XVIII: A Simple Test

XVIII
A Simple Test

Jaibriol walked the cliff path with two of his bodyguards in front and two following. They were high above the ragged shoreline where the enraged waves of Glory’s ocean battered the black sands. The wild landscape reflected the tumult in his mind as he prepared to face Admiral Erix Muze, his naval Joint Commander.

Although Jaibriol had never felt comfortable with Muze, he preferred him to Barthol. Until this business with the peace treaty, he and Erix had maintained a wary détente. The moment Jaibriol had blackmailed Erix into signing the treaty, threatening to execute him for a crime he hadn’t committed, that had changed. The cold, uncompromising nature of Highton law allowed the emperor to put to death anyone in the family of a traitor, even though Erix had nothing to do with the sins of his first cousin, Colonel Vatrix Muze, who had tried to assassinate Jaibriol last year.

Supposedly tried to assassinate.

Jaibriol was the only person alive who knew Vatrix had never tried to kill him. The colonel had caught him crawling out of the Lock after Jaibriol had unwillingly joined the Skolian Triad. Hidaka, the captain of Jaibriol’s Razer bodyguards, had also witnessed it—and he had blasted Muze into ashes with a laser carbine so the colonel could never reveal Jaibriol’s secret.

Even now, many months later, Jaibriol could barely absorb the immensity of what Hidaka had done. The Razer had known exactly what he witnessed. Hidaka had been built, bred, and programmed for one purpose: to serve Hightons. Jaibriol had valued Hidaka’s intelligence and loyalty, but he would have never, in a millennium, have expected Hidaka to murder a Highton colonel to protect so huge and unforgivable a secret, that the emperor was a Ruby psion. Hidaka’s loyalty had outweighed a conditioning his creators forced on him even before his cybernetic birth from a mechanical womb. The Razer had risen to an ideal, his belief, however naively, that Jaibriol could make the universe a better place for humanity.

And so Hidaka had died only months later. He had given his life to protect Jaibriol when the emperor met with Kelric on Earth. All of their bodyguards had died, Skolian and Eubian alike, sacrificing themselves to protect two sovereigns who were committing treason by meeting in secret. From that sacrifice had come a miracle. Deep in the night, Kelric and Jaibriol had hunkered together, the only survivors, stranded in the wilds of the Appalachian Mountains, and written the peace treaty.

Jaibriol gritted his teeth. How did ESComm respond to this great sacrifice and miracle? By murdering Hidaka’s entire line. In the warped universe of Highton logic, they punished the Razer for sacrificing his life. Why? Their investigation had uncovered signs of Hidaka’s humanity, hints that he was developing self-determination. It was far too great a threat to the Aristos that the Razers—the most dangerous of all their human creations—could think for themselves. By the time Jaibriol had discovered what was happening, it was too late; none of Hidaka’s line had survived.

Or so he had thought before today.

Jaibriol’s aide Robert was waiting up ahead. He bowed deeply as Jaibriol joined him. “My honor at your presence, Your Highness.”

“My greetings.” Jaibriol had long ago told Robert not to kneel, before he realized other Aristos considered it a threat when their emperor did away with the expected deference. They saw each of his changes as a chink that weakened the fundamental structure of Eube; too many chinks, and slaves would think they were human. Which was exactly what Jaibriol intended. But if he pushed too hard, his sway over the Aristos weakened. It was a balancing act, easing constraints bit by bit, humanizing Eube without losing his ability to make changes.

“Has Admiral Muze arrived?” Jaibriol asked.

“Ten minutes ago.” Robert indicated a path that sloped away from the cliff, down into the mountains, ending in a clearing circled by black marble pillars and high peaks. A retinue waited there, the admiral’s tall form in their midst. Muze’s black hair glittered in the pale sunlight that diffused through the misty air, water vapor from the waves below that survived even this high in the mountains. Sunlight sparkled in the veils of mist, softening their view of the clearing so that Muze’s retinue looked like spirits in a celestial palace. It never ceased to amaze Jaibriol that a race as unrepentantly brutal as the Hightons produced such ethereal beauty in the worlds they created.

