Primary Inversion

by Catherine Asaro

  “Kurj needs an heir who understands Imperial Space Command,” I said.

  “You.”

  “He chose three of us. Me, and the two of my brothers who became Jagernauts.”

  “Why three? Only one of you can be Imperator.”

  I gritted my teeth. “That’s right.”

  Rex stared at me. “The one who survives.”

  My shoulders bunched under my jacket. “Kurj knows I can’t stay on active duty forever. I’ve proven myself for a quarter of a century. But sixteen years ago it was different.”

  “That was when your husband wanted you to quit?”

  I nodded. “It would have meant abdicating any claim I had to become Imperator.”

  Rex made an incredulous noise. “What the hell did your husband expect when he married an Imperial heir?”

  I stared down at my hands. Somehow I said the words. “I got pregnant. I didn’t know. I was injured in battle and lost the child.” I made myself look at Rex. “Jato—my husband—it tore him apart. He stayed with me until I recovered. Then he left.”

  “Soz,” Rex murmured. He tried to put his arms around me, but I held back. I’d always wondered if Kurj knew how much Jato and I had wanted a child. That was another item in my mental file of things not to think about.

  “You ought to know I wouldn’t leave you,” Rex said. “I don’t expect you to retire.”

  I turned the idea over in my mind like a child with a newly minted coin. Kurj couldn’t keep me in combat forever. With my rank and experience it made more sense to have me behind a desk, planning strategy. If he killed all his heirs, he wasn’t likely to get more of us soon. None of my other siblings were remotely qualified.

  Rex was a good man; I’d known that since I first met him. He was a potent telepath, probably the strongest I would ever find. I couldn’t spend my life looking for that one in a trillion person whose mind matched my own. The only time I had ever shared my mind with another Rhon psion had been an accident. Once, when my kid brother Kelric had been seven and I sixteen, we went hiking. A storm caught us, pale blue sleet raging from the sky. We took shelter in a spine-cave of the Backbone Mountains. As Kelric and I huddled together for warmth, our minds merged. It lasted only a few hours, the most fulfilling link I had ever made with another human being. It never happened again; that bond was too intimate to share with a brother. But neither of us forgot. After that day, I knew I would search everywhere for a Rhon mate.

  Except there weren’t any. Despite all the attempts to engineer a Rhon psion—before the ethics boards mercifully put a stop to them—my grandmother had been the only success. In the generations since her birth, on a thousand plus worlds and a billion different peoples, we knew of only two people who had been born naturally, and survived, with the full complement of Rhon genes: my father and my grandfather.

  “Soz?” Rex touched my cheek. “Where are you?”

  I looked at him, really looked in a way I had never done before. This man had been at my side for fifteen years, gone into combat with me, laughed with me, mourned with me. We had traveled across Skolia, both on duty and off, learning to know each other with an intimacy that had nothing to do with sex. Could I lie with him as wife? The answer was easy, now that I considered it. The only surprise was that it had taken me so long to realize it.

  I smiled. “Who else would want me inflicted on him for the rest of his life?”

  “What were you planning on inflicting?”

  “My sense of humor.”

  Rex grimaced. “I’ll try to endure it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” He tilted his head. “Yes, what?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. The thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “You know.”

  He put his hands on either side of my head and mussed up my hair. “Say it.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Go on.” He was laughing.

  I scowled at him. “Keep this up and I’ll change my mind.”

  “I don’t know, Soz. If you can’t say it, how can I believe you’ll do it?”

  “All right. I’ll marry you. Satisfied?”

  He stopped grinning and spoke in that strange gentle voice he had used earlier tonight. “Yes.”

  So. It didn’t feel so odd after all. I slid my hand across the black sweater he wore under his jacket. He pulled me down with him on the bed, lying on his back as he wrapped his arms around me.

  “I can send my Notification of Intent tonight over the Kyle-Mesh,” he said. “I’ll give my resignation when we get back to HQ.”

