The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (40 page)

"Mother?" Shannon asked. "Don't you know me?"

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"Your son." He used the edge of the blanket to clean tears off her face. "It's all right. We will take care of you."

Her voice shook. "No more hurting."

"No more," he swore. "Never again. I promise."

The scene faded into blue haze. Once again Eldrinson was standing with Shannon in the tower. Rage shuddered through him. The Traders had done this to his wife. He would take them apart, one by one, if only he could. He wouldn't forget.

*nor will I. Shannon thought. Another memory came, vivid and clear: the Bard, broken and blind in the tent of Vitarex.

Eldrinson took a deep breath. Vengeance had cost them their chance to question Vitarex.
Remember it as a reason to protect what we love. Not for revenge.
He spoke as much to himself as his son.

mother knows how escomm broke the Defense codes here.

She does?
Although ISC had figured out how ESComm sabotaged the Jagernauts, they still didn't know how the Traders had infiltrated the ISC defenses on Lyshriol.

it was in her mind when we pulled her off the trader ship.

Eldrinson didn't see how Roca could know.
Have you told ISC?

no. i thought you should choose whether or not to speak to outsiders.

It was the way of the Blue Dale Archers, to put the tribe first. However, they had to inform ISC.
I will talk with them.

Shannon nodded, his silver eyes pale from lack of sleep. Neither of them would acknowledge that they might never speak with her again if the procedure failed. Instead they talked about Shannon's life with the Archers. A name came up often. Varielle. She was the young woman in Shannon's

memory. Charmed by his son's shy interest, Eldrinson wanted to ask about her. He held back, though, knowing the boy would tell him in his own time.

A tap came at the entrance. Taza Rajindia, the biomech adept who had treated both Althor and Soz, stood in the archway.

Eldrinson tensed. "You are finished?" Rajindia nodded with a neutral expression. "We thought you might like to be there when we wake her."

Roca opened her eyes.

A ceiling curved above her. Pale colors. Pretty patterns. A face appeared, a woman with dark eyes. Her mouth moved and sounds came out. She went away. A man appeared. He made sounds. He seemed upset. Then he went away.

Councilor Roca?

Where did that come from?

From your node. Arabesque.

Where?...

In your brain.

Oh,

Don't you remember?
No.

The man reappeared. "Roca?"

She would have answered, except she had nothing to say. He made more upset sounds and went away again.

Councilor, Arabesque thought. You should have regained your memories.

Go away.
Roca closed her eyes and faded into a forever blue trance.

Soz pressed her hand against the closed door. The room beyond had been a nursery years ago, then a family room after Kelric had his own bedroom. Now it was an infirmary for their mother. The door moved and Soz jumped back. A medtech came out, a short man with light brown hair. Soz didn't know how she looked, but as soon as he saw her, sympathy softened his face.

"How is she?" Soz asked. "It's too soon to know."

It didn't take genius to interpret his answer. Soz felt as if her stomach dropped. "I have to talk to the biomech adept."

"Rajindia is working with your mother." He went to a wall niche with a bluestone fountain and filled a cup with blue water.

"Look at me," Soz said. He quit avoiding her gaze. "I can't let you in." She struggled for calm. "Can you give Rajindia a message?"

"All right." He gulped his water.

"She needs to have the node use extra memory in my mother's mind. Like mine does. I don't know if my mother has as much, but she's Rhon." Soz wanted to stride into the room, grab Rajindia, and tell the adept herself.

"I will tell her." He went to the door, then paused with his hand on the antique doorknob. "Quaternary Valdoria, I'm sorry I don't have better news."

She spoke awkwardly. "I'm no Quaternary. I haven't graduated."

He nodded. Then he went inside and closed the door.

The Bard sat by Roca's bed, grieving. She responded to no one, did nothing more than open her eyes. The doctors knew. The worst had happened. He would have picked that up from them even if he hadn't possessed a shred of empathic ability.

Rajindia and a medtech were conferring in low voices. Eldrinson watched listlessly. Then he turned to Roca and hinged his hand around hers, his four big fingers holding her slender five. So soft. So precious. So empty.

