Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback (5 page)

“I can send my Notification of Intent tonight over the Net,”
he said. “I’ll give my resignation when we get back to Headquarters City.”

Notification of Intent. It was so odd to hear it from Rex.
But his timing made sense. After our rest here we would return to Headquarters
to pick up orders for our next mission. Rex had waited until he knew we would
no longer be going into combat together. I could love him now. I never had to
send him into battle again.

A beep came from the console by the bed. “Damn,” Rex muttered.
He stretched his arm across the bed and touched the Respond panel on the
console. “What?”

Helda’s voice came out
of
the speaker. “Ya, Rex. You
know where is Soz?”

“I’m right here,” I said. “We’ll meet you at my room.”

Both Helda and Taas were waiting outside my door when we
arrived. Helda gave me an odd look. I couldn’t tell what she picked up, but she
must have sensed something. It had all changed. I would never see Rex in the
same way again.

The pager by my door showed a dark-haired woman standing on
the rocky shore of an island. She stood looking out at me, a quiver full of
arrows strapped on her back and a beautiful curving bow in her hand.

I put my finger against the waves that lapped up on the
beach below the woman. A flash of light came from inside the pager as a laser
played over my finger. It only took an instant for it to produce an
interference pattern from the ridges of my fingerprint and correlate it with
the one made by the inn’s computer. Then my door swung open.

After the sensual ambience in Rex’s room, mine felt much too
cool. The walls were a polished blue-green ceramic, with frothy accents as if
waves played across them. The computer console was built into a rolltop desk by
the bed. Its horizontal surface was a hologram screen and the vertical section
supported the console controls. The labels on the controls were in six
languages, including Skolian.

I sat down at the console and touched the panel marked with
the picture of a doorway. “Access my guest account. Then connect me to the
Skol-Net.”

“Hello, Primary Valdoria.” The computer spoke in Skolian. “Homer
here. Welcome to the Aegean Inn. I am pleased to access your account.” After a
pause it said, “I’m setting up the Skol-Net link now. Please excuse the delay.”

“Hoy, that’s
a polite
computer,” Helda said.

I smiled. Allied computers tended to be friendlier than
nodes on the Skol-Net, Skolia’s massive computer network. We had chosen this
hotel because it equipped its consoles with psiphons, which few Allied
establishments bothered to do. I opened a cubicle in the desk and took the
psiphon out of its cradle. It was a simple model, no more than a transparent,
double-tipped prong connected to the console by a thread.

When I clicked the prong into the socket on the inside of my
wrist, my arm tingled. I knew, logically, that those tingles weren’t real. But
every time I plugged in a psiphon I imagined I felt them.

The words
attempting
connection
appeared on a small screen set into the desk.

“Looks like it’s working,” Taas said.

“So far.” The fact that Homer responded to the psiphon with
written instead of verbal replies made me doubt the Allieds had spent much time
setting it up.

I rubbed my hand up and down my arm, a habit I had picked up
years ago. Many Jagernauts did it. My thoughts of the biomech web in my body
worried at my mind like an animal caught in a trap. The web had four parts:
fiberoptic threads; sockets in my wrists, spine, neck and ankles; the spinal
node; and bio-electrodes.

The fiberoptics had been bioengineered into my body. Homer
sent signals to one tip of the psiphon, which passed them to a thread in my
wrist. From there, they traveled along threads to my brain or spinal node.
Nano-sized electrodes in my brain cells translated the l’s and O’s of that
input into thought by making my neurons fire. If an electrode received a 1 it
gave the neuron a brief, tiny shock; if it received a 0, it left the neuron
alone. Similarly, they translated my thoughts into binary output. Bioshells
coated the electrodes, and neurotrophic chemicals kept them from damaging my
brain cells. My web sent messages back to Homer via the second tip of the
psiphon prong.

Given the complicated nature of the operations to implant a
biomech web, and the years it took to learn to use it
if
the host body
didn’t reject it—not to mention the required security clearances—few people had
them.

Another message appeared on the screen:
psiphon activated.

“Slow,” Helda muttered.

“Allied equipment,” Taas said, as if that explained it.

Test,
I thought.

The word
test
appeared
under Homer’s last message.

parameters?
Homer
printed. His response showed in red on the screen, mine were blue. The message
didn’t echo in my mind at all.

Verify spinal node link, I thought.

The words
verify
sibling
appeared on the screen.

Rex laughed. “Whose sibling are you verifying?”

“It’s not translating right.”
Run diagnostic on psiphon,
I
thought. The words
run diagonal
deepening
glowed on the screen.

please restate command, Homer printed.

I tried verbal. “Run a diagnostic on the psiphon.”

“Running,” Homer said. Then: “I found no problems.”

I swore under my breath. If the psiphon wasn’t the problem,
it had to be my biomech web. And that was no easy fix. It could mean surgery.

I pulled the prong out of my wrist and peered at it. A thin
layer of dust covered the head. I rolled it gently between my fingers, cleaning
off the dust, and plugged it back in.

Verify spinal node connection, I thought.

verify spinal node connection appeared on the screen.

verified,
Homer
responded.

I exhaled.
Good.

I
have A link to the skol-net NOW, Homer printed, if
you

GIVE ME AN ACCOUNT AND PASSWORDS, I WILL BE PLEASED TO LOG
YOU INTO THE SYSTEM.

That isn’t necessary.
I pressed a panel on the
console marked with the Greek letter
.

The words
denied
glowed
on the screen.

“Denied?” Taas asked. “What does that mean?”

Homer, I thought. Why can’t I enter the psiber gateway?

I can’t translate “gateway” in this context, Homer printed.

I want to use the psiber functions of the psiphon.

THEY AREN’T ENABLED.

