Empress of the Sun

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Me too,’ Sen whispered. ‘I’s had enough of being a princess. Princesses are naff.’

  *

  Tippy-tap. Scrit-scratch.

  ‘Uh?’

  Rap-rappety-rap-rap.

  ‘I’s coming.’

  The door opened. Sen’s eyes went wide in surprise. She gave a cry, covered her small breasts with her hands. She was wearing only panties.

  ‘Everett Singh! Go way go way go way! I thought you were … someone else.’

  ‘Sorry sorry sorry.’ Everett’s face burned in embarrassment. The latty door slammed in his face. ‘Sen, can I … come in?’

  The door opened again. She had pulled on a rugby shirt. ‘It’s kind of messy.’

  Kax had offered the crew apartments of staggering luxury and opulence in Palatakahapa’s Sojourners’ Tower. Everett, Sen, Captain Anastasia, Mchynlyth and Sharkey had each on their own decided they preferred to sleep on the ship. The ship was the one place you couldn’t see the ship. Everness was a terrible, tragic ruin. Her spine was warped, her catwalks and companionways twisted. Ceilings were bowed in, latty doors jammed. Her skin still gaped in a dozen places from the crash and the Genequeen assault, and was ripped and torn where squidship tentacles had resisted giving up their grip. Of the three engines that had been sheared away in the crash-landing, only one had been replaced. The second was still in engineering. The third was lost forever. Everett could not look at the ship without pain. But sleeping in her was more than just not having to look at the wreckage: it was an act of loyalty. It was an act of love.

  Sen’s porthole was cracked and the wooden roof panelling splintered, but her hammock hung level, her over-stuffed drawers spilled clothing, there was dusty make-up strewn over every surface and her rugby players looked down from the walls. Everett moved a short wooden staff to sit down on the pull-down door-seat. The amber globe on top of the staff rippled like jelly. Everett dropped the staff with a yelp. Sen picked it up quickly. The gel flowed with gold, cinnamon, shades of yellow and orange and settled back into a sphere.

  ‘Oh wow, that’s it,’ Everett said. ‘Can I try?’

  ‘It doesn’t like anyone else touching it,’ Sen said. She leaned the staff carefully in a corner. ‘Anyone but me.’

  ‘Can you make it work?’ Everett asked.

  Sen nodded. ‘But I don’t like it. It’s like it’s in my head.’

  ‘I got stuff in my head too,’ Everett said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t want it there. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be here. Sen, I gave them the Infundibulum.’

  ‘You had to, Everett. You couldn’t have done anything. I would’ve done the same. Any of us would.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘I’ll tell you you’re all right if you tell me I’m all right,’ Sen said.

  ‘You had to shoot that Jiju. The Captain … Annie said you had to.’

  ‘It was just so fast,’ Sen said. ‘Like it happened before I had time to think about it. I pulls the trigger and the thumper shoots and it’s gone and it was like all so slow but so fast at the same time and you think you can go back and make it not happen but you can’t. No one can. I’s killed someone, Everett Singh. I’m not clean. I feels dirty. I’ll always feel dirty, in here.’

  Everness moved at her moorings, buffeted by the winds that blew forever up or down this shaft through the world.

  ‘I killed someone too,’ Everett said. ‘Not directly. But I gave Kax the gun. She killed the other princess.’

  ‘If you hadn’t, Kax would’ve died. Do you think that other Jiju would’ve said, “Thank you oh so much, Everett Singh and Mr Miles O’Rahilly Lafayette Sharkey”? She’d have thought something meese on to that dolly riah of hers and cut you and Sharkey up into mince. You done right. We done right. ’Cept …’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like it.’

  ‘It don’t.’

  ‘And Kax is taking us around like we’re … gods or something, and all I’m thinking is, I wish my dad had never given me the Infundibulum. I should have just deleted it. I could have. I thought about it. There was a moment – just a swipe of the finger, and it would have been gone. I should have just got rid of it and that Jiju you killed would be alive, and all Charlotte Villiers’s soldiers, and that other Tejendra on Earth 1 and the crew of that hovercraft on the ice world, and ’Appening Ed, and that other Everett, he’d just be another me, going to school and seeing friends and trying to get girls and playing football, and Annie and you would have a ship and lives back there on E3, and okay, Charlotte Villiers would have my dad, but he’d be on Earth 3, and they’d treat him well, and maybe when she had the Infundibulum from him she’d let him come back.’

