Primary Inversion (40 page)

      
I needed to rethink the risks of tampering with Kurj’s strategy for the Qox interrogation. Here on Diesha, Qox was too close to the power centers of the Kyle-Mesh. If he escaped, he could carry out exactly the function he had been bred to execute. He could gain access to the link and overload the Triad. If he managed it without killing himself, he would be perfectly positioned to take over the functions of the three people he had murdered. It would put him in control of the Mesh and ISC.

      
Bass, stop matching,
I thought.

      
Stopped,
Bass thought.

      
I withdrew from the meshes in proper format, rising through its levels. Then I considered my next move. If I told Kurj what I knew about Jaibriol, I risked execution for the treason I committed by hiding the truth for so long. But Kurj needed the information. Instead, I could interrogate Qox, break his barriers, and inform Kurj that the Highton Heir was Rhon. I would present the information as if I were learning it for the first time. That way, I protected both myself and the Imperialate.

      
I would have to be careful when I broke Jaibriol’s barriers, though, so I didn’t hurt him.

      
I rubbed my eyes, drained from my work. And now I was about to make Jaibriol’s suicide attempt into reality.

      
Suicide.
Suicide.
Why had I forgotten that? What the blazes was wrong with me, thinking Jaibriol had come here to kill us?

      
I got up and paced out of the room, trying to clear my head. A moment ago I had been thinking with what I believed was perfect clarity. Yet now I felt as if a stranger had been in my head. My intention was to
free
Jaibriol, not betray him to Kurj. How could I get the information I needed to locate Jaibriol, if the process of finding it made me betray him?

      
I picked up a paper and wrote:
It’s not your mind. If you listen, you will regret it. Get the data.

#

The maze of halls under the ISC Records complex went on for kilometers. Its stark lines and dim lighting had earned it the name Catacombs. My psiberchips were in a Catacombs vault secured a beta scanner, which analyzed retinal patterns, fingerprints, voice, height, weight, body chemistry, skeletal structure, and brainwaves. It opened only to me or Kurj, who also kept one of his chips there. That vault stood inside a larger vault secured with a beta scanner, inside a room secured with a beta, at the end of a hall secured by a beta. It was the best security the Imperialate had to offer. Breaking in was impossible—unless you happened to be the person it was meant to protect.

      
Every lock opened for me. Within the innermost vault, I found our chips in a molded box on a shelf. I sat at a console by the wall and clicked my card into the psiberchip slot. This time Bass gave me a 1.2% match to Kurj’s brain. I picked up Kurj’s card—

      
—and stopped.

      
I was about to commit an act that could destroy my family and the Imperialate. I was a fool. I had been operating within an emotional mindset that damaged my ability to think clearly.

      
I looked at the paper in my hand.
It’s not your mind.

      
Incorrect. It was imprecise to state that merging with Kurj’s brain made my mind his. It altered my mental processes, giving me insights I otherwise lacked. My mind remained my own.

      
If you listen, you will regret it.

      
No. The only source of regret I would find in these actions were the actions themselves. It was time I stopped this treason.

      
Get the data.

      
No data was available to me. My aunt had protected it with her customary brilliance; even if someone came this close, they would go no further because in the process of reaching it they came to understand why it must not be reached.

      
It’s not your mind.

      
My mind had been strained. Tager had made this clear in my talks with him.

      
Seeing Tager had been a weakness.

      
No!

      
I clenched the console so tightly my knuckles turned white. The paper crumpled in my hand, its edges sticking out of my fist. Seeing Tager had
not
been a weakness. My mind was sound. If I had written these words on this paper, they were sound.

      
I picked up Kurj’s card and placed it in the slot. His chip resisted me, like a human body rejecting a transplanted organ. I tensed, waiting for that sense of
deletion
that would come when it wiped itself blank.

      
Instead I felt a curious relaxation. Then I remembered where to find Jaibriol.

#

I entered EM16 as before, cloaking my operations. This time I went straight to the security subgrid. When I toggled visual mode, the net blinked out of existence, replaced by the desert. Parched land surrounded me for thousands of kilometers, red and mottled with upjutting rocks that cut the landscape in angular fingers. Prickly grey stubs of dustbite poked out of the sand. Only far in the north, where the plains rose into a haze of mountains, did the view soften. The sky above me stretched in a blue stone tablet washed clean of clouds.

      
No one lived here. ISC had other purposes for this desert. We had honeycombed it with installations, including Block Three, a complex hidden under the desert.

      
Psicon,
I thought.

      
The desert retreated like a cloth backdrop yanked away by a giant hand, shrinking as it receded, until it was no more than an icon glittering within a square of the Kyle-Mesh. I accessed the file in my node with the data I had stolen from Kurj’s psiberchip.
Guards:
three units watched Jaibriol’s cell, six guards per unit. Each unit knew the location of one other unit. I reprogrammed EM16 so that on the next shift, units one and three knew about each other and unit two knew about itself. I reassigned unit two to a new area so its original location appeared to be another unit. At the original location, a hole now gaped in the security cage around Jaibriol.

      
I reprogrammed the Block Three defense systems to ignore certain input at a certain time. I reset the medical monitors that watched Jaibriol’s cell to watch the guard outside the Block Three cafeteria. I switched the monitors to the holography darkroom, and I changed work shifts to clear workers out of certain areas. I reset the robot mice that scurried around, supposedly cleaning the base while they spied on people. Then I set up a program that would, minutes after my changes went into effect, undo every one of them, reset every system to its original state, wipe out the record of my changes, destroy itself, and delete the record of my deletions.

      
There were going to be a lot of confused people in the morning.

