V: Plague

V
Plague

“We need the Skolian and Trader delegates to meet in person,” Kelric said.

Dehya stared at him. “You must be joking.”

They were in a conference room of chrome and platinum hues, at a table with tech-mech panels disguised as gleaming metal artwork. Kelric sat sprawled in a big chair. “How else will we work out the treaty?” he asked. “Everyone and her sister’s uncle is trying to undermine the damn thing.”

Dehya traced an arc on the chromed table with her graceful finger. Kelric wasn’t fooled. Yes, his aunt looked fragile. But in her mind and character, she was one of the strongest people he knew. Although her face had a childlike quality, she was almost the oldest living human, second only to her ex-husband, a retired admiral on Earth. Her stratospheric intellect coupled with the knowledge she had accumulated throughout her life, all one hundred and seventy years of it, had turned her into a greater force than any of his military commanders or the political strategists in the Assembly. To the rest of humanity outside her family, she was a reclusive legend who never appeared in public, Dyhianna Selei, the enigmatic and powerful Ruby Pharaoh.

Right now, though, she was just being obstinate.

“I need your support to make my idea work,” Kelric said.

“It’s not an idea,” she said. “It’s a bout of insanity.”

“We can figure out how to make it work.” He rubbed his shoulder, trying to ease the stiff muscles. His knee joints hurt, too. Damn war injuries. “If anyone can help me do that, it’s you.”

She tilted her head, studying him. Her eyes were green, like the foliage deep in a forest, but a translucent film covered them, the vestigial inner eyelid she had inherited from her father. In Dehya, the lid was almost invisible, just a trace of gold and rosy hues. Sunrise eyes, people called them. They were beautiful, large and heavily fringed with black lashes, and right now they were filled with her suspicion that he had gone nuts.

“What makes you think I want to make it work?” she asked.

“You supported the peace treaty,” Kelric said. “If we plan to trade with the Eubians instead of trying to annihilate them, we have a million details we need to work out, everything from minor import tariffs to how a civilization like ours that considers human freedom an inalienable right is going to trade with an empire whose economy is based on slavery.”

“I agree, we need a summit,” she said. “But this idea to have us all meet face to face is crazy. The delegates from both governments would probably rather be dropped on a hill of starving vampire-ants.”

Kelric gave a startled snort of laughter. “That’s a lovely thought.”

“Yes, well, I can’t imagine a bigger security nightmare than putting a bunch of Trader sadists with delusions of godhood into the same hall as our vociferously contentious Assembly councilors. They’d all want to strangle each other.”

“It would be a security problem,” he admitted. To describe it more accurately would involve profanity he didn’t use around Dehya.

“We can do the summit in a virtual reality simulation,” she said. “We stay here, the Traders stay there, and everyone is safe. The Kyle web will give us almost instantaneous communications.”

Kelric scowled at her. “It’s too easy to lie in virtual reality. And don’t tell me about how we have all these wonderful protocols to prevent it. Everyone cheats.”

“That may be,” she said. “But a virtual summit is the best we’re going to get.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

A hum interrupted their argument, coming from a gold square in the table. Kelric touched the panel. “Skolia here.”

A holo appeared above the table, the head and shoulders of Admiral Chad Barzun, Kelric’s top naval commander. Normally the granite-haired officer had a gratifyingly calm and solid demeanor, but today he looked frazzled.

“Sir, we have a situation,” Chad told him.

Damn. Anything the even-keeled Barzun described as a “situation” was more likely a disaster of interstellar proportions, like a declaration of war from the Traders. “What is it?” Kelric asked.

“It’s your brother,” Chad said. “Prince Del-Kurj.”

Kelric winced. That could be even more stressful than a new war. “What’s he done?”

“One of his songs has been released.”

“A lot of his songs have been released,” Kelric said. “Granted, they’re loud. But the last time I checked, shouting rock music didn’t qualify as a star-spanning crisis.”

