Primary Inversion (32 page)

      
My mother whirled around. “Stop it!”

      
I couldn’t stop. I wanted to more than anything else, but my life might someday depend on knowing the truth. “Why has he set Althor and me against each other? Because he thinks we’ll be too busy fighting each other to turn on him? Does he fear one of us will try to assume his title by committing fratricide?” I forced out the words. “Like Kurj committed patricide?”

      
My mother came over—and slapped me across the face. Her body was shaking as she sank into her chair. I put my palm against my stinging cheek, hating myself for what I needed to know.

      
“You will
never
say those words again,” she told me. “Neither your accusations nor your filthy insinuations. Kurj’s
father
was an ISC scout, a good and decent man who died in the line of duty.”

      
I swallowed. “Mother—I’ve seen the files.”

      
She looked like an injured shyback deer. “What?”

      
“The records. The same ones Kurj found the day he killed the man who fathered him.” Gods, I hated this. Kurj was right; we learned to survive—not only against the Traders, but against each other as well. The same talents of mine that Kurj had so often utilized when he had me spy against the Traders worked just as well against him. “Kurj’s legal father couldn’t have sired him. The man wasn’t a Rhon psion.”

      
She looked away from me. “My first husband carried at least one copy of every Rhon gene. The doctors selected the proper ones from him. Then we made a baby.”

      
How many times had I heard that “official” explanation of why Kurj was Rhon even though his father wasn’t. The Imperialate needed Rhon heirs, and we were their breeding stock. Dangerous recessives in our DNA made inbreeding risky, but clipping out those recessives deleted what made us Rhon. After a long search, a man was found who carried variants of our genes. His were different enough to decrease the probability that recessives would kill or deform the children he had with a woman of the royal family. He didn’t have two of every gene, so he wasn’t Rhon, but he had at least one of each. With medical help, he could sire a Rhon child. My grandparents arranged a marriage between him and my mother. Never mind the almost zero probability of finding such a man. Kurj was considered living proof that he had existed.

      
I met my mother’s gaze. “Those records—they include the analysis of your first husband’s DNA. He carried almost none of the Rhon genes. You know that. You know Kurj can’t be his son.”

      
A tear ran down her face. ““What difference does it make? It’s done. Over with.”

      
I wanted to hide, to pretend it had been a mistake, that I was wrong. The last time I had seen her cry had been at the memorial service for my brother Kelric. But denying the truth wouldn’t erase it. Kurj trusted neither Althor nor me, and I needed to understand why, for someday our own lives could depend on that knowledge.

      
I spoke softly. “Please. I need to know.”

      
My mother wiped her face with her hands, then set her hands on her knees. She sat staring at the floor in front of her chair, her eyes clouded.

      
Finally she looked at me. And she spoke. “When my father was Imperator, he chose Kurj as his heir. Kurj coveted that power, more and more as the years passed. But he never tried to depose my father. He valued family over even power. Values he learned from my first husband, someone he deeply loved. My husband was a good father. My parents chose better for me than I did for myself.” She took an uneven breath. “I wasn’t like you when I was young, so strong and sure. I made stupid mistakes. Several years after my husband died, I remarried. But I…there was violence. I didn’t know before I married him, or didn’t let myself see, what he was like. When I found out, I was ashamed.”

      
I had never heard my mother speak this way. “So you left him?”

      
“Imperial heirs don’t divorce.”

      
I thought of my first marriage. “Tell that to Jato.”

      
Her voice softened. “I was a fool for feeling that way, I know that now. But at the time I thought I had no choices.” She swallowed. “Kurj was so young then, so vulnerable. He saw everything, and he felt helpless to stop it.”

      
Kurj, vulnerable and helpless? “It’s hard to imagine.”

      
“He was just a boy.” She paused. “At first my husband never hit him. But when Kurj reached puberty, it changed. He was growing so fast, already as tall as me. My husband thought—I don’t know. Yes, I do. He saw Kurj as—as—”

      
“A competitor?”

      
She watched me with her large eyes, like a dove startled from her hiding place. “Yes.” Her voice hardened. “That man beat my child. So I left him.”

      
“What happened to your husband?”

      
“He went to prison.”

      
“And Kurj?”

      
“After that he hated anyone he thought might hurt me. What I didn’t understand was why he hated
himself.
Back then I didn’t realize how my presence…affected him.” She rubbed her arms as if she were cold. “Sometimes I think his only stability came from his memories of my first husband. For a quarter of a century—while Kurj gathered his power as an Imperial Heir—he held onto his memories of his father as if they were a lifejacket.”

      
I was beginning to see. “Then he found those files with the identity of his true father.”

      
She nodded, her face pale. “He was enraged. It didn’t matter that the Assembly did it in secret, without telling us, by switching my mother’s and my eggs, because they were desperate for Rhon psions, and it seemed none of us could have more children. It didn’t matter that none of us knew what they had done until long after. He felt betrayed by everyone he loved.” Her voice shook. “In his view of the universe, the man who had what he wanted—the title of Imperator—had also taken what he loved more than anything in the world. Someone forbidden. To both of them.”

      
Her hands trembled as she pushed a curl out of her eyes. “Did he say to himself, ‘I will kill this man?’ I don’t believe that. But he knew the risks…and he still forced himself into the link.” She took a breath. “I found him kneeling by Father’s body. He—he was crying.” Her voice broke. “When Kurj was a baby, I held him, loved him. Ai, Sauscony, he was my firstborn, my shining light. But he changed. Bit by bit, year by year, decade by decade.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Until I lost him.”

