The Radiance War.
Skolia had gone to war with the Traders. We destroyed their capital. They killed or captured our leaders. We broke their fleet. They crushed our largest military complex. We hurled our desperate armies against each other until the star-spanning battles exploded in a furious climax. It was a war unmatched in human history.
I had no idea who had won.
My neck prickled. Up until now, I hadn't believed Kyle space could actually have imploded. I had assumed my impression of such a catastrophe was an artifact of my strange condition. Now a growing disquiet ate away at that conviction. What if the implosion had been real? It couldn't stay that way; as long as human thought existed, Kyle space would recreate itself. But it would reform as a new universe with no trace of the psiberweb.
The magnitude of it stunned me. The networks that linked into psiberspace also linked to uncounted optical, electronic, biological, quantum, and neural networks. If Kyle space imploded, that would pull down many of the nets linked into it, which would disrupt networks linked to those, which would disrupt others, and so on, the failure spreading like a tidal wave. The nets used by humanity were interwoven, all of them, for all of us, regardless of where our allegiances lay. It could end up in one huge, star-spanning collapse, a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions.
It could never happen.
Fine. Why couldn't I detect a hint of the web?
Then it hit me. The Traders could have precipitated an implosion if they had tried to follow Taquinil and me into Kyle Space when we escaped. That could have collapsed the singularity. But if psiberspace had collapsed and I hadn't vanished, I must have recreated a bubble of it, a tiny universe in the birth throes of its metaphysical big bang. Which was impossible. Supposedly. Yet I existed.
As my burst of energy faded, I became aware of my nausea, thirst, and exhaustion. I slowed to a walk, and my hair stopped flying around, hanging instead to my knees. One hundred fifty-eight years is a long time to let the protein on your head grow, even if you remember to cut it every few decades. Many cultures had tales about a person who wore his or her hair as clothes. Well, it didn't work. Mine wouldn't cover the front of my body even when I held it in place. It shifted all the time and kept uncovering my backside as well. It was better than nothing, though.
I heard the city before I saw it. It rumbled like a heartbeat. The green-black forest ended abruptly, and I walked out onto another promontory, a giant step in the land. Slowcoal dominated the sky, making the night almost as bright as day. Its red light bathed the scene.
I went to the edge of the cliff. No lake rolled at its bottom. A city nestled down there, penned on one side by this cliff and on the other three by forest. Rounded and natural, the buildings resembled the blue, green, and aqua beetle-tanks. Paths wound among them. I saw no machines, but I suspected the city dwellers had plenty of technology. It probably wasn't possible to make a permanent home here without the benefit of modern advances.
I felt rather than heard Hajune emerge from the forest, an eerie repetition of how I had first met him. This time, however, he emanated no hostility.
His footsteps rustled behind me. "I thought you would come here."
I turned, pulling my hair across my body. He stood several paces away, his pack slung over one shoulder and an axe lashed on his back.
"I won't go back with you," I said.
His forehead furrowed. "Understand you, I do not."
"Go back with you, I will not."
"I know."
"Then why you come?"
"It isn't safe for you to roam." He gaze traveled down my body and he reddened, then looked back at my face. "Especially like that. Manq take."
I grimaced. "I met them."
He stared at me. "They
caught
you?"
"No. I ran away."
"Smart. Smarter still for you to have a guard."
"You offer protection?" I couldn't hold back my incredulity.
"Yes."
"Why?" I scowled. "You wanted to kill me before."
"I thought you were Manq."
"Not Manq."
"I know."
"How know you?"
"Talk. Listen. Watch."
"Why leave me tied, then?"
"I did not want you to run away."
"Why?"
"Beautiful you are." Softly he added, "Lonely I am."
His undisguised pain caught me off guard. I was used to the Assembly and Imperial court, which were both saturated in the protective discourse of politics. An admission of vulnerability would bring in the predators faster than an eye blink— and given the power we dealt with, that could ruin a life. Pah. No wonder I spent so much time in the web, hidden from all but my family. My people didn't have the brutality of the Traders, but we weren't angels either.
I spoke more gently. "Married, I am."
"No husband here."
"Told you. Manq take."
He exhaled. "Then he is dead."
I shook my head. "He is more valuable alive."
"Why?"
Good question. He was my consort, but it was more that that.
Rhon.
Eldrin and I were Rhon psions. Empaths. Telepaths. Our family had been bred for the traits. Rhon had a specific meaning: we were the strongest psions human DNA could produce. And the rarest. Rhon also meant we were members of the Ruby Dynasty. Eldrin and I were part of the same extended family. Anger shot through me, but I didn't know yet what caused it.
How much did Hajune understand the Manq? Trader Aristos were anti-empaths, the result of an attempt to make humans resistant to pain. But the project hadn't worked; instead it produced mutated empaths. When an Aristo picked up another person's pain, the Aristo's brain sent the signals to its pleasure centers. The more another person hurt, the more the Aristo experienced pleasure.
My heart lurched. Psions projected their emotional responses more than normal humans, making us highly sought by Aristos. Eldrin was their ultimate prize: both a priceless political prisoner and an empath as powerful as the human mind could produce.
I stared numbly at Hajune. To his question I said, simply, "Psion."
His face revealed his dismay. "The Manq will hurt him."
