by Pam Uphoff
"Please, sit. Not to our surprise, you have a One X chromosome and Wolfson's double powered X chromosome. Your count of the other Prophets' genes is extraordinary. You kids average about fifty-five percent. You have eighty-four percent. Your mother must be extraordinarily strong. I'm surprised she wasn't recruited by the Princess School."
Ryol nodded. "Our biomother was. It could be that our records missed that complication, since we were embryo transplants. I'm not actually sure if we were legally adopted, or if everyone just decided to leave the hospital birth records uncorrected and save the fuss."
"Humph. Very irregular."
"Well, it could be that I misunderstand." She tipped her head toward, well, the wall, and by inference beyond. "Rael Withione is our biomother."
"Oh. She never said anything."
Ryol could feel her face heating, and wished she could go back and edit the conversation. "We've always called her Aunt."
"I see." The look was a bit pitying.
Oh great, now she thinks our mother rejected us!
"Well that does explain the lack of third person genes."
"Third person?" Ryol blinked.
"Literally." She shook her head. "That wine! Apparently, along with everything else it can do, it will sort through all available genes—that is all available sperm—and grabs anything better than the original chromosomes in the fertilized ovum, and substitutes them."
"Eww! That's . . . "
"Disgusting? Hard to say. No doubt the putative fathers of the other children will be happy to know that they've had some genetic input." Diuc returned her attention to the data screen. "So. You are a 212 Withione, with a Comet Fall X. You first touched the Power of the One at the age of ten years and four months. Your glow is very well controlled, for your age.”
“Aunt Rael gave me lessons.”
“Hmm. And what did you see on the table out there?"
"A heap of maybe twenty cubes, four or five centimeters to a side. The edges glowed electric blue. The sides were translucent, very pale blue. The interior was hard to see, there may have been further cube frames within."
"Excellent. That was a test for dimensional abilities. You will be receiving an invitation to the Princess School when you graduate from high school. Actually you would even if you had no dimensional abilities at all. In the meantime, you will, from time to time, be invited to join others in special training. Part of the training is to measure your progress. We will be measuring your baseline this week. Some training sessions may involve travel to Embassy to train under the dimensional experts at Disco."
Ryol swallowed. Managed to nod.
"We're almost done with the individual chats. Why don't you relax. We'll be splitting the group up into those who have and those who haven't awakened to the Power of the One for appropriate exercises."
"Thank you, Princess." Ryol nodded and hurried out. I made a total hash of that interview. But . . . I will be going to the Princess School! And . . . Embassy!
Aunt Rael grinned and winked at her as she fairly danced past.
Gior and Voan were gone. The other girls were all trying to be serious and meditate and all. She sat down cross-legged and let her grin out. Princess School! Ryol for the win!
Chapter Seven
Shields and Headaches
"Then he handed me a sack full of absolutely nothing, and said any kids who could see and manipulate them could do corridors, and had a thirty percent chance of also being able to create gates." Rael glanced at the chip on the desk between them. "I did a word-for-word report on the whole conversation. With annotation."
"Humm. Well, did any of the kids see anything in your bag?"
"All of them." She pressed her lips together. I'm not going to ask if he knew. I'm not. "Nineteen of them just saw a vague blue glow, the rest saw cubes inside of cubes. Some could pick them up, others described them as too slippery to grab. One boy was fooling with, as far as I could see, thin air. He suddenly jumped, turned red and apologized for 'breaking it.' Whatever the heck 'it' was."
"Huh. And, did you meet any of his other kids? Or these mixed Oner and Comet Fall kids?"
"Yes. In fact Lieutenant Ruff Hasty who has considerable diplomatic duties with the Comet Fall Embassy, is one of Dancer Hoon Withione's pair. Xen is his father, and his younger brother is apparently the son of the God of Art, who is apparently no longer alive. And they said Ajha has a daughter and granddaughter there!"
"Hardly shocking, the way Action Teams were previously encouraged to run wild."
