The Thousand Emperors

THIRTEEN

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.’

‘But only so long as you do what she wants,’ she said, reaching out to touch his forehead. ‘You really think it’s possible? That there’s a part of . . . of Antonov, somewhere inside you?’

‘All I know,’ he said, gazing at her with pain-filled eyes, ‘is that I’m afraid of what I might see every time I go to sleep.’

He woke at dawn, alerted by Vanaheim’s security networks that Ambassador Sachs had suddenly dropped out of view. He notified de Almeida as he slid quietly out of bed.

Eleanor sat up and looked at him. ‘Do I even need to ask where you’re going?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m wanted.’

‘For God’s sake, Luc! You need to talk to Lethe. You can’t take this level of risk on your own. You need backup.’

‘We’ve already been over this,’ he said irritably.

She shivered. ‘There’s no reason to think you can trust de Almeida any more than the rest of them.’

He laughed. ‘You think I do? She’s crazy – as a matter of fact, I think they’re all crazy. Now tell me seriously, what you think you can do to help me that won’t just get me killed instead? Because I’m open to any ideas.’

‘I swear to God,’ she said, ‘if that bitch doesn’t figure out some way to save your life, I’ll hunt her down and put a bullet between her fucking eyes. You can tell her that from me.’

He leaned down and kissed her on the lips. ‘Now that’s more like the Eleanor I know,’ he said, and finished getting dressed.

Luc found himself back outside de Almeida’s residence a few hours later, his head heavy with the dull ache of fatigue. He took a moment to work up the courage to walk back inside, afraid as he was of seeing any of her grotesques staring back at him with needle-tipped eyes.

He found her inside, entirely alone, and chewing on a thumbnail as she studied several projections arranged around her in the air.

‘Councillor,’ he said, stepping towards her.

‘Sachs is still out of sight,’ she said, without taking her eyes from the displays. ‘I don’t know how he’s done it. He was on his way back from meeting with Meinhard Carter, and his flier just . . . vanished.’

‘You mean it crashed?’ asked Luc. ‘Are we talking about sabotage of some kind?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she muttered. ‘If he’d got into any kind of trouble, his flier should have sent out a distress signal. No, it’s more like he’s become invisible.’

So what’s really got you worried is that someone else can pull off the same tricks as you. Luc stepped up beside her and saw the projections depicted a variety of locations all across Vanaheim.

‘So where exactly was the Ambassador before he disappeared?’

She let out a sigh. ‘That’s a harder question to answer than it should be.’

De Almeida whispered something under her breath, and the projections merged into a single representation of Vanaheim as a spinning globe, more than a metre across. Brightly glowing hoops of navigational data materialized around the globe’s circumference.

‘Wherever it was,’ she said, pointing to one particular location, ‘it was somewhere around here, within a thousand-kilometre radius.’

Luc saw a circle appear over one continent and begin to strobe gently, while a dashed line representing the trajectory of Sachs’ flier appeared layered over it.

‘He was somewhere in this rough area when his locational data went haywire, making it look like he was in a thousand places at once.’ She glanced at him for the first time since his arrival. ‘Like informational chaff,’ she explained. ‘That way, it’s nearly impossible to figure out whether the craft you’re tracking is the true one, since all the rest are just mirages.’

Luc nodded towards the slowly spinning globe. ‘Do we know where he was headed to when he disappeared?’

‘To another meeting, this time with Hobart Tidman and Hernando Kowallek.’ She frowned. ‘Which is strange.’

‘Strange, how?’

‘The two of them have been inactive in Council affairs for a long time. They used to work in artefact recovery.’

‘Artefact recovery?’

‘They both researched alien technology recovered from the Founder Network back even before the Abandonment,’ she explained, her frown deepening. ‘They later acted as advisors to Coalition governments before they were cut off by the Schism.’

‘And the Ambassador had just come from a meeting with Carter, who heads up an advisory committee on deep space research,’ said Luc, feeling a prickle of unease.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said de Almeida. ‘Believe me, there are no Founder artefacts anywhere in the Tian Di. I’d know if there were.’

He looked at her carefully. ‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’

Her expression became uncertain. ‘Let’s just stick to the facts we have and not get distracted by speculation. Only one way inside the Founder Network has ever been discovered, and that’s still deep inside Coalition territory. As far as Ambassador Sachs is concerned, we need to figure out just how he managed to fool my systems so completely.’

‘There was something you said back at Vasili’s funeral service, about rumours of secret negotiations with the Coalition. Maybe we need to start speculating: what if the rumours are true? And what if Carter, Tidman, Kowallek and the Ambassador are all involved in some capacity? And . . . what about Cheng?’

She looked at him. ‘What about Cheng?’

‘I just heard a rumour he’s been asked to relinquish control over the Council.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

She didn’t seem angry, just curious. ‘Through a contact in SecInt,’ he told her. ‘Is it true?’

She shook her head as if in sorrow. ‘There’s some truth to it, yes.’

Luc felt suddenly light-headed. ‘Borges was right, wasn’t he? Something really is going on – something bigger than one Councillor winding up dead.’