Chad cleared his throat. “Sir, it’s ‘Carnelians Finale.’ ”

Hell and damnation. Suppressing the “Finale” had been the only tri-lateral agreement ever made between Skolia, Eube, and Allied Worlds of Earth. It hadn’t been easy, but they had managed to erase the song off the interstellar meshes before it exploded relations between Eube and Skolia.

Now here it was again, just as Skolia and Eube were embarking on an already nearly impossible peace process.

Aliana grunted as she strained to throw Tide over her hip. It didn’t work; he was as immobile as reinforced zirconablock. Not that she’d ever actually seen zirconablock, which was supposedly the heaviest substance in the universe. Like yeah, heavier than a black hole. Tide was still a chunk, though. She barely managed to twist out from under him. Heaving in breaths, her hair straggling in her eyes, she stood there with her arms hanging at her sides. They were in the basement of one of Harindor’s “palaces” where his customers injected, inhaled, or imbibed his wares. She and Tide had been working for an hour, doing every whacked out exercise he could think of, and she’d had her fill.

Tide straightened up, huge and looming, and grinned at her. “Getting worn out, girl?”

“Don’t call me a girl, vomit breath,” Aliana muttered.

“Why? You a boy?” He was amused rather than tired, which just annoyed her more.

“Where’d you learn to fight so well?” she asked, curious despite herself.

His smile vanished.

“What?” she asked. It seemed a perfectly reasonable question.

It was a moment before he responded. Finally he said, “I used to be a Razer.”

Aliana stared at him. “Flaming crap.”

He laughed. “That sounds unpleasant.”

“You were secret police? For Aristos?”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

Like hell it was nothing. “Why aren’t you a Razer anymore? I thought it was for life.”

“My line malfunctioned.” His face had become neutral, impossible to read. “So they decommissioned all of us.”

Malfunctioned? It made him sound like a machine. “You mean there are more like you?”

“I don’t know if any of the others are left. But yeah, there used to be more.”

“How’d you malfunction?” She asked. With a smirk, she added, “You going to go psycho on me?”

He stalked over to her. “Listen, byte-babe, shove a mesh-mole in it.”

“A what?”

He touched her nose. “Mesh-mole. It’s a noxious piece of code that crawls around your mesh system puking its innards all over your pristine modules, until your system is so mucked up, it can’t remember the last time you went to the crap-shack.”

Aliana tried not to laugh, mainly because it would interfere with her attempts to glare at him. “That’s disgusting, Tide. You’re the one told me you went haywire. So what’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. It was another Razer in my line. I don’t know what he did. He’s dead. All I know is his name. Hidaka. Sam Hidaka.”

“I thought Razers didn’t have names. Just serial numbers.”

He regarded her sourly. “That’s why my line was decommissioned.”

“Oh. You were too human.” That was nuts. She liked him this way, not that she would ever admit it out loud. He wasn’t bad looking, either, especially with that impressive scar that ran down his left cheek. He must have taken the injury after he stopped being a Razer; otherwise the Aristo he guarded would have had the scar fixed. Aristos hated imperfection. They were gods, after all. Though if her stepfather Caul was any example of their progeny, she sure as shingles didn’t see anything godlike in what they sired.

“You have a name,” she pointed out.

He lifted his chin. “Damn right.”

She knew she should be afraid of him, but had to be one of the most interesting things that had ever happened to her. A Razer! “So how come you call yourself Tidewater?”

Now he seemed self-conscious, quite an accomplishment given that usually he looked either emotionless or ready to kill someone. “I liked the tide outside the mansion of the Highton I served. The oceans on the planet Glory are crazy like you wouldn’t believe. It’s because the planet has so many moons. I loved it when the tide came in. The waves crashed and tore up the beach.”

He loved it. Everyone knew Razers had no emotions. No wonder they had decommissioned his line. Not that she would call an ability to act like a human being defective.

“Listen, Tide,” she said. “I like you this way. So screw whoever decommissioned you.”

“I thought you hated me.”

“That too.”