  Notification of Intent. It was so strange to hear it from Rex. His timing made sense, though. After our rest here, we would return to Headquarters for our new orders. Rex had waited until we were between missions. I could love him now. I never had to send him into battle again.

  A beep came from the console. “Damn,” Rex muttered. He stretched his arm across the bed and touched a panel on the console. “What?”

  Helda’s voice came out of the speaker. “Heya, Rex. You know where is Soz?”

  “I’m right here,” I said. “We’ll meet you at my room.”

  Both Helda and Taas were outside my door when we arrived. Helda gave me an odd look. I couldn’t tell what she picked up, but she must have sensed something. It had all changed. I would never see Rex in the same way.

  The pager by my door showed a dark-haired woman on the rocky shore of an island. She stood with a quiver of arrows strapped on her back and a curving bow in her hand. I touched the waves on the beach, and a laser played over my finger. It only took an instant to produce an interference pattern from my print and correlate it with the one made by the Inn’s computer. Then my door swung open.

  After the sensual ambience in Rex’s room, mine felt too cool. The walls were blue-green ceramic with frothy accents. A mesh console was built into a roll-top desk by the bed, with labels on in six languages, including Skolian.

  I sat at the console and touched the panel marked with the picture of a doorway. “Access my guest account. Then link me into Kyle space.”

  “Hello, Primary Valdoria.” The console spoke in Skolian. “Homer here. Welcome to the Aegean Inn. I am pleased to access your account.” After a pause it said, “I’m setting up the Kyle link. Please excuse the delay.”

  “That’s a polite console,” Helda said.

  I smiled. Allied mesh nodes tended to be friendlier than those on Skolia’s massive network. We had chosen this hotel because it equipped its consoles with psiphons, which few Allied establishments bothered to do. I lifted a small panel and took the psiphon out of its cradle. It was a simple model, no more than a transparent prong connected to the console by a thread. When I clicked the prong into the socket on the inside of my wrist, my arm tingled. I knew, logically, that those tingles weren’t real, but every time I plugged in a psiphon I felt them.

  The words Attempting connection appeared on a small screen in the desk.

  “Looks like it’s working,” Taas said.

  “So far.” That Homer responded to the psiphon with written instead of verbal replies made me doubt the Allieds had spent much time setting up the system.

  I rubbed my hand up and down my arm, a habit I had picked up years ago. Many Jagernauts did it, as if we could feel the biomech in our bodies. It had four parts: fiberoptic threads; sockets in my wrists, spine, neck and ankles; the spinal node; and bio-electrodes. Homer sent signals to the psiphon, which passed them to a thread in my wrist. From there, they traveled along threads to my brain or node. Bio-electrodes in my brain cells translated that input into thought by firing my neurons. If an electrode received a 1, it gave the neuron a brief, tiny shock; if it received a 0, it left the neuron alone. Similarly, they translated my thoughts into binary output. Bioshells coated the electrodes, and neurotrophic chemicals kept them from damaging my brain. My fiberoptic threads sent messages to Homer via the psiphon prong
. Given the extensive operations required to implant a biomech web, the years it took to learn its use, and the chance the host body might reject it—not to mention the numerous security clearances—few people had them.

  Another message appeared on the screen: Psiphon activated.

  “Slow,” Helda muttered.

  “Allied equipment,” Taas said, as if that explained it.

  Test, I thought.

  The word test appeared under Homer’s last message.

  Parameters? Homer printed. His responses glowed red on the screen; mine were blue. His message didn’t echo in my mind at all.

  Verify spinal node link, I thought.

  The words verify sibling appeared on the screen.

  Rex laughed. “Whose sibling are you verifying?”

  “It’s not translating right.” Run diagnostic on psiphon, I thought.

  The words Run diagonal deepening glowed on the screen.

  Please restate command, Homer printed.

