Primary Inversion (11 page)

      
“Well, hell, why not?” I said.

      
I crossed the road, and its nervoplex shifted under my feet. On the other side I walked through the cyberlock rainbows and up to the front door. Then I knocked.

      
The door opened immediately, revealing two guards armed with laser carbines, power packs hung on their belts. Their confusion hit me like a blast of air; had his lordship actually been lunatic enough to invite me here? Had I been lunatic enough to accept?

      
“My greetings,” I said—and whipped up my leg, kicking one carbine out of its owner’s hands while I sent the other man’s gun flying with a sweep of my arm.

      
Neither guard had a chance to summon help before I knocked them out. But as I ran into the mansion, another eight guards appeared, running down the stairs in the entrance foyer and coming through archways on my right and left. What the hell? Although Hightons always traveled with bodyguards, the usual complement was four. I had expected only the five I had seen at the bar.

      
As I focused on the guards, my mind went on boost, changing my perceptions so that everyone seemed to move in slow motion. The guards reacted as if they were underwater, barely changing position while I leveled my Jumbler at them.

      
Weapons link established,
my node thought. A grid of cross-hairs appeared over my view of the foyer while stats flashed in a corner of my mental display:

Fuel: abiton

rest energy: 1.9 eV

charge: 5.95x10
-25
 
C

magnet: 0.0001 T

max radius: 0.05 M

      
I swept the Jumbler beam across the ground in front of the guards. Only orange sparkles showed as it cut through the air, but when it touched the floor, that parquetry exploded. Debris flew everywhere and rained down into the trough I was gouging. Dust swirled around us. I doubted the owners of the mansion would rent to the Aristo again. His guests were too ill-mannered.

      
The guards skidded to a stop at the trough, their arms rising in slow motion to protect their heads from flying debris. It wouldn’t delay them for long, and I couldn’t knock out this many even with my enhanced reflexes. Either I was going to have to take the irreversibly drastic step of shooting them or else find another way to reach the Highton.

      
I ran back outside into the garden. A laser shot came so close to my ear that strands of my hair sizzled. Someone cursed and shouted in Eubian about wanting me able to talk, not crisped to cinders.

      
I sprinted with accelerated speed toward a tower at the south edge of the mansion. It had to be the security center; Traders rarely varied in their procedures. They didn’t comprehend innovation, opting instead for sheer strength. Unfortunately for us, sheer strength went a long way no matter how much imagination its producers lacked.

      
I reached the tower in seconds and annihilated its lock. Another guard was inside, his carbine already up and aimed. Even before my mind registered his presence, my leg was kicking into the air. My boot heel hit the carbine and it flew out of his hands, its shot going wide and burning into the wall instead of me.

      
The guard hit my Jumbler so fast, the gun spun out of my hand in a blur. He also had enhanced speed; I barely managed to block his blows when he came at me. I slid the thorn-tube out from my sleeve and fired its microthin sliver of metal. He jerked up his arm, deflecting it with the wrist guard he wore. That gained me the second I needed; while he was stopping the drug-filled needle, I got him with a dart. It hit his neck and he spasmed in mid-punch, his fist flailing, the tendons in his neck outlined like cables under his skin. He collapsed to the floor, breathing but unconscious.

      
A quick glance at his console told me he had been monitoring the estate defenses. I deactivated the cyberlock first. Then I used his system to access an emergency node of the Kyle-Mesh, one ridiculously easy to reach—for those who knew how to look. The instant I activated the account, it released a virus that jumped into the Highton’s system. Less than a minute had passed since I walked up to the mansion.

      
Bells clamored outside. I grabbed my Jumbler and ran out of the tower—into chaos. Lights blazed, alarms cried for attention, flood lamps swung wildly across the gardens. The virus was setting off every warning system on the estate. In all that madness, they would never find the one alarm they needed, the one that registered me.

      
I fired the Jumbler across the street. Over here the glare of flood lamps hid the sparkles the beam made as it annihilated air molecules, but across the road, a street lamp disappeared in an orange flash. I hit the tree by the fragrance fountain, too, and its branches crashed to the ground in a confusion of exploding wood and flying leaves. Shoving the Jumbler back into its holster, I ran toward the mansion. If this supposed Highton followed the usual Aristo pattern, he would be staying on the second story in the room hardest to reach from either the ground or air.

      
The most isolated window on the second floor had no entrance below it. I climbed up using a nervoplex trellis that vibrated under my weight, trying to throw me off. Had my reflexes been even a fraction slower, it would have succeeded. But I made it to the balcony and clambered over the railing, then stepped silently onto its polished floor. This bizarrely untutored Highton had left the curtains open on the doors that fronted the balcony. I could see him standing in the middle of his bedroom, gaping at the madly flashing console on his wall.

      
I annihilated the locks on the doors. Then I shoved them open and walked inside. “My greetings,” I said in Highton.

      
He spun around. “How did you get in here?”

      
I tilted my head at a wardrobe by the wall. “I’m going to hide behind that. In a moment your guards are going to burst in and tell you an intruder is on the estate. You say you saw me run into the park, and you want them to catch me.”

      
He watched me with astonishment. “I will say no such thing.”

      
“Yes, you will.” I closed the curtains on the balcony and backed up into the space between the wardrobe and wall, aiming my gun at his head. “Otherwise, I’ll annihilate you into oblivion.”

      
He didn’t argue. It was a good thing, because my Jumbler was empty. I couldn’t annihilate a speck of dust. Even with only wimpons for fuel, a gun could only hold so much antimatter.

      
A knock sounded outside.

      
The Highton turned with a startled jerk. “Come.”

