Skyfall (22 page)

These “holobooks” Brad liked were even worse. He had actually tried to convince Eldri that the marks in them formed patterns you could use to speak. It was crazy. Those symbols couldn’t hold meaning, all so different, even those that Brad claimed “spelled” the same “word.” They
weren’t
the same. They were in different places in the book and surrounded by different patterns. How could Brad think they were the same? It made Eldri wonder if Brad might be a bit strange in his mind about these books.

The flyer floated toward Windward, skimming over the nearby peaks. It settled in the open area before the traitorous bridge that had given Avaril’s men access to Windward. Eldri left the courtyard with Garlin, Shaliece, and Shannar. They were crossing the bridge when the flyer opened and Brad stepped out. Eldri’s heart leapt to see his friend. Even after having known Brad and his odd ways for so long, though, it still unsettled him to see the flying machine disgorge a man.

Brad looked more like himself now than he had during the siege, when they had all become ragged and tattered. He had shaved his beard and cut his hair in that peculiar style some offworlders favored, so short it capped on his head. He also wore slacks and a “turtleneck” sweater. Brad had shown him images of turtles and explained the name, which he claimed dated back centuries, but Eldri couldn’t fathom the resemblance between them and Brad’s clothes. He just couldn’t see it. Out of respect for his friend, however, he refrained from saying he thought it absurd.

Brad hadn’t come alone. Several unfamiliar men and women descended from Brad’s flyer, all in severe clothes. Their garb resembled the coveralls Brad sometimes wore, except these outfits were crisp and snug, giving an impression of authority. They had symbols on the shoulders and chests, not blue, but gold and black. The newcomers all wore boots, sturdy and finely made. Although their apparel would be poor protection in a battle, their manner made Eldri think they were soldiers.

Eldri’s group met their visitors at the end of the bridge. Brad nodded with respect and spoke in English. “I am gratified to see you well, Eldrinson.”

Eldri wondered at his uncharacteristic formality. “And I you.” It was true. He would have mourned even more if Brad had died in the battle.

Brad indicated the people with him, who watched Eldri with disquieting intensity. “This delegation comes from Imperial Space Command of the Skolian Imperialate.”

Eldri wondered if he was supposed to know what that meant. “I see.”

Brad didn’t look happy at all. “Eldrinson, they are military officers from your wife’s people. They have inquiries about you. They’ve asked me to act as an interpreter.”

Eldri froze. The war god had sent emissaries. He felt chilled, then hot and flushed. He nodded stiffly, knowing he had to ask the question that had tormented him since the star warriors had taken Roca. “Is my wife all right? And our child?”
Please,
he silently begged the deities he had so neglected during his short life.
Please let them be all right.

Brad’s voice gentled. “She is fine. And you have a strong, healthy son. Your wife named him Eldrin Jarac Valdoria, after you and her father.”

The relief was so overwhelming, Eldri thought he would grab Brad right there and hug him in front of everyone. He managed to hold back only because his fear of the war god’s minions tempered his rash behavior. They continued to watch him, except one woman who was waving her finger over an object in the palm of her hand. It reminded Eldri of Brad’s “palmtop,” except this one was gold and black instead of blue.

Eldri inclined his head to the minions, and they nodded back. From their minds, he could tell they found him…
interesting.
It made him uncomfortable, as if he were wild prey they wanted to trap. He wished they would leave, but he didn’t dare send them away.

So he invited them into his ruined home.

Bewildered, Eldri turned from the strangers and their magicked “holos.” The strange pictures floated in the air, diaphanous and untouchable, yet appearing solid. He, Garlin, Brad, and the visitors were sitting at the table in the dining hall. The woman next to him had unrolled a flat screen. Holos moved above it, odd shapes in different colors, pretty but meaningless.

Eldri gave Brad a beseeching look and spoke in English. “I don’t understand what they want. Why won’t they tell me about Roca?”

Brad seemed troubled. “I think they’re giving you an IQ test. It measures intelligence.”

Garlin frowned. “Intelligence is not sand or water, that you can measure it.”

“I will ask.” Brad’s mood of foreboding disquieted Eldri. Nor had he realized Brad knew so many languages, though perhaps he should have guessed it from how fast Brad had picked up Trillian. The Earth man spoke to the Skolians in their language, and they answered in short sentences. Eldri could tell, from their minds, that they were guarding their responses.

Brad turned back to Eldri. “They want you to find the patterns in the holos.”

Eldri was growing angry. “They have
no
patterns. Why do these people keep asking me such bizarre questions?”

