Primary Inversion (31 page)

      
“Why does he ask so much of you?” Tager asked.

      
“Because if I can’t give it to him, I’ll never be strong enough to face Ur Qox.” I spread my arms out from my body. “It’s not like I can say, ‘Oh, I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this anymore.’ If neither Althor nor I follows Kurj as Imperator, who will? Who has the training, the Rhon mind, the knowledge, all that combined?” I dropped my arms by my sides. “A thousand worlds. How many people on each? A thousand? A million? Ten
billion?
Do I have to carry the burden of every one of their damned lives?”

      
He let out a careful breath. “You’re the Imperial Heir.”

      
“One of them. There are two.” Two left. Out of three. “How do you like that? The future of the universe may be in the hands of a crazy woman.”

      
“You think you’re crazy?”

      
“Aren’t I?”

      
“No.” He spoke as if he were walking through a forest of fragile, crystalline trees with branches that might break at the slightest touch, their fractured ends sharp and deadly, ready to pierce his body. “Injured, yes. You’re suffering from so many forms of stress disorder I’m not sure I could count them. Even for a psion, you’re extraordinarily sensitive. You’ll probably never be able to endure crowds or their uglier emotions without withdrawing emotionally. But crazy? No. Not at all. To have experienced what you have and still function takes a phenomenal strength of mind.”

      
He stood watching me with that incredible empathy of his and I didn’t know what to say. So I just looked at him. And he let me. He didn’t push, didn’t crowd, didn’t retreat, didn’t turn away.

      
Finally I said, “Well.” It wasn’t the most articulate response, but it would do. Tager smiled as if I had said something intelligent.

      
I walked to a corner of his office where the walls met at an acute angle. A shelf there held a small mirror, an old style square of silvered glass inside a jade frame. As I looked at my reflection, I could almost see Kurj behind me, always watching, always waiting, never satisfied.

      
Watch carefully, brother,
I thought.
Or I may surprise you.

#

When Jarith came into the bedroom, I was just waking up. I lay in the warm sheets, absorbing the sight of him walking across the room. It was a nice view. He wasn’t wearing anything but his pants. The hairs on his muscled chest caught the sunlight like a dusting of gold. His face was flushed, though. Red. Really red. In fact, he looked frantic. He was headed for the pile of our clothes on the floor by the bed. When he reached it, he searched through the garments, throwing them here and there.

      
I peered over the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”

      
He jumped up. “You’re awake.”

      
I smiled. “Just barely. Come on back and make us sleepy again, hmmm?”

      
“Soz.” His face turned even redder. “We have company.”

      
“Company? What do you mean?”

      
He motioned toward the living room. “When I woke up, I went to get a drink—and she was
there.
Reading a holobook.”

      
“Someone is
inside
my apartment?” What the hell? I scrambled out of bed and scooped up the underwear and jumpsuit Jarith had tossed on the floor after he peeled them off me. “Who is it?”

      
He found what he was looking for, his sweater. “She says her name is Cya Liessa.”

      
I stopped and straightened up. “Ah.”

      
He yanked his sweater over his head. “Ah?”

      
“That explains your reaction.”
 
      
“It does?”

      
I laughed softly. “She affects everyone that way.” I finished dressing and went to meet my guest.

      
I saw her as I came through the archway that opened into the living room. She was standing by a window, looking out at Jacob’s Shire. Gold hair poured over her arms, back, and hips like spun sunlight streaked with gold. It glistened in the ringlight. She wore a rose-hued dress, Foreshires style, with the same lace and straps that felt so awkward on me. On her, the simple shift looked spectacular. She had the face of an angel, the body of an erotic holomovie goddess, and the grace of a ballet dancer, which she used to do for a living, performing under the assumed name of Cya Liessa.

      
“My greetings, Mother,” I said.

      
Jarith made a strangled noise behind me. “
Mother?
”

      
She turned to us. “Sauscony.” Her gaze shifted to Jarith, who was standing slightly behind me and to my right, as if for protection from this apparition that had shown up in my apartment. A smile tugged up her lips. “I’ve met your friend.”

      
Even at forty-eight, I felt guilty having my mother find me with my lover. “How did you get inside?”

      
“Pako let me in.”

      
Before Jarith and I had gone to sleep, I had told Pako we weren’t to be disturbed. Why would it let her inside? True, its Evolving Intelligence tried to anticipate my wishes. But even I wasn’t sure in this case. “What did it tell you?”

      
“That you weren’t available, but I should wait.” She glanced at Jarith. “I can come back…”

      
“No. Don’t do that.” I motioned at the bar across the room. “Would you like a drink?”

      
Sauscony.

      
Her thought came into my mind as clear as sunlight, and brought my memories rushing in of Lyshriol, my father’s world, where I had grown up.
Home.
I saw the silvery plains rippling from the village of Dalvador to the Backbone Mountains in the west and the huge mountain range we called Rider’s Lost Memory in the north. Shimmerflies flitted over the plains, their gauzy wings iridescent in the sunlight. Home, with all its love and pain, the joy and loss, the place where I had retreated in my childhood, whenever I needed succor, to the nurturing arms of the golden woman who had given me birth.

      
Behind me Jarith made a soft noise, as if he had seen a beautiful picture. He touched my shoulder. “Soz, I have a music lesson this afternoon. I should go practice.”

      
I turned to him. He was smiling, no longer red-faced. But sad too. Why was he sad? And why did he have to practice? He had been playing his stringed lytar all morning.

      
“Can I call you this evening?” he asked.

