Primary Inversion (12 page)

      
“How long did you think you could hide it?” I asked.

      
He stared at me. “What are you going to do?”

      
I couldn’t believe it. He was afraid of me. I had felt many emotions from Hightons: lust, anger, obsession, disgust. But never fear. As far as they were concerned I was nothing but a provider, and they refused to acknowledge a provider could have the power needed to inspire their fear. Yet I felt his as clear and sharp as broken glass.

      
I felt his mind.

      
Sweat beaded on my temple. A moment ago his barriers had been impenetrable. Now they were dissolving. He was a mental fortress, one that should have taken a tortuous battle of wills to break, yet now I felt him. He had to be voluntarily dropping his walls; I had done nothing. But I sensed neither the intent from him to do so nor the realization it was happening.

      
He watched me with a healthy, sensual desire that caught me unprepared. Blood rushed to my face and to far more private places.
Block!
The synapse psicon flashed in my mind, and kept flashing, telling me the block wasn’t working. Either his reactions were too intense to shut out or else I was feeling my own as well. What was going on? It was wrong, all wrong. No, it wasn’t wrong, it was right, and that was what was wrong.

      
I took a breath. Stay cool. Find out who he is. But how? I had a good starting point; if someone wanted him to pass as a Highton, they would have given him a Highton name.

      
“What surprises me,” I said, “is that your parents gave you a name you obviously had no claim to.”

      
The comment didn’t provoke his anger, as I had hoped. He just shrugged. “I have far more right to it than the hundred or so others who have it.”

      
Hundred. Given that only a few thousand Aristos existed, his name had to be a popular one. What were well known Aristo names? That was easy. Kryx, as in Kryx Tarque. I would never forget it. Vitar was another, Jaibriol, and…

      
Jaibriol.
Jaibriol.
Now I knew why Rex and I thought this man looked familiar, but neither Helda nor Taas recognized him. This false Aristo, this dove hiding in a night-wolf’s body, was a living reminder of a dead Highton, a man who had died when Helda was a small girl and before Taas was born. Comtrace hadn’t reported it because we had asked for a living Highton. This man resembled the late Emperor Jaibriol Qox, the father of the present Emperor.

      
A dramatic difference existed, however, between this man and holos I had seen of Jaibriol Qox. Although the previous Emperor had been handsome in his youth, his face had aged into harsh lines that showed his true nature. His son, the current Emperor, was a leaner, quieter ruler, softer-spoken—and just as vicious. The years had stamped that cruelty into his features, just as they had stamped it into his father’s face. The man in front of me now showed no mark of that brutal nature.

      
The thought budding in my mind was absurd. It had to be wrong. But I had to test it. “How are you ever going to rule, Jaibriol? Your people will never accept a telepath as their Emperor.”

      
He flushed. “Nothing is wrong with my mind. My people will accept me.”

      
No.
NO.
It was a lie. It had to be. But his mind was opening up to me, leaving no room for misinterpretation. We had been wrong, all of us.

      
Emperor Ur Qox had an heir.

      
Somehow I spoke calmly. “You’re descended from a provider. It’s the only way you could be a psion. You have to get the genes from both parents.” Both.
Both.
I stared at him. Now that I was looking for it, I couldn’t mistake his Qox lineage. Not only did he bring to mind the late Jaibriol Qox, but I saw his resemblance to the present Emperor as well. “That means your father—the Emperor—is at most only
half
Highton. You can’t be more than one quarter.”

      
“Stop!” Jaibriol clenched his fist. “Stop your filthy insults.”

      
His mental blocks were dissolving like salt in water. His mind was incredible. Beautiful. Sensual. I wanted him, just as an Earth salmon ready to spawn felt driven to swim upstream, against all obstacles, to reach home and reproduce. It made me want to strike out at him, furious that he—the Highton Heir—could so move me.

