The Thousand Emperors

SEVEN
In the three days since Jacob Moreland’s ship had crash-landed on Darwin, he had taken to hiding in a deep cave a few kilometres away from where that same craft had quickly set about destroying itself. He sustained himself by sucking brackish moisture from the pocket-like leaves of bushes that grew up the side of the hill below the cave, until it began to rain on the second day, an incessant downpour that continued well into the next evening. He passed the time huddled deep within the cave’s recesses, staring out towards the distant flicker of light that betrayed the presence of Coalition mechants still searching the nearby forest and shore.
They were looking for him, of course. His ship had evaded detection on the way down from orbit by disguising itself as random orbital flotsam, but whoever was controlling the mechants must have realized there was a chance at least one of the spy-ships had made it past their defences.
Jacob continued watching through the night until the lights eventually passed into the next valley, and only then allowed himself the luxury of sleep.

He emerged from the cave at dawn on his fourth day on Darwin, by now ravenous with hunger, climbing to the top of a tree and crouching low on a branch in order to peer out across the forest canopy. He could see that the search for him continued to move further and further away from his hiding place: beams of light flickered across the mouth of an estuary several kilometres to the north.
From time to time, as he waited to be rescued by whichever Tian Di sleeper agents picked up his transceiver alert, he would glance up at the impossibly vast bulk of the world-wheel that straddled Darwin’s equator. Patterns of light danced around the wheel’s inner curve, and up and down the spokes that connected the wheel to the continents and oceans below. From time to time displays of light, not unlike auroras, encircled the wheel like a phantasmagorical wreath, billowing like silk sheets cast into a turbulent wind. Whether it were some strange natural phenomenon, a byproduct of industrial processes, or indeed some form of artistic display, Jacob could not begin to guess.
The search lights finally faded behind a veil of grey rain that tumbled from the sky, blown in from the sea. Jacob returned to his cave and checked the transceiver for what might have been the thousandth time, but there was still no response.
He could not discount the possibility that the agents who had arrived before him might have been uncovered and terminated; but if that were the case, he felt sure their killers would not only have located their transceivers, but used them to track him down the moment he had sent out his distress call. The fact that they had not done so suggested those agents were still out there, somewhere.
Of course, there was always the possibility that if the sleeper agents had been captured, they had first managed to destroy their transceivers, or perhaps . . .
No. He pushed his transceiver back into a pocket of his combat suit. It was too easy to get caught up in paranoid fantasies, isolated and alone out here as he was. If he received no response within the next few days, he’d just have to strike out on his own and take his chances.
He set about foraging in the woods close by the cave, and found some wild nuts that proved bitter but edible. He tried a fruit analogous in appearance to berries, small dark clusters the colour of bruised knuckles, but just one was enough to make him violently sick and leave him with a fever that very nearly incapacitated him. He managed to crawl back inside the cave, where it took the microchines infesting his gut several hours to neutralize the berry’s poison and calm the fever.
When he next emerged from the cave, pale and shaky, night had fallen once more, and he saw a single light flickering through the line of trees dotting the slope below his cave.
They’ve found me, he thought with a lurch. Darwin’s security forces must have decided to renew their search for him. The chances of him surviving any encounter out here, without backup, against whatever mechants the Coalition were now employing, were vanishingly small.
Jacob waited, silent and still, for several minutes, then came to the conclusion that this was almost certainly a lone individual moving through the woods on foot. He could hear them stumbling through the undergrowth, their flashlight swinging this way and that.
Scrambling into the shelter of a tree’s wide, blade-like roots, he waited again.
Before long he saw the figure of a man make its way into a clearing below the cave, nervously clutching a torch in one hand. Jacob studied this individual from amongst deep shadows. The flickering auroras from the world-wheel faintly illuminated the stranger’s face, and Jacob saw that the man’s hair was grey and unkempt, his eyes pale and watery-looking. His mouth moved as if he were perpetually on the verge of saying something but then changing his mind. He was not young, and the lines on his face and the stiffness of his movements suggested he had not made use of any gerontological treatments presumably available to the Coalition’s citizens.
