Prime- The Summons

  “Vlad,” Joaquim said softly, “it’s not—”

  “Silence!” Vlad roared. He screamed the word, the veins and tendons on his neck standing out in sharp relief. Joaquim fell back, dismayed. Vlad turned away, nervously running his hands through his hair, his expression almost despairing. They stood silently in the room. Xai let her eyes fall shut, blanking out the sight of Joaquim and the four guards waiting for Vlad to come to a decision, as another great beam of sunlight worked its way across the back wall.

  “You were the only family I ever had,” Vlad said softly. “I loved you as I would love a father.” Xai forced her eyes open again, feeling the sickness roil through her belly.

  “Don’t—” Joaquim started, shaking his head.

  “For that,” Vlad continued in a soft tone of voice, “I will let you live. You want her, so I will give her to you as well.”

  “Vlad,” Joaquim murmured gently, “I—”

  “But I curse you,” Vlad said softly. “For your foolishness, for the trust you give too easily. Be betrayed, as I was betrayed. Watch your kin fall to a vicious death at the hands of criminals, as I was. And live,” he added finally, enunciating softly, the words the only sound in the room, his eyes gleaming with something disturbingly close to pleasure as he watched Joaquim’s face fall at the litany of his words, “yes, live—for a long, long time, knowing you were to blame. I curse you to life, Joaquim Salazar Syng. Live, and watch all that you love die.”

  All the blood drained out of Joaquim’s face. The two men looked at each other for several moments, anger and intensity on both faces. “You were not cruel when I knew you,” Joaquim said finally.

  Vlad laughed suddenly, harshly, abruptly, and turned away. “Give them what they came for and take them away,” he told his minions. “If they are still in Ruus space by 2300,” he added, walking toward the distant door, “sell them to Rydia.”

  The guards waited until he had gone through the door before roughly pushing them in the direction of the traveling tubes.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  JOAQUIM’S MOUTH was a grim, hard line as he strapped Xai into the Tellorian, brushing her hands away as she ineffectually tried to help him. “Be still,” he said tersely. “We need to get out of this sector of space as soon as possible.” They were both still in their PES.

  “Joaquim,” Xai began.

  Joaquim’s eyes met Xai’s through the twin planes of their helmets, reflecting two sets of desperate expressions. His face softened, and he stopped what he was doing. “I apologize, Xai,” he murmured. “He was right in that I was too trusting, if for the wrong reasons.”

  Xai shut her eyes and swallowed, trying to clear her foggy mind. “I was frightened,” she blurted, ashamed. “I didn’t know what to do.” She looked back at him. She didn’t know where the words came from, but they were the truth. She felt the oddest inclination to burst into tears. What had been in that concoction? she wondered. The thought slipped away, sliding greasily out of her grasp.

  Joaquim shook his head, his expression bleak. “So was I,” he told her. He went back to his task, swiftly strapping her in and swinging into the seat next to hers. “Rest,” he told her as he began to guide the Tellorian out of the docking bay and back through the channels of the asteroid belt.

  The asteroid belt was a huge and daunting mass of wandering rock looming all around them. To Xai’s eyes the asteroids seemed to be leaving traces in space, marking their passage. Every once in a while the Tellorian would break out from their shadows into the dazzling light of the reddening sun, a burst of red and gold and brilliant fire. Xai’s stomach lurched, as if it was the light itself, and not the drugs, that were affecting her.

  Joaquim sat next to Xai, following their maneuvers through the asteroid belt on the strips of data scrolling before him, frowning. There was a Weakness Point just on the edge of the belt, and he directed them there as quickly as possible. As soon as they were within connection distance he snapped, “Annabel, log onto to the beacon.”

  “Logging on,” the Tellorian murmured. “Connection established. State your request.”

  “This is Julian Te,” Joaquim said, “Rydian pilot, requesting passage.”

  “This is Ruus IV,” a male voice with a Ruus accent replied neutrally. “Please present retina for credit check. Cost of transit: eighty credits.” Joaquim snarled wordlessly and hunched over the small box the Ruus had given him before pushing them toward the Tellorian.

