Searching.

Searching.

And finally he found what he sought, the barest trace of a file, one that had languished for thirty-five years. The actual data had been erased, but its ghost persisted like a translucent copy. Laboriously, using all the mental tools at his disposal, he reconstructed the file.

It was a DNA map.

Tokaba's DNA map.

Tokaba'strueDNA map.

In many ways, this vague file matched the robust records Kurj had found at the top levels of the webs.

However, it gave the right shade of blue for Tokaba's eyes and the proper traits for his hair. It matched his physical records in every detail. It lacked only one thing.

The genes of a psion.

Tokaba had none of the complex genetic mutations that created a psion. He manifested no empathic traits because he lacked the genes, either paired or unpaired. He just plain didn't have them. Tokaba couldn't be his father. It was impossible.

Impossible.

Nausea rose within Kurj. He refused to believe Tokaba hadn't sired him. It would kill him.

Inexorable now, Kurj slipped through convoluted mazes in the depths of the web, following tenuous leads that thinned and vanished. He continued to probe, search, and dig. What had the a.s.sembly done?

What G.o.dsforsaken crime had they committed, to make a Ruby psion out of the impossible?

Finally Kurj found the truth they had kept from him, from his parents, from his entire family. They had sabotaged Roca's and Tokaba's fertility treatments. They replaced Tokaba's sperm with that of another man.

And then Kurj found what the a.s.sembly had hidden.

It was the name of his father.

His true father.

Jarac.

25.

Sacrifice.

Kurj lost control.

He ripped his mind out of the web so fast, his disrupted neural pathways registered the process as a firestorm of white light. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He had stumbled upon the ultimate treachery.

The one moderating force in his life, the memory of his father, was a lie, one on such a monstrous scale he couldn't comprehend its enormity.

The a.s.sembly had destroyed him. And now, in his rage, he would make them pay. The Skolian Imperialate survived because a Dyad powered the web. Kurj knew exactly how he would achieve his vengeance-he would take into his own hands the power of the web that the a.s.sembly so prized, the web for which they had committed this atrocity. He would become that web. He would control it. He would hold the a.s.sembly hostage to his power.

He would destroy them.

A thought far back in Kurj's mind warned of danger to his grandparents, but his fury swamped it out.

His grandfather was his father. The betrayal went so deep, he thought he would scream with the knowledge.

By the time he became aware of his surroundings again, he was striding through the War Room. The amphitheater was strangely empty, without a single telop on duty. Kurj stopped at a console and accessed its records. An hour ago an immense spike of power had surged through the systems here.

Following it, Kurj had sent an order to every telop, officer, aide, page, and tech in the War Room: Evacuate.

He didn't remember giving the order. In his mental explosion, he had operated without conscious thought, ridden the magrail across the Orbiter's interior and come here to the War Room without seeing where or how he went, his mind careening from the shock of his violent withdrawal from the web.

He strode to the Lock corridor.

It began at the perimeter of the amphitheater and stretched back into the wall itself, dwindling to a point as if it reached to infinity. A great arch framed its entrance and its floor flashed, a steel and diamond composite. Set off by pillars rather than walls, the corridor glowed in the otherwise dark War Room. The columns were akin to the Strategy Table, transparent and indestructible. Clockwork mechanisms gleamed within them, active as never before, glittering with light and alive with moving gears, all eerily silent.

He stepped up onto the raised corridor. His boots rang on the floor as he strode toward the infinite point of perspective. The end of the corridor never seemed to come closer, though he pa.s.sed pillar after pillar.

Suddenly the point expanded into an octagonal doorway. He slowed as he reached the sparkling arch.

When he stepped through it, time dwindled. s.p.a.ce became thick. He felt as if he were moving through invisible mola.s.ses. A great hum of power filled the octagonal chamber, and a glare of light hid the high ceiling.

The Lock pierced the chamber.

A pillar of light rose out of an octagonal well in the center of the floor, a great column of radiance so bright it made the air shimmer. The Lock was a singularity in Kyle s.p.a.ce. It pierced s.p.a.cetime like a needle, rising from the floor and vanishing overhead in a hazed glitter, back into its own universe.

Humanity had lost the technology that created it, but the Lock remained, forever enduring.

Kurj crossed the chamber in slow motion, his steps long and heavy. He stopped at the rim of the octagonal depression.

Then he stepped into the pillar of light.

Kurj, of the endless Fire; My one son, forever bright.

Escape the blazing pyre; Mute your rage, decry the night.

Tokaba's voice flowed through his mind. He knew the cadence of that rhyme; his father had often sung it to him. But the poem had been about a child's playful life, not fire and rage. Kurj had never heard these words-and yet, he knew Tokaba's voice. It came from his memory, and he wanted to weep for the loss of what it meant to him. Caught in grief and fury, his mind twisted the rhyme into a chant of his anguish.

In this nether land between s.p.a.ce and time, braced between two universes, he relived his life in a million instants, so many moments he had thought lost and forgotten.

Then other memories began coming to him, recollections not his own: Lahaylia, Ruby Pharaoh, born into slavery and ascended to rule one of the largest empires in human history; Lahaylia, who built the Skolian Imperialate from nothing and would protect it with the same ferocity she protected her family; Jarac, the only survivor of a dying race from an ancient Ruby colony that had failed over the millennia of its isolation; Jarac, whose Ruby genes had revitalized an ancient family and whose love gave Lahaylia an unexpected gift in the twilight of her life. Together, they had founded a dynasty that commanded, enthralled, incensed, aroused, and mystified the peoples of a thousand and more worlds.

The waves of thought that created Kurj's mind overlapped with those of Jarac and Lahaylia, blending, interfering, canceling and adding, creating wave patterns for three instead of two. Power flowed through Kurj, filling him with white noise. He stood within the pillar of light, his face turned upward, his body bathed in the radiance of another universe.