Brad’s look was unnerving, as if he were watching Eldri fling himself off a cliff. “The pattern is easy. Can’t you see it?”

Eldri glared at him. “If you see it, then tell me, I will tell them, and you can translate.”

“They’ll know. They’re recording this session.”

“Recording?”

Brad indicated the woman with the screen. “She is a Memory.”

Finally Brad said something that made sense. Eldri nodded to her with respect, but his unease was growing. These strangers were
studying
him. He felt it. They analyzed his every move.

“I think they understand English just fine,” Eldri told Brad. “They pretend otherwise because they think it will make us careless with our words, so we might reveal useful information.”

Brad spoke dryly. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Eldri turned to one of the soldiers, a man with short, dark hair. “Do you understand me?”

The man glanced at Brad. After Brad translated, the man spoke in his own language. To Eldri, Brad said, “Major Bass can pick out some of my English words because he has a spinal implant with a language module, but he can’t follow your speech at all because of the harmonics created by your vocal cords.”

Eldri glared at him. “Whatever you just said, I am certain I don’t believe it.”

Garlin let out an explosive breath. “Brad, it never makes sense. All these words—do you mock us with them?”

“No. I swear, no.” Brad sounded miserable. “Eldri, I’m sorry. You must answer his questions. I’m not sure why, but it is important.”

“Very well.” Eldri gave the Skolians his most implacable look. “Proceed.”

They started over, asking him to “identify patterns.” Frustrated, he gave up trying to understand and answered according to games he played with each symbol. He grouped them in eights and imagined them reflecting, inverting, and translating through their centers. He varied his responses according to how the images changed color. It made sense to him, though he doubted it was what they wanted.

So they continued.

R
oca sat in the dark, rocking Eldrin. Her chair responded to her movements, making her comfortable. She cuddled her sleeping child and sang as she went back and forth. In the three weeks since she had returned to the Orbiter, she had come to love this routine with her son.

She dozed for a while, then stirred enough to put Eldrin in his cradle by her bed. As she tucked him in, the front door chimed. She kissed Eldrin’s cheek, then left the room, pausing in the doorway to look at him. He was an angel, sleeping so peacefully. Already she saw his father in him. She missed Eldri so much, it was a fissure in her life.

The chime came again. Roca sighed. Rather than asking the house EI to screen the visitor, though, she went to answer herself. This valley where her family lived was one of the best-guarded places in the Imperialate. No one could enter without clearance. Supposedly that meant no one in Valley posed them any danger, though Roca had her doubts. Security could protect them from outsiders, but no one could protect them from one another. Their passions injured their hearts.

She opened the door to find a slender, dark-haired woman outside in the twilight, the breezes of Valley rustling her hair.

“Dehya! Saints almighty.” Roca grasped her sister’s arm and hauled her inside. “When did you arrive on the Orbiter?”

Dehya laughed and hugged Roca, her head against her sister’s shoulder. “Gods, we were so afraid.”

Roca embraced her, grateful to see her. After several moments, they parted and Dehya stood back, wiping tears off her face. “Ah, Roca, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. But when you vanished, we all feared something terrible had happened.”

“It did.” Roca touched a panel on the wall, making the door shimmer closed. “The Assembly voted to start a war.”

“Actually,” Dehya said, “they voted to reclaim the regions of the Platinum Sectors the Traders stole from us.”

“Same thing.”

Dehya smiled gently. “Can I come in?”

Roca reddened, mortified that she had let her sister stand in the doorway while she grumbled. She saw Dehya so rarely and loved her so dearly. “Yes. Please. Come in.”

As they entered the living room, with its brighter light, Roca was once again struck by how much her sister resembled an ethereal version of their mother. Unlike the queens of their ancestry, Dehya was fragile, though only physically. But she had the classic hair of a Ruby queen, long and luxuriant, hers glossy black rather than streaked with gray. She also had their mother’s green eyes, slanted and large. A shimmer of sunrise colors overlaid hers, a vestige of their father’s inner eyelid.

Dehya glanced toward the bedroom. “Is he in there?”

“Yes.” Roca’s voice softened. “He’s sleeping.”

“May I see him?”

Roca lifted her hand in invitation. “Please.”

They padded into the bedroom, to the cradle. Dehya peered at the baby. “He’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Roca felt her heart go tender. “I think so.”

“Even Kurj thinks so.”

Roca scowled. Then she stalked out of the room.

Dehya joined her in the living room. “Sister.”