"Well, yeah, but, Ajha?"
"One suspects it wasn't rape."
"Oh. Yeah, that I can see." She nodded. "So, then Xen took me to Comet Fall, and introduced me to the Karista Bay Pyramid of witches. Dear One! It was like Pink Princesses everywhere! Four of them were the result of an Action Team gang rape. They felt like Oners. One of them was a member of Endi's spy team, the woman called Heil. They seemed to have about the same abilities as their more ordinarily conceived sisters. Sisters being a courtesy term applied to any fellow witch. Although in this particular pyramid a bunch of them had the same mother."
"I've heard they don't marry." Urfa tipped his chair back and gnawed his lip.
Rael grinned. "They do, but it's utterly scandalous. Very rare. 'Keeping a pet,' as they call it, is more common. Senior Sister Trump keeps Lord Hell, otherwise known as the God of Just Deserts."
Urfa choked faintly. Nodded.
"He's one of the original thirteen. Took my breath away, and he was pretty well shielded.
“Anyhow, back to the Embassy bunch. Ruff's apparently what they call a mage, and, well, technically speaking he's got dimensional ability, but can't really do anything. He's strong, mind you. He said the One gene and the Mage gene—that's the one they've got on the Y chromosome—were so similar that there wasn't the usual two different power genes effect, which Xen says is a large part of being able to do anything with the dimensional ability.
“Apart from Ruff, Xen's got four kids there on Embassy. Well, there's a lot more kids there, but four of them are his. Twelve year olds, two girls and two boys, scary strong, just glowing with magic. They've all got older brothers and sisters, apparently not Xen's, who are off at 'The Wizard School.'
“They made it sound like the equivalent of the Princess School . . . but Xen laughed and said it was straight up academic magic, both theory and practice. No politics or training for bodyguarding, and certainly not being trained to be leashes hung around someone's neck."
She didn't even try to suppress a sudden grin. "And he said that teleportation was not a dimensional skill. He said it merely took power, discipline, and training. He started looking a bit cautious, at that point."
Urfa snorted. "And so I ought to send a powerful, well trained and disciplined Princess there? One that can get him to open up a bit more than is, strictly speaking, wise."
"Yep. Now, may I go check on those kids again?"
"Sure. Keeping an eye on your niece and nephew?" His brow creased. "How did your sister meet Endi, anyway? I thought she lived in Montevideo."
Rael closed her eyes. "The main reason I went to vent at Xen was that Arno asked something, and I checked my old medical records. After I was shot, while I was in a coma, they removed embryos for transplant. I yelled at Xen to keep myself from strangling my sister. She never told me. My parents never told me."
"Oh. One."
"Yeah. Thank the One I like those kids. Bit of a shock, fourteen years later, though. To find out I'm their mother, not their aunt." She sighed. "Biomother. And I haven't told them about my genetic irregularities, so to speak."
Urfa drummed his fingers. "Don't. They're at an impressionable age, no need to . . . make them feel attached to Comet Fall. Xen is such a heroic figure, I'm probably a fool to let any of these kids meet him."
"Umm. And being told they're something like three-fourths Comet Fall . . . I think you are correct."
***
The mirror agal worked. For as lo
ng as he could keep it in the back of his mind.
Arno got used to going to bed with an aching head.
Technically, he was in the group of seven boys who hadn't yet felt the Power of the One. The cheerful Izmo had shrugged away the designation. "Every single one of you is getting mentally loud, and glowing like mad. You'll feel the power soon enough. After all, the average age of bloom is eighteen. I suspect you'll all be early bloomers. For now though, we're going to run some quick assessments, to determine what specific talents you might have."
"Talents?" Or What looked uncertain. "Like for micromanufacturing?"
"That's one." The old priest didn't seem to mind interruptions. "Physical manipulations, both large and small. Telekinesis, scientifically speaking. Telempathy. Telepathy.