  ‘You think that?’ Sen said. Her eyes were very blue and clear and burning with passion. ‘You really think that? Coves like Charlotte Villiers, they nanti let anyone go, ever. I seen the likes of her around Hackney Great Port. You done right, Everett. You the hero.’

  ‘I’m the hero. Okay. So: if I’m the hero, how comes we’re sitting in a wrecked airship surrounded by a trillion smart lizards who now, thanks to me, have the ability to go anywhere in the multiverse? Is that what heroes do? If I’m the hero, how come everything around me goes to shit? How come everyone gets hurt? How come everyone dies?’

  ‘Everett.’ Sen stood up. She had a look of determination on her face. ‘Come and sleep with me.’

  ‘What?’

  Sen nimbly swung herself up into her hammock. ‘Doss up here beside me. There’s loads of room. Remember back on Earth 1, when I had the nightmare?’

  ‘About being trapped in the Tower of Souls?’

  ‘An’ you came and I asked if you’d sleep with me down on the deck – for company and all?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, I think you needs that now but you’re an omi so you won’t ask, so I’m asking you. Come and doss with me, Everett Singh.’

  The hammock rocked, the hooks creaked as Everett slid in beside Sen. She was as small and wiry as a street dog, but she wrapped arms and legs around him and her small body was warm and Everett felt the deep shuddering breaths in his chest turning into little sobs – nothing big, nothing embarrassing, nothing he would be ashamed of. A bit of omi crying. Because she was so warm and close, and there.

  Sen stroked his head.

  ‘’S all right, Everett Singh.’

  The ship moved again around him. Through the port-hole came the lightning flicker of the electric arc between the wall of the shaft and Palatakahapa. And Everett Singh shook in Sen’s skinny arms and he knew that however far he was flung across the trillion trillion planes of the Panoply, he would never be alone.

  Her hair was so mad and soft and smelled of Sen.

  ‘Sen.’

  ‘What, Everett Singh?’

  ‘There’s a kind of … like … well, way you smell.’

  ‘Are you saying I’s a minger?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just – I really like it.’

  ‘That’s good, Everett Singh.’

  Everett snuggled up close and tight against Sen.

  ‘Sen.’

  ‘What now, Everett Singh?’

  ‘That rugby shirt?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Could you take it off?’

  Sen gave a gasp. ‘Get you! Cheeky omi. No, Everett Singh, you’re a BB. My new BB.’

  ‘Is that like a boyfriend?’

  ‘No! You omis! You never let it lie. BB – Bona Bitch. Best friend. The boys back in Hackney, well, they’re never around long enough. And they’re so full of themselves. All zhooshed up. Looking at themselves in the mirror more’n you.’

  ‘Best friend.’

  ‘Best friend I sleep with.’

  ‘Do you do that much?’

  ‘Sometimes. Me and Jiri …’

  ‘Who’s Jiri?’

  ‘Get you, Everett Singh, do I hear jealous? Another BB. A polone, Everett Singh. And stop you thinking th
at. I know what omis are like.’

  ‘You invited me in, Sen.’

  ‘I know. Everett Singh, the rugby shirt …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I says “no”, I doesn’t mean, “yes cos it’s you,” and I doesn’t mean, “not right now, maybe a day or two” – I means, no.’

  32

  First came the light. A ray of pure white stabbed upwards through a crack at the centre of the Sun Control Chamber. It struck the top of the dome and broke into a hundred beams. The central ray widened, the crack expanded into an iris. The holographic model of the Diskworld system split into six sections and slid away from the expanding hole. Sen giggled as an apparently solid section of World-wheel passed through her.

  ‘Airship-shape and Hackney-fashion,’ Captain Anastasia ordered. Everett sucked in his stomach and pushed back his shoulders the way he had been taught in drama class, when he had been forced to do those embarrassing warm-up exercises. He’d never have imagined they would come in useful for an audience with the Empress of the Sun.

