Prime- The Summons

  From the moment Kekka’s arm snapped, all of Xai’s peers, by almost unconscious accord, left Xai entirely alone. Kekka spent an afternoon at the infirmary, and came out with a healed arm and a fear of Xai that effectively prevented her from taking the revenge she so clearly desired. Meezein told the Me’xeit it had been a fluke. The Me’xeit was content with the answer—which he would not have been had Meezein told him the truth, which was that the child appeared to have all her father’s unpredictable tactical ability. Instead, he put Xai to fight some of their older programs, which came from a time when the artistry and philosophy of the techniques were promoted over the outcomes they offered.

  Of all the fourth generation, Meezein was the kindest to Xai. The others saw her as her grandfather did, as a slight to the family name and the living memory of their fall. But Meezein and Xai’s mother had been very close as children. Perhaps also, he, the least brilliant of all the Me’xeit’s children, felt some sort of kinship with Xai, so clearly fated to be Last for the rest of her life. It was a secret affection, entirely bound by protocol, which expressed itself in the programs he chose for her, the allowance he made for her moods, and the fact that he overlooked the vast amount of time she spent out of quarters, wandering the Starbase with her Primer friend.

  XAI found Meezein in the third of the study rooms, listening to T’ao Xiang’s second lecture. He sat on one of the study pads, his arms and legs folded, watching the fat old man describing the minutiae of diplomatic messaging. His Gamma hung above him in the air, beeping contentedly.

  “Mizeit,” Xai said, stepping into the room and bowing to the fourth. “Zazei’ite has sent me.”

  Meezein paused the hologram and turned to look at Xai. He was smaller than the rest of his brothers and sisters—though not nearly as small as Xai. “Xai,” he said. “Come. What is it?” He gestured her into the room.

  Xai entered—stopping, as was expected, on the first fringe of the woven mat. “Prime is sending a Strike Force to our Space Station,” Xai explained. “The Me’xeit has convoked Council to meet when his prayers are finished. He was at the third station,” she added. Third station was the last. It meant Meezein had perhaps twenty minutes before the Council began.

  “I presume the soldiers are Messinian?” Meezein asked.

  “Yes,” Xai told him.

  Meezein nodded, his expression distant. Xai paused for a moment, waiting to see if he would ask anything else. Meezein continued to stare into the distance.

  “Mizeit,” Xai said, bowing to the fourth and preparing to retreat. Meezein returned abruptly to reality.

  “Wait, please,” he said. “I have been meaning to speak to you,” he added, patting the cushion before his. He almost seemed uncertain. “Please,” he told her, “sit with me for a moment. I have something that is properly yours.”

  Xai fully entered the room and sat gingerly on the cushion. Then they were facing each other, the master and his pupil, cross-legged in a small white room with padded walls and a cream mat, beside the paused hologram of a great old man, centuries dead.

  Meezein tugged uncertainly at his moustache. “You are almost nineteen now,” he said.

  “Ta, Mizeit,” Xai replied. Of all her relatives, he was the only one she did not truly fear. Meezein nodded and fell back into his pensive silence.

  Xai glanced around the room, wondering what he was going to give her. Meezein was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice her eyes darting about—a breach of protocol if ever there was one.

  “By your age,” Meezein said thoughtfully, almost to himself, “children of the Noble Houses have begun the Long Walk. Commoners have Pledged to a House. Or to Prima, as they do now. You have done neither.”

  Xai realized this might take some time. Relegating the thought of Marcus to the back corner of her mind she began counting slowly under her breath and waited.

  “When truly examined,” Meezein continued, brooding, “most of our education—most of what we teach you—can be reduced to three simple things. First, know how to fight. Second, know when to fight. Finally, perhaps, know what to fight for.”

  “Ta,” Xai said, as it seemed to be expected.

  Meezein’s eyes focused on Xai with startling speed. “You have the training to know how to fight,” he said. “And all the training in the world—well. . .your cousin Tekor Zaze knows more than you ever will, and she has five years less than you. But she will never know when to fight.”

  Xai waited.

  “Your father knew when to fight,” Meezein said.

