Primary Inversion

by Catherine Asaro

  As we walked, I glanced at the chief. “The providers—they from Tams?”

  “Not originally. Their parents were taskmakers brought to Tams a few years ago as part of an Aristo’s household.”

  “So these providers, they are born slaves?”

  “It’s all they’ve ever known.” The chief grimaced. “Hell, they can barely talk. Apparently even when they had the chance tonight, they almost didn’t make a run for it. It took a lot of courage for them to do what they did.”

  Translate ‘Make a run for it,’ I thought.

  In this context, it means ‘attempt to escape,’ my node answered.

  No wonder the chief said they had courage. Just to think of escaping, they had to break years of conditioning. “You help them?”

  “As much as we can,” he said. “When the boy is released from the hospital, we’ll send them to Earth. They’ll have a host family there and counseling to help them adjust.”

  At least some benefit had come from the mess I had made tonight. The providers had sanctuary, that word the Allieds liked so much. Earth chose no side in the war between my people and the Traders, granting asylum to anyone who gave cause for needing it. I had always regarded them with suspicion because of that. Their sanctuary struck me as a convenient means for Imperial trouble makers to evade the authorities. Tonight I saw it differently.

  The providers were in a private room. I recognized them as soon as the doctors ushered me in. They looked like fraternal twins, both about eighteen. The boy lay in the bed, propped up on pillows, and the girl sat in a chair next to him, showing him a holobook. They jumped as the door opened, their faces going pale.

  I came forward slowly. “My greetings.” I spoke Eubian, a language of the taskmaker castes. It was named after Eube Qox, Jaibriol’s great-grandfather and the first Emperor. Eube was also the word the Traders used for their empire, the Eubian Concord. That name had to be one of their more specious creations. I doubted enslaved worlds like Tams Station felt any “concord” with their unasked-for masters.

  The girl watched me with eyes the color of pale seashells. Her brother sat up slowly. He wore pajamas, but I saw the welts on his wrists and knew worse hid under his clothes. I didn’t want to imagine what his owner had done to him—and owner was the right word despite the Aristos’ attempts to convince the rest of the universe that their providers were “favored subjects” rather than slaves.

  The youth spoke with diffidence. “Are you the one who came to the house?”

  I nodded. “I’m glad you got out.”

  The girl said, “We’re sorry we caused you so much trouble.”

  “We really are sorry,” the boy said. “We didn’t mean to be a problem.”

  I couldn’t believe they were apologizing to me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have come earlier.” Say eighteen years earlier.

  “We won’t cause any more problems,” the girl said.

  I gentled my voice. “You never made any problem.”

  The longer I talked with them, the worse I felt. They kept apologizing. Their minds were open, unprotected; I knew their shame at having been providers, at having caused a commotion, at just plain having been. To say they didn’t like themselves was the understatement of the century. The marks the guard had left on them went far deeper than welts.

  Hadn’t the heartbender I saw ten years ago, following my experience with Tarque, said similar to me? No, I didn’t want to think about that.

  After we left the hospital, the police released me. They could have deported me for breaking their laws, but they showed no inclination to do it. I had a feeling the one they wanted to deport was the guard who pressed the charges, the man who had owned the two providers.

  As I walked to the Inn, I brooded. When I thought of Rex, it hurt. I couldn’t let my memory of Jaibriol become a wedge between us. Nor could I bear the knowledge that the one man who could be my Rhon mate represented everything I most hated. I doubted Jaibriol’s father recognized the irony, that in trying to create the ultimate weapon to destroy my people, he had produced a remarkably decent human being.

  Jaibriol’s life, once he openly assumed his position as the Emperor’s heir, would be hell. He would have to live as a Highton, trapped among a people who would sicken him. To survive he would have to become, in all appearances, just like them. If they ever learned the truth, they would turn on him in a way that would make the life of the two providers I had just met seem gentle in comparison. What would happen to Jaibriol when he realized the truth?

  I already knew the answer. I had seen it in my half-brother Kurj, even in myself. The capacity of the human soul to harden was boundless.

