The Thousand Emperors

by Gary Gibson

  ‘If you want to ask me any more questions,’ Luc replied, his fingers gripping his knees, ‘you can do it in the presence of Director Lethe of Security and Intelligence.’

  ‘Let’s leave SecInt out of it and think of this as just being between friends. Haven’t you ever thought maybe the Council’s been in power too long? It’s been more than two centuries, now. Don’t you feel it’s time for some new kind of government to be put in their place?’

  ‘What I think, Mr Cripps, is that you’re testing me for some reason I don’t understand. I lost my family to Black Lotus when I was very young, so you’re out of your mind if you think I’m an agent for them. Go read my SecInt file. The word “exemplary” gets used a lot.’

  ‘That file also tells me the majority of people in the part of Benares you came from had sympathies for Black Lotus. When you came to Temur as a refugee, you lived in a part of Ulugh Beg with a strong Black Lotus presence.’

  ‘Black Lotus murdered a couple of million Benareans in a sustained assault that devastated half a continent. Believe me, Mr Cripps, I’ve got more reason than most to hate Winchell Antonov. Besides, everyone in SecInt gets psych-profiled to find out where their loyalties lie. So why are you really here?’

  There was a reptilian quality to Cripps’ gaze, something in the way the skin wrinkled around the corners of his eyes that made Luc think of a predator half-submerged in some watering-hole beneath a baking sun.

  ‘Two reasons,’ Cripps responded. ‘For one, a couple of years ago you were given the chance at a promotion to SecInt’s security division, but you didn’t take it. Why?’

  ‘Because it would have taken me out of the Archives division, and away from my intelligence work,’ Luc replied immediately. ‘The job was mostly bureaucratic. If I’d accepted it, I might never have tracked Antonov down. I told Director Lethe that at the time, and he had no problem with my reasoning.’

  ‘Except that promotion would also have given you the authority to influence Archives’ lines of investigation,’ Cripps countered. ‘That could have made a lot of difference – maybe enough so that we wouldn’t be forced to re-instantiate an entire Sandoz Clan.’

  ‘You said there was a second point?’ Luc snapped, barely able to contain himself any longer.

  ‘I don’t think you have any more love for the Temur Council and Father Cheng than Winchell Antonov ever did,’ Cripps replied, a glint in his eyes. He nodded past Luc, towards the White Palace hovering in the air beyond the window. ‘Who’s to say you aren’t a sleeper agent, placed deep inside Archives, and who’s to say Antonov’s death wasn’t faked in some way? No body was recovered, and all we have is your unlikely testimony, delivered to a Sandoz investigator, which can’t possibly be corroborated since no CogNet records of your encounter with Antonov exists!’

  ‘With all due respect, sir,’ Luc spat back, ‘you don’t know shit.’

  Cripps’ shoulders jerked briefly in a laugh. ‘Things are going to be very different from now on, Mr Gabion. I’m going to be keeping a very close eye on you. Remember that, when you start your investigation.’

  Luc stared at him, baffled. ‘My what?’

  ‘We’ll meet again shortly. Just remember, in the coming days, that you are as much a suspect as anyone else.’

  ‘Suspect in what?’ Luc shook his head in befuddlement. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking ab—’

  Cripps’ data-ghost vanished while he was still mid-sentence, leaving him staring at an empty room.

  An investigation, Cripps had said. What kind of investigation?

  He pushed both hands across his head, wondering if he hadn’t just imagined the whole thing. After everything he’d been through, he couldn’t even be sure how much he could trust his own senses. Maybe he was losing his mind. Maybe it was really that simple.

  ‘House,’ he asked, ‘was anyone else just here?’

  ‘Senator Bailey Cripps, by remote data-presence,’ the house replied.

  He closed his eyes in silent relief and sank back into the chair, but soon found himself staring back out at the Palace, feeling nothing but a premonitory chill.