  I tried verbal. “Run a diagnostic on the psiphon.”

  “Running,” Homer said. Then: “I found no problems.”

  Huh. If the psiphon wasn’t the problem, it had to be my biomech web or this console, both of which were more serious. I pulled out the prong and peered at it. A thin layer of dust covered the head. After rolling it between my fingers, cleaning off the dust, I plugged it back in.

  Verify spinal node connection, I thought.

  Verify spinal node connection appeared on the screen.

  Verified, Homer printed. If you provide your account information, I will try to enter you into the Kyle-Mesh.

  That isn’t necessary. I can do it. I pressed a panel with the Greek letter Ψ.

  Denied glowed on the screen.

  “Denied?” Taas asked. “What does that mean?”

  Homer, I thought. Why can’t I enter the psiber gateway?

  I can’t translate “gateway” in this context, Homer printed.

  I want to use the psiber functions of the psiphon. The Kyle functions.

  They aren’t enabled.

  Helda snorted. “Why have psiphons if they don’t set them up right?”

  “Maybe they don’t know how,” I said. Homer, can you enable the Kyle functions?

  I don’t know. What do they do?

  The psiphon should boost my mind into psiberspace.

  The only translation I have for psiberspace is “hypothetical computer network,”

  “Pah,” Helda muttered.

  Kyle space, then.

  Kyle space and psiberspace are the same thing.

  Yes. Either way, it exists.

  Where? I don’t know what it is.

  It’s outside spacetime. Information there is transmitted in wavepackets of thought rather than by photons or matter particles.

  If it has no spatial location, how can I find it?

  It exists everywhere, I thought. The other nodes can receive our input immediately no matter where they’re located.

  This would require instantaneous transmission across interstellar distances.

  That’s right.

  That violates the laws of spacetime.

  I scowled at the friendly but uncooperative console. Kyle space isn’t in spacetime.

  I cannot access something outside of space and time.

  I tried to think of an explanation it would understand. In normal space, if I had two particles and I measured the quantum properties of one, I immediately knew those of the second regardless of its location, even it was across the galaxy. In Kyle space, the “measured” property was thought; as fast as a telepath could form a thought, every user in the star-spanning Kyle-Mesh could receive it.

  Neither the Allieds nor the Traders had a Kyle-Mesh. It needed a Rhon telepath to power it, and no member of my family would consent to do that for them. Aristos had no Kyle abilities. Their providers did, at least enough to use if not power a Mesh, but the Traders refused to acknowledge providers could do anything but provide. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if they or the Allieds had tried to create a Mesh and failed. Despite the Allieds’ skepticism about psibernetics, they had to realize the Kyle-Mesh allowed my people to survive against the Traders. The Aristo inventories of military personnel and equipment dwarfed ours, but we could outmaneuver, outcommunicate, and outcalculate them. They lumbered; we sailed.

  That was why my family, the Ruby Dynasty, held power even in this age of elected leaders. No machine could link into Kyle space. Only a telop—a telepathic operator—could connect to the Mesh. And only a Rhon psion could create or power that vast network. The entire Mesh, with its billions of nodes, needed a Rhon psion to keep it operating, for no other psion was strong enough to survive its force. Without my family, the Mesh wouldn’t exist, and without it, Skolia would fall to the Traders.

  Homer, try this, I thought. Hail node PS42.mil on the Skolian network. When you get the “Restricted” message, transfer control of this console back to me. Maybe I could find a backdoor our intelligence people had snuck into the Allied systems.

  Hailing, Homer thought. Then: Transferring link.

  A new thought came into my mind, crisp and cold: Provide identification.

  Access my spinal node, I thought. Mod 16, path 0001HA9RS.

  Accessed. Clearance verified.

  My awareness of the room faded. I floated in an opalescent sea, my mind centered at one node of a glimmering mesh that spread in all directions. Flashes of light sparked as other minds navigated its endless extent. I was a quantum wavepacket, a round hill surrounded by circular ripples that extended into the infinite “lake” of Kyle space, becoming smaller and smaller the farther they were from the peak that defined the center of my identity.

