Carnelians

by Catherine Asaro

  Mac nodded, distracted. Jett had ushered them into an unfamiliar corridor, leading them toward an elevator at its end. “Captain Masters, where are we going?”

  “We have a hover car downstairs,” she said. “It will leave the building via secured tunnels.” She glanced at Del. “So you don’t have to go out into that crowd.”

  “Thanks.” Del massaged the muscles in the back of his neck. “When I started performing, before I was well known, it bothered me that people said I shouldn’t go in a crowd. I wanted to meet them. I mean, they actually liked my music. But the better known I got, the crazier it went. People would grab my clothes and hair.” He reddened. “Women threw lingerie. A few times I was trampled when the crowd knocked me down. It was nuts.”

  “We’ll make sure nothing like that happens,” Jett assured him.

  The elevator turned out to be a pleasant chamber carpeted in amber, with mahogany walls and a luminous disk on the ceiling, like a pool of radiance shedding light. Yet it felt wrong to Mac. It was like when Jett had thanked Del for comparing her to Kelric. He didn’t understand what troubled him; all her responses were normal and expected, and the Marines looked unconcerned as they stepped inside the elevator chamber.

  “Captain, where does this elevator go?” Mac asked as the doors closed. “I thought I knew all the exits from this building.”

  “HQ recently installed it,” Jett said. “Special treatment for VIPs.”

  Again, a perfectly normal answer, but it felt . . . what?

  Fake, Mac thought. It’s fake. He didn’t know why he thought she or the Marines were acting; he had no reason for it other than his gut reaction.

  “No, let’s go out the way we came in,” Mac said. He turned toward the control panel—and found only the smooth wall. “Where are the controls?” He swung around to Jett. “Stop this elevator.”

  “I’m sorry, Mister Tyler.” She looked genuinely apologetic. “This is a secured chamber. It won’t stop until we reach the hover lot in the basement.”

  Del spoke coldly. “I’m not stupid, Masters. If you can start this lift, you have the codes to stop it. Do it now. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I believe you are going somewhere, Your Highness,” she said. “With us. You won’t be making any more speeches.” The other two guards were watching Del and Mac with impassive gazes, silent bulwarks behind Jett, their hands resting on their holstered guns.

  “Are you crazy?” Mac asked. “You can’t take him with you.”

  Jett ignored him as she spoke to Del. “Many people, both Allied and Skolian, believe your song must be heard. This ‘peace’ treaty is a falsehood propagated by the Traders to weaken us, with the ultimate goal of conquest over all humanity.” Her voice hardened. “We’re making sure no one else uses you as a propaganda tool, not the Traders, not the Allieds, and not your own family.”

  Del stared at her. “You’re out of your flaming mind.”

  “You won’t even get him out of this building,” Mac said. “Let alone anywhere else.” According to the files he had seen, these Marines had been vetted by both the Allieds and Skolians. But if they were taking Del, he didn’t believe the military had any hand in it. This came from somewhere else.

  “We have private transportation arranged,” Jett said.

  “Gods, this is rich,” Del said with an angry laugh. “I can’t even trust the people who are supposed to protect me from the nut cases out there who want to ‘keep me from being used’ by whoever they don’t like this week.”

  “You’re looking at a court-martial,” Mac told Jett, his voice as hard as the knot forming in his stomach. This couldn’t be happening, not now. Was there anyone out there who wasn’t trying to destroy the damn peace process?

  The sensation of descending stopped and the elevator doors slid open. Outside, a man and a woman in black jumpsuits waited in the hover lot. The woman was holding a laser carbine, but the man had a different type of gun, an air-loaded syringe pistol. A hover-van with tinted windows waited on a pad behind them, dark and sleek.

  “No.” Del raised his hands, palms outward, as if to push away the commandos. “Damn it, no.” He swung around to Jett. “I’m not going with you.”

  “I’m afraid you have to.” Jett glanced at the man in the lot and he raised his syringe pistol.

  A familiar stab of fear went through Mac. “You can’t shoot him! He’s allergic to many drugs. He’s not even native to this planet. You could kill him!”