  The light brightened to painful intensity. Squinting through the glare, Everett could see a brilliant object rising out of the hole: the SunThrone. A model of her people’s power. The Empress of the Sun rose into the centre of the Sun Chamber. Light beamed from the thousand spines of the throne. Just as Everett could bear no more, the glare dropped to a tolerable level. The floor closed. The throne extended a ramp. The Empress descended to floor level. The Jiju folded their hands in reverence. The room rang with a chorus of swooping whistles. Crest colours ran gold to blue, forward and back again.

  Everett felt Sen slip her hand into his. Her fingers were small and warm and strong. Everett had woken early – in the half-light of the great shaft through the world, body clocks went haywire – slipped out of Sen’s hammock and crept back to his own latty. No one had seen him, but he felt guilty. He was still trying to work that one out: Sen had invited him to be with her, but Everett felt like he was the one who had taken advantage. Bona bitch you doss with. He wanted to be more than that.

  The Empress of the Sun raised a jewelled claw, and a screen on a tall stand slid up out of the floor. The Jiju had modelled their Infundibulum exactly on Everett’s iPad.

  ‘They might have like at least filed the serial numbers off,’ Mchynlyth muttered.

  The Empress of the Sun touched the screen. Light shone up into her face. Her eye-membranes flickered. She sang a brief phrase in Jiju.

  ‘I think that means, “How do I get this to work?”’ Sen whispered.

  Kax hurried to her mother. Long fingers moved over the screen.

  ‘Oh God,’ Everett whispered. Sen squeezed his hand.

  The Empress of the Sun looked at Everett. He saw in her eyes power and darkness and hate ten million years deep. She was terrifying.

  ‘The Empress of the Sun thanks you,’ she said. ‘You have done a great service to the Sunlord nation. A million years from now my people will be singing poems that praise the name of Everett Singh.’

  She still sounded like his mother. The Empress of the Sun returned to her floating throne.

  ‘What do you want it for?’ Everett asked.

  Hisses of intaken breath all around the chamber. No one talked back to the Empress of the Sun.

  The Empress whipped back to Everett. Her nostrils flared. She stared him down. But Everett was not afraid now.

  ‘The safety and security of my people. What other desire does have a monarch have?’

  ‘Can we go home now? You’ve got the Infundibulum – you can send us home.’

  ‘You are guests. You have always been free to leave at any time.’

  The Empress of the Sun took her place on her throne. The light brightened until the crew were forced to shade their eyes. When Everett could see again, the throne was gone, the floor intact. The fake Infundibulum stood on its pedestal.

  ‘Well, I think that’s show over,’ Captain Anastasia said. ‘Let’s get Everness air-worthy and jump the hell off this world. No disrespect, Princess.’

  ‘You talked back to my mother!’ Kax hissed to Everett as Captain Anastasia led her crew from the control chamber. ‘My mother!’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t sounded like my mother,’ Everett muttered.

  ‘You should hear what I say to my mother,’ Sen whispered.

  ‘Your mother heard that!’ Captain Anastasia thundered.

  *

  ‘Bona togs.’ Sen threw clothing at Everett. Jacket, ship shorts, boots. ‘Go and put some clobber on!’ She had changed into her favourite slashed T-shirt, grey leggings and pixie boots, topped off with her Airish-style cavalry jacket.

  ‘What for? What’s going on?’ Everett said from behind with two armfuls of gear.

  ‘We’s going home, ain’t we?’

  ‘We’re what?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ Captain Anastasia stuck her head out of her latty. ‘Earth 3. As soon as Mchynlyth’s charged the batteries up enough for you to jump us out of here.’

  ‘You can’t go there!’ Everett said. ‘I mean, what about my dad? What about Charlotte Villiers and the whole Plenitude after us? That’s insane.’

  Captain Anastasia stepped out of the latty into the corridor. She straightened the waistband of her riding breeches, wiggled a foot deeper into a boot.

  ‘I’ll overlook your last comment as a spontaneous outburst of teenage angst,’ Captain Anastasia said with a sub-zero stare. ‘I must repair my ship.’

  ‘The Jiju have like sixty-five million years of tech. They can repair anything.’