De Almeida sighed, all of her usual swagger gone. ‘I really don’t know, Mr Gabion. If I did, I probably wouldn’t need you here. I already told you I’m not always privy to everything that goes on in the Council, particularly where its higher echelons are concerned. Sometimes I have little more than rumours to rely on myself.’

‘What I’m beginning to wonder,’ Luc continued, ‘is whether there’s something more to Reunification than is being publicly admitted. What if it’s not just about reuniting the human race – what if there’s some other reason the Coalition are here?’

Just a few days before, the idea of speaking to a member of the Temur Council in this way would have been unimaginable to him. So much had changed in such a very short time. Even so, Luc held his breath as he waited for her to reply.

‘I think you’re on the right path,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t necessarily know more than you do. But I want to know what’s going on, because whatever it is, the Eighty-Five are keeping it hidden from the rest of us – from the rest of the Council, I mean. But like I said, you have an advantage since you can still go places I can’t.’

‘You and the rest of the Council are more powerful than anyone else in history, but you keep telling me you need me.’ Luc shook his head and laughed, overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the situation. ‘Just how many friends do you have left here on Vanaheim, Zelia?’

She opened her mouth to frame a retort, then instead stepped towards a nearby table, leaning against it and folding her arms over her chest as if hugging herself.

‘Not as many as there used to be,’ she said quietly. ‘Look – what you have to understand is that the one thing still uniting the Council is that we are all survivors. Most of us were alive when Earth died, and we lived through the fighting before and after the Schism. After that, things were in such an appalling mess that we had no choice but to try and hold everything together, and Cheng was key to making that work. We’ve all shared so much with each other over the centuries that you couldn’t possibly understand the loyalty most of us still feel towards the very idea of the Council.’

She gripped the edge of the table, her expression bleak. ‘But now everything’s about to change with Reunification – and I mean everything. It’s possible the Council itself might not survive the transition, let alone Cheng. And as much as I hate to admit it, it’s possible our time is past.’

‘How could reconnecting with the Coalition cause so much change? They’re just people, same as us.’

‘Are they? Can you really say that about Ambassador Sachs?’

‘I admit the costume he wears is ridiculous, but I’m sure there’s an ordinary human being under there.’ But even as he spoke, Luc felt the lack of conviction in his words.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said before, Gabion? The Coalition are vastly more technologically advanced than we are. We could end up swamped by them, and there are those like Borges who’d be prepared to commit violence in order to try and turn back the tide of history.’

Something occurred to Luc as she spoke.

‘I have an idea,’ he said, gesturing towards the spinning globe. ‘According to what I can see here, the Ambassador’s flier was in a circumpolar orbit when he was last seen, right?’

She nodded. ‘He’d have reached Liebenau in another hour or so if he hadn’t vanished.’

Luc looked again at the globe. The Ambassador’s flier would have passed over icy wastes stretching for thousands of kilometres. Stepping closer, he saw a chain of white-clad mountains amidst an otherwise featureless void of snow.

There was a brief twinge of pain behind his eyes. Something about those mountains . . .

‘What about here?’ he asked, fingers brushing through the air where the globe was projected.

‘No, there’s nothing there, except . . .’

She paused, and turned to look at him, her mouth half-open.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There is something out there.’ She made her hands into fists and pressed them against the sides of her head. ‘Stupid,’ she muttered to herself, ‘stupid.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘There,’ she said, stabbing one finger toward the chain of mountains, just a thousand kilometres shy of Vanaheim’s north pole. ‘That’s where Cheng’s kept Javier Maxwell locked up all these centuries.’

Luc felt a sudden tightening in his chest. Javier Maxwell. The greatest renegade of them all, after Antonov – and the author of the very book Luc had found on Vasili’s body. A book that, according to no less an authority than Vincent Hetaera, shouldn’t even exist.

‘Is it possible . . . ?’ he asked.

‘That this is where the Ambassador disappeared to? I can’t think of any other possibility,’ she said.

‘Perhaps if I data-ghosted there—’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘If Sachs can fool my surveillance networks that easily, he can certainly trick a data-ghost into seeing whatever he wants. This is going to require eyeballs on the ground.’

‘What about your armies of micro-mechants? Can’t you use them?’

She shook her head. ‘Cheng gave the Sandoz sole responsibility for handling security for Maxwell’s prison. That means I’m not allowed to have my own surveillance anywhere near it.’

‘So unless you plan on going out there yourself,’ said Luc, ‘you’re going to need me to go out there.’

She nodded. ‘Unless there’s something else out there I don’t know about, Maxwell’s prison is the only place Ambassador Sachs could have gone.’

‘And if we do find him there?’

‘Then we have the evidence we need to prove he’s been carrying out clandestine meetings, without putting you in any danger. And if we can confront him with that evidence, maybe we’ll be able to find out where he really was the night of Sevgeny’s murder.’

‘But what business could Sachs possibly have with Javier Maxwell?’

‘I can imagine a couple of possibilities,’ de Almeida replied, ‘and if even a few of them turn out to be true, the Council’s in far more trouble than I’d realized.’ She nodded toward the exit. ‘We have no idea just how long he’s going to stay at Maxwell’s prison, assuming he’s even there, and that means you need to leave now.’