  A spark resolved into another wavepacket. It rippled through me without a trace of interference.

  Security check, I thought.

  All lines secured, PS42 thought. You are undetectable to users with clearance lower than Blue Forty-seven: Level B.

  Transfer me to IMIN.

  The hill that was me sank into the mesh. I rose up in another section of the grid that glinted like metal. Sparks jumped into focus and then disappeared.

  The grid rose in front of me into a cobalt mountain of polished metal. You have reached A5a.mil. Unauthorized access of this node is punishable by execution.

  Well, that was lovely. My clearance is in M-16.

  Clearance verified. State purpose.

  To use Comtrace.

  The cobalt node shifted me to a white grid in a sea of painfully bright light. Comtrace’s response came into my mind like ice, deep, strong, mechanical. ATTENDING.

  Comtrace, access my optic nerve, I thought. Alter my perception to highlight my physical surroundings.

  DONE.

  My awareness of Kyle space faded into a translucent image that overlaid my view of the room. I saw Rex leaning over to peer at the console. Helda stood next to him, waiting with her massive arms crossed, and Taas was sitting on the bed glancing through the book Tiller had given me. None of my interactions with the Mesh showed on the screen: the printing had stopped with my last response to Homer.

  Activate audio, I thought.

  “Audio activated,” Comtrace said. Although it used Homer’s speakers, the icy cadence of its speech was a jarring contrast to Homer’s friendly tones.

  Taas looked up from the book. “Set up?”

  “Done,” I said. “I’m giving it my file on the Aristo.” Then I thought, Comtrace, upload the file M-86, D-4427, F-1 from my spinal node.

  UPLOADED.

  I’m going to detach the psiphon. Keep your end of the link open.

  UNDERSTOOD.

  I unplugged the prong and handed it to Rex. “Your turn.”

  It only took him a few seconds to upload his memory of the Aristo into Comtrace. Helda went next and then Taas. When they finished, I linked back in. “Comtrace, produce a visual image of the subject based on our memories of him.”

  “Working,” Comtrace said. A
holo formed above a horizontal screen on the desk showing the Aristo we had seen in the bar. He just stood there, about one handspan tall.

  “He wasn’t that harsh,” Rex said.

  The console remained quiet, the holo unchanged.

  Comtrace, I thought. Respond to voice input from the three units listed in my security file.

  BLACKSTONE, REX: VERIFYING. BJORSTAD, HELDAGAARD: VERIFYING. MOROTO, TAAS-KO-MAR: VERIFYING.

  I waited restlessly for it to finish verifying that it could respond to them. Their names was like a microcosm of Skolia. Blackstone was the modern translation of an ancient name from the planet Raylicon. Like Rex, it was pure Raylican, dark and powerful. Helda’s was the Skolianized version of an Earth name; her parents were an Allied couple who had immigrated to one of our colonies. Taas’s name was a mix: some of his family had come from Skolian colonies and some from a place on Earth called Japan. My name—Valdoria Skolia—was a different sort of mix. Although my maternal grandmother had been born in a genetics lab, her lineage went back to the Ruby Dynasty. My father and maternal grandfather came from rediscovered Skolian colonies.

  UNITS VERIFIED, Comtrace thought. RESPONDING TO BLACKSTONE.

  The Aristo’s features softened, making him look sixteen years old.

  “Too young,” Taas said. Comtrace aged the man about three years.

  “Still too young,” Helda said. Comtrace added another three years.

  “His hair was a little longer,” Helda said. Comtrace added a few inches.

  They studied the image. Finally Rex said, “Looks about right.” Taas and Helda nodded.

  “Comtrace, run an ID check on this image,” I said. “Compare it to every file available on the current Highton Aristo caste.”