Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 6

Now it would forever be G4.

Behind Qox, the door opened. He knew no one could enter here without his blessing. His bodyguards stood outside and his defense systems remained in operation. Still, hearing a door open behind his back, he wondered if this, then, would be the day of his death.

Without turning he said, "So."

"My greetings," his wife said.

Qox turned to her. The bare room needed no adornment with the Empress Viquara present. He had chosen her for one thing and one thing alone: s.e.xual beauty. That she also turned out to be intelligent had been an unexpected a.s.set.

Dark lashes framed her red eyes. She had a cla.s.sic face, with skin as smooth as snow-marble. Her hair s.h.i.+mmered, straight and black, glittering in the cold light. After twenty-six years of marriage, her shape remained perfect. How she maintained her youth he never bothered to ask, but she was even more the epitome of Highton beauty now than the day she had met him, at their wedding twenty-six years ago, when she was fourteen.

He had sterilized her using methods so discreet she never knew it happened. All she understood was that despite prewedding medical reports to the contrary, she was barren.

She urged him to allow her artificial methods to produce his heirs. He refused, of course. It violated Highton beliefs. It was done anyway, but it served him no purpose to grant her the children she craved. He left her one honorable choice, an ancient solution practiced within their, highest caste, where the need for heirs outweighed matters such as love. He offered to let her commit suicide.

She begged for clemency, wept, used the many feminine gifts nature granted her. In the end he "relented." The price of her life was an oath: when he found a woman to produce his heir, Viquara would acknowledge the child as her own and ask no questions. So the empress kept her t.i.tle and her life, and Ur Qox had his Rhon son. As promised, his wife gave no hint the boy wasn't hers. Ur had hidden Jaibriol until a year ago, and by then Viquara played her role with ease.

Now she murmured her husband's name, Oojoor, making it silken, with a glottal stop after the first syllable, a sound shared by Skolian and Eubian languages alike, all derived from an ancient tongue five thousand years old. He went over and took her into his arms, brus.h.i.+ng his lips over her hair. He had never determined if she loved him or was even capable of love. It didn't matter. She gave him what he required, as did all people, when he required it, as he required it.

If they didn't, he got rid of them.

Their bodyguards waited outside, four men in the stark midnight uniforms of the Razers, the secret police who served the emperor. Gunmetal collars glinted around their necks, the only outward indication the officers were slaves. Thus guarded, the emperor and empress descended to the ground level of the palace.

Black and gold diamonds tiled the floor, and columns graced the huge, airy halls. The glittering white pillars and walls were made from neither diamond nor snow-marble, but a blend of the two, created atom-by-atom by nan.o.bots. As with all nanotech, the bots were no magic machines, simply molecules capable of one function, in this case docking certain atoms into a crystal lattice.

The group stopped at the great double doors to the Hall of Circles. One of the Razers touched his collar and the doors opened. Inside, high-backed benches ringed the circular hall, glittering white and set with red brocade cus.h.i.+ons. Aristos dressed in glistening black clothes filled every bench, hundreds of Aristos, from all three castes: Highton Aristos, who controlled the government and military; Diamond Aristos, who attended to commerce, production, and banks; and Silicate Aristos, who produced the means of pleasure, including providers. All had ruby eyes, s.h.i.+mmering black hair, and perfect faces.

They looked the same.

They moved the same.

They spoke the same.

They thought the same.

They watched their emperor and empress walk up an aisle that radiated like a spoke from a dais in the center of the Hall. Ur Qox mounted the dais with Viquara at his side. Then he sat in the glittering red chair there. The Carnelian Throne.

In unison, three hundred Aristos raised their arms and clicked three hundred cymbals. One blended note rang through the Hall. It was a rare expression of grief, merited only by the highest among them. Today they mourned the Highton Heir. In silence, they swore an oath: the Ruby Dynasty would pay for the loss of Jaibriol II, Eube's s.h.i.+ning son.