Within minutes, Luc found himself back on board the same flier de Almeida had used to transport him from Temur. The craft accelerated towards suborbital space, before dropping back down in a long arc that passed over an ocean dotted with ice-floes.

Over the next hour, the floes gradually merged into a featureless expanse of white that stretched in all directions. After a while the same snow-capped mountains he’d seen in de Almeida’s laboratory rose from around the curve of Vanaheim’s horizon, growing larger as the flier carried him towards them.

The mountains continued to expand until the flier finally passed between two of their peaks. Glancing down through the flier’s transparent upper hull, Luc saw that the slopes on the near side of the mountains fell away into glaciated valleys and deep ravines that showed evidence of recent volcanic activity; he could see a few small unfrozen lakes here and there, tiny oases whose shores were streaked with patches of scrubby lichen and moss.

The lakes passed out of sight as the flier decelerated, dropping towards a landing on the far side of the mountains near some foothills. The peaks of the mountains were lost in dense cloud.

De Almeida’s data-ghost appeared in the cabin next to Luc the moment the AG motors ceased to hum. ‘You’ll find cold-weather gear in the back,’ she told him.

‘I thought you said it was too risky for you to data-ghost?’

‘I hacked the private account of someone who hasn’t data-ghosted in a couple of decades,’ she replied. ‘It’ll be a long while before he notices, if ever.’

‘I don’t see much of anything,’ he said, peering out at his surroundings through the hull’s translucent surface. ‘Just snow and rocks. Couldn’t you get any nearer than this?’

‘I didn’t want to take the chance of testing the prison’s security perimeter any more than I had to,’ she explained. ‘This is as close as I can safely get you without risking detection. That means there’s still some way for you to go on foot, I’m afraid.’

Luc stared outside. ‘Where to, exactly?’

‘Look there,’ she said, pointing towards the nearest peak. ‘The foothills are only six kilometres or so from where you’ve landed, and that’s where you’ll find the entrance to Maxwell’s prison. There’s a transceiver amongst your cold-weather gear – plant it where it tells you to if you can’t see any sign of the Ambassador, then come back. If he shows himself, the transceiver will let us know.’

‘And the Sandoz guarding this place won’t know about it?’

‘If you manage to prove that Ambassador Sachs is making some kind of secret deal with Javier Maxwell, no one’s going to care one way or the other. I don’t think getting there and back should take you more than a couple of hours.’

‘And if this doesn’t work?’

‘Then we’ll have to think of something else. There’s a storm front closing in on the mountains – don’t tarry, because you really don’t want to get caught in it.’

‘I’d better get going,’ he said.

She nodded, the hunger in her eyes reminding him he wasn’t the only one fighting for his survival.

‘Good luck,’ she said, and vanished.

Luc clambered through to the back of the flier, found the cold-weather gear and pulled it on, stepping outside as soon as he was ready. Even with the protection of the gear, a cold deeper than any he had experienced before sucked the heat from the few exposed patches of his face.

He started walking, ice and snow crunching under his heavy boots. Before long it began to sleet, a thick wet slush that stung when it struck any of his exposed skin. He adjusted the sunglasses he’d found amongst the cold-weather gear to cut down the glare from the snow.

Cresting a low hill, he continued down the other side, and when he finally stopped to take a breath and look back the way he’d come, the flier was nothing more than a stark black dot against the horizon. He’d already gone a lot farther than he’d realized. Distances were hard to judge in such a nearly featureless landscape.

He made his way down the other side of the hill and then up another, and then another, and another. Eventually he came to one that was slightly distinguishable from the rest by virtue of being capped with a lump of half-eroded granite only partly covered in snow. By the time he reached its peak, his legs had gone from aching to half-numb, but when he looked ahead, he could see what appeared to be a hangar cut into the side of a steep ridge several kilometres away.

Coming to a halt, he rested with his hands on his knees, taking a minute to recover his breath before using his sunglasses to zoom in on the cavern. There, he could see a flier parked near the mouth of the hangar.

He ran an analysis and got an immediate positive result. It was the Ambassador’s flier, all right – and he hadn’t left yet.

Luc had what he needed. Turning back, he saw dark thunder-heads to the north, sweeping in across the snowy wastes, and remembered de Almeida’s warning. The wind had already started to pick up, a thin, eerie whine that carved patterns in the ice and snow all around.

And there was something else, just barely audible over the rising howl of the wind. A faint hum, coming closer . . .

He made his way over to the granite stub rising from the peak of the hill and pressed himself into a shadowed indent. As he listened the humming got louder, then started to fade as the source of the sound moved away from him. Luc waited for a good half-minute before cautiously leaning out to take a look around.

He saw a mechant, already at the base of the hill and on its way towards the rock hangar. Breathing a sigh of relief that it hadn’t seen him, he made his way back the way he’d come as fast as his tired legs could carry him.

The storm, however, was coming in faster than he had imagined possible. The wind kept rising in pitch until it sounded eerily like the scream of an injured animal. He picked up the pace, very nearly breathless by the time he crested another hill.