The Thousand Emperors (26 page)

‘And Sillars? You haven’t said anything about what happened to him. Was he part of all this?’

Kulic shook his head. ‘No. Sillars didn’t believe like the others did.’

Jacob felt a flush of relief. ‘He stayed true to his mission?’

Kulic nodded. ‘He argued with Bruehl and my father before we headed for the cities. Bruehl got into a fight with Sillars, and . . .’ He licked his lips, eyes darting towards
Jacob.

‘Go on.’

‘My father told me Bruehl killed Sillars. Sillars was afraid Bruehl might compromise their mission and alert the Coalition authorities to their purpose here. I remember one particular
night just before we set out, when my father took me to Sillar’s house. He had been stabbed, and was losing too much blood for even his microchines to cope. He died that same night. My father
claimed it was God’s will, and told me I was never to tell anyone what had happened.’

‘That’s something I was wondering,’ said Jacob. ‘If they had become so fervent in their beliefs, then why in hell didn’t your father or Bruehl ever think to tell
anyone else who they really were, where they’d come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kulic replied, shaking his head. ‘Maybe they were afraid of what might happen to them. But after Sillars’ murder, something went out of my father.
It’s like he chose to pretend it hadn’t happened. But when he died, he told me the truth of what he was, and told me someone like you would come one day.’

Jacob stared at the old man with sick disgust. It was nearly unbelievable so much could have gone so badly wrong, but all the evidence was right there, in the transceiver gripped in his own
hand. Kulic couldn’t have lied to it if he’d wanted to.

‘Doesn’t anyone from the cities ever come out here?’ asked Jacob.

Kulic shivered. ‘The people in the cities don’t care about us, and I’m glad of it. Sometimes they . . . they watch us, from a distance. But not in human form.’

Jacob stepped closer to him. ‘There’s something I need to find,’ said Jacob. ‘It’s the reason I was sent here, but it could mean travelling to one of the
cities.’

Kulic stared back at him with bright damp eyes. ‘I can help you.’

‘You don’t like it here, do you?’ Jacob had been able to feel the old man’s hatred for the people he lived amongst, seeping through the words he had spoken to the
transceiver, here in the quiet dark beneath his house.

‘I despise them all,’ said Kulic. ‘Ever since I learned of my father’s true nature, I realized why I never felt like I belonged. There are fewer and fewer of the
Left-Behind each year – most of those houses you saw when we arrived have been boarded up and abandoned for a long, long time. There are scarcely any children born these days.’ Kulic
swallowed. ‘Even so, the cities frighten me. I’m scared that if I went there, they might change me into something that isn’t really human.’

Jacob placed his hands on the old man’s shoulders, thinking how easy it would be to snap his neck in an instant. Instead he patted him.

‘Your father and his colleagues would have maintained a cache of equipment I can use,’ said Jacob. ‘Do you know of it, and where it’s located?’

In truth, he already knew where it was, thanks to the transceiver, but he wanted to test the old man, see if he told the truth. If he lied or acted evasive in any way, he would prove himself
useless, and Jacob would be left with no alternative but to dispose of him immediately.

‘I know where it is,’ said Kulic. ‘It’s not far from here, buried at the bottom of an abandoned well.’

Just as well you told the truth
, thought Jacob, patting Kulic’s shoulders one last time before stepping back and letting his hands fall by his side.

‘We’ll get some sleep and leave in the morning,’ said Jacob, and led the way back up the steps.

Luc arrived back at his apartment without incident and found several messages waiting for him from Eleanor. This time, instead of ignoring them he sent back an immediate
response. He had a sudden desperate urge to see her, to hold her in his arms.

While he waited, he spent a few minutes checking up on Ambassador Sach’s movements. De Almeida’s networks showed him the Ambassador had most recently paid a visit to the Vanaheim
residence of Meinhard Carter, another member of the Council.

When Luc tried to direct one of de Almeida’s countless micro-mechants to approach Carter’s home, he discovered the precise limits to how far de Almeida’s networks could reach,
when it got to within only a few metres of a window before its signal faded to static. After that, it dropped permanently out of contact, presumably victim to Carter’s own army of personal
security devices.

