Carnelians

by Catherine Asaro

  The Skolian doctor had red hair pulled back from her face and caught at the nape of her neck. She was slender, skinny in fact, all bony angles under her white jumpsuit. Even her name sounded bony: Doctor Skellor.

  “You’ll feel nothing more than a tickle of air,” Skellor assured her as she set the muzzle of a syringe-gun against Aliana’s neck.

  Aliana grimaced when the syringe hissed, not because it hurt, but because she didn’t trust whatever Skellor had just injected into her. Nanomeds? Apparently people who didn’t grow up in slums took health-meds for granted, but she had never heard of them.

  “These med things,” Aliana said. “Will they stay inside me? Have baby meds and set up housekeeping?”

  Skellor smiled, the lines around her eyes crinkling, which made her look kind despite her being Skolian. “If you mean are they self-replicating, the answer is no. They’ll fall apart in a few hours and your body will eliminate them.”

  “You mean I’ll crap ’em out?”

  The doctor gave a dry laugh. “Yes.”

  Aliana supposed she could live with that. “What will they tell you?”

  Skellor indicated the machines around the bed. “The meds transmit data about your health to my monitors. Anything from the condition of your liver to the psiamine in your brain.”

  “Sigh-a-what?”

  “Psiamine.”

  Aliana squinted at her. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a neurotransmitter.”

  “Never heard of that, either.”

  “It’s a chemical,” Skellor explained. “Everyone has neurotransmitters, but only psions have psiamine. It’s what allows your brain to interpret brain waves from other people.”

  “Oh. Well, good.” Aliana wished she didn’t feel so stupid. They weren’t treating her as if she were slow, though. They wouldn’t tell her these things unless they believed she could understand.

  Skellor peered at a holo above a flat screen near the bed. “Secondary Lensmark wants us to send a full workup of your blood into the Skolian medical system. If your father was Skolian, maybe we’ll get a hit.”

  “Ah.” Aliana didn’t know what else to say. Although she still didn’t want to be Skolian, she had to admit, the people here had treated her a lot better than Harindor or her stepfather.

  The door across the room irised open into a tall, thin hexagon. It relieved Aliana, because many Skolian doorways were bizarre, shaped like rectangles. Skolians used right angles everywhere. It was so strange. Alien.

  Secondary Lensmark walked into the room. Aliana hadn’t seen her these past two days since Tide defected. Lensmark had been busy with whatever military people at embassies did, like “debriefing” Tide, which sounded to Aliana like Aristo-speak for interrogation. Except these people weren’t Aristos. That should mean they were slaves, but they didn’t believe that applied to them, and none of them wore either collars or wrist guards.

  Doctor Skellor straightened up. “My greetings, Lyra.”

  Aliana blinked. Lyra? Why wasn’t Skellor saluting and all? She peered at Skellor’s uniform. The embassy insignia glowed on her sleeve, a gold triangle inside an exploding sun, but nothing looked military. Huh. Maybe civilians didn’t have to jump and salute.

  Lensmark smiled at Aliana. “My greetings.”

  “Mine, too.” Aliana hesitated, uncertain how to address her. “Ma’am,” she added.

  Lensmark glanced at Skellor. “I’d like to talk to Aliana alone.”

  The doctor nodded, though she looked worried. “I’ll be right outside.”

  After Skellor left, Lensmark turned her full attention on Aliana. “We have a problem.”

  Aliana stiffened. So it had come. She had been waiting for someone to say, It’s all a mistake, we can’t help you, go on home. “What happened?”

  “Do you know the name Barthol Iquar?” Lensmark asked.

  “An Aristo,” Aliana said. With a name like that, he had to be Highton. She vaguely recalled hearing it before. “Military, maybe?”

  Lensmark pushed her hand through her bristly hair. “He’s military, all right. He’s the other Joint Commander of ESComm, along with Admiral Muze.”

  A terrible thought occurred to her. “Tide! They found out he’s here.”

  “No. Aliana, no.” Lensmark eased the gruffness of her voice. “It’s nothing to do with that. General Iquar has had an accident. He’s in a coma.”