He walked down the path with Robert and his bodyguards. As he came within the circle of the pillars, everyone in Muze’s retinue went down on one knee, their heads bent, including the admiral’s two Razer bodyguards. Muze bowed to Jaibriol.

Jaibriol lifted his hand, indicating they could rise. People who knelt to him always managed to see that motion even though they were supposed to be staring at the ground. He didn’t care where they looked; he would have dispensed with the entire process if it wouldn’t have led to so much grief. But it had its uses, such as now, when he wanted to hold the upper hand with Erix.

Jaibriol spoke to the admiral. “It would please us to enjoy the company of ESComm’s finest.” By disguising his order for Erix to walk with him as a compliment, he offered more honor than a rigorous adherence to Highton custom required.

Erix nodded, the tilt of his head expressing his appreciation of the phrasing. Jaibriol didn’t extend his invitation to Erix’s retinue, but Robert stayed behind as a courtesy. Jaibriol could have allowed them to come. Although it might have softened Erix up to let him bring his Razers, Jaibriol didn’t want the pressure of their partly Aristo minds. It was difficult enough to deal with just the admiral.

He strolled with Erix along the high cliff, accompanied by Jaibriol’s Razers. The wind blew through their hair, which splintered the sunlight. A black marble rail ran along a waist-high wall to their left; beyond it, the black cliff face dropped in great sweeps to the beach far below. The black sands sparkled in the sunlight while waves leapt high above the spiked outcroppings of glittering black rock that jutted up in the water along the shoreline.

“A beautiful sight,” Erix commented.

“Indeed,” Jaibriol said. “A sight fit for our empire’s visionaries.”

Erix’s face remained cold. He knew what Jaibriol meant, that those who supported the treaty were enlightened. He offered no sign of agreement.

Steeling himself, Jaibriol eased down his barriers. The force of Erix’s mind increased like the pressure of water against a flexible barrier, ready to burst and flood him with pain.

Security protocols activated, his spinal node thought. It controlled the biomech in his body, which could moderate his responses, even automatic actions like his sweat or heartbeat, and stop him from visibly flinching under the onslaught of Erix’s mind.

The admiral had no idea that Jaibriol had extended a mental probe. He took for granted what every Aristo considered an undisputed truth; no other Aristo could know what went on in his mind. The “gods” of Eube had decreed that Kyle abilities made providers weak, less than human, but Jaibriol knew the truth, why Aristos were fanatic that no genes of an empath or telepath “contaminate” their DNA. Psions could spy on their minds, in that one simple act bypassing the convoluted modes of interaction that Hightons used to hide their feelings. Aristos tortured psions into subservience not only for transcendence, but also as punishment for possessing a gift no true Aristo could ever own.

If only you knew, Jaibriol thought. He could only skim the surface of Erix’s thoughts, but that was enough. It was no surprise to discover the admiral would never forgive Jaibriol for blackmailing him or that he considered the peace process a mistake. What Jaibriol didn’t expect was that he had earned Erix’s respect. In the universe of Machiavellian Highton intrigue, Jaibriol had shown himself to be far more inspired than Erix expected. As much as the admiral abhorred the actual treaty, he couldn’t help but admire the way Jaibriol had pushed it through. He hadn’t thought Eube’s young emperor was devious enough to pull off such a coup.

Jaibriol hardly considered it a compliment that Erix considered him good at being Highton, but it gave him a way to deal with the admiral. He could only take Erix’s mind in small doses, though. He raised his barriers, muting the painful force. Ironically, his discomfort caused Muze to transcend at a low level, one he wasn’t aware of, but that eased his antagonism about this meeting.