Luc thought again of all that Ambassador Sachs had said to him on board the
Sequoia
, including the revelation that the Ambassador had been able to see him during Vasili’s funeral
service. Somehow Sachs tied into all of this, and it was clear the Ambassador knew far more than he was letting on.

Even so, he appeared to be doing nothing more than he might be expected to do – taking part in scheduled meetings and paving the way for Reunification, while perhaps also smoothing over
the ripples caused by Vasili’s sudden disappearance from public view.

Despite the limitations de Almeida had placed on Luc’s access to her networks, he found he could nonetheless access a basic summary of Meinhard Carter’s role within the Council. It
proved, however, to be bafflingly vague. Carter was involved in some kind of research and development, and chaired an advisory body on deep-space exploration. That advisory body included several
other Councillors charged with constructing the starships used to carry new transfer gates between old and new colonies. Several of them had worked on Founder research prior to the Schism.

Whatever Carter’s current role in the Council might be, the Ambassador had caught him on what was apparently one of his rare visits to Vanaheim. And when Luc tried to find out where
Meinhard Carter spent the rest of his time, he found himself blocked at every turn.

It wasn’t long before Eleanor appeared to him as a data-ghost.

‘I’m not even going to start on the fact you’ve been ignoring me,’ she snapped as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, ‘but I think you should know people have
been looking for you. First that whole debacle at the White Palace, then Cripps sneaking into your apartment, and now Lethe’s been asking questions ever since you went to talk to Offenbach. I
don’t care if you’re allowed to talk about it or not – were you on Vanaheim?’

He tried and failed to blank from his thoughts the image of a shambling figure climbing into a white-hot furnace.

‘I think that’s probably not hard to guess,’ he admitted.

‘That’s where you were taken right after we arrived inside the White Palace, isn’t it? Where else could you have gone for so long?’ She paced before him, looking tense
and harried. ‘Lethe told me about some raid on a building on Kirov Avenue. He knows you were there, Luc – you were seen. It had something to do with a man named Reto Falla,
right?’

Luc nodded.

‘Then there’s the way you keep disappearing from sight with no way to contact you,’ she went on. ‘It’s clear you’re involved in something as big as Aeschere
– maybe even bigger, I don’t know.’

‘I don’t understand why you’re upset,’ he said. ‘You know how these things are. It’s not like the first time either one of us has been involved in something
we can’t talk about—’

‘Because even then I knew at
some
point we wouldn’t have to do it any more!’ she shouted, pressing one hand against her head. ‘I’m not taking part in any
more high-risk fieldwork, and you told me things were going to be different after you’d caught Antonov.’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s not the case, is it?’

‘Look, this was a direct request from a member of the Temur Council,’ he said, forcing himself to breathe slowly. ‘Believe me when I say it’s really not something I had
any choice in. Why do I have to tell you that, when you know it already?’

‘Do you remember what I said to you?’ she said, rounding on him. ‘That there’s only one of you; but that still didn’t stop you charging into an unknown situation
with a bunch of Sandoz who at least had the advantage of backups.’ She shook her head. ‘You still don’t understand how lucky to be alive you are after all that’s happened,
do you?’

‘So what do you expect me to do?’ he said irritably. ‘Go marching back up to the Palace and say, “Sorry, I’m quitting because my girlfriend isn’t
happy”?’

She sank down onto a chair he couldn’t see, hands clasped above her knees, head slightly bent forward and eyes closed as if in prayer. ‘No. I know you can’t do that,’ she
said quietly. ‘It’s just that I nearly lost you once before, and I thought I was never going to have to deal with something like that again.’

He pulled himself out of his chair and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, momentarily forgetting she wasn’t physically present. Even so, she leaned towards him, acknowledging the
gesture.

‘I thought it was all going to be over too,’ he said, letting his hand drop back by his side. ‘But it’s not. Not yet, anyway.’

