Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (3 page)

“All right.” And off she went, but not before she gave Rex another
one of her shy smiles.

Across the room, the door opened. A group came into the bar—and
this time when my shoulders went rigid it was my own reaction, not anyone else’s.

Traders. There were six of them now, the five we had seen earlier
plus a man they were guarding. A man with shimmering black hair and red eyes.

Aristo.

As soon as they saw us, the Traders stopped. We all stared
at one another. The bartender quit polishing his glass and set it under the
counter.

Don’t you hate them?
Taas had asked. Hate was too
mild a word. I saw the Aristo and my brain felt hot with my memories of Tarque,
the Aristo governor on Tams. Three weeks of torture. This Aristo stared at me
with his perfect ruby eyes, his perfect black hair shimmering and his perfect
body relaxed. I wanted to break every perfect bone in his perfect face.

Steady, I told myself. Steady.

One of the Aristo’s bodyguards leaned toward him and spoke.
I didn’t need to be a telepath to know he suggested they find a bar with a
higher class of clientele. But the Aristo shook his head. Then he settled down
on a stool at the counter.

“I can’t just sit here and watch them drink.” Taas was crumpling
his menu in his hands. “I can’t do it.”

Rex nodded. “Let’s go.”

Helda stood up.

“Sit down,” I said.

They all stared at me. Then Helda sat.

I felt Rex nudge at my mind, but I kept the door closed. My
thoughts about Traders were private, even from Rex. To say I had no desire to
stay at the bar now was the understatement of the century. It was also
irrelevant. “Aristos don’t come to Delos for vacations,” I said. “He must be
here for a reason. Our job is to find it out.”

A muscle in Rex’s cheek jerked. He had had that twitch ever
since he saw what Tarque did to me on Tams, saw me so rigid with shock and fear
that I couldn’t speak.

Helda fingered her belt where her holster normally hung. But
none of us were armed with more than small hidden knives. Even without a
diplomacy mod, I knew how threatening it would have looked for us to stroll
along the Delos boardwalk with Jumbler guns on our hips.

Neither had the Traders been armed when we had seen them
earlier. But now they had someone to protect, someone apparently high enough in
their social hierarchy that it compelled them to carry burn-lasers, complete
with powerpacks clipped to their belts.

“Just watch them,” I said. “See if you can pick up anything.”

The waitress reappeared at our table and set a drink in
front of me, a glass filled with amber liquid. I didn’t know much about Earth
distillation processes, but I knew liquor. What she gave me wasn’t ale, it was
rum.

My English must have been even worse than I realized. I
shook my head at her. “We beer have.” I motioned at the others. “Beer. For all.”

She swallowed. “It’s a—” Her voice squeaked. “The man—he
ordered it for you.”

“What man?”

She nodded toward the Aristo. “Him.”

I stared at her. Then I gave her back the glass of rum. I
had to make a conscious effort to keep myself from shoving it back in her hands
so fast that it spilled.

Rex stood up and took the glass from her. He slipped his
hand under her elbow and walked her to the bar, where he set down the rum. Then
he drew her to the back of the room and took her out a door that I guessed led
to the kitchen. I understood why he wanted her out of sight; if she was having
the same effect on the Aristo that she had made on our group, she could be in
trouble.

But the Aristo hadn’t even glanced at her. I was the one he
was watching. I felt like bugs were crawling on my skin.

Taas was twisting his menu, making the holes distort into
weird mishmashes of color. “What do you want us to do?”

“Note everything you can about them,” I said. “What they’re
wearing, how they sit, how they move, how they speak. Store it in your memory
and back it up. We’ll feed it into the Net later and see what we come up with.”

Helda motioned toward some hologames in a corner of the
room. “From there I get a different view.”

I nodded. “Go.”

Across the room, the musicians finished their song. They
stood on the stage and looked at the Traders, then at us, then at one another.
The drummer said something to a horn player, and a sudden urge to
get out of
here
made the muscles in my legs contract as if I were preparing to run. I
had to make a conscious effort to sit still.

Then again, maybe sitting wasn’t the best choice. The stage
had a good view of the Trader group.

“I can keep this side of the room covered,” Taas said.

“Good.” I smiled slightly. “I think I’ll go for some music appreciation.”