      
“They’ll lust after your pain.” I was losing my battle to stay cool. “All of them, your ministers, peers, women, guards, generals. Your life will be hell.”

      
“You’re insane.”

      
“You don’t know. You’ve had barriers protecting you. But you can’t do it forever. If you slip once,
just once,
they’ll know. You’ll find out the truth about your precious Hightons. About your father. The man is a monster.”

      
He pointed at the Jumbler I held. “This is all you understand. You see everything as war and hate. My father is a great man, far greater than you could ever comprehend.”

      
“Where have you been for the last twenty years? In a cocoon?” I wanted to hit him. “Hightons torture people. Your father probably did it to your mother while he was siring you.”

      
His face went white. “You are sick.
Sick.
”

      
“You think I’m lying?” I waved my gun at him. “Fine. Come into my mind, phony Highton. You want to know what providing is like? Come and look. If you have the courage for it.”

      
He watched me like a man balanced on a cliff staring at an abyss. And then he fell.

      
I had meant only to make him see what happened on Tams, to make that memory hurt him the way it hurt me. But I couldn’t pull out of our link. His mind was too strong, more so even than I had expected given the warning of his immense barriers. We dropped together, melding as we plunged, a joining I had known only once before with a seven year old boy. Only this time it was with an adult, with an intensity heightened by anger and sexual desire, and it hit me like a tidal wave.

      
Jaibriol Qox was Rhon.

      
I could smell him, a musky, masculine scent that muddied my thoughts. Pheromones,
Rhon pheromones.
My whole body reacted. He picked up my arousal through our mental link and fed it back to me, exciting me even more. It multiplied Jaibriol’s reaction as well, locking us into a double feedback loop that fast became overwhelming in its intensity. Had our natures been incompatible, it would have been revolting. But he
fit
. He was an aphrodisiac, firm and masculine, warm, inviting…

      
I fell into his memories like a diver plummeting into the ocean. His thoughts curled around me as if I were the only solidity in the sea of loneliness where he had lived for so long. He had spent the entire twenty-two years of his life, until a few weeks ago, living alone…only the visits of his tutors broke his solitude…his father rarely came to see him—

      
The demands of his life leave him no time
, Jaibriol thought.
He has more than me to consider. He is Emperor of Eube.

      
I recognized what he couldn’t see: to his father, he was the ultimate provider. Somewhere within himself Qox had found the decency to leave the boy alone, avoiding him rather than risk giving in to the drive to torture his own son.

      
Too late I realized that as soon as I formed those thoughts, Jaibriol knew them. His mouth opened, then shut again.
How can you believe such a thing?
he thought.

      
Jaibriol—I’m sorry.
I had to pull out of this link. I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t react with such sympathy to the Highton Heir.

      
Then I saw his mother, the Empress
…tall, regal in a black and gold dress. Gold glistened on her wrists and throat, diamonds sparkled on her ears. Her hair fell to her waist like black silk. Her eyes were rubies, red and clear. Her face, so lovely, so regal—so
icy,
as hard and as cold as diamond. Why did she hate me? What horrible thing had I done, that my mother despised my every word, every move, every breath?

      
I watched his face, wanting to touch his cheek, his lips.
Jaibriol, can’t you see? You don’t have even a remote resemblance to the Empress. She can’t be your mother, not if you’re Rhon and she’s Highton.

      
Stop!
He took hold of my lower arms, gripping them hard.
I am not a provider.

      
Despite his denial, he had to suspect the truth. How long had it taken his grandfather to find a provider who carried the full set of Rhon genes? Years? Decades? He must have used that provider to sire a son who was half Qox and half Rhon. That ensured his genes remained in the Qox bloodline and required the least deviation from Highton behavior. That he even managed to break those ingrained patterns of conduct enough to father a son who was half Highton astounded me. The son he created—Jaibriol’s father—must have completed the process. How? Engineered a son from his own genes? Or did he find a second provider to carry his Rhon heir?