Soz stopped by a hip-high boulder, the laser carbine slung over her shoulder. Jaibriol sat down on the boulder, holding the valise with their computers.

The sky arched overhead like a pale blue eggsh.e.l.l. To the east, the red dwarf sun gleamed in a molten disk of gold. Although the "red" star was actually hot enough to appear white to the human eye, Prism's atmosphere scattered away enough of its scant blue light that it shone orange instead. To the west, the blue-white sun blazed, intense and white. Soz had named the red dwarf Red and the blue-white sun Blue, at least until Jaibriol thought of something better. Although Blue was well over three times the diameter of Red, it was far enough away that Red's molten disk appeared more than six times as large in the sky, almost three times as big as Sol when seen from Earth.

Forest surrounded Soz and Jaibriol, except for the clear stretch of ground before them. A few meters away, a wide river swelled over fallen trees.

"This is beautiful," Jaibriol said. "The best site so far."

She indicated a hill across the river. "We could build a house up there."

He nodded, absently rubbing his chest through his blue environment suit.

"Is the pollen bothering you?" Soz asked.

"Not since I took MedComp's last concoction." With a grin, he spoke in a nasal tw.a.n.g. "Not even a clogged nose."

At the sight of his smile, Soz sighed. Her mind started imagining him without the environment suit.

He made an exasperated noise. "Saints almighty, you only think about one thing." He put his arms around her waist and drew her between his knees. "You've no respect for my mental facilities, Wife."

She smiled. "I respect all your facilities, Husband. Mental and otherwise."

His face gentled. Then he sighed and let her go. "We should get to work."

Soz would have rather explored his facilities, but she knew he was right. So instead, she said, "All right. You run reconnaissance while I secure the river."

He laughed. "This isn't a military operation."

She grinned and gave him a salute. "Onward."

They chose a spot by the river with a small beach enclosed by palms that chattered when their crackling fronds rubbed together. Across the river, gigantic roots buckled out of the bank. The only candidate for the tree that had been nourished by those monstrous roots was a toppled trunk rotting in the water.

Over the next hour, Jaibriol explored and Soz worked with GeoComp, a.n.a.lyzing the samples Jaibriol brought her. The results agreed with those from the other sites they had investigated. About half the foliage was edible, a quarter mildly poisonous, the rest lethal. The water also tested the same, drinkable if they boiled it, though MedComp predicted they would eventually develop immunities to its odd honeycomb bacteria. The soil had the dark green color they had seen elsewhere, derived from chlorophylls mixed in with the loam. She suspected it would grow good crops, if they could figure out what to plant.

Although Prism was a young world, the age of Precambrian Earth, its life-forms had a sophistication more congruent with Earth's Paleozoic Era. It thrived with primitive flora and, to a lesser extent, with fauna. The animals were unlike anything Soz had seen before. Gold and red fliers hummed through the air, part crustacean, part reptile, and part plant, with chitinous hides that incorporated chlorophyll.

The first scan made by the Earth probe, after it found the planet, had detected what seemed to be a humanoid species. Subsequent scans revealed the "humanoids" were actually bizarre plants that could move by bending over until their crowns touched the ground, sending down roots from their crowns in the new location, then pulling out their original roots and straightening up until their old roots became their new crowns.

Standing on the beach, Soz looked across the river. The forest thinned on the other side, and a loamy green hill swelled up from the bank, peaking after a few hundred meters. If the soil was as good there as here, she and Jaibriol may have found their homestead. She nodded, then leaned down and pulled off her hiking boots.

"What are you doing?" Jaibriol asked.

She straightened up to see him a few meters down the beach. "Going wading."

"How do you know it's safe?"

"Calculated risk." She motioned at the water. "We've found no predators or other dangers. Nothing but slugs and bugs." The "bugs" were actually more like tiny crustacean-plants.

"'Slugs and bugs' can hurt," Jaibriol said. "What if they sting you or something?"

"MedComp says they have no poison."

