Saga of the Skolian Empire 01 - Primary Inversion by Asaro Catherine

Author:Asaro, Catherine [Asaro, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: literature, Galactic, Speculative Fiction, &, Science, Space Opera, Fiction, Fantasy, Military, Empire
ISBN: 9780812550238
Google: zp5B-aVJC5MC
Goodreads: 365672
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1995-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14. Mind of the Web

It stood in the middle of a casecrete plaza, the building we called, simply, the Hub. It was deceptively plain, just a two-story structure with white casecrete walls. Muted lamps lit the area even this late at night, their light reflecting off the surfaces of the plaza and the building.

The only entrance was a featureless door. When I pressed my fingers into its lock, a scanner read my fingerprints and the door opened, revealing a cubicle that looked like an airlock. Except instead of air, this lock kept in secrets.

As soon as I stepped inside, the outer door closed. The walls glowed with just enough light to let me see a psiphon resting in a cradle on the wall by the inner door. I plugged the prong into my wrist and waited while the computer node connected to it scanned my brain.

The inner door slid open.

A corridor with glass walls stretched out before me. There were four offices on either side, each with one person sitting inside. Telops. They wore full psiphon exoskeletons, structures even more extensive than the ones on our Jags. These covered their wearers from hip to chin, plugging psiphons in at the wrists, spine, and neck. Some of the telops also wore helmets that covered their eyes, or their entire heads. Telops didn’t need to move. Just think. Most of them sat completely still, though a man on my right was slowly rocking his head back and forth with his eyes closed. Farther down the hall a woman was leaning back in her exoskeleton watching a cluster of holos rotate in the air above her head.

Security menu, I thought. Personnel, Security telops, Hub, current.

The face of a woman with gray hair and lean features formed in my mind. Stats appeared under her image: name, age, security clearances, other pertinent data from her ISC file.

Simultaneous displays. I thought.

The woman’s image shrunk until it filled only an eighth of my mindscape. Seven more images appeared, all of them telops who monitored security for the Hub. As I walked down the hall, my spinal node matched the images with the men and women in the offices, giving me stats on each of them. I stored the data in a memory file. Although I had learned to deal with the “double exposure” created when my mindscape produced images at the same time that my eyes were viewing a scene, it was still disorienting to see the telops inside my mind while I was looking straight at them.

The hall ended in another security airlock. I entered as before. This time when I plugged in the psiphon inside the cubicle, a metallic thought came into my mind.

Name?

Sauscony Valdoria, Primary.

Purpose?

I kept my mind as smooth as the surface of a lake on a windless day. To recode T12.

The inner door slid open.

I walked out into a circular lobby with white walls and a blue carpet. Blue chairs sat against the walls like molded beanbags. In the center of the room a white metal staircase spiraled up to the ceiling.

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