Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro Page B

his barriers had been impenetrable. Now they were dissolving. He was a mental fortress, one that should have taken a tortuous battle of wills to break, yet now I felt him. He had to be voluntarily dropping his walls; I had done nothing. But I sensed neither the intent from him to do so nor the realization it was happening.
           He watched me with a healthy, sensual desire that caught me unprepared. Blood rushed to my face and to far more private places. Block! The synapse psicon flashed in my mind, and kept flashing, telling me the block wasn’t working. Either his reactions were too intense to shut out or else I was feeling my own as well. What was going on? It was wrong, all wrong. No, it wasn’t wrong, it was right, and that was what was wrong.
           I took a breath. Stay cool. Find out who he is. But how? I had a good starting point; if someone wanted him to pass as a Highton, they would have given him a Highton name.
           “What surprises me,” I said, “is that your parents gave you a name you obviously had no claim to.”
           The comment didn’t provoke his anger, as I had hoped. He just shrugged. “I have far more right to it than the hundred or so others who have it.”
           Hundred. Given that only a few thousand Aristos existed, his name had to be a popular one. What were well known Aristo names? That was easy. Kryx, as in Kryx Tarque. I would never forget it. Vitar was another, Jaibriol, and…
           Jaibriol. Jaibriol. Now I knew why Rex and I thought this man looked familiar, but neither Helda nor Taas recognized him. This false Aristo, this dove hiding in a night-wolf’s body, was a living reminder of a dead Highton, a man who had died when Helda was a small girl and before Taas was born. Comtrace hadn’t reported it because we had asked for a living Highton. This man resembled the late Emperor Jaibriol Qox, the father of the present Emperor.
           A dramatic difference existed, however, between this man and holos I had seen of Jaibriol Qox. Although the previous Emperor had been handsome in his youth, his face had aged into harsh lines that showed his true nature. His son, the current Emperor, was a leaner, quieter ruler, softer-spoken—and just as vicious. The years had stamped that cruelty into his features, just as they had stamped it into his father’s face. The man in front of me now showed no mark of that brutal nature.
           The thought budding in my mind was absurd. It had to be wrong. But I had to test it. “How are you ever going to rule, Jaibriol? Your people will never accept a telepath as their Emperor.”
           He flushed. “Nothing is wrong with my mind. My people will accept me.”
           No. NO. It was a lie. It had to be. But his mind was opening up to me, leaving no room for misinterpretation. We had been wrong, all of us.
           Emperor Ur Qox had an heir.
           Somehow I spoke calmly. “You’re descended from a provider. It’s the only way you could be a psion. You have to get the genes from both parents.” Both. Both. I stared at him. Now that I was looking for it, I couldn’t mistake his Qox lineage. Not only did he bring to mind the late Jaibriol Qox, but I saw his resemblance to the present Emperor as well. “That means your father—the Emperor—is at most only half Highton. You can’t be more than one quarter.”
           “Stop!” Jaibriol clenched his fist. “Stop your filthy insults.”
           His mental blocks were dissolving like salt in water. His mind was incredible. Beautiful. Sensual. I wanted him, just as an Earth salmon ready to spawn felt driven to swim upstream, against all obstacles, to reach home and reproduce. It made me want to strike out at him, furious that he—the Highton Heir—could so move me.
           “They’ll lust after your pain.” I was losing my battle to stay cool. “All of them, your ministers, peers, women,