Primary Inversion (37 page)

      
“That’s not a reason to become his patron.” He slid the book on the shelf. “Did he please you?”

      
“If you’re asking did I bed him, the answer is no.”

      
“Did you want to?”

      
“No.”

      
Kurj frowned. “I assume he has no holds over you?”

      
“Of course he doesn’t.”

      
“Does Charissa?”

      
“I’ve never met the girl, aside from that day at the hospital.” Shaking my head, I said, “You’re looking for something that isn’t there. I helped them because I felt like it. No other reason.”

      
Kurj spoke quietly. “Then you’re a fool.”

      
“I don’t see it that way.”

      
“Why?"

      
This was stranger and stranger. I felt more like I was being interviewed for a job than called to task for my actions. “It’s better to have your citizenry as satisfied as possible with their lives. Happy people are more productive.”

      
“It isn’t your job to see to the happiness of Imperial citizens.”

      
“These were situations where I could make a difference.”

      
“Tiller Smith isn’t even Skolian,” Kurj said. “Not only does training him have no advantage to us, it could be a disadvantage. He will take his knowledge back to the Allieds.”

      
“So we should give him reason to stay here. Then we get use of his talent instead of the Allieds.” Who wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.

      
Kurj considered me. “Very well.”

      
I waited, but he said no more. That was it. No warnings to leave off with his personal life, no reprimands, nothing. Instead, he settled into an armchair. Then he motioned me toward the couch.

      
I sat down, puzzled. Kurj sat there, silent and appraising, his inner lids covering his eyes like gold shields. I shifted in my seat. What was going on?

      
I want to take no risks,
he thought.

      
I almost jumped up again. His thought was unusually clear and strong even for him, which suggested he had prepared in depth for this silent discussion. Why?

      
Security,
Kurj thought.

      
You already have the best security in the Imperialate.

      
True. But this is an unusual situation.
His thoughts had an odd flavor, a taste of triumph.
We have a guest.

      
Who?
I already knew he was the only one staying at the palace.

      
His smile had a grim edge to it. Then he showed me an image of our “guest.”

      
Jaibriol Qox.

      
My first reaction was a reflex I had coded into my node, a program set to run whenever I heard Jaibriol’s name. It initiated a procedure that shielded my mind as inconspicuously as possible, hiding my reaction. Behind that mask, though, my thoughts rocketed: how had they caught Jaibriol, where was he, what did they know? Even with my node working furiously, I couldn’t conceal the intensity of my response. So I let some of it show, just enough shock that Kurj would find appropriate.

      
The Highton Heir is
here?
I thought.

      
Yes. He is ours now.

      
But how?

      
He was in a ship, alone, without even a Solo and Escort.
Kurj leaned forward.
One of our Kyle sentries registered the ship during inversion, going at millions of times light speed. The Sixth Squadron threw him into stasis and dragged him out.

      
I stared at him.
What was Jaibriol Qox doing alone, without a single guard?

      
We don’t know. He’s told us nothing.
The shields over Kurj’s eyes glinted.
Yet.

      
I didn’t want to imagine what they were doing to Jaibriol. I knew what his interrogators would soon discover, if they hadn’t already; mental blocks even stronger than a Jagernaut’s guarded his mind. On Delos, for me, he had relaxed those defenses. But if his were anything like mine, then under duress, his conditioning would stop him from lowering those barriers even if he wanted to.

      
I had tried to forget why his blocks so easily dissolved for me, tried to forget the longing in his voice, the feel of his body. But one thought was all it took. I remembered and my pulse raced. Even though he was the Highton Heir. I wanted him. Like knew like.

      
Kurj was watching me.
What’s wrong?

      
Careful. Dangerous ground.
I was thinking about my last meeting with a Highton.

      
Tarque.

      
I didn’t answer and he didn’t probe. It was the way we always treated the subject. I phrased my next question carefully.
Why so much secrecy? Capturing the Highton Heir is a triumph. Making it public will cripple Trader morale and send ours flying.

      
I don’t trust this good fortune,
Kurj thought.
It may be a trap. Until we know more I intend to take no risks.

      
Purpose indeed. What had Jaibriol been doing, hurtling through space with no protection? No one without access to the Kyle-Mesh could have found him. Even with it, we were lucky to have caught him. At that speed, he could have traveled for years and only an instant would have gone by for the rest of us. Fast enough, and he could have lived his entire life and died before anyone knew he disappeared.

      
Then it hit me. He had intended exactly that. Suicide. Except it hadn’t worked. The Kyle-Mesh had caught him like a shimmerfly in a web.

      
I let a question reach the surface of my mind:
What have you found out from Qox?

      
Nothing.
Kurj’s frustration simmered.
He responds as if he has a biomech web in his body programmed to help him resist interrogation. But we’ve found no trace of one. His only implant is the cyberlock in his brain.

      
They were so close to the truth.
What will you do?

      
Find an interrogator who can disrupt his conditioning.

      
I knew what would happen. Jaibriol’s mental shields could block the neural processes in his brain that let him interact with people. In extreme cases—like interrogation—he wouldn’t be able to communicate by any means, even speech. He
couldn’t
answer their questions. Breaking that conditioning was no different than breaching any other defense; it required a strong enough battering ram, in this case a powerful telepath. Kurj could do it, but his blunt power would smash Jaibriol’s mind. My brother Althor had more subtlety, but probably not enough. My aunt had the finesse but not the strength. Although my father had both, he had none of the military knowledge needed to do the interrogation. No one did except Kurj and Althor.

