Diamond Star by Catherine Asaro

  "Kelric will make sure they blend in," Chaniece told him. "He doesn't want to advertise who you are."

  "I'm not going to fire Cameron. He stays."

  "I think Kelric expects him to. Then you have more guards."

  Del had run out of protests. So he mentally braced himself. "All right. I'll do it." He shifted in his chair. "Do I have to comm Kelric?"

  "He said I could do it if you didn't want to."

  "I don't want to comm any of them. They'll just criticize me."

  "I'll talk to him." Her shoulders relaxed, and Del could see her relief that he had agreed.

  "Are the boys there?" he asked, glad for a more pleasant subject.

  Her smile lit up her face. "They want to talk to you."

  A boy stuck his head into view of the comm screen. He had his mother's features, but his hair was darker, like merlot wine.

  "I've been right here!" the boy said. "Father, when are you coming home?"

  XVIII: Over the Moon

  A sharply indrawn breath came from Jud's room. Del ignored it and smiled at the boy. "Jaqui, you've grown. Look how big you are!"

  The boy beamed at him. "I'll be as tall as you the next time you come home."

  Del couldn't help but smile. Jaqui had nearly two feet to go before he reached that goal. "You better hurry. I'll be back before you know it."

  "Hoshma says you're making music. Can we come watch?"

  Del's good mood dimmed. He didn't want the boys exposed to the glitzy, drugged-out world of holo-rock. "It's no place you'd like. Too much noise and nowhere to chase bubbles."

  "Oh." Jaqui looked disappointed. "Hoshma said so, too. But she said those soldiers weren't holding you prisoner anymore."

  Chaniece had moved to the side, but she was still in view. She spoke quietly. "Jaqui thinks Mac Tyler put you in prison."

  "Mac!" Del wanted to laugh, but he didn't want to offend the boy's dignity. So he just said, "Mister Tyler would never hurt me. He helps me."

  "He's one of them." Jaqui looked as if he would whip out his wooden sword and brandish it at all of Allied Space Command.

  "Not all people from Earth are bad," Del told him.

  "Oh." Jaqui didn't look convinced. Then his face brightened. "Guess what?"

  Del had no clue, but he tried. "You went somewhere."

  "No. I learned fractions. One-eleventh plus three-eighths equals forty-one over eighty-eight. And I'm reading books with chapters."

  "That's great!" It never ceased to amaze Del how easily Jaqui learned. "When do you start designing starship engines?"

  "Oh, Hoshpa," Jaqui said, laughing. Then he said, "Delson learned to subtract. The chip in his brain helps him."

  That sounded like good news. "Is he there?" Del asked.

  "Here." Jaqui moved aside and a young man took his place. Although on Earth, Delson would be eighteen, Del thought of him as twenty-two, his age in the octal system on Lyshriol. He was taller than Del and more heavily built, with rugged features. He had the same violet eyes as Del, but with no glint in the lashes.

  "Hoshpa." His smile, so trusting, lit up the screen. "I can subtract now. Do you want to hear?"

  "Yes, please," Del said, with a familiar ache.

  The youth thought for a moment. "Five minus three is . . ." He paused, his forehead furrowed. "Two?"

  Del felt as if he had achieved a milestone himself. "Yes! That's excellent!"

  The boy grinned at him. "I can run, too."

  "You run?" This was new.

  Chaniece spoke. "He's good at it, Del. He wins every race with the boys in Dalvador."

  A quiet joy spread over Del. If they had found something Delson could excel at, it was reason to celebrate. A sport like running was straightforward. As long as someone kept an eye on him, Delson could do it fine.

  They talked a while longer, and Del felt better than he had in weeks. After he signed off, he sat staring at the console, wishing he didn't have obligations that kept him away from home.

  A rustle came from his right. He looked up to see Jud standing in the doorway of his room.

  "You all right?" Jud asked coldly.

  "Sure, fine," Del said, waiting for the explosion.

  Jud didn't blow up. He spoke in a low voice, but that only made it worse. There was no mistaking his anger. "Father?"

  Del looked down at his hands. "That's right."

  "Your sister's children?"

  "Jud, don't."

  "Damn it, Del! Look at me." When Del raised his gaze, Jud was gripping the doorframe. "How could you?"

