Primary Inversion (34 page)

      
“You live in a penthouse rich even for an Imperial Primary,” Jarith said. “You have a rank as prestigious as an admiral even though you’re not even thirty. And you know the Imperator.”

      
I got off the bed and walked to the window. Outside, Jacob’s Shire rolled out, golden in the setting sun.

      
“Soz?” Jarith asked.

      
“I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

      
Jarith took a breath. “Imperator Skolia—are you and he—have I presumed—?”

      
Flaming rockets. He thought Kurj was my
boyfriend.
I almost laughed. Instead I went back and sat next to him. “You haven’t presumed on anything. I’ve known him for many years, that’s all.”

      
“You’re older than you look, aren’t you?”

      
“I’ll be forty-eight in a few days.”

      
His mouth fell open. “You’re
kidding.
”

      
“No.” I squinted at him. “Does that matter to you?”

      
Jarith shifted his weight. “I don’t know. You’re older than my mother.”

      
Gods. The next thing I knew, the ISC ethics squad would come looking for me.
You’re under arrest, ma’am. For cradle theft.

      
But what he said hurt in another way. I had yet to have a child, and a woman younger than me had a son old enough to father his own children. Although my extended lifespan let me delay childbearing longer than most women, I couldn’t wait forever. But I hadn’t wanted to start a family while I was flying with the squad, not after what happened the first time.

      
Jarith watched my face. “Soz?”

      
I spoke quietly. “I’m not sure how to say this.”

      
He tensed. “Just say it.”

      
“Helda brought me a message from my family. I have to leave for Diesha tonight.”

      
“You’re going offworld?
Tonight?
”

      
“As soon as I pack.”

      
“Soz, no. Don’t go.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Was it what I said? I can handle the age difference.”

      
I took his hands. “It’s nothing you said.”

      
He started to add more, then stopped. I felt what he didn’t say. He wanted to go with me. Part of me wanted him to come. But it would mean asking him to start over on a strange world where he knew no one. I couldn’t press him to make that change unless I was willing to offer him more than what we had now. And I wasn’t. Too much remained unsettled in my life.

      
“You mean a lot to me,” I said.

      
“Don’t do that.”

      
“Do what?”

      
“Say things that sound like a preface to ‘I think you should start seeing other people.’”

      
“I think you should.”

      
Jarith swore under his breath. “Soz, stop it.”

      
“Do you really understand what I do for a living? Every time I go out, I could die. Do you want to live with that?”

      
“No. But I’m willing to try.”

      
I spoke softly. “I don’t know if I am.”

      
He exhaled. Then he drew me into his arms. “Will you come back to Forshires?”

      
I lay my head on his shoulder. “I hope so.”

      
We held each other for a long time. Finally Jarith lay down on the bed, pulling me with him. We made love in the clouds, floating together one last time.

Part Three

-

DIESHA

XIII

Fist Of The Web

Helda and I took a commercial flight to Diesha, traveling like civilians, doing nothing to attract attention. Although Kurj had made no stipulations about how I was to arrive, it was obvious he wanted a low-key approach. Why? What was he up to?

      
We landed far from any terminal at the starport. The passengers all gathered in the cubicle some generous person had dubbed the ship’s lounge, a chamber with three chairs and a table bolted to what served as the deck in a gravity field. Glancing out a porthole, I saw a flybus approaching from the distant terminal, speeding on its cushion of air like a black and silver bullet.

      
“Prepare to disembark,” the steward said over the com, his pleasant tone a marked contrast to the clipped computer voices on the military transports I usually took to Diesha.

      
We queued up at the airlock and the steward appeared, a young man in a blue uniform. When he opened the batch, fresh air flooded the ship, a relief after our days of canned air during the flight.

      
The flybus pulled alongside the ship. As it rose to the airlock, an officer came to stand in its open doorway, a woman in the dusky red uniform of the military police. She carried a laser carbine. Here on the planet dedicated solely to functions of Imperial Space Command, ISC controlled everything.

      
An accordion bridge unfolded from the flybus to our airlock. After the steward clamped it into place, he smiled at us. “Welcome to the Dieshan Air and Starport, Civilian Terminal. We hope you enjoy your stay here.”

      
The bored police officer didn’t look as if she cared whether we enjoyed or loathed our stay. She checked each of us as we entered the flybus, running her scanner over our bodies and luggage. When we finished boarding, the bus retracted its bridge, closed its door, sank down, and headed for the terminal. We all sat in nervoplex seats staring out the windows, the walls, the floor, anywhere but at each other.

      
A second flybus met us halfway to the terminal. While the two vehicles sat on the tarmac like giant bullets conferring with each other, we disembarked and boarded the second, going through the whole blasted security procedure again.

      
Helda grumbled as we waited in line to be scanned. “Never again,” she muttered. “Never again I come to Diesha as a civilian.”

      
The second bus took us to within ten meters of the terminal. We walked the rest of the way between poles that blinked and beeped at us. The path ended at a security arch framing a doorway. A burly man and a heavyset woman in ISC uniforms staffed the counter beyond.

      
As I walked through the arch, the man motioned for me to stop. “Baggage check.”

      
I slung my duffel onto the counter. The woman touched a panel on her console and holos formed above my bag, rotating to show the interior, every last detail, including my underwear and other privates.

      
“Open it,” the man said.

      
Gritting my teeth, I undid the flaps and the duffel fell open. As the man ruffled through my belongings, data scrolled across the woman’s console. “Valdoria, Sauscony,” she read. “Jacob’s Shire, Eos, Foreshires Hold.” She glanced at me. “Far from home, aren’t you?”

      
“Yes,” I said.