  The next morning a mechant guided Luc from the metro station at the edge of the park and along a pathway that skirted the bronzed statue of Chandrakant Lu. The White Palace’s architect had been depicted with one hand reaching upwards, as if to catch the vast edifice floating half a kilometre above the city. He saw innumerable fliers arriving to decant yet more people to join the hundreds already milling about, a considerable number of whom wore the formal work clothes of Council bureaucrats, while the rest sported the uniforms of either SecInt or Sandoz.

  Mechants, most of them conspicuously armed and bearing Sandoz markings, darted through the air, almost outnumbering the crowds. Their carapaces glittered under the bright arc lights that substituted for sunlight beneath the Palace’s vast bulk.

  The mechant guided him towards an open plaza near the park’s centre. He felt a rush of pleasure when he sighted Eleanor standing amidst a gaggle of several other SecInt agents. The agents were gathered around an olive-skinned man wearing a long formal jacket; Luc immediately recognized him as Mehmood Garda, Director of Policy for Benares, and himself a member of the Eighty-Five.

  The crowds moved and shifted, and a moment later Luc also caught sight of Vincent Hetaera, his immediate superior in Archives, engaged in what looked like an in-depth discussion with several of his junior research staff.

  ‘Mr Gabion!’ Garda exclaimed as Luc approached, stepping forward to clap him on the shoulder and pump his hand at the same time. ‘Congratulations on your success at Aeschere. I believe we all owe you a debt of gratitude.’

  His voice boomed over even the noise of the crowded plaza. Several security-mechants clearly tasked with guarding Director Garda aimed their machine-gaze at Luc.

  ‘I appreciate that.’ Luc almost had to shout the words over the cacophony. He’d heard rumours Garda had participated in the torture and execution of Black Lotus agents, particularly when those agents had been female.

  Garda lifted his chin towards the Palace. ‘You must be full of anticipation. This is the first time you’ve been invited into the Palace?’

  ‘It is,’ Luc shouted back. ‘To be honest, I think I’ll be glad just to get this over with,’ he added.

  Garda drew himself up to his full six-foot-plus height, this time placing both hands on Luc’s shoulders and clapping one of them hard. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t think of anyone who could possibly deserve what’s coming to you any more than you do.’

  Luc caught sight of Eleanor from out of the corner of his eye. ‘It’s certainly an honour,’ he replied.

  ‘And after this?’ asked Garda. ‘Black Lotus aren’t finished just because Antonov is dead. Are you going to help us wipe the rest of them out?’

  ‘I think that remains to be—’

  To Luc’s considerable relief, one of Garda’s entourage approached, whispering in the Director’s ear.

  ‘I look forward to seeing you receive your honours in the Palace,’ said Garda, briefly turning back to Luc, but it was clear his mind was already somewhere else. ‘Affairs of state, I’m afraid.’

  Luc nodded, and watched the Director step away and greet someone else.

  ‘Feel like washing your hands?’ asked Eleanor, moving up next to him.

  Luc suppressed a grimace. ‘I guess I should have expected him to be here.’

  ‘You had a look on your face like you’d just drunk your own piss. To be honest, I think he noticed.’

  ‘If he did, I don’t think it bothered him a great deal.’

  ‘First Lethe, now Garda. Just when you thought you’d be able to relax a little.’

  Luc shook his head wearily. ‘Fuck assholes like Garda. There’ll always be people like him.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘I need to see you. Soon.’

  She nodded. ‘Look, I’m sorry about last night, it’s just—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, stop
ping her. ‘I seem to be about the only person in all of SecInt who isn’t on active duty right now.’ He shrugged. ‘And maybe it’s not such a bad thing that you weren’t there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He hesitated, wondering how she’d react to what he was about to tell her.

  They had become lovers the year before, on a joint trip to Yue Shijie in the 94 Aquarii system to try and track down one of Black Lotus’s many sources of funding.

