Part 6 (1/2)

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.”