Primary Inversion

by Catherine Asaro

“They give you a hard time, too?”

  She scowled. “They are lucky we have orders to be as quiet as mumblemice.”

  I smiled at the incongruous image of Helda as any kind of mouse. I wouldn’t want to be the cat that went after her. “How long until your connecting flight?”

  She tilted her head, the familiar blank look flashing across her face as she accessed her node. “Twenty minutes.”

  Twenty minutes. Then she was off again. “I wish you were staying.”

  Helda laughed. “Heya, Soz, you getting sentimental?” She motioned at a speedwalk. “Come to my gate.”

  I didn’t want to go with her. I had no idea why, other than an odd sense that if she left, I would never see her again. As we boarded the speedwalk, I spoke quietly. “You and Rex, and Taas at the end there—I was used to being with you day and night. Half the time we were one mind. Now that’s gone.” I struggled to express feelings that swirled like mist at the edges of vision. “Something is ending, Helda. I don’t know what.”

  “Ending?” The wall behind her slid by as the speedwalk whisked us toward her departure gate. “You sound strange today.”

  I made myself smile. “I guess so.”

  We talked about lighter matters after that. She told me what she knew of Taas, who was flying with another squad and developing a reputation as a skilled pilot.

  “When you see him again, wish him well for me,” I said.

  “If you want.” She shrugged. “It is more likely you see him first, here at HQ.”

  “I know. But do it for me anyway. Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  I didn’t know the answer. So I forced a laugh. “You never know what diversions I’ll find.”

  At Helda’s gate, passengers were queued up for another flybus. After Helda got through the security arch, she waved at me. I stood inside, behind the bulletproof, laserproof, shatterproof, fist-thick wall of tinted glass and waved back. Then she boarded the bus. Within moments it was just another bullet humming across the tarmac like all the other chromed bullets out there.

  I returned to the speedwalk, and this time I strode along, adding my speed to its own so I whipping along. I had no idea I why I was in a hurry, I just wanted to get away from the starport, from this place of leave-takings and endings.

  The Magrail platform outside perched on a casecrete tower as tall as the starport. Giant rails arched in the sky, came down to the platform, ran level with it, and then swept up again, over the port in a great curve of silver. The Magtrain hurtled toward the platform, a string of bullet cars, their blue, silver, and black chrome gleaming. As I joined a handful of other travelers, the train stopped and its doors slicked open like a camera shutter. Within moments, we were rushing up and out of the port.

  Most of the civilians disembarked in the suburbs. At the perimeter of Headquarters City, we stopped at a platform secured by guards with laser carbines. Armor encased their bodies, making them eight feet tall, giants of black and silver metal, faceless, with opaque screens instead of eyes. By this time I was the only “civilian” on the train.

  As the guards entered the car, we all stood. One giant strode over to me, boots ringing on the metal floor. He or she—I didn’t know which—spoke through a voice filter that made it sound like a machine. “Identification.”

  I turned over my hand and tensed my arm, pushing my ID chip out of its sleeve into my palm. The socket on my wrist glinted, marking me as a telop or Jagernaut. I couldn’t read the officer’s reaction; the armor hid body language and expressions, and the filter took emotional nuances out of the voice. The guard just slid my card into a box at the waist. Although I had been through these checks before, the procedure felt strange today, as if I were being distilled into that small square.

  Everyone in the car received clearance to enter Headquarters City. No surprise there. Only someone very naive or very foolish would try to enter the city without proper ID. I disembarked at a platform in the heart of downtown. As the train pulled away, a swarm of automated taxis swooped in, vying for the fare. I ignored them, instead choosing an airtube at the edge of the tower. It lowered me with air jets that slowed my descent. Getting blasted with air that way unsettled many people, and few trusted the tubes not to drop them, but I liked it, probably for the same reason I liked doing loops and rolls when I piloted an aircraft, something about the challenge or maybe just the boost of adrenalin.

