I wondered if Eldrin wished he were dead now. Would he forget Taquinil and me? His absence left a vacuum. We had been married for fifty-seven years. On the day Eldrin and I wed, Coop hadn't even been born. Even now, at thirty-eight, Coop looked like a boy. Vazar could pass for thirty, though she was actually in her mid-sixties. The same had been true for Althor, who would have been almost seventy now.
I spoke tiredly. "We're too old." Taking a swallow of my drink, I gulped as its warmth exploded through me. "It doesn't matter how young we look. We've lost the edge of youth."
"Youth is a waste of time," Vazar muttered. "Overrated. When I was young, I was wild and confused."
I smiled. "Now you're wild and opinionated."
She slanted me a wry look. "You sound like my cousin."
By "cousin," I knew she meant General Naaj Majda, Matriarch of the House of Majda. Naaj had a great deal of power. Too much. "Jon Casestar tells me Naaj has taken over the duties of the Imperator." It meant she commanded ISC.
Vazar regarded me uneasily. "You going to throw her in the brig?"
"Now why would I do that?" I asked dryly.
Vazar just said, "Hereditary." We both knew the title of Imperator went only to the Ruby Dynasty.
"A hereditary position with no heirs," I said.
She spoke carefully. "Six of your sister's children are still alive."
"So they are." Vazar was well aware that none of them had the training to lead ISC. Most had never even left their rural home on the planet Lyshriol. Roca would be a better choice for Imperator. Although she was a diplomat rather than a military officer, she had extensive experience with the power structure of Skolia. But no one was going to inherit anything unless they had the freedom to assume that title. And Roca didn't right now.
I set my glass on the ground. "What is this business about Earth refusing to let Eldrinson and Roca go?"
Surprise flickered on her face. "Jon already briefed you?"
I hadn't needed a briefing. My models had predicted their captivity. I just wished I had been wrong. As provided for in the Iceland Treaty, we had sent them to Earth for safety during the war, not only Roca and Eldrinson, but also Kurj's widow, Ami, and her little boy Kurjson. The Allieds had also provided military forces to support ISC in safeguarding the planet Lyshriol, where Roca and Eldrinson had raised their family and where their surviving children still lived.
"I don't know the details," I said. "What happened?"
She picked up the bottle. "Naaj contacted the Allieds to arrange passage home for your family. Earth refused."
"They can't do that."
"No? Well, the vermin-infested fu—"
"Vaz." Noble birth or no, she could swear worse than the proverbial star-sailor when she got going.
"Sorry." Then she poured more whiskey. "The Allieds are keeping them in 'protective custody.' "
"With what justification?"
"They're afraid that if they release your family, you all will build a new psiberweb and restart the war." She drank her Blazer's, but she didn't down it all at once this time. "I believe their comment was, 'The Skolian Imperialate and Trader Empire will destroy human civilization just as they did five thousand years ago.' " She grunted. "Damn Allieds."
Unfortunately, they had a point. But they had missed one "slight" flaw in their argument. "If the Traders build a psiberweb and we can't, we'll all be fodder for their war machine. Including the Allieds."
"Actually, Earth's leaders made that charming comment about us destroying civilization before the Traders broadcast that holo with your husband in slave restraints."
I tried not to think of the holo, but my heart lurched. "And now? Earth can't ignore the danger."
"They hope to negotiate with the Traders."
I stared at her. "Aristos don't
negotiate
with non-Aristos. They think we're dirt."
Her face took on a pensive cast. "Xir looked exhausted on that broadcast. And did you hear all the mistakes he made? He even referred to Lady Roca as your brother. Maybe they're as worn out as we are with this damnable war."
"Maybe." I held little hope for negotiations, but anything was worth a try. "If Earth won't let my family go, Naaj might take it as a hostile act." I could imagine how the hard-line, aristocratic general had taken their refusal. "It could start a war with the Allieds."
Vazar spoke flatly. "Another war will destroy us."
I crossed my arms and rubbed my palms up and down my bare arms. But nothing could warm my chill apprehension. Our future might depend on those four children on Earth. I could reveal my suspicion that they had a link to the Ruby and Qox Dynasties. As farfetched as it sounded, I could probably produce enough evidence to spur an investigation, not only using the lists of their potential parents, but also to ask why ISC's own computer system had covertly blocked my search. It would be interesting to hear ISC's take on that. I wasn't sure I wanted to play that hand, though, at least not yet.
I could just say my models kept converging on the children. ISC also ran models to predict the future, but theirs rarely agreed with mine. They hadn't been able to duplicate my thought processes even before I had neural enhancements. A general had once referred to my brain as an "invaluable interstellar resource." It made me feel strange, as if I were a stockpile rather than a person.
But I hesitated to mention the children. They might have no link to this— or they could be triggers that sent the precarious balance of interstellar power spiraling out of control. As long as a good chance existed that someone else could reach them first, I couldn't risk drawing attention to their existence. Gods only knew what could happen if the wrong people found them. The Traders had reached Jaibriol II first— and it had started the Radiance War, nearly destroying two empires.