"The ones we've checked." He came over to her, holding the carbine at his side. "We can't have a.n.a.lyzed more than a tiny portion of the species here."

She unfastened the collar of her environment suit. "I've done planetary surveys for ISC. This world fits well within accepted standards."

"That doesn't mean nothing in the water can hurt you."

"I'll take the air syringe. If I get a sting or bite, it can make an antidote."

He frowned. "How? It has no history of this world."

"We've given it one." She indicated the valise with their computers. "Even one sample tells it a lot, and we've given it hundreds, more than enough to map the chemistry here. MedComp is already designing antidotes."

Jaibriol wiped the dusting of pollen on his cheek. "MedComp is effective, I'll grant that. But you shouldn't take chances."

"We have to try sooner or later. We can't avoid risks forever."

Softly he said, "I don't want to have to bury you."

She laid her palm against his cheek. "You won't."

"I'll come with you."

"One of us should stay here. Just in case."

"I'll go then."

"Jaibriol, I'm trained to do this."

He blew out a gust of air. After a moment he said, "I'll cover you from the bank."

She touched his hand. "That would be good."

Soz peeled off her clothes, then strapped on her belt and hung it with the syringe, a knife, her palmtop, a life jacket folded into a palm-sized square, and a cord reinforced with nanotube fibers, making it as thin as spider silk and as strong as steel. Then she waded into the river.

Clear water swirled around her legs. She let it run through the palmtop a.n.a.lyzer, recording more of the rich bacteria life. Spatula leaves floated past her and rocks rolled under her feet. By the time she reached the middle of the river, the water had risen to her waist. Turning, she saw Jaibriol on the beach. She waved and he nodded to her, the carbine gripped in his hand.

Soz tipped her face up to the sky. Suns.h.i.+ne streamed around her, blue and gold mixed together, clear and bright. Although the human eye wasn't sensitive enough to detect the differences in light intensity when one sun was up as compared to both, her augmented optics registered that Red put out most of its light in the infrared whereas Blue put out most of its in the visible and ultraviolet. Prism's rich atmosphere, a thick ozone layer, and extensive oceans helped protect her fragile human inhabitants, both from Red's rare but powerful flares, which could s.h.i.+ne with the light of many suns, and from Blue's UV radiation.

Turning her attention to the river, Soz saw her two shadows rippling in the water, one in front of her and the other behind. All around her, the day chattered with life. Prism was an attractive world, open and free, lonely perhaps, but relatively benign all things considered. She and Jaibriol had been fortunate.

She surveyed the opposite bank, where water gurgled over the half-submerged cage of giant roots. The roots had a red tinge and were mottled with purple moss. Vines grew over them, ropy cables with leaves that resembled red sponges.

Soz waded to the roots. The river ran deeper here, cutting a trench as the gnarled roots funneled its flow. She climbed up on a root that buckled out of the water, a pulpy arch as thick as her waist. Sitting on her perch, she dangled her legs above the river and sc.r.a.ped her finger through a patch of moss, fetching a sample for the a.n.a.lyzer.

Water splashed at her feet. She looked to see ripples in the river, as if a small creature had broken the surface and disappeared.

"Soz?" Jaibriol called. "Are you all right?"

She glanced up at him. "Fine," she called.

He stayed at the water's edge, s.h.i.+fting the carbine from hand to hand. Soz gave her moss sample to the palmtop, then sc.r.a.ped her fingernail along the root for another sample.

Water splashed again.

Her reflexes kicked in and she looked faster this time. It still wasn't enough; whatever had made the splash had already disappeared.

She directed a thought to her spinal node. a.n.a.lysis.

The disturbances suggest a living organism. Or something falling in the water.

Soz looked around. A few roots arched above her head, with smooth surfaces patched by moss. Could moss be falling?

Possibly. However, it would probably make a different sound.

She peered at the water. Maybe something is hiding down there.