  I needed a boost. Kurj’s odd summons, the impersonal security procedures coming into Diesha, Helda’s leaving, the faceless guards in their armor—it all left me with an uncomfortable sensation, as if I were turning into a machine, my humanity strained out and condensed into an ID chip.

  At the dispenser in the bottom of the tower, I bought a mirrored visor. It was translucent to my vision, letting me see the city through an amber tinge that muted the harsh sunlight. Anyone looking at me would see only a dark, mirrored strip across my eyes.

  Heavy traffic hovered along the streets, but I rode speedwalks instead of flagging a taxi. Pedestrians were everywhere, military personnel. Their visored eyes were blank masks, unreadable, like Kurj’s face when his inner lids were lowered.

  The tower where I lived had no lobby, just a door that whisked open in response to my ID chip, admitting me into a glass shaft. The lift took me to the top floor and let me out into a corridor with walls of amber glass. Outside, the downtown spread out in a relentless pattern of squares and rectangles both horizontal and vertical, no softening touches of green, just black and silver and white. A flyer appeared from behind the tower, winging so close to the window that the glass vibrated. Then it curved away and out above the city.

  Only two people had quarters on this floor: myself, and a retired general who still acted as one of my brother’s top advisers on espionage. My door checked my ID chip, fingerprints, and retinal patterns before it opened. The living room looked the same as always, all chrome and glass, with white furniture and gleaming tables.

  “Welcome home, Primary Valdoria,” a voice said as the door closed behind me.

  “Heya, Mak.” That name was the closest I had come to personalizing the ISC-MA4K Evolving Intelligence that took care of the place. I dumped my duffel on the floor and collapsed onto the couch. “Any messages for me?” Although Mak had forwarding my mail to Foreshires during my stay there, everything might not have come through yet.

  “Two messages,” Mak said.

  “Is either from Imperator Skolia?”

  “No.”

  Maybe Kurj didn’t know I was here. That seemed unlikely; if he wanted me back as badly as Helda indicated, he would have kept track of my arrival. Given his measures to keep his summons secret, I doubted he wanted me to announce my presence.

  “Mak, send a message to my parents at the palace.” They weren’t there; neither liked coming to Diesha. Kurj probably was, though, unless some crisis required him to stay in the city. The palace was the only place secure enough to let him dismiss his bodyguards. High in the mountains, surrounded by wilderness and numerous deadly installations dedicated to protecting it, the place was completely automated. It needed no human staff. That seemed lonely to me, but it gave him what he treasured: privacy—complete, utter privacy.

  “Text of message?” Mak prompted.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “My greetings, Mother and Father. I’m back on Diesha to visit Rex. Let’s get together while I’m here. Love, Sauscony. End message. Send.”

  “Sent.”

  Belatedly, I remembered the girl from the hospital Kurj had “invited” to the palace. What was her name? Cyliessa? No…Charissa. That was it. Charissa Deirdre. If she found the message, she might actually forward it to my parents. “Mak, who is living at the palace?”

  “Imperator Skolia.”

  “Anyone else, either now or in the previous five months?”

  “A woman named Charissa Deirdre stayed with him for one hundred and six days.”

  One hundred and six. She must have please
d him. I wondered how she felt about it. Did he repulse her? Had she grown to love him? I supposed it was possible. Love was a bizarre enough emotion to strike in the most unlikely places.

  “Where is Deirdre now?” I asked.

  “She works in the nursery of the ISC Hospital maternity wing and lives with her parents in Suburb Fourteen.”

  Her parents? “How old is she?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Gods. That was below the age of legal consent. Someone ought to flaming well remind Kurj that he was bound by the law, too, even if no one had the boldness, or perhaps the imprudence, to enforce it with him. Had her parents known why she vanished? I wondered which would have been harder for them, not knowing where she went or discovering she was a prisoner of Skolia’s ninety-year-old warlord. She was free now, though, and besides, none of this was my business. She had resumed her life, after all. Maybe she even liked Kurj.

