The Thousand Emperors

NINE
Luc dreamed he was back on Aeschere, lost in claustrophobic passageways crowded with mandalas and leering statues.
This isn’t real, he gasped as Antonov leaned over him, playing with the wriggling worm-like mechant.
Very astute, Antonov replied, grinning down at him. You’ve met Zelia by now, haven’t you? Be careful of that one.
Luc struggled to free himself from the chair he had been bound to. Don’t do this to me, he cried. I can’t go through this again.
I wish I could stop this, Mr Gabion, said Antonov, shaking his head sadly, I really do. But this isn’t the kind of dream where you can pinch yourself and wake up; you know that already. You’re reliving all this because there’s a war inside your skull, and I’m winning.
No. Zelia de Almeida is helping me. She’ll undo whatever damage you’ve done to me.
The neuro-suppressants she put inside you? They only suppress your conscious awareness of a process that can’t be stopped. Didn’t she tell you that?
She told me she could save me!
Antonov laughed a rich, hearty laugh, leaning back and raising his face to the ceiling. She’s bluffing, he said, bringing his gaze back down. Or maybe she thinks she really can retard the lattice’s growth, but I seriously doubt it. What I put inside your head is far in advance of the kind of technology even the Temur Council allow themselves. No, my dear boy, she’s more interested in saving her own skin than anything else. At best, you’re a puzzle to be unlocked, so she can find out what I’m really up to.
Then why not just tell me why you put this thing inside me, damn it! Luc screamed.
Because we are engaged in a game, Luc – and a very dangerous one, Antonov replied. And it is never a good idea to show one’s hand too soon.
You’re killing me because I found a way to stop you.
Antonov looked confused for a moment. You think this is about revenge? He shook his head. I’m saving your life, and mine as well.
How in hell do you figure that out?
When you found me, I had no access to my backups, no other way to preserve at least some of my thoughts and memories. What you see before you is all that’s left of me.
Luc listened, thunderstruck.
You did a better job than you realized, the dead man continued. I had cached backups, of course, but SecInt, thanks to its temporary truce with Sandoz, managed to locate nearly all of them – and every last one of them auto-destructed before it could be interrogated. He clasped one hand to his injured chest. But this part of me, mere shadow of my former self that it is that now resides inside you, is enough to finish the task ahead.
He leaned in close to Luc. Speak to the Ambassador, Luc. With his help, we will both be reborn, and a terrible calamity will be prevented.
What Ambassador? What—
Luc woke with a start and jerked upright, lungs heavy and aching in his chest. He was back home again.
For all he knew, the dream he had just experienced was at best an elaborate fantasy formed from his own fears and desires – at worst, a sign of incipient madness, triggered by the lattice as it grew in complexity and reach.
But he knew better. Whatever Antonov had done to him, it had been done for a reason. Some part of the dead man, some shadow-aspect, was alive and well inside his skull, drawing out the agony and drip-feeding him whatever tantalizing scraps of information it could use to make him dance to any tune but his own.
Speak to the Ambassador. Luc had no idea which Ambassador Antonov might have been referring to.
Every world of the Tian Di but Vanaheim had embassies, but they meant little in this age of instantaneous travel across the light-years. Mostly, the title ‘Ambassador’ was an honorary role given to those who’d served the Temur Council with distinction. They could have told Luc he was an Ambassador as his reward for Aeschere, and it wouldn’t have meant a damn thing.
He searched the public and secure databases for information on planetary ambassadors currently resident on Temur while he dressed and breakfasted. He vaguely recognized some of the names, but could find no immediately obvious link to Vasili or to de Almeida or anyone else – nothing that might make sense of what the dream-Antonov had said to him.
Glancing in a mirror, he frowned, then stepped closer. His CogNet earpiece had turned dark, an indicator that it had failed in some way and needed to be replaced.
He carefully removed it and looked down at it in the palm of his hand. It was tiny, the kind of thing that was easily lost, but as easily replaced at virtually no cost. The technology was entirely ubiquitous, the kind of thing you grew up around without ever really being aware of how badly you needed it until it was gone.
Except there had been no break in service during his search of several different databases, despite his CogNet earpiece’s terminal failure. Antonov’s lattice, he realized with a chill, had seamlessly taken over from it without his even noticing.
He stared down at the tiny darkened bead, a mixture of dread and excitement churning inside him.
