Somehow he managed to say, "Your magnanimous character is noted." He almost gagged on the words.
Muze should have been pleased with the response. But he only seemed warier. Wary . . . and something else. What?
Then it hit Jaibriol. The colonel was transcending. With growing horror, Jaibriol realized Muze suspected his good mood was linked to the emperor. Jaibriol shored up his barriers, but it didn't help; his defenses were too strained.
"I shall arrange matters to your taste," Muze was saying.
Alarm flared in Jaibriol. He had to stop Muze from bringing a provider. He would experience the psion's agony as if it was his own, and if that happened in his current weakened state, he would crack open. But he couldn't form the words to extricate himself for the situation; his thoughts fled the intricacies of the Highton language like a cornered animal in pain.
"Your Highness?" Muze asked, his gaze hard.
A chime sounded.
Jaibriol blinked. As he turned toward the sound, Robert looked up from the desk where he had been occupying himself. Until now, he had apparently been too inconsequential for Muze to bother noticing.
"Your Glorious H-highness." Robert sounded terrified. "Please excuse my deplorable interruption. I beg you to forgive me. It is an urgent message from his eminence, Lord Corbal Xir. He requests you attend it soon. Sire!" He slipped out of the chair and knelt with his head down. "I beg you, forgive me."
Jaibriol would have gaped in utter astonishment at his aide's peculiar behavior, except the agony in his head overcame every other reaction, even his falling over in shock. Whatever had afflicted Robert?
It took him a moment to realize Robert was giving him an out. Corbal ranked well above Vatrix Muze in Highton levels of power and influence, enough so the colonel would have to accept a dismissal. At the same time, Robert implied the emperor would see that his aide paid for such an unwelcome interruption from an evening of pleasure. With his mind so raw, Jaibriol knew Robert was terrified, not of him, but for him. Robert feared that if this audience continued, the emperor would reveal himself in ways better left unknown.
Jaibriol lifted his hand to Muze, palm upward, the gesture meant to indicate apology and displeasure with the source of the infraction, Robert in this case. "It appears my cousin is more eminent than usual," he said wryly.
Muze gave a startled laugh. Apparently Jaibriol's attempt at a Highton joke hadn't fallen flat. He didn't know whether to be relieved he could pull it off or dismayed he was becoming that much of an Aristo.
He initiated the process of dismissing Muze without insult. The entire time, Robert stayed on his knees, shaking. When Hidaka escorted the colonel from the room, Jaibriol had an odd sense, as if Hidaka stayed too close to Muze. It wasn't enough to be an overt threat, but he wondered if the Razer was subconsciously trying to intimidate the colonel. It couldn't be conscious; Razers were designed to consider Aristos supreme beings. It was imprinted in their biomech webs and neural nets. Unless Muze endangered or attacked the emperor, Hidaka could no more threaten him than he could turn inside out. Given that Muze had done nothing more than offer Jaibriol a pleasure girl, the Razer could hardly consider him a danger.
After Muze was gone, Jaibriol said, "Thank you, Hidaka. You all may go as well."
"If it pleases Your Highness that we leave," Hidaka said in his deep voice, "we will esteem and honor your wishes." Then he added, "But I beg you to ask us to commit suicide instead, for we would rather take our own lives than leave yours undefended."
Hell and damnation. The last thing he needed was his Razers arguing with him under the guise of spurious threats to commit suicide. "Hidaka," he said softly. "Go. My head hurts."
The captain stared at him. Hightons never admitted weakness. The shock of it had the desired effect; Hidaka offered no more objections, just motioned for the other guards to leave with him.
As soon as he and Robert were alone, Jaibriol slid down to the floor next to his aide and slumped against the desk. Robert had scanned the room earlier for monitoring devices, but Jaibriol didn't want to take chances. Audio bugs were harder to find than optical, so instead of speaking, he tapped a message on his wrist comm and held it so Robert could see it even with his head bowed.
=Why are you on the floor?= Jaibriol asked.
Robert raised his head. Then he tapped out a message on his comm. =You must not let them harm you.=
=I am the emperor. They cannot.= That wasn't true, but he had endured too much truth for the night. He just wanted to go to bed and give his meds a chance to treat his aching head.
=They can,= Robert wrote. =And they will.=
Robert never openly contradicted him. It scared Jaibriol. =I'll be all right,= he answered.
