"It's about angular momentum wavefunction expansions," I told them.
"Oh. Well. In that case." Now Vazar sounded more like her usual self. "What the holy hack does 'angular momentum wavefunction expansions' mean?"
Farther back in the room, the medic in the green jumpsuit spoke in a low voice to a man who was studying his palmtop. "Is she going to live?"
The other man glanced up uneasily. "According to this, she was never dying. She just started to— thin out. Like ink diluting in water."
An odd comparison, but apt. "I was going into another reality," I said.
They looked around with a start. It seemed odd they wouldn't know I had augmented hearing. Any doctor assigned to my case should have seen my records. Then again, my hearing seemed even more heightened now than usual.
They came closer, joining the medics. The officer in green had a bar on his chest that gave his name as
Bayliron.
"I'm not sure what you mean," he said.
"Spherical harmonics." I rubbed my eyes. "Before Opalite, I was in a Hilbert space spanned by an infinite set of orthonormal angular momentum wavefunctions that used thought as coordinates rather than spatial rotations."
Bayliron rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah… spatial rotations."
I could tell he didn't know if I was serious or cracked. Security had cleared my medical team to know what happened, so I tried again. "When the Traders came after us, my husband pushed my son and me into the First Lock. The Lock is— basically it's a pole associated with different Riemann sheets. A branch cut joins the sheets. When Taquinil and I slid through the cut, it took us from this universe into psiberspace. I've only come out part way."
He still had that look. "Uh— part way?"
I searched for better words. "Not all the terms in my partial wave expansion have transformed. They're higher order, so they only contribute to fine details, which is why I look solid. But they're still part of my overall state. Right now, if I don't concentrate, I start to slip back into the Kyle universe. I need a psiberweb to stabilize my transformation so it can finish properly."
I stopped then, mainly because they were all staring as if I had said, "Floobergab miggledy bleck."
"Is it safe for us to examine you?" Bayliron asked.
The thought of being examined made me feel trapped. The concern of all these worried people gathered in one place thickened the air like invisible smoke, gritty against my skin. I needed air. "I will come to sick bay tomorrow."
He didn't look pleased. "Pharaoh Dyhianna—"
"Tomorrow," I said softly. Like most cruisers, this one kept a thirty hour "day."
He started to protest, but when I shook my head, he stopped. After bowing from the waist, he said, "May you have a pleasant evening, Your Highness." Then he motioned to his people, and they all took their leave.
When we were alone, Vazar shook her head. "You should have let them stay. Admiral Casestar will give them grief."
I sank back into the sofa. The feel of the cushions scratching my skin came as a relief. I was solid. I could feel. "No doctor can cure what's wrong with me."
She sat next on the divan, making the cushions sink. "If you were in Kyle space, why didn't you die when it imploded?"
I wished I knew. Orbitals. They shimmered in my mind. What made me think of them? It had to be important, if it had almost pulled me out of this reality. We had been talking about the Lock. Seth Rockworth. The Allieds. My sister Roca. Her husband Eldrinson.
Orbitals.
I suddenly sat up straight. "Delos."
She blinked. "You survived the implosion of another universe because of a little island on Earth?"
I smiled. "No. We have to go there."
"We can't go to Earth. They'll put you in 'protective custody' too."
"Not that Delos. The planet named after it." Earth had declared Delos a neutral world. Sanctuary. They hoped that Skolians, Traders, and Allieds could meet there in harmony and build bridges among their peoples. It was an inspiring dream, but naïve.
She leaned back, her body turned toward me, one arm on the top of the sofa. "Why Delos? I would have thought you would want to go to a Lock."
"The Locks aren't secure." I rubbed my arms for warmth. "If I hook in to one, the Traders might attack me through the one they stole."
"What if you had access to a Triad Command Chair?"
That gave me pause. Normally a Triad member could only use such a chair to operate a psiberweb that already existed. But my mind had been developing for more than a century and a half. I knew Kyle space like no one else. Hell, I had
been
Kyle space. I might be able to do more with the Triad Chair. If we could find one. A few ISC bases had them, and also several battle cruisers, though none of those I had access to now.
"It might help," I said thoughtfully. "But we have to go to Delos first."
She frowned. "How will going to Delos stop you from fading out?"
"It won't."
"Then why go?"
"I don't know," I admitted.
"If you convince Jon Casestar to do this, he will take our entire complement of ships. We also expect to rendezvous with an ISC Fleet Talon from Onyx. It will swell our ranks to several thousand. Moving that many warships to Delos will probably give their authorities collective heart failure." She tapped her long index finger on the top of the sofa. "We had better have a damn good reason."
"I've no desire to give the Allieds collective heart failure." That wasn't completely true, given that they were holding my family hostage. "But we still have to go."
Vazar frowned, somehow making it look regal. She had always been a contradictory mix of aristocrat and hard-living warrior. "Before we take such a large fleet to an Allied world, we will have to notify Naaj."
The last person I wanted to notify was the Majda Matriarch, who had taken the title of Imperator that rightfully belonged in my family. Even worse, she might have enough support within ISC to keep the title. I wondered where Vazar came down on that issue. Majda by blood and Ruby Dynasty by marriage, she could throw her support either way.
I spoke carefully. "We have no web communications. The only way we could inform Naaj would be to send a starship to ISC headquarters. It could take days or even weeks for them to send back an answer."