Rajindia joined him. "Your Majesty?"

Eldrinson regarded her dully. "Yes?"

"We would like to try one more procedure."

He wanted to shout at her to leave his wife alone, get away, spare her any more indignities. But he was the one who had asked them to try. How did you cure a deadened mind? He had no answer. So he said, "What procedure.?"

"We may be able to expand the memory used by her node."

It sounded as arcane as everything else they said. "What would that do?"

She brushed a strand of hair off Roca's mouth, then took a cloth and dried the spittle on Roca's lips. "Your daughter thinks Arabesque doesn't have enough memory to reactivate your wife's brain."

Bile rose in his throat; they turned the people he loved into machines. He forced down his nausea. He would do whatever it took. Nothing mattered but filling this husk that had been Roca. "Could it make her worse?"

"Probably not." Sofdy she added, "But it isn't likely to help."

His voice caught. 'Try."

Roca opened her eyes.

The ceiling arched in vaults, patterned with stained-glass mosaics. A face came into view, a woman with dark eyes.

"Councilor?" the woman said.

Roca tried to respond, but her voice wouldn't work.

"Did she answer?" a man said, out of sight.

Roca wet her lips and tried again. "Yes?"

"Do you recognize me?" the woman asked.

"No," Roca answered. "Should I?"

"I'm Taza Rajindia, a biomech adept."

The man spoke again. "At least she understands words."

Roca lifted her head and frowned at the medtech who had spoken, a young man she didn't recognize. "And why," she inquired sweedy, but with an undeniable edge, "would that be a surprise?"

"Gods above!" a familiar voice said. "That's her." A man strode past the medtech, up to her bedside. Eldri.

His eyes were full of tears. "Roca? It is you?"

"Of course it's me. Why are you crying?" She tried to sit up and discovered she was attached to all sorts of lines, tubes, and monitors. Confused, she lay down and glared at Rajindia. "What is all this stuff?"

The biomech's eyes turned glossy as if she, too, had been

hit by an urge to shed tears. Odd. She didn't seem the weepy type.

"Welcome back, Councilor," Rajindia said. Their responses bewildered her. "Back?" Then her memories stirred.

They came slowly, like a wave rolling up a beach. Another wave of recollections came after them and soaked her mind. A larger wave followed, then another, even bigger. The memories flooded her, one after another, each deeper and more turbulent. They piled up, then curled over and crashed down, pounding her mind. More breakers came, huge, towering, thundering. Behind them, bigger waves loomed, higher, too high, she would drown—

Roca gasped. Alarms blared and red lights flashed.

"Knock her out!" Rajindia yelled.

Roca had no idea what they put in what intravenous line, but almost immediately she felt woozy. Lethargy spread over her and the waves withdrew, becoming smaller and choppy, until they settied into rolling swells. She closed her eyes and drifted like flotsam, grateful the onslaught had stopped.

For some time she stayed that way. When she opened her eyes, she realized she was in the old family room, though someone had transformed it into an infirmary. Her memories still inundated her, but they were bearable. Gods. That ^blue universe had been real. Somehow, incredibly, her fam-iily had pulled her through Kyle space to the Blue Dale Mountains.

Eldrinson sat on the bed. He looked like hell, his hair uncombed, bis clothes wrinkled, his eyes dark—and she had never seen such a welcome sight. She squeezed his hand, too woozy to speak.

"Do you remember me?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrows.
It would be rather difficult to forget you, given how long we've been married.

Ah, Roca.
A tear ran down his face. He brushed it away and blushed until it hid the freckles on his nose.

She smiled. He truly was a mess.
You look lovely.

He glared at her.
Men are not lovely. Roca. They are handsome.

You're truly a handsome sight.
She laughed softly.
But you are also a mess, love.

Rajindia was watching with a puzzled expression. That tended to happen when someone saw telepaths going through the facial expressions of a conversation. It was why Roca rarely had mental discussions in front of people who weren't psions.

The Bard slanted a look at the doctor. "The operation must have worked. My wife is insulting me."