Then he thought back to his meeting with Offenbach, when he had been unable to bypass the security settings on a number of files. Would his lattice, unwelcome as it was, now enable him to access those same files should he try again?
Luc dropped the darkened bead in the recycling, then headed out.

One of de Almeida’s mechants guided him to a tiny private cubicle in a walk-in office complex close by Chandrakant Lu Park. He didn’t have long to wait before de Almeida’s invitation arrived in the form of a tiny point of light that hovered in the air before him.
He reached out. The star-like point puffed into mist the moment his fingertips brushed it, and –
– he was on Vanaheim.
Looking down at his hands, he flexed them, stunned at how perfectly real they looked. He could feel a breeze touching his cheek, as if he were really, actually physically present. The haptics alone were on a whole order of sophistication beyond anything he’d ever experienced before while data-ghosting. It had to be because of his lattice.
It was like actually being there.
He was sitting on a long stone bench near the middle of an auditorium cut into the side of a hill. The benches formed steps that led down to the foot of the hill, and seated on them at different points around the auditorium were maybe forty or fifty men and women, the majority of whom he did not recognize. Sitting at his side was de Almeida, who glanced towards him out of the corner of her eye, giving him the tiniest nod to let him know she could see him.
The auditorium was large enough that it looked almost empty. Clearly, few amongst the Temur Council had felt inclined to come and pay their respects to their dead compatriot. Most of those present were clustered together near the base of the auditorium, but a few, including de Almeida, sat conspicuously apart from the rest. Mechants sporting a variety of liveries hummed through the air.
Before the steps stood a low, wide platform, and beyond that a sloping grassy plain. Luc could see a meandering river a few kilometres away. Tall columns were arranged haphazardly around the edges of the auditorium, a few bearing broken-limbed statues, as if the auditorium were the remnant of some long dead civilization. Close by a bend in the river stood an imposing-looking ruin, moss growing up its sides, a partly caved-in roof open to the elements.
Luc held his breath, half-convinced someone would see his electronic phantasm despite de Almeida’s reassurances.
<You’re sure no one can see me?> he asked her.
<No one even knows you’re here,> she confirmed.
<What are those ruins?> he scripted, nodding towards the river. They looked old, which made no sense unless Vanaheim had been occupied for far longer than anyone knew.
<Follies,> replied Zelia. <They’re not real. Just architectural whims, like this auditorium.> There was a note of disgust in her voice, as if she didn’t approve.
He spotted Surendra Finch, Overseer for Temur’s security services, and the man to whom Lethe reported directly; Rosabella Dose, who had fired the fatal shot that killed Lewis Finney when Coalition forces stormed the judicial headquarters on Darwin mere months after the Abandonment; Alexander Maksimov, famous for negotiating the surrender of Yue Shijie’s transfer gates to the Sandoz; and many less familiar faces that nonetheless had in their own ways influenced the course of the Tian Di over the centuries.
It was intimidating company, to say the least.
He saw Father Cheng stand up from a gathering at the front of the auditorium, and step towards the platform, trailed by several mechants and a small entourage that included Cripps. A projector had been set up on the platform, and as Luc watched, this device unfolded broad panels made of thin metal wafers.
After a moment, the air above the panels shimmered, then darkened to reveal a sprinkling of stars, in defiance of the afternoon light. A grey, cylindrical shape floated in the foreground, occluding many of the stars. The curved surface of a world was clearly visible, revealing that the cylindrical object was in orbit.
As Luc watched, brilliant light flared at the rear of the grey cylinder, and it began to recede from the fixed viewpoint above the planet, dwindling within seconds to a tiny point of slightly flickering light almost indistinguishable from the steady brilliance of the stars. Before very long it had vanished entirely. Luc guessed it was Sevgeny Vasili’s coffin.
‘Sevgeny would have liked it this way,’ said Father Cheng, his voice carrying clear and sharp across the hillside. ‘He used to wonder what might lie at the heart of our galaxy; well, in a way, he’ll get to find out now. That ship we placed him on board – the last one he’ll ever travel on – is a modified version of the same craft that carry the seeds of transfer gates to new worlds. I can’t think of a better farewell for a man who worked so hard towards reuniting the two disparate halves of the human race.’
Luc watched with interest as Cheng pointedly cast his gaze around those gathered, and recalled what Offenbach had told him: Vasili had been given the job of Reunification not as a perk, but as a kind of punishment duty.
