The Ruby Dice Read online

  "Well, Hidaka, you have an excellent name," Jaibriol said. "Your men may choose names as well, if they wish."

  The captain bowed. "You honor us."

  Jaibriol couldn't answer. It wasn't an honor, it was appalling it had taken this long for him to offer the choice.

  They left the hall then, and as Jaibriol walked through the black marble halls of his palace, he brooded. He wished his joint commanders were as straightforward to deal with as his guards. He doubted he would ever convince Barthol Iquar or Erix Muze to endorse his wish for peace. And without support of the military, he didn't see how any talks with the Skolian Imperialate could even succeed.

  "Jeremiah Coltman," Dehya said.

  Kelric looked up from the console where he was scanning files on army deployments. He and Dehya were in a room paneled in gold and copper hues. It was one of many offices that honeycombed the hull of the Skolian Orbiter space station used as a command center by the Imperialate.

  "Jeremiad what?" he asked.

  Dehya regarded him from her console, a slender woman with long hair, sleek and black, streaked with white, as if frost tipped the tendrils curling around her face. Translucent sunset colors overlaid her green eyes, the only trace she had of her father's inner eyelid. Kelric didn't have the inner lid either, but he had his grandfather's metallic gold eyes, skin, and hair, modifications designed to adapt humans to a too-bright world.

  "Jeremiah Coltman," she repeated. "Do you remember?"

  "I've no idea," he said, rubbing his shoulder to ease his stiff muscles. He had many aches these days; he hardly recalled the years when he had been bursting with energy and youth.

  "That boy from Earth," Dehya said. "About a year ago we had trouble with the Allied Worlds over him."

  Kelric searched his memory, but nothing came. Bolt, he thought, accessing his spinal node. You have anything on him?

  His node answered via bioelectrodes in his brain that fired his neurons in a manner he interpreted as thought. Jeremiah Coltman was detained on a Skolian world. I'm afraid my records are spotty.

  Kelric remembered then. It had come up the day Jeejon died. He recalled little from that time, and he had recorded nothing well in the long days that followed. Even now, nearly a year later, he avoided the memories. They hurt too much.

  "I thought the man they locked up was an adult," Kelric said. "A professor."

  "An anthropology graduate student." Dehya was reading from her console. "He spent three years on one of our worlds while he wrote his dissertation. Huh. Listen to this. They didn't throw him in prison. They like him so much, they won't let him go home."

  Kelric turned back to his work. "Can't somebody's embassy take care of it?" It surprised him that she would spend time on it. Dehya served as Assembly Key, the liaison between the Assembly and the vast information meshes that networked the Imperialate in space-time—and in Kyle space. Physics had no meaning in the Kyle; proximity was determined by similarity of thought rather than position. Two people having a conversation were "next" to each other no matter how many light-years separated them in real space. It allowed instant communication across interstellar distances and tied the Imperialate into a coherent civilization. But only those few people with a nearly extinct mutation in their neural structures could power the Kyle web. Like Dehya. As Assembly Key, she had far more pressing matters to attend than a minor incident from a year ago.

  "Ah, but Kelric," she said. "It's such an interesting incident."

  Damn! He had to guard his thoughts better. He fortified his mental shields. "Stop eavesdropping," he grumbled.

  She smiled in that ethereally strange way of hers, as if she were only partly in the real universe. "He won a prize."

  "Who won a prize?"

  "Jeremiah Coltman. Something called the Goldstone." She glanced at her console. "It's quite prestigious among anthropologists. But his hosts won't let him go home to receive it. That caused a stir, enough to toggle my news monitors."

  Kelric felt a pang of longing. Had he been free to pursue any career, he would have chosen the academic life and become a mathematician. He and Dehya were alike that way. Those extra neural structures that adapted their brains to Kyle space also gave them an enhanced ability for abstract thought.

  "Why won't they let him go?" Kelric said. "Where is he?"

  "Never heard of the place." She squinted at her screen. "Planet called Coba."

  He felt as if a freighter slammed into him. Jeejon's words rushed back from that moment before she died: You never told anyone where you were those eighteen years.

  "Kelric?" Dehya was watching him. "What's wrong?"

  Mercifully, his mental shields were in place. He didn't think she could pick up anything from him, but he never knew for certain with Dehya; she had a finesse unlike anyone else. So he told the truth, as best he could. "It reminded me of Jeejon."

  Sympathy softened her sculpted features. "Good memories, I hope."

  He just nodded. His family believed he had been a prisoner during those eighteen years he vanished. He let them assume the Eubians had captured and enslaved him, and that he didn't want to speak of it. That was even true for the final months. But he didn't think Dehya ever fully believed it. If she suspected he was reacting to the name Coba, she would pursue the lead.

  He had to escape before she sensed that his disquiet went beyond his memories of Jeejon. Dehya's ability to read his moods depended on how well the fields of her brain interacted with his. The Coulomb forces that determined those fields dropped off quickly with distance; even a few meters could affect whether or not she picked up his emotions.