  Then again, maybe not.

  “Mak—do you have any more information about Deirdre?”

  “Checking.” Then: “Prior to her stay with Imperator Skolia, Charissa Deirdre was an honor student at a vocational college in suburb eight, where she was studying to become a caregiver for children. Earlier this year she won an award for outstanding academic performance. She was secretary of a community services club and belonged to an athletic club. A boy named Jayms Procal applied for a permit to marry her when they reached their twentieth birthdays.”

  It didn’t sound like she had much in common with Kurj. “What happened after she went to the palace?”

  “She was expelled from the college for absenteeism and refusal to respond to administration summons. The expulsion was changed to ‘missing person’ status after her parents contacted the school. At the Imperator’s request, she was reinstated at the college after she returned home. Her grades have plummeted, and she is currently doing work below the level considered acceptable for continued attendance. However, no attempt has been made to dismiss her.”

  Of course not. No sane person was going to dismiss a student who had been reinstated by order of the Imperator. “What about her other activities?”

  “She lost her job at the hospital, then was reinstated by Imperator Skolia. Her community services club membership is active but she let her athletic membership lapse. She has no record of participating in either club since her return home. The boy who applied for the marriage permit had his application denied.”

  “Did her name also appear on it?” He could have applied without her knowing, hoping to have an approved permit to offer if he were the one making the proposal. But without both their signatures, the permit was worthless.

  “Both names appeared,” Mak said. “The permit was initially approved. However, the approval was revoked the day after her tenure at the palace began.”

  “What’s its status now?”

  “They reapplied eleven days ago. The permit was denied.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “That the previous permit had been denied.”

  No surprise there, either. If Kurj had stopped the first one, no one would risk putting through a second. I wondered if he had any idea how much he had screwed up her life. I couldn’t heal her emotional wounds, but I could do one thing. “Mak, link into the Marriage Bureau and have approval sent to Deirdre and her young man, on my authority.” Of course Kurj could override it. But I knew him. If he had tired of the girl, he wouldn’t pursue it, particularly if she left him with fond enough feelings that he had acted on her behalf at her school and job. I was the one he would come after.

  “Approval sent.” Mak paused. “Even a brief analysis of this situation suggests Imperator Skolia will not appreciate your intervention in his private life.”

  I grimaced. I had certainly found a more effective method for letting him know I had arrived than pretending my parents were at the palace. I put my feet up on the table in front of the couch, trying to relax. It didn’t work. I was wound as tight as a coil. “Read the two messages in my mail queue. Don’t bother with headers.”

  “Message one.” A click sounded, followed by a bland voice. “Attention all residents. Air lifts will be turned off on three-eight-three-point-six from one to three hundred hours for maintenance. Do not attempt to use the lifts during this time.”

  “Mak, delete it.” The message was several months old.

  “Deleted. Message two.” A man’s voice floated into the air. “Hello, Primary Valdoria. I wasn’t sure where to send this, so I posted it to General Inquiries on Diesha. I hope it reaches you. I thought you might like to know my interview with you and Secondary Blackstone did the trick. The University at Athens gave me a grant to come to Parthonia for testing. And guess what? I’m 7.2 on your Kyle scale. Of course, I don’t know what to do with it yet. But the Parthonia Institute admitted me for training. Anyway, thanks. Tiller Smith.”

  “Well, how do you like that?” I said.

  “I have no emotional reaction to the message,” Mak said.

  I smiled. “I do. A pleasant one. Why didn’t you forward this to me on Foreshires? How long ago was it sent?”

  “It reached General Inquiries fifty-three days ago. General Inquiries routed it to Military Inquiries, which routed it to Officer Inquiries, which routed it to Unsecured Documents, which routed it to Civilian Documents, which routed it to General Inquiries, which—

  “Mak, can you abbreviate it a bit?”