As I walked across the room, I felt the Aristo watching me.
When I reached the stage I spoke to the singer, a man with dark hair. “Can you
a song play?”

“What would you like?” he asked.

“You pick.”

He nodded, but I had a feeling that what he really wanted
was for all of us to leave, both my squad and the Traders. I didn’t blame him.

The band started to play again, a slower piece with a sweet
melody. The man sang in a well-trained baritone. Had the situation been
different, I would have enjoyed it.

I watched the Trader group with my peripheral vision. So I
saw it when the Aristo stood up and came toward me. As he neared, I turned to
face him.

He stopped in front of me and spoke in perfect, albeit accented,
Skolian. “It’s pleasant, isn’t it?” The accent was Aristo, pure Aristo from the
elite Highton caste, the aristocracy of the aristocracy, the overlords in the
Aristo hierarchy.

It was all I could do to keep from pulling out the knife
hidden in my boot. “What do you want?”

“To meet you.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “I meant no offense.”

That didn’t fit. I had met many Aristos, usually over
long-range communication but also in person during the sporadic and consistently
failed attempts at peace we and the Traders had made. They always spoke with
arrogance, often outright scorn. This one seemed to have missed his training in
how to act superior.

But his guards missed nothing. They stood in formation by
the bar with their guns drawn, looking ready to detonate. The Aristo must have
ordered them to stay put; otherwise they would have never let a Jagernaut talk
to him alone.
Block,
I thought. Their hostility receded, but the Block
psicon kept flashing in my mind, warning that my systems couldn’t keep out the
full onslaught of their emotions. To do so would have required my brain to
release so much of the drug that inhibited the psi specific receptors on my
neurons that it would have interfered with my ability to think.

Jack’s other patrons had either left or moved to the back of
the bar. Rex was back, holding a massive knife he must have taken from the
kitchen. Taas and Helda also had knives out, smaller ones like the blade I wore
in my boot. There were five Traders with lasers and only four of us with
knives, but we had an advantage; the Aristo was easily within my reach. His
perfect self would make a perfect hostage.

“Why do you want to meet me?” I asked him.

“It’s your hair.” His expression brightened. “I’ve never
seen anything like it.”

I stiffened. Tarque had told me the same thing. My hair was
black and curly, a little more than shoulder length. But about two thirds of
the way down it shaded into a dark wine color and at the ends it turned gold.
It had fascinated Tarque. Was this Aristo also looking for providers? He was
young, not much more than twenty, but that was more than old enough. Aristos
usually took their first providers when they reached puberty.

But something about him didn’t fit. I couldn’t figure it.
The chiseled features of his face had the look of a Highton. His accent fit
perfectly, his stance fit perfectly, his voice fit perfectly. Yet something was
wrong.

“What do you want with my hair?” I asked.

“It’s pretty.” He shook his head. “You’re so beautiful. Why
do you want to be a soldier?”

In my mind I saw that image again, the one that haunted my
memories: Tarque raising his long finger to point at me.
That one. I want
that one.

I had to struggle to keep my voice even. “And I suppose you
would be happy to show me my other options in life, right?”

He smiled. “Perhaps for this one evening? This is Delos
after all. Here we can, at least for one night, meet each other as friends.”

Right, I thought. Aristos socialized only with their own
caste. Period. Their only use for the rest of us was as objects for barter. Did
he really think I would walk off into the night with him? I’d never see my
freedom again.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m busy tonight.”

He looked disappointed but unsurprised. “Perhaps someday.”

Then he bowed and walked back to his group. As I watched,
his guards closed around him and hurried him out the door.

It wasn’t until they were gone that his bow fully registered
on me. Aristos only did that with each other, as a sign of respect. None I knew
would be caught dead bowing to one of us.

Rex came over to me, still holding his monster knife. “Are
you all right?”

“Fine,” I said.

“What did he want?”

I spread my hands. “He was trying to pick me up.”

Rex tensed. “Did he threaten you?”

“No. Not at all. I’ve never heard an Aristo like him. He
sounded normal. Very polite.”

Helda and Taas came up on my other side. “You think it was a
trick?” Helda asked.

“I don’t know.” I exhaled. “But if I hadn’t had experience
with Traders, he might have convinced me to go with him.”

