The Radiant Seas

by Catherine Asaro

  Release exoskeleton, Althor thought.

  Released. The exoskeleton around his body opened and the psiphon prongs clicked out of the sockets in his spine and neck.

  Lost in thought, Althor left the chamber and walked through his office, then through the outer offices where his assistants worked, and out into the corridors that networked the hull. He took the magrail to his apartment in City, where he had chosen to live, instead of in Valley.

  City drifted around him as he strode through its plazas and along its boulevards. The sailpath he summoned took him to a blue building with onion towers and shimmering spires. When it set him down on a third-story ledge, a doorway shaped like the keyhole for a giant skeleton key opened in the wall. After Althor went through it, the doorway disappeared, leaving a smooth surface glowing with blue light, like a piece of Sky.

  The halls inside also glowed blue, a translucent luminance that extended deep into the walls. At the end of one hall he came to another large horseshoe arch shaped like a keyhole. Purple and silver mosaics bordered the blue door within it. He brushed his finger across a scroll of leaves and the door chimed.

  “Come in, Althor,” the door said. It shimmered and vanished.

  He walked into an airy room with wicker furniture. The door had barely re-formed behind him when an adolescent girl with violet eyes and a wild head of bronze curls stalked through the horseshoe arch of an inner doorway. She stopped when she saw Althor, glared at him, and stalked out again.

  Althor blinked. “Eristia?” He started after the girl.

  An older woman came through the inner doorway. Tall and willowy, with blue eyes and red hair streaked with silver, Syreen looked every bit the actress she had once been, before she retired to pursue a career in linguistics.

  “Althor.” She took his hands. “It’s good to see you.”

  He lifted her hands and kissed her knuckles. “What’s wrong with Eristia?”

  Syreen made an exasperated noise. “She’s been like that all afternoon. Maybe you can talk to her.”

  An irate voice came from the room beyond. “I don’t feel like talking.”

  Syreen frowned. “Eristia, come here and greet your father.”

  The girl appeared in the archway. “Ultra, Daddy.” Then she disappeared back into the inner room.

  Althor glanced at Syreen. “Ultra?”

  Her mouth quirked up. “As near as I can tell, it has positive connotations.”

  He smiled, then went into the inner room and found his daughter glaring at a holo-painting on the wall. “Why are you angry?” he asked.

  She continued to glare.

  He tried again. “Are you mad at me?”

  “At you?” She turned to him. “No, of course not.”

  “You’re angry at someone.”

  “Yes.”

  Althor waited. When it became clear no more information was forthcoming, he said, “At your mother.”

  “She never lets me do anything.” Eristia crossed her arms. “Nothing. Everyone else has fun. Everyone else razzles. But me? No, not me.”

  It was beginning to make sense. “You want to do something and your mother said ‘no’.”

  “She’s the most unreasonable person alive.”

  Althor grinned. “Alive anywhere?”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “What won’t she let you do?”

  She spread her arms to accent her words. “It was going to be the razzlest. Ultraviolet. Out the galactic arm.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Does that have a translation into normal language?”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  He looked for help at Syreen, who had come into the doorway.

  “She wants to go on a trip with some other children from Academy,” Syreen said. “To Blazers Starland.”

  “Blazers?” Althor frowned at his daughter. “Isn’t that the entertainment complex on Sylvia’s Moon?”

  “Everyone ultra is going,” Eristia said. “It will be the firestorm of the year.” Her pretty face suffused with hope. “Tell Hoshma it’s all right, Daddy. Say I can jopper. Please?”

  “Jopper—that means go on a trip, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course.” She regarded him with the sympathy of the enlightened for those less savvy about the universe. “Everyone razzle will be there.”

  “Everyone?” He liked this less and less. “Just who is everyone? The girls from your school?”

  “Girls?” Syreen snorted. “Don’t be naive, Althor. Half these ‘razzle’ personages are boys. None, it seems, are chaperones.”

  Althor stared at his daughter. “You want me to let a thirteen-year-old girl go to an entertainment complex on a world as wild as Sylvia’s Moon, with boys and without chaperones? Absolutely not.”