  “The message cycled through General Inquiries three times, after which a watcher flagged it, and sent it to Investigations. From there the sender went through a security check—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Security did a check on Tiller just because he sent me a letter?”

  “Yes. Do you wish the results of the investigation?”

  “All right. But keep it brief.”

  “Tiller Smith, age twenty-six; Citizenship, Allied Worlds of Earth, Delos resident. No record of subversive activities. He was ticketed two years ago for leaving a flycar in a no parking zone at the Arcade during a parade, and when he was four years old he had to be removed from the premises of an Arcade bar he had wandered into.”

  “For flaming sake.” Didn’t Investigations have anything better to do? “When did they finally get around to giving me the message?”

  “After Investigations approved it, they routed it to Central Military, which sent it here. It arrived four days ago, at which time I submitted it to Offworld Clearance for transferal to Foreshires. I’m still waiting for the release. Shall I cancel the request?”

  “Please do.” I rubbed my chin. “Can you access the data banks of the Parthonia Institute?”

  “Yes. What do you wish me to find?”

  “Who is sponsoring Tiller.”

  “Connecting to offworld-transfer node.”

  I had received my Kyle training from private tutors when I was a child, so I wasn’t familiar with Institute procedures. But I was pretty sure Tiller needed patrons to attend the school. As an Allied citizen, particularly one with little or no standing even among his own people, let alone among mine, he wouldn’t find many sponsors. Without them, he wouldn’t last long on Parthonia. The Kyle-Mesh was power—political, military, academic, social, and economic—which meant anything concerned with it involved high stakes and a set of unwritten rules. Tiller was way out of his league.

  “Information received,” Mak said. “Tiller Smith has one patron, a woman named Marya Pulivok, the tester who determined his rating.”

  One patron? And one with no political clout. They would eat him alive and spit him all the way back to Delos. “Add me to Tiller’s list of sponsors.”

  “Message sent.” After a pause, Mak added, “And acknowledged.”

  “Good.” With an Imperial Heir as a patron, Tiller would have them fighting for the honor of taking him as a favored student.

  I went over to a bookcase against the wall. The book Tiller had given me was where I had left it, stuck between the statuette of a jade dragon and a ponder
ous text on mystimatical theories of alternate dimensions. I pulled out Verses on a Windowpane and opened it to the page Tiller had been reading that day in his office, the poem he had marked with the Arcade ticket:

  A frame of stone.

  Silvered glass

  frosted with icy tears.

  My fist closes

  on the mirror;

  flesh traps ice.

  Brittle snaps

  of breaking tears.

  I see you now

  standing behind me;

  always watching,

  always waiting,

  never satisfied.

  I sheath my heart,

  its bare softness

  guarded by ice.

  I wondered why he had marked the poem. Was I doing that, guarding my heart with icy fortifications that grew colder and thicker, until someday I became Kurj? I closed the book with a snap. No. I wasn’t Kurj. I wouldn’t become him.

  Would I?

  I didn’t have the energy to wrestle that nightmare. Although it was only midday on Diesha, I was exhausted. The flight had thrown off my internal clock.

  I left the living room and went to what I called my memory hall. As I walked down the corridor, my footsteps activated its subtle screens and holos appeared. They showed the countryside around my father’s house: blue-capped mountains against the sky like the backbone of a giant; plains of silver-green grass under the great dome of the sky; trees with glasswood trunks that released tinted spheres into the air. Home.

  Then I was at the end of the hall and the holos were gone, vanished after I passed. I touched a panel and the door opened onto my bedroom.

  Within moments, I was asleep.

  #

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “Secondary Blackstone isn’t here.”

  She “sat” on the dais in my holobooth with its curving screens. I sat on a much smaller dais where lasers played over my body, producing interference patterns that my system sent to hers so her booth could produce as detailed an image of me as mine did of her. I had no desire to look at her holo, detailed or otherwise. She was too damned pretty. What was Rex doing with such a beautiful nurse?