  “What did he give me?” Xai asked.

  Abruptly Joaquim looked up, blinking. “Good,” he murmured to himself. “Where do I look?” he asked. The Tellorian flashed its red light. Joaquim looked into the light.

  “Credit confirmed,” said the beacon. “Data is being transmitted.” The Tellorian shifted three or four degrees over and slowed slightly, preparing to enter the Weakness Point.

  Joaquim leaned over and tightened the strap of Xai’s chest belt. “He gave you a truth serum called vask,” he said. He glanced at Xai then, and Xai saw the telltale blue sheen of a credit lens in his left eye.

  “Vask—” began the Tellorian.

  “Quiet, Annabel,” Joaquim said shortly.

  “I feel awful,” Xai murmured.

  Joaquim snorted. “You’d feel worse if he’d given you the other half. That can kill.”

  “Vask,” the Tellorian began again.

  “Annabel,” Joaquim said shortly, “mute.”

  The Tellorian was silenced.

  Xai swallowed again, shutting her eyes, feeling suddenly oddly relaxed. Sleep crept up upon her. “You saved my life,” she told Joaquim.

  Joaquim laughed bitterly. “Not quite,” he said sourly. “You saved me from certain death, placed your fate in my hands, and I, in return, almost got you needlessly murdered by a man no longer in control of his own mind.” He glared at the holo of their small ship coasting into the gleaming iridescence of the Weakness Point. “Annabel,” he said, “give me the Quantum Drive.”

  The Tellorian was silent.

  “You muted her,” Xai murmured.

  Joaquim made a face. “Annabel, unmute.”

  “Tellorian unmuted,” Annabel said enthusiastically.

  “Give me the Quantum Drive,” Joaquim told the ship.

  “Confirmed,” the Tellorian replied cheerily. Joaquim watched their ship glide into the Weakness Point. A series of figures began flashing across the field of view.

  “Activate the Drive,” Joaquim said.

  “Drive activated.”

  Xai felt the odd, inimitable sensation of a dimensional shift.

  “The barrier has been successfully crossed,” the Tellorian said.

  “Current position,” Joaquim asked tersely.

  “9-8-6.”

  Joaquim grumbled underneath his breath, obviously dissatisfied with the distance. “Our speed at entry?”

  “.08 parsecs.”

  “And our angle?”

  “.06 off the suggested course.”

  Joaquim grumbled again.

  “But you stopped him,” Xai said. Joaquim frowned.

  “I should not have brought you into that situation in the first place,” he told her.

  “You couldn’t have known he’d hate Messinians,” Xai said dreamily. She felt the most enormous desire for sleep.

  “I should have guessed thirty-five years was time for all men to change.”

  Xai forced her eyes open and looked at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Joaquim looked at her for a long moment. Suddenly he smiled, relaxing back into the man she had known before they had gone to see the Ruus, gaunt, confident, ironic. “It doesn’t bother you, does it,” he said finally.

  Xai shut her eyes again. “My people have a saying,” she told him sleepily. “Troubles find you. It’s how you find the troubles that matters.”

  “What a deliciously pragmatic people.”

  Xai giggled at the idea.

  “Sleep, Xai,” Joaquim said gently.
r />   Xai did.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE SALAK was bigger than Xai had imagined, a space station sixty kilometers in diameter, made of five concentric rings. The rings each spun at their own speed, the inner rings faster than the outer ones, to maintain the same gravity. Each was at a different angle than the others, so that each ring could be seen from the other rings. Hundreds of transport pods darted out between them, taking people from ring to ring, swooping into open space before circling down to their destination. The whole thing glistened in the reflected lights of a million stars, thousands of ships connected by slender umbilicals to each ring. Advertisements threw out light, shapes, and words in every direction. At a short distance were a variety of hotels. Ships darted back and forth between the hotels and the rings, some occasionally turning off in the direction of the nearest Weakness Point. It was monumental; it was excessive.

  “It’s beautiful,” Xai whispered.

