Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (36 page)

My father was silent
for a moment. Then he said, “Madam President, before I give you their
identities I need your word that you will reveal this conversation to no one.”

Jaibriol’s hand
tightened around mine. Like me, he must have been present during dealings of
his government with Calloway. He would know what I knew: her word was
good—which was why she gave it so rarely. What if she refused my father now? As
soon as she saw us, she would realize she was being asked to intervene in a
matter that could tear apart the Rhon at its highest levels. How could she know
it was to her advantage to side with my father?

“You’re asking a great deal,” she said.

“With reason.”

“And if I don’t
promise my silence?”

He didn’t answer
immediately. But I felt his turmoil. He was going to tell her anyway, even
without her guarantee. If she contacted Kurj with what she knew—no, we couldn’t
let that happen. He would know that I wasn’t the only one who had committed
treason, and Kurj had far less desire to see my father alive than me.

Father, no! I thought. Don’t do it.

He didn’t respond.
Instead he spoke to Calloway. “If you can’t give me your word, people may die.
Members of the Rhon.”

“And if I do give it?”

“No one but you and I
will ever know.”

“What about the two
people in question?”

“They also. But we’ll
send them where no one can find them.”

She watched him with a
guarded expression. “What you’re asking is that I enter into a pact with only
one member of the Triad, an agreement you intend to keep secret from the
others.”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t tell me
why until I make this pact.”

“I must ask you to
trust in my judgment.”

“Judgment and politics
are rarely easy bedfellows, Lord Valdoria.”

“Nevertheless, I must
ask for your trust.”

Whatever she was
thinking, she revealed nothing. If my father picked up anything through the
psiphon, he gave no hint of it. I doubted she let down her barriers enough for
him to catch even a glimmer. Despite the Allied’s “official” position about
psibernetics, I was sure their President had been well trained to protect herself
against members of the Rhon.

As the silence
lengthened, I glanced at Jaibriol. Sweat had gathered at his temple and was
running down to his neck. I could feel wetness on my own hand where it gripped
his.

“Very well,” Calloway said. “I give you my word.”

I made a small sound,
one barely audible, just a rush of breath through my teeth. My father’s
shoulders lowered, coming down from a hunched position I hadn’t realized they
had taken until they relaxed.

He beckoned to us. As
we walked over to the console, he moved out of the way. Then Jaibriol and I
were in front of the screen, I dressed only in a prison shirt that was the
obvious partner to the pants he wore. We stood there half naked, holding hands,
and regarded President Calloway.

Her mouth dropped open. “My God.”

My father stood up next
to me, moving back into Calloway’s view. “Will you help them?”

She blew out a gust of
air, sending a tendril of gray hair wafting about her face. “I don’t
understand.”

“They think they are in love,” my father said.

“I still don’t
understand,” Calloway said. “Primary Valdoria, do you truly want to go into
exile with a Highton?” She paused. “Could you even survive living with him?”

“He’s not Highton,” I said.

“No?” She turned to Jaibriol. “Then what in heaven’s name
are you doing with the title of Highton Heir?”

He spoke quietly. “I’m also a Rhon psion.”

Calloway’s eyebrows
went up. It was a good five seconds before she said, “That must have taken some
doing.” She glanced at my father. “It seems to me he poses a far greater threat
to you alive than dead.” She grimaced. “To all of us.”

My father shook his
head. “What Emperor Qox wants from his son may well be impossible for him to
give, Madam President.”

“You trust him because he’s Rhon?”

“Yes.” He paused. “I
once learned about a fish that is native to your planet. To reproduce, it must
swim upriver to reach the place where it was spawned, or die in the process.
The Rhon are like that in our drive to mate with our own kind, to form our own
community. No matter what the barriers, we fight until we overcome them.” He
glanced at me and his voice caught. “Or die trying.”

“Why can’t they go to
Delos on their own? Why do you want me to intercede on their behalf?”

“We can’t leave Diesha,”
I said. “The planet is on full military alert.”

Calloway gave me a
long, hard look. Then she turned back to my father. “You’re asking me to become
a coconspirator in an action that directly challenges the authority of the
Imperator.”

“I’m asking you to help
me avert a crisis that would threaten the stability of three governments.”

“If I help you now, and
it ever becomes known—” She let her sentence hang.