  I didn’t want to imagine Jaibriol as he would become. I wanted to remember the extraordinary man I had met tonight. Maybe he would retain enough of that humanity to meet a Skolian Imperator at the peace table someday. He was the only Highton Emperor I could imagine genuinely talking peace with us. And that was why I could never reveal that Jaibriol was a Rhon psion.

  I had melded with him. It was an experience my half-brother Kurj would never share. Even in the immensely unlikely event that the opportunity presented itself, Kurj would never consent. And without it, he would never accept my conviction that Jaibriol was our one chance to stop this war. If Kurj ever learned Ur Qox had sired an heir who could take control of the Kyle-Mesh, he would never rest until he stood over the Highton Heir’s body, preferably after Jaibriol died an agonizing death.

  I could barrier my mind to hide what I know. But it would raise a wall between me and everyone I loved. Rex would realize something was wrong. He would never guess the truth but he would know something had changed.

  It was past midnight when I walked into the velvet and giltwood lobby at the Inn. As I passed the front desk, the clerk looked up from the holobook she had been dozing over. “Excuse me, ma’am,” she said in English. She pulled out an envelope out form under the counter. “This was delivered for you about an hour ago.”

  That was odd. Who on Delos would send me a note in the middle of the night? I took the envelope. “Thank you.”

  As I walked toward the stairs, I tore open the envelope. The handwritten note said: I must talk to you. Come to dock four in the harbor. It had no signature.

  Damn. I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted was to go run around the harbor. I went back to the desk, where the clerk nodded over her book. “Miss?”

  She opened her eyes. “Yes?”

  I held up the envelope. “Who this come?”

  She peered at me. “Pardon me?”

  I had never understood why the Allieds asked you to pardon them when you were the one being indecipherable. “This note,” I said. “Who with it come?”

  “A man. I don’t know who he was.”

  “How he look?”

  “Black hair. Dark eyes. He sounded Croatian.”

  “What Croatian?”

  “It’s a language from Earth.”

  Why would an Earth man ask me to meet him at a remote dock in a sea harbor? It was crazy. I should go upstairs and sleep. But I wouldn’t rest until I found out what he wanted. So once again I headed outside.

  It took ten minutes to reach the harbor, which lay southeast of the Arcade. Breakers rolled in over knife-coral reefs whose spires jutted out of the water, some as tall as a person, others soaring into the air for ten or more meters. Sparks flashed as iridescent insects flew in and out of the coral, building it up with secretions from their bodies just as the skeletons of sea animals extended it under water. Glints of phosphorescence jumped in the sea, blue and green, purple and pink, flashes of gold. Gates and arches and channels had been cut in the coral, passages that allowed even the largest freighters to enter the harbor. Waves frothed and jumped high in bursts of spray.

  The moon hung at the horizon like a huge orange portal big enough to swallow a fleet of ships. The salt in the air was so thick, I could taste sodium chloride on my lips. A sweet odor of sealace tickled my nose. Its delicate frond
s lay everywhere, speckled by tiny bioluminescent insects, washed up by breakers or dragged onto the piers by cargo handlers working around the ships.

  Many piers were dark, some empty, others with ships hunkered in their docks, groaning as the wind pulled at them. Lamps glared on pier twenty-seven, where a team of handlers loaded cargo onto a freighter with sails of fluorescent purple nervoplex. Cranes swung boxes over the water and into ship holds while muscled handlers in blue caps and red shirts lifted cargo or shouted orders.

  Dock four was at the far end of the harbor. Darkness shrouded it, and a silence broken only by the lap-lap of waves against pilings. I paused under the pier, hidden in the shadows. It was cold, and I pulled my jacket tight, sealing it up the front. Breakers swirled around my boots, then withdrew over gem-sand that sparkled blue and gold.

  “Sauscony?”

  I froze. A tall figure stood by a piling. He had his collar turned up and a hood pulled over his head, but I knew him. I doubted he could have heard me coming, yet he was looking straight at where I stood hidden.

  “Jaibriol?” I asked.

