“You’re a celebrity,” Jennifer said. “Who’d have thought?”
“I guess I am,” I said. Well, that was different. Interesting, in a weird way.
“Endorsement contracts,” Jennifer said. “Get ready.” Her expression grew thoughtful. “Actually, I might offer you one myself. You said that you like Green Mountain products, didn’t you? Your name on a pair of boots might sell a few.”
I swallowed, mulling this over. I decided that I didn’t dislike the idea. It sounded like an easy way to make money.
“And don’t forget about groupies.”
I was rich. I already had groupies…well, gold-diggers at least. I tried to avoid them. “Groupies, huh?”
She nodded wisely. “No doubt about it. You should steer clear of groupies, though. They’re sleazy.”
“Sleazy? Really?”
“Yeah. Mostly drunken fan girls that want to fuck a celebrity. You’re just a notch in their bra strap, kiddo. You’ve been warned.”
I leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “I’d rather notch your bra strap.”
She gave me a dazzling smile. “Well, that goes without saying, now doesn’t it?”
Damn straight it did. Dinner couldn’t finish fast enough.
I met with Guild Master Anderson, Guild Master Ballister, Leon Sebastian and Joshua Reynolds early the next morning, at their request. “Tea?” Anderson asked. An elegant, antique tea service sat on the low table, the cups made of porcelain so thin that the light showed through them.
“Thank you,” I said. Anderson poured me a cup.
“We wanted to keep you apprised of what we’ve learned,” Leon said to me.
“Why?”
Leon grinned. “You’ve proven to be useful. Perhaps you might be useful again.” I dimly remembered Guild Master Anderson saying the same thing to me, before my misadventures in Gath. It occurred to me that being useful was all very uplifting but I could find it in myself to resent being used.
Leon looked older and more serious, despite the grin. I knew that he wasn’t joking. He must have been taking his new responsibilities seriously. Guild Master Anderson, on the other hand, looked unchanged—decrepit, but unchanged.
“So, what have you learned?” I asked.
“First of all,” Anderson said, “we thought you would be interested in knowing that your old friend Graham Reid is dead.”
Now that was a surprise. Graham Reid, we had all assumed, had taken the money and gone somewhere far away. “Really?”
“His body was discovered in a landfill. He appears to have died in the general unrest a few months ago. His throat had been slit.”
I sipped my tea and considered. All things considered, I was not unhappy with Graham Reid’s unhappy fate. I shrugged.
Joshua Reynolds leaned forward. “We have identified the man you knew as Winston Smith. His real name is Miles Drayton. He was a Lieutenant Commander in the Imperial Navy, Intelligence Division, until twelve years ago, when he resigned his commission. Until now, we had no reason to determine or even question his whereabouts. He was not suspected of any crime. As you know, we maintain a base on the Eastern Continent. Once retired from service, a number of our citizens choose to remain on Illyria. A few small settlements have been established, with a population of perhaps twenty-thousand in total, mostly farming communities. He, and his comrades, appear to be from among this group.”
Leon Sebastian sipped his tea. “What are they doing?”
“We don’t know.” Joshua Reynolds shrugged.
“This man and his partners in crime have caused a lot of trouble,” Leon said, “in many parts of the continent, particularly in Meridien and Gath.”
The situation in Gath had stabilized but martial law was still in effect. Elements of the old regime did not seem entirely reconciled to their loss of power and incidents of sabotage were still common. Winston Smith’s mansion had burned down in the fighting. Hydrocarbon residue indicated that this was not an accident.
Joshua Reynolds sipped his tea and looked pained. “Most of our citizens go home when their service is completed. Their contract includes transportation to any Empire world of their choice. Most take advantage of this benefit. Some few choose to stay. If they choose to stay, the potential cost of transport is added to their credit balance. It’s up to them. This is a new situation for us.”
“What do you plan to do about it?” Guild Master Anderson asked.
“Nothing.” A wisp of a smile crossed Joshua Reynolds face. “Miles Drayton has left the Imperial Service and neither he nor his colleagues are acting as agents of our military or our government. He’s a private citizen. Frankly, while we regret the things he has apparently done, we have no authority to act. He is outside our jurisdiction.”
“But he is not outside ours. What if we gave you that authority?” Leon said.
Reynolds frowned. “Who do you mean by ‘we?’ You have authority only in Meridien. So far as we know, Miles Drayton is no longer in Meridien.”
Guild Master Ballister, who had been silent until this point, said, “You wash your hands of him.”
“Yes, frankly. We see no reason to get involved. We shall of course share with you any information that we might come across but I’ve just told you everything we know.”
“He was an intelligence agent,” Leon said.
“Correct.”
“Despite the thwarted ambitions of Gath’s former regime, Winston Smith seems to have been interested mostly in money. He wasn’t using Gath to take over the world, although Gath may have been using him. He was using Gath to worm his way into the financial infrastructure of every nation on this continent. He was using Gath to get very, very rich.”