Jacob’s lattice searched its databases for a facial match, and found a near-perfect correlation with a sleeper agent named Melvin Kulic who had been sent to Darwin more than a century ago. The match was not quite perfect, however, suggesting this man was instead a descendant of Kulic’s, born since his arrival on Darwin.
Jacob felt a bristling of unease. This was not the reception he had been expecting.
‘Are you there?’ the old man called out, his voice wavering with uncertainty.
A moment later the old man jerked around, flashing the light across the clearing as if he he’d heard something, but Jacob had made no sound.
The light from his torch flickered across the tree behind which Jacob hid. Jacob drew back slightly, momentarily unsure whether or not he should reveal his presence.
That this old man had come looking for him, rather than the agents he had been expecting, implied something had gone badly wrong. His mind churned with possibilities. If he revealed himself, would he be walking into a trap? At the worst he could kill himself, safe in the knowledge that he had prepared instantiation backups prior to his departure from the Tian Di.
That settled it. And, besides, there was nothing to be gained from hiding any longer.
Jacob stepped away from the tree, watching as the old man flashed his light here and there around the clearing. He hadn’t seen him yet.
‘Listen,’ the old man’s voice quavered, ‘if you’re there – and if that damn thing hasn’t just gone haywire telling me you’re here – you’d better think about . . . Shit!’
The old man staggered backwards when he finally caught sight of Jacob standing just a few metres away. He stumbled over a root or rock hidden in the undergrowth, and let out a gasp of pain when he landed clumsily.
Jacob stepped forward, reaching out a hand and helping the old man back up onto his feet. At least if it were to prove expedient or necessary to kill this stranger, there would be no possibility of witnesses.
‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ said the old man, his face a mixture of awe and terror. ‘From the Tian Di.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s your ship?’
‘You’re alone?’ asked Jacob.
The old man squinted, and Jacob realized with a start that he had trouble with his eyes.
‘Your eyes,’ asked Jacob. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘My . . .’ The old man stared at him in befuddlement. ‘Of course,’ he replied after a moment. ‘You won’t know about the Edicts.’
‘Edicts?’ Jacob grasped at a sliver of memory. ‘You mean the Left-Behind – their Church Edicts, is that what you mean?’
The old man nodded. ‘The pastors won’t stand for any kind of messing around with the body now,’ he said. ‘Not any more, anyways.’
‘Tell me your name,’ said Jacob.
‘Jonathan Kulic. My father was . . . one of you.’
‘Where is he?’ Jacob demanded. ‘Why didn’t he or Bruehl or any of the other agents come here to meet me?’
‘I . . .’ the old man faltered. ‘My father died, years ago.’
‘Died? Of what?’
‘He . . . he came to believe in the Edicts.’
Jacob stared at him. ‘I don’t understand. How is that even possible?’
‘He didn’t have faith in the Edicts at first,’ Kulic replied, ‘that much he finally told me just before his death. But when he did come to believe in them, he let the microchines in his body – is that what they’re called? – die out. After that he grew old so quickly, some in our community believed he had been touched by God, or perhaps punished by him.’ Kulic shook his head. ‘He never even told my mother where he’d really come from, but he confided in me, on his deathbed.’
Jacob’s mind reeled. If Jonathan Kulic was telling the truth, his father – a Tian Di sleeper agent – had gone native, falling for the dictates of an extremist religious group existing on the very fringes of Coalition society. It said much about the moral corruption of the Coalition that such fringe cults were allowed to exist. But then again, groups such as the Left-Behind provided excellent cover for Tian Di agents.
‘And the others?’ Jacob demanded, stepping closer to Kulic. ‘Bruehl? Sillars? What about them?’
Kulic took a step back, looking frightened now. ‘Bruehl . . . changed. I don’t know as much about Sillars. I told the beacon everything I could.’
The beacon. He meant the transceiver, of course. ‘Then why are you here?’ asked Jacob, stepping forward and grabbing a fistful of the old man’s shirt. ‘You had nothing to do with any of this; you’re not from the Tian Di. Why did you come here?’