      
Someone nudged my shoulder, pressing me into the counter. I glanced back to see another passenger pushing by me as she entered the terminal. Although she was dressed as a civilian, the patches on her shoulders indicated her commission in the military. I recognized her from the ship, a woman who had been at the end of the line when we queued up here. Outside, other civilian passengers stood in line, squinting in the harsh sunlight as they waited.

      
I turned back in time to see the security officer take my wallet out of my duffel. He flipped it open and the mini-album activated, cycling through holos. One of Jarith came up, several of us both, then Helda and Jarith, and finally one of my mother. The man stopped the display, leaving a holo of my mother floating above the wallet screen so it looked as if she was standing on his palm.

      
“Who is this?” he asked.

      
None of your damn business.
“My mother.”

      
“You’re kidding.” He handed the wallet to the woman behind the counter, his arm creating ripples of light when it pierced the security field around her console. “Can you get an ID?”

      
She set my wallet on a flat screen. My mother floated there, smiling and golden. She blurred as a laser played over the holo.

      
“Correlation complete,” the computer said. “Name: Cya Liessa. Occupation: dancer, Parthonia Imperial Ballet. No address given.”

      
“Ballerina, huh?” The man smiled. “She’s pretty.”

      
Pretty?
That was all he had to say after they invaded my mother’s privacy as if we were just some page in a holozine they were reading?

      
The woman dropped my wallet into my duffel, then closed up the bag and handed it to me. “All right. Move along.”

      
Clenched the handle, I slung the duffel it over my shoulder as I stalked into the arrivals gate. People crowded the chrome and glass area, standing, talking, sitting in chairs, watching the holovid in the corner, boarding speedwalks.

      
Helda came up next to me. “Pah.”

      
“They give you a hard time, too?”

      
She scowled. “They are lucky we have orders to be as quiet as mumblemice.”

      
I smiled at the incongruous image of Helda as any kind of mouse. I wouldn’t want to be the cat that went after her. “How long until your connecting flight?”

      
She tilted her head, the familiar blank look flashing across her face as she accessed her node. “Twenty minutes.”

      
Twenty minutes. Then she was off again. “I wish you were staying.”

      
Helda laughed. “Heya, Soz, you getting sentimental?” She motioned at a speedwalk. “Come to my gate.”

      
I didn’t want to go with her. I had no idea why, other than an odd sense that if she left, I would never see her again. As we boarded the speedwalk, I spoke quietly. “You and Rex, and Taas at the end there—I was used to being with you day and night. Half the time we were one mind. Now that’s gone.” I struggled to express feelings that swirled like mist at the edges of vision. “Something is ending, Helda. I don’t know what.”

      
“Ending?” The wall behind her slid by as the speedwalk whisked us toward her departure gate. “You sound strange today.”

      
I made myself smile. “I guess so.”

      
We talked about lighter matters after that. She told me what she knew of Taas, who was flying with another squad and developing a reputation as a skilled pilot.

      
“When you see him again, wish him well for me,” I said.

      
“If you want.” She shrugged. “It is more likely you see him first, here at HQ.”

      
“I know. But do it for me anyway. Just in case.”

      
“In case what?”

      
I didn’t know the answer. So I forced a laugh. “You never know what diversions I’ll find.”

      
At Helda’s gate, passengers were queued up for another flybus. After Helda got through the security arch, she waved at me. I stood inside, behind the bulletproof, laserproof, shatterproof, fist-thick wall of tinted glass and waved back. Then she boarded the bus. Within moments it was just another bullet humming across the tarmac like all the other chromed bullets out there.

      
I returned to the speedwalk, and this time I strode along, adding my speed to its own so I whipping along. I had no idea I why I was in a hurry, I just wanted to get away from the starport, from this place of leave-takings and endings.

      
The Magrail platform outside perched on a casecrete tower as tall as the starport. Giant rails arched in the sky, came down to the platform, ran level with it, and then swept up again, over the port in a great curve of silver. The Magtrain hurtled toward the platform, a string of bullet cars, their blue, silver, and black chrome gleaming. As I joined a handful of other travelers, the train stopped and its doors slicked open like a camera shutter. Within moments, we were rushing up and out of the port.

      
Most of the civilians disembarked in the suburbs. At the perimeter of Headquarters City, we stopped at a platform secured by guards with laser carbines. Armor encased their bodies, making them eight feet tall, giants of black and silver metal, faceless, with opaque screens instead of eyes. By this time I was the only “civilian” on the train.

      
As the guards entered the car, we all stood. One giant strode over to me, boots ringing on the metal floor. He or she—I didn’t know which—spoke through a voice filter that made it sound like a machine. “Identification.”

      
I turned over my hand and tensed my arm, pushing my ID chip out of its sleeve into my palm. The socket on my wrist glinted, marking me as a telop or Jagernaut. I couldn’t read the officer’s reaction; the armor hid body language and expressions, and the filter took emotional nuances out of the voice. The guard just slid my card into a box at the waist. Although I had been through these checks before, the procedure felt strange today, as if I were being distilled into that small square.

      
Everyone in the car received clearance to enter Headquarters City. No surprise there. Only someone very naive or very foolish would try to enter the city without proper ID. I disembarked at a platform in the heart of downtown. As the train pulled away, a swarm of automated taxis swooped in, vying for the fare. I ignored them, instead choosing an airtube at the edge of the tower. It lowered me with air jets that slowed my descent. Getting blasted with air that way unsettled many people, and few trusted the tubes not to drop them, but I liked it, probably for the same reason I liked doing loops and rolls when I piloted an aircraft, something about the challenge or maybe just the boost of adrenalin.