  Like Aeschere, Yue Shijie orbited a gas giant, but unlike that desolate moon, Yue Shijie was well within its system’s habitable zone, and large enough to support a habitable biosphere. He remembered standing with Eleanor on the balcony of a ziggurat-like building that, like much of the rest of that world’s capital city, rose out of dense jungle stretching to the horizon in all directions. He remembered looking up to see the gas giant’s streaked atmosphere, marked here and there by outpourings from Helium 3 factories ploughing through its upper reaches.

  They had been stuck there for the better part of a month, chasing after lines of enquiry that led nowhere. Demonstrations and riots stirred up by Black Lotus had made the city streets too dangerous to venture onto. Boredom and alcohol had combined with inevitable effect.

  He recalled in vivid detail the curve of her small, high breasts beneath the thin blouse she wore that evening, the curve of her spine when she leaned against the railing beside him. Falling into bed had seemed the obvious thing to do on such a long and lonely night, but neither of them had anticipated how quickly and how deeply their feelings for each other would develop. He wanted to keep her at a safe distance from anything that involved Cripps, yet at the same time, he knew there was no one he could trust more than Eleanor.

  ‘I had a visitor yesterday evening,’ he told her. ‘Bailey Cripps. He spent the whole time quizzing me about my loyalties.’

  Her eyes became round and she stepped back a little. ‘Bailey Cripps? Visited you where, here?’

  ‘He turned up in my home.’

  She had a look in her eyes like she wasn’t quite sure she could believe him.

  ‘Listen, I swear on Cheng’s teeth he was there,’ Luc insisted.

  ‘He doesn’t strike me as the type to make impromptu house calls.’

  ‘There was nothing impromptu about it. He data-ghosted into my apartment without any warning. I guess Council privileges extend to home security overrides.’

  ‘He questioned your loyalties?’ Her eyes darted to the side and then back again, and he guessed what she was about to ask. ‘Are you sure it was really him?’

  ‘I checked. It was him, all right. He seemed to think I couldn’t be trusted because I’m from Benares. He also mentioned something about an investigation, but I have no idea what investigation he was talking about.’

  Her expression became more alarmed. ‘Investigation? Into what? Aeschere?’

  ‘No, he seemed to mean something else, but he didn’t seem interested in telling me precisely what.’

  ‘We need to tell someone about this.’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘For God’s sake, why not?’

  ‘This is Bailey Cripps we’re talking about. There has to be a reason he approached me directly, instead of going through Lethe or Hetaera. If I tell them or anyone else, I might not get to find out what that reason is.’

  She sighed, tilting her head back to stare up at the Palace’s illuminated underside. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said, bringing her gaze back down. ‘You should tell someone.’

  ‘I’m telling you, aren’t I?’

  She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Don’t you think you’ve been through enough already?’

  ‘Look, maybe Cripps came to me in the way he did because he knows something about Black Lotus. Besides . . . he’s one of the Eighty-Five. What they want, they get.’

  ‘There are some members of the Council,’ she said, speaking to him as if he were dim-witted, ‘you don’t want to get tangled up with.’ Her eyes slid to one side, and he followed the direction of her gaze until he alighted on Garda, still working the crowd.

  ‘I just want to find out what Cripps wants. Then I’ll go talk to Lethe.’

  He could sense the anger brewing behind her thinned lips. ‘Is that a promise?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ she replied, ‘because this is starting to feel like Aeschere all over again.’

  Garda mounted a stage set up at the centre of the plaza and began to speak, while mechants from half a dozen different news agencies buzzed through the air, jostling for the best vantage point.

  Luc’s attention soon drifted back to the Palace floating overhead. Something about the sight of all those millions of tons of metal floating unsupported in the air always felt like a test of one’s faith in technology. He wondered, not for the first time, just how many seconds he’d have left to live should the AG pods holding it in place suddenly fail to function.

  Glancing at Eleanor beside him, he saw she had an expression like she’d swallowed something nasty. She hadn’t taken the news about Cripps well. But during his recovery, left with little to do but think, it had come to Luc that so much of his life had been devoted to finding Antonov that there hadn’t been room left for much else. He’d sometimes wondered what kind of life he might have led if the Battle of Sunderland hadn’t brought everything to a crashing halt at such a young age.

