Ascendant Sun

by Catherine Asaro

  He saw no vehicles. The traffic authority probably kept them out to protect pedestrians. Porthaven had obviously never been meant to deal with this many people. They crammed cafés, clustered around yellow stone tables, perched on basins glinting with salt crystals, strolled, strode, wandered, stood, sat, and lay in amber-washed plazas and parks.

  Cafés. Food. When had he last eaten? He had been in space for two days, asleep, recovering from bums he sustained in the fire that made his escape from Coba possible. Vaguely he recalled the ship’s robodoc hooking him to an antiquated IV. It must have provided enough nourishment; he felt only a distant, easily ignored sense of hollowness in his stomach. His nausea, however, had worsened. If he tried to eat now, he would lose his meal.

  A man and a woman strolled past, glancing at him with concern. He realized he had stopped in the street and was simply standing there, gazing into space. Shaking his head, he resumed his walk.

  Edgewhirl colonists were everywhere, distinctive by their bronze skin and hair, side effects of genetic tinkering meant to keep their cells from taking in too much chlorine. Their hair swung in braids to their waists, sometimes woven with copper threads, a sign of wealth on this metal-deficient world where corrosion ate minerals. But they made up less than half the current population. Offworlders filled the streets, diverse in their races, language, and garbs. Why? What had happened? What?

  Kelric raked his hand through his hair, a mane of gold curls that spilled down his neck. Everything here shouted of political upheaval. He had to sort out his disordered thoughts. Form plans. Take action.

  And do what?

  If he made the wrong move, he could end up in even worse trouble. His position within the power hierarchy of Imperial Skolia had always been precarious. He was one of the three heirs to Kurj Skolia, the Imperator. Kurj served as commander in chief of the combined ISC forces: the Pharaoh’s Army, the Imperial Fleet, the Advance Services Corps, and the Jagernaut Force.

  Kurj. His half brother.

  Technically Kurj didn’t rule the Skolian Imperialate; that title went to an elected civilian, the First Councilor of the Assembly. But the question of who truly ruled Skolia had long plagued the halls of Imperial power. Kelric knew well the whispers that named Kurj a military dictator.

  Kurj had no legitimate heirs of his own. So he chose three of his half siblings: Althor, Sauscony, and Kelric. Only one could become Imperator.

  The one who survived.

  And now? Kelric exhaled. His relationship with Kurj had always been difficult. They looked alike, moved alike, spoke in the same deep voice, had the same metallic coloring. Even their names were similar. In personality they were very different men, but that made no difference to Kurj. He looked at Kelric and saw himself. Having gained his title through violence, he feared Kelric would seek the same, perhaps even through fratricide. That Kelric was incapable of such an act against the family he so loved was a truth his half brother had never seen.

  Even if Kelric had come back to an unchanged situation, he would have taken care in announcing his return from the dead. Now he had no idea what he faced.

  He finally found an open console room in the library, a peaceful place with many windows that let sunlight slant across the clay walls and tables. It was one of the few empty areas he had seen in Porthaven. Most of the consoles were dark, but an active light glowed on one in the corner. He sat down and started to say “guest account.”

  Then he paused. Although he saw no one, that didn’t mean no one could overhear. In a civilization so dependent on computers, even guarded interactions could become public. Electro-optical webs, molecular nanowebs, quantum picowebs, and the psiberweb permeated human existence, all its creations, even people like himself who carried nodes within their bodies.

  Kelric knew his half brother saturated the nets with security monitors. More subtle, and perhaps more dangerous, were the shadow spies of his aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh. Her ghostlike omnipresence had once permeated the webs. But now? Who controlled the nets? His aunt? Kurj? The Allieds? The Aristos? The more sophisticated a system, the more ways existed to detect a user’s presence. If he linked into a general web, would he reveal himself? For all he knew, it could be a fatal step. Better to hide his presence.

  So in the end he resorted to barbarism: he typed at the keyboard. He intended only to access the library network.