Jaibriol indicated a marble bench in an alcove carved into the cliff wall on their right. “It would be good to relax, perhaps view the latest mesh broadcast. Or similar.” In other words, give me your report about the embassy situation on your son’s planet, Muze’s Helios.

“It would be my honor, Your Highness,” Erix said.

After they sat down, Erix pulled a slender tube off his belt and unrolled it into a gold screen, which he laid on his lap. Holicons appeared around its edges, morphing every time he flicked one, until finally a larger holo formed above the screen. It showed a group of people, both ESComm officers and civilians.

Erix indicated a man with dark hair in the center. “One can find substantial defects in a Skolian embassy.” Disgust edged his voice. “Should it please your honored Highness, ESComm is prepared to dismantle and study any defective equipment.”

Jaibriol couldn’t answer. He felt as if someone had socked him in the stomach. The man in that holo, the traitor who had tried to defect to the Skolians—it was Hidaka. Except it wasn’t his dead bodyguard, but rather, another clone from the same line, one with the same “flaws” in his constructed personality, the flaws had made Hidaka extraordinary. Human.

Somehow Jaibriol spoke in a detached voice. “It might be advantageous to debrief so anomalous a defect.” In other words, Bring him here. I want talk to him.

Erix didn’t look surprised. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“I’m intrigued that such anomalies aren’t isolated,” Jaibriol said. The report on the embassy situation had mentioned two slaves who were with the Razer.

Erix spoke dryly. “Especially when such anomalies involve one’s own property.” He indicated a boy on the edge of the group.

Jaibriol studied the youth. So that was Erix’s escaped provider. The admiral’s security people had traced him to the embassy, which was how they had found the Razer. The boy was standing off to one side, almost fading into the background. It wasn’t clear why he had been with the Razer.

“Astonishing that the Skolians acquired an item of such value,” Jaibriol said. In other words, How the hell did your provider end up in a Skolian embassy?

Muze shrugged, looking at the holo instead of Jaibriol. “One can tire of even a valuable painting or vase, no longer wishing it to clutter their home. In such cases, it is efficient to dispose of the object. After all, one can always replace it.”

Dispose? Jaibriol felt ill. Erix would kill a slave just because he was tired of having him around? Gods, were both of his Joint Commanders such monsters?

Except Erix was lying. His face offered no hint that he cared, but Jaibriol felt his remorse. He hadn’t wanted to kill the provider. He had reacted in anger when another Aristo implied he was sleeping with the boy. Of course Hightons slept with whatever slaves they wanted, and some didn’t care about the sex. Erix did care; he only slept with his pleasure girls, which was why he professed to throw away the male provider. But he knew perfectly well his staff had left the boy a way to escape. If this situation hadn’t come up, Erix would have never bothered to reclaim him.

Jaibriol wondered what it said about how he lived, that he found Erix’s remorse a good sign. What the admiral did to his providers was unconscionable, and if that boy hadn’t broken his conditioning and climbed out of the waste compactor, Muze would have murdered him simply out of irritation with another Highton’s verbal jabs. But that insight offered Jaibriol a way to save the provider; he needed to give Erix an alternative to killing the youth that allowed the admiral to save face.

Jaibriol spoke with a nonchalance far different from he felt. “Others may enjoy property that doesn’t meet the standards of our exalted kin.” He paused as if mulling over a thought. “The daughter of an aide on my staff celebrates her ascendance to adulthood soon. She deserves a gift.” In truth, he had little idea when the daughters of the people on his staff had birthdays, but he could undoubtedly find a suitable one and give her the boy.

Erix inclined his head. “You are generous.”

Generous? He felt like a monster. How many slaves had died for each he could save? He hadn’t even yet accounted for the other slave they had found with the Razer. “Perhaps the young lady celebrating her birth would enjoy a matched pair.”

Erix waved his hand in dismissal, then indicated another figure in the holo. “I doubt such large size and unattractive features would produce much of a match.”