  Her frustration rolled out in a wave from her mind. “But why not?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Yes, it is,” she assured him.

  “Erista, I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”

  Her face crumpled in anguish. She swung around to include Syreen. “You’re horrible people!” With that, she stalked out of the room.

  When they were alone, Althor squinted at Syreen. “Do you think she really means that?”

  “Althor, no.” Syreen came over to him. “She’s just disappointed.”

  “I can’t fathom why people would let their children go on a trip like that.”

  “I checked with the other parents. Most of them said ‘no’ too.” Her smile crinkled the lines around her eyes. “When Eristia discovers how many of the others had to stay home, they’ll have a great time commiserating about their heartless parents.”

  “I suppose.” It didn’t make him feel any better about being a source of the commiseration.

  “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  He shook his head. “I have plans.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” She paused. “How is Coop?”

  “He’s fine.”

  After an awkward silence, she said, “Say good-bye to Eristia before you leave.”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “I’ll try.”

  He found his daughter lying on her back on a divan in the sunroom, staring at the skylight above her head. When he entered, she scowled and focused harder on the glass.

  “I will see you tomorrow,” Althor said.

  Her disappointment suffused his mind. “I know,” she said. “I’ll still be here. Everyone galactic will be on Sylvia’s.”

  He came over and sat next to her. “Did you really think we would let you go on that trip, Podkin?”

  “Don’t call me that baby name.”

  “All right.” He wondered when she had stopped liking the nickname. She continued to stare at the skylight, so he tilted his head to look. All he saw was an unremarkable patch of Sky.

  “Not much up there,” he commented.

  She sighed. “Oh, Daddy. You’re so infrared.”

  He turned back to her. “Infrared?”

  “Don’t feel bad,” she consoled. “Parents are supposed to be that way.” She sat up and hugged him around the neck. “Come for dinner tomorrow, all right?”

  He hugged her back, relieved she didn’t find her taciturn father so horrible after all. “Of course.” Softly he said, “Your mother and I love you, Pod—Eristia.”

  “Me too,” she said. “You, I mean.”

  After he left Syreen’s apartment, he walked to his own. He didn’t know what to make of Eristia’s taste for the fast life of her rich friends. Having grown up on a rural world, he never even knew that kind of life existed until he went offworld at eighteen, to attend military school. At thirteen, he had spent his free time hiking in the countryside around Dalvador, the village where his family lived. His friends were all local boys. Their idea of getting into trouble was sneaking into a tavern to drink watered-down ale.

  A voice spoke, sounding like Cobalt, the node that ran his apartment. “Althor, are you coming home?”

  He stopped. “Cobalt?”r />
  “The door registered your presence and interpreted your body language as an intent to come home,” Cobalt said. “But you kept going.”

  Althor looked around. He had indeed walked past the turn to his apartment. He retraced his steps to a corridor where the walls glowed in ever-deeper layers of blue. The keyhole arch at the end stood twice his height, with stained glass in its upper curve and a mosaic border of cool geometric designs. The building’s beauty was one reason acquiring an apartment here was impossible without connections. Althor had gotten Syreen one when she discovered her unexpected pregnancy after what had been, for both of them, a fling of a few days. They tried to make a go of their relationship, only to discover they did far better as friends than as lovers. But he was glad she had stayed all these years, making him part of Eristia’s life.

  The door shimmered open and he entered. His apartment had a different feel than Syreen’s home. Where she chose wicker, he chose glass and chrome; where she used curves, he used angles. The floor-to-ceiling holopanels on the walls displayed whatever he felt like looking at. Right now, they showed his childhood home, the village of Dalvador. Blue-capped mountains made a backdrop for a town of whitewashed houses with purple or blue turreted roofs. Plains of silvery grass rippled in a breeze.

  The horseshoe arch across the room had no door. Beyond it, sunshine poured through many windows into the sunroom where Althor often went to relax. As he entered the sun-drenched chamber, a young man came through another archway across the room, a willowy youth, twenty-four years old, about five-ten, with red curls and blue eyes. He could have been Syreen’s brother.