  "I didn't." Del had to fight to speak words he always kept to himself. "I came out of cryogenic stasis to discover I had an eight-year-old son."

  "Cryo what?"

  "I spent forty-five years in a cryogenic womb."

  Jud looked as if he had just hit a brick wall. "Good Lord, why?"

  "Because they couldn't keep me alive when they put me in the womb." Del suddenly felt exhausted. "That's another reason Mac is so overprotective. Certain drugs can kill me. And they're common with our crowd."

  Jud pulled over a chair, then set it backwards and sat with his arms resting on its top. "You overdosed?"

  "Not exactly." Del told him, briefly, what had happened.

  When Del finished, Jud said, "And you woke up to find out you had a son?"

  Del averted his eyes, unable to face Jud's too perceptive stare. He rarely talked about the boys to anyone outside the family. He had never even hinted to Ricki that he had children. He dealt with his fears of rejection by hiding the truth.

  But Jud was his best friend, even after seeing Del at his worst. So Del took a breath and said, "The first time they took me out of cryo, they took Chaniece out, too."

  "Wait a second. Your sister was in cryogenesis?"

  Del looked up at him. "When she found out that I had died, she told them to put her in cryo too, until they took me out." Even after all this time, Del couldn't believe what she had done. "We were twins. Two halves of one mind. We aren't complete without each other." His voice shook. "If I had known, I would have never let her do it."

  "If she was in cryo, those couldn't be her children."

  "They're hers." Del's pulse leapt, fueled by an anger he had never come to terms with. "They thawed us out nineteen years ago. She was all right, but I died within an hour. So they put me back in. The Assembly got scared. They thought I would never survive." His voice cracked. "Another Ruby spare, down the drain. So the bastards had the doctors impregnate Chaniece without telling her, using my DNA. By the time she knew, she was afraid she would lose me completely. So she had the child."

  Jud stared at him. "Bastards hardly begins to describe it."

  Del waited until his pulse calmed. Then he said, "The doctors told them that even if I lived, I had brain damage. I couldn't survive the powerlink for the Kyle web. Then my brother, Kelric—they believed he died in combat. He didn't; he was captured. But the Assembly didn't know. They panicked. They thought they were losing all the Ruby Heirs." With pain, he said, "So they made a replacement for me. Delson. I mean, hell, it wasn't like I was in a position to object."

  "How could they get away with that? It must be breaking I don't know how many laws."

  "They make the laws." Del was gripping the arm of his chair so hard, his knuckles ached. "After all, Delson doesn't need to be smart to be a Ruby heir. Just a strong psion. And he's a powerhouse." His voice broke. "So what if he has the mind of a child?"

  "Del, I'm sorry."

  "Don't be." Del tried to smile. "He's a wonderful kid. Sweet-natured, despite how tough he looks. He could flatten someone with one of those big fists of his, but he never would, unless they threatened Chaniece or Jaqui."

  "Why didn't this Assembly just clone you?"

  Del wished it were that easy. "You can't. The geneticists aren't yet sure why. We're rare because the genes that make us such strong psions also have negative mutations associated with them." Bitterness leaked into his voice despite his attempt to
stop it. "Scientists don't have many of us to study, and oh, there's this little ethics question of experimenting on living people." He took a breath, calming down. "Kyle genes are recessive, so they have to come from both parents. If a Ruby mother doesn't carry a Ruby baby, it almost never survives."

  Jud pushed his hand through his hair, clacking the beads. "But if they breed you to each other, doesn't that make mutations worse?"

  "Yes." Del flinched. "Look at the great gifts of intellect I bequeathed to my son."

  "Damn it, you're not stupid!"

  "Jud, don't."

  His roommate scowled at him. "You're the one who told me how smart everyone in your family is. His being slow may have nothing to do with you."

  Del just shook his head. It hurt too much to talk about.

  "No wonder your aunt overthrew her government," Jud muttered.

  Del's anger trickled away. "Yeah, the Assembly used draconian methods. But Jud, they had reason. Without Ruby psions, we have no Kyle-mesh. And without the mesh, we would lose our advantages in speed and communications over the Traders. They'd conquer us."