      
“Yes. Of course.” I started to kiss him, then remembered who was watching us and decided to leave the kissing for later. “I’ll talk to you then.”

      
Jarith gathered up his things from the bedroom. When he tried to leave my apartment, he ran into my mother’s bodyguards, two Jagernauts hulking outside the door. As they searched him, Jarith gave me a puzzled look.

      
Sorry,
I thought.
She’s a dancer. A celebrity. They’re being careful.
It was a lame excuse. My mother hadn’t danced for years. I hid the real reason for the search from him. More than one “friend” of our family had tried to smuggle out holofilm of our private lives, records that brought a phenomenal price on the media black-market. Explaining that would mean telling him why, and I didn’t want to contaminate what I had with Jarith by revealing I was a member of the Ruby Dynasty.

      
When Kurj chose an heir, that person would spend the rest of his or her life as he, my aunt, and my parents lived now, guarded day and night. I didn’t want that prison. Maybe someday I would have to accept those constraints, but for now I still had a choice.

      
When the guard finished checking Jarith, she bowed to him. “You may go through.”

      
He blinked, seeming more surprised by the bow than by the search. Then he glanced at me and smiled. “See you tonight?”

      
“Tonight,” I said.

      
After Jarith left, I went to the bar and poured a glass of ale. “Want some?” I asked my mother.

      
She shook her head, rippling her glorious hair. “No, I’m fine.” Ringlight glimmered on her skin and reflected off its metallic sheen the same way light did off Kurj’s skin. Her eyes had gold irises and black pupils exactly like his did, at least under the shield of his inner lids. Although she hadn’t inherited the inner lids from my grandfather, she and Kurj could otherwise have been twins. But where Kurj was hard, my mother glowed. I longed to go to her, to lay my head in her lap as I had so often done as a child. Except I wasn’t a little girl anymore, I was a grown woman, and I had no intention of running to my mother every time I stubbed my toe.

      
“Why are you here?” I asked.

      
She smiled. “Well, I happened to be on Forshires, so I thought I would—”

      
“Mother.” I clunked my glass on the counter. “You have no reason to be on Foreshires Hold. So why are you here?”

      
She came to the bar and sat in a tall chair, sliding onto it easily despite its height; she was taller than me, taller than my sisters, as tall as my father. She spoke with the gentle voice that had comforted my night fears when I was little. “Kurj told me about Rex. I’m sorry.”

      
I ran my finger around the top of my glass. “He knew the risks.”

      
“Sauscony. I’m not Kurj.”

      
I looked up at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”

      
“You’re hurting. I can feel it.”

      
“It’s personal.” When she started to speak, I put up my hands. “I mean it. Let it go.”

      
“All right.” She watched me with an expression I knew well. She was casting around for a subject that wouldn’t make me edgy, trying to find a way to talk to her daughter. The older I got, the more often I saw that look on her face.

      
“Your friend Jarith is very handsome,” she said.

      
“I guess.”

      
Young, though,
she thought, reaching for the closeness of a mental link.

      
Leave it, Mother.

      
Sauscony, I’m not your enemy.

      
Block,
I thought. The synapse psicon flashed, taking away her concern.

      
My mother looked frustrated, but she said nothing, just watched me with concern. I scowled and stuck my glass under the fount, refilling it with ale. Then I stalked out from behind the counter and went to sit on the couch. After a moment, she came over and sat in one of the armchairs. She looked like a picture, an artist’s vision of beauty, her body relaxed in perfect lines, her angel’s face pensive. I wondered if she had any idea how hard it was being her daughter.

      
“What’s it like?” I asked.

      
She regarded me curiously. “What is what like?”

      
“Being loved by everyone who meets you.”

      
Incredulity. It broke over me in waves. “Where did you get the idea I’m loved by everyone who meets me?”

      
“Aren’t you?”

      
“No.”

      
I hesitated. “Can I ask you something personal?”

      
“That’s a bit of a double standard isn’t it?”

      
I stiffened. “Fine. Never mind.”

      
“Sauscony.” She spread her hands. “Go ahead.”

      
“What’s it like to be loved by a Rhon psion?”

      
The change that came over her face was as spectacular as it was subtle. I hadn’t realized how tense she had become until it eased out of her posture like water running out of a cup. She answered softly, “Your father completes me.”

      
“What about sex?”

      
She reddened. “I think that’s enough personal questions.”

      
“Sorry.”

      
After a moment, her voice lightened. “Let me put it this way. Having ten children was easy.”

      
Can I ask you something else?
I thought.

      
She gave me a wry look.
That depends.

      
About Kurj.

      
Suddenly she was stiff again.
What about him?

      
Was it really an accident?

      
Was what an accident?
Her agitation rippled against my mind.
How can I talk to you, Sauscony, if you keep asking me half questions?

      
Grandfather’s death. Was it really an accident?

      
She practically snapped out of her chair, like a coil compressed too tight, releasing in a burst of energy. She went to the window and gazed at Jacob’s Shire. “Of course it was an accident.”

      
“Kurj must have known he could overload the link.” That had been fifty-five years ago. Now he was one of three people who powered the Kyle web: Kurj, my aunt, and my father. It wasn’t coincidence that they were so different. If the minds in that link were too similar, it set up a resonance like a driven oscillator, forcing their minds into bigger and bigger fluctuations until the link shattered. Fifty-five years ago, only my grandparents had been in it. Kurj had tried to become the third.

      
“He must have known,” I said. “The odds that both he and Grandfather would survive were too low. Kurj
knew
it. And he was younger. Stronger. The chances of him surviving were greater.”