The Triad was born.

The mental explosion yanked Roca awake. As she scrambled out of bed, Eldrin cried out, his wail rising in terror. She stumbled to the crib and lifted him into her arms, murmuring as she struggled to focus. Her mind was reverberating from an incredible surge of energy.

Roca strode into the living room, holding Eldrin. He was sobbing now, his simple anguish filling her heart as she tried to soothe him. Starlight slanted through the windows, silvering the room. The console by the doorway had lit up like a festival tree, including thepagelight and its alarm, alerting her to an urgent message. Shifting Eldrin to one arm, she thumped her hand on the pager.

"Roca!" Her mother's voice crackled. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." Roca's heart was pounding as if she had just run a kilometer. "What happened?"

"G.o.ds only know. Have you seen Jarac?"

"No. He isn't with you?"

Eldrin went still and silent, his small hands hinged in half as he clutched Roca's nightdress.

"He went to see you hours ago," Lahaylia said.

Roca felt the blood drain from her face. She sensed her mother's dread all the way across Valley-her mother, who never showed fear. "He never arrived. Can't your EI locate him?" It could monitor every centimeter of the Orbiter.

"No." Lahaylia took an audible breath. "Something is blocking its signals."

"That's impossible," Roca said.

"I can't find Kurj either," her mother said.

Eldrin began to cry again, taking gulps between his sobs. Cradling him, Roca leaned over the console to hear her mother better. She thought of Kurj- And her mindburned.

He burned.

Blazed like a flame.

A pillar of flame.

"G.o.ds, no," Roca said. "It can't be."

Eldri sat up in bed, the images of his nightmare flaming in his mind. If it hadn't been for his medicines, he had no doubt he would have convulsed. His mind was on fire.Fire.

"Roca!" He jumped out of bed and strode from the room in his nightshirt, pulling on his robe, headed for the shrine he had erected to the sun G.o.ds. In his mind, he entreated them:Please. Don't let my wife and child die.

The shrine was a small room with a stand of polished granite in the center. Eldri had laid out dried bubbles and goldstone b.a.l.l.s as offerings. He threw open the shutters, letting the gales of Windward tear over him. Their chill bit through the heavy cloth of his robe as he gazed at the stars.

"Take me, if you must," he said. "But don't hurt them."

Roca reached the War Room before her mother. She held Eldrin close, shielding him with her mind. He was no longer crying, but he remained wide awake, his mind swirling with formless nightmares kept at bay only by his mother's arms. Had she put him down now, he would have panicked. Her terror of losing him to forces beyond her control had grown the entire time she had ridden the magrail here. She couldn't lose her son. Her sons.What had happened to Kurj?

Impossibly, the War Room was empty. Even this late at night, it should have hummed with activity. But no telops sat at the consoles; no pages hurried among the stations; no techs rode in the robot arms. The only light came from the Lock corridor, its columns blazing. Roca stopped several meters away, holding Eldrin with one arm while she raised the other to protect her eyes against the brilliance. The corridor seemed to stretch forever, diminishing into a point of perspective.

A man walked out of that point.

He was barely visible, a speck forming out of infinity. He seemed to grow as he came forward, until he reached his true size, a giant of gold. His boots rang on the floor as he strode that ageless corridor, his gait never faltering. White light coruscated around his body, and his face had a terrible radiance.

Consoles all over the War Room were coming to life, screens activating, panels flashing, comms humming. In the dome far overhead, the Imperator's throne pulsed with light.

Roca became aware someone else had entered the War Room. Lahaylia walked past her and stopped before the archway of the Lock corridor. Light haloed her body. Kurj reached the end of the corridor and stood in the arch, framed by its dazzling energy, its mechanisms glowing and spinning around him.

The power of his mind surged, huge, tremendous, and chaotic.

"Go back." His deep voice echoed unnaturally. "Both of you. Go back. Go home. Be safe."

"Kurj." Roca held Eldrin close. "What have you done?"

He lifted his hand, nearly blinding her with the light it emanated. "I cannot stop what is happening. You must go."

Lahaylia didn't move. "Where is my husband?"

Kurj answered harshly. "With my father."

"G.o.ds, no," Roca said.Tokaba was dead.

Eldrin had gone still in her arms, but she felt his nascent mind focused on Kurj. He responded to his brother's power. Like knew like. But he had no defenses. Roca shielded his mind with hers, lest the outpouring of mental energies overwhelm him.

Light radiated from Lahaylia's body; whatever surged through Kurj already burned within her. They both called now on the same forces. The Dyad. No,Triad.

Lahaylia's voice resonated throughout the War Room. "Your father, Tokaba Ryestar, is dead."

"I speak not of Tokaba Ryestar," Kurj said.

"Darr Hammerjackson is also dead."

"I do not speak of Darr, either."

Roca went rigid. He had only one other "father":Eldri.Her anger and her fear blazed. "What have you done to my husband?"

Kurj turned his gaze on her, his inner lids glowing like molten shields. "Eldrinson Valdoria will never be my father."

"Then who?" Roca asked.

His answer dropped into the air like a great weight.

"Jarac."

He had to have gone mad. "You can't mean what you are saying." Roca felt as if she were shattering inside.

"Go." Kurj braced his arms against the sides of the arch. His voice thundered, unreal in its eerily amplified power. "Go now, both of you, while you are safe."

"Kurj, listen." Lahaylia faced him with no sign of fear, though he towered over her, huge and solid, standing on the raised floor of the corridor. Her voice matched his in strength, drawing on the unleashed power of the Lock. She and Kurj were part of a triangle now, aware of s.p.a.ce and time in a way Roca could perceive only from the edges of their Triad.