  Jud blinked. "You mean a few empaths is all that stands between your people and mass slavery?"

  "Essentially, yeah. It's why the Assembly tries to control us." Del took a breath. "They should have trusted us more. We don't want to fall to the Traders any more than they do."

  "I'm surprised your aunt didn't throw the whole lot of them into prison."

  "I was too, at first," Del said. "But you know, the Assembly is actually pretty effective. If she had dismantled the government right after the war, Skolia might have collapsed."

  Jud snorted. "Politicians only do what's in their best interest."

  "She's not a politician. She and Kelric are mathematicians."

  "Kelric?" Jud asked. "Is that someone in your family?"

  "My brother." Del shifted his weight. "Imperator Skolia."

  Jud blanched. "Oh."

  "He's in the Dyad with my Aunt Dehya. I'm the idiot brother."

  "Stop it!" Jud looked ready to shake him. "I hate when you do that. You're one of the most creative people I've met. So what if you're not like everyone else? You may not read, but you have one of the most impressive vocabularies I've heard, and you've hardly known English a year. I don't know anyone who can match what you do with music and words."

  Del was floored. Mac and Ricki had told him similar. He had hardly listened to Mac, and he hadn't believed Ricki, either. But now three different people said almost the same thing.

  He spoke awkwardly. "Thanks."

  Jud hesitated. "That younger boy called you Father, too."

  The second shock. "Nine years after Delson was born, the doctors brought me out and made Jaqui with my DNA. This time I survived a few weeks before they had to put me back."

  "Did you know about him?"

  Del shook his head, trying to push away the hurtful memories. "Not until three years later, when they took me out again." Dryly he added, "I managed to stay alive that time."

  "So that was the last time in cryo."

  "I wish." Del rubbed the tensed muscles in the back of his neck. "Over the next two years, I was in and out every half year or so, for a few months. And I had to relearn everything. But I recovered. The past five years, I've been fine."

  "You say it all so calmly." Jud let out a breath. "It sounds like a nightmare."

  Del just didn't want to hurt anymore. "The hardest part was having two children, and I couldn't be a father to them, even after I came out for good. Chaniece looked after us all. I was almost as helpless as an infant. Jaqui and I learned everything together. He was two and I was—well, I don't know how the hell old I am. Twenty-six, if you count the time I've been out of cryo. Some tests say twenty-five or twenty-four. It messed up my DNA."

  "No wonder they worry so much about you."

  "They're suffocating me. They want to keep me in this symbolic cryogenesis forever."

  Jud spoke gently. "They're afraid for you. It's hard, when you love someone, to see things clearly."

  Was it love? Del wanted to believe that. But he said only, "So I have more bodyguards." He wished he didn't have to inflict them on Jud. "I'm sorry. It's affecting your life, too."

  "Are you kidding?" Jud laughed good-naturedly. "My life has never been this interesting. A hit single, and my roommate is a flipping prince. It's great."

  "Hey, I only do flips when I practice." Del snapped his arms up in a mai-quinjo move. "I'll toss you over my shoulder."

  Jud gave him an unimpressed look. "I've never seen you toss anyone. I think you made all that up."

  "Don't tempt me, or I'll have to prove you wrong."

  His roommate laughed. "Okay. But first let's get pizza. I'm starving."

  Del grimaced. "I hate pizza. How about Thai?"

  "All right." Jud jumped up. "I'll tell Cameron."

  "You don't have to," Del grumbled. "He'll know the second I leave this apartment."

  Jud hesitated, his face thoughtful. "You know, you're well enough known now that someone might recognize you if we go out."

  Del just wanted to eat, without people coming up to him. "Let's get it in, then."

  So they commed a restaurantio in the m-universe and ordered food, which they had delivered to Cameron since he would intercept it anyway. When he showed up at the door, holding dinner, looking confused, they unlocked the security mesh, altered the permeability on the molecular airlock, and invited him inside. Together, the three of them consumed six full dinners.

  It was almost fun. Del tried not to dwell on how much he missed his family. But he knew the truth, as hard as it was to face. It was wrong for him to be in their lives. What example could he set for his sons, that their uncle was also their father? His third sister, Aniece, had married Lord Rillia, who governed the Rillian Vales. Rillia loved the boys and had taken them and Chaniece into his home. He was surely a better father figure than Del could ever be, and he had been a constant in their lives during the years their biological father had slept in cold storage.