=We must leave this place,= Robert answered. =It is worse for you here.=
A chill went through Jaibriol. Just how much did Robert suspect? =I can't go yet.=
=Cancel the meeting tomorrow. A crisis has arisen. Lord Xir bids you to attend it.=
Jaibriol thought he must be even more dazed than he had realized, to have forgotten what elicited Robert's reaction in the first place. Reorienting, he wrote, =If Corbal sent a message by starship and it's already arrived, he must have sent it just after I left Glory.=
Robert met his gaze squarely. =Forgive me. I lied.=
Jaibriol gaped at him. Robert was supposed to be incapable of misleading a Highton. That he admitted it without a flinch also put the lie to his performance of terror in front of Muze. When Jaibriol didn't immediately respond, Robert paled. But he never averted his gaze.
Jaibriol took a deep breath. =Very well. I will leave for this "emergency."= As relief suffused his aide's face, he added, =But first I must visit the Lock.=
Robert's brow furrowed. =You are already in the Lock.=
=Not the station. The singularity.=
=But it is dead, Sire.= Robert grimaced. =Unless evil spirits haunt its grave. This station is a grim place.=
=It has no spirits. Just technology.=
Robert didn't answer, and Jaibriol doubted his aide believed him. Jaibriol rubbed his head with his fingertips. Regardless of his condition, he couldn't leave before he did what he had come here to do. He feared that what had begun as a small anomaly could become an interstellar catastrophe by the time it reached the SSRB. The implosions had started where he lived. Maybe it was coincidence. But he didn't believe that. The Lock was seeking him. Maybe it wanted any Ruby psion, and he happened to be closest.
He had to find out what it needed before it was too late.
XVIII
The Ward Of Lives
Radiance filled Kelric Skolia.
Light flowed, liquid and brilliant.
A thought formed in his mind, with the sense of an alien intelligence. KEY.
Yes, Kelric thought. I am your Key. His body no longer existed. He had become thought. Light. Radiance.
NOT KEY, the Lock answered.
I am your Key. He could never stop being one. His brain was so thoroughly intertwined with the Dyad, it would cause fatal brain damage if he tried to withdraw.
DEATH. The luminosity dimmed around Kelric.
Whose death? Kelric asked.
ALL.
Kelric didn't like the sound of it. If the Lock ceased with him in it, he would stop existing as well. His gauntlets had thought of "home," which suggested the SSRB where he had found them. Could that Lock be dying because he had deactivated it?
How can I help? Kelric asked. What do you need?
STRENGTH.
That I can do. He gathered his power into a great wave and flooded the Kyle. The fading of the light slowed, but it didn't stop.
ENDING, the Lock thought.
Then I must go, Kelric thought. If he didn't return to his own universe, he could vanish here. The first time he had entered a Lock, he had no trouble leaving. He had thought of doing it and found himself stepping out of the singularity. But now, when he tried, it didn't work—and without a body, he had no other w
ay to go back.
The universe darkened. END.
NO!
The Kyle vanished.
Jaibriol Qox, Emperor of Eube, stood at the threshold of the corridor that led to the SSRB Lock and stared down the dead, dark pathway. Columns rose on either side, shadowed and filled with motionless gears. Nothing glowed here except a small Eubian safety light on the dais behind him.
He had come alone into this graveyard. He had evaded his guards by leaving his quarters through a disguised exit Robert had discovered when he swept the room for monitors. Convincing Robert to let him go by himself had been more difficult. His aide feared the Lock and had no desire to enter it, but he had even less desire for the emperor to do so. When Jaibriol told him to remain behind, he had thought for one astonishing moment that Robert would refuse an Imperial order. Then his aide had knelt to him, his face flushed, and Jaibriol had felt smaller than an insect.
No sense of life awaited him. No intellect tugged at his mind. Before Kelric had killed this Lock, Jaibriol had felt its presence. It filled the station. Apparently no one else sensed it, certainly no Aristo or taskmaker, possibly not even a provider. But Jaibriol had known. Now that presence was gone.
Are you dead? he thought. Maybe he was deluded, to imagine this place as anything more than a big room with defunct machines and a path that led . . .
Where?
He started down the Lock corridor.
Darkness surrounded him. The wan light from the dais dimmed to nothing. It should have trickled down the pathway, yet nothing penetrated the gloom. He walked in blackness.
Jaibriol stopped, uneasy. He looked back the way he had come, but he could see no more in that direction. Turning forward again, he took another step. The darkness drew closer. He knew, logically, that a lack of light wasn't "close." Yet he felt as if it wrapped around him, heavy and dense.
He continued on.
Jaibriol had no idea how long he walked. Unable to see even his hand in front of his face, he felt dissociated from reality. This place between space-time and some other universe had gone wrong. He considered returning to the dais room, but he feared if he walked the other way, he would never reach the end of the path in that direction either. He existed in a limbo of nothing.
His hand hit a surface. With a relieved grunt, he felt along the barrier and found an opening. When he stretched out his arm, his hand hit another side. And archway, perhaps. He leaned against the lintel, his heart beating hard. Although he had no idea where he had ended up or if he could escape this place, at least it was a place.
