Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 58

"It wasn't stable with just us and the children," Soz said. "But we've more now, people willing to build with us."

Seth tried to absorb it all. "Will you ever come back?"

"I don't know," Soz said. "Not soon. We've found closure. Completion for our lives. Peace."

Jaibriol looked around the hallway. "Where is Jai?"

"He flew into a star," del-Kelric explained from the safety of his father's arms.

Jaibriol smiled at the boy. "Into a star?"

"He means to the stars," Lisi said. "Jai joined the Dawn Corps."

Soz stiffened. "He's not here?"

"I'm sorry." Seth suddenly felt awkward. "I wouldn't have signed the papers. But I had no idea."

"Why the Dawn Corps?" Soz asked.

"It was his way of mourning," Seth said. "He wanted to understand why you died."

Jaibriol exhaled. "Yes. That sounds like Jai."

"You must tell him where we've gone," Soz said. "Tell him that he can come home."

"I will." Seth paused. "Can you stay awhile?"

Jaibriol shook his head. "If it becomes known we lived, it could start the war again. G.o.ds only know what would happen if our marriage became public."

"We've heard rumors that ESComm captured the Third Lock," Seth said. It was the most recent news come in by star s.h.i.+p, as of yet unverified.

"But they have no Keys," Soz said. "Both Althor and Jaibriol are with us now."

"Is Althor all right?" Seth asked.

It was a moment before she answered. "He has some brain damage. Many of his memories are blurred or erased."

"I'm sorry," Seth said.

"He's still essentially the same person." Her face gentled. "My big brother."

"So the war really is over," Seth said. When Soz nodded, he asked, "Who do you think won?"

"If you mean," she said, "ISC or ESComm, I would say neither. Both took immense losses. At least most casualties were military." She paused. "I would say the peoples of Eube and Skolia won. Apparently Trader slaves are going free by the millions. What's happening with Skolia is more subtle, the easing of ISC control and the psiberweb, but in the long run, the effect may be just as dramatic."

"Eventually the web will come back up," Seth said.

"In a limited sense," she agreed. "But without a full Triad, it will be impossible to maintain on the same scale."

"Won't you still be in the Triad?"

She shook her head. "With the links frozen, I was able to get out. I suffered neural damage, but nothing drastic."

He stared at her. "You've already done it?"

"We went to Raylicon before we came here," Jaibriol said. "That's why it took so long."

"I used the Second Lock," Soz said. "It's in the ruins of a city that was the ancestral home of our hereditary bodyguards, the Abaj Tacalique."

Seth began to understand. The presence of the Second Lock on Raylicon was one reason it was so well defended a world. "What you're doing with all this-it's a way for Skolia and Eube to make peace, isn't it? Without ESComm to back up Eube and the psiberweb to back up Skolia, your peoples have to meet at the peace table."

"We can hope," Jaibriol said. "The chances are better now than ever in the past."

Seth regarded them uneasily, wondering if they knew Soz's parents were being held in Stockholm and her siblings confined to their home world of Lyshriol. The Allied authorities had turned their protective custody into imprisonment. As far as Seth knew, they had no intention of ever freeing the Imperial family.

"We certainly have every wish to see peace prevail among your peoples," Seth said.

Soz snorted. "And if it means keeping my family prisoners in their own homes, so be it, hmmm?"

"Ah. Well." He cleared his throat.

She started to speak, then stopped. Then she said, "I realize you can't give me secured information."

"I don't know any. I'm retired." It wasn't exactly true; he still did some work for the navy, training SEALs.

"I wondered if you had news of Dehya," Soz said.

The mention of his ex-wife's name caught Seth off guard. "She's on the Orbiter, isn't she?"

"Not anymore. She's-" Soz hesitated, as if unsure of the right word. "Gone, somehow. I can feel it. I'm afraid she, Taquinil, and Eldrin are dead."

Quietly Seth said, "I'm sorry." He didn't want to believe they had died. He put that knowledge away for when he had privacy to deal with the complicated forms of grief that came with it.

He understood why Sauscony and Jaibriol wanted to vanish, to set up their own community. Even after having lived several decades among the Imperial court, as the Pharaoh's consort, he still found it hard to believe one family could be so coveted by so many powers. Empires rose and fell in attempts to control the Ruby Dynasty. It was no wonder they wanted their own hidden community, where the rest of the universe would leave them alone.

"I hope you succeed with what you're trying to do," he said.

Jaibriol offered him his hand. "I don't know words enough to thank you for taking care of our children."

Seth shook his hand. "You honored me." He looked at the children and they smiled back, Lisi, Vitar, and del-Kelric, so beautiful to him. He would miss them until his last day alive.

Jai's first posting took him to the city of Porthaven on the Allied world known as Edgewhirl, near the border regions of Trader territory. The small, spa.r.s.e planet had formerly supported an atmosphere rich in chlorine as well as oxygen. Biosculptors adapted it to human life, though chlorine still remained in the biosphere, dissolved as salts in the oceans. The sun Whirligig, also called Clement's Star to honor one of the great literary names of Earth's Golden Age, spun so fast it resembled a squashed orange, huge and golden in the green sky.

