Authors: Catherine Asaro
Except there weren’t any. Despite all the attempts to engineer a Rhon psion—before the ethics boards mercifully put a stop to them—my grandmother had been the only success. In the generations since her birth, on a thousand plus worlds and a billion different peoples, we knew of only two people who had been born naturally, and survived, with the full complement of Rhon genes: my father and my grandfather.
“Soz?” Rex touched my cheek. “Where are you?”
I looked at him, really
looked
in a way I had never done before. This man had been at my side for fifteen years, gone into combat with me, laughed with me, mourned with me. We had traveled across Skolia, both on duty and off, learning to know each other with an intimacy that had nothing to do with sex. Could I lie with him as wife? The answer was easy, now that I considered it. The only surprise was that it had taken me so long to realize it.
I smiled. “Who else would want me inflicted on him for the rest of his life?”
“What were you planning on inflicting?”
“My sense of humor.”
Rex grimaced. “I’ll try to endure it.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” He tilted his head. “Yes, what?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know. The thing.”
“What thing?”
“You know.”
He put his hands on either side of my head and mussed up my hair. “Say it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Go on.” He was laughing.
I scowled at him. “Keep this up and I’ll change my mind.”
“I don’t know, Soz. If you can’t say it, how can I believe you’ll do it?”
“All
right.
I’ll marry you. Satisfied?”
He stopped grinning and spoke in that strange gentle voice he had used earlier tonight. “Yes.”
So. It didn’t feel so odd after all. I slid my hand across the black sweater he wore under his jacket. He pulled me down with him on the bed, lying on his back as he wrapped his arms around me.
“I can send my Notification of Intent tonight over the Kyle-Mesh,” he said. “I’ll give my resignation when we get back to HQ.”
Notification of Intent. It was so strange to hear it from Rex. His timing made sense, though. After our rest here, we would return to Headquarters for our new orders. Rex had waited until we were between missions. I could love him now. I never had to send him into battle again.
A beep came from the console. “Damn,” Rex muttered. He stretched his arm across the bed and touched a panel on the console. “What?”
Helda’s voice came out of the speaker. “Heya, Rex. You know where is Soz?”
“I’m right here,” I said. “We’ll meet you at my room.”
Both Helda and Taas were outside my door when we arrived. Helda gave me an odd look. I couldn’t tell what she picked up, but she must have sensed something. It had all changed. I would never see Rex in the same way.
The pager by my door showed a dark-haired woman on the rocky shore of an island. She stood with a quiver of arrows strapped on her back and a curving bow in her hand. I touched the waves on the beach, and a laser played over my finger. It only took an instant to produce an interference pattern from my print and correlate it with the one made by the Inn’s computer. Then my door swung open.
After the sensual ambience in Rex’s room, mine felt too cool. The walls were blue-green ceramic with frothy accents. A mesh console was built into a roll-top desk by the bed, with labels on in six languages, including Skolian.
I sat at the console and touched the panel marked with the picture of a doorway. “Access my guest account. Then link me into Kyle space.”
“Hello, Primary Valdoria.” The console spoke in Skolian. “Homer here. Welcome to the Aegean Inn. I am pleased to access your account.” After a pause it said, “I’m setting up the Kyle link. Please excuse the delay.”
“That’s a
polite
console,” Helda said.
I smiled. Allied mesh nodes tended to be friendlier than those on Skolia’s massive network. We had chosen this hotel because it equipped its consoles with psiphons, which few Allied establishments bothered to do. I lifted a small panel and took the psiphon out of its cradle. It was a simple model, no more than a transparent prong connected to the console by a thread. When I clicked the prong into the socket on the inside of my wrist, my arm tingled. I knew, logically, that those tingles weren’t real, but every time I plugged in a psiphon I felt them.
The words
Attempting connection
appeared on a small screen in the desk.
“Looks like it’s working,” Taas said.
“So far.” That Homer responded to the psiphon with written instead of verbal replies made me doubt the Allieds had spent much time setting up the system.
I rubbed my hand up and down my arm, a habit I had picked up years ago. Many Jagernauts did it, as if we could feel the biomech in our bodies. It had four parts: fiberoptic threads; sockets in my wrists, spine, neck and ankles; the spinal node; and bio-electrodes. Homer sent signals to the psiphon, which passed them to a thread in my wrist. From there, they traveled along threads to my brain or node. Bio-electrodes in my brain cells translated that input into thought by firing my neurons. If an electrode received a 1, it gave the neuron a brief, tiny shock; if it received a 0, it left the neuron alone. Similarly, they translated my thoughts into binary output. Bioshells coated the electrodes, and neurotrophic chemicals kept them from damaging my brain. My fiberoptic threads sent messages to Homer via the psiphon prong. Given the extensive operations required to implant a biomech web, the years it took to learn its use, and the chance the host body might reject it—not to mention the numerous security clearances—few people had them.
Another message appeared on the screen:
Psiphon activated.
“Slow,” Helda muttered.