  Joaquim looked up from the tube of tattoo suppressant he held between his fingers and nodded. He seemed preoccupied. Xai couldn’t blame him. They had come closer to death with the Ruus than Xai wanted to think about. “Trust is dearer than precious gems,” T’maa Dei Ping had once said. Xai understood that now in a way she had never thought possible. And they were returning to his people, to try and discover why no one had come after him. If she had been in his position, she would have been worried too.

  “They finished the construction of the fourth ring,” Joaquim remarked suddenly, his tone pleased. He leaned forward and watched as they passed beneath it.

  “Oh,” Xai said nonchalantly, peering up, “they did that years ago.” The re-opening ceremony had been in all the newscasts. Xai had been quite young at the time, but she distinctly remembered watching the Edoxian space acrobats with Marcus.

  Joaquim laughed. “How many years?” he asked. “Ten? Fifteen?” Xai flushed.

  “Something like that,” she said

  “The Salak is requesting identification,” the Tellorian said.

  “Julian Te, Rydian trader,” Joaquim replied promptly. “I need a berth. No one knows about Julian,” he told Xai. “It’s a backup…for sticky situations. Incognito travel. That sort of thing.”

  “Did you use him often?” Xai asked.

  Joaquim grinned again, his green eyes flashing, the credit lens giving an iridescent cast to his left eye. “Let’s just say I’ve had the occasion,” he told her.

  “Hotel or ring,” the Tellorian prompted.

  “Ring,” Joaquim replied. “Fifth,” he added. “You can stay at a hotel,” he told Xai, “or, if you have your own ship, berth on the rings. Fifth ring is the outer one.”

  “Please present credit for check,” the Tellorian prompted.

  Joaquim looked into the Strip.

  “Credit confirmed,” the Tellorian said. “Berth course projected. Pilot permission requested.”

  “Granted,” Joaquim said, letting go of the controls. Oddly, his mood seemed to be improving as they got closer to the Salak, as if the sight of it satisfied him in some very basic way. “One of the founding laws of the Salak is that the AI controls berthing,” he told Xai, crossing his arms over his chest and sitting back in his chair.

  “Why?”

  Joaquim nodded in the direction of the fourth ring. “That’s why. It took them over seventy years to repair it.”

  Xai stared in fascination at the approaching rings. At this distance one could see the shops—thousands of them, laid side by side, offering every imaginable good. She could even see the people, in almost incalculable numbers, walking from shop to shop, milling, talking.

  “It’s also a first class advertisement,” Joaquim added, a small smile on his face. “They plot a long, torturous course past all the stores. It’s a good idea.”

  Xai nodded. She’d never seen anything so enticing.

  After perhaps fifteen minutes they were guided to a cluster of docking bays. Several small ships were attached to a main umbilical. The Tellorian began to circle over a vacant slot, falling into rotation.

  “One, two,” Joaquim counted, that small, anticipatory smile still on his face. “Three, four.”

  There was a bump and a sudden hiss. The Tellorian docked. Xai felt pulled back into her seat. A plastic cup bounced off the floor, followed by the two heavy thuds of their PES Helmets. Gravity had returned. It felt awful.

  “Docking completed,” the Tellorian said. “Pilot has relinquished control of the ship. Berth cost per day, thirty-five credits.”

  Joaquim whistled softly.

  “I don’t feel very good,” Xai said, battling down a sudden bout of nausea.

  Joaquim nodded. “Me neither. It’s gravity sickness. I get it every time. Annabel, give us anti-nausea shots.”

  Xai stiffened just before the Tellorian jabbed her sharply in the rear.

  Joaquim grunted. “Not subtle, is she?”

  Xai shook her head. The nausea subsided slowly.

  Joaquim turned to her. Looking at him now, Xai could see that for all his apparent calm he was wound as tight as a bow. “Xai,” he said seriously, “one of the great mistakes I made with the Ruus was not telling you my plans.”

  “That’s—” Xai began, but Joaquim cut her off with a swift wave of his hand.

  “Listen to me Xai,” he said. “This is important. You saved my life, and last I heard it was a life of some value. I was heir to Syng, however much I tried to ignore it.”