  “Oh.” Aliana crossed her arms. “I didn’t do it.”

  Lensmark smiled. “I know.” Then she said, “Skolian and Eube relations were already more strained than usual because of the attack on the merchants. Even with Imperator Skolia disavowing knowledge of the incident, it’s touchy. Most Eubians don’t believe him, in part because of that song his brother sings.” She let out a tired breath. “Now in the midst of all, ESComm has lost one of its top commanders. It’s a mess.”

  “I’m sorry he’s sick,” Aliana said. “But why would that matter for me?”

  “The problem is, ESComm won’t let Skolian ships leave Eubian space. For now, we can’t get any of you out. If they knew the three of you were here, they would demand we turn you over to them.”

  “But why?” Aliana’s heartbeat ratcheted up. “Because Tide was a Razer?”

  “In part,” Lensmark said. “And they’d call you a provider.”

  “I’m not!”

  “I understand. But Aliana, you’re an extraordinarily strong psion. To an Aristo, you’re like an uncut diamond, unfinished but of immense value.” Anger edged Lensmark’s voice. “And Red. How that idiot admiral could condemn him to die—” She stopped and waited a moment, then spoke more calmly. “Most Aristos would consider Red a find of great worth. If anyone finds out we have the two of you and a Razer who wants to defect, we’ll be in deep trouble.”

  “So you can’t take risks? Like trying to get us out of Eube.”

  “Not yet,” the Secondary said. “But we aren’t giving up. We just need to wait.”

  “Why are you hiding us?” Aliana asked, suddenly angry, not at Lensmark, but at the world, the universe, the Hightons, who kept life so ugly. “If you turned us over to ESComm, they’d give you a reward or something.”

  Lensmark spoke firmly. “I will never turn you over to them, not as long as I have any say in the matter. You have my word.”

  Aliana flushed. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Neither of them said what they both knew, that if ESComm found them here, it wouldn’t matter what the Skolians promised.

  It had been a long day.

  “I want to go home,” Larse muttered as he put his virtual reality suit back on. He had just taken it off when his console informed him that it was receiving a message via the Kyle web. He was the only telepathic operator at this middle-of-nowhere outpost, indeed the only one within a many light-year radius. If anyone was going to receive the transmission, it had to be him.

  At least this helped justify his job. No one here considered his work necessary. If the Skolian military hadn’t been paying for this telop station, his boss would have closed it long ago. They were on the edge of Imperialate space, a nether region where Skolian territory abutted Trader territory. Nothing was out here but their tiny outpost on a ragged asteroid. It frustrated Larse no end that everyone assumed that meant he had nothing to do as a telop. His location made no difference to his work! His position in Kyle space was determined by thought, not spacetime coordinates. Although most messages in the Kyle went through the more densely used pathways, one might come here instead if its subject was closely related to whatever he was thinking about. He didn’t deal with anywhere near as much traffic as the bigger centers, but he still had work to do.

  So despite having just finished a twelve hour shift, he dropped back into his telop chair. The helmet lowered over his head and blackness surrounded him. The chair’s exoskeleton folded around his body, cool and firm, its motors whirring.

  “Access my Kyle account,” Larse said.

  “Sett
ing up link.” That came from Jitters, the EI that ran the outpost. “Psiphons activated.”

  Clicks sounded as psiphon prongs snicked into sockets in Larse’s neck, waist, and wrists. The prongs linked to his biomech web, which had four parts: the sockets, fiberoptic threads that networked his body, a node in his spine, and bio-electrodes in his neurons. Neurotrophic chemicals and bio-shells protected his brain from the implants. Jitter sent signals to the psiphon prongs, which passed them to the threads, which sent them to his spinal node. The node prompted bio-electrodes to fire his neurons, translating the input into thought. Similarly, the system translated his directed thoughts into signals and sent them back to Jitter.

  Verify your link to my spinal node, Larse thought.

  Verified, Jitter thought. I’m opening the gate in psiberspace.

