The Thousand Emperors (20 page)

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.

he asked her.

she confirmed.

he scripted, nodding towards the river. They looked old, which made no sense unless Vanaheim had been occupied for far longer than anyone knew.

replied Zelia. 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.

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. Gabion, is the Coalition Ambassador, Horst Sachs.>

Luc insisted.

<
Coalition
Ambassador?>

She gave him a sidewise glance full of irritation. 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. off?>

she replied.

he replied, feeling dazed.

he sent back.

‘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?’