  ‘They may well have, but they don’t have airships and they especially don’t have Everness. I’m taking her home to people who can make her well again.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts, Mr Singh. I’m taking her home, proper home: back to Bristol. I’ll lay her low and get the Portishead Massive in to zhoosh her up bona and Bristol-fashion. Now we’ve got rid of that bijou tracking device, we can out-dance Charlotte Villiers and her ground-pounders. Dress up warm and get to your station, Mr Singh; we jump at our earliest convenience.’

  And with that Captain Anastasia skipped down the rattly, dented companionway to the bridge with the lightness and excitement of a teenager going to a party.

  Dozens – hundreds, thousands – of objections rattled through Everett’s head as he pulled on his leggings and ship shorts. Any Heisenberg Jump left a trail in the quantum reality of the multiverse: Charlotte Villiers would know at once that Everness had returned to Earth 3. She could send a snatch-squad from Plenitude to Diskworld – a few hundred kilometres of English West Country wouldn’t faze her. And repairing the damage the crash and the Genequeen ship-napping had done didn’t look like the sort of thing you could pay for with a charity car wash or a garage sale or even a quick crowd-fund.

  Everett’s jaw and fists tightened at the thought of Charlotte Villiers – so brave, beating up a nearly-fourteen year-old kid; so noble, leaving her crew to be cut to pieces by the Genequeens. Captain Anastasia would never have abandoned her crew. He had seen the Captain in kneepads with a brush, scrubbing away, scrubbing away, trying to get the blood out of every corner and crevice of her ship. And Sen – Everett was glad he had not seen her broken and bloody: the Jiju had put her back together again, sent their nano-machines into her lungs and through her veins, into every cell in her body, but what had those healing machines left behind? The changes, the differences, her ability to make the Genequeen staff obey her will – were they forever? Yes, he wanted more than anything to be off this artificial world, away from its terrible, brutal wars and rivalries, its history soaked in blood for sixty million years. Earth 3 was home to him now, but he couldn’t feel any joy in going home like this.

  The Jiju had the Infundibulum.

  Everett was tightening the straps on his boots when sudden commotion made him look up.

  Mchynlyth’s voice. Angry: he seemed to wake up angry. And another: a woman’s voice. Angry: more than a
ngry. His mother’s voice. Impossible. Kax.

  Everett rattled down the stairs to the cargo hold. Sen was a footfall behind him. She carried the Genequeen staff like a spear. Mchynlyth had a restraining hand on Kax’s chest. Kax’s halo was angry, splintering into sharp red blades, then reforming again.

  ‘Everett Singh!’ Kax called. ‘Get this man out of my face. Get all your people! Now! My Mother – the Empress of the Sun – I know what she’s going to do with the Infundibulum!’

  *

  ‘For fifty million years we have battled each other. War after war; civilisations rising, fighting, collapsing. No side has ever been able to gain the ultimate victory.’

  The crew formed a circle around Kax. Mchynlyth squatted; Captain Anastasia stood, arms folded; Sharkey was behind her, looking suspicious; Everett perched on the bottom step of the main companionway, knees pulled up to his chest; Sen sat on a section of engine casing. The Jiju staff lay across her lap.

  Kax stood in the centre of the circle. She looked long at each human in turn. ‘Until now. My mother has a plan which will bring about the final victory of the Sunlords. We win. Everyone, everything else, loses.’

  ‘The Infundibulum,’ Captain Anastasia said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’ Everett asked.

  ‘We are the Sunlords. We make the sun dance to our command. We give the sun and we can take it away. And we can give too much sun.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sharkey asked.

  ‘A solar flare,’ Everett said. ‘Like the jets you use to move the sun up and down – you could send them in a different direction. Like outward. Across Diskworld – sorry, the Worldwheel.’

  ‘We can do much more than that. We can make the sun nova,’ Kax said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sen asked.

  ‘It’s like a star exploding,’ Everett said. ‘They flare off their outer layers. It’s usually neutron stars—’

  Sen cut him off with a small cry of horror. ‘But that would …’

  ‘Incinerate every living thing on Worldwheel. Yes,’ Kax said. ‘Trillions of deaths. It would be a sterile, uninhabitable waste for tens of thousands of days.’

  Everett did the maths in his head. ‘That’s hundreds of years.’