The Thousand Emperors

TWELVE

A couple of hours after rescuing Jacob, Jonathan Kulic guided his horse and cart into a small settlement on the edge of the forest, just as the sky began to redden towards dusk.

Jacob watched the landscape pass by from under the carpet Kulic had thrown over him in the rear of the cart. He kept the case he had recovered from his ship clutched tight against his chest. The settlement that Kulic called home was, to Jacob’s eyes, astoundingly primitive. Smoke spiralled upwards from thatched-roof dwellings, while candles and lanterns flickered from inside windows formed from heavy, puddled glass. There were farm animals in pens, and a stable with horses. It was a stark contrast to the spires of one of Darwin’s cities, glittering on the far horizon.

Kulic guided his horse and cart into a barn, then led Jacob into his home through an adjoining door. Kulic’s residence proved to be a single-storey affair of brick and plaster, with wooden floorboards that creaked with every step.

Jacob’s duty was to hide himself in one of these Left-Behind communities, and take advantage of the Coalition’s incomprehensible willingness to allow them to continue existing. From his conversation with Kulic throughout their journey from the coast, he had learned that the Left-Behind had become considerably more militant in their beliefs over the decades, having come to reject nearly every form of technology imaginable, up to and including previously accepted technologies such as the internal-combustion engine and electricity. The electric torch Kulic had used to aid him in his search through the deep forest was something he was forced to keep secret from his neighbours.

The only source of heat in Kulic’s hovel came from a heavy iron stove, with flames licking behind a narrow grate. Pots and pans hung from steel hooks above a table scattered with the ruins of chopped vegetables. Jacob stood close by the stove, warming his hands before the grate and trying hard not to breathe too deeply, since everything smelled of mould and animal shit. He wondered what the Darwinians, living as they did in their shining silver cities, made of it all when they gazed down at these disease-ridden hovels, clustered together in the mud and filth.

‘Once the beacon told me you were here, I spread it about that a cousin might come to visit me from New Jerusalem,’ Kulic explained as he closed the latch on the front door. ‘That settlement’s a long way away from here, a good four or five days’ journey on horseback. I thought it’d make as good a story as anything else.’

‘It’ll do,’ said Jacob, his attention still focused on getting warm. ‘It’s called a transceiver, by the way, not a beacon. Where do you keep it?’

‘Downstairs,’ Kulic replied, ‘in the cellar.’

‘I would like to see it, please,’ said Jacob, looking around. He hadn’t seen any sign of steps or a staircase leading down.

Kulic stepped towards the centre of the room, reaching down to pull a faded, hand-woven rug to one side and revealing a trapdoor with an iron ring set into it. Kulic pulled the trapdoor up with a grunt, revealing a short ladder leading downwards. A foul miasma rose from below, and Jacob covered his mouth, thinking that even the cave in the woods had been better than this.

Kulic climbed down the steps and out of sight. With a sigh, Jacob wrenched himself away from the stove’s welcoming heat and followed the old man down.

Farming implements hung from hooks all around the walls of the stone-floored cellar. Kulic lit a gas lantern hanging from a hook in the ceiling then, as Jacob watched, stepped over to a barrel that had been pushed into a corner, a rusted kettle and several dirty-looking rags dumped on top of it.

Kulic brushed all of this junk onto the floor, then lifted the lid from the barrel, which proved to be full of oily-looking water. He took hold of an almost invisibly thin thread hanging over the side of the barrel and pulled on it with extreme care, soon drawing a package wrapped in heavy oilskins up from the barrel’s depths before depositing it on the floor. Jacob watched as the old man carefully unwrapped the package to reveal a large wooden box.

‘Here,’ said Kulic, opening the box and lifting out a fist-sized device, passing it to Jacob with an uncertain grin. Something about his expression made Jacob think of a dog desperate for its master’s approval.

He studied the device by the dim light of the ceiling-mounted lantern. In outward appearance it looked like nothing more than a blunt, copper-plated sphere, but in reality it was a compact mass of molecular circuitry impervious to any but the most ruthless scan. It sang with information from the moment his fingers touched it, firing a blizzard of condensed data into his lattice that had the quality of long-held memories.

He looked up at Kulic. ‘I see you’ve been speaking to it, telling it everything that’s been happening?’

Kulic nodded, his expression full of awe. ‘Yes, just as my father asked me to. I . . . wondered if I was being a fool, talking to a piece of metal, as if it had ears.’ He looked at Jacob with hope. ‘It worked?’