  Guest account, he entered.

  A screen morphed out of the table and Guest account appeared on it in blue glyphs, glowing on a white background.

  System down, the node printed.

  Down? He rubbed his chin. The redundancy and backups built into planetary webs made it unlikely that any particular network would go down more than a few seconds. He waited a minute, then retyped Guest account.

  System down, it repeated.

  Baffled, he looked around. Except for himself, the room was still empty. People crammed Porthaven, yet no one was using a public console room that normally would be packed at this time of day.

  He turned back to the console. How long has the library web been unavailable?

  Unknown.

  Unknown? That made no sense. Why?

  The Collapse corrupted my files, the node answered, its self-reference implying it had an Evolving Intelligence brain. However, I have reconstructed them to some extent and can roughly place the Collapse as thirty days ago.

  Are you talking about a collapse of the library web? Kelric asked. Or a bigger web?

  A bigger web.

  He waited, but the node said no more. So he typed, What web collapsed?

  All of them.

  All of what?

  The webs.

  Kelric held back his exasperation. The node’s literal responses suggested its EI brain was less than state-of-the-art, to say the least. What webs do you mean?

  Every web in settled space.

  He almost laughed. So. Now he understood. The node had malfunctioned. When were you last serviced?

  This morning.

  This morning? What about the rest of the library nodes? Thinking of its terse answers, he added, Explain in detail.

  The Collapse damaged many nodes, it informed him. Some more than others. The techs took those library nodes that survived whole, or were easily repaired. They need them for webs more crucial to the city and port. With glyph shadings of pride, it added, They chose me to monitor the library.

  Kelric suspected the library rarely left this node in charge. He had an odd urge to congratulate the computer. He wondered if his fatigue made him read human emotions into a machine.

  What is “the Collapse”? he asked.

  When psiberspace imploded, every psiberweb node crashed, it explained, its nuances indicating a desire to be helpful. That pulled down every EO, nano, and picoweb connected to them, which took down every web linked to them, and so on, until every web in settled space collapsed.

  Kelric blinked. Saying psiberspace “imploded” was like saying spacetime collapsed. That’s impossible.

  Apparently not.

  This had to be a mistake. He had never known even a planetary web to go down for more than a few hours, and that only in a worldwide disaster. Now he was to believe the star-spanning webs that wove together three empires had collapsed? Impossible.

  Yet the node seemed undamaged. He tried to absorb its story, but instead a memory came to him from fifty years ago, when he had been seven. Watching his father and another man practice with swords, he had suddenly understood that this man he loved, the center of his life, could die from a mere thrust of sharpened metal. It was the first time he realized how vulnerable humans became without their technology.

  Kelric pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to pull his thoughts together. He knew he was in shock, had been for hours, days even, ever since he escaped the inferno that had engulfed his home on Coba. Despite his efforts to pull out his Coban bodyguards, they had perished as the city roared in the flames of war. The whole damnable war had been his own
damnable fault. Not because he did anything. Simply because he existed. He gave an unsteady laugh. The man whose face had launched a thousand ships. Now he was here, arguing with a slow-witted computer.

  He started to stand up, then sank back into his chair, too tired to do more. A thought pierced his haze. His family. The Ruby Dynasty. If the web truly had collapsed, it meant something had happened to them.

  His family were Kyle operators. They ran the psiberweb. Kyle sciences had developed centuries ago, after the discovery of a nano-sized brain organ: the Kyle Afferent Body. In rare humans, the Kyle operators, the KAB grew to microscopic size.

  Although the brain waves of any two people could interact, the effects were tiny. However, a Kyle operator’s enlarged KAB boosted the effect. When stimulated by fields from another person’s brain, the enlarged KAB sent signals to structures in the Kyle’s brain called paras. Like many neural structures, paras turned such signals into thought. But these thoughts were filched. They belonged to someone else. In other words, Kyle operators were psions. Most were empaths, but if their paras were sensitive enough to decipher words, they rated as telepaths.

