more durable than government. The Raylicans have spent six thousand years struggling to survive their infertility. During that time their empire rose, collapsed, and rose again. To them, fertility is the most enduring symbol of a union. Two centuries ago the Imperial Assembly arranged a marriage between Althor’s mother and an Allied man. The contract for that union was a treaty that filled a library. Although the marriage eventually failed, the treaty remained in effect until the last Skolian-Trader war, when Earth betrayed the Imperialate.
Was it truly betrayal? That depends on your point of view. During the war, Althor’s aunt, Sauscony Valdoria, commanded the Imperial fleet. As per terms of the treaty, she sent the most vulnerable members of the Rhon to Earth, for protection. After the war the Allieds refused to release them, fearing it would restart the star-spanning destruction. What made it even more galling was that the Traders agreed to release their most valuable prisoner of war—Althor’s father—in exchange for the son of the late Trader emperor.
“An Imperial special operations team eventually freed the members of the Rhon being held on Earth,” Ming said. “But we almost went to war over it. The Raylicans themselves may be dying, but their Imperialate thrives, especially with the influx of genes from Allied immigrants. The only reason they don’t overthrow us is because, small as we are, we’re almost big enough to tip the balance of power toward whoever allies with us.”
I considered the implications of her words. “Althor’s parents are both Rhon, aren’t they?” I searched for a tactful way to put it. “They’re both—close.”
“It’s called inbreeding.” Ming exhaled. “It’s not my place to judge. Inbreeding is one of the few ways the Rhon can reproduce themselves.” She considered me. “Do you know your Kyle rating?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“It’s an exponen
tial scale. Ninety-nine percent of humans are between 0 and 2. Those who test higher than 3, about one in a thousand, are empaths. A rating of 6 qualifies a person as a telepath, about one in a million. Only one in ten billion rates as a 10. The scale starts to break down above 11 or 12. Rhon operators—like Althor—are rated as ‘Rhon’ instead of by a number because their ratings are much too high to quantify. The Rhon are also rare to the point of extinction.”
That took a moment to absorb. “He thinks I’m a telepath. But before I met him, I never picked up much.”
She nodded. “I’ve heard it’s not unusual, in a link between two or more operators, for the stronger to expand the abilities of the others. But even without him I bet you have a high rating, at least four. Perhaps even five.”
Four. Perhaps five. I had never thought of myself as special in any way before.
After Ming left me to rest, I lay on the quilt, reaching for the Jag…
Attending, the Jag thought.
How is Althor? I asked.
Asleep. I’m still working on him.
I’ve been wondering about Kyle operators.
I can make my library available to you.
Will it distract you from your work?
No. The index is a minor automatedfunction. It requires no attention. A menu formed in my mind:
Index
Help
Exit
Index, I thought.
I closed my eyes and a library seemed to appear, a room of ceiling-high shelves crammed with books. A librarian who looked like Martinelli seated me in an armchair. In response to my questions, he brought books or else sat in another chair and talked to me. He made images in the air, detailed pictures to illustrate his words.
Several hundred Kyle genes exist. They are alleles, or alternate forms, of normal genes. Mutations. Like most mutations they do more harm than good. Fortunately they are almost fully recessive, which means that they show almost no manifestation unless you inherit copies from both parents. People who carry one Kyle allele and one normal gene are normal, but those with paired alleles often have problems. Anemia. Missing limbs or organs. Lung or heart disease. Abnormalities in nerve, muscle, or circulatory development. Brain damage. Kyle fetuses often die within weeks of conception. Those that survive rarely live long enough to reproduce.