My father jumped on the
opening. “My daughter is an expert in covert operations. She can remove any
trace that these negotiations ever existed.”

Calloway studied me.
She had to know he was telling the truth about my erasing the record. Her
people would have a dossier on me just as extensive as the ones we had on her
highest-ranking officers.

The President leaned
back in her chair. She put her elbow on the armrest and rested her cheek on her
hand. She didn’t look at us while she thought, just stared at a point somewhere
between Jaibriol and me. The deadening silence was broken only by the
spire-clock with its ticking. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. I wished the
maddening noise would stop.

Calloway spoke. “I will help you.”

The ship landed on the
palace roof, a medical racer designed to get people to hospitals fast. It came
down in a roar of hot gases, blasting the landing pad with its exhaust. Warning
lamps strobed in the night, their lights blinking in patterns tuned to the
palace defense systems. Their light caught on the surrounding peaks, the only reminder
that we were on the roof of a palace isolated in the mountains rather than at
the starport.

Next to me, Jaibriol
and my father shaded their eyes from the glare. We had taken shelter behind a
retaining wall on the other side of the roof. As soon as the ship was down, I
sprinted toward it, running through a wind that whipped my jacket around my
body.

The hatch swung open
and light streamed out. A woman jumped down onto the roof. She wore the uniform
of an emergency medpilot, a white coverall with a triangular patch bearing the
Triad symbol on her left shoulder. The hatch closed behind her, cutting off the
light as abruptly as it had appeared. I came to a stop in front of her.

She bowed from the waist. “Primary Valdoria?”

“That’s right,” I said. “My father is resting.”

“Has he had any more convulsions since you reported the
first?”

I shook my head. “But he’s not too steady right now.”

“I have an air stretcher for him.”

So far she had given the right answers. “What’s your name?”

“Erin O’Neill.”

It was the name
Calloway had given us. The badge on her uniform said
Lyra Merzon.
A
good, solid Skolian name. We probably had a dossier on Lyra Merzon covering her
entire life. And it was false. Every last bit of it. This woman was Erin O’Neill
from Earth. If I hadn’t had other problems to worry about I would have had time
to be vexed that the Allieds had managed to plant her so securely at
Headquarters.

“What were you told?” I asked.

“That I’m to take two
people offworld, to a location specified in a file uploaded to my racer by
President Calloway.”

“Does anyone know your orders besides the President?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I’m one of the two people you’re taking.”

She nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“President Calloway
told me that under current Allied law, ship captains can perform marriages in
space that are legally binding among your people. Is that true?”

She blinked. “Well—yes. It is.”

“Good.” Both
Imperialate and Trader law recognized Allied marriages. That way, if Jaibriol
and I ever had children they would be our legal heirs. I had no idea what that
would mean, but at least they wouldn’t be illegitimate.

I spoke into the com
embedded in my wrist guard. “We’re ready.”

The lights on the roof
went out, leaving us in darkness. The wind ripped at my jacket and sent O’Neill’s
uniform flapping about her body. I turned and raised my hand. As O’Neill peered
across the shadowed roof, two figures appeared, unrecognizable in the dark.

They approached slowly,
the shorter figure limping the way my father did when he didn’t have his cane.
O’Neill squinted into the darkness, but with only starlight to see by it wasn’t
until they reached us that they were visible. Jaibriol came up next to me,
dressed in clothes we had taken from the palace.

O’Neill stared at
Jaibriol. Then, remembering herself, she bowed from the waist, first to my
father, then to Jaibriol.

I motioned at the racer. “Let’s get inside.”

She stood aside to let
my father climb inside the darkened cabin. Jaibriol stepped up next, followed
by O’Neill and then me. As soon as the airlock closed, lamps flooded the cabin
with light.

The racer was built
similarly to a Jag, designed for speed and economy. Its cabin was crammed with
equipment: crates with survival gear patches slapped on their sides; bundles of
cloth, nervoplex rubber, canvas, pipe; barrels ribbed with metal; smaller
boxes, brown, gray, green, black, all of them with printed labels for computer
and medical supplies. A laser carbine was secured against a bulkhead, along
with the box that carried its power pack. I saw a survival ax, a box of needle
bombs that were more useful for excavating than as weapons, and a box of ISC
standard-issue knives. A bunk hung secure against the hull and medical webbing
lay across it, ready to fasten around a patient.