  What gave birth to psiberspace? Quantum theory. Quantum wavefunctions existed for any system—including the brain. How do you define a thought? Simple. Use the wavefunction for the brain as it forms that thought.

  If a function with fixed energy varied with time, it could be Fourier-transformed into one with a fixed time that varied with energy. Likewise for position and momentum.

  So came the what if?: could they transform the spacetime function for a fixed thought into a “thought” function for fixed spacetime coordinates?

  Kelric’s eccentric, delicate, and reclusive aunt—the Ruby Pharaoh—had derived the transform that took functions from spacetime into psiberspace. Just as the wave for an atom existed everywhere in normal space, so the wave for a thought existed everywhere in psiberspace. In other words, as soon as a sender formed a thought, receivers could pick it up. It made possible instant communication across interstellar distances.

  Of course, the folks doing all this sending and receiving needed links into psiberspace. Enter Kyle operators. With hardware to boost their abilities, strong Kyles could transform thoughts into psiberspace. But almost none could power the psiberweb. Only Rhon psions were strong enough to carry that load, and the only known Rhon were Kelric’s family. It was why he was so close to them; they shared affection with an unusual ability to meld their emotions and thoughts. If the psiberweb had crashed, what did that mean for them?

  What happened to the Ruby Dynasty? he typed.

  Unknown, the node answered.

  Why don’t you know?

  No one has seen fit to provide me with that information. Its nuances expressed annoyance.

  You must have some information.

  I’m sorry. I don’t. Now its glyphs indicated regret.

  Why did psiberspace implode?

  Unknown.

  Make a damn guess.

  A high probability exists that the Collapse is due to the Radiance War. Then it added, Please do not curse at me.

  Sorry. After so many years on Coba, without computers, it felt odd to apologize to a machine. But it had a brain, after all. It deserved courtesy too. He didn’t recall ever having a computer chastise him for his language, though.

  Then he absorbed its other words. What is the Radiance War?

  It was fought by Imperial Space Command and Eubian Space Command.

  ISC and ESComm have been fighting for centuries. What makes this any different?

  ISC invaded Eube. ESComm invaded Skolia.

  He stared at the screen. Do you mean full-scale invasion? Not deep-space ambushes, but attacks on major planetary centers?

  Yes.

  Gods. Had the entire universe gone war-crazy? Give me all the details you have.

  I have already done so. I suggest you go to a relocation office. They can provide more information, as well as humanitarian aid. The Dawn Corps has an office in the government building at Omega Drymorn Lane.

  Aid. Yes. He needed help. Even if it had been safe to reveal his identity, he had no access to his family’s resources without the web. If those resources even existed anymore. He rubbed his temples, trying to subdue his headache. Then he typed, Thank you for your help.

  You are welcome. It was nice to talk to someone. I’ve been alone here.

  I hope you meet more people. Looking at what he had written, Kelric smiled. Although in terms of “intellect,” this El wasn’t sophisticated, its emotional traits were advanced from those of his day.

  Thank you, it printed. Good luck.

  I may need it, he thought. He cleared the screen. A record of their conversation would remain in the node’s files, but he doubted it would give away his identity.

  Kelric stood up—and nearly passed out. He grabbed his chair, hanging on for balance while black spots danced in his vision. Taking a breath, he waited until his head cleared.

  Then he left the library.

  The holomural filled an entire side of Porthaven’s tallest building, a ten-story skyscraper. Kelric saw it when he was walking to the Dawn Corps office. The mural showed two people. The woman had green eyes and curly black hair with gold tips. The austere simplicity of her black uniform gave her an aura of power greater than any medals or braid. Behind and to one side of her stood a towering, massive man with gold skin and violet eyes, an elite ISC officer wearing the black leathers of a Jagernaut. They gazed out of the mural, larger than life, regal and silent.