  “We’re aware of his health,” Jett said. “The shot will only knock him out. Unless he comes of his own free will.” She raised her hand as if inviting Del to dinner. “After you, Your Highness.”

  Del, stall, Mac thought, shouting the words in his mind. He wasn’t a telepath, but Del was a powerful enough psion that if Mac projected his thought with sufficient strength, Del might pick it up even through the mental shields he used to protect his mind.

  Del glanced at Mac, his forehead furrowed as if he were straining to hear a whisper.

  Stall them! Mac thought. Allied Space Command monitored Del. Even if Masters and her people had temporarily nullified that security, they couldn’t keep this up for long. If he and Del stalled long enough, someone would find them.

  Del crossed his arms and regarded Jett implacably. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Suit yourself.” She nodded to the man with the syringe gun.

  As had often happened during Mac’s Air Force days in an engagement, his time sense slowed down. The man with the syringe seemed to move in slow motion, training his weapon on Del. Mac didn’t give a rat’s ass what Jett Masters claimed about their precautions; he couldn’t let whatever was in that gun hit Del. When the man’s finger touched the firing stud, Mac threw himself in front of Del. He didn’t hear the shot, he felt only a stab of pain in his neck, but that was enough; he recognized the pressure-driven dart of a syringe gun. With a grunt, he lurched past Del and crashed into Jett. He was dimly aware of the Marines converging on them as he and Jett slammed into the wall.

  The world went dark.

  Aliana had never expected even to leave Muzeopolis, let alone visit a Skolian embassy. The idea that she might leave the planet was so far outside her experience, it never entered her mind.

  Until it happened.

  She had no choice. The soldiers had taken them from the embassy despite outraged protests from the Skolians. Aliana was just grateful ESComm hadn’t executed anyone, especially Lensmark, who she particularly liked despite the Secondary being an Imperialate soldier. The Skolians should be grateful they were alive, yet instead they were furious at ESComm. Aliana wished she could be angry, too, but mostly she was terrified.

  “Zina?” Red’s voice was soft in the darkness.

  Aliana lifted her head. She was slouched in a big beanbag, here in the two-room cabin where the soldiers had locked up her and Red. He had been in the other room, asleep in a pressure hammock slung between two bulkheads. She could have closed his door, but she couldn’t bear to cut herself off from him, her only friend within light years. She had no idea what the soldiers had done with Tide and it was killing her. This had happened because he helped her and Red. Even knowing ESComm would have looked for him anyway when the order came to kill any survivors of his line, she felt responsible.

  “I’m over here,” she said, ensconced in the soft beanbag. It shifted around, making her more comfortable, something she hadn’t known chairs could do.

  “I come over?” He sounded closer.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Please.”

  A hand touched her shoulder. The fresh scent of his clothes tickled her nose, and the smooth cloth of his jumpsuit brushed her neck when his arm moved past her. The material crinkled as he sat settled to her in the big lump of a chair.

  Aliana hesitated, feeling shy. But they had so little time left with each other. She didn’t want to waste it. She put her arms around him, tentative, afraid he would pull away.

  “You smell good,” sh
e said.

  “You, too.” His cheek moved against hers as if he were searching for something. He turned her head, bringing her lips against his. Then he kissed her softly, with such sweetness. It felt good, like warmth against the cold of their fear and isolation.

  Fear. Common sense finally kicked in and Aliana pulled back. “Red, no. We can’t.”

  “Yes, can,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

  “I’m not an Aristo. I can’t have you.”

  “Not want Aristo.” His voice caught. “They never love. They hurt and hurt and hurt.”

  She couldn’t imagine what hells he had lived. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “Not want to die.” His usually rich voice had a hard edge. “Aristos say I never think. No mind. Nothing. Just provide. But I think.” His voice rasped with anger she had never heard him give words to. “I feel. I dream. I laugh and I cry. I want to live.”

  “Ah, gods.” Tears gathered in her eyes. It was all there, in him, the humanity the Aristos had denied, that they had bred him never to show, just like the humanity within Tide. She had no way to save his life, no way to help either of them. ESComm was sending them both to Admiral Muze, who was on the planet Glory. She didn’t know why they included her, except that she was a side issue caught up with Red and Tide. She knew only that Admiral Muze had wanted to kill Red for some cruel and arbitrary reason she would never understand.