“We should warn the Arcade police,” Taas said. “Before he
does get someone around here to go off with him.”

I nodded. Taas was right, of course. But somehow I didn’t
think the Aristo would talk to anyone else. Something about him didn’t fit, it
just didn’t fit at all.

The city of Athens bordered the north and east sides of the
Arcade. I had no idea why the Allieds called the place Athens; it was as ugly
as its ancient namesake on Earth was reputed to be beautiful. They had laid it
out in squares delineated by nervoplex streets and lit by boxy lamp posts. As
Rex and I walked along the darkening roads, hovercars hummed by us, their
cushions of air exciting the black nervoplex into rippling patterns that
bounced back and forth between the curbs. Maybe the people who lived here liked
the effect, but it gave me a headache.

The police station was a one-story building chromed with the
same blue and silver colors worn by the Arcade police. We entered a lobby with
a counter on its far side. As we crossed the room, a holocam tracked our
movements from its perch in a corner of the ceiling.

A woman with graying hair greeted us at the counter. “Boro
na sas voetheso?” she said.

Translate, I thought.

Greek, my spinal node responded. Translation: May I help
you?

The woman looked from Rex to me, her gaze darting over our
uniforms, then back to our faces. She repeated her question, her voice higher
in pitch this time. What did we want, coming in here dressed like that—

Block,
I thought. The psicon flashed and I stopped
feeling like a criminal.

Translate ‘We would like to make a report’ into Greek,
I
thought. As my spinal node provided the translation, I spoke haltingly, copying
the words as exactly as I could manage. But it didn’t sound much like the way
the node had pronounced it.

“Ti?” the woman asked. The spinal node translated it: What?

I pushed my hand through my hair. “Skolian?”

She shook her head. “Okhi Skolian.”

No Skolian, the node translated.

“English?” I asked.

“Okhi English.”

How do I say ‘interpreter’ in Greek?, I thought.

Diermeneas, the node answered.

I regarded the woman. “Diermeneas? Skolian. Diermeneas.”

“Epanalabete?” she asked. The spinal node gave that one as
Say again?

I gave it another try. “Diermeneas.”

“Ah.” The furrow lines in her forehead smoothed out. She motioned
for us to follow her.

She took us to a small room with a table surrounded by nervoplex
chairs. Three of the walls were blank, but the fourth had a large pane of
opaque glass. I suspected the glass was transparent when viewed from the other
side; the place looked like an interrogation room.

After the woman left, Rex scowled at the chairs.

I smiled. You don’t like the decor?

He grimaced. It’s hard enough muting people’s reactions
without having it multiplied by what we sit in.

I brushed my finger over the nervoplex back of a chair and
it stiffened in response. In truth, it could do no more than react to our
muscle tension. Empaths tended to interact with nervoplex, stiffening when it
tried to relax our muscles, relaxing when it tensed up. It set up a feedback
loop that intensified whatever we were feeling. So really it only multiplied
our own emotions. But Jagernauts were like sponges; other people’s feelings
became ours. Even the most disciplined of us, soldiers who showed no response
at all to most observers, experienced minute changes in posture and muscle tension
when we picked up emotions.

The door opened and a young man came into the room. He
walked over to Rex and smiled, extending his hand. “My pleasure at your
company,” he said in perfect Skolian. “I am Tiller Smith.”

Rex blinked at him, then looked at me.

Put your hand in his and move it up and down, I thought.

Rex grasped Tiller’s hand and pumped it vigorously. “Gracias,”
he said, using one of the few Earth words he knew.

Tiller winced, and extricated his hand from Rex’s clutch. “Mrs.
Karpozilos said you wanted to report a crime.”

Why is he talking to me? Rex thought. Can’t he tell that
you outrank me?

Maybe he doesn’t know our military protocol.
Aloud, I
said, “Not a crime. We’re hoping to prevent one.”

Tiller glanced at me, reddened, and looked away. He peered
at the arms of Rex’s jacket, then at mine, then at Rex’s again. Finally he
said, “I’m sorry—I’ve never really worked as an interpreter before. I’m just a
handyman here. I—well, I’m not sure how to do this.” He spread his hands. “I
can’t even read your identifications.”