  The youth froze. Then he remembered himself and said, “My greeting, Prince Althor.”

  Althor smiled. “Coop, my name is Althor. You don’t have to use a title.”

  Coop managed a more relaxed smile. “Althor.”

  “How is your painting?”

  “I finished the landscape this afternoon.”

  Althor nodded, pleased. Coop’s art had caught his notice when he had wandered into an outdoor exhibit while walking home from the War Room. The work had struck him as close to genius. After learning how much time Coop wasted doing ISC holobanners to support himself, Althor became his patron. He set Coop up in a luxury apartment with a huge studio and gave him a sensible credit line to cover expenses. At least Althor considered it sensible. For some reason Coop thought it extravagant. Tonight he had invited Coop to dinner, to begin introducing him to Orbiter society.

  Althor went into the circular alcove that served as a kitchen and bent over the counter, checking its console for messages. “My family should be here soon.”

  “Cobalt set up dinner.” Agitation crackled in Coop’s voice.

  Althor turned to see him standing in the archway of the alcove. “What’s wrong?”

  Coop flushed. “Nothing.”

  “I’m an empath,” Althor said. “I can tell you’re upset.”

  “It’s just—” Coop exhaled. “Before you, the most important person I ever met was the pilot on the ship that brought me here. And she was just a liner captain.”

  “You’ll like my family,” Althor said. Another thought came to him. “You meant my family are the ones that make you nervous, yes? Not me?”

  Coop smiled. “You did at first. Not now.”

  “Althor,” Cobalt said. “Your parents and your brother Eldrin are in the hall.” The holopanel in the wall next to Coop erased its mountain scene and showed a view of three people. Tonight his parents were the same height. When Althor had been young, his father had often worn boots to make himself taller than his statuesque wife, but he had eventually stopped caring that he was short compared to her family.

  Althor’s brother Eldrin was their oldest, out of ten children, with Althor coming next in line. Althor had long thought he and Eldrin embodied their parents’ differences. Except for his violet eyes, Althor took after their maternal grandfather, with his height, massive physique, and gold coloring. Of the seven Valdoria sons, Eldrin most resembled their father. He had inherited a few Skolia traits, being broader in the shoulders and taller than his sire. But he had their father’s wine-red hair, the violet eyes, even the sprinkle of freckles across his nose.

  Eldrin’s hands were the Lyshriol norm, four thick fingers and a vertical hinge that folded his palm lengthwise. Althor had been born with Lyshriol fingers, but without the hinge that let them oppose each other. Instead, he had a rudimentary thumb. His parents had his hands rebuilt when he was a baby, to match the human norm. It served him well; with Lyshriol hands he would have had trouble making efficient use of ISC technology.

  At sixteen, Eldrin’s interests were swordplay and girls; fourteen-year-old Althor had wanted to learn engineering and play sports. After he and Eldrin had a knockdown fight over a girl, their parents sent Eldrin offworld, to the Orbiter, an environment they thought more conducive to books than swords. Devastated, Althor hadn’t understood why Eldrin picked the fight. Althor hadn’t really even liked the girl. It was years before he realized it had nothing do to with her and everything do to with the fact that at fourteen, Althor was bigger, stronger, faster, more advanced in school, and more at ease with Imperial technology than the older brother he worshiped.

  On the Orbiter, Eldrin had struggled with a culture where his skill with knives and swords was seen as juvenile delinquency rather than a source of admiration. In working with him, the education specialists began to understand why Lyshriol natives had no written language. Eldrin saw words as pictures; if the pictures weren’t identical, he read them as different words. Use five different fonts and he saw five different words. The hieroglyphic languages of Skolia and Eube had so baffled him that the sixteen-year-old warrior had once slammed his broadsword into a web console. Until then, no one had realized the depth of his frustration at being unable to process what came so naturally to his “little” brother.