  He came over, pushing back his hood. In the darkness, when I couldn’t see that his eyes were red or that his hair glinted, he looked even more beautiful.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said.

  I held up the envelope. “I just got your note. How long have you been waiting?”

  “About an hour.”

  That long? “The clerk said an Earth man brought it.”

  “I came here in the dark so no one would recognize me. Then I paid a man to take the note.”

  “But how did you leave the mansion without alerting your guards? Isn’t the cyberlock on?”

  “I talked them out of it for another few hours.” Dryly he added, “I’ve become quite good at it. If Rak isn’t there.” He grimaced. “Rak insists on the field. I think he enjoys seeing it bother me.”

  “Rak is the guard with the two providers?”

  “Not any more. They ran away.”

  “He probably does enjoy seeing it hurt you, even if he doesn’t consciously realize it. You have to barrier your mind against him better.”

  For a moment he watched me. Then he said, “You tell me Aristos are sadists. You show me horrors. And Rak’s providers refuse to come home. I want to disbelieve—” He paused. “But regardless of what you say, my guard is not an Aristo.”

  “He has Aristo blood,” I said. “Probably more than you do yourself.”

  His anger sparked. “You insult my bloodline without a thought of what that means to me.”

  I laid my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. But it’s the truth.”

  When I touched him, he stiffened. Then he sighed, as if capitulating, and pulled me into his arms. I was the one who went rigid then. But feeling him warm and firm against my body was too much. I laid my cheek against his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. He bent his head, searching for my face with an unexpected clumsiness. His prodigious intellect and Highton manner made him seem older, enough so that I had forgotten he was hardly more than a teenager, one who had spent his entire life alone.

  As soon as he kissed me, I forgot his age. Our minds started to blend again, an intimacy that made my desire for him flare like fire hitting oil.

  An image of Rex flickered in my mind. My longing for what Jaibriol could give me was irrelevant. I had given Rex a pledge.

  I pushed him away. “I’m sorry.”

  At first he wouldn’t let go. Finally, when I didn’t respond, he dropped his arms. “I hope this man Rex appreciates his fortune.”

  “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Stay. Please.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. It was a Vscript, the written record of a virtual telegram. “I received this two hours ago. I want you to tell me your version of what it means.”

  I took the card—and barely kept my mouth from dropping open. Its seal was unmistakable; it came from his father, the emperor. The heading indicated it had been decoded by Jaibriol’s console, so it must have been sent in secret. The man who ruled the Trader Empire had certainly never meant an Imperial Jagernaut to see it.

  The Highton message was brief: J’briol—I have sent flags to smooth the situation on Tams. Proceed there to oversee.

  I closed my eyes, then opened them and reread it to make sure I had it right. “What have you been told this means?”

  “Nothing. But I can guess. Smoothing the situation must mean he plans to intimidate them, maybe fire on the planet.” He spoke freely, willingly divulging information to an enemy officer without even the guarded tone he used with his own retinue. “My father wants me there by the time the action is finished to see first hand how to deal with a problem like Tams.” Self-disgust filled his voice. “I am not much of an heir. I think he means for that to change.”

  “You think Tams is a problem?”

  “Yes.”

  I clenched my fist, crumpling the Vscript. “That ‘problem’ comes from a lot of desperate people terrified of their Highton conquerors.”

  “Sauscony.” He took hold of my shoulders. “You see the situation through your own biases. I know you believe them. But I see it differently.”

  I jerked away, wondering if I should hate him after all. “Then see this, Highton.” I crammed the card back into his hand. “We’ve intercepted these coded messages before. A ‘flag’ is a battle cruiser and its associated warships. You want to know what ‘smoothing’ means? Those warships are going to destroy the Tams atmosphere.”

  “How can you believe such a lie?”

  “Lie?” I wanted to shake him. “I’ve seen it. Your father had it done to both CJ4 and Bullseye when the people overthrew their Aristo lords there.”

  His anger flared. “The people of CJ4 destroyed themselves with chemical warfare. I’ve never heard of Bullseye. Perhaps your propaganda ministers created it.”