‘Yes.’ Jacob nodded.

‘My father told me it could communicate with other worlds.’

Then he told you too much, thought Jacob, frowning. The device was indeed built to pick up instantaneous transmissions across space, regardless of distance, although the power consumption required to boost a signal across so many light-years without it dissolving into random noise was quite enormous. Along with news of events back on Temur as well as throughout the Tian Di, Jacob had in just these last moments received adjustments to his mission plan. Although his primary goal remained the same, there was now an added urgency to his purpose in being here.

‘The device tells me the Left-Behind split into factions, and that the more rigidly conservative faction became dominant.’

Kulic stared at the device nestled in Jacob’s hands with horrified fascination. ‘That little thing – it told you all that?’

The Left-Behind had briefly been a powerful force on the surviving colony worlds following the Abandonment, preaching that the artefacts responsible for turning every living thing on Earth to dust had been sent there by God, in order to gather the souls of mankind prior to a final judgement. The religion had eventually been outlawed throughout the Tian Di, but here in the Coalition followers were permitted to exist, so long as they remained far from the provenance of the cities.

‘You told the transceiver that Bruehl had begun to believe he was some kind of messiah, destined to lead the Left-Behind through the Founder Network.’

‘I still remember him from when I was much younger,’ said Kulic, nodding. ‘Before he died, my father told me Bruehl was responsible for setting up safe-houses for other Tian Di agents. Bruehl was tasked with penetrating the Coalition’s secure military networks, in order to find their weaknesses. But something happened.’

‘What?’

Kulic’s balding pate glistened under the dim light of the lantern. ‘He started telling people God was waiting for us up at the end of time, along with everyone else who’d been rescued when the angels razed Earth; he said that was why the Founder Network had been created, so that all sentient beings could find their way there. This went against the doctrine of the Church’s Elders and made them very unhappy.’

‘And your father? How did he feel about this?’

‘At first he thought Bruehl was insane, but I think my father had a great deal of trouble adjusting to life here. He married because it was expected of him, and it was his duty to fit in. I . . . realize now that I was nothing more than part of his cover, that he had never really wanted a child.’

‘He told you this?’

‘No.’ Kulic shook his head. ‘I worked some of it out for myself, once I knew the truth about him . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘Go on,’ Jacob prompted.

‘I think my father committed suicide, in a way,’ Kulic finally said. ‘He changed his mind about Bruehl, and began to believe him. I think his new-found religious beliefs were a way to hide the truth from himself, that he no longer wanted to live.’

‘Bruehl had quite a few followers, I understand. Your father was only one of them.’

‘Yes, Bruehl had a great number of followers after a while. Even I was one. We all followed him when he left for the cities. He said he’d had a vision, that God would guide us through the Founder Network, and the Coalition wouldn’t be able to stand in our way.’

‘How many of you went with him?’

Kulic shrugged. ‘A thousand, perhaps. At that time I had no idea of my father’s true identity, and the same went for the other agents like Bruehl. When we left, the Elders condemned us for our actions.’ The old man stopped, gazing wistfully into the distance.

‘And?’

‘And we never even reached the cities. First Bruehl and my father started fighting, and before long the people who’d followed them started to take sides.’ Kulic shook his head. ‘Folks around here don’t like to speak about those days any more, but I was there. A few hundred continued on with Bruehl, while the rest followed my father back home. But not all of us were allowed back in – old scores were being settled, I suppose.’

‘And what happened to Bruehl?’

‘More people abandoned him and drifted back to their villages over the following days and weeks. As far as I know he managed to lead a few dozen as far as the nearest city, but all I know about what happened after that is rumour and conjecture. From what I heard,’ said Kulic, with an uncharacteristic touch of sarcasm, ‘they never reached the Founder Network, since God apparently failed to supply them with the necessary authorization to pass through a single transfer gate.’

As if even the Coalition would have wasted one moment listening to the ravings of madmen straggling in from some self-imposed backwater, branches and leaves clinging to their holy beards, thought Jacob. Learning about such things left a sour and unpleasant taste in his belly. He could only imagine that Bruehl and this man’s father must have been suffering from some shared psychosis they had somehow kept hidden during their mission training – a psychosis that had achieved full flower once they found themselves surrounded by people even crazier than themselves.

‘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.