Roca crossed her arms. “What?”

“He is your son. Not your enemy.”

Roca grunted.

Dehya regarded her steadily. “Kurj voted the way he did to protect all the babies whose lives the Traders will destroy if they conquer us.”

“How can you defend him?” Roca demanded. “You voted against the invasion.”

“A mother should not hate her son.”

Roca lifted her hand, then dropped it in frustration. “I could never hate Kurj. That’s what makes this so wrong. I hate the things he does, but I will always love him.”

“You and he must come to terms with this.”

“I don’t know if we can this time.” Her memories of Kurj as a boy eased into her thoughts. “But still, he is my firstborn, my golden child.”

Dehya sighed. “Now you have two.”

Roca heard the longing in her sister’s voice. “Are you and Seth still trying?”

“Not anymore.” Dehya walked with her to the couch. “We tried for decades with the best doctors we could find. But finally—well, it just hurt too much to keep failing.” As they sat on the couch, she said,

“I am happy for you, more than I can say. But—ai, Roca, I envy you, too. Sometimes I long for a child so much, I am breaking inside.”

“I’m sorry,” Roca murmured. Although she had sensed Dehya wanted a family, she hadn’t realized how deeply it hurt her sister that it had never happened. Dehya had married an Allied military officer, William Seth Rockworth, in an arranged marriage, part of an Allied-Skolian treaty.

“Ah, well.” Dehya tried to smile. “I have nephews.”

“Don’t give up yet,” Roca said. “It wasn’t easy for Tokaba and I to have Kurj. We went to many clinics. The doctors said I could never get pregnant, not unless we were willing to have the child’s DNA altered so it wouldn’t be a psion.”

Dehya sat up straighter. “That is what they told Seth and me! Ruby genes have too many lethal recessives. The combinations that made our family may be the only ones that produce a viable fetus. Artificial methods never worked for us, not even cloning.” She shook her head. “Why can’t we figure out why Ruby children survive only if they gestate in the mother? It is an injustice.”

Roca remembered the difficult time when she and Tokaba had struggled to accept that they would never have a child of their own. Even manipulating their DNA to delete the genes of a psion might have failed, given the difficulties. Nor did she think they could have made such a decision. It would have been like taking away the child’s sight.

She spoke in a low voice. “When we found out I was pregnant with Kurj, it was a miracle.”

“I can imagine.” Dehya’s face gentled. “Father thinks Eldrin is beautiful.”

“Very beautiful.” Roca smiled. “Not that I’m biased.”

Dehya laughed. “Not at all.”

“Perhaps Eldri and I managed better because his people have been separate from ours for thousands of years. Apparently we don’t carry many of the same recessives.” She thought of her difficult pregnancy. “It was easier for me to carry Kurj, though, probably because he is more like us.”

“What does your husband’s DNA show?”

It gratified Roca that her sister referred to Eldri as her husband, a reference most of the family avoided. “I don’t know. Kurj hasn’t given me the results yet.”

“Ah, Roca.” Dehya obviously understood what she left unspoken. “He will come to accept his stepfather.”

“I hope so.” But Roca knew it would never happen.

Dehya was watching her closely. “You hurt.”

“I miss Eldri.” Softly she added, “And it tears me apart that he can’t see his son.”

“Why can’t he come here?”

“Kurj.” Roca put a world of anger into that one word.

“He threatened you?”

“Not me. Eldri.”

Dehya stared at her. “This is wrong.”

Roca made an effort not to grit her teeth. “Tell Kurj that.”

“I will.”

Roca laid her hand on her sister’s arm. “No, don’t. I will deal with it. I don’t want you caught in the emotional shrapnel from this.”

“I would like to help.”

“Support me in the Assembly when I speak of Eldri.”

Dehya didn’t hesitate. “All right.”

“I am glad you voted against the invasion.”

She spoke awkwardly. “Kurj has asked for my help on it.”

“You said no of course.”

“Actually, I agreed.”

Roca went rigid. “How could you agree?”

“And if I don’t?” Dehya pushed back tendrils of hair curling around her face. “ISC wants me to improve the EI security on their ships. It could save lives. If that is within my capability, I must do it, regardless of how I feel about the invasion.”

“I admire your integrity,” Roca said dryly. “I doubt I could do the same.”

“Work within the Assembly. Be a moderating influence. I will support you.”