‘We all know how hard Sevgeny worked towards that goal,’ Cheng continued. ‘He may not have lived to see it fulfilled, but his body, if not his soul, will journey where his heart and his mind often did, to the mystery at the heart of our island universe. God speed, Sevgeny,’ he said, glancing towards the dark projection hovering in the air. ‘We’ll miss you, but you’ll always be with us, in spirit at least.’
Cheng stepped down from the platform, and someone new stepped up to say their piece. Luc meanwhile found his attention drawn to a figure that stood alone on the far side of the auditorium, and felt his skin prickle as if he had just been doused in ice-water.
Whoever they were, their face was entirely invisible beneath a mirrored mask. The mask formed part of a suit of cloth and metal that was covered in turn by a loose, flowing coat that billowed gently in the light breeze flowing down the slope of the hill.
The same figure he’d seen in his dreams, with Antonov’s angry face reflected in it.
<Who is that?> he demanded, pointing.
De Almeida glanced towards the masked figure, then regarded him with an expression of amusement before turning her attention back to the man delivering his eulogy on the stage. <That, Mr Gabion, is the Coalition Ambassador, Horst Sachs.>
<I know him,> Luc insisted. <I saw him in my dreams.>
<He certainly fits the description you gave me a few days ago, yes.>
<Coalition Ambassador?>
She gave him a sidewise glance full of irritation. <Of course. You know that we’ve had visitors from Darwin prior to the new transfer gate’s official opening. The Ambassador is our most frequent visitor of all. Sevgeny Vasili was scheduled to introduce him to the public during the Reunification ceremonies.>
Luc felt a shiver run through him at the sight of the masked figure. <I’m not sure how people are going to react if he’s still wearing that mask. Doesn’t he ever take it off?>
<Not to my knowledge, no,> she replied. <People in the Coalition are . . . very different from us, it seems. How different may prove to be a shock for many.>
<Then what I saw really was real,> he replied, feeling dazed.
<Clearly.>
<Then you understand what this means?> he sent back. <Antonov must have had dealings with the Ambassador. Why didn’t you tell me he was real before?>
<Because I knew there was a very good chance that he’d be here, and I wanted to see if you genuinely did recognize him.>
‘Zelia.’
Luc realized with a start that Ruy Borges had come over to join them. He stiffened with apprehension before remembering Borges could neither see nor hear him.
De Almeida’s response was filled with bored exasperation. ‘Whatever it is, can’t it wait, Ruy?’
‘I was just thinking,’ said Borges with a lopsided grin, ‘of what Javier might say if he was here. He’d have a few words to say about Sevgeny, wouldn’t he?’
Javier. He could only be talking about Javier Maxwell.
De Almeida scowled. ‘This really isn’t the time or the place.’
‘I almost forget sometimes how much those two men hated each other,’ Borges continued, his grin growing wider. ‘If it wasn’t for Javier being locked up in that prison of his, I’d have thought he was behind Sevgeny’s murder.’
‘I’m serious, Ruy,’ de Almeida growled. ‘Go away.’
‘Now if Javier were the next to be assassinated . . . well, it’s not like there’s a lack of volunteers when it comes to pulling the trigger.’
De Almeida stared at him with baleful contempt. ‘What, exactly, are you saying?’
Borges shrugged. ‘Just that if the security systems around that prison of his were to fail and something were to happen to him as a result, well . . . we’d be free of a serious thorn in our side, don’t you think?’
Luc saw some heads towards the front of the auditorium had turned away from the latest eulogy, and were keenly watching Borges’s confrontation with de Almeida instead.
She stood. ‘You’re suggesting I killed Vasili, and I should do the same to Javier. Is that it?’
Borges’s grin grew wider, his voice slightly louder, easily carrying across the auditorium. ‘It’s not like everybody doesn’t already think you did it. But if something were to happen to Javier, then it might help tip the balance in your favour a little.’
De Almeida stared at him with undisguised loathing. ‘Am I on trial?’ she demanded.
‘All I’m saying,’ Borges continued, ‘is that were you to allow the security on Javier’s prison to slip at the right time and place, there are a few people who might be prepared to take care of Javier the way you took care of Sevgeny.’