Jaibriol looked where Erix indicated—and nearly lost his carefully built composure.

It was true the girl was unusually tall, but she wasn’t ugly. Hers was a beauty of strength and power, traits no Aristo wanted in a slave, except for the purpose of destroying it. But that wasn’t what made him feel as if his stomach dropped through the ground. God above, hadn’t anyone seen it? Was it so utterly absurd that they all missed it?

The girl was a feminine version of Kelric Valdoria, the Skolian Imperator.

“We don’t even know if he’s alive!” Roca strode down the hall with Kelric and First Councilor Barcala Tikal.

“The Allieds have a lot to answer for,” Kelric said. How could they have lost Del?

“His speech could have made a difference,” Tikal said. “It was even better than what he showed us beforehand. He entreats people to calm down, let Eube and Skolia heal their rifts—and what happens? Some fanatics grab him from the heart of Allied Space Command. It will inflame everyone all over again.” He banged his fist against his thigh in frustration. “This group that claims they took him, The Minutemen of Valor—we’ve never even heard of them.”

“I don’t care about the speech.” Roca’s golden face was flushed, her legendary eyes furious. “I don’t care about the damned treaty. I just want my son home.” She scowled, first at Kelric, then at Barcala. “What the blazes is a ‘Minuteman’ anyway? A man who does it all in a minute?”

Kelric choked on his laugh. “Mother, for flaming sakes!”

Tikal glanced at Roca. “I do believe you’re embarrassing our mighty warlord, Councilor.”

Kelric had heard far worse from his female commanders. But none of them were his mother. He decided to pretend her comment was purely innocent. “Minuteman is a historical term from the United States on Earth. They were rebel soldiers chosen for their ability to take up arms fast.”

“Anyone who hurts one of my children,” Roca said, “is no hero.” She regarded Kelric implacably. “They deserve to die.”

“Roca,” Tikal warned.

She turned her iciest gaze on him. “What?”

“If you tell the Allieds that, it will only inflame matters.”

“What I say to you two and what I say in public are two different things,” Roca answered. “But I mean what I say. If these people hurt Del, they’ll pay.”

Kelric knew her anger was a shield she used to help her deal with her fear for Del. “We’ll get him back,” he told her. “I swear.”

“Yes, well, the question is how,” Barcala said.

They had reached two doors that ended the corridor, portals of glass and chrome. Tikal keyed in a code and the doors swung inward under his push. His spacious office lay beyond, with its glass and chrome tables, modern furniture, and an extensive media center taking up one wall.

Tikal strode to the big mesh table he used as a desk and traced his hand across it, shifting around holicons. “Here’s another update,” he said, reading the three-dimensional glyphs as they formed over the table. “Nothing new.” He looked up at Kelric and Roca across the table. “The kidnappers still haven’t told us what they want.”

“They have what they want,” Kelric said. “They ruined his speech. They want people angry, not appeased.”

Roca rubbed her eyes, her anger slipping into exhaustion. Kelric recognized the signs; she needed that anger to keep going. He spoke more gently. “It will work out.”

“I just don’t see how we can go forward with this treaty business,” she said.

“We can’t give up,” Tikal said. “That’s what they want. If we stop, we’re letting them win.”

“And if they kill Del to make their point?” she asked.

“They won’t kill him,” Tikal said. “It would achieve nothing except starting a war between us and Earth.”

“Killing Del would be stupid,” Kelric said. “And they aren’t. Everything they’ve done so far shows they know exactly what they’re doing.”

“I hope so.” Roca took a deep breath. “At least Mac Tyler is with him. He’s not alone.”

There was that. Kelric liked Del’s manager, a former Air Force officer who had gone into the music business after he retired. “Maybe our people have more news.” He checked his gauntlet mesh, paging through messages. “The transport we sent to pick him up is in the Solar System. They’ll reach Earth in a few hours.”