  Kelric stopped dead. He had trouble breathing. His vertigo surged. With calm steps that gave no hint of the earthquake inside his heart, he walked to the building.

  He read the plaque beneath the mural.

  Its words were simple, dating from only a month ago—and they tore apart his heart: In honor of Imperator Sauscony Valdoria and Imperial Heir Althor Valdoria, who died to bring humanity freedom.

  Kelric sank onto a stone bench next to the plaque. He couldn’t see. His vision blurred.

  Who died to bring humanity freedom.

  Died.

  His sister and brother. Soz and Althor. Dead.

  He leaned forward, unable to make a sound.

  Soz. The big sister who had laughed with him, scolded and teased him, looked after him. He had loved her with a child’s adoration, a maturing boy’s shy realization of her beauty, and an adult’s admiration for her integrity. His many thoughts of her blended into a cherished haze.

  And Althor. His older brother. Kelric had idolized him, the giant who swung the child Kelric in his arms, laughing as the small boy shouted with delight; the warrior who came home from the stars, striding through their father’s stone house; the complicated adult who challenged Kelric’s assumptions but never let him doubt his brother’s love.

  Gone. They were gone.

  He choked, an almost inaudible protest. It was the only sound he made as tears rolled down his face. He stayed in the shadow of the war memorial, hidden by an obelisk, his arms folded across his stomach, unnoticed by anyone as he wept.

  Then it hit him. Imperator Sauscony Valdoria. Imperator. His sister had taken over Imperial Space Command. That meant Kurj had also died. As much as Kelric had resented and feared his half brother, he also respected him. And yes, loved him. Whether or not Kurj felt any fraternal affection in return, he would never know. But he mourned Kurj as well, with silent tears.

  And then, finally, another realization came to him.

  He was the only surviving Imperial Heir.

  He now ruled the Skolian Imperialate.

  2

  Come the Dawn

  Kelric found the genetic tattoo parlor in a crumbling section of Porthaven, where alleys wound in sinuous curves among old buildings. Dirty yellow houses leaned over so far that their tops touched each other, making arches above the sweating ground. Before he entered the tattoo shop, he took a small garnet out of his pouch and cupped it in his fist, so the tattooist would
n’t see him remove it from his frayed pouch and guess at the fortune he carried.

  The tattoo artist showed him a catalogue. Kelric chose a simple form of genetic tinkering, one that would turn his gold hair and eyes brown and take away the metallic highlights that shimmered in his skin. The artist gave him a dye job to serve until the altered skin and hair grew in. None of it would fully hide his gold coloring, but it was enough to disguise how much he resembled the man in the mural. Even in the best of times his family were targets for abduction or assassination—and this was far from the best of times.

  Kelric paid with his garnet, the high value of the stone also ensuring the tattoo artist’s silence. He spent the next hour walking back to the city center. The Dawn Corps office occupied the ground floor of a government building. He entered a lobby with stone walls, faceted yellow windows, and soft gray furniture. At a counter in the back, he pressed a panel that rang a digital bell.

  A woman in a blue uniform came through a doorway in the back wall. Seeing Kelric, she faltered in midstep. Then she recovered from whatever caused her pause and came to the counter. As she smiled, her cheeks reddened with a blush. She spoke in a language he didn’t know, her voice soft.

  He shook his head to show he didn’t understand.

  She tried again, still with her pleasant smile and voice. He wondered if the Allieds were this nice to everyone. Her response wasn’t feigned, either. Her mind projected genuine pleasure at his presence. He shook his head again, to indicate he still didn’t understand, but her friendly manner eased his tension. When he smiled, her rosy blush deepened and a wisp of sexual arousal drifted from her mind to his. She tried a different language, but he didn’t understand that one either.

  Finally she beckoned him to follow. She took him along stone corridors. On the walls, the logo of the Allied Worlds glowed in blue. Based on the insignia of Earth’s United Nations, it showed a silhouette of Earth’s continents superimposed on several concentric circles.