  Xai felt as if her whole world stopped. The room, the Starbase, Marcus, the coming Strike Force—they disappeared. Suddenly there was nothing but her uncle’s calm, rather ugly face and the words he spoke. It was anathema to speak of Xella Tal’ei in Ke-i’dzei House and yet he did.

  “He had a genius for it,” Meezein continued almost dreamily, seeming to become lost in the memory. “I have never seen anything like it. He had almost no technical skill but absolute, perfect flair. It was…extraordinary.”

  Xai waited, intently focused on the words coming from Meezein’s lips.

  Meezein shrugged, returning to the present. “What he fought for,” he told her, “that was wrong. Xella Tal’ei destroyed our way of life. He destroyed our culture. Messim as a people no longer exists. We are slaves now, bound to the will of others. But Kesta’s Heart, he was a fighter!” Rising to his feet Meezein went to a portal on the wall and keyed open a drawer. He took a small pendant out of it, a tiny fragment of polymer attached to a metallic chain.

  “Your mother was a fighter as well,” Meezein said. “Perhaps that is why she fell in love with him, and abandoned our way of life.” He looked down at the pendant for a moment.

  “Here,” he said, giving it to Xai. “It was your mother’s. Your father gave it to her.”

  Xai stared at the pendant in the palm of her hand. She had never had anything of either of her parents. Now, to hold this. She wondered what it was. She wondered where he had gotten it. She looked up at her uncle, not knowing what to say or where to begin.

  Meezein shook his head. He looked almost like Marcus, struggling to find the words. “You have the skill to know how to fight, Xai. I believe you also will know when. I hope this pendant will remind you how careful one must be in choosing one’s cause.” Meezein looked at Xai, his expression very intent. “Ke-i’dzei House may not have treated you well,” he said finally. “Do not assume thereby that what it fights for is wrong.”

  “Mizeit—” Xai began, wanting to thank him, not knowing how.

  “You have reached your seniority,” Meezein said, interrupting her. “It is yours by right. Now,” he added, rubbing his hands together, “I have ten minutes before Council, and Xiangte has much to teach in such a span of time.” He turned away from her and unpaused the hologram, unleashing T’ao Xiang. The fat old man began to speak once more, his accent thick and obscure. It was a clear signal the interview was over.

  Xai rose to her feet, took a deep breath, and tried to compose herself. “Mizeit,” she said, by way of farewell. Meezein nodded his head. T’ao Xiang waved his hands in an oddly diffident gesture. Xai bowed stiffly to the fifth and left.

  Chapter Four

  XAI found Marcus underneath the Annabel Tellorian, on his back, examining the Q-Culture and eating a sandwich.

  Marcus had built the Tellorian in Docking Bay Three, one of the old bays on the nebula side of the station. These were no longer in use, being too small for modern courier ships—the only ships that still came to this Starbase since they had discovered the Manaxian Weakness Point. Following the old style, the only thing between the inside of the bay and space was a force field. This left the entirety of the nebula on display. It was beautiful. It was also very late. Xai suppressed a yawn. “Have a nice talk with your grandfather?” Marcus asked.

  Xai snorted and sat down beside him. Her Gamma was accessible to anyone who could Strip. All the Gammas were—it was part of the accord between Prime
and the Messinians, a condition of their exile. Marcus always knew where Xai was. “Sort of,” she said. They sat side by side in companionable silence for a moment or two. “Marcus,” Xai asked abruptly, “do you know why the soldiers are coming?”

  Marcus grinned impishly. “They sent you to interrogate me, is that it?”

  Xai laughed. “Hardly. I spend too much time with Primers to have the intelligence necessary for something as mentally challenging as that.”

  Marcus darted her an amused glance and took another bite of his sandwich. “The soldiers are here,” he told her, his mouth full, “because the situation in Rydia is volatile. The Emperor’s ill again, and those systems have been trying to secede for centuries.” He glanced up at the Strip for a moment. “Prime doesn’t think they’ll succeed,” he continued, “but these are difficult times, and we’re the furthest base in Prima space and the most likely to fall to pirates. Apparently there have been rumors of a large number of ships moving in this direction. Some even say it’s Fleet, but that seems unlikely. Fleet’s dying.”