  A new thought came into his mind, cool and inhuman: PROVIDE SECURITY CODES.

  Whoa! That was a node he’d never interacted with before. Powerful. Access mod 2, path 016 in my biomech, Larse thought.

  ACCESSED. CLEARANCE VERIFIED.

  The blackness lightened into a glimmering web that extended in all directions. Larse was a wavepacket, a round hill surrounded by circular ripples that extended into the infinite “lake” of Kyle space. Another packet glowed nearby, carnelian red. Huh. That color was reserved for the Traders.

  Identify yourself, Larse thought.

  I am an automated transferal protocol, the packet answered. Source: Skolian Embassy on the planet Muze’s Helios. Hosting government: Eubian Concord.

  Interesting. He had never received a message from Trader space. What are you transmitting?

  Blood test results from embassy personnel.

  Couldn’t they analyze them at the embassy?

  Apparently not, it answered. Can you route me to a Skolian medical facility?

  Sure, Larse said, disappointed that it was such a mundane request. He scanned various connections until he found a free medical node. All right, I’ve got you a good home. I’m transferring you to Steward Medical Center on the planet Sandstorm. They can analyze the tests.

  That will be acceptable.

  The transfer only took a few seconds. After Larse finished, he exited the Kyle web, shed his telop gear, and headed home.

  Perhaps someday, something interesting would come into his station.

  XV

  Capture

  The doors to the Amphitheatre of Providence rose as tall as ten men, framed by two fluted columns that curved into the floor at the bottom and into a rounded archway at their tops. Mosaics in gold and silver bordered the doors, abstractly beautiful, like stylized flowers.

  As Jaibriol and Tarquine approached, the doors swung open. They entered the amphitheatre with four bodyguards and came out on a high balcony. The hall below rumbled with the discussions of the assembled Aristos, over two thousand of them: Hightons, Diamonds, Silicates. Jaibriol reeled under the onslaught of their minds, which had grown worse since his entry into the Skolian Triad. He filled his mind with Quis patterns, letting them evolve, and their geometric beauty shaped his thoughts, shunting the Aristos off like water running over a dry sponge.

  He walked to the balcony rail with Tarquine at his side. With his mind calmed by Quis patterns, he sensed her mood beneath her icy Highton veneer. She was a geode, her exterior impossible to read, but her mind like multi-hued crystals, structures of intrigue, ambition, love, and pain from the loss of their child. She was tired, not fully recovered from the assassination attempt even now, several weeks after it had happened. Jaibriol wanted to reach out to her, even just touch her hand, but he could show no such emotion in public.

  A robot arm swung through the amphitheatre, its end shaped into a gigantic human hand and burnished like old bronze. Huge gears and cranks operated the hand as if it came from an antique era, but that was for show; it was designed with state-of-the-art technology. Its fingers curled into an open fist, forming a human-sized cup. The hand slowed to a stop at the balcony and docked in front of Jaibriol. Straightening two of its fingers, it created a path from its palm to the balcony.

  Jaibriol turned to Tarquine. “I will see you after the session.”

  She nodded, her alabaster face composed. Screens suspended above the amphitheatre showed them standing here in larger than life holos, visible to everyone below.

  As Tarquine withdrew with their guards to sit in the upper levels, Jaibriol walked along the fingers and stepped onto the robot’s palm. Its two fingers curled back up, leaving him in a giant cupped hand. A light flashed, indicating the safety protocols were active, preventing the hand from closing into a fist while he was within its grasp.

  “Dais,” Jaibriol said.

  The hand carried him past tiers filled with ornate benches where Aristos and their staff reclined on gilded cushions. A circular dais was rising in the center of the amphitheatre. Four Razers stood on it, awaiting his arrival, and the Minister of Protocol sat at a console there.

  When the robot fist docked at the edge of the dais, Protocol rose to her feet. The fist relaxed, its fingers uncurling until Jaibriol stood on its flat palm. He walked across its fingers and stepped onto the dais. He knew force nets surrounded the great disk and would catch anyone who fell, but it still felt strange to stand on a platform without even a rail separating him from the chasm of air below. The robot hand curled into a fist and whirred away, descending into the lower levels of the amphitheatre.