Identifications? I looked down at my jacket. The only
markings on the black material were a line of silver studs, and of course the
gold band around each of my upper arms that denoted my rank. Rex’s jacket was
identical except that he had two narrower bands on each of his arms. Did Tiller
mean our ranks?

“I’m Sauscony Valdoria, Primary.” I motioned at Rex. “Rex
Blackstone, Secondary.”

Tiller gaped at me.
“You’re
an Imperial Admiral?”

“Primary. It’s not the same thing.”

“But isn’t Primary another word for Admiral?”

“The rank is similar,” I said. “But it’s not the same.
Primaries are Jagernauts. Only Jagernauts.”

“Cyberfighters.” Excitement leapt in Tiller’s voice. “Telepathic
computers, yes? I studied about you in—Ah!” He hit his head with his palm. “I
digress. You didn’t come here to be questioned by me. My apologies.”

“That’s all right,” I said. It was actually rather nice to
meet someone who didn’t wish we would go away.

He motioned to the chairs. “Shall we sit?”

Rex and I looked at each other. Neither of us made any move
to sit. After a moment Tiller said, “I have a better idea. Why don’t you come
to my office? I have some great armchairs there.” He glanced at the nervoplex
seats and added, “Mine have cloth upholstery.”

“All right,” I said.

Tiller’s “office” was a cubbyhole between a restroom and a
closet. Shelves lined the walls, crammed with holobooks and old-style texts with
paper pages. Equipment was everywhere: optical tools, dismantled holoscreens,
parts of computer consoles, jacks for human/computer interfaces, pieces of
burn-lasers. The clutter covered every available surface and hung from anything
that remotely resembled a hook. A faint odor of oil hung in the air. The
promised armchairs were buried under boxes of hologram film.

“Here.” Tiller cleared off three chairs, transferring the
boxes to his already crowded desk.

I chose a chair with a worn covering that crackled when I
sat down. Rex settled into a green chair. When Tiller pulled up his seat, we
made a small circle. He pulled a slender rod out of his pocket and tapped it
against his knee. The rod hummed, then unrolled into a flexible screen that lay
in his lap. Dark letters appeared, suspended about a millimeter above the
screen. A holocam icon glowed in one corner, which I guessed meant he was also
making a visual recording.

“Okay.” As Tiller spoke, his words formed above the screen. “Tell
me what happened.”

“A Trader Aristo is visiting the Arcade,” I said.

Tiller stiffened. “And?”

I considered him for a moment. “Do you know why we call the
Eubians by the name Traders?”

He nodded. “I know—knew—someone who was on a ship captured
by a Eubian Huntercraft. His family has been trying to find him for six years
now. The authorities say he’s probably been sold to an Aristo.”

“I’m sorry.” I knew their chances of rescuing his friend
were nil. “We think that may be why the Aristo is here. To find providers.”

As Tiller’s hand tightened on the arm of his chair, my own
knuckles started to ache. “You think he’s planning to kidnap someone?” Tiller
asked.

Rex rubbed his hands together, massaging the knuckles. “It’s
possible.”

“I don’t understand,” Tiller said. “Why would an Aristo come
to Delos for that?”

“Providers have to be empaths,” Rex said. “And empaths are
rare, particularly among the Traders. He might have thought he had a better
chance of finding one here.”

“Empaths?” Tiller spoke carefully. “The official Allied position
is that they don’t exist.”

Rex shrugged. “That’s your problem.”

Tiller held up his hands. “I didn’t say we all thought that.
Just that the experts aren’t yet officially convinced true empaths exist.”

I wondered how an official conviction differed from an unofficial
one. “An entire range exists, from simple empaths all the way up to those who
can sometimes pick up the thoughts that go with the emotions.”

A surge of excitement made my stomach feel like shimmerflies
danced in it. In the same instant Tiller said, “You mean telepathy, yes? Are
you—?” He stopped himself. “I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that I’ve never met
telepaths before. I mean, you have to be, right? If you’re Jagernauts?”

I couldn’t help but smile. I liked Tiller. Most people
wanted to be as far from us as possible, fearing we would violate their privacy,
or worse. I had heard fabulous talents attributed to Jagernauts, everything
from moving mountains to adjusting the future. In truth the best we could do
was catch unusually intense thoughts, and even that was difficult unless the
sender was also a strong enough empath to send thoughts as well as emotions.