"Although 'Tele' is a bit of a misnomer. It means 'distant' in an ancient language, but we use it when we mean 'mental' or 'magical' methods."
He shrugged. "But when we say talents, we often mean very specific inborn biases toward one thing or another. We all have things that come more easily than others. Such as subjects in school. I was always good at language arts, and dismal at math. Brilliant at gymnastics, pathetic at track. These exercises will give us some idea of your current magical biases."
Arno latched onto one word. "Current?"
"Current. You'll grow into magic much as you'll grow into your feet. Now, Arno, you think you're small and clumsy, in ten years you'll be tall. Graceful, eh, too early to tell."
"So you're testing now, to watch us grow, magically."
"Exactly. Now you seven may find these exercises stupid, if not impossible, but frankly, I wish we'd started six years ago, before any of you twenty-seven blossomed. So, let's get started. Paper and pencils in front of you, eyes closed. Listen to my voice . . . "
Fifteen minutes later, Arno was frowning at the stick figure people standing in a circle that he'd just drawn . . . and wondering why he'd drawn it. Izmo just dated it and slipped it in a folder with Arno's name on it.
"How about some video games?"
Not the standard ones Arno was used to, but the full immersion games were half frustrating and half easy. Until they ramped up a few levels. Drat. Well, if they were measuring something, no doubt he'd improve. Eventually.
Or not. If they were measuring some connection to the One. This Endi Dewulfe, Xen Wolfson person. His father. Biofather. Whatever. That person might be able to change that. He'll probably do anything Aunt Rael asks. But he'd better not do anything to me without checking with me first.
He hunched his shoulders. Being some stranger's child hadn't bothered him a few days ago. Somehow knowing more was making it worse.
***
"Four girls have one copy of the standard One X chromosome, and then Wolfson's X chromosome, with its doubled power genes. The other eleven all have two One power genes, but one of their X chromosomes is otherwise Wolfson's. The ability to see very clearly those things Wolfson sent back with Rael doesn’t correlate exactly with the Comet Fall power genes. But except in one case it seems to match with the child having both of Wolfson's chromosome sixteen. That damned wine effect . . . " Ytry looked back at his notes.
"The boys are a bit more varied, with some odd combinations. Eight have the One X and a normal Y. Four boys got both X and Y from Wolfson, and so have the same power genes he has. All four of them have strong dimensional talent, plus three of the ‘normal’ boys. Again, all but one have Wolfson’s chromosome sixteen."
Diuc sniffed. "Probably just an unusual coincidence, since it isn't universal."
"Possibly, but since the two with only one copy are twins, and they both have the same chromosome sixteen from their mother, that gives us a starting point for identifying the genetic basis for dimensional abilities."
Chapter Eight
Offices
“In all honesty, we probably ought to have three offices. One inside your security area to monitor your periodic spasms of military aggression, one here in the town for ordinary business, so the people just wanting information and the local staff we’ll be hiring don’t have to keep going through the cattle chute of your gate security on the way to and from work every day.” Xen pretended to be oblivious to the military escort “Mr. Polanski, State Department” had with him.
Karl Mantigo and Xian Chang were in their Earth Army uniforms for the office hunt, Chris Hanger had opted for a civilian suit, rather than the Disco gray that Xen was wearing. Otilia Schott looked like she was going to a funeral. Six months with Disco . . . Electronic Intel Expert from the British Empire. But she says she wants field experience, on foreign worlds.
“And an office in the Hague for political matters.” Xen shrugged. “Eventually. But we’ll start here. Chris? Otilia? What do you think?”
“It’s a good starting place. Once we see what sort of traffic we get through here, we can expand.” Otilia looked around. “I expect we’ll get a lot of practice saying ‘No. We cannot sell you an invisible dimensional bag. Can I interest you in a planet?’ Or something like that.”
Polanski stared at her in horror. “You can’t sell worlds! Nor dimensional bags, or corridors, or gates!”