Helda snorted. “Why they have psiphons if they don’t set
them up right?”

“Maybe they don’t know how,” I said. Homer, can you enable
the psiber functions ?

I DON’T KNOW. WHAT DO THEY DO?

The psiphon should be able to boost my mind into
psiberspace.

THE ONLY TRANSLATION I HAVE FOR PSIBERSPACE IS “HYPOTHETICAL
COMPUTER NETWORK.”

“Pah,” Helda muttered.

It’s not hypothetical, I thought. It exists.

WHERE?

It’s outside of spacetime. Information there is transmitted
in wavepackets of thought rather than by photons or matter particles.

IF IT HAS NO SPATIAL LOCATION, HOW CAN I FIND IT?

It exists everywhere, I thought. The other nodes can receive
our input immediately no matter where they’re located.

Homer paused. ACCORDING TO MY PHYSICS LIBRARY, THIS REQUIRES
INSTANTANEOUS TRANSMISSION OF DATA ACROSS INTERSTELLAR DISTANCES.

That’s right.

THAT VIOLATES THE LAWS OF SPACETIME.

Psiberspace isn’t in spacetime.

I CANNOT ACCESS SOMETHING OUTSIDE OF SPACE AND TIME.

I tried to think of an explanation Homer’s Evolving Intelligence
would understand. In normal space, if I had two particles and I measured the
quantum properties of one, I immediately knew those of the second no matter how
far away it was. In psiberspace, the “measured” property was thought; as fast
as a telepath could form a thought, every user in the star-spanning Skol-Net
could receive it.

Despite the Allieds’ skepticism about psibernetics, what
they called “pseudo-psience,” they had to realize the Skol-Net was the sole
reason my people survived against the Eubians. The Trader inventories of
military personnel and equipment dwarfed ours, but we could outmaneuver,
outcommunicate, and outcalculate them. They lumbered; we sailed.

The Aristos had no psiber abilities. Their providers did,
but they refused to acknowledge that providers could do anything but provide.
Still, I wouldn’t have been surprised if either they or the Allieds had tried
to build a Skol-Net and failed. It needed a Rhon telepath to power it and no
member of my family would ever consent to do that for them.

That was why my family still held so much power in an age of
modern politics. No machine could connect directly into the Net. The only way
to link in hardware was through the minds of its users. And just as one
computer needed a central processor, so the Skol-Net with its billions of nodes
needed a Rhon psion to maintain it as a coherent web. Only we had the immense
mental resources for that job. Without my family there was no Skol-Net and
without the Net there was no Skolian Imperialate.

Homer, try this, I thought. Hail node PS42.mil on the
Skol-Net. When you get the ‘Restricted’ message, transfer to me. Perhaps I
could find a backdoor our intelligence people had snuck into the Allied
systems.

HAILING, Homer printed. Then: transferring link.

A new computer accessed my mind, crisp and cold: Identification.

Access my spinal node, I thought. Mod 16, path 0001HA9RS.

Accessed. Clearance verified.

My awareness of the room faded. I floated in a pearly sea,
my mind centered at one node of a glimmering mesh that spread out in all
directions. Flashes of light sparked on the web as other minds navigated across
it.

I was a quantum wavepacket now, a round “hill” surrounded by
circular ridges, like the waves made by dropping a rock in a pond. The ripples
extended out in the infinite “lake” of psiberspace, becoming smaller and
smaller the farther they were from the peak that was the center of my identity.

A spark of light flashed, resolving into another wavepacket.
It rippled right through me without a trace of interference.

Security check, I thought.

All lines secured, PS42 thought. You are undetectable to
users with clearance lower than Forty-seven: Level B.

Transfer me to IMIN.

The mound sank into the net. Then I was in a new section of
the grid, the center of my identity shifted to a small ripple. It swelled,
forming a hill, and the ripples around it shifted until they were rings
concentric with the new center for my identity.

The web here glittered like metal. Sharp clicks accompanied
the sparks that jumped into focus around me and then disappeared.

A mound appeared, growing into a cobalt mountain of polished
metal. It emanated cold. Imperial Intelligence A5a.mil. Unauthorized access of
this node is punishable by execution.

Clearance in M-16, D-30A5a, F-037, I answered.

Clearance verified. State purpose.

To use Comtrace.

This time I shifted to a white net in a sea of painfully
bright light. Comtrace, access my optic nerve. Alter my perception display to
highlight my physical surroundings.

Comtrace’s response came into my mind like ice. Done.

My awareness of psiberspace faded until it was no more than
a translucent image overlaid on my view of the room. I saw Rex again, leaning
over me to look at the console. Helda stood next to him, waiting with her
massive arms crossed, and Taas was sitting on the bed glancing through the book
Tiller had given me at the police station. None of my interactions with the Net
showed on the screen: the printing had stopped with my last response to Homer.

Activate audio, I thought.

“Audio activated.” Although Comtrace spoke using the inn’s
computer, the icy cadence of its speech made a jarring contrast to Homer’s
friendly tones.

Taas looked up from the book. “Set up?”

I nodded. “I’m giving it my file on the Aristo.”
Comtrace,
unload the data in M-86, D-4427, F-l.

Uploaded.

I’m going to detach the psiphons. Do not break the link.

Understood.

I unplugged the prong and handed it to Rex. “You next.”

It only took him a few seconds to upload his memory of the
Aristo. Helda went next, then Taas. When they finished, I jacked back into
Homer. “Comtrace, produce a visual image of the subject based on our memories
of him.”

“Working,” Comtrace said. The holoscreen on the desk lit up,
lines and speckled patterns swirling inside of it. An image appeared, a holo
about twenty-five centimeters high that showed the Aristo we had seen in the
bar. He stood on the desk in front of me as if he were actually there, watching
us.