  Protocol bowed to Jaibriol. Aristos never knelt. Jaibriol had even found a law from the earliest days of the empire that made it illegal for an Aristo to kneel to anyone. Silicate Aristos bowed to Diamond and Highton Aristos, Diamonds bowed to Hightons, and Hightons bowed to the emperor. When he had first assumed his throne, Jaibriol had kept all the arcane codes of Aristo behavior straight by using his empathic ability to sense from the people around him what needed to be done. It was unsettling to realize how much of it had now become second nature.

  He nodded to Protocol, indicating she should resume her seat. With her so close, the pressure of her mind weighed on him more than with anyone else here. One of the Razers on the dais exerted a similar pressure, which meant he was probably more than half Aristo. Jaibriol would have to reassign him to someone else’s guard and find a way to do it so the fellow didn’t think it was a punishment.

  Jaibriol looked out at the tiers of Aristos ringing the amphitheatre. The media orbs spinning in the air would carry his image and words throughout the hall. He spoke and his voice resonated. “We are now convened at this, the two-hundred and twenty-third Summit of Glory.”

  A chime rang out as the Aristos tapped their finger cymbals, all doing it in the same instant, creating one single note that vibrated in the air. They were like a great machine, one entity composed of two thousand glittering pieces. Some even cloned themselves rather than having children, the ultimate narcissists, unable to envision any greater progeny than themselves.

  “We are gratified,” Jaibriol said, “by the support offered from this circle of nobility for the challenges faced by ESComm during these difficult days. It pleases us to acknowledge the rising of the sun over Glory.” Which was a bald lie. He had just said, Thank you all for your concern over General Barthol and aren’t we all glad the bastard will live after all. He should be relieved Barthol was going to recover; Eube hadn’t lost a Joint Commander and the empress hadn’t assassinated her own nephew. But he could never celebrate the survival of his son’s murderer.

  Another chime sounded from the assembly, followed by silence as they waited for him to continue. Jaibriol said, “We are met this day to consider a petition from those lesser beings who presume to share the stars with our esteemed populations.” Which was an absurdly insulting way to present the Skolian proposal, but given its outrageous nature, the more he played to the Aristo sense of superiority, the more likely they were to listen. They were still going to pulverize the idea, but what the hell. He had to try. At least the assembly was listening, all of them sitting ther
e in silence, the forever unrepentant subjects of Prince Del-Kurj’s furious “Carnelians Finale,” waiting to see why the odiously pitiful Skolians dared petition them.

  “It would seem,” Jaibriol continued, “that a desire for neighborly relations motivates our petitioners.”

  A trickle of chimes rolled through the hall like water burbling over stones, the melody of laughter. They felt about as neighborly with the Skolians as a battalion of waroids.

  “In matters of trade and treaty,” Jaibriol said, “our optimistic neighbors find propitious the concept of an exalted assemblage such as that which graces the Hall of Providence today, but in a setting offered by their Allied neighbors.” In other words, the Skolians wanted to meet face-to-face on Earth for the summit. He had no doubt the Aristos understood his implication with the phrase “their Allied neighbors.” The “Carnelians Finale” song had spurred the Allied Worlds of Earth to change their declared neutrality on Eubian-Skolian conflicts to a wary alliance with Skolia.

  Cymbals chimed in an erratic rhythm and voices rose. No one bothered to page Protocol’s console with a request to speak, however. The petition was too absurd. Too ridiculously Skolian. It would have been insulting if their emperor hadn’t presented it with amusement.

  Jaibriol suspected the impulse for the proposal came from Kelric. He understood why. He agreed. He wanted it as well. But the Skolians hadn’t offered a way to make this work. They probably didn’t have one. If he ordered his people to Earth for an in-person summit because the Skolians requested it, the Aristos would find it unforgivably offensive, dooming the negotiations to failure.