When his pulse settled, he took an exploratory step through the archway. He almost fell; the floor on the other side was a hand span lower than on his side. He felt his way along a cool, smooth wall and figured out that he had entered a small room with eight sides. An octagon chamber. An octagonal depression in its center was about two paces wide.
Jaibriol rubbed his hand over his eyes. Worn out, he slid down one wall and sat on the floor. He was no closer to discovering if the Lock had a connection to the implosions.
"What should I do?" he asked the air.
Silence.
After he rested, he climbed to his feet and made his way along the wall again, headed toward the doorway. Maybe he should go back to his quarters and sleep, before his body gave out.
His knee hit a hard surface.
Jaibriol paused, startled. Then he explored the barrier. It felt like a console. Yes, here was the seat. He sat down and slid his palms over the panels until his fingers scraped a line of engraved hieroglyphics. He felt it carefully. He didn't recognize the language, but it had elements in common with both Iotic and Highton, which derived from the same roots. He pieced out the inscription:
To you, Karj, comes the ward of lives.
Karj? Could it mean Kurj, the man who had been Imperator before Jaibriol's mother? But he had died only twelve years ago, and this inscription was probably thousands of years old. The name Kurj dated from before the time when Skolia and Eube had split apart, back when they had all been one people.
He tried to activate the console, but nothing worked. Finally he gave up and went back to the center of the chamber. Kneeling in the depression, he felt around the floor, searching for clues to understand this place. The sleek surface offered no answers.
Frustrated, he sat with one leg bent and his elbow resting on his knee. His thoughts felt muted, but at least it eased the damage from his exposure to Aristos, especially Colonel Muze, whose mind had grated like sandpaper on a raw wound. The darkness settled over him like a blanket and muffled his brain.
In the darkness of a space that didn't exist, Kelric Skolia strained to keep his identity intact.
Begin.
He shored up Kyle space like the Atlas of Earth's mythology holding up the world.
Begin.
His power beat like a deep pulse.
Begin.
The darkness stabilized, an absence of light but no longer of existence. And Kelric began to understand.
When he had deactivated one of the Locks, he had eliminated one of three nodes that sustained Kyle space. The Locks balanced the Kyle web; with only two operating, it strained and snapped. Humanity had created million of gates that connected the Kyle to space-time, and each one added to the strain. Just as earthquakes relieved pressure in a planet's crust, so the implosions relieved stresses between the two universes. The instabilities had built for ten years, until something had to give. When the disruptions reached the SSRB, they were going to rip apart space-time between the three Locks like fault lines cracking. It would be an interstellar disaster of unprecedented proportions.
Kelric saw no choice. He had to reactivate the Lock. A universe where the Traders had access to Kyle technology wasn't one he wanted to contemplate, but destroying a substantial portion of space could be even worse. Gods only knew how many people would die and star systems perish.
He had no idea if he could restart the Lock from so far away, but as a Key, he had more resources than anyone else, probably more than he had plumbed. The SSRB Lock existed at the fringes of his awareness, quiescent, distant and vague, but alive.
Resume, he thought.
No response.
I am your Key. Come to me.
Like a leviathan awaking, the Lock stirred.
Jaibriol sat in the darkened SSRB Lock and tried to understand its emptiness.
Come to me, he thought, he wasn't certain why, except that the words felt right.
The Lock stirred.
Jaibriol froze. Who? he asked.
NOT KEY. It was as if a distant monolith turned toward him.
I'm not a Key, that's true, he admitted.
DEATH.
He swallowed, wondering if it thought he had killed it. Do you mean this Lock? Uneasily, he added, Or me?
ALL.
Both of us?
NO.
I don't understand.
END.
His frustration built. What ends? He felt foolish questioning a thought that was probably a figment of his imagination.
THE CORRIDOR OF AGES.
I don't understand. He didn't know if the thoughts came from the Lock, the machinery, or something else.
Nothing.
You have to help me. That felt wrong. He delved deeper into his mind—and words came as if Kyle space itself revealed them.
Come to me, Jaibriol thought. I am your Key.
Kelric's thought thundered throughout the Kyle.
RESUME.
With a gigantic, shattering surge of power, the Lock awoke.
Light flooded the chamber where Jaibriol sat, brilliant and painful. He cried out and covered his eyes. In that instant, the Kyle singularity shot up through the floor and pierced the chamber—
Right through Jaibriol.
XIX
A Chilling Blue
Crush the petals of a night-fragrant vine,
In bitter dreaming sweetness.
Hold its vulnerable, frail be
auty,
Cherished beyond all reason.