‘There’s a rumour going around that Falla was connected with some kind of assassination attempt,’ she said, the anger of a moment ago now drained from her voice. ‘Lethe
made enquiries after you were seen on Kirov Avenue, and got Offenbach to admit you’d been asking questions about Sevgeny Vasili, who no one’s seen in days. Everyone at Archives knows
there’s something big going on, and you’re connected with it.’

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

Her shoulders rose and fell. ‘There are rumours about Father Cheng that have everyone worried.’

‘What about him?’

‘That he might be stepping down as Chairman.’

Luc dropped back into his seat and stared at her in shock. ‘What? Where did you hear this?’

She let out a small, bitter laugh. ‘With the way you’ve been running around between here and Vanaheim or wherever the hell they’ve been sending you, I thought you’d be
the one to know something about it.’

‘I had no idea. This isn’t official?’

‘No, it’s not official. But the way I hear it, there’s a faction in the Council demanding Cheng stand down and let someone else become Chairman.’

‘What faction?’

‘Luc, if anyone’s likely to know about something like that, it’s you.’

‘This is the first I’ve heard of any of this, El. Any idea
why
they’re calling for Cheng to stand down?’

‘Apparently some members of the Council think he’s out of touch with Reunification. That things have to change, and that if he can’t adapt to the new circumstances then he
should go.’

‘That sounds like some Black Lotus propaganda I’ve heard.’

‘Well, it’s more than that, from what I’m hearing,’ she told him, suddenly looking as tired as he felt. ‘I’ve been at SecInt all night – I’m still
here, as a matter of fact. They have almost everyone on full general alert, but nobody’s explaining why.’

‘And you think it must have something to do with Cheng? El, I swear I had no idea.’

‘They’ve got Offenbach running trend analyses to see the possible outcomes of a shift in power.’

‘Did you hear all this from Lethe?’

‘No, I heard it from another source.’ Her eyes darted away from his. ‘But when I asked Director Lethe, he admitted he’d already heard something along the same lines. And
with everything that’s been going on . . . when you wouldn’t reply to any of my messages, I started getting seriously worried about what might have happened to you.’

Luc looked at her – straight dark hair falling to her shoulders, face downcast – and wanted desperately to hold her. ‘Then come and see me here as soon as you can.’

He winced as a deep throbbing began to spread outwards from the centre of his skull. Icy despair took hold of him: it had to be the lattice, growing once more despite de Almeida’s
interventions.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, looking alarmed.

‘Nothing,’ he replied thickly, then winced a second time. It was rapidly getting worse.

‘Bullshit, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m coming over now.’

She arrived just forty minutes later. By then Luc had dragged himself into bed and lay in the dark, grunting as wave after wave of pain swamped his thoughts. Fragmented images
he could hardly make sense of flitted through his mind’s eye. He barely noticed when Eleanor entered his apartment.

He opened his eyes to see her drop her SecInt jacket on the floor before pulling her shirt up over her head, her body silhouetted in the light filtering through the window. She leaned over him,
taking his head in her hands. Something about her touch made the pain lessen, become more distant.

He instinctively reached up to touch her breasts as her mouth pressed against his. Within moments she was straddling him, gripping his chest hairs and leaning down to kiss him again.

Somehow, despite the pain, he felt himself become erect, and let her manoeuvre him inside her. By the time he came a few minutes later, hands gripping her thighs, the pain had washed away, like
a morning tide receding from a shore.

He told her everything – about Aeschere, the implant, Zelia de Almeida and his encounter with Ambassador Sachs. It was all too much for him to hold in any more. She stroked one hand over
his stubbled scalp and listened in silence, her expression far away as he spoke.

For the first time in a long while, as they lay there together in the enclosed darkness of his bedroom, Luc felt content.

‘We could go to Director Lethe,’ she whispered to him, ‘tell him everything you just told me. Things might not be as bad as you think, if we can get you the right kind of help
. . .’

‘De Almeida wasn’t lying to me,’ he whispered back. ‘Everything she said was true. If anyone else found out about my lattice, I’d be as good as dead, and not even
Lethe would be able to help me.’

‘How sure are you that this woman can fix you?’

‘I’m not at all sure,’ he admitted. ‘But some chance is better than none. She didn’t promise she could do it, only that she could try.’