Primary Inversion (9 page)

      
“Not the Assembly, no,” I said. “The Kyle-Mesh does.” At his puzzled look, I added, “Imperial heirs have to be Rhon psions.” I couldn’t help but notice Rex as I spoke. Why was he so pale, as if I had punched him in the gut? Surely he knew our children would never be in the line of succession.

      
Rex spoke carefully. “I had never realized bloodline was so important to the Imperial family.”

      
I wanted to kick myself. I had become too comfortable with him, assuming he knew me better than he had reason to. Why should he be aware of something so personal? My family guarded our privacy, all the more so given how much our lives fascinated the rest of the universe.

      
Block Moroto and Bjorstad,
I thought. As my awareness of Helda and Taas receded, I tried to reach Rex. He blocked me.

      
“It isn’t that way,” I said. “We
need
to widen our gene pool. Too many dangerous recessives are tied to the Rhon genes. But if we cut them out, it removes what makes us Rhon.”

      
“What I don’t get,” Taas said, “is why—”

      
Helda interrupted. “I just remember, Taas. We didn’t close our accounts after we check mesh-mail in my room.”

      
Taas glanced at her. “Yes, we did.”

      
“No, I think we forget. We better make sure.”

      
He frowned at her. But then he said, “Oh, all right.”

      
After they left the room, I smiled wanly at Rex. “Subtlety was never her strong point.”

      
“We’ve worked in a Kyle link for years,” he said. “It’s natural she would pick up on tension.”

      
“Rex, I’m sorry.” I unplugged the psiphon and stood up next to him.

      
“I presumed.” His voice was flat. “I aspired to a station above mine.”
 
      
“I can’t think of any man more worthy to be my consort.”

      
His emotions broke through his barriers: anger and shame mixed together. “Yet our children aren’t worthy of the Skolia name?”

      
“Of course they are! But the Imperial family has to be Rhon.” The room felt so quiet, muted by the thick walls and carpet. “It’s the only way we can keep the Kyle-Mesh alive. If my family doesn’t do it, who will? The Allieds? Ur Qox would eat them for breakfast. If we ever lose the Mesh, the Aristos will douse us like a bell over a candle.”

      
“No, our children won’t be able to power the Mesh,” Rex said. “What the flaming hell does that have to do with their ability to lead?”

      
“They’ll still be heirs to the Ruby Throne. It’s only the Triad they can’t join. Without full Rhon access to the Mesh, that access would kill them.” I spoke more softly. “Our children won’t be Rhon, but they will be empaths, powerful ones. That’s all the more reason to keep the Rhon strong. If Skolia falls to the Traders, then you, me, any children we have—we’ll all become providers.”

      
A muscle under his eye twitched. “We won’t let it happen.”

      
“No. We won’t.”

      
He was still blocking me, though not as much as before. I didn’t push. I wanted things to be right with him, for it to work out where my other two tries at marriage had failed. “Rex. I’m sorry.”

      
“I should go sleep,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

      
And then he left.

IV

Lucifer's Legacy

The spectacular sunset had cooled into darkness, leaving the street below my window lit only by holosigns that glowed in the alley. I couldn’t sleep. The Delos day had no resonance with my internal clock. I wondered if Rex was in bed. What he would say tomorrow, in the early hours of darkness when humans here started their day? I lay naked under the frothy blue blankets, thinking about it. Then I rolled over. Again. And again. I wound the blanket so tight around my legs, I could barely move. I jerked off the covers and turned again, facing the console, the air cool on my skin.

      
A button the size of a coin had turned blue on the console. I pushed it. “Yes?”

      
“Soz.” Rex’s voice rose out of the speaker.

      
My shoulders relaxed. “Heya.”

      
“Were you sleeping?”

      
“No. Just lying here.”

      
“Do you remember Jo Santis? That officer you bunked with in retraining a few years ago?”

      
“Vaguely.” Whatever had prompted that question?

      
“She told me something about you. I’ve been thinking about it.”

      
I didn’t like the sound of that. I couldn’t imagine what in a spacer’s helmet I had done that some woman I barely knew would tell Rex, and that he would find thought provoking after all these years. Warily, I asked, “What did she say?”

      
“That you sleep naked.” I could almost see his wicked grin. “That true?”

      
Ah. I stretched my arms. “Maybe.” I almost added:
Why don’t you come find out?
But the words stayed in my throat. Instead, I said, “I used to when I was a girl, when it was hot.”

      
“Soz…"

      
“Yes?”

      
“I can deal with the succession thing. It just caught me by surprise.”

      
“I should have said something before. I was stupid.”

      
“You’re never stupid.” He laughed. “Dense as hell sometimes. But never stupid.”

      
“Hey.” I smiled. “I’m still your CO, you know.”

      
“I’d rather a wife.”

      
“Me too.” After he retired, he would have to get my family’s approval before we could marry. But they would give it. Even I could see how well suited he and I were.

      
“You want a wife too?” Rex asked.

      
I laughed. “No. You. Husband.”

      
His voice softened. “See you tomorrow, Soz.”

      
“Night.”

      
After we cut the connection, I still couldn’t sleep. Now it was because I kept remembering how tightly his pants fit. I was never going to get any rest. Finally I sat up and turned on the lamp over the bed. Soft light diffused through its blue glass.

      
The book Tiller had given me lay on the nightstand. I opened it to the title page.
Verses on a Windowpane.
A pen-and-ink drawing below the title showed a window frosted with ice. An indistinct form stood on the other side of the pane, barely discernible through the icy coating. The figure was drawing in the frost, just the tips of fingers visible against the window.