  “I don’t need to convince you.” My voice quieted. “Your life may have been sheltered, but you’re no fool. As soon as you start living among the Hightons, you’ll know the truth. You must already suspect, despite what you say, or you would have never asked me here tonight.”

  No arrogance showed on his face, only pain. “If my father tells me the truth, I must believe you are a monster. I should kill you now before you have a chance to become Imperator of Skolia. If you tell me the truth, my father is a monster and he is the one I should kill.” He spread his hands. “Kill a person I love? I could never do it. Not my father. Not you.”

  I stared at him. “How can you think you love me? You’ve only known me a few hours.”

  “We’ve known each other our entire lives.” He touched my temple. “We lived them together tonight.”

  I pushed his hand away. He was wrong. I could never love the Trader Emperor’s son.

  “It won’t go away, Sauscony.” He met my gaze steadily. “No matter how you deny it, we will live with what happened tonight for the rest of our lives. If I become Emperor and you become Imperator, we will have to live with it even as we swear to destroy everything the other most values.”

  “You won’t value what you inherit.” I barely kept my voice calm. “You’ll hate everything it represents. And you’ll live in terror, knowing you’re only a breath away from becoming its victim.”

  “If that is true, then I will change it.”

  “Change it? Gods, Jaibriol, the structure of your empire is built, from its foundations up, on the Aristo need for providers. It’s not a social problem you can correct or a few evil people you can remove from office. You can no more stop the brutality of the Aristos than you can eliminate their drive to eat or sleep. If you try, they’ll crucify you.”

  His fist clenched. “You’re wrong.”

  I spoke gently. “I’m sorry for what your life is going to become. I wish I could change it.”

  “I don’t want pity. I want you.”

  His longing was so intense I could almost touch it, the ache of a man deni
ed human contact his entire life, a child denied love from the day of his birth. And I wanted him so much it burned. But if I admitted it even here, where no one but he and I would ever know, I could never face anyone else I loved.

  “I can’t stay with you,” I said.

  He took a deep breath and spoke in his cold Highton accent. “Then go.”

  Somehow I made myself turn and walk away into the shadows.

  VI

  Blackstar Squad

  I raced back to the Inn, calling with my mind to Rex, Helda and Taas: Get up. NOW. As I strode into the hotel, Rex was running down the staircase that swept into the lobby like the train of a blood-red wedding dress. I ran past the startled clerk and met Rex halfway up the stairs.

  “I found out why the Aristo is here.” I paused, out of breath. “He’s Qox’s son.”

  Rex stared at me. “What?”

  “The Heir.” Saying it out loud, I heard how fantastic it sounded. “That man we saw—he’s the Highton Heir.”

  Helda and Taas appeared at the top of the stairs, striding around the corner in time to hear my statement. They made in down to where I stood with Rex in two seconds.

  “His name is Jaibriol,” I said. “Jaibriol Qox.” I looked around at them. “It’s why Rex and I thought he was familiar. He looks like his grandfather.”

  “How you find all this out?” Helda asked.

  “I figured out where he was staying. I broke into his mesh system there. His father sent him a coded message about Tams.”

  “You’ve been busy,” Rex said.

  I grimaced. “I’ve been arrested, mug shot, lined up with five clones, questioned by the politest police alive and gone to the hospital to see two providers who escaped when I crashed Qox’s mansion. They asked the Allieds for sanctuary.”

  “You did all that in one night?” Taas asked.

  Helda smiled. “Why you need us, Soz?”

  I took a breath. “Because Ur Qox is going to flood out Tams.”

  “What does that mean?” Taas asked.

  I regarded him steadily. “At Bullseye he did it by converting part of the planet’s moon into hydrogen. At CJ4 he used an asteroid. They pour hydrogen into the atmosphere and use gigantic discharges to make it react with the oxygen and produce water.” I grimaced. “It’s going to rain good and hard on Tams. When it’s over, there won’t be any oxygen left in the atmosphere and the surface will be flooded.” I thought of Allied religious texts I had read. No ark was going to save Tams. When Lucifer impersonated God, nobody survived.