      
And me.

      
I forced a calm into my mind that didn’t touch what I felt.
Why did you call me here?

      
He watched me with his shielded gaze.
I’ve assigned you to Qox’s case.

      
You have more experienced interrogators.

      
None of them can break him.
None.
Think about what that means.

      
He has a strong mind.

      
Too strong.

      
I said nothing, afraid to move for fear it would give me away.

      
He is a psion,
Kurj thought.

      
He can’t be.

      
Nevertheless. He is. A strong one.

      
I don’t see how that’s possible.

      
Nor I.
Kurj shook his head.
I’ve worked on him, Soz. I can’t break his defenses.

      
You can break any mind.

      
It would take so much force, it would reduce him to a vegetable.

      
I didn’t know which disturbed me more, knowing Kurj was on the verge of the truth or feeling his grim satisfaction when he contemplated the screams of the man he thought responsible for the massacre at Tams. It was the first time in my life I had felt the brunt of Kurj’s hatred, and I hoped like hell it was never directed at me.

      
If you can’t break him,
I thought,
I’m not sure what you think I can do.

      
You have more finesse. Get into his mind. Tell me what’s there.
Kurj stood up.
Meet me at the palace in the morning, oh-six hundred. Make it look like a personal visit.

      
I wanted to refuse. But I could only stand up and say,
Yes, sir.

      
After Kurj left, I dropped into my chair and put my head in my hands. Then I lifted it, wondering if my apartment was monitored. I didn’t dare show signs of the turmoil I felt.

      
I understood why Kurj thought Jaibriol’s capture was a trick; it was the only way Ur Qox could gain direct access to Skolia’s Imperator. My brother wouldn’t take the same personal interest if we caught anyone less than the Highton Heir. It was a horrible thought, that Qox would send his own son to be tortured in the hope that Jaibriol could assassinate Kurj. Yet if anyone appeared capable of that, it was the Trader Emperor. But I was sure Qox hadn’t done it. He valued Jaibriol too much, and not only because of his Rhon genes. In his own way, Qox loved his son. The emperor would never send him on an assassination mission. The only person Jaibriol had meant to kill was himself.

      
I got up and walked to the wall. Although it looked opaque, it was a double-paned window. When I touched a small panel on it, the window’s polarization changed to let me see through the glass. Flyers glided among the towers, their sleek lines the only curves in a city of corners and edges. Beyond the suburbs, the barren red desert rolled out to the horizon.

      
Where had Kurj put Jaibriol? In a vault under the city? Some remote base elsewhere on the planet? That prison would be guarded by layers of security. What to do? Even if I did find him, I couldn’t send him back to Ur Qox and Kryx Quaelen.

      
I could do what Kurj wanted, but make it easy on Jaibriol. I could “discover” the Highton Heir was insane, that his father had repudiated him and his only choice was suicide. If my brother believed Jaibriol knew nothing useful, that he wasn’t even capable of understanding why he was being tortured, Kurj would let him die. The advantage of publicly executing the Highton Heir would outweigh any satisfaction he might gain from keeping him alive to punish him.

      
Except I didn’t want Jaibriol to die. I wanted him to live. With me.

      
I pressed my hands against the glass. Tager had forced me to face the truth. I may have never asked for the responsibilities of my heritage, but I wanted the title of Imperator so much I could taste it. Turning my back on that power—it was true what Rex had once said about me. I was no saint. I couldn’t walk away from it.

      
Yet Jaibriol had done almost exactly that with his title. Maybe he was a better person that I. Or wiser. Or weaker. I didn’t know. For some reason Tager believed I was more than what I saw, more than a bitter soldier with her heart sheathed in so much ice she had nothing left to give. He treated me as if I had a value beyond my heritage. He even made me believe that maybe, just maybe, he was right. Yet I also heard my mother’s voice, soft and hurting, as she spoke about Kurj:
He changed. Bit by bit, year by year, decade by decade. Until finally I lost him.
How long until she lost me as well?

      
No.
I didn’t have to end up that way. I could have Tager brought to Diesha—no, that was Kurj’s style. I would ask Tager. If he didn’t want to leave Foreshires, I would find a heartbender here. But I hoped Tager would come. I trusted him, at least as much as I could trust anyone.

      
And there was Rex. With enough time, perhaps we could pick up those ends that had broken between us. With Rex by my side and Tager to keep me sane, maybe it would be all right. What my parents had done, creating a Rhon community—that was a fluke, a dream. Jaibriol and I could never give it to each other.

      
Even so. I could still free him. The problem of where he would go remained, though. He couldn’t ask the Allieds for sanctuary. No one would have the Highton Heir. No one would believe he was as much a victim of the Aristos as the rest of us.

      
Unless…I vouched for him. If the Delos authorities didn’t keel over from the shock, it just might work. But first I had to free Jaibriol without implicating myself.

      
I pushed up my sleeves. I had a lot of work to do.

XIV

Mind Of The Web

The Hub stood in the middle of a plaza. It was deceptively plain, just a two-story building with white casecrete walls. Muted lamps lit the area even this late at night. A featureless door offered entry. When I pressed my fingers into its lock, a scanner read my prints and the door slid open, revealing a cubicle that resembled an airlock. Except instead of air, this lock kept in secrets.

      
After I stepped inside, the outer door closed. The walls glowed with just enough light to let me see a psiphon resting in a cradle by the inner door. I plugged it into my wrist and waited while its security system scanned my brain.