‘Would you be the one who pulled the trigger, Ruy?’ A cold smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘No, of course not. You just like to make speeches and threaten people. And let’s be clear on this: the one thing I don’t control is the security cordon around Javier’s prison. You know that just as well as I do. The Sandoz handle it under Joe’s direct supervision.’
Ruy’s hands twisted at his sides. ‘You know I’m not the only one who wants nothing to do with that thing masquerading as a human being,’ he spat, stabbing one finger in the direction of the masked Ambassador. ‘Joe’s hand is being forced when it comes to Reunification. He doesn’t say it, at least not to anyone outside of the Eighty-Five – but we all know it. Something’s going on that we aren’t being told about.’
Zelia’s expression became incredulous. ‘What the hell does Javier have to do with any of that?’
‘Because that’s what Javier’s always wanted, isn’t it?’ Borges’s voice was rising again, and even the woman delivering her eulogy had paused to listen. ‘To expose us to those . . . those monsters in the Coalition.’
Luc glanced towards the Ambassador, wondering how he felt about being described in such terms.
De Almeida waved one hand in dismissal. ‘You’re a fantasist, Ruy. Show some respect for Sevgeny’s memory and sit the hell back down.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Luc saw Cripps moving rapidly up the steps towards them.
‘Somebody has to say it,’ Borges spat. ‘Those people in the Coalition have all been changed by the Founder Network. For God’s sake, Zelia,’ he continued, a pleading tone creeping into his voice now, ‘how can we possibly know there’s anybody left alive on Darwin who’s truly human anymore, even in all of the Coalition? How do we know they weren’t compromised, even replaced by whatever it is that’s lurking in the Network?’
‘Stop this now.’
Borges turned to stare at Cripps, his nostrils flaring. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head adamantly. ‘There are things that have to be said.’
‘This is a difficult enough time as it is,’ Cripps growled. ‘You’re making a scene, Ruy.’
‘Everyone knows she—’
‘Ruy.’
Borges’s lips quivered, but he went silent and walked back down the steps without another glance at de Almeida. Luc followed him with his eyes as Borges stalked past the platform, giving Horst Sachs a wide berth as he made towards a group of fliers parked a short walk away.
‘Thank you,’ de Almeida said to Cripps.
‘Don’t thank me,’ Cripps replied curtly. ‘It wasn’t for your benefit; he was disrupting the proceedings.’
De Almeida nodded wordlessly as Cripps turned on his heel and headed back down to rejoin Father Cheng, who hadn’t so much as turned around throughout the altercation. Luc had little doubt he was nonetheless aware of everything that had just taken place.
<I want to talk to the Ambassador,> Luc said as de Almeida took her seat next to him once more.
She allowed herself a brief sideways glance at him. <I’m already working on making arrangements for precisely that. You might be interested to know Ambassador Sachs was working very closely with Vasili on the run-up to Reunification.>
<He was?>
She nodded, very gently. <They had regular meetings up until just a few days before Sevgeny’s body was discovered, as a matter of fact.>
On the stage, the final eulogy came to an end. People were already sharing muttered conversations as they began to move out of the auditorium and towards the parked fliers.
De Almeida stepped away to speak to one or two people, but it was clear from their uneasy expressions that they were disinclined to spend too much time speaking with her.
He glanced towards Ambassador Sachs, who was now in conversation with Cripps. Something about that perfectly reflective mask made his skin crawl. When he followed de Almeida down to the front of the auditorium, he had the uncanny sense the Ambassador was watching him, but with that mask it was impossible to tell exactly where his gaze fell at any moment.
<Gabion.>
He glanced back over at de Almeida. <What?>
<You can rule out the Ambassador as a possible suspect,> she replied, leading his data-ghost across the grasslands towards her flier. <It seems he was at a function held in his honour at the exact same time Vasili was killed.>
<What did Borges mean when he said something was going on? Something that people weren’t being told about?>
She sighed. <The honest answer is that I don’t know what he meant.>
<I don’t believe that.>
<It’s true. I . . . > She stopped and looked around. Luc did the same; they were amongst the last to leave, and even if someone had seen her speaking to someone who wasn’t there, they might simply have assumed it was a private conversation and left it at that.
‘We’re free to talk out loud now,’ she said, switching away from script-speak. ‘No one’s going to overhear us.’
<You’re sure?>
She glanced around with a furtive expression. ‘I never feel comfortable using script-speak, even if I have to.’
