Kelric gave me an approving glance. "You're fast. But the highest ranked polyhedron is the dodecahedron. None have more than twelve sides." He indicated the ruby. "Unless you consider a sphere a polyhedron with an infinite number of sides."
"Clever. But that isn't a sphere. It's a ball."
He laughed. "True. A sphere is hollow. Surely our highest-ranking piece must be solid."
Possibilities swirled in my mind, tantalizing. "It's more than a game, isn't it?"
"That depends on how you play." He shrugged. "Most people gamble."
"But you don't?" I had forgotten how hard it could be to converse with Kelric. He had never been talkative, and the last nineteen years had intensified his taciturn inclinations.
"No." He gathered up the pieces and put them in his pouch, but instead of tying it on his belt, he offered it to me. "You must have copies made."
Stunned, I took the pouch. No one had ever seen him part with it. "Are you certain you want me to take this?"
"Yes." He shifted his weight. "Return them soon."
"I will." I knew he could have had his console do a holo-scan of the dice and transmit the results to my jewelers, who could make them without the originals. This was a deliberate gesture of trust. "Thank you."
"When you have your own set, we will play Quis."
"Is that what you call the game?"
"Yes. It means 'influence.' "
"Literally?" My neural nodes sifted through language bases, trying to find a match for the word
Quis.
If I could narrow down the language, it might provide a clue about where Kelric had been all these years. Most people accepted that he had been with the Traders, but I didn't believe it.
Quis sounded like
keys
in Earth English. In Earth Latin,
quis
meant "who," and in the language of the Topolo people on the world Metropoli,
keez
meant "rebirth." None of those fit with places that it made any sense for Kelric to have been all these years.
"The literal translation is 'resurrection,' " he said. "But Quis gives influence if you play well. You plan with it, analyze, tell tales."
"It sounds fascinating." My nodes came up with
kuxel
for resurrection and
kux
for "come back to life," both ancient Mayan words. But that didn't help much, either, given that all our languages derived in part from ancient Mesoamerican tongues.
"You must learn Quis." Kelric was studying me with his gold gaze. "No other person will play it like you."
Who could resist a pitch like this? "All right. But why won't you teach anyone else?"
"They don't have my oath."
"Your oath?"
He spoke quietly, not in our modern tongue, but in classical Iotic, a language over five thousand years old. "For Skolia and the Ruby Dynasty, I come to your Circle to give my Oath. I swear to hold your Estate above all else, as I hold the future of Skolia in my mind and hands. I swear, on penalty of my life, that my loyalty is to the House of Skolia, only to Skolia, and completely to Skolia."
I stared at him, stunned. He had repeated the ancient oath Naaj Majda had given me in the Hall of Chambers. But it wasn't identical. Where did his version come from? And how did it relate to Quis? I was certain it did, somehow.
"You honor me with your oath," I said. "And I give you mine in return."
He nodded, apparently satisfied with my response.
An image formed in my mind:
lm
The
l
was dark purple and three-dimensional, like a plum, but polished and smooth, almost reflective. The
m
looked similar, except with a bluer hue. Those two letters could mean anything, but to me, in that font, they referred to the quantum numbers that defined a spherical harmonic wave.
The letters suddenly morphed into spherical harmonic orbitals.
They shimmered in my mind, glistening blue, violet, rose, and lavender.
"They're
us,
" I sudddenly stated.
Kelric blinked. "The Quis dice?"
"Not your gems. Spherical harmonics. They're us. The Rhon." His dice had prodded my thoughts. The way he built with them, their beauty… an idea hovered at the edges of my mind, if I could only catch the thought.
"Spherical harmonics as the Rhon." Kelric smiled. "The idea has a certain symmetry."
I laughed, tickled by his humor. Our bodyguards exuded bafflement. I supposed the joke wasn't that funny unless you liked to play with the symmetry properties of spherical harmonics. I had forgotten this side of Kelric, the way he and I used to talk in math puns. The rest of the family had thought us strange, but we enjoyed ourselves.
"A Rhon psion is an orbital in Kyle space," I said. The orbitals continued to glimmer in my thoughts. Some resembled Kelric's round Quis dice. "They're made from spherical harmonics."
"Orbitals of thought." Kelric tilted his head. "But spherical harmonics give only the angular dependence. It's like saying the Rhon only goes
around
a center. Nothing takes us
out
of that center."
More puzzlement came from our guards: They wondered if we were talking in code.
"You're still missing something," Kelric said. "The radial extent."
The idea suddenly coalesced in my mind. Just as his Quis dice formed individual balls or rings, symmetric about their centers, so spherical harmonics built up the mind of a Rhon psion in Kyle space, symmetric about our mental center of being. But a spherical harmonic had only angular dependence; it only described how a shape varied
around
a central point. It had no radial dependence. It didn't tell how a shape varied as we moved
into
or
away
from that center.
I saw the problem now. It was obvious. A Rhon psion could exist in Kyle space, but only in isolation. We were complete with respect to our own centers, but we couldn't reach out.