Tikal continued to move glowing images around on his table. “Nothing else new—” He broke off as a flashing red icon appeared. In the same instant, Kelric’s gauntlet buzzed and Roca tapped the audio comm in her ear.

“What the hell is that?” Tikal flicked his hand through the holo.

“I’m getting an emergency page,” Roca said, her head tilted as she listened.

Kelric touched the receive toggle on his comm and a message scrolled across his gauntlet screen in red glyphs: The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Palace Protocol Division in the Qox Palace on Glory has contacted the Protocol Division of the Inner Skolian Assembly. It was the first step in the lengthy dance needed for the Eubian emperor to send a message the Skolian government.

“Hell’s bells,” Tikal said. “It’s a message from Glory.”

“From Emperor Jaibriol’s protocol people,” Roca said.

“They’re routing it to both my staff and Dehya’s staff,” Tikal grumbled. “It’s ridiculous. They should just send us the damn message.”

Roca smiled at him. “If we don’t let them do their thing, Barcala, they get upset.”

Kelric only half listened to them as he studied the images accompanying the announcement from Glory that had arrived as a prelude to the message from the emperor. He didn’t even know what he was looking for. The glyphs went on and on . . .

Kelric saw what he sought.

It appeared disguised in a frame of artwork. The Traders always included such a border to open a government communiqué. A distinguishing characteristic of such designs, especially for the emperor, was their artistic originality. They were never the same. The greater the beauty, the more they believed it glorified the sender. Kelric had never seen one like this. The intricate work included a pattern so subtle, it was almost invisible. Quis symbols. Jaibriol had sent an answer to the session Dehya and Kelric had left on the table. The emperor must be learning Quis at an incredible rate, to create such a sophisticated response.

Kelric barely listened as the official message wound its way to Tikal and Dehya. It would no doubt be some standard statement, Jaibriol re-iterating what they already knew.

The real message was in those dice patterns.

Dehya’s private office glowed in sunrise colors, the walls rosy near the floor and shading into blue at the ceiling. A starry night glimmered on the ceiling. The screens of her mesh stations glowed, gleamed, and glistened around her, alight with images. It was all beautiful, but what she found most captivating was the brilliance of the EI that ran it all. She had been working on this Evolving Intelligence for decades, until it had become an extension of her own mind. She called it Laplace, after an Earth mathematician who had created radiant equations.

She shifted her weight in her chair. “My guess is that these Minutemen on Earth who grabbed Del aren’t connected to whoever attacked Kelric, Del, and myself in Kyle space.”

“Why?” Laplace asked. “The Allieds may claim they don’t believe telepathy exists, but what their military says to the public and what they know are different matters. They’re well aware of what we do with the Kyle, and they are undoubtedly working to learn it themselves.”

“The style of the attacks is too different.” Worrying about Del was making it hard for her to concentrate, which sent her in circles; the more trouble she had thinking, the more she worried that she couldn’t help him, which made it even harder to think.

“Take a breath,” Laplace said. “Relax. Clear your mind.”

Dehya smiled slightly. “What, are you reading my mind?”

“Over the years, your thought processes have become more predictable.”

“I’m glad someone thinks so. Most people say I’m incomprehensible.”

“So talk to me,” Laplace said. “We’ll figure this out.”

“The kidnappers acted directly against Del,” Dehya said. “It was overt. Direct. Blunt. The other attacks happened in Kyle space. They were abstruse and convoluted.”

“More Highton,” Laplace said.

“Maybe. But Hightons are only that way with each other, not with those of us they consider slaves. Given that, Del’s kidnapping is more what I’d expect from the Traders than the Allieds. But the Kyle attacks were done by a sophisticated psion with training, which the Traders don’t have.”