Vazar considered me. "Jon can make the decision on his own. But for something this big he'll need to justify it. You must have some idea why you think it's important."
"Orbitals."
She made an exasperated noise. "I don't know a kiss in a quasar about your orbitals."
"Yes, you do. You studied quantum theory in school."
"Believe me, Dehya, it's not the way you do it."
"In Kyle space, Taquinil and I became spherical harmonics. How does that connect to Delos?" I spread my hands out, palms up. "He and I are incomplete now. Delos has an answer. I can't define it more clearly even for myself. But we must go there. As fast as possible."
"How can you be sure if you don't understand why you want to go?"
"Calculations."
"What calculations?"
I waved my hand absently. "In my head."
She sighed. "Has anyone ever told you how strange you sound sometimes?"
My mouth quirked up. "You do, periodically."
"The hell of it is, you're usually right."
"I could use your support with Jon."
She lifted her hands in surrender. "All right. I'll talk to him."
13
Primary Inversions
Delos Space Command was not happy.
"We welcome vessels of all worlds." Colonel Yamada's voice crackled over the comm. "However, Admiral Casestar, you have more than a 'few' ships in orbit around Delos."
"Two thousand four hundred and sixty-three," Jon said. He was sitting in a control chair at the end of a robot arm in the center of the bridge. About half a kilometer across, the hemi-spherical bridge capped the cylinder that formed the main body of the cruiser. Layers of armaments and defensive shields protected it. Consoles studded the inner surface and crew members worked everywhere, some upside down far "above" us, some sideways to the left and right, and others right-side up "beneath" us.
I floated by his chair, holding a cable that stretched to its back. Here in the center of the bridge, we had no gravity even when the hemisphere rotated. Only Jon was visible to Yamada; I remained completely out of sight and sound.
Colonel Yamada was speaking. "What is your intent?"
"Most of my ships are survivors from the war," Jon explained. "I was hoping to give my people a rest, but I realize we can't send down millions at once. Would it be possible to arrange for them to visit in shifts?"
"You're requesting
shore
leave?" Yamada made no attempt to hide his incredulity.
"That is correct," Jon said. He even kept a straight face.
I listened while they hammered out details. Delos was a crux of some kind and I needed time to figure out why. Yamada obviously didn't believe we had brought an entire fleet here for a vacation. He didn't press the point; we outnumbered and outgunned his defenses fifty times over. I suspected he thought we intended to occupy Delos. Given the situation with Earth, such a move made sense, a way to pressure them into releasing their Ruby Dynasty prisoners. Delos wasn't a major world, but it had a symbolic value that could work for our purposes.
I doubted, though, that the Allieds would release their hostages for Delos. With access to a Lock, any of their Rhon prisoners could recreate the psiberweb. So could I. Fortunately, the Allieds didn't know I had survived, which was why I was staying hidden from Yamada. Three empires thought my sister Roca was Pharaoh Presumptive. For that matter, she was also Imperator Presumptive.
In ancient times, the House of Majda had provided our military leaders. They still produced many of our best generals and admirals. Although my father had been titular head of ISC, Naaj Majda's grandmother had been the acting commander. Kurj had wrested the job from Majda, year by year, until he became Imperator in all but name. Then he took the title too— at the bitter price of our father's death. Now we had no Ruby Dynasty Imperator, not my father, Kurj, Soz, Althor, or Kelric.
I kept thinking of my "conversation" with Kelric in Kyle space. What had it meant? He was dead. Maybe I had picked up a sense of him that survived in the mind of his father; Eldrinson and I had a strong link through the Triad. But Eldrinson was also the father of Soz and Althor. If I felt his thoughts about Kelric, I should have felt those about Althor and Soz even more, since we had lost them much more recently. Yet if anything, I had been aware of their
absence.
Maybe Kelric was alive. Hell, maybe he was a ghost. That made about as much sense. It was hard to see how he could have survived the Trader attack that destroyed his ship eighteen years ago— the debris had been spread all over space— but it wasn't completely impossible that he had lived.
I wanted to search psiberspace again, but I couldn't risk it, not without supporting technology to pull me out if I lost control. A few of the ISC's largest cruisers carried Triad Chairs, those immense command stations a Rhon psion could use to work in Kyle space. But this ship,
Havyrl's Valor,
wasn't one of them.
I opened my eyes and found Jon Casestar watching me. He had apparently finished his negotiations with Colonel Yamada.
Curiosity flickered across his face. "You looked like you were asleep."
"I was thinking."
Now he looked even more intrigued. "Did you come to any conclusions?"
"Kelric Valdoria."
It took him a moment respond. I suspected he was accessing a memory file. Then he said, "Do you mean the Ruby Prince? The one who married Naaj Majda's older sister?"
"Yes." Good gods, of course. That added yet another twist to this convoluted mess. Thirty-five years ago, Kelric had wed Corey Majda, the previous Majda Matriarch, in an arranged marriage. The Traders assassinated her two years later. Naaj, her younger sister, had inherited the bulk of her assets and taken over as head of Majda. Kelric had received a sizable widower's stipend, the Majda palace on Raylicon, and several lucrative enterprises Corey had given him. Now Naaj had
everything,
not only her House and Kelric's assets, but the title of Imperator as well. She stood to lose a great deal if he suddenly showed up from the dead.
"Naaj Majda would be a formidable foe," I said.
Jon blinked. "For whom?"
"Kelric."
"Kelricson Valdoria has been dead for twenty years."