He smiled. “You’re a piece of work, Zina. But listen, don’t ever say ‘screw whoever decommissioned you.’ The decision was made by an Aristo. You could go to the pits for that.”

“Oh.” Of course an Aristo was involved. She’d never heard anyone call her Zina before, probably for her third name, Azina. She liked it. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good.” He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing his sweat. “Anyway, you’re making a little progress with the training.”

Aliana grinned at him. “I’ll whip your ass next time, mesh-mole man.”

She thought he’d laugh. Instead he just looked at her oddly. What had she said? For a machine with no emotions, he was certainly moody.

“You mad at me?” she asked.

“No.” He strode across the basement to where he’d dumped his gear. “See you tomorrow.”

“Sure.” What had she said wrong?

No, it wasn’t wrong. Her ability to sense moods told her that she had shaken him up, not angered him. It didn’t help much, though. She could tell how he felt but not why. She had walls in her mind. They protected her mentally, but she had no idea what to do about them.

After she and Tide parted, Aliana walked home, alone in the night on a road slick with oil and drizzle. A sputtering light orb floated above her, throwing harsh glints on the ground. It was then that she realized what she had said. Tide was a Razer, a machine without a soul or free will, an enforcer who obeyed every command from his owner.

She had called him a man.

“Expecting Skolians to show respect is a contradiction in terms,” Barthol Iquar said. “They insult the universe by their mere existence.”

Jaibriol sat watching Barthol and his other advisors argue. He brooded in the sunlight that slanted through tall windows around the room. His great-grandfather, Emperor Eube Qox, had terraformed this world to fit his idea of paradise, named it Eube’s Glory, and declared himself its god. Now Jaibriol sat here listening to Eube’s megalomaniacal legacy, the Aristos, as they debated in their maddening, never-say-anything-straight style of speech. They were in fine form today, so adept at their circuitous arguments, it made his head ache. He wanted to say, Just make your flaming point. Of course he couldn’t. They spoke directly only to kin, lovers, or slaves. Here it would be the ultimate insult. Aristos had assassinated each other for less, and he was tired of people trying to kill him.

Anyway, he knew the point. A small holo of the song that had created this disaster played silently above the oval table where they all sat. Even without the sound, he knew the words. He had heard “Carnelians Finale” plenty of times nine years ago, when Del had shouted it to the stars in his magnificent voice. You dehumanize us, your critics they all died, you answered defiance with massive genocide. Del was singing to him, Jaibriol the Third, the Carnelian tyrant of Eube.

The worst of it was, the words were true, not for Jaibriol or his father, but for their predecessors, who had perpetrated so many sins on humanity, Jaibriol wondered that they hadn’t incinerated in the hell of their own iniquity. That he himself hadn’t committed genocide or tortured anyone meant nothing. He let the Aristos continue because the alternative was even worse. If he overtly sought to stop the oppression in an empire where the economy, politics, and social structure were based on that tyranny, someone would just kill him and the atrocities would continue. He had to use more subtle ways to bring about change.

Del would never know the irony, that the emperor of Eube he sang to with such fury was actually his nephew, a Ruby psion—and a member of the Skolian Triad.

The Triad. It was Jaibriol’s nightmare. The Ruby Dynasty used it to create a star-spanning mesh in the Kyle universe, a place where a telepath went in mind only, not body. People with similar thoughts were next to each other in Kyle space no matter what their location in the normal universe. It made possible almost instant communication across interstellar distances. Only Skolians could do it. That was why Eube had never conquered them despite ESComm’s greater forces. Skolia sailed, Eube lumbered.

Telepaths capable of using the Kyle web were less than one in a million. Aristos called them “providers” and craved their agony with a sadistic addiction they claimed was godlike exaltation. Even if they were willing to use their providers create a Kyle web, it wouldn’t work. Only Ruby psions had the strength to create, support, and extend that vast mesh; such work would tear apart the mind of anyone else. Eube had no Kyle web because only the Ruby Dynasty were Ruby psions, and so far ESComm had failed to keep any Ruby they captured.