Jaibriol sat down on
the bunk, closing his eyes as he sagged against the hull.

I sat next to him. “Are
you all right?”

He opened his eyes. “Just
tired.”

My father came to the
bunk and stood there frowning. Jaibriol flushed. Then he grasped one of the
cables that held the bunk against the hull and hauled himself back up to his
feet.

What was this? Another
silent communication between Jaibriol and my father, like that business about
children? I stood up, looking from one to the other of them.

My father frowned at
Jaibriol. “Are you prepared to take proper care of my daughter?”

I couldn’t believe it. “For pugging sakes, Father.”

He glanced at me. Then
he reddened and turned back to Jaibriol. “Maybe that wasn’t the most
appropriate question.” He stood for a moment scratching his chin. Finally he
said, “Aren’t you a bit young for Sauscony?”

That was almost as bad.
Why did he and my mother feel so compelled to comment on the age of the men in
my life?

But whatever my father
intended with his questions, Jaibriol seemed to understand. “I’ll do everything
I can to make her happy, sir.”

“See that you do,” my father said.

O’Neill stood near the
cockpit, watching the exchange with her mouth open. When she saw me glance at
her, she stood up straighter and closed her mouth.

I turned back to find
my father looking at me. He spoke in a much gentler voice. “Goodbye, daughter.”

I started to reach for
him at the same moment he raised his own arms. Our hands collided, and then I
was in his embrace, the same arms that had held me so safe when I was a child.
I hugged him tightly, laying my head against his shoulder as I closed my eyes. “Goodbye,
hushpa.”

“Be well,” he whispered. “I love you.”

A tear ran down my
cheek. “And I you.” I drew back so I could see his face. “Will you tell Mother
that I told you I was sorry about what happened on Foreshires. That I said how
much I loved her, and how much I wished—” I swallowed. “How much I wished it
wasn’t so hard for me to tell her.”

He rubbed his palm over
his face, smearing his tears. “I will tell her.”

O’Neill cleared her
throat, a quiet sound, almost inaudible. When we looked at her, she said, “I’m
sorry—but we had better leave. The longer we stay, the more the risk of our
being discovered.”

I made myself nod. Then
my father and I walked to the airlock and stood by the inner door, watching
each other. Finally he touched the panel that opened the airlock. The lights
went out again and no radiance spilled from the cabin out into the night when
the doors opened. He let himself back down onto the roof, a silhouette in the
darkness.

I lifted my hand.
Goodbye.

He raised his arm to wave.
Goodbye, Sauscony.

Then I closed the airlock.

As the lights came back
on, I turned to O’Neill, who was waiting by the copilot’s seat. The racer didn’t
have a true cockpit, just a section in the front of the cabin with two seats,
one for the pilot and one for the copilot.

She motioned me toward
the pilot’s seat. “I was told you can get us through the cordon around the
planet.”

“I’m going to try.”
Whether I could do it or not was another question altogether.

She nodded and slid
into the copilot’s seat. Although no strain showed on her face, I felt her
tension. It was an odd assignment she had drawn for herself, having to risk her
life to help people she was supposed to be spying on. Jaibriol was sitting on
the bunk again, leaning against a bulkhead with his eyes closed.

“Jaibriol.” My voice softened. “You’d better strap in.”

He opened his eyes.
Then he lowered himself onto the bunk and stretched out his legs, moving slowly
as if each contraction of his muscles hurt.

O’Neill reached over
and touched a panel on the exoskeleton that lay open around my seat like
metallic petals. “This controls the medweb.” She pressed the panel and a rustle
sounded from the bunk. I turned to see the medical web fastening around
Jaibriol’s body. A line snaked to his arm, inserted into it—and his eyes
snapped open. He grabbed the line and yanked it out of his body.

O’Neill was watching
him on the screen above the pilot’s seat. She spoke quickly. “It’s just glucose
fluid, Lord Qox. According to the monitors on the medbunk, you’re seriously
dehydrated.”

Jaibriol considered
her. Then he let the line drop. As soon as it was free, it snaked back to his
arm and reattached. He stiffened, but this time he let it stay. The medweb
responded to his tension by massaging his body, tightening and relaxing around
him in a steady rhythm.