I spoke slowly. "When the Rhon make the psiberweb, we link our minds with the minds of many others. Those links radiate out from our centers. The web takes us out of ourselves. Without it, we can exist, but we are cut off from humanity." I paused, uncomfortable. "If we want to be truly human, we need those links."
"Do you think we are?"
"Truly human?"
"Yes."
Gods. What a question. I thought of Taquinil. The waveform I had shown Jon to describe Taquinil's existence in Kyle space had come from my impression of my son. It included radial as well as angular dependence, which made me think he wasn't ready yet to completely shed his humanity. We had the ability within ourselves to reach out, if we wished. What we did with that ability depended on us. "Perhaps we each have to make that choice."
He regarded me curiously. "What made you think of all this?"
I indicated his dice pouch of gems. "They remind me of spherical harmonics. All those colors."
"You see mathematical functions in color?"
"Always. Texture, too. Even music." I chuckled. "Spin is more frivolous than angular momentum."
"I should enjoy hearing more about it." Kelric rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his knuckles. It pulled down his shirt cuff, uncovering his wrist guard. Intricate hieroglyphs were engraved in the gold. Intrigued, I tried to decipher the language. It had a faint resemblance to Iotic, but I couldn't be sure without a closer look.
Following my gaze, he glanced down. Then he lowered his arm and pulled down his cuff.
"They're marriage guards," I said. Almost no one wore them anymore, not even among the most conservative Houses. They looked too much like Trader slave restraints. That resemblance had destroyed a tradition with a five-thousand-year history among our people. At one time, the giving of such guards had been an expression of love.
"Dehya, don't ask." He paused. "There is Jeejon. My wife."
I knew Jeejon hadn't given him the guards. Perhaps he was protecting a former wife. Children? Given the current turmoil in the Imperialate, he had reason for caution. And he obviously loved Jeejon, as unlikely a pair as they seemed.
I didn't push. When he was ready, if ever, he would talk about it. Instead I said, "I like your wife."
Kelric grinned, his teeth bright against his gold skin. "So do I."
My breath caught at his smile. I was no more immune to his beauty than anyone else. But more had changed than the gray in his hair or the lines around his eyes. Nineteen years ago, he had often let a woman's physical appearance dazzle him, sometimes to his detriment. He had also tended to prefer women from the noble Houses. Jeejon came from a background so different from his, she had almost no overlap with his previous life.
"I wonder, though, how she will survive the Imperial court," I said.
"She is my consort. She can do whatever she wants."
"Well, yes." I could just imagine how that would fit Naaj's ideas of nobility and
lèse majesté.
"But the Imperial court won't go easy on her."
"Then forget the Imperial court." His face relaxed. "I love her, Dehya. And if the noble Houses have a problem with that, tough."
"Well. Good." I liked this new Kelric more and more. He had also given me a valuable insight.
I thought of his ruby ball, which resembled an orbital. By itself, the ball meant little. It took meaning only as part of a Quis structure. So it was with my mind in Kyle space: the psiberweb gave it meaning. Kyle space formed another aspect of human existence. It deepened our humanity by creating an alternate reality out of the sum total of human thought. The Rhon could open portals to it, but those gates went nowhere without the rest of humanity to give structure to that mental universe.
* * *
Only a short time remained before the shuttle took Kelric and me from
Roca's Pride
down to Parthonia for our speech, which would be broadcast to all the settled worlds. Before we could leave, one visit remained to be made. So I walked with Jinn Opsister and my bodyguards, my heart heavy.
We paused at a large hatch guarded by more Jagernauts, who unlocked and opened the heavy portal. When my bodyguards started to follow me through the hatchway, I shook my head. "Please wait out here."
Jinn didn't look happy, but this time she didn't argue. Perhaps she understood.
I continued on alone and closed the hatch behind me.
The observation dome curved out from the hull, a transparent bubble of dichromesh glass. The stars blazed outside; ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and diamond. Interstellar Quis dice. Nurseries of interstellar dust filled with hot, newly-born stars spewed through space like impossibly huge fountains frozen for millennia. The aft end of the battle cruiser curved away from the bubble in both directions, huge, its hull gnarled and massive. Far down the curve, the maw of thrusters dwarfed this bubble, but they were quiescent, making the bay safe for now.
A man stood across the chamber, looking out at the spectacular panorama. The transparent floors, walls, and ceiling made it appear as if he were standing in open space. His hands rested on a waist-high rail.
I went to stand with him. For a long time we both gazed at space.
Then he spoke. "How long until you go down to Parthonia?"
I looked at him. "As soon as you and I finish here."
"So." The First Councilor continued to watch the stars, his face drawn. Prison cuffs glittered on his wrists.
"Barcala," I said softly.
Finally he turned, pain in his gaze. "Must my final view of another human be my executioner?"
I felt as if were dying inside. "I'm sorry."
He looked as if he had aged years. "How long do I have?"
"A few hours." Gods, I hated this. But unlike as with Jon Casestar, no leeway existed here. The noble Houses, our supporters, ISC— all demanded the deposed leader die. Never mind that Barcala and I had been friends for years or that he had done a good job as First Councilor. Unless we executed him, he would be a constant shadow over the new government.