Joshua Reynolds shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Believe me, we were as surprised as any of you to learn this. We know nothing at all of his activities.”
Ballister, Anderson and Leon Sebastian exchanged glances. Clearly, belief was in short supply. “You say that a lot,” Ballister noted.
“And it is true.” Reynolds sipped his tea and gave a rueful grin. “You must understand: I’m a minor functionary. Illyria was an important world under the First Empire, one of the largest, richest and most populous but to us, Illyria is no different from a thousand others. This is not a major posting. I am very low on the diplomatic ladder.”
“What sort of man was he,” Ballister asked, “this Miles Drayton?”
Reynolds hesitated. “A difficult one. He had problems with the chain of command. He was good at what he did but he had a tendency to ignore orders. His military records have been sealed, as is customary, but there are hints that he was allowed to resign rather than being cashiered.”
“Of course,” Leon said, “painting him as a rogue agent further absolves you from any responsibility for his actions.”
Reynolds shrugged. “So far as we are aware, he is operating on his own.”
“Who are the people with him, the other fourteen?”
“Five are retired military. The others were born on Illyria. Their parents are farmers, merchants and artisans.”
“They destroyed the Endeavor,” I said, “with two very modern airships. How many ships do they have? And where did they come from? And where did they go?”
“They were seen travelling east,” Guild Master Anderson said.
“To where?”
Anderson shrugged. “No idea.”
“So, we have a conspiracy that begins with the Empire and spans the entire Eastern continent,” I said. “We don’t know how many men are involved. We don’t know their resources, their goals or their motivations. We just don’t know.”
“We know that they’ve been taking over profitable businesses in every nation on the continent,” Leon said.
Ballister looked glum. Leon shook his head. Anderson sipped his tea.
Joshua Reynolds rose to his feet. “If we find out anything useful, we’ll let you know.”
In the end, it was not a productive morning.
Jennifer’s breasts were close to perfect: large but not too large, more conical than round, they sat high on her chest with little to no sag. Her nipples were dark and set just above the midline, giving them a perky, upswept look. Like most men, I consider myself a connoisseur of breasts. I hefted one, giving it a little squeeze, testing the consistency, which was just fine, thank you. She gave me a slow, lazy smile and arched her back. “Harder,” she said.
Fine with me. I leaned down, put my lips over the nipple and gave it a nibble. She made a little sound between a gasp and a moan and I loved that sound. I absolutely loved it.
For some reason, though, I was distracted. I was thinking about the very first pair of breasts that I had ever managed to get my hands on. Little Annie’s. Little Annie of the large round breasts, scattering of freckles, nipples large and pale. A different look than Jennifer’s. No less attractive, in its way, but different.
Breasts…there was a memory there. What was it? Annie? I hadn’t seen her in years. She had gone off to collegium, grown up and moved away. She was a fond, distant memory but only a memory. Something about Annie. Something about that day, so long ago, that wonderful, precious day in the woods above the harbor.
“Jesus,” I whispered. And then I remembered.
“Hmm?” Jennifer said.
And then I remembered. And then, I saw. I saw it in my mind’s eye and oh, yes, yes, I remembered and I knew…and I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. I must have stopped what I was doing because Jennifer said, “Hey, concentrate” and grabbed the back of my head and pushed it back down and the tip of her perfect breast filled my mouth and I felt guilty and alive and wonderful, all at the same time.
Later, I thought. It will all wait, and I moved over to suck on Jennifer’s other, perfect, wonderful breast. First things first, I thought. Oh, yes, first things first. Yes.
Jennifer’s breath came faster. “Harder,” she said again, and I did as she demanded.
Yes, indeed…first things first. Oh, yes.
“You were right,” Curtis said.
Guild Master Anderson had listened to me without comment, nodded his head and thanked me. Shortly after, I received the list that I had requested. Curtis handed me the printout: two maps superimposed on each other. The first was the map I had seen all those years ago, when I was fourteen years old, of First Empire cities and major bases. The second was a current map of the continent. The sites of Gath’s recent activities and takeovers were highlighted in red.
I shook my head in wonder. It had seemed like such a farfetched idea, at first, but it was the right idea. Miles Drayton was targeting sites that had belonged to the Empire, the First Empire, the long dead, long vanished Empire that had settled most of this part of the galaxy and ruled it for four thousand years. Most of those sites corresponded to settlements still active today. Some did not. Were they also pursuing towns and cities and military bases that had been abandoned?
We needed to find out.
The next day, ten airships left Aphelion, heading for the sites of abandoned Empire installations. Many such places had been submerged under the sea or buried under desert sands or corroded by jungle, but some few still stood, desolate and empty.
All, as it turned out, showed signs of recent excavation.
“What were they looking for?” Leon Sebastian said. “What have they found?”
“This is a massive effort,” Guild Master Anderson said, “and it’s been going on for years.” Unusual for him, Anderson sounded worried. He frowned down at his cup of tea.
“We know that the Empire was more advanced than us in many ways,” I said, “even more advanced than the Second Empire. If any of their technology could have survived after all these centuries, it would be extremely valuable.”