Kulic stared back at him with wide and frightened eyes, looking like he was on the verge of tears. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
Jacob reached behind his back, sliding a thin blade from out of a narrow sleeve situated over his lower spine. He brought it up to where the old man could see its razored edge glinting in the light of the world-wheel, then touched it to the side of Kulic’s throat.
‘Why didn’t you alert the Coalition authorities here that your father had confessed to being a spy?’
‘I was too afraid of them,’ the old man stammered, ‘of what they might do to me. I grew up with stories of the horrible changes they make to you when you join them, of the Fallen in the cities, demons pretending to be human. And, besides, the villages are all I’ve ever known. He told me – my father, that is – that the Tian Di would wipe Darwin and all the other Coalition worlds free of sin. So when he died, I decided to finish what my father could not.’
Jacob relaxed his grip on the old man. He was nothing more than a weak-willed old fool. In some ways that might make him dangerous, and Jacob knew the safest course would be to terminate him immediately.
Yet the fact remained that his mission so far had gone desperately awry almost before it had started. There was at least a chance Jonathan Kulic might actually be able to help him.
‘I need shelter, clothes, and food,’ he told the old man. ‘I also need a little time to regain my strength. Can you help me?’
The old man reacted with pitiful gratitude, his eyes shining as he sobbed. ‘Of course. Of course! You’re going back there, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘Back to Temur, through that new transfer gate.’
Jacob struggled to control himself. His training told him he should reach out and snap Kulic’s neck and be done with it; whatever madness had taken over Kulic’s father had caused him to share the intimate details of his mission with his son, an act that constituted an appalling breach of protocol.
But then he saw the old man’s eyes were again damp with tears. He’s been waiting all his life for this moment, Jacob realized with a shock – waiting for the day his father’s transceiver would activate, and give his life a purpose that had clearly been missing.
Jacob had been lucky to survive the journey across the light-years – and even luckier to have evaded the Coalition’s security forces on reaching Darwin. He could almost believe the God of the Left-Behind really had guided this old man to help him, when by all rights he should have been forced to fend for himself.
Jacob reached out slowly and put a hand on Kulic’s shoulder, patting it. From here on in, he was going to have to improvise.
‘If you ever again mention any of the details of my mission out loud,’ Jacob said quietly, ‘I will gut you and garland your village with your intestines. Do you understand me?’
The old man’s mouth worked. ‘I – I’m sorry,’ he managed to mumble. ‘I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.’ His eyes darted here and there, almost as if he thought someone might be hiding behind a tree or bush and listening. ‘But you could take me home with you,’ he added in a hoarse whisper. ‘Take me back to Temur, where there are at least real people, and not . . . monsters.’
‘Perhaps I could,’ Jacob replied with as much fake sincerity as he could muster.
The old man’s gratitude was rapidly becoming wearing. Jacob had him wait there in the clearing while he went back to the cave in order to fetch the case he had retrieved from the ship. Then he allowed Kulic to lead him back through the woods to a horse and cart waiting on a dirt path less than a kilometre away. The horse whinnied gently at Jacob’s approach, its hoofs pawing nervously at the dirt underfoot.
‘Why not use motorized transport?’ Jacob asked Kulic, as he climbed into the rear of the cart, which contained nothing but bags of dried hay and a large, tattered carpet with a faded pattern woven into it.
‘The Edicts,’ Kulic replied, as if that told Jacob everything he needed to know, before taking the reins and coaxing the horse into a gentle trot. They began to move at a steady pace, but Jacob could feel every bump where he sat crouched in the rear.
For the first time since he had stumbled out of his ship and watched it dissolve to nothing, Jacob allowed himself a faint sliver of hope. There was still a chance – small, but real – that he could find the weapon Father Cheng required him to locate, and carry it back to Temur.
Just days from now, and he, Jacob Moreland, would earn his place as one of the greatest heroes of the Tian Di. Millions might die as a result of his actions, but – as all truly good men knew – history was a tapestry necessarily woven from the bodies of the innocent.