Except, of course, Jaibriol Qox. Kelric didn’t think Jaibriol would attack them. Dehya was less certain, but not by much. Jaibriol was in the Triad. Her sense of him was distant and unformed, but she was aware of him at the edges of her mind. She didn’t think he had done this. Similarly, if he had died while in the Triad, she would have felt the shock as a distant loss, just as she had sensed it when Roca’s husband Eldrinson had died while he was a Triad member eleven years ago. She hadn’t experienced that for Jaibriol.

“How do you know the Eubians don’t have a provider capable of such attacks?” Laplace asked. “They have a Lock command center, and it contains consoles that a trained telop could use to access Kyle space. With enough work, ESComm could hack our Kyle networks.”

Dehya grimaced. “They would need a psion nearly as strong as a Ruby. That’s incredibly rare. The only reason more than three or four of us exist is because we’ve deliberately bred for them. Even with that, it’s hard to make more. Cloning doesn’t work. A woman who isn’t a strong psion can’t carry one of us to term. Hell, Laplace, I could barely carry my own children, and I am a Ruby. If the Traders have a way to make more of us or were fortunate enough to discover a psion with such power, and they’ve figured out how to use the Kyle at that level of sophistication, and they’ve cracked our highest security—” She just shook her head. She couldn’t go on.

“It does seem unlikely,” Laplace said. “I calculate the probability as tiny. But not zero.”

“What it seems is terrifying,” Dehya said. “If they can achieve all that, the only reason they haven’t destroyed us yet is because they don’t fully realize what they’re doing.”

“So far, it seems the most likely possibility,” Laplace said. “Unless you have another.”

Dehya thought for a moment. “The attack against Kelric and me damaged our neural processes. In Del’s case, it didn’t cause damage, it spurred him to release ‘Carnelians Finale.’ It looks like the same person did all three attacks, based on the path of their work that we’ve so far unraveled in web, but we don’t know that for certain.” She wanted to believe it was a one-time attack that couldn’t be repeated, but whatever had caused Del to release “Carnelians Finale” was different enough to suggest more than one source. “Laplace, bring up my analysis of the attack on Kelric. I want the models where I assumed various plans on the part of the attackers and then evolved those plans to see if they could result in what happened to him.”

“Done,” the EI said. “Do you want me to run those same models on Prince Del-Kurj?”

“That’s right. See if they predict what happened to him as well as they do for Kelric.”

A line of red glyphs suddenly flashed on Dehya’s main screen.

“Well, that’s dramatic,” she said.

“It’s a message from your protocol office,” Laplace told her.

She scanned the glyphs. Wryly she said, “It seems the Traders want to elevate us with their glorious correspondence.”

“I’m monitoring its progress through our diplomatic channels.”

“See if anything in it resembles Quis patterns.”

“Checking.” Then Laplace said, “I have the results for the analysis on Prince Del-Kurj.”

“It failed, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did. I can’t use the same model for him that describes what happened to Imperator Skolia. Such a model fails for every scenario, then goes wonky and spews out a lot of mesh code.”

Dehya scowled at her mesh screens. “My code never goes wonky.”

“All right,” Laplace said. “I’m analyzing the non-wonky code it spewed all over. The situation with Del is too different to predict its outcome with the Kelric model.”

“It’s odd,” Dehya mused. “It’s as if whoever attacked us left behind a neural signature. The signature of whoever tampered with Del in the Kyle is different than the one for me and Kelric.”

“You think two people are involved?”

“Unfortunately, yes, even if it’s supposed to look like one,” Dehya said. “According to what we’ve dug up in Kyle space, all three of us had our brains affected at the same time. I was in a Triad Chair on the Orbiter and Kelric was in the War Room, but Del was asleep.”

“Maybe the attacks weren’t really at the same time.”

“Well, he released the song twice, the first time before we were attacked. The Kyle space paths for the two releases are tangled up together. It’s hard to separate them because events in the Kyle are related by similarity, not by time.” She thumped a panel her with frustration. “How did they get to him? None of us show any evidence of drugs, physical tampering, or anything else. The only possibility that makes sense is that they affected our neural processes through Kyle space. But he almost never goes into the Kyle.”