Porthaven had grown up around a bustling starport. Now refugees poured into the starport from all over settled s.p.a.ce, and races from a thousand different worlds jammed the city.

With his ability to speak Iotic, Highton, Eubic, Skolian Flag, and English, Jai worked as a translator, helping people fill out forms. So he heard their lives. The taskmakers wanted freedom, education, and the right to go where they pleased, when they pleased. He was surprised to learn some had considerable financial resources or lands on their home worlds, often all used to pay for their escape.

One morning a huge, taciturn man came to his office. He had brown hair and eyes, but in the light they glinted, suggesting a metallic sheen hidden by the genetic alterations available in tattoo parlors. His gold wrist guards looked ancient, with no picotech, only engravings in a language Jai didn't recognize, though it resembled ancient Iotic. The outline of armbands showed under his sleeves, five on one arm and six on the other. The pouch hanging from his belt clinked when he sat down, as if it contained coins or perhaps dice.

Incredibly, the man knew almost nothing of the war. He asked many questions but refused to answer any. When he learned that every living member of the Ruby Dynasty was a prisoner and that both the Allieds and Traders intended to keep it that way, he became even more wary. In the end he declined to fill out any forms and left the office without giving his name.

Jai met one provider. Spectacularly beautiful, soft-spoken and frightened, she could barely talk. The director of his unit called him in to translate for the girl, who spoke only Highton. When Jai entered the director's office, the girl was standing by the window. She turned to him and froze, panic flus.h.i.+ng her face. Then she came over and knelt in front of Jai, her head bowed. Fl.u.s.tered, he looked around at the director and his staff, but no one seemed to know what to do.

Finally Jai got on his knees in front of her and spoke in Highton. "What are you doing down there?"

For a long moment she stared at him. Then she said, "You have brown eyes."

He understood then. She saw what no one from Earth noticed: he had the cla.s.sic Highton facial structure and build. Without his contacts, his eyes were Highton red.

Jai gave her a rea.s.suring smile and touched the patch on his Dawn Corps uniform. "I'm with the Allied Worlds."

Her relief flowed around them, unhindered, impossible to miss. She had never learned to hide or mute her emotions.

He took her back to his office and helped her fill out forms. And so he heard her story. Somehow he managed to stay calm. Somehow he managed to translate every last horrific detail without falling apart.

That evening he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep, unable to free his mind of the images she had left him. He felt sick for days.

Then a message came into the corps office from the Eubian world Garnet. A group of taskmakers there requested aid in "releasing a pavilion." It took a few back and forths before it became clear they wanted to relocate people who lived in the place they called a pavilion.

The corps rated the a.s.signment at the highest risk level. Garnet was inside Trader territory. At the moment the Aristo presence there was nonexistent, the owners unwilling to stay without ESComm protection. With Garnet cut off so thoroughly from Eube, some taskmakers had decided to flee. But if ESComm returned while the Dawn team was on Garnet, the team members could lose their own freedom and become slaves themselves. So the corps took only volunteers for the mission. With his linguistic abilities, Jai was one of the first chosen.

They landed in Agate, a city on a southern continent, in the evening. A welcoming committee of taskmakers put them up at an inn. The taskmakers had a simple request, in addition to their immigration concerns. They wanted their slave restraints taken off. Usually it was a matter of jimmying maglocks or breaking silicate-metal alloys, but the more complex cuffs and collars carried picotech linked to implanted systems within the taskmaker's body and had to be removed with the utmost care.

Despite the obvious competence the taskmakers had at running their lives and society, they were tentative, unable to make even minor decisions. Toward their owners they expressed a disquieting mix of wors.h.i.+p and fear. Most wrestled with guilt over their decision to seek sanctuary and several changed their minds.

Jai couldn't sleep that night. He lay staring at nothing while scenes of the cruelty his kind had wrought played over and over again in his mind.

A day on Garnet lasted twenty-three standard days, so the sleep period ended when night had barely begun. In the starry darkness, the Dawn team and their hosts boarded carts drawn by six-legged animals. Rocking and jolting along in the cart during the dark hours of a long night reminded Jai of Prism and his mood dimmed again.

A question haunted him: were his parents to give humanity no more than epic legends of the leaders who brought two empires to their knees? The myths growing around them had no reality he recognized. It was as if the truth had been thrown away by the cold immensity of a universe with no place for flimsy human love.

So were his thoughts as they rode to the Silicate pavilion. When the taskmakers said they didn't know what to do with the providers in the pavilion, the Dawn volunteers didn't understand. Everyone in the pavilion was an adult, yes? Yes, the taskmakers said. Couldn't they be retrained? How? the taskmakers asked.

