Vortex (22 page)

B) The only doctors who would perform "illegal" actions were less than competent. The fact was that he had never found it difficult to recruit the highest level professionals—provided they were given the appropriate sop of "patriotism," or "duty to the Empire," or even, in extreme cases, "duty to life."

C) That after performing the required deed, a doctor might be stricken with guilt or even just a desire to discuss what happened. The fact was that the only guilt Poyndex had ever seen a medico evince was when the mores of the society changed without the doctor being aware of the change, the fee had not been paid, or his malpractice insurance did not cover the deed. And every doctor seemed to hate every other doctor, which kept shoptalk from ever being worrisome.

For this operation, it had taken no more than two hours for Poyndex to find his surgical team. Among them were the best and the brightest of the Empire's doctors. And all of them had been on Poyndex's payroll for years.

The cover story—which Poyndex had planted no more heavily than a casual mention to an OR nurse who was a Mercury operative—was that the operation would be performed on one of the Emperor's doubles. Everyone "knew" the Emperor had doubles, who were sent into high-risk or high-boredom assignments. In fact, there were none and never had been, a blatant stupidity that Poyndex meant to bring up with the Emperor at an early date.

Once assembled, the team was sent to Earth. The Emperor had been right: the site was perfect.

Aeons earlier, the Emperor had decided he liked salmon fishing. He had bought from Earth's government, and from the local government of the province of Oregon, the entire Umpqua River, from its headwaters to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean. Over the decades he had also bought out everyone who lived or worked on or near the river. A few locals were permitted to live and work near the Umpqua—after all, provisions, guides, game wardens, and so forth were necessary. The Emperor then went fishing, using sites that were no more than level ground that a few tents could be pitched upon.

But on that river an industrialist, Tanz Sullamora, had also built a camp. Sullamora, however, had found he couldn't stand either the wilderness or fishing, so his camp had been turned into a luxurious retreat. Sullamora, once the Emperor's most loyal supporter/groupie, became a bitter enemy and the leader of the assassination plot. But he died when that bomb destroyed the Emperor, as well.

His secluded resort became a place where the rest of the conspirators, the self-named privy council, went for consultations.

Now…

Now it was where the Emperor went to take a long-needed—as the livies praised—rest from his onerous duties.

This time the Emperor never knew that he had traveled to Earth.

Days before the departure date, his food had been gently drugged with sopors. The Emperor didn't realize he was receding into a fog. He continued to perform, his duties and consult with his aides on important issues.

He did not realize that these aides—none of whom he recognized—were carefully trained Mercury Corps operatives, presenting him with problems that grew simpler and simpler. Eventually they were so easy a one-celled protozoa,
Amoeba quaylus
, could have solved them. The entire scenario was a traditional operation, called a reagan/baker, devised to maintain a senile ruler in power as long as possible.

Poyndex and his technicians took the Emperor down and down, until he was unconscious. But they continued the slow dosage, now in an intravenous solution that everyone nursing the comatose being thought was just nourishment.

Poyndex was taking no chances.

Eventually his technicians reported that the Emperor was one stage above the suspended animation the early longliners had used, the animation that had killed most of the passengers and crew on those monster ships that had stumbled out from Earth for the nearest stars before stardrive had been devised, and before AM2 had been discovered to make that drive a practicality.

Poyndex then ordered the Emperor stabilized and transferred to the
Normandie
, the Emperor's yacht-battleship that officially did not even exist.

The Emperor held, very comfortably and safely, in that state. Poyndex felt a bit of pride.

Next, the nature of the device—or devices—hidden inside the Emperor's body should have been examined electronically. Poyndex could not. He was fairly sure there were no antiexamination booby traps on them. The Emperor, after all, could stride through security screens without anything happening.

But he was only fairly sure.

Therefore, feeling as if he were living in the Dark Ages, he ordered his chief surgeon to begin exploratory surgery. The surgeon was further told that the operation must be done at speed, as if he were in a trauma center, with only seconds to keep the patient from dying.