      
I spoke softly. “I’m sorry. For all of it.”

      
A tear traced its path down her cheek. “So am I.”

XII

A Time To Plant

“Do you want to be Imperator?” Tager asked.

      
That was dangerous ground. I studied the figurines on his shelf, picking one up, turning the glass statue over in my hand, and placing it back on the shelf. He had a collection of country pieces, each formed in minute detail and color, down to the eyelashes and fingernails. The tiller was bent over, holding a hand plow in his gnarled grip. The planter wore a layered dress that feathered down around her calves. She held up the front, making a bowl with her skirt to carry seeds. The harvester walked along a row of rye-cobs, tall stalks of grain that bent under the weight of their ripe cobs. She held one cob in her hand and carried a bag bulging with more.

      
“Where did you get these?” I asked.

      
“A community of Cammish farmers live south of Jacob’s Shire,” Tager said. “They help support themselves by making the statues.”

      
I turned to him. He was across the room, half sitting on his desk. “They’re beautiful pieces.”

      
He had that look again, as if he were trying to decipher my nonsequiturs. “Yes. They are.”

      
I walked around the office, looking at his other knick-knacks. “You can till and plant and harvest. Live by the land and seasons, become part of life’s cycle.” I stopped and regarded him. “Or you can skip all that and put in a food processing plant.” Like Kurj processed. People. Cities. Planets. All were unfinished material he fitted to his needs. I motioned at the Cammish figurines. “Growing food from the land is inefficient.”

      
Tager smiled. “It tastes better.”

      
“Maybe taste is a luxury we can’t afford.”

      
“Why?”

      
“We don’t need it. Food is nourishment, not entertainment.”

      
“We evolved our sense of taste for a reason,” Tager said. “Just like we learned to live off the land for a reason. That we have other options now doesn’t negate the desire some people to live in the old ways.” He watched me. “Maybe it’s more than tilling and planting and harvesting. Maybe it satisfies a deeper part of what makes us human.”

      
“Then again,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a big waste of time.”

      
“Is that what you think?”

      
I went back to pacing. “I think Skolia needs both. The tillers and the processors.”

      
“Which are you?”

      
I halted again. “Both. I hope.”

      
He spoke quietly. “That answers ‘how.’ But not ‘Do you want to?’”

      
Did I want to be Imperator? I knew the answer—but I wasn’t  ready to meet it. My mind danced around the idea, coming close, moving away, unwilling to commit.

      
Tager waited. When I just stood there, he tried another tack. “What about your brother Althor?”

      
I crossed my arms. “What about him?”

      
“What if Imperator Skolia never makes the choice? What if he dies leaving the question of his heir unsettled?” Tager spoke as if he were walking on a layer of eggshells. “Or what if he waits to let the answer sort itself out?”

      
“Althor is my brother.” My
brother,
whom I had loved when I was a child,
still
loved despite everything Kurj had done to drive us apart.

      
“So is the Imperator,” Tager said.

      
“I know.” I had yet to sort out how I felt about that.

      
Tager sat quietly, patient, not pushing. After a moment I said, “Althor is my parent’s second child. Number two out of ten. He left home at eighteen to attend the Dieshan Military Academy.”

      
“So he’s also a Jagernaut.”

      
“That’s right. I was fourteen when he left. I didn’t see him again until he came home to visit.” My face relaxed. “He seemed happy to see Lyshriol.”

      
“Lyshriol?”

      
“My father’s home world. We all grew up there.”

      
He looked puzzled. “I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

      
No reason existed he should have, at least by that name. “We keep it private. It’s one of the ancient colonies. It had been isolated for over four thousand years. By the time the Imperialate found it again, the colony had backslid so far they no longer remembered their origins. The only mesh nodes on practically the entire planet are the ones my mother had installed in the house and starport.”

      
“House?”

      
“Where we lived.”

      
Tager smiled. “Do you mean palace?”

      
“No. House.” I smiled slightly. “My mother changed things as little as possible.”

      
His curiosity lapped around me in waves. “Why?”

      
“Why meddle with it? It’s idyllic.”

      
“Do you miss it?”

      
That was too a complicated for an easy answer. “Sometimes. But I was so out of place. I always wanted to be a Jagernaut. When I was ten, I could take apart a Jumbler and tell you how it worked. By the time I was twelve, I could derive the equations for inversion. This on a world where armies fought with swords and bows.” My brother had essentially ended warfare there when, at the age of sixteen, he had ridden into battle with a laser carbine. “I think Althor struggled with it, too.”

      
“Tell me about him,” Tager said.

      
My memories unfolded like a scrap of parchment found in an old style book bound in leather. I saw Althor in his Jagernaut uniform, a Jumbler on his hip, kneeling on one leg before my father with his head bowed in respect, the traditional greeting that a son on Lyshriol gave his sire when he returned from war. Our father stood there, so proud he looked ready to shout it to the village—and so confused, struggling to understand this son who came home in a starship.

      
“I was seventeen when he came back,” I said. “I thought he was incredible. I wanted to be just like him. Then one day, somehow, somewhere, I passed him. I was a Primary, he a Secondary.” Now Kurj watched to see what we would do, Althor and I circling each, so much left silent, unspoken.

      
“Do you and Althor talk about it?” Tager asked.

      
“We don’t have a lot to say to each other.” Too much distrust existed for us to share the closeness we had known as children. But the love remained. Althor and I would never plot against each other until only one survived. If Kurj was waiting for us to make his decision for him, he would wait forever. In the end, my mother was the one who suffered, forced to watch the ugly game of power and death played by the children she loved so dearly.