  “So they’re sending the Messinians in case of pirates?”

  “Well,” Marcus replied, “it’s only sixty five soldiers. More of a warning than anything else.”

  Xai blanched at the idea of sixty-five Prima pledged Messinian soldiers on her Starbase.

  “They’re not going to hurt you, you know,” Marcus said.

  Xai shrugged. Marcus didn’t understand. He couldn’t—he wasn’t Messinian. “Look,” she said, changing the subject, “It was my mother’s.” Opening her hand, she showed him the pendant Meezein had given her.

  Marcus made an interested sound. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said. “I wonder what it is.” Pulling it out of her hand he clambered into the Tellorian. Xai followed.

  Marcus had made the Tellorian with an Andusian Q-Matrix, cross-bred with an Edoxian one for a one-way, transparent skin. For the skeleton he’d chosen Mallorian plastic. This made the Tellorian mostly transparent—the entire functioning of the ship, laid out in the floor, was visible, as well as 280 degrees of the sky. The idea never failed to make Xai feel queasy, but Marcus loved it. “I’m going out to see the stars,” he’d say, “not the ship I’m using to see the stars.”

  “Annabel, activate,” Marcus called, slipping into his chair.

  “Activating,” Annabel cooed.

  Xai sighed and sat down in the chair next to Marcus’s. She’d had many an argument with Marcus about the nature of his AI. Marcus had argued that an Explorer Class vessel should be equipped with an AI with personality. Xai had pointed out he might not like the personality the AI had. Marcus had responded by getting a full psych evaluation and from that an officially recommended AI for his sort of personality—the AS 146, as it so happened—feminine, compliant and yet moderately argumentative—to add, as he put it, some spice to those lonely nights in space. What the advertisements neglected to mention, Xai thought sourly, was that to anyone other than that perfectly compatible personality she was arch, arrogant, and evidently full of herself. Xai hated her and, although it was impossible, Xai could have sworn the sentiment was reciprocated.

  This is the Annabel Tellorian,” the Tellorian said. “Registration 433EE5STT3. Hello Marcus. How may I help you?”

  Marcus slid the pendant into the physical sample analysis slot. “What is this, Annabel?” he asked.

  “One moment.”

  Xai glanced around the Tellorian’s interior. Annabel wasn’t a very big ship. Being made both to surf and sail, most of her almond-shaped body was devoted to the sail storage beneath Xai’s feet. Looking down, Xai could see the sail rippling slightly in the Q-Culture. It grew there, spreading out from the culture onto the body of the ship and the sail. Open (unfurled into a great semicircle of organic skin, utterly dwarfing the small pod in which it currently rested), it would catch the solar tides, gliding from Weakness Point to Weakness Point, sailing through the infinite depths of space.

  All that made for a somewhat cramped oxygenated human area. There were two rather comfortable seats. There was a bed in the back, under which, in case of serious injury, was a stasis pod. Beside it were the water recycler and the forty-liter reserve tank. In the corner was a small tella plant—the leaves of which had the advantage of being almost perfect nutrition, albeit truly foul-tasting. There were also three years’ worth of vitamin, protein, and citrus supplements. The most obtrusive piece of equipment was the exercise machine, on which Marcus was supposed to spend at least one of every seven hours if he didn’t want to atrophy without any gravity to keep his bones dense and his muscles working.

  “The object in question is one of the five connection chips belonging to the second generation of initial Prima prototypes,” the Tellorian said.

  Marcus made an odd noise, somewhere between a gasp of surprise and a stifled whoop of excitement.

  “What?” Xai asked, not understanding.

  Marcus turned to her, his pale face flushed with wonder. All the cool aplomb he had been working on so hard for the past year had abandoned him, leaving the excitable young man Xai had grown up with, eyes gleaming, enthralled with his subject matter. “What do you mean, what?” he cried. “Xai,” he continued, “it’s one of the Prima prototypes! It’s the ancestor of what I’ve got in my head!” he added, tapping his temple. “How did your mother get one of these?”

  Xai shrugged. “My father gave it to her.”