  She brushed her lips over Red’s nose, tickling it with her tongue, and he laughed, his voice catching at the end. He kissed her again as they slid down in the beanbag. It molded around them, cradling their bodies. Red undressed them both with such expertise, she didn’t realize what he was doing until his palms slid over her bare skin and she felt his smooth chest against her body. He knew exactly how to touch her, how to make her want him, his touch playful and kind.

  Their minds blended until Aliana couldn’t tell where his started and hers ended. She knew then what he wanted, what he needed, that he had never been touched in love, never in his life, only hurt until he wept from the pain and his loneliness. When her skin brushed his, he tensed as if for a blow. When she caressed him instead, his startled relief suffused her mind.

  He made love to her with kindness and desperation. The damp skin of his face pressed against her cheek, his tears mixing with hers. It was the first time—and probably the last—that either of them would know how it felt to share love.

  XVIII

  A Simple Test

  Jaibriol walked the cliff path with two of his bodyguards in front and two following. They were high above the ragged shoreline where the enraged waves of Glory’s ocean battered the black sands. The wild landscape reflected the tumult in his mind as he prepared to face Admiral Erix Muze, his naval Joint Commander.

  Although Jaibriol had never felt comfortable with Muze, he preferred him to Barthol. Until this business with the peace treaty, he and Erix had maintained a wary détente. The moment Jaibriol had blackmailed Erix into signing the treaty, threatening to execute him for a crime he hadn’t committed, that had changed. The cold, uncompromising nature of Highton law allowed the emperor to put to death anyone in the family of a traitor, even though Erix had nothing to do with the sins of his first cousin, Colonel Vatrix Muze, who had tried to assassinate Jaibriol last year.

  Supposedly tried to assassinate.

  Jaibriol was the only person alive who knew Vatrix had never tried to kill him. The colonel had caught him crawling out of the Lock after Jaibriol had unwillingly joined the Skolian Triad. Hidaka, the captain of Jaibriol’s Razer bodyguards, had also witnessed it—and he had blasted Muze into ashes with a laser carbine so the colonel could never reveal Jaibriol’s secret.

  Even now, many months later, Jaibriol could barely absorb the immensity of what Hidaka had done. The Razer had known exactly what he witnessed. Hidaka had been built, bred, and programmed for one purpose: to serve Hightons. Jaibriol had valued Hidaka’s intelligence and loyalty, but he would have never, in a millennium, have expected Hidaka to murder a Highton colonel to protect so huge and unforgivable a secret, that the emperor was a Ruby psion. Hidaka’s loyalty had outweighed a conditioning his creators forced on him even before his cybernetic birth from a mechanical womb. The Razer had risen to an ideal, his belief, however naively, that Jaibriol could make the universe a better place for humanity.

  And so Hidaka had died only months later. He had given his life to protect Jaibriol when the emperor met with Kelric on Earth. All of their bodyguards had died, Skolian and Eubian alike, sacrificing themselves to protect two sovereigns who were committing treason by meeting in secret. From that sacrifice had come a miracle. Deep in the night, Kelric and Jaibriol had hunkered together, the only survivors, stranded in the wilds of the Appalachian Mountains, and written the peace treaty.

  Jaibriol gritted his teeth. How did ESComm respond to this great sacrifice and miracle? By murdering Hidaka’s entire line. In the warped universe of Highton logic, they punished the Razer for sacrificing his life. Why? Their investigation had uncovered signs of Hidaka’s humanity, hints that he was developing self-determination. It was far too great a threat to the Aristos that the Razers—the most dangerous of all their human creations—could think for themselves. By the time Jaibriol had discovered what was happening, it was too late; none of Hidaka’s line had survived.

  Or so he had thought before today.

  Jaibriol’s aide Robert was waiting up ahead. He bowed deeply as Jaibriol joined him. “My honor at your presence, Your Highness.”

  “My greetings.” Jaibriol had long ago told Robert not to kneel, before he realized other Aristos considered it a threat when their emperor did away with the expected deference. They saw each of his changes as a chink that weakened the fundamental structure of Eube; too many chinks, and slaves would think they were human. Which was exactly what Jaibriol intended. But if he pushed too hard, his sway over the Aristos weakened. It was a balancing act, easing constraints bit by bit, humanizing Eube without losing his ability to make changes.