After a pause, it thought, Estimated probability that an organism hides in roots: 72 percent; under rocks: 48 percent; that it jumped out of water: 24 percent; that something dropped into water: 17 percent; that water exhibited random turbulence: 9 percent; that root snapped out of water: 3 percent; that rock jumped out of water: 0.05 percent. Its response came in a normal-speed mode, as words, rather than in the accelerated data dump of a fast-speed battle mode.

She smiled. Rocks jumping out of water?

The probability is small, it admitted.

You think something is hiding down there?

This is a reasonable guess. A blue light glowed on her palmtop, indicating it was receiving IR from her node, sent via fiberoptic threads in her body to her wrist socket, which then conveyed the signal to the palmtop. The light turned purple as the palmtop sent data back to her internal biomech web. Then her node said, I suggest a.n.a.lyzing these roots further. The sample you gave the palmtop suggests a chemistry different from other life in this area.

Different how?

Part plant, part crystalline.

That intrigued Soz. Does it photosyn- This splash was much bigger.

The root under her whiplashed, flinging Soz into the river. As she hit the water, a root snapped around her ribs, pinning her right arm, and another circled her waist. Then the roots whipped her out of the water.

Her reflexes responded even before her brain registered what had happened. With her pinned arm she strained against the coil around her torso, pus.h.i.+ng outward to keep it from crus.h.i.+ng her ribs. She worked her other hand into the coil around her waist, going for her knife.

The root slapped her into the water, down to the riverbed. It sc.r.a.ped her face-first along the rocks and she gulped in water. Nanomeds in her body tried to ferry the water out of her lungs, but it came in too fast for the meds to keep her from drowning.

She managed to get her arm the rest of the way inside the coil around her waist and push outward with both arms. Her hydraulics were working at maximum, and the heat produced by her microfusion reactor dissipated into the water.

With a sudden frenzy, the coils yanked her out of the river and she gasped, choking up water she had swallowed. Trees and sky spun past and a burning stench a.s.sailed her senses. She glimpsed Jaibriol sighting across the river with the carbine.

Soz kept working her arm down her side until her fingers brushed the hilt of her knife. She manipulated it free and stabbed the blade up into the root. The response was immediate: the root whipped her back toward the bank. She kept stabbing, struggling to breathe. Black spots danced in her vision. Her biomech could operate for a few moments without her conscious mind to direct it, but she doubted it would be long enough to save her life.

She glimpsed Jaibriol again, sighting on the roots. Then the roots jammed her into the center of their ma.s.s and held her there, blocking his shot. Blackened scars showed in the central ma.s.s and the stench of scorched pulp saturated the air. Her arm felt numb, but her node kept her hydraulics working and she kept stabbing the coil. The spots of darkness in her vision grew.

With a cracking snap, the root fell away from her waist. Using her freed arm, she hacked at the coil around her ribs with more force, again and again, until it too loosened. As it lost its grip, she tumbled into the water. Other roots thrashed at her, injured now, blind as she wriggled through their seething mess.

A loop of vine caught her ankle. More vines wrapped around her legs and arms, and their spongy red leaves covered her face. They dragged her out of the water, back into the center of the roots. The burning stench was even worse now, and Soz choked on the smell. Jaibriol must have hit the roots again when she was in the water.

As a backup system the vines were less effective than the roots. She sawed at them, snapping one cord, then another, then another. More curled around her body, but they were weakening, moving with erratic jerks. She kept at it, cutting, cutting, cutting, until the weight of her body became more than the vines could hold and she slid into the water. A few loops tangled around her legs, but a good hard kick sent her arrowing out of their grasp.

She reached the center of the river and stood up. Jaibriol was running through the water, sending sprays of liquid into the air. His emotions beat against her, a mix of fear, relief, and fury. She waded toward him and they collided when they met. Sliding his arm around her waist, he pulled her against his side. Together, they stumbled out of the river. Soz collapsed onto the bank and lay on her back, half in and half out of the water, gasping for breath.

He knelt beside her. "Are you all right?"