  “Xella Tal’ei,” the Tellorian said, “leader of the Commoner forces in the Messinian Commoner War, was held in captivity—”

  “Enough, Annabel,” Marcus said. “But how did your father find one?” he asked Xai. “These are rare. Very rare!”

  Xai shrugged. She felt uncomfortable talking about her father. Actually, she felt uncomfortable even thinking about him. “He grew up in Prime,” she told him. “Prime took him as a baby, and kept him until he was in his twenties. He probably got it then.”

  Outside, in the docking bay, Alpha sang an incoming.

  Marcus cursed softly. “I have to go,” he said. “Mother’s having a dinner.” Rising to his feet, he tugged down on his shirt and took a deep breath, pulling himself back into the shape of the calm, collected young man he had so recently become. “But don’t you think,” he added, wagging a finger in Xai’s direction, “that I’m not going to want to hear the rest of the story. Tomorrow!” he told her, and pulled himself out of the Tellorian and into the docking bay.

  “Tomorrow,” Xai promised. Tremendously relieved, she watched him stride out of the bay, late as usual.

  Chapter Five

  LEGEND has it that when Kesta first spoke to the People, waking them out of the Long Sleep and into the Banishment, she told them the price of their rebellion was an eternity of battles, great and small. They say, also, that when they begged that it not be so, the Gentle Goddess replied in unusually harsh tones that a people who seek to be gods and fail must accept the fate put upon them, or be doomed instead to an eternity of creeping dishonors. Given the alternatives, the People reluctantly pledged themselves to an expression of piety seen nowhere else in the galaxy. Even to Fleet war is nothing more than a way of life. But in Messim it is a religion, a manner of living, an art form and a path to self-knowledge all at once, a totality so ingrained into everyday existence that even the encounter with Prime could not shake it.

  Nothing of this is said in the Prophecies—not those of M’kel, nor those of M’tein or A’stert, nor even those of T’esla X’tei, bastard, epileptic son of the ruling Prince, who almost began a revolution before Kesta called him to serve her House. Even the followers of Chaim have no writings which might assert such a thing. And yet still the legend remains. Tei Kett Zang’s great song cycle—Quoze Tei—began with the Obligation (as it was eventually to be known); Keimo Torr’s mastepiece, perhaps the most controversial sculpture out of Ko’maa’s Tertiary Guild during the Age of Sun and Order, was of Kesta—not as the loving, benevolent Goddess of the Makori Pledged—
but as the Goddess of Fate, bestowing the Judgment. It was, quite simply, a story replete with significance, which proffered a rationale somehow satisfying to a people stranded on an inhospitable planet by their ancestors.

  During the Time of Chaos, which ended the Age of Sun and Order, the myth faded under the combined weight of fratricide and a thirty-year civil war. Historians lost all sight of the Guardian Goddess, and for a time—a short time, but a bloody one—Kastor, god of chaos, seemed to have consumed the civic imagination.

  Eventually, however, Tein and Tell Xan’ta’lei, twin sons of the last Messinian king, died, and Messim fell under the rule of the Eight Noble Houses. To impose the new order, its chief architect, Ke-i’dzei Tein Xan’ta’lei, Tein’s eldest daughter and indubitably the greatest political mind ever to arise in Messinian history, resuscitated the myth, making it the cornerstone of her entire propaganda effort. It worked better than even she could have imagined, and integrated battle into the everyday life of every man, woman and child on the planet.

  No one was deemed an adult until they had served their first full term of service to the Noble House of their choice. From this they took their second name. Only after their naming were they admitted as speakers before the Circle of Elders. The only youths exempt from this duty were the children of the Noble Houses, who were forced instead to spend their term in the Temple—a duty so universally hated that ‘temple-bound’ became a Messinian epithet for adolescent sulkiness.

  It was only at the end of the Commoner Wars that tattoos became a part of Messinian culture. Under the Noble Houses, appearance was strictly determined by Protocol. The only use of tattooing was for suppliants to the Oracle. To demonstrate their humility and their devotion to their cause, suppliants submitted to being marked as the Goddess’ own. Tattoos were thus understood as both temporary—for an antidote was applied after the Oracle had given its answer—and inherently religious, connected to the will of the Goddess.