“A psion’s mind is more vulnerable during sleep,” Light said. “Maybe a telepath reached him on Earth while he slept, and Del went onto the Kyle web without waking up.”

“It’s possible, I suppose. But who? It would have to be an immensely powerful psion.”

“I’m running your models again,” Light said. “If you remove the assumption that the tampering came through the Kyle web, they all spew wonky code.”

She decided to let the “wonky” go this time. “So either it didn’t happen while Del was asleep or my models are drilled.”

“I don’t believe it’s anatomically possible to ‘drill’ a mesh code,” Laplace said. “According to my files on profanity, ‘drill’ refers to the act of reproduc—”

“I know what it means!” Dehya said, laughing. “You know, you evolving codes create new parts of yourselves all the time by splicing other parts together. That’s like reproduction.”

“Yes, well, I don’t have sexual relations with other codes. By the way, the message from Emperor Jaibriol has finished clearing through the protocol offices.”

“Good. Has Kelric contacted you?”

“Yes, he wishes to meet with you at his house. He says, ‘Bring your Quis dice.’ ”

A thought came to her. “Can you code my models for the Kyle attacks into Quis patterns?”

“I can do that. Do you want me to project the models as a game you can play?”

“Yes. But not now. I need to meet with Kelric.”

“He’s says he’ll be home in ten minutes.”

Dehya stood up and stretched her arms. “Upload the message from Emperor Jaibriol to my spinal node.” She headed for the archway out of her office. “Did you find Quis patterns in it?”

“In a border.” Laplace paused. “Did you know that you have a message waiting in your main queue that is labeled as urgent?”

Dehya stopped at the doorway. “No I didn’t. What is it?”

“Well, oddly enough, it appears to be a request for an analysis of blood tests.”

“Appears? Can’t you tell?”

“It’s buried in layers of security code.”

Baffled, Dehya returned her station, stepping inside the array of screens. “Why ever would someone want me to analyze blood tests?”

“I’ve no idea. It originated at a Skolian embassy on the Eubian planet called Muze’s Helios.”

How strange. “File it under ‘incoming, top priority.’ I’ll look at it after I see Kelric.”

“Pharaoh Dyhianna, I can’t file it. My security codes aren’t high enough.”

That stopped her cold. “Your codes are my codes. I can access anything.” Technically, she couldn’t access Kelric’s most secured files or those of the Assembly, but she had long ago circumvented their protections.

“It has to be you,” Laplace said. “Physically. It wants DNA, fingerprints, and retinal scans.”

“That’s truly odd.” Dehya slid her finger into a slot below the screen. A light played over her eyes while the console analyzed her fingerprint and scraped a skin sample for the DNA check.

A new voice spoke, cold and impersonal. “Identity verified. Invoking Zeta protocol.”

“What for?” Dehya asked. Her Zeta protocol involved such a high level of security, even Kelric couldn’t break it.

“I’m downloading the message,” Laplace said.

“What does it say?”

“Nothing really. It’s exactly what I thought, a request for a blood test analysis.”

This became more bizarre by the moment. Dehya brought up the message and scanned the layers of code it had accumulated. Why had they sent these tests out for a Skolian analysis? A procedure this simple could be done within the embassy.

Dehya spoke uneasily. “Laplace, analyze the blood tests.”

“I’m not a medical unit.”

“The procedure is trivial. Any EI could do it. Hell, an AI could.” Dehya slowly sat back down. “Like the AI at the medical center on Sandstorm.” Except that AI hadn’t returned any results to the embassy, it had instead forwarded this message. From Sandstorm, the message had followed an ever more complex path, ending up deep within the ISC mesh, which had sent it to her.

“Analysis finished,” Laplace said.

“Put it on the screen.”

“Projecting.”

Dehya read the glyphs—and read them again.

And again.

“Gods almighty,” she whispered.