“A Jagernaut has to rate five or above on the scale,” Rex
said.

“Scale?” Tiller asked.

“The Kyle Empathic Reception and Expression Scale,” I said. “Most
people just call it the psi scale. It measures an empath’s strength. The scale
is inverse exponential, so higher numbers are rare. Ninety-nine percent of all
humans are between zero and two. Only one in every hundred thousand is above
five. What most people call telepaths are six or above.”

Tiller looked from Rex to me. “And you’re both sixes?”

Neither Rex nor I answered. After a moment, Tiller said, “What’s
wrong?”

“What would you do,” I asked, “if I asked you how many times
you made love last night?”

He reddened, and suddenly I felt mortified, as if I had
peeked into his bedroom. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was so
private.”

“I rate as a ten,” Rex said.

I stared at him. What had possessed him to reveal that? I
knew the ratings for my squad: Taas was seven, Helda six. At ten, Rex was that
one-in-ten-billion telepath. But knowing their ratings was part of my job as squad
leader. I doubted Rex had told Taas yet, maybe not even Helda.

Tiller looked at me—and I caught it. Feedback. He was
feeding my surprise back to me.

Are you getting it too? Rex thought. I was trying to draw
him out.

You could ask him, I thought.

Too personal.

I think he wants to know. And he seems more comfortable
with you.

Rex considered that. Then he spoke to Tiller. “How long have
you known you were an empath?”

“What?” Tiller turned red. “I never claimed—”

“You’re in a feedback loop with us,” Rex said. “You’re
picking up our emotions and sending them back to us.”

Tiller gaped at us. “You’re
kidding.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”

“Of course not.” He paused. “Well, I mean, I’ve always suspected,
at least I thought—but you don’t go around saying things like that. People
would laugh at you.”

A breathless feeling came over me, like fear and hope mixed
up together. It was an odd sensation, pleasant in a way but also foreign. At
that exact moment Tiller said, “You really think I could be an empath?”

Rex smiled, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “You ought
to get tested.”

“I’ve thought of it. That’s why I spent so much time
learning Skolian. But I can’t afford passage to a Skolian world.” He looked
from me to Rex. “I’m probably fooling myself, anyway. I mean, I just don’t see
any evidence I’m different.”

“It’s not something you see,” Rex said. “It’s your brain.”

“There’s something wrong with my brain?”

“Not wrong,” I said. Though I supposed that depended on your
point of view. “It contains two extra organs.”

Tiller laughed. “In my skull? There’s no room.”

I smiled. “They’re microscopic. More people have them than
realize it. The Kyle afferent body and the Kyle efferent body. The KAB receives
input and the KEB sends it.”

“What input?” Tiller asked.

“When you think, neurons fire in your brain,” Rex said. “My
KAB picks that up.”

“Why?” Tiller asked. “How does it know my neurons fired?”

“The molecules in your brain are described by a quantum probability
distribution—”

“Wait.” Tiller put up a hand to stop him. “I don’t
understand quantum.”

“Imagine an invisible hill centered on your brain,” Rex
said. “That’s the probability distribution. Its ‘foothills’ fan out in all directions.
They
get
smaller so fast that they’ve dropped to almost nothing a few
hundred meters away from you. The closer you are to me, the better they overlap
my brain. When you think, it changes the shape of those hills and my KAB picks
that up.”

Tiller considered him. “So why doesn’t this quantum hill overlap
everyone?”

“It does,” Rex said. “But without a KAB, a person has no way
to read it. The more intense your feelings the more molecular sites they
stimulate on my KAB. The KAB then sends messages to neural structures in my
brain called para centers. Only empaths have them. My paras interpret that
input as your emotions.”

“And the KEB?” Tiller asked.

“Amplifier,” I said. “It increases the range and intensity
of the signal you send to other empaths, so much so that they may even be able
to decode your thoughts from it. KEB sends. KAB receives.”

Tiller grinned. “No wonder I’m so slow. With all this extra
business going on, I never have time for just thinking.”

Rex laughed. “Actually, the increased number of brain cells
in your cortex may make you more intelligent than average.”

“Not me,” Tiller said. “Not compared to my siblings. My
sister is a math genius and my brother is a philosopher.”