  Nor had Eldrin understood why his stunning looks and singing voice garnered so much more attention on the Orbiter than the soldiering attributes he considered far more worthwhile. But when he realized the genuine value people placed on his musical gifts, he let himself pursue his love of singing. Known now for his spectacular voice, he wrote and sang folk ballads about their home, the village of Dalvador on the planet Lyshriol.

  Althor walked into the living room just as Cobalt let in his parents and Eldrin. His mother was wearing a blue dress and her gold hair floated everywhere. His father had on his usual trousers, laced shirt, and knee boots. Eldrin wore Orbiter styles now, simple and elegant, dark pants and a white shirt.

  His mother hugged him, her face glowing. “You look wonderful.” She held him at arm’s length. “But Althor, you need to eat more. Look how thin you are.”

  Eldrin laughed. “She told me the same thing.”

  Their father made an exasperated noise. “Roca, these boys are giants already. Make them any bigger and it will throw off the Orbiter gravity.”

  Laughing, Althor embraced her. “It’s good to see you, Hoshma.” He grinned at his father over her shoulder. “And you, Hoshpa.”

  His father nodded, pretending to look gruff. “Are Syreen and Eristia here?”

  “Not tonight.” Althor glanced at his brother. “Dehya couldn’t come with you?”

  Eldrin shook his head. “She’s working in the web.”

  It didn’t surprise Althor. Dehya’s work as Assembly Key left her little time for a normal life. Eldrin, as her consort, took care of their social obligations.

  A rustle came from behind them, accompanied by the tread of shoes on the carpet. Althor’s father turned toward the sound—and his genial expression vanished like a doused candle flame.

  Coop was standing in the inner doorway. To Althor, the artist looked like a work of art himself, bathed in sunlight, his diamond earring sparkling, his beautiful face radiant.

  Eldrinson spoke with stiff formality. “I’m afraid I have work on the web tonight. Please accept my apologies, but unfortunately
I will have to miss dinner.”

  Althor swung around to him. “What? What duties?”

  “My apologies.” Eldrinson nodded without acknowledging Coop. He simply left the apartment then, the door snicking open for him and sliding shut after he stepped outside.

  Althor stared after his father. Then he scowled at his mother. “It never stops, does it?”

  “I’m sorry.” She sounded stunned. “I don’t know why he did that.”

  “Like hell. We both know why.”

  She started for the door. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  “No.” Althor caught her arm. “I’ll do it. This is something he and I have to settle.”

  Coop came up to them, obviously mortified. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere.” Althor discovered he didn’t have to feign his anger.

  Eldrin glanced at the door, then at Coop, then at his brother. Althor? he thought. Do you want me to talk to Father?

  Althor shook his head. No. I have to do this myself.

  Roca turned her diplomat’s smile on Coop. “So you’re the mystery guest Althor wanted us to meet.” She motioned to a divan. “Come sit with me. Tell me about yourself.”

  Glancing back at Althor, Coop let Roca pull him to the couch. As they sat down, Althor focused on his mother. Can you play host for a while?

  Of course. She looked up at him. I truly am sorry about your father. I didn’t expect that.

  Nor I, Althor lied.

  So he left the apartment, and the building, and summoned a sailpath. As it carried him through the air, he thought, Moonstone Park.

  The path landed in a sequestered glade on the outskirts of City. Althor found his father sitting on a bench under an arch of blue moonstone, among trees and flowers. A fountain gurgled nearby, but the area was empty of people, as Althor had arranged earlier this afternoon.

  Eldrinson frowned at him. “You could have warned us.”

  Althor sat next to him. “I wasn’t sure you would come.” He sent a thought to his spinal node. Basalt, verify security.

  Verification complete. Area is secure.

  “Basalt checked security,” Althor said. “No one can monitor us here.”

  “Fine.” Eldrinson still sounded angry. “So no one can spy on us. Perhaps now you will tell me what is so sensitive you had to play this charade with that boy? He has no idea it was a setup, no more than your mother or brother do. They think I believe he is your lover and I’m angry because of it.”