It was well that Poyndex gave those instructions. He had scrubbed and gowned and gone into the operating theater, an arena he was quite familiar with. The first incision opened the body cavity, and Poyndex saw the device. He brushed the surgeon's hand aside and held the back of his fingers against the plas ovoid. It was growing warm.

"Excise it," he snapped.

"But—"

The surgeon's scalpel lased twice, and the device was free. Bastard, Poyndex thought. Got you before you could detonate.

"There. Another one."

"But there's hemorrhaging!"

"Screw that! Cut!"

A second device.

"What are the vital signs?" Poyndex asked hoarsely.

"Stable."

"Good. Doctor, open the rib cage."

The heavy bone-cutting laser made the cut.

"There. Another one. Take it out."

The cuts were made. Poyndex was sweating. There could be one more. But he couldn't just send in the machete team.

"Survey. Scan the medulla oblongata area."

"Yes, sir."

Time stopped.

"There appears to be… some kind of short-range transmitting device. Very short-range—one third of a meter. If you wanted an opinion, I'd say it was a very sophisticated encephalograph. But that's all it is."

Poyndex almost sagged.

"Then that's all. You can slow down. Stabilize him. Stop the bleeding. And button him up."

"What about these?" The second surgeon indicated the three man-made devices that had been cut out of the Emperor's body.

"Mine. You did not see them."

The three plas objects went to immediate tech analysis.

The first devise was a sophisticated bomb, using conventional matter for the detonator and Anti-Matter Two for the explosive. It would have been enough to create a one-eighth-kilometer parking lot with the OR as ground zero. Poyndex grinned tightly. Now he knew where that mysterious blast had come from that went off microseconds after the privy council's assassin had shot the Emperor. The bomb was intended to prevent autopsies, at the very least.

The second device was a combination receiver and booby trap set to detonate if the Emperor was ever cut open. It further contained certain programmed circumstances. It took Poyndex some hours to puzzle out the purpose of the device. The electroencephalograph still in the Imperial skull would continually transmit the Emperor's thoughts. If those thoughts deviated beyond the programmed circumstances, the bomb would detonate.

Interesting, he thought. One way to keep yourself from going insane. Or… And he decided not to ponder further possibilities.

The third device was the most interesting. It was a very high-powered transmitter. Its activating mechanism was linked to the Emperor's vital organs. So, Poyndex thought. If the Emperor is killed, the transmitter transmits. Or, he theorized, if the Emperor is tortured into doing something he should not, or drug-conditioned into a certain pattern, or if he becomes neurotic/psychotic beyond the allowable profile—the bomb goes off and the transmitter transmits.

To whom?

To where?

And sometime later, the Eternal Emperor returns.

Poyndex was tempted to continue his investigation.

Then he caught himself.

What were the chances of the Eternal Emperor, when he recovered consciousness from this operation, ordering the death of everyone involved with this project?

Excellent.

What were the chances, even if everyone involved with this wasn't disappeared, of the Eternal Emperor ordering everyone connected with this operation brainscanned to see what they knew about this incredible secret?

Better than excellent.

Poyndex suddenly knew, with an absolute knowledge beyond experience, paranoia, or amorality, that his chances of living, if he investigated where this mysterious signal was beamed at, were far less than zero. Hating this loss of knowledge, but wanting to live even more, he personally destroyed all three devices.

He was not sure of what he had just done. Nor why the Emperor had this bomb in his body, or why he wanted it removed. It made sense for the Emperor to protect himself against kidnappers.

But… if he were eternal, as he most provably was, what happened when the bomb went off? How did the Emperor survive the blast?

Psychic projection?

Clot that. Next he would be accepting the wacko beliefs of the Cult of the Eternal Emperor, who thought that their ruler periodically went out to commune with Holy Spheres.

The hell with it. Now was the time to be nothing more than a supremely loyal servant.

"Sir. You are bleeding."