      
As I flipped through the book, a ticket stub from the Arcade fell out. It marked a page with a poem and another drawing of the frosted window. Whoever had been on the other side of the glass was gone. The pane had shattered, and its broken glass jutted up in shards with ice glistening on their edges. The poem was in English:

      
A frame of stone.

      
Silvered glass

      
frosted with icy tears.

      
My fist closes

      
on the mirror;

      
flesh traps ice.

      
Brittle snaps

      
of breaking tears.

      
I see you now

      
standing behind me;

      
always watching,

      
always waiting,

      
never satisfied.

      
I sheath my heart,

      
its bare softness

      
guarded by ice.

      
“For flaming sake.” I closed the book. “What kind of poem is that?” It reminded me of Kurj for some reason. I dropped
Verses on a Windowpane
on the console and lay in bed. What was Rex doing? Sleeping? Did
he
sleep with clothes on? Images from the poem mixed in my mind with far more appealing images of Rex minus his uniform.

      
“Stop it,” I muttered. I would never get any sleep this way.

      
Finally I got up and dressed. Then I went for a walk. It was either that or take a cold shower.

      
The crowds on the Arcade had thinned to almost nothing. I cut through a corner of Athens, then jogged across the stubbly fields around the Delos starport. When I reached a terminal, I went in on the level with the arrival and departure gates. The place had that late night feel unique to starports, with their cool lights that never went off and their chrome and glass halls. I paced its artificially bright corridors like a leather-clad thug in black boots.

      
Eventually I came to one of the ubiquitous security checkpoints, an arch about two meters tall. It could make multiple recordings of whoever went under it, everything from magnetic resonance scans to an analysis of skeletal structure. It could even analyze behavior and judge if it was suspicious. Two guards staffed the arch, a man and a woman checking a line of bored people. I got into the line for no other reason than to have somewhere to go. Anything was better than returning to the Inn, where I could find nothing to do but read weird poems about sheathing hearts.

      
As the line moved forward, people queued up behind me, most looking half asleep. When my turn came, I stalked through the arch and sent the console into shock. Lights flashed and alarms shrilled loud enough to wake every living sole in the entire area.

      
The guards stepped in front of me. The woman looked at the bands on my jacket, then spoke in English. “I’m sorry, Primary. But we can’t let you through until we find out the problem.”

      
The problem indeed. What, besides the fact that I was a living weapon.

      
We compromised; they would let me through if I handed over every metal object on my person. So I pulled the switchblade out of my boot. As I straightened up, both guards dropped their hands to their burn-lasers. I just handed my knife to the woman. She blinked, then took the blade. Next I gave her the thorn-tube hidden in my jacket sleeve and the dart thrower tucked under my belt. She turned the weapons over in her hands as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

      
“Is that all?” she asked.

      
“Yes,” I said.

      
The man indicated the metal studs on my jacket. “Those will set off the alarms.”

      
Oh, what the hell. I took off the jacket and handed it to him. I could pick it up on the way out. Underneath I was wearing a Regulation Class Six Garment, upper body issue, type three; in other words, a black pullover. But when the man glanced at my pants, which also had metal studs, I said, “I not give you those.”

      
He turned bright red. “I didn’t mean—of course not.”

      
I tapped my torso, then my head, then my thighs. “Got biomech in here.”

      
He blew out a gust of air. “Well, give it another try and see what happens.”

      
I went around and walked under the arch again. The alarms were just as loud as the first time. The guards were very polite while they scanned me for more weapons. They were very polite when they asked me to go through three more times and submit to three more scans so they could verify it was the tech on my uniform and in my body that set off the alarms. By then, I thoroughly I wished I had found somewhere else to walk. Meanwhile the line of people behind me grew longer and longer.

      
Finally the woman said, “She’s clean.”

      
“All right.” The man exhaled. “You can go on through, Primary.”

      
Someone in the line clapped. I laughed—and half the waiting people jumped like scared rabbits. Huh. They must have seen too many Jagernaut-runs-amok movies.

      
Once I made it through the checkpoint, though, I had no idea where to go. So I just walked. And walked. Eventually I stopped near a deserted gate. I stood in front of its door, staring at my reflection in the windowpane that made up its upper half.

      
“Want to retire?” I asked the woman staring back at me. Maybe it was time to rest, to give myself the peace I needed to clean out that file of suppressed memories.

      
Small footsteps sounded nearby. A child spoke in English. “Do you have a motorcycle?”

      
I looked down to see a girl of about five gazing up at me with big eyes. I smiled and tried out my English. “What is mutter-psi call?”

      
She smiled back. “It’s like a big bicycle.”

      
“Oh.” I didn’t know what a bi-psi call was either. “Have you mutter-psi call?”

      
She shook her head. “Just a trike. A red one. The wheel had a hole in it.”

      
Ah. She meant
cycles.
Of course. “I am sorrow about the hole.”

      
“It’s okay.” she said. “My Daddy fixed it. The tire was all empty and he made it full.”

      
Something about what she said was important, but I couldn’t figure it out. Then I noticed a man hurrying up the hall. He spoke quickly to the girl. “Kimberly, don’t bother the soldier.”

      
I smiled. “Is okay. I enjoy.”

      
He stared at me, and I caught a flash of his thoughts, surprise that I responded like a normal human being.