  Xai nodded, as it seemed expected.

  Joaquim stared at her, his bright eyes very intense, his expression very serious. “You and I have a bond now,” he told her, bringing his hand to his chest, “a bond of kinship which I plan to make final. This I promise you, as I promise that I will make certain you arrive at your home planet.”

  Xai nodded again. Joaquim frowned. “But first,” he continued, his countenance darkening, “I must find out why I was left for thirty-five years in stasis. I must know the truth of it.”

  “I understand,” Xai told him. Joaquim stared at her very intensely for a moment, then patted her on the shoulder.

  “I thank you for that,” he murmured. He looked up, seeming to relax once more. “Annabel,” he said, “I need a reflective surface.”

  “Mirrors,” began the Tellorian.

  “Just give it to him, please,” Xai said firmly.

  One of the panels before them darkened, becoming fully reflective. Joaquim looked into the mirror and proceeded to rub the tattoo suppressant cream onto his cheeks.

  Xai watched, fascinated, as the tattoos slowly disappeared, leaving in their trace a tall, gaunt man with flashing light eyes, high cheekbones, and a wry expression. To Xai’s eyes he seemed much less T’lasian without the tattoos.

  “How often do you have to put the cream on?” Xai asked curiously.

  “Once a week,” Joaquim replied absently, busy examining his face. “After that they’ll come back. If they were temporary tattoos they’d disappear for good, but these tattoos are much harder to get rid of.” With a decisive slap of his cheekbone he turned away from the mirror and looked at Xai. “Ready to see the Salak?”

  Xai nodded.

  Joaquim got to his feet. “Well then,” he said, “let’s get going.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  JOAQUIM keyed open the Tellorian’s hatch. It slid up with a gentle whisper, presenting them with the view of a narrow, curving hall. For a moment the two of them just stood there, looking at the unadorned wall. “I’m nervous,” Xai blurted.

  Joaquim laughed. “Me too,” he said.

  Xai smiled, absurdly relieved he shared the sentiment. “A philosopher of my people once said fear is the saving grace of the good solider.”

  “Really?” Joaquim asked, intrigued. “How so?”

  Xai thought for a moment, remembering. “Fear saves the good soldier,” she said, quoting Te Xiao. “It reminds him he must occasionally retreat.”

  “What a pragmatic people you are,” Joaquim remarked.
“The philosophers of my people are frankly incomprehensible. ‘The hymn of time hums the time of the hymn’—things like that. But tell me, does that mean you think we should retreat?”

  Xai thought about it. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “But I do think it’s always a good idea to keep retreat as a possibility.”

  Joaquim threw his head back and laughed, delighted. “Perfect,” he cried, stepping out into the corridor. “On that note, I believe we should enter the Salak.” Xai followed him down the curving hallway, a strange warmth in her heart at the sound of his laughter.

  They passed several other ships with open and shut hatchways. A man inside one, his clothes that of a Kemorrian, nodded neutrally as they went past. Joaquim nodded back. Xai kept her eyes on the ground and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. She felt as if she had the word ‘escapee’ branded on her forehead. She knew this wasn’t the case but she couldn’t help worrying that someone from Prime would see her and haul her back to Prima Space. She kept remembering the story of old Tema’a of Wuhan, who had snuck out of the Third Kingdom in a boat. Queen T’es had asked him why he, the greatest military thinker of his time, had run away in the middle of the night. The old man had replied that a mouse can hide behind a blade of grass, while a mei-pan needs a copse of trees. “When trees are lacking,” the old man had said, “good strategy suggests you become a mouse.”

  The passageway had widened until it was about two meters wide. It felt odd to be walking, unnatural after so much time floating in space. “Why are you walking behind me?” Joaquim asked, sounding mildly annoyed.

  “Sorry,” Xai said, quickly coming up beside him. “I—my people—it’s—” she stopped, not knowing what to say.

  Joaquim looked at her, his eyes bright with understanding and something very like compassion. “Xai,” he said gently, “I do not know what your life was like before we met. But you are a member of my clan now. The People walk together.”