      
The Emperor must have falsified the bloodline. He had means available to no other Highton. I also had no doubt he murdered all of those who made the verifications, executing the death sentence himself, in secret, leaving no witnesses to the truth of his son’s heritage.

      
No.
Jaibriol’s thoughts shimmered like tears on a mirror.
You’re wrong. Wrong!

      
Jaibriol—I’m sorry.
I tried to pull back from him. But it was impossible—so lonely—his life had been so lonely. The only constant in it was his father.

      
He is a great man,
Jaibriol thought.
I will never be worthy of his name.

      
Don’t worship him. It will only hurt you.

      
I don’t worship him. I love him.

      
He left you with no one.

      
He brought tutors.
Jaibriol formed an image in his mind, an elderly man with grey hair and large eyes.
I loved Marlin. He taught me to sing. His voice was magnificent. On my sixth birthday he gave me a hunter-pup. And he encouraged my hobbies.

      
Hobbies?

      
Jaibriol showed me his library on the estate where he lived. He let me see him studying, singing, writing, training, building, researching. His “hobbies.” He had nothing else to do. He spoke fourteen languages, played seven instruments, had a voice that spanned four octaves, excelled at seven sports. He knew the histories and geographies of a hundred worlds and more, had studied mathematics and science at the doctorate level, could debate the works of both human and non-human philosophers.

      
I stared at him.
Don’t you realize what you’ve accomplished?

      
I’ve done nothing.
He showed no pride. He had no referent for his achievements.
I am a failure as a son. Why else would my father hide me?
He paused, then made himself continue.
Marlin stopped coming to see me. This always happened. They came for a while, then disappeared. Only my father always returned.
His next thought was more ragged.
My nurse—Camyllia. She was there when I was small. She took me for walks, played with me, sang me to sleep, and comforted me if I woke up afraid. She let me feel as if every moment we spent together was precious beyond words, that it would never come again so she had to make it the best it could be.
He drew in a shaky breath.
Then she went away. Father said she was sick…that she…died.

      
I saw Camyllia in his mind, a beautiful young woman, a brown-eyed version of Jaibriol. With her hair and eyes altered to look Highton, she could have been his twin. But I had no doubt it had been Jaibriol’s eyes and hair that had been altered. Camyllia wasn’t his sister. She was his mother.

      
As soon as that thought formed, I imagined a blanket over my mind, hiding it from Jaibriol. His father would have killed anyone who knew his son’s true identity. That the mother had convinced Qox to let her live long enough for Jaibriol to remember her was as astonishing as it was heart wrenching.

      
Jaibriol saw through the cover I had laid over my thoughts.
No. You’re wrong.
A tear ran down his face.
Wrong.

      
Your father loved you.
I made myself believe it so Jaibriol would.
He isolated you because it was the only way to make sure no one hurt you. If any hint of what you truly are escapes, it will destroy you.
Not to mention his father.
He needed you to grow strong and learn to protect yourself.

      
His grip on my arm tightened.
How can you think you know anything about my father’s love? You’re a Jagernaut. A killer. How can you feel love at all?

      
As soon as he formed the question, my mind responded. I tried to hold back, but he swept into my memories. He saw my childhood, a girl surrounded by an intense and loving family. He felt what it was like to live with other empaths, the fulfillment, and the gaping lack of it in his own life. He saw Rex, Helda, and Taas, understood how close we were. He saw me working with them, especially Rex, including on Tams—

      
And he found Tarque.

      
As his face contorted, he sank to his knees, pulling me with him until we were kneeling face to face on the carpet. He bowed his head and leaned forward, his grip so tight on my arms that his knuckles turned white. Even when his forehead came to rest against mine, he didn’t look up, just kept staring at the floor. I dropped my Jumbler and clenched the cloth of his sleeves while my mind heaved a blanket of denial over the memory. But he whipped the blanket whipped away, and it flew out of our mental the tempest like a rag caught by the wind.