As I slid into the
pilot’s seat, it folded its cocoon and exoskeleton around me. The psiphons didn’t
click into place, but as soon as I activated them, they snicked into my neck
and spine.

Erin’s exoskeleton was also closing around her body.

Medline attending, the racer thought.

Entering the Net from
Medline felt awkward and overly formal. The computer on my Jag would have
boosted me to psiberspace immediately. I had to walk Medline through the entire
procedure, giving it instructions at every junction.

I entered the Net as a
wavepacket cowled in black. The grid was alive with cordon activity, its cords
shining harshly, like rays of the too bright Dieshan sun. Kurj’s presence was
everywhere, omnipresent. Inescapable? I hid in my cloak.

VR psiber-simulation, I thought. High orbit.

The grid disappeared—and I was in space. The planet Diesha
hung before me like a ball of turquoise and amber, swathed in dirty cotton. I “stood”
in the near vacuum that existed this far out from the planet.

Pivoting slowly, I
surveyed all of space. The psi-sim used the data gathered by Medline’s sensors
to create a “reality” so complete I felt as if I were
here,
turning within
the cordon, analyzing it as I moved. It gave me a far better reading of the
situation than I could have made without a psiberspace linkup, limited to
visual displays and screens; a better reading even than with the mindscape I normally
used in a psiberspace linkup.

Visual sensors:
mindscape: psi-sim—they were three different levels of sensor ability, each
more effective than the previous, each more costly. A psi-sim drained its user’s
mental and physical resources so fast that after a few minutes of it I might
well collapse. But to get out of here we were going to need every advantage we
could get. If we didn’t escape—well, my condition wouldn’t much matter then.

A blip appeared over
the rim of Diesha. I concentrated, and rushed toward it, the computer supplying
data for the simulation faster than an actual ship could have safely traveled
this close to the planet. The blip resolved into an ISC battlecruiser, a
ponderous giant big enough to swallow a thousand racers and still have room for
more. Weapons mountings covered the surface like craters. Its cannon maws alone
were big enough to drive a MagRail train into. A host of smaller ships attended
it. Traffic moved in and out of docking bays that opened like huge jaws, with
angular struts and up-jutting equipment ringing the mouth like grotesque metal
teeth. The scene was eerily silent, the atmosphere far too thin to carry any
appreciable sound waves.

I moved closer until
the cruiser filled my field of view; closer still and I could see every dent
and pockmark. The hull curved above and below me like a cliff of metal. Closer
yet, and I could brush my hand across it. I knew I was actually feeling the
inside of my exoskeleton cocoon, with Medline using its data on the battlecruiser
to recreate the tactile sensations of touching its hull. But that gritty
surface looked and felt so authentic that I would have sworn I was there.

I backed away from the
battlecruiser and plummeted toward the planet. The view changed with dizzying
speed: a ball in space, a curved landscape, a flat one. I plunged through wet
clouds, came out below them, dropped closer and closer to the surface until the
massive shadows of mountain peaks rose around me. No lights showed anywhere
below, except in the valley where the Imperial palace sparkled like a jewel.

I “landed” on the
palace roof near the flier I had used to bring Jaibriol here. The racer sat
posed, waiting on its landing pad. I passed through its hull into the cabin,
where I saw myself in the pilot’s seat with my eyes closed, my body encased in
the exoskeleton.

Seeing myself like that
was eerie, as if I were having an out-of-body experience. I shook my head and
the head of the pilot moved from side to side. I felt the motion rub my cheeks
against the exoskeleton and the cocoon. My hair rustled, a noise I heard both
with my ears and through the simulation.

“Ready to go?” I asked.
It felt odd to speak; usually when I piloted a ship I was in a psilink, making
verbal communication unnecessary.

“Ready.” O’Neill’s forehead creased as she watched me.

“Problem?” I asked.

“I’ve never before seen a pilot make flight preparations
with her eyes closed.”

“I’m in a psi-sim.”

“Can you actually see the cockpit?”

“Better than just
seeing.” I concentrated on her and a translucent display appeared, glowing in
red. “You’re sitting 48.32 centimeters away from me, turned at a 23 degree
angle relative to a line drawn from your solar plexus to the holoscreen
directly in front of you. A lock of hair came free of your braid and is hanging
next to your left eye.”