Poyndex came out of his kaleidoscoping thoughts and returned the Mantis soldiers' salute. "Thank you. I must have cut myself. I'll get it treated."

The soldier nodded and continued her patrol, eyes sweeping the wilderness, alert for any signs that an enemy of the Empire lurked out there.

Grateful for the pain, his decision, and the interruption, Poyndex walked toward the infirmary.

He allowed himself one second of pride.

From this moment, the Emperor—aided by his servant—would no longer be controlled by the past.

The Eternal Emperor's eyes opened.

He found himself in a cold, sterile place. Naked.

Was he once more back on that ship? A flash of panic. Had mistakes been made? Was he now that mewling waffler he had grown to hate?

No. He felt some pain. And not the sullen muscles of rebirth.

He remembered…

Yes.

He must be on Earth. And Poyndex, as he had promised, had performed his duty.

The Emperor yet lived.

He allowed his mind to wander, still half-anesthetized. But even stuporous, he realized that he no longer felt watched. He no longer felt he had to guard his every thought.

The link was broken.

The eyes of the warden, the assassin, the Voice on the ship, were closed.

Now he was alive.

Now he could rule as his fate, his weird, intended.

Now he was free.

The Eternal Emperor smiled.

BOOK THREE
WALL CLOUD

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

T
he massacre at Pooshkan University backblasted across the Altaics. Rumors of the tragedy burst on the streets of Rurik
as the troops were opening fire
. Sten filed this anomaly away as significant while he tried to make sense of the chaos erupting all around him.

Surrounded by Jochi troops whose purported orders were to protect the Imperial embassy, Sten sat in the eye of the storm watching events unfold, filing a blizzard of "Eyes Only" reports.

The massacre itself he had witnessed via two teams of Frick & Fracks, which had swooped over the soldiers as they opened fire on the students. There was no question in his mind that Iskra had ordered the attack. Proof, however, would be difficult. The soldiers wore no identifying insignia on their uniforms. They were clearly human. But they could just as easily have been a rebel Jochi militia. Or even Tork.

Sten also noted that the first rumor claimed the attack was the work of a Suzdal militia unit.

This tidbit of disinformation came
as
he watched Riehl tumble off the barricade. The rumor was followed by its opposite a beat and a half later: It was the Bogazi who had committed the atrocity.

Sten, who had witnessed a great deal of blood spilled in his life, had to force himself to watch the gory drama that unfolded. He heard several young com officers retch at the sight. Even Freston, the chief of the com unit, turned away.

"Th' man's no daft…" Alex muttered as he watched the butcher's work on the vid screen. "He's clottin' insane."

Sten ignored him, as he attempted for the tenth time to get Iskra on the embassy line to demand that he call off the dogs. For the tenth time, his call was repulsed by a low-level functionary, who said that Iskra was "meditating" and had left strict instructions not to be disturbed.

"I'll meditate
him
," Sten snarled. Then, to Alex: "Get me some eyes on the palace."

Seconds later he was patched into a pair of Frick & Fracks soaring over the Square of the Khaqans.

The news there was just as bad. A group of protesters, spurred on by the rumors of the Pooshkan massacre, was advancing on the Khaqan's palace.

His stomach churned as, instead of the expected confrontation between the mob and Jochi troops, he saw a contingent of Imperial Guards sweep out of the palace and down the steps.

They charged into the crowd, hitting like shock troops. The confrontation was violent—and brief. In moments the crowd was hammered and put to flight. As the frightened beings fled, he saw many civilian bodies heaped on the ground.

To make matters worse, many of the Imperial Guard soldiers chased after the fleeing protesters, flailing at them with riot sticks.

Cind swore. "They're acting like clottin' cops, instead of soldiers. And bad cops at that."

Sten made no comment. He had his emotions under an iron lid now, but there was a backbrain crawl that wouldn't go away. When this was over many fingers of blame were going to be pointing in many directions. And the Imperial Guard had just made itself a potential target.