“
How?
” Roca hit her palm on her knee. “I am thoroughly sick of Kurj blocking my simulacrum from appearing in the Assembly. I am a Councilor, a member of the Inner Circle. Every time he cuts off my transmission, he interferes with government business. It is appalling.” She had kept her staff working on the problem nonstop, and they had barely dented Kurj’s security blocks. But she intended to succeed, regardless of what it took.

Dehya spoke carefully. “That is a serious accusation.”

“I know it’s him.”

“I had wondered why you didn’t attend this last session. I assumed you were busy with the baby.”

“I am. But that wasn’t the reason.” She tapped her fingers on the arm of the couch. “I’m thinking of going to Parthonia for the next session.”

“If it truly is Kurj behind these problems, he could have his people there prevent you from attending in person.”

“They can try,” Roca said darkly.

Dehya’s mouth curved upward. “The solution is simple.”

“It is?”

“I told him I would design security to keep out Traders.” Her eyes glinted. “I never promised to keep out his mother.”

Roca gave her a dubious look. “I know you’re good at what you do. But
that
good?”

Her sister leaned forward. “Just watch me.”

Kurj worked late into the night, reading reports from his top officers. All plans for the invasion were on track.

A comm hummed on his desk. He rubbed his eyes, then flicked his light-stylus through a holo. “Primary Skolia.”

One of his aides answered. “Sir, this is Secondary Teller. Your grandparents have received a message from the Eubian emperor.”

Kurj lifted his head.
That
was unexpected. “What is it?”

“The message is secured, sir.”

Gods. His officers were as bad as his EI. “I’m cleared to see it.” He wasn’t, but he doubted Teller would argue with him. “What does it say? You have my permission to read it.”

“I’m bringing it up—” Astonishment crept into Teller’s voice. “Sir, it looks like an offer to negotiate for the Platinum Sectors.”

Kurj gritted his teeth. He knew his grandfather; given a false offer of truce, Jarac would weaken instead of keeping the resolve they needed for the invasion. “Say nothing more about this. Forward a copy of the message to my home. I will go over it tonight.”

“Right away. Also, sir.”

“Yes?”

“We have the results of the medical tests on your father.”

Kurj’s hand clenched the edge of his desk so hard, the muscles in his hand spasmed. He had to make a conscious effort to control his voice. “Secondary Teller, I want one thing understood and understood well. Eldrinson Valdoria is not my father. You will never again refer to him in that manner.”

“Yes, sir.” His aide sounded subdued. “My apologies.”

“Is the report on Valdoria complete?”

“The medical exam, yes.” Teller paused. “But the psychologists are questioning the validity of their tests. They have doubts about the interpretation.”

“Interpretation, hell. Just send me the results.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything on his DNA? Is he a psion?”

“Yes, it seems so.”

The light-stylus in Kurj’s hand snapped. He stared at the gash in his hand where it had cut him. “A Ruby psion?”

“They can’t say for certain yet. But it looks like it.”

Kurj felt as if the walls were closing on him despite the large size of his office. He wanted to explode, but he pressed down his emotions. He wouldn’t lose control, wouldn’t let the anger burst free. “Very well. Send those results, too, the preliminaries you have now and the final report, when it is ready.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

“That will be all for tonight. Out.”

“Out, sir.”

For a long moment, Kurj sat unmoving, his fists clenched so hard that his fingernails gouged his palms. Finally he made himself relax, first his shoulders, then his arms. Slowly he opened his fists. He picked up the broken stylus and turned it over in his hand. Then he moved it through holos on his desk, bringing up images until he found the one he wanted, a holo of his father. Tokaba stood grinning, his rakish stance showing a young man full of vibrancy, his blond-streaked hair tousled from the wind.

“We only had six years.” Kurj swallowed. “Far too short a time, yes? But in that time, you taught me more about fatherhood than I’ve learned in all the years since then.”

The memories hurt too much. Kurj closed all of his files. A large part of his anger at Eldrinson Valdoria came because he knew the man would hurt his mother. Kurj could never accept him. He represented everything Kurj loathed: turmoil, wildness, barbarism. Kurj wanted—
needed
—the universe to follow rules of logic and reason. Any other path was chaos, the brutality of the Traders, Darr Hammerjackson multiplied a billion times, on an interstellar scale.

Eldri walked through the nursery. It had formerly been an alcove off his bedroom where he stored clothes and armor. He and Roca had cleared it out together, sharing their dreams of the child who would live here. Instead of rough stone walls, now it had blue glasswood paneling gifted to them by people who had scavenged it from their own rooms during the siege. A beautifully carved cradle stood in one corner, full of plump baby quilts.