  He rose to his feet. "I think I'll take a break."

  She spoke softly. "I'm sorry I reminded you."

  His face gentled, as could happen around Dehya. She was one of the few people who seemed untroubled by his silences and reclusive nature. "It's all right."

  He left the chamber then, his stride long and slow in the lower gravity, which was forgiving to his huge size. Alone, he headed back to his large, empty house.

  II

  A Debt To Life

  Kelric sat in his living room with no lights except the gold designs on the walls. No sunlight slanted through the open windows, but the bright day diffused into his home. He had settled on the couch, almost the only furniture in the huge room.

  He sat and he thought.

  Coba. It had taken eighteen years of his life. What would it do to Jeremiah Coltman? Would the young man's unwilling presence stir that world as Kelric's had done, until its culture erupted into war? Compared to the Radiance War that had raged between the mammoth Eubian and Skolian empires, Coba's war had been tiny. But it ravaged its people. And he, Kelric, had caused it. Coltman was a scholar, not a warrior, but the youth's presence would still exert an influence.

  Kelric spoke to the Evolving Intelligence, or EI, that ran his house. He had named it after an ancient physicist who had illuminated mysteries of relativistic quantum mechanics.

  "Dirac?" he asked.

  A man answered in a deep baritone. "Attending."

  "Find me everything you can about Jeremiah Coltman."

  Dirac paused. "He was born in Wyoming."

  "What's a wyoming?"

  "A place on Earth."

  "Oh." That didn't help. "What about his graduate school?"

  "He earned a doctorate from Harvard for his study of human settlement on the planet Coba. He spent three years working on a construction crew there while he wrote his dissertation. One year ago, a Coban queen selected him for a Calani. I have no definition of Calani."

  "I know what it means." Kelric leaned back and closed his eyes. Queen was the wrong word for the women who ruled the Coban city- estates. They called themselves Managers. In Coba's Old Age they had been warriors who battled constantly, but in these modern times they considered themselves civilized. Never mind this atavistic penchant of theirs for kidnapping male geniuses.

  Dirac continued. "Coltman's family and members of the Alli
ed diplomatic corps have tried to free him."

  "Any success?" Kelric asked.

  "So far, none. He agreed to abide by Coban law when they let him live on their world."

  "What about this award he won?"

  "Apparently the Coban queen relented enough to send his doctoral thesis to his advisor at Harvard. The advisor submitted it to the awards committee. At twenty-four, Coltman is the youngest person ever to win the Goldstone Prize."

  Kelric was grateful the fellow had received the honor, not because he knew anything about anthropology, but because it had caught Dehya's attention, which meant Kelric had found out about Coltman. It also gave him a reason to ask about the planet.

  "What do you have on Coba?" Kelric asked. His outward calm didn't match his inner turmoil. He had avoided directly speaking that question for ten years, lest someone notice and want to know why he asked. As long as he seemed to ignore Coba, no one had reason to suspect its people had imprisoned a Ruby heir for eighteen years.

  "Coba is a Skolian world," Dirac said. "Restricted Status. No native may leave the planet. They are denied contact with the Imperialate. The world has one automated starport, a military refueling post that's rarely used. Skolians who voluntarily enter the Restricted zone forfeit their citizenship."

  Kelric waited. "That's it?"

  "Yes." The EI sounded apologetic.

  Relief washed over him. It was even less than he expected. Restricted Status usually went to worlds inimical to human life or otherwise so dangerous they required quarantine. The Cobans had asked for the status, and ISC had granted it because Coba was so inconsequential that no one cared.

  Kelric's Jag starfighter had crashed on Coba after he escaped a Eubian ambush. The Cobans should have taken him to the starport. He would have died before they reached it, but the Restriction required they do it. Instead they saved his life. His legs had been pulverized by the crash, and the Cobans had healed him the best they could. But their medicine had limitations; even with additional work done by his people two decades later, his legs would always bear the internal scars of those injuries.

  On Coba, by the time he recovered, they had decided never to let him go. They feared he would bring ISC to investigate the Restriction. They had been right. That had been before he understood how the Imperialate could destroy their unique, maddening, and wondrous culture.

  Kelric couldn't fathom why they let Coltman study them. He rose to his feet, and his steps echoed as he walked through the stone halls of his house, under high, unadorned ceilings.

  His office had a warmer touch. Jeejon had put down rugs, dark gold with tassels. Panels softened the stark walls with scenes of his home world, plains of silvery-green reeds and spheres adrift in the air. In some images, the spindled peaks of the Backbone Mountains speared a darkening sky.

  He sat at his desk, and it lit up with icons, awaiting his commands. He turned off every panel. Then he opened a drawer and removed his pouch, a bag old and worn, bulging with its contents. Often he wore it on his belt, but other times he left it here, in the seclusion of his private office. He undid its drawstring—

  And rolled out his Quis dice.

  The pieces came in many forms: squares, disks, balls, cubes, rods, polyhedrons, and more. Not only did he have the full set carried by most Cobans, his also included unusual shapes such as stars, eggs, even small boxes with lids.