XV

Chains And Silk

I landed the flyer in darkness. No moon shed its softening rays on the desert, only the cold light of the stars, a multitude that glittered above the parched land. I ran across the rocky ground to a point several meters away. Then I touched a button on the leather guard around my wrist.

      
A circular section of rock about two meters wide sank into the ground. After it descended for a meter, it swiveled aside, uncovering a metal surface, the safe door for Block Three. Another touch on my wrist guard and the safe door descended silently. Finally it too swiveled aside, revealing a metal staircase spiraling into the darkness. A shaft plunged from my feet down to the top of those stairs. I touched my guard again and a vertical seam opened in the wall of the shaft, uncovering a ladder.

      
I climbed down to the landing and ran down the stairs. The security airlock at the bottom released to my command. When the inner door opened, light glared in my eyes. Pipes lined the walls and ceiling of the corridor: huge tubes big enough to crawl through, smaller pipes the width of my arm, tiny conduits no wider than a finger. I ran down the hall, my boots pounding the floor. The place might as well have been deserted. I penetrated some of the most advanced security systems ISC had created and not one alarm sounded.

      
It took less than two minutes to reach Jaibriol’s cell. I unlocked it with a laserpick I had set to the light pattern it expected. The door opened into a small room with a ledge along the left wall.

      
Jaibriol lay sprawled on the ledge, asleep.

      
He was barefoot, and wore only the grey pants and short-sleeved shirt of a prison uniform. Bruises and welts covered his arms, and the marks of an Espring prong, which gave electric shocks. The lacerations on his wrists and ankles looked as if they came from chains. I wondered how his interrogators justified their methods, given that we had far less violent ways of extracting information. They didn’t need torture. Then again, they probably felt no need to justify it, given their prisoner. Vengeance had no use for benevolence.

      
I ran over and shook his arm. “Jaibriol! Wake up.”

      
He spoke thickly in Highton. “No more.”

      
I grabbed his shoulders. “Wake up!”

      
He sat bolt upright and struck out with his fist, hitting me in the stomach with a bruising blow that knocked me onto the floor.

      
I scrambled to my feet. “It’s me. Sauscony.”

      
He stood up, looming over me, his fists clenched, his eyes unseeing.

      
“Jaibriol, it’s m—”

      
“Qox.” Although he looked straight at me, his gaze was unfocused. “Jaibriol Qox.”

      
“I know who you are.” I grabbed his arm. “Come on.”

      
He shoved me away so hard, I slammed into the wall. I tried not to think of the time rushing by. As he raised his fists over my head, I spoke in as conversational a voice as I could manage. “If this is how you greet all of your potential girlfriends, you must have a lousy love life.”

      
He stopped. “What?”

      
“Jaibriol, it’s me. Sauscony. From Delos.”

      
He stared at me, his face blank. I extended my arms, showing him I carried no weapons. “Remember? We met on Delos.”

      
“Sauscony?” He lowered his arm. “
Sauscony?
”

      
“Remember? I was very rude at your mansion. I shot the place up and broke into your bedroom.”

      
His gaze finally focused. “How did you get in here?”

      
“It wasn’t easy. We have to go. Fast.”

      
He looked past me at the open door. Then he broke into a run, sprinting for that sign of freedom. I sped after him, pointing to the right, and he veered that way. He stumbled on his bruised feet, almost falling, regaining his balance, stumbling, but he never slowed. We reached the exit shaft in no time. He ran up the stairs, bare feet thudding on the metal strips. At the landing, he grabbed a rung of the ladder, but when he tried to pull himself up, his swollen hands slipped. He fell, knocking his head against the ladder as he crumpled to the ground. He lay in a heap with his eyes closed.

      
No! I grabbed his arm, trying to heft him up, but he didn’t stir. In his weakened state, the blow had knocked him out. Even with my augmented strength, I couldn’t carry someone his size up a ladder. To have made it this far and be stopped by a damned ladder—no! I shook him hard. “
Get up.
”

      
His eyes opened blearily. He fumbled for the ladder and closed his hand around the lowest rung. As he dragged himself to his feet, I held him around the waist. Then we climbed, with me just below him on the ladder. It seemed forever before we reached the top, but finally we were running across the desert to the flyer. If Jaibriol noticed the dustbite weeds jabbing his feet, he gave no sign. He threw himself through the open hatchway and fell across the deck as I scrambled after him. I slammed the hatch closed and ran to the cockpit.

      
I didn’t waste time doing checks, I just taxied across the desert, bumping in the starlight, and took off, flying dark and silent. We soared through the night.

      
And finally, as Base Three dropped behind us, I dared to relax. We had made it. I had done the impossible, stealing the Highton Heir out from under the relentless eye of ISC.

      
I put the flyer on autopilot and turned to Jaibriol. He had collapsed into the co-pilot’s seat and was lying with his head against its back, his chest rising and falling with his ragged breathing.

      
“I have a counterfeit ID for you,” I said. The only disguise he would need were colored eye lenses and hair dye. No one would dream the Highton Heir was walking around free in the heart of an ISC starport.

      
He opened his eyes and lifted his head. “What are you going to do with me?”

      
“I’m taking you to Delos. You can ask the Allieds for sanctuary.”

      
He laughed harshly. “Sanctuary? They’ll put me on trial for war crimes.”

      
“What crimes?” I grimaced. “Giving bad speeches after Kryx Quaelen drugged you?”

      
He sat up straight. “How did you know that?”

      
“I could tell as soon as I saw you speak.”

      
“No one will believe I didn’t kill all those people at Tams.”

      
“They will if I vouch for you.”