Jaibriol gritted his teeth. Neither brilliance nor political acumen had brought him his secret Triad position. It had been a damned accident. If the Fates existed, they must be laughing at him, for last year he had been in the Lock—a Triad command center that ESComm had stolen—when Kelric unknowingly activated it from light years away. The Lock had blasted Jaibriol into the Triad, locking him into a three-way link with Kelric and the Ruby Pharaoh. So it was that Jaibriol had become the tool his forefathers designed him for when they secretly bred the forbidden genes of a Ruby telepath into the Qox Dynasty. He could create a Kyle web—and no one here had a clue.

Someone kicked his foot under the table. He glanced up to find Tarquine watching him. She looked bored, but he knew what she was about. His empress wanted him to pay attention to his council before they got him into trouble.

Parizian Sakaar, his Minister of Trade, was speaking. “How more blatant the puppet,” he asked, “than to show it in full view of the gallery?”

Jaibriol had followed enough to the conversation to know the “puppet” was Del. Given the Aristo love of hyperbole, especially when it concerned either their own greatness, the “gallery” probably meant the rest of the universe, which was presumably watching the Aristos and the purported sins of their enemies.

Corbal raised his eyebrows at the comment. He was seated across from Jaibriol, his white hair glittering in the light from the orbs hovering near the ceiling. He looked relaxed, but Jaibriol knew better. They all wanted an answer to the same question: was it Del who had released “Carnelians Finale”? If so, it was one hell of a hostile act toward the peace treaty. If Jaibriol had to lay odds, he would have bet the person who had put it out there was at this table. Sakaar maybe, who as Trade Minister had a vested interest in controlling the interstellar markets, in particular the slave trade, which the Skolians would never acknowledge as legal. Or perhaps Barthol Iquar, filling his big chair at the end. If Tarquine hadn’t offered to name him as heir to the unconscionably wealthy Iquar Line, the general would probably have preferred being dragged through hot tar to signing the document.

Corbal spoke to Sakaar. “In this day and age, even a puppet can act of its own volition.”

“Puppets don’t make choices,” Calope Muze said. “Someone else pulls the strings.” An elegant woman with silvery hair, she served as High Judge, the judiciary among Jaibriol’s advisors. As his cousin, she was second in line to the Carnelian Throne after Corbal.

Azile Xir spoke dryly. “Puppets and strings should remain inanimate objects.” He was Corbal’s son and also the Minister of Intelligence. Jaibriol’s top spy man. Although Azile was twenty years older than Jaibriol, he was the youngest person here after the emperor.

Corbal snorted. “In my experience, inanimate objects don’t exercise their vocal cords, especially with so much energy.”

Azile smiled slightly. “Your use of the word energy is kind.”

A low laugh went around the table while the other Ministers looked suitably pained at the thought of Del’s “energy.” Jaibriol doubted any of them would have been caught dead listening to holo-rock if a Ruby prince hadn’t been involved.

“Actually,” Jaibriol said, “I like his music.”

Silence descended while everyone stared at him. They didn’t seem insulted by his direct speech, just confused. Except Tarquine, with her deadpan expression. Only Jaibriol knew her well enough to realize she was struggling not to laugh. Everyone else assumed he was making some abstrusely clever insult about Del combined with a pithy political reference, all done in such a convoluted manner that none of them could figure out what the hell he meant. Jaibriol just sat looking royal and enigmatic.

Calope inclined her head. “An appropriate expression of appreciation, Your Highness.”

The others nodded as if Jaibriol had said something brilliant. It would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so serious. He had first heard Del sing ten years ago, when Jaibriol had been a teenager, and he had liked the music right off. He even liked “Carnelians Finale,” or he would have if it hadn’t been about him.

Glancing down the table, he saw Barthol watching him with a narrowed gaze. Not good. Well, so, time to put Barthol on the spot.

Jaibriol said, “I’m curious how our military offices view this business of Earth and her supposed songbird.”