"I am glad," Rajindia said. When he glowered at her, she laughed. "I meant that Councilor Roca is recovering."

Judging from her mood, Roca suspected "glad" was a far too mild a description of Rajindia's response. The adept withdrew, leaving them as much privacy as they could manage with so many people in the room. Roca's memories continued to roll in slowly. She wished she had lost those of the Aristos, but they remained.

Your memories are intertwined, Arabesque thought. If I erase the brutal ones, others will go as welt. Do you wish me to delete them anyway?

No. Let them stay.
Roca would rather endure the bad than give up the good.
Is it true?
she asked Eldrinson.
Out you make a Triad?

It is true.

Good.
She felt a fierce satisfaction. All the nobles who had condescended to her husband, the Assembly delegates who plotted to dissolve her marriage, the ones who tried to deny him status as a free citizen so they could study him in a lab— now they had to bow to him. Every last one.

He smiled.
You look ferocious.

Just gratified.

He lifted her hand and pressed her knuckles against his cheek.
This feels like a miracle.

Warmth spread through her. But the "miracle" had flaws.
I have holes in my mind. It hurts.

You must not retreat to Windward and refuse to see anyone.

She smirked.
I must stay here. Otherwise, who would bedevil you?

He laughed and pulled her into his arms, lines, sheets, equipment, and all.
I am here. Remember that.

I wiff. She had a long recovery ahead, but with her family around her, she could manage anything.

"It isn't absurd!" Soz crossed her arms and faced off with Rajindia and Colonel Corey Majda, commander of the Lyshriol orbital defense system. They were standing outside the infirmary with Soz's father.

"The Chair tried to tell me," Soz said. "It showed me Jaz."

"Jaz?" Eldrinson asked. "What is that?"

"Not what," Soz said. "Who. He was one of my roommates last year."

"He?" Her father's face turned thunderous. "You had a male roommate?"

"Oh, Hoshpa." Soz didn't want to argue. "The Chair showed me an illusion of him. Jaz told me that Mother had forgotten her birthday."

'This has significance?" Rajindia asked.

"She forgot." Soz wished she could express herself better. "That was about the time Arabesque closed down her mind. The Chair was saying she needed help."

Colonel Majda considered her. Dark-eyed and dark-haired, the Majda Matriarch resembled her sister, Devon, but she was younger and less austere. "Soz, don't you think that's far-fetched?"

At least she hadn't said, That's crazy. "I can't give you proof," Soz said. "But the Chair protects us. The Ruby Dynasty. That includes Althor. It told me that he forgot Like Mother."

"The Chair couldn't have known," Rajindia said.

"How do you know?" Soz demanded, painfully aware of her father listening. She would hate herself if she gave him false hope, but she couldn't let this go, not if any chance of success existed. "Althor had his node for less time than Mother, but it's a more advanced model by decades."

"Your mother lost knowledge," Rajindia said. "Your brother's brain is dead. It isn't the same."

Soz knew they believed she was in denial. Maybe they were right. But this went beyond her resistance to accepting his condition. "Yes, he died. His ship revived him."

Rajindia spoke with the sympathy of someone who often dealt with bereaved families. "It revived his body. By that time, the brain damage was too extensive. He had almost no neural activity left in his cerebral cortex."

"Neither did Mother," Soz said.

"A great deal more than Althor," Rajindia said.

Soz made herself stay calm, though she wanted to shake someone. "The first attempt to revive her didn't succeed because after storing her neural patterns, her node had too little memory to activate her bioelectrodes. But you gave it more, right? You augmented it with her Rhon brain cells."

Corey Majda spoke. "You think Althor's node is holding his mind, but it doesn't have enough memory to fire the bioelectrodes in his neurons?"

"Yes," Soz said.

"It sounds to me like a surefire way to destroy his brain," Corey said.

"It's a risk," Soz admitted. "But Mother survived it."

"Althor's node had no time to store his mind," Rajindia said. "They were in combat."

Her father finally spoke. "Soz, are you sure this isn't just wishful hopes on your part?"