“Allied equipment,” Taas said, as if that explained it.
Test,
I thought.
The word
test
appeared under Homer’s last message.
Parameters?
Homer printed. His responses glowed red on the screen; mine were blue. His message didn’t echo in my mind at all.
Verify spinal node link,
I thought.
The words
verify sibling
appeared on the screen.
Rex laughed. “Whose sibling are you verifying?”
“It’s not translating right.”
Run diagnostic on psiphon,
I thought.
The words
Run diagonal deepening
glowed on the screen.
Please restate command,
Homer printed.
I tried verbal. “Run a diagnostic on the psiphon.”
“Running,” Homer said. Then: “I found no problems.”
Huh. If the psiphon wasn’t the problem, it had to be my biomech web or this console, both of which were more serious. I pulled out the prong and peered at it. A thin layer of dust covered the head. After rolling it between my fingers, cleaning off the dust, I plugged it back in.
Verify spinal node connection,
I thought.
Verify spinal node connection
appeared on the screen.
Verified,
Homer printed.
If you provide your account information, I will try to enter you into the Kyle-Mesh.
That isn’t necessary. I can do it.
I pressed a panel with the Greek letter Ψ.
Denied
glowed on the screen.
“Denied?” Taas asked. “What does that mean?”
Homer,
I thought.
Why can’t I enter the psiber gateway?
I can’t translate “gateway” in this context,
Homer printed.
I want to use the psiber functions of the psiphon. The Kyle functions.
They aren’t enabled.
Helda snorted. “Why have psiphons if they don’t set them up right?”
“Maybe they don’t know how,” I said.
Homer, can you enable the Kyle functions?
I don’t know. What do they do?
The psiphon should boost my mind into psiberspace.
The only translation I have for psiberspace is “hypothetical computer network,”
“Pah,” Helda muttered.
Kyle space, then.
Kyle space and psiberspace are the same thing.
Yes. Either way, it exists.
Where? I don’t know what it is.
It’s outside spacetime. Information there is transmitted in wavepackets of thought rather than by photons or matter particles.
If it has no spatial location, how can I find it?
It exists everywhere,
I thought.
The other nodes can receive our input immediately no matter where they’re located.
This would require instantaneous transmission across interstellar distances.
That’s right.
That violates the laws of spacetime.
I scowled at the friendly but uncooperative console.
Kyle space isn’t
in
spacetime.
I cannot access something outside of space and time.
I tried to think of an explanation it would understand. In normal space, if I had two particles and I measured the quantum properties of one, I immediately knew those of the second regardless of its location, even it was across the galaxy. In Kyle space, the “measured” property was thought; as fast as a telepath could form a thought, every user in the star-spanning Kyle-Mesh could receive it.
Neither the Allieds nor the Traders had a Kyle-Mesh. It needed a Rhon telepath to power it, and no member of my family would consent to do that for them. Aristos had no Kyle abilities. Their providers did, at least enough to use if not power a Mesh, but the Traders refused to acknowledge providers could do anything but provide. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if they or the Allieds had tried to create a Mesh and failed. Despite the Allieds’ skepticism about psibernetics, they had to realize the Kyle-Mesh allowed my people to survive against the Traders. The Aristo inventories of military personnel and equipment dwarfed ours, but we could outmaneuver, outcommunicate, and outcalculate them. They lumbered; we sailed.
That was why my family, the Ruby Dynasty, held power even in this age of elected leaders. No machine could link into Kyle space. Only a telop—a telepathic operator—could connect to the Mesh. And only a Rhon psion could create or power that vast network. The entire Mesh, with its billions of nodes, needed a Rhon psion to keep it operating, for no other psion was strong enough to survive its force. Without my family, the Mesh wouldn’t exist, and without it, Skolia would fall to the Traders.
Homer, try this,
I thought.
Hail node PS42.mil on the Skolian network. When you get the “Restricted” message, transfer control of this console back to me.
Maybe I could find a backdoor our intelligence people had snuck into the Allied systems.
Hailing,
Homer thought. Then:
Transferring link.
A new thought came into my mind, crisp and cold:
Provide identification.
Access my spinal node,
I thought.
Mod 16, path 0001HA9RS.
Accessed. Clearance verified.
My awareness of the room faded. I floated in an opalescent sea, my mind centered at one node of a glimmering mesh that spread in all directions. Flashes of light sparked as other minds navigated its endless extent. I was a quantum wavepacket, a round hill surrounded by circular ripples that extended into the infinite “lake” of Kyle space, becoming smaller and smaller the farther they were from the peak that defined the center of my identity.
A spark resolved into another wavepacket. It rippled through me without a trace of interference.
Security check,
I thought.
All lines secured,
PS42 thought.
You are undetectable to users with clearance lower than Blue Forty-seven: Level B.
Transfer me to IMIN.
The hill that was me sank into the mesh. I rose up in another section of the grid that glinted like metal. Sparks jumped into focus and then disappeared.