      
From my hiding place I could see only the Aristo. I heard the door open.

      
“We apologize for disturbing you, sir,” a voice said.

      
The Aristo gave a perfect Highton scowl and waved his hand at the blaring console. “This is disturbing me far more. What is the problem? Who was that woman I saw outside? She looked like an Imperial Jagernaut.”

      
“She is,” the guard said. “The Primary from the bar. She damaged the foyer and ran out again.”

      
“Why?” The Aristo sounded genuinely curious.

      
A second voice spoke. “We don’t know, sir. We’ll question her as soon as we catch her.” His anticipation made my stomach lurch. I “recognized” the feel of his mind even though I had never met him. He was the guard with the two providers.

      
“I saw her run into the park across the street,” the Aristo said.

      
“We’ll search it thoroughly,” the first guard told him.

      
“Good. Now leave me to my privacy. And fix those alarms.”

      
“We haven’t been able to isolate the virus causing the trouble,” the other guard said. “We may have to turn off the security system and restart it.”

      
The Aristo raised his eyebrows. “With all the commotion, she could have climbed into this room without being detected.”

      
The first guard spoke in a reassuring voice. “The trellis would throw her off, sir. And she was only on the grounds for a moment. She didn’t have time to get close to you.”

      
The Aristo spoke dryly. “I’m glad you have such confidence. Now go find her.”

      
“Yes, sir.” The guards must have bowed, because their clothes crackled with that irritating noise Trader uniforms made when someone bent at the waist. The door whispered shut and the pound of boots receded through the house.

      
The Aristo came over to me. “What do you want?”

      
I edged out, keeping my empty gun trained on him, and went to his console. Then I turned down the audio. Alarms continued to blare in the rest of the mansion but at least it was quieter in here.

      
“Have a seat,” I said. “We’re going to talk.”

      
He stayed put. “I have nothing to say to you.”

      
“You didn’t feel that way in the bar.”

      
Unexpectedly, he smiled. “No, I didn’t.”

      
A law should have existed against an Aristo having such a beautiful smile. No, he couldn’t be an Aristo. Not with a smile like that. “I don’t believe you’re a Highton,” I said.

      
“Why?”

      
His surprise sounded genuine. If he was a fake, either he didn’t know it or else he was an astoundingly good actor. But I couldn’t be sure. At close range, I could pick up an Aristo’s emotions; their lack of empathy had no effect on how an empath perceived them. But I caught zilch from this one. Nothing. He was a blank wall.

      
I moved to the balcony doors and nudged open the curtains. A man was patrolling the garden below. “Your guards are good.”

      
“Apparently not good enough.”

      
“None of this makes sense.” I let the curtain close. “You have eleven guards, at least one with a biomech web in his body.” I thought of the man with the providers. It wasn’t easy even for an Aristo to acquire psions, let alone a guard. “Another one of them is in favor with a powerful Highton, one with far more rank than you could have at your age. And few people, especially at your age, want or need to undergo the invasive operation to implant a cyberlock in your brain. Since your guards hold its key instead of you, they must take their orders from someone else.”

      
He stared at me. “How did you know all of that?”

      
I didn’t. Most had been conjecture. But he had just verified it. “I’m good at what I do.”

      
“Yes. You are.”

      
Huh. No Aristo would concede that someone like me, who to them was no more than goods for sale, had competency at anything besides serving Aristos. They knew what we were capable of, but they never acknowledged it. Yes, this man had the mannerisms, the carriage, the accent of a Highton. But not the scorn. A true Aristo would have made no secret of his intent to punish my actions. I would have
felt
his contempt. But I felt nothing with this one. He looked annoyed and intrigued, but I felt none of it. Nothing. It was almost worse than the cavity.

      
Then it hit me. He had
blocks
in his mind. These weren’t the instinctive psychological walls anyone could raise, empath or not. Elaborate mental barriers protected this man. He had been trained to stop his brain from transmitting to other empaths. I knew the great investment of time and effort it took to learn those barricading techniques. It had been part of my Jagernaut training. It was different from the mental doors I closed to let other empaths know my feelings were private. These were fortified protections that could be broken only by the force of a stronger mind.

      
But only psions built such barriers.
Only
psions. Normal people had neither the need nor the ability to do it. In fact, even with biomech enhancements, most Jagernauts couldn’t erect barriers as strong as I detected in this man. He was blocking even me. That meant he had to be a potent telepath. But no Aristo could be a telepath. It just wasn’t in their precious gene pool.

      
“Why do you look at me this way?” the Aristo asked.

      
“What way?” I asked, stalling for time while I thought.

      
“As if I am a laboratory specimen.”

      
“I’m trying to figure out why a provider is traveling as a Highton.”

      
His anger sparked. “You come up here, throwing insults and waving guns, demeaning my bloodlines. Well, I am not impressed. Go ahead, shoot. This is what Jagernauts do, isn’t it? Kill without compunction.”

      
I didn’t need telepathy to see his anger was genuine. He believed he was a Highton. “We never kill without compunction. How could we? We’re empaths. We feel what our targets feel.”

      
“This thing you call empathy—it weakens the mind.” His voice quieted. “It is a frailty. Those with weak minds must work that much harder to overcome their failings.”

      
Where had all that come from? “Did your parents tell you that when they taught you to hide your telepathic abilities?”

      
He paled, and I was sure I had hit the truth. He was a telepath, which meant
neither
of his parents was Aristo. Someone had taken great pains to conceal that fact. Why? Yes, many Hightons had children with their providers, and they often elevated those offspring to high levels within their slave hierarchies. But to pass off such a child as a Highton—it would be a phenomenal “corruption” of their incessantly glorified bloodlines.