  But Del missed them so much, it left a hole nothing could fill.

  Mac had spent so much energy dreading his talk with Del that he almost passed out when the prince called him instead.

  "You want me to do what?" Mac gaped at the comm screen.

  "Cameron and I are supposed to meet this person at the starport," Del said. "But Cam doesn't want me going into the terminal because people might recognize me. So we were wondering if you would meet her while we wait outside in the flyer."

  "Who is she?"

  Del glowered at him. "Hell if I know."

  "And you really told your family what happened?" Mac was sure he had heard wrong. "Everything?"

  "I told Chaniece. Sort of." Del raked his hand through his hair. "My brother Windar saw a holo of me singing. So of course, instead of contacting me, he took it to Kelric and my mother."

  Mac raised an eyebrow. "Whereas you immediately contacted them when Prime-Nova gave you the contract."

  Del regarded him with those deceptively innocent eyes. "I've been planning to tell them."

  "For a year? That's a long plan."

  "I needed to think." Del even said it with a straight face.

  Mac wondered how Del could be so charming sometimes and so exasperating at others. He said only, "I'm glad you talked to Chaniece. Fitz McLane wanted to contact your family. I got him to hold off, but he wouldn't have waited long."

  Del glowered at him. "General McLane can go drill—"

  "Uh, Del, you know our conversations are recorded."

  To Mac's surprise, Del laughed. "All right. I won't cuss anyone out." He mimed doing a salute. "Hi, General."

  Mac struggled to hold back his laugh. Fitz wasn't going to find it amusing, and Mac didn't want to antagonize him.

  "All right," he told Del. "I'll go meet your new Jagernaut bodyguard."

  The Thurgood Marshall Starport that served both Baltimore and Washington was east of the Inters
tate 95 Air Lane. Mac rode with Del and Jud in a rented flyer while Cameron sat up front with the pilot, another Marine. They let Mac off at the gates for offworld flights, then headed to a flyer parking lot.

  Inside the terminal, Mac strode along a fast-walk, which took him to the waiting area for Skolian arrivals. As he stood in the blue-carpeted lounge, the Jagernaut strolled out of customs carrying a smart-sack over one shoulder. She was far more convincing as a civilian than Cameron. He fooled people because holo-rock techs liked to act military; this woman looked like a tourist, nothing more. The only reason Mac knew she was an elite military operative was because he recognized her from the images Del had sent him.

  He waved her over. "Tyra Jarin?"

  "That's me," she said as she came up. "Are you Mac Tyler?"

  Good Lord. Her English was perfect. "Yes, I am. Welcome to Baltimore." Mac offered his hand, and she shook it with complete ease, as if she had done it all her life.

  "Do you have any luggage?" Mac asked as they headed into the gleaming white concourse with its many shops.

  "Just this." She hefted her smart-sack.

  "Good." He didn't know what to say. She looked so normal. Straight, dark hair brushed her shoulders and framed an aquiline face. She was on the tall side, with a lithe build. It was hard to believe she was one of the most versatile killers ever created.

  Tyra glanced at him with the hint of a smile. "This way, no one notices me."

  A flush heated Mac's face. He had forgotten Jagernauts were psions. "Am I that easy to read?"

  "Only if you practically shout it in your mind. Your mental shields are otherwise very effective."

  "I was trained to build them during my Air Force days," Mac said. "It's one reason ASC hired me to work with Del."

  "How is he?" Tyra asked. "That business with those two fans sounded gruesome."

  "He was pretty shaken up," Mac said. "But he's better."

  "Good." She looked around the concourse like a fascinated tourist, but Mac had no doubt she was taking in every detail.

  They rode a lift to the top floor, then went outside to the flyer lot, which consisted of landing pads rather than parking spaces. They were walking toward Del's flyer when its door opened and he jumped out. He stood in the sunlight wearing a ragged pair of mesh-jeans and a faded T-shirt with a rip in one sleeve. His hair spilled over his collar. He rubbed the small of his back, then stretched his arms while he looked around. When he spotted Mac and Tyra, he waved.