Read Online Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback by Catherine Asaro - Free Book Online Page B

display?”
    I grimaced. I had no desire to see Qox give another one of
his speeches. Although we spelled his name Ur Qox, or sometimes Ur Kox, the way
we pronounced it, the true spelling was U’jjr Qox, the apostrophe indicating he
was a Highton. The highest Highton. The Emperor. But regardless of how I felt
about the Trader Emperor, we needed to know what he had to say.
    “Yes,” I said. “Display the recording.”
    The image of the mystery Aristo disappeared, replaced by a
lean man speaking at a glass podium. He was in his late forties, with
shimmering black hair and red eyes. His Highton accent was chillingly perfect.
Tarque had also been a Highton, with that same grating sound of unremitting
arrogance in his voice, that same look of it in his perfect face.
    Qox spent most of the speech lauding the Trader army. He
painted the rebels as less than human and the Trader soldiers as heroes. There
wasn’t a whit of useful information in the entire speech. He went on and on,
invoking the glory of the Eube empire and of the Aristos and of himself and of
his father’s esteemed name.
    “At least his father’s dead,” Rex muttered.
    At least. The previous emperor had been worse than the
current one. Emperor J’briol Qox, the man we called Jaibriol, had during his
reign conquered nearly a thousand worlds. And he had hated my family. Gods, he
had hated us. Apparently it infuriated him that we, the ultimate providers, not
only lived free from his power but had the audacity to build a civilization
that rivaled his own.
    In English, the name J’briol Qox translated into Gabriel
Cox. But the Allieds always used our spelling and the soft J of our pronunciation.
I once asked a receptionist in an Earth embassy why they avoided their own
translation. She told me the name Gabriel came from one of their holy books,
that he was an archangel who heralded good news, and that the name meant “God
is my strength.” She thought Jaibriol Qox should have been called Lucifer instead,
after the fallen angel who had sunk from heaven to hell. It made a lot of sense
to me.
    “At least this Qox has a redeeming quality,” Taas said.
    Helda snorted. “His only redeeming quality would be to fill
a coffin.”
    “He has no heir,” Taas said. “Twenty-five years of marriage
and not one child.”
    Rex nodded. “You would think he would divorce the Empress
for a more fertile wife.”
    “Why?” Taas said. “All the Hightons need is her eggs and his
sperm to make a baby. She doesn’t have to be naturally fertile.”
    “They are not allowed divorce anyway,” Helda said.
    “Actually, he could divorce her if she’s refusing to give
him an heir,” I said. “Deliberate infertility is grounds for dissolving the
royal marriage. The only grounds, in fact.”
    “You think maybe he actually loves her?” Taas asked.
    “Am I wearing a ballet tutu?” Helda asked.
    Rex grinned at her. “I’d like to see that. A pink tutu.”
    Helda crossed her arms, her bulky muscles rippling under her
sweater. “Pah.”
    I smiled. “Well, whatever his reason, he has problems.” The
Hightons were fanatical about keeping their castes pure, their bloodlines “unpolluted.”
No child could be recognized as a Highton unless his parentage was verified by
genetic tests from three independent sources. And of course the Qox line had to
be the purest of all. If Ur Qox didn’t soon produce an heir, he risked losing
his claim to the title of Emperor.
    “At least we don’t have to worry about all that,” Taas said.
    “We don’t?” I asked.
    “The Assembly and the Skol-Net don’t depend on heritage.”
    “The Assembly, no,” I said. “The Skol-Net, yes.”
    Taas blinked. “It does?”
    “Imperial heirs have to be Rhon psions,” I said. Why was Rex
so pale? He knew it already, that his and my children would never be in the
line of succession. Didn’t he? Yet I felt sick, as if I had just been punched
in the gut.
    Rex spoke carefully. “I had never realized