Once at the pavilion, Jai understood. He saw the testing rooms, the bodysculpting labs, the examination tables. He walked through the isolation rooms, discipline rooms, memorization rooms, erotica rooms, silence rooms. He met the "adults" huddled in their sterile cubicles, slaves his own age, some even younger, staggeringly beautiful, terrified by the upheaval in their rigidly controlled lives, robbed of their humanity. He saw their glittering restraints, picotech so interwoven with their bodies that the team didn't dare remove the cuffs and collars.

Jai started his s.h.i.+ft handing out food and blankets to slaves who watched him in silence. At first the Dawn team thought none of the providers could talk. It was Jai who discovered that they understood Highton. Once again he became the completer of forms. He almost broke down. None of the providers had a name. A few gave him a number that listed them in some inventory, but most didn't even know that. None knew their age. None could read or write. For the section requesting their reasons for seeking sanctuary, they simply stared at him. Finally he wrote their descriptions of their daily routines. It needed no other explanation.

At the end of his s.h.i.+ft, Jai walked into the Garnet night. He went into the whispering woods outside the factory and knelt down, surrounded by the beautiful forest the Silicates had grown to adorn their pavilion. And then he was violently sick. He leaned over with his arms around his stomach and retched again and again, until he felt as if he were tearing out his insides.

Sometime later a hand touched his shoulder. Looking up, he saw Mik Fresnel and Carol Sanchez, two other corps volunteers. As Jai stood up, Mik handed him a handkerchief to clean himself. Jai wiped his mouth, unable to think of one word to say. This went beyond what he had expected even when he believed he knew the worst.

Carol spoke in a subdued voice. "We were wrong."

"Wrong?" Jai wiped the tears off his cheek. He hadn't realized he was crying.

"About the Traders," Mik said.

Carol shuddered. "How could anyone believe that without seeing it?"

"We must make sure it's recorded," Mik said. "Broadcast to the free worlds. Seen by everyone. So no one can ever forget or deny this existed."

Softly Jai said, "I will never forget."

After they finished on Garnet, they went to a new posting, a place like Porthaven. Again Jai filled out forms.

The news of Eldrin Valdoria's capture hit the settled worlds one by one. Without a central web, it had to be carried by star s.h.i.+p and so spread slowly. Dismay greeted it. The hope for peace, the dream that Eube and Skolia would finally be forced to the negotiating table, was false. Eube had their Lock and Key.

So also came the reports of Eube's atrocities, adding layer after layer of horror. The Allieds finally spoke in condemnation of what they had so long doubted existed. But even as free humanity struggled to regroup, to build defenses and offenses, so Eube rumbled with the beginnings of a power that could devastate the fragile accords being established all over settled s.p.a.ce.

The golden thread of hope everyone had nourished, that glistening tendril called peace, was about to break.

Skolia was tired. Eube was tired. The Allieds were tired. No one wanted another war. Even the Hightons desired calm. But regardless of that desire, the Aristos knew only one mode of thought. With the uniformity of a glittering machine, an inflexibility that took centuries to change, and an innate arrogance that never died, the Hightons responded as they had always responded. They sought to conquer.

Late one night Jai went to a tattoo gene parlor in the Old District of town. When he told the tattoo artist what he wanted, the man said it was impossible, that it couldn't be done unless Jai carried at least some of the necessary DNA. Jai insisted until finally the artist checked Jai's gene map. Subdued and uneasy, the man acknowledged that what Jai wanted was possible after all. But he refused to do it. Finally Jai paid him a great deal of money, both for the process and for his silence.

Jai returned to his rooms with no visible difference except a shaved head. He bought a cap and wore it everywhere after that, never removing it.

35.

The planet Delos was a member of the Allied Worlds. Earth had long ago declared it a neutral zone, sanctuary, a place where ISC and ESComm soldiers could walk together in harmony. Harmony was the Allieds' word, however. No Skolian and Traders had ever walked together on Delos, in harmony or otherwise.

Except two.

When the Dawn Corps landed on Delos, Jai went to the Arcade, a vibrant, booming boardwalk crowded with people. He tried to find the bar, Constantinides, where his parents had met, but no trace of it remained. So he walked on, a tall figure in jeans and sweater, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He still wore his cap, though his hair had grown back, altered forever by a top-of-the-line tattoo artist.

On an overcast day, he left the inn where the Dawn Corps was staying and went out into a large plaza. Pulling up his collar against the drizzle, he crossed to the emba.s.sies on the other side. Inside a glittering white building, he arranged to send a message. He wrote it in a language almost no one alive spoke, and he included a lock of his hair.

Then he returned to his inn. To wait.

Soz sat with Jaibriol on the hill. Spatula gra.s.s rustled around them, blown by the breezes of Prism. Only a few people in ESComm had known the planet existed and they were all dead now.

"Do you think he'll come home?" Soz asked.

"I don't know." Jaibriol spoke in a contemplative voice. "Jai is an adult now. He needs his independence. He was restless even before all this happened."

Soz felt a hotness in her eyes. She still remembered her firstborn as a baby in her arms. "Whatever he does, I hope he's happy."