“Birds don’t exist on Glory,” Barthol said in a bored voice. “So I can’t imagine why any office would bother with them.”

“Unless the songbird is neither from Earth nor Glory,” Calop said. “But instead Skolian. It wouldn’t be valid for Earthers to think of him as their own or for Eube to consider him such.”

“Who knows if Earthers even think,” Barthol said. “Let alone if any of it is valid.”

It irritated Jaibriol that his top army commander couldn’t give a more useful comment on the situation than his scorn for Earth. “We need more than questions about intelligence,” Jaibriol said. He wanted the general’s assessment of a situation that he suspected Barthol might have deliberately created in secret.

“Indeed,” Barthol said indolently. “Your Highness is most esteemed to remark on its lack.”

Enough of this, Jaibriol thought. He needed to find out what Barthol was up to, not listen to insults about someone’s supposed lack of intelligence, which could refer to him, to Azile Xir, or to who the hell knew what. He eased down his mental shields. The pressure from the gathered Aristos increased until he wanted to jump up, stride around the room, anything to alleviate the painful sense of falling into blackness. But he caught a sense of Barthol’s surface thoughts. So that was the general’s game: stir up anger by insinuating the Allied Worlds released the song as a back-handed slap against Eube. Barthol was deflecting attention from himself.

Pain sparked in Jaibriol’s temples and he withdrew, raising his mental barriers.

Corbal was speaking. “Perhaps the people of Earth are hiding secrets about their borrowed songbird and his music. They would resist hunts by offworlders to uncover such secrets.”

Tarquine waved her hand, dismissing his comment. “The only thing Earthers hide when the glorious lions come out to hunt is their own meek selves. If their history is any indication, they would rather pretend the lions don’t exist than risk keeping dangerous secrets from us.”

Corbal answered with an edge. “The lion is native to Earth, Your Highness. Not Glory.”

She regarded him with her exquisitely aloof Highton gaze. “All beasts come from the same place, Corbal dear, if you go back far enough in our ancestry.” With a voice like whiskey, she added, “Some of us are just more deadly than others.”

For flaming sake. The last thing Jaibriol needed right now was another fight between Corbal and Tarquine. “General Iquar,” he said to Barthol. “Your knowledge pleases us. Continue.”

A muscle just barely twitched under Barthol’s eye; if Jaibriol hadn’t looked for such a sign, he would have missed it. He knew what it meant. The general didn’t like being asked to support his implications that the Allieds released the song to insult Eube. Tough. Jaibriol had no intention of sitting back while Barthol started rumors that would damage Eube’s already shaky relations with the Allied Worlds of Earth.

His headache was growing worse.

The interstellar mesh wasn’t one system. It wasn’t a million. Not a trillion.

No one knew how many meshes networked human space; every human being alive operated hundreds, thousands, even millions. The webs permeated cultures, they saturated people, cities, atmospheres. When meshes could be as small as atomic particles or as long as light years, when they infiltrated every aspect of life, even becoming part of human evolution, it was impossible to keep any place touched by humanity free of them. Individual nodes linked into community meshes, which linked into planetary meshes, which formed super meshes within a star system. Those systems communicated with the Skolian psiberweb through the Kyle web, linking across interstellar space. To gain access to the Kyle, the Allieds petitioned or paid for it and the Eubians stole it, until all of human space was connected across the star-flung reaches of three empires into an ever-evolving entity simply called The Mesh.

As with any form of life, The Mesh could become infected. It developed codes to protect itself. Antibodies. They worked with varying effectiveness, countering contagions it picked up from human civilization or discovered mutated within itself. Usually, an infestation in one network had little effect on another unless they were closely related. It was almost unheard of for an infection to spread throughout settled space, across three empires. A rare, rare phenomenon.

When it happened, people called it a mind-plague.

In the year 2288, only months after the historic signing of the first peace treaty between the Skolian and Eubian empires, a mind-plague exploded across the interstellar meshes.

It was called “Carnelians Finale.”