Luc activated his data-ghost’s audio circuits, but kept the volume dialled down to not much more than a whisper. ‘Go on, then.’
‘There are rumours,’ she explained, ‘of secret negotiations between the Coalition and some members of the Eighty-Five. Negotiations that none of the rest of the Council were ever told about.’
‘And that’s what Borges was referring to just now?’
She nodded helplessly. ‘For all I know it’s just a rumour and nothing more, but once you put an idea like that in the head of a man like Borges, no matter how tenuous, it becomes dangerous.’
‘But what kind of negotiations?’
She shrugged. ‘I have no idea, assuming the story is even true.’
‘All right, then what about Javier Maxwell? Why would Borges want him dead so badly?’
She scowled. ‘It doesn’t really have to do with Maxwell at all, it’s more to do with what he represents. Borges is scared because Cheng’s hand is being forced over Reunification.’
‘Forced? How?’
‘By the same tide of popular opinion that originally made it possible for him to seize control of the Temur Council – a tide that has now turned the other way, in favour of Reunification.’ She kept her voice low as she spoke. ‘Even without access to instantiation technology, people throughout the Tian Di are living better and longer lives than at any time since the Abandonment. The days when the colonies had to struggle to survive, when desperately stringent measures were needed – those days are long gone, and everyone in the Tian Di knows it. Now they want the same things we in the Council have – and Father Cheng hasn’t given them any adequate reasons why they shouldn’t have the same things sooner rather than later.’
‘Then why doesn’t he just give them to us?’
‘Cheng is old. We all are. The mistake was believing that as long as things stayed the same, we’d have stability. Instead, we have stagnation, but Cheng doesn’t seem to understand that. He had to be forced into agreeing to Reunification.’
‘What forced his hand?’
‘There are plenty of indicators showing that without radical social change, the Tian Di might break up. There might even be civil war. The evidence was convincing enough to persuade the majority of Councillors to agitate in favour of Reunification. And for all his power, Cheng can’t do anything without the vast majority of us backing him.’
‘And Borges?’
‘Men like Borges would be more than happy to maintain the current status quo forever, even if the rest of the Tian Di burned. He doesn’t want change, and neither, I think, do most of the Eighty-Five.’
‘In that case, given Vasili was actively working towards change, surely Borges would make a good suspect for his murder?’
‘Our mutual cup overflows with potential suspects, wouldn’t you say?’ she said.
‘That’s why I’m going to need full access to Vanaheim’s security records, Miss de Almeida.’
She stared at him like she hadn’t quite heard him right. ‘You’re not actually serious, are you?’
‘Quite serious. I need access to any and all data relating to the movements of everyone in Vanaheim over, say, the last few days – and preferably the last several weeks. I also need access to the personal records of everyone on the Council.’
She laughed disbelievingly. ‘And you really think I would give you that much?’
‘If you don’t,’ he said, ‘I don’t see how I’d be able to do my job properly. I can’t possibly make an accurate assessment regarding Vasili’s murder until I first have a good idea of the circumstances and events surrounding his death. Without that context, how can I possibly clearly identify a motive that might give you the identity of his killer? And everything you’ve just told me makes it clear that there’s a lot I still don’t know.’
Anger flashed across her face. ‘I’ll take the idea under consideration,’ she replied, her voice clipped. ‘But any specific information you need I can get for you immediately, upon request. You don’t need direct personal access.’
‘Without it, I’m flying blind,’ he countered.
And what about Father Cheng? He wanted to ask. Are we treating him as being above suspicion?
But he was still too afraid to ask that question.
‘Here’s what I can do,’ she said. ‘I just sent Ambassador Sachs a request for a confidential interview that you’ll conduct.’
‘Won’t a request like that make him suspicious? What if he tells someone else about it, and Father Cheng finds out you’re carrying on your investigation in defiance of his orders?’
‘I told the Ambassador it was all part of an overall review of our security measures in the wake of Vasili’s murder. As far as he’s concerned, you’re just someone who works for me, period. He knows nothing of your background, or why you’re really here. But it’s also a chance to find out why he met with Antonov. In the meantime,’ she added, ‘I want you to go home and wait there until you hear from me.’
‘I understand,’ Luc replied wearily, but even before he had finished his reply she had cut the connection. The last of his words echoed dully inside the tiny cubicle, back in Ulugh Beg.