Pain stabbed my temples. Wincing, I massaged my head. My mind had jumped into an accelerated mode. Normal brain cells worked much slower than computers. Our minds plodded while our machines whizzed. The nodes we put in our brains worked faster than unaided thought; in a sense, the human mind became a user on the implanted system. It could be unsettling, and difficult to learn, which was one reason not everyone chose to enhance their brains.
I had dealt with the problem in a unique manner, judged from the shock of the neurosurgeons who monitored my brain. I wasn't sure why they became so excited. All I did was have nanomeds in my body redesign my brain so my neurons became part of the implanted system. It accelerated my neural impulses. I thought faster. I didn't use that mode often, though; fiddling with my own brain chemistry gave me a headache. I had discovered the hard way that if I ignored the warning signs, I went into a coma.
According to my chronometer, only three seconds had passed since Vazar made her last comment. I considered her. "Do you know anything about Admiral Rockworth?"
She blinked at me. "What?"
"Seth Rockworth."
"When did we start talking about your ex?"
"I just wondered if you knew anything."
She took on the distant look she got when she accessed her mental files. "He's still on Earth, enjoying his retirement."
"Has he had any contact with the Ruby Dynasty recently?"
"None that I know of." Her focus returned to me. "Why the blazes do you care? He made his position clear when he walked out on you."
"Seth has been around Allied politics longer than anyone else alive. He might have ideas about how we could handle this situation without it blowing up." I could always send a proposal to Earth suggesting Seth and I negotiate. But that might still draw attention to the children.
Don't reveal them.
That thought jumped out of the models evolving in my mind. The equations suddenly morphed into pictures, beautiful quantum orbitals. They spun lazily, globes circled by diffuse rings, pale blue, soft gold, the blush of a newly opened rose, the lavender of a desert sky at dawn, all as graceful as delicate ornaments bobbing in a breeze. Math functions. Spherical harmonics.
"Orbitals?" I said. "What the hell?"
Vazar quirked an eyebrow at me. "Orbitals? That makes perfect sense."
"No it doesn't." Why would thinking about Seth make me see mathematical functions? My mind drifted with the images. Spherical harmonics…
"—medical team now!" The man's voice cut the air in staccato bursts.
"What good will that do?" Vazar demanded. "She's not sick, she's translucent."
I squinted, trying to clear my blurred vision. Medics in gray jumpsuits surrounded the divan, all smelling of the antiseptic nanomeds doctors used to keep their offices sterile. Two were bending over me and several others were working on palmtops, monitoring me apparently, judged from the holos of my body that rotated above their units. They flicked their fingers through the holos, working with sharp, fast motions. One fellow's hand
was
the palmtop; his entire arm was cybernetic. Lights glinted in a circle around his wrist.
Vazar was no longer sitting next to me. She now stood a few steps away, glaring at a man in a green jumpsuit. His uniform identified him as a member of the medical corps in the Pharaoh's Army.
"What are you doing?"
I asked the cluster of agitated medics. My words came out like leaves blowing over a distant plain. It didn't even sound as if I were in the room.
A tall man sat on the edge of the divan, leaving enough space so that he was in no danger of touching my body. "Pharaoh Dyhianna? Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
My voice drifted, star dust on an interstellar wind…
"Hey." Vazar stepped closer, nudging aside a medic. "Dehya? Are you solid again?"
Her vigorous presence pulled me back into reality, but it was like trying to find purchase on an oiled surface. Without my tenuous connection to her, I might completely disperse into psiberspace.
"Vaz… I'm going…,"
I whispered.
"Dehya!" She tried to grab my shoulders.
Her hands went through me.
"Don't touch her!" The medic's warning echoed in my ears. The scene smeared as if it were a reflection in a sheen of oil. Vazar's hands swirled, blending with my shoulder.
Dismayed, I tried to inhale. Air sifted through my body. I was a ghost, diaphanous, evaporating. If I became solid, Vazar's hands would be
inside
my body.
"Gods," someone whispered.
The blood drained from Vazar's face. My mind spread throughout the room; I felt her thoughts, knew the blood thundering in her veins, saw what she saw. My body had become almost transparent.
With infinite care, she withdrew her hands from my shoulders. My body rippled like the rings that spread on a lake after a leaf dropped onto its still surface—
Suddenly I snapped back. The room solidified with jarring speed. I slumped on the divan, gulping in air. "Ah…"
"Saints al-frigging-mighty." Vazar stared at me. "Dehya, are you all right?"
"I'm… fine." I felt as if I had been wrung through a starship drive nozzle.
"Pharaoh Dyhianna?" The medic at my side spoke. "We've never dealt with anything like this. Can you tell us what you're doing?"
Good question. "I'm not sure. I don't think medicine can help, though." I looked up at Vazar. "Your hands disrupted whatever was happening to me."
She paled. "I'm a jackabat on jigs."
I couldn't help but laugh. "What does that mean?"
"I can't say. You told me to clean up my language."
"Vaz, when you grabbed me, it pulled me back."
"It did?" She looked nonplussed.
Some of the medics made entries on palmtops, while others monitored my condition. The one with the cyber-arm was running a calculation that produced holos of my body rippling in the air. The sight made me queasy.