  Dice and Coba. They were inextricably blended. All Cobans played Quis, from the moment they were old enough to hold the dice until the day they died. It was one giant game, the life's blood of a world. They gambled with Quis, educated with it, gossiped through the dice, built philosophies. The powers of Coba used it to gain political influence. For a Manager to prosper, she had to master Quis at its topmost levels.

  Then there were Calani.

  The few men honored as Calani were extraordinarily gifted at Quis. They spent their lives playing dice. They provided strategy for the Manager, a weapon she wielded in the flow of power among the Estates. Managers had ten to twenty Calani; together, they formed her Calanya. The stronger a Calanya, the more a Manager could influence Coban culture. Quis meant power, and a Manager's Calanya was her most valuable asset.

  Only Calani owned jeweled dice. The white pieces were diamond; the blue, sapphire; the red, ruby. But Calani paid a steep price for the spectacular luxury of their lives. They remained secluded. They saw no one but the Manager and the few visitors she allowed. They swore never to read, write, or speak to anyone Outside the Calanya. Nothing was allowed to contaminate their Quis, for anyone who succeeded in manipulating their game could damage the Estate, even topple the Manager from power. Managers shielded their scholarly Calani from Outside influences with the single-minded resolve of their warrior queen ancestors.

  To symbolize Jeremiah, Kelric chose a silver ball. He built structures around it and let them develop according to complex and fluid rules. His skill molded the structures, but the complexity of the game and its often unexpected evolution informed their design just as much. Calani and Quis: they created each other.

  He had intended to model Coban politics and examine what they revealed about Jeremiah. Instead, the dice patterns mirrored the history of his own people. He wasn't certain what his subconscious was up to, but he let the structures evolve.

  Six millennia ago, an unknown race had taken humans from Earth and moved them to the world Raylicon. Then they vanished, leaving nothing but dead starships. Over the centuries, using libraries on those ships, the humans had developed star travel. They built the Ruby Empire and established many colonies, including Coba. But the empire soon collapsed, stranding the colonies. Four millennia of Dark Ages followed.

  When the Raylicans finally regained star travel, they split into two opposed empires: the Eubian Concord, and Kelric's people, the Skolian Imperialate. Skolians referred to Eubians as "Traders" because they based a substantial portion of their economy on the sale and trade of human beings.

  Since that time, Skolia had been rediscovering the ancient colonies like Coba. The people of Earth had a real shock when they reached the stars: their siblings were already there, two huge and bitterly opposed civilizations. The Allied Worlds of Earth became a third, but unlike their bellicose neighbors, they had no interest in conquering anyone. They just sold things. In his more philosophical moments, Kelric thought neither his people nor the Traders would inherit the stars. While they were throwing world-slagging armies at each other, the Allieds would quietly take over by convincing humanity they couldn't survive without Allied goods. Imperial Space Command had an incredible ability to expand to new frontiers, but it paled in comparison to Starbytes Coffee.

  Earth's success in the interstellar marketplace, however, depended on maintaining civil relations with Skolia and Eube. They obviously had no intention of upsetting their relations with the Imperialate over one graduate student. The moment Jeremiah had set foot on Coba, he had forfeited his rights as an Allied citizen and become subject to the Restriction.

  Kelric blew out a gust of air. He had to get Jeremiah out of there, and do it without alerting anyone. The Restriction protected Coba's extraordinary culture.

  And it protected Kelric's children.

  He sat back, staring at the Quis structures that covered his desk. "Dirac."

  The EI's voice floated into the air. "Attending."

  Kelric knew if he continued to ask about Coba, someone might notice. His interactions with Dirac were shielded by the best security ISC had to offer. But he knew Dehya. If she became curious, she could break even his security. He was taking a risk. But it had been so long, and he had so little time left.

  "I need you to find a Closure document," he said. "It was written ten years ago, just after the Radiance War." He leaned his head back until he was gazing at the stone ceiling. Outside his window, wind rustled in the dapple-trees like children whispering together.

  "Did you arrange it?" Dirac asked.

  "That's right," Kelric said. "I was serving on a mer
chant ship. The Corona." He had escaped Coba in a dilapidated shuttle that had barely managed to reach another port. He hadn't had credits enough even to buy food, let alone repair the aging shuttle. The job on the Corona had offered a way out.

  "I have records of a vessel fitting that description," Dirac said. "Jaffe Maccar is its captain."

  "That's it. I filed a Closure document with the ship's legal EI."

  A long silence followed. Finally Dirac said, "I find no record of this document."

  Maybe he had hidden it better than he thought. Either that, or it was lost. "It's encrypted," he said, and gave Dirac a key.

  After a moment, Dirac spoke crisply. "File six-eight-three. Marriage to Ixpar Karn Closed. If Closure isn't reversed in ten years, Kelric Garlin Valdoria Skolia will be declared dead, and his assets will revert to his heirs. Ixpar Karn and two children are named as beneficiaries." The EI paused. "Your listed assets are extensive."