“Without government approval, of course.” Xen put in. “The main purpose of this office will be to save mining companies and colony organizers from having to get visas and a security check just to talk to us about getting a world of their own. We can show them the available worlds, advise them as to what they will need to bring with them, tell them what permits they’ll need to get from your government and the costs. Then they’ll have all the information in hand to get the permits and licenses and whatnot.”
Chris nodded. “The procedure hasn’t changed. We’re just shortening one step of the process.”
Polanski scowled. “And these unrestricted passes?”
“Disco agents need to come and go at will. To report in to HQ, attend meetings, and, of course, look for problems.” Xen shrugged. “Or I can just keep popping in and wandering around.”
Polanski squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Right. Two unlimited passes. And two resident worker visas. And approval for a foreign entity to rent office space and housing. There may be a wait for the financial check for the housing.”
Otilia finally cracked a smile. “Not a problem. It’s an easy commute from Embassy.”
Polanski winced—probably at the thought of the two agents coming and going past all their gates and seeing everything they were doing, twice a day—and pasted a forced smile on his face. “I’ll see if I can expedite the process.”
***
“Good God! What is THAT!”
Xen coughed politely. “The Director’s Residence. It’s a bit ornate.”
Exterior Director Izzo laughed, behind them. “And there’s so much of it. I call it the Gothic Horror, although it’s much too tacky to stick to a single style of architecture. Come in, won’t you?”
The appalling . . . style mashup didn’t stop at the door.
The . . . would it be called a drawing room? It featured lots of plants on plinths of carved . . . things. A wall of peacock feathers—the real feathers glued to the wall, and a huge fireplace, with carved marble . . . embellishments.
Presidential Director Urfa was staring up at the mural on the ceiling as they walked in.
Introductions circled and a butler appeared to ask about drinks
Xen watched as Urfa and Izzo looked over the Disco agents he was about to drop in their laps.
Prince Primus Faraster had a touch of glow. The Arbolian power genes often—usually— failed to bloom, but the guys often didn’t feel quite right to a trained Oner. Or a Fallen Magician, either. But Faraster did know how to shield, and couldn’t be easily read or influenced.
Mark Taurus was a full on Purp. His cheeky grin was completely at odds with his corpse-colored skin and purple hair. Not a strong magician, but Oners should be able to tell that he was well disciplined, and shielded.
Urfa cleared his throat. “Well, the
pair of you will certainly be an interesting addition to the scene. You may need offices in Paris as well as reopening the Disco Office here. Or elsewhere. In any case, welcome to the Empire of the One.”
And hopefully the office will stay open this time.
Izzo nodded. “I’ll get you passes . . . Xen, you know us well enough, so I’ll leave you to set them up financially . . . Umm we have pretty good public transit until you buy local cars . . . umm . . .”
Faraster chuckled. “Don’t worry. Xen taught me how to drive, and has been making both of us drive the car he imported from here.”
Mark nodded. “All we have to do is fill out forms, pass the test, buy cars . . . return Xen’s in pristine condition . . .”
The Oners grinned.
By the time they’d lunched in the ornately carved dining room, it was coats off and elbows on the table as they talked trade, security, smuggling . . . the awkward political situation with a hostile Council being in charge of the military through the Ministry of War . . .
Izzo invited the Disco people to stay at the Horror until they were settled into apartments or houses.
All friends here. Now to find out what the Arbolians are going to do . . .
***
Xen followed the Arbolian ambassador, Lord Manchuro, through their gate, Prince Primus Warric and Prince Primus Jack on his heels, shaved heads and black robes. And the two poor fools he was going to assign to here, were behind them.
Sommer Albrecht choked faintly at the stench of medieval level city with minimal sanitation. A Mino—on her Earth, meaning a racial minority, sub-Saharan phenotype, in her case—a lawyer, and an FBI agent, tall and fit.
James McMillian was also an FBI agent, but from a different Earth. Bulldog expression and a stubborn personality to go with it. Medieval history was his hobby. Xen hoped his love for the era would survive living here.