  “Has Admiral Muze arrived?” Jaibriol asked.

  “Ten minutes ago.” Robert indicated a path that sloped away from the cliff, down into the mountains, ending in a clearing circled by black marble pillars and high peaks. A retinue waited there, the admiral’s tall form in their midst. Muze’s black hair glittered in the pale sunlight that diffused through the misty air, water vapor from the waves below that survived even this high in the mountains. Sunlight sparkled in the veils of mist, softening their view of the clearing so that Muze’s retinue looked like spirits in a celestial palace. It never ceased to amaze Jaibriol that a race as unrepentantly brutal as the Hightons produced such ethereal beauty in the worlds they created.

  He walked down the path with Robert and his bodyguards. As he came within the circle of the pillars, everyone in Muze’s retinue went down on one knee, their heads bent, including the admiral’s two Razer bodyguards. Muze bowed to Jaibriol.

  Jaibriol lifted his hand, indicating they could rise. People who knelt to him always managed to see that motion even though they were supposed to be staring at the ground. He didn’t care where they looked; he would have dispensed with the entire process if it wouldn’t have led to so much grief. But it had its uses, such as now, when he wanted to hold the upper hand with Erix.

  Jaibriol spoke to the admiral. “It would please us to enjoy the company of ESComm’s finest.” By disguising his order for Erix to walk with him as a compliment, he offered more honor than a rigorous adherence to Highton custom required.

  Erix nodded, the tilt of his head expressing his appreciation of the phrasing. Jaibriol didn’t extend his invitation to Erix’s retinue, but Robert stayed behind as a courtesy. Jaibriol could have allowed them to come. Although it might have softened Erix up to let him bring his Razers, Jaibriol didn’t want the pressure of their partly Aristo minds. It was difficult enough to deal with just the admiral.

  He strolled with Erix along the high cliff, accompanied
by Jaibriol’s Razers. The wind blew through their hair, which splintered the sunlight. A black marble rail ran along a waist-high wall to their left; beyond it, the black cliff face dropped in great sweeps to the beach far below. The black sands sparkled in the sunlight while waves leapt high above the spiked outcroppings of glittering black rock that jutted up in the water along the shoreline.

  “A beautiful sight,” Erix commented.

  “Indeed,” Jaibriol said. “A sight fit for our empire’s visionaries.”

  Erix’s face remained cold. He knew what Jaibriol meant, that those who supported the treaty were enlightened. He offered no sign of agreement.

  Steeling himself, Jaibriol eased down his barriers. The force of Erix’s mind increased like the pressure of water against a flexible barrier, ready to burst and flood him with pain.

  Security protocols activated, his spinal node thought. It controlled the biomech in his body, which could moderate his responses, even automatic actions like his sweat or heartbeat, and stop him from visibly flinching under the onslaught of Erix’s mind.

  The admiral had no idea that Jaibriol had extended a mental probe. He took for granted what every Aristo considered an undisputed truth; no other Aristo could know what went on in his mind. The “gods” of Eube had decreed that Kyle abilities made providers weak, less than human, but Jaibriol knew the truth, why Aristos were fanatic that no genes of an empath or telepath “contaminate” their DNA. Psions could spy on their minds, in that one simple act bypassing the convoluted modes of interaction that Hightons used to hide their feelings. Aristos tortured psions into subservience not only for transcendence, but also as punishment for possessing a gift no true Aristo could ever own.

  If only you knew, Jaibriol thought. He could only skim the surface of Erix’s thoughts, but that was enough. It was no surprise to discover the admiral would never forgive Jaibriol for blackmailing him or that he considered the peace process a mistake. What Jaibriol didn’t expect was that he had earned Erix’s respect. In the universe of Machiavellian Highton intrigue, Jaibriol had shown himself to be far more inspired than Erix expected. As much as the admiral abhorred the actual treaty, he couldn’t help but admire the way Jaibriol had pushed it through. He hadn’t thought Eube’s young emperor was devious enough to pull off such a coup.