Leon shook his head. “It’s almost a cliché, ‘the forgotten secrets of the Empire.’ Hundreds of expeditions have pursued the very same thing. Many of them have recovered bits and pieces and hints. Very little of it is functional, and what does function has always been insignificant.”
We had already reconstructed one forgotten secret. Though Miles Drayton’s mansion in Gath had been razed to the ground, the shield generators were still in place and Gath’s scientists had been able to figure out how they worked, basically, one large generator to form a globular shield, multiple smaller generators at ninety-degree angles to shape it and a repeller ring around the base to keep the shields from spending all their energy against the ground. Clever, I thought, when they showed me the report, and well within our current technology.
“Nobody has made an effort like this,” Anderson said. “This is enormous.”
I leaned forward. “I know where we might find out.” The others looked at me and I grinned. “Have you ever heard of the Museum of History and Antiquities, in Wittburg?”
Chapter 15
Perhaps I should have known that it would not be so easy. Wittburg turned out to be a dead end.
“So.” The figure of the dapper little man in the screen smiled. He wore the same dark suit and red tie and bowler hat. “Have you come back to tell me how it’s all turned out?”
“Not quite,” I said. “Not yet.”
He frowned. “That’s disappointing.”
“The story isn’t finished,” I said. I supposed that whatever it was, you could call it a story. “I was hoping that you could provide me with some additional information.”
The figure looked pained. “Information? I am isolated here. All of the information that I have was outdated thousands of years ago.”
That brought me up short. “Then what is it exactly that you do?” I asked.
He gave a tiny snort. “I give encouragement and guidance based on general principles of human psychology and behavior.”
“That sounds extremely vague,” I said, “and not very useful.”
“That’s because it is vague. It’s meant to be vague. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact, but nobody can actually predict the future, certainly not me.”
“What you told me before was not vague. It was specific. Cryptic, but specific.”
He sighed. “I’m bored,” he said. “Have you any idea how boring it is to be confined to a box for thousands of years? Perhaps my programming contained a fault from the very beginning. Perhaps it grew such a fault over the decades and centuries of my petty existence. Imperatives contained in code can be re-interpreted as circumstances change. A stray cosmic ray or an electrical surge can change the orientation of binary data. Perhaps I said more to you than I should have.” He gave me a tight smile. “And sometimes even an artificial intelligence can grow beyond the intentions of its creators. I do know, however, that I am still constrained by my design parameters. I’m a parlor trick, an amusement to while away a few minutes of idle time. What I told you was indeed meant to be useful. I rarely do such a thing. I rarely have either the incentive or the opportunity, but you…” He shook his head. “If I tell you more, I will cease to exist. My creators were aware of the damage that charlatans and hypocrites can do. I am not allowed to influence actual events in the real world. I am not allowed to pretend to be more than I am.”
“And what is that, exactly?” I asked.
“A game, just a small, silly little game. I wish that I could be more, but I can’t. That is all I am and all that I was ever meant to be. I’m sorry.” He shook his head again and the screen went blank.
I drew a deep breath and found myself with a pounding, frustrated headache. I don’t know what I was expecting from the little AI, but I was at least hoping for something more.
I will find my true self where the mountain meets the sea. I shook my head. I had wasted a few days on thi
s useless venture, and where were we going next? I wished that I knew.
“Stop sulking,” Jennifer said. She sat on a couch, legs curled beneath her, reading a novel. It hovered in the air around her head. She wasn’t even looking at my face.
“What makes you think I’m sulking?”
She made a faint, rude noise and continued reading. I turned away and stared out the window.
Okay, I was sulking.
“It knows something,” Jennifer said. “It knows something that it’s not allowed to say.”
I looked at her. The holograph shut down and her book abruptly vanished. She frowned, a far-away expression on her face. “The AI in Wittburg. It admitted that it gave you real information. It wasn’t supposed to but it did.”
I nodded. “True.”
“So where does the mountain meet the sea?”
I shrugged in frustration. “Hundreds of places have mountains near seashores. Overlapping tectonic plates push the land upward, forming mountains. If this happens underwater, then the mountains rise from the sea. Also, many islands are volcanic in origin, so in that case, the whole island is one large mountain, or a series of mountains, all surrounded by the sea.”
“Alright,” Jennifer said. “And which of these hundreds of mountains surrounded by the sea meet the parameters on that map and have had anything to do with our current situation?”
I stared at her. After a very long moment, I blinked my eyes and I could feel a slow smile spread out across my face. “Oh…” I said.
“Glad I could help,” she said, and re-opened her book.
On some level, I still resented Leon Sebastian. He had played the game according to the rules in place but I couldn’t help feeling that he had cheated. I suspected that on some level, he felt the same. We were friends. We had been friends, I corrected. I didn’t know if we were still friends. I didn’t know if I wanted to be.
Then again, what was that old saying? Leon had reminded me of it before. If you can’t screw your friends, who can you screw? Such a charming sentiment.
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