I felt ill. "Yes."
"My wife was also an empath."
Softly I said, "My sorrow."
His grief rippled. "Mine also."
I sorted through my Shay libraries for the appropriate phrase. "I offer grace to her time and space of burial."
When he stiffened, I feared I had misspoken. But then he said, "We had no burial. The Manq took her body."
I shuddered, wondering why they wanted her body. She could no longer project the emotions they craved. "Are you sure?"
The pain on his face made me wish I hadn't asked. "I saw her die. I saw them take her."
It was beyond my ability to understand how they could inflict such cruelty. "I am so very sorry, Hajune. This is too much hurt."
His jaw worked. "Yes."
"How long since it happened?"
"Two ****"
I tried to decipher the word. "Decadar?"
"Ten risings of sun."
Twenty Opalite days had passed since the murder. Eighty hours. Saints almighty, it had just happened. He must be raw with shock. No wonder he had attacked me when I came through his territory, my hair lustrous with hanging flyers, resembling Aristo hair.
"Go you to the authorities?" I asked. "Report what happen?"
His shoulders hunched. "No authorities on Opalite. Only city Shay."
"Go you to city?"
"I am Hajune. Other Shay. Not city."
I had only a few files on the Shay, but my scant library suggested they formed insular societies. Apparently a demarcation existed here between forest and city dwellers. But we had to warn the city Shay about the Razers. And Hajune needed help to deal with his grief. His heartache filled his thoughts.
"How many Manq are here?" I asked.
He spit to the side. "Four have I seen."
"I also." I wondered at their behavior. They had to know they faced interrogation and execution if they were caught. They should never have touched Hajune's wife. Then they had let Hajune, a witness, survive. Even if they had guessed about his antipathy to the city, they couldn't count on his silence.
The implications of their choices hit me like ice. Hajune was also an empath. It made sense; psions tended to seek each other as mates. I picked up his moods more easily than I did with normal humans. The Razers had probably fed off his emotional pain. He had far more value to them alive; empaths brought high prices on the Trader slave markets. They probably hadn't expected his wife to die and would have been more careful with him if they meant to take him later. It could also explain why they hadn't shot me.
But that implied they expected rescue.
The prospect of more Traders arriving, probably with an Aristo warlord, chilled me. I wanted to run and run, to find the deepest hole possible. But if they decided to look for us, there was nowhere we could hide from the sensors of their warships.
We had to bring in help. I spoke gently. "Did you tell the city Shay about the Manq?"
"Why? It is no use. My wife is dead." He clenched his fist. "Thinking of them— of her— I
cannot.
"
I softened my voice. "Must tell, Hajune Tailor. To give warning."
"City Shay have never helped forest Shay."
"Even so. You must tell them. It is right."
He crossed his arms, their well-developed muscles bulging under his clothes. "No."
"Must."
"To city, I take you. What you tell city Shay, I care not."
It was a good solution. He knew I would go to the authorities. By escorting me to the city and providing protection, he ensured its people received warning, but without admitting his intent.
"Your proposal is fair." I wished I could as easily find a way to assuage his grief.
"We go, then."
I spoke awkwardly, still holding my hair in front of myself. "My clothes are gone."
A blush touched his cheeks. "Nice it is."
I glared. "Embarrassing it is."
His expression softened. He pulled off his axe and shrugged out of his pack. After setting them on the ground, he took off his jacket and gave it to me.
"My thanks." Relieved, I fastened up the big jacket. It hung almost to my knees.
Still stolid, he put on his pack and took up his axe. "We go now."
So we set off, Hajune leading the way down a switchback path cut into the side of the promontory.
The city waited
5
City Shay
The city simmered in the dawn. From above, it had looked small, only a few hundred square meters. Down here, its extent became clearer. The Shay built up among the trees rather than out along the ground. They cut stairs into the massive trunks and strung bridges between the columns far above the ground. As a result, they lived on many levels.
We encountered no one on the winding paths. I soon realized people were peering at us from homes within the trees, hidden in foliage. Hajune projected a confident lack of concern, but beneath that his tension thrummed, as tight as a vibrating drum skin. He disliked the city; it constrained him, both physically and mentally. I understood. I too had trouble with large groups of people. Even when I buffered my mind, their emotions surged against it in waves, until I had to escape that mental pressure.
I also felt Hajune. His emptiness at the loss of his wife hollowed his heart. Psions responded strongly to each other. Eldrin and I had also felt it. When we loved, we felt the pleasure it gave our partner as well as our own. It created a two-way exchange, as our partner's contentment became our own. Hajune had lost half of himself.
As had I.
Another memory came: once Eldrin and I had climbed the Sky, the inner surface of the spherical Orbiter. Sky glowed like a blue glaze in a gigantic bowl. Such a waste of space, to give half the surface area of the station to a human-made sky. But the Orbiter was designed for beauty, not efficiency. Ground had an even more compelling splendor: mountains, trees, valleys, parks, and an ethereal city, all idyllic.
Holding hands, Eldrin and I had strolled to the sun and sat on the edge of that great lamp. We looked "up" at the ground hemisphere several kilometers above our heads. And we talked, sharing thoughts, reminiscing, enjoying each other's company even after decades of marriage. He and I were two parts of a whole.