  Maybe now was the time to find out. And as much as he hated to admit it even to himself, Cripps’ vague allusion to an unspecified investigation had awoken within him a sense of purpose he had not felt since his departure for Aeschere.

  Garda’s speech finally came to an end, and Luc realized he hadn’t taken in a single word. Two massive doors in the Palace’s underside, positioned directly above the plaza, slowly swung apart on cue. All around the park, fliers thrummed into life while low, sonorous music flowed out of hidden speakers.

  The interior of a docking bay became visible beyond the doors. Dozens of mechants rose towards it, as if the Palace were in actuality a moon, the mechants drawn upwards by the tug of its gravity.

  ‘This is it,’ said Eleanor, taking his arm and flashing him a smile that looked only half-genuine.

  A mechant approached and asked them to follow it. They trailed after it towards a sleek-looking craft onto which at least a dozen other people were already filing.

  They boarded and took their seats, Eleanor taking his hand and holding it tightly.

  ‘Nervous?’ she asked.

  ‘A little,’ he admitted. He wondered if Cripps would be present during the ceremony. He leaned back, half-listening to the people chattering around them as the flier waited for clearance. Most of them were ordinary citizens, on their way to be granted privileges and rewards for services rendered. It was all part of the Temur Council’s unceasing public relations campaign designed to remind people how good life was under Father Cheng.

  The upper part of the hull was transparent, and Luc watched as other fliers scattered around the plaza took off, one after the other, rising straight up and disappearing into the blaze of the docking bay’s lights. Then, finally, they were on their way, landing inside the Palace after a trip that lasted barely a minute.

  Once they disembarked, more mechants, decorated in the gold and blue livery of the Temur Council, took care of guiding the flier’s passengers towards an auditorium located on the Palace’s lowest tier. One of the mechants flew towards Luc and Eleanor, coming to a halt immediately before them and bringing them to a startled halt.

  ‘Mr Gabion,’ said the mechant in a smooth contralto. ‘If you would follow me, please.’

  Luc saw the curious glances of the other passengers as they passed by. He felt strangely embarrassed, as if he’d been caught gatecrashing.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It concerns a matter of the utmost seriousness,’ the mechant informed him. ‘One that requires your absolute discretion.’

  ‘Re
quired by whom?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘I am not at liberty to say, but the request comes from within the Temur Council.’

  ‘Then we’ll both come,’ said Eleanor.

  The mechant’s AG fields buzzed quietly for a moment before it answered. ‘I’m afraid this is a matter for Mr Gabion only, Miss Jaq. Director Lethe has been informed of your necessary absence from the ceremony. Mr Gabion, please follow me.’

  Eleanor opened and closed her mouth, then stared at Luc with a concerned expression.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ she finally said in a low voice. ‘Why now, of all times?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, reaching out to squeeze her arm.

  She tried to force a smile, but the strain was clear on her face.

  He nodded to the mechant and it led the way, gliding towards an AG platform at the far end of the bay. The platform began to accelerate upwards as soon as he stepped onto it, the mechant rising at the same rate in order to keep even with him. He glanced down once to see Eleanor looking back up at him, and tried to ignore the deep unease lurking at the back of his thoughts.

  The platform kept rising, and Luc realized with a shock it was going all the way to the top, to the Hall of Gates. He made a point of not stepping too close to the edge of the platform. Its AG fields would prevent him from falling off, but he had little desire to see just how far he had risen.

  ‘The matter for which your presence has been requested rates a C category under the Security review of 285 P.A.,’ said the mechant, turning towards him as the platform began to decelerate. ‘You may not disclose the nature, location or any other pertinent aspect of your final destination to anyone with a less than C-category security rating, under penalty of the permanent loss of all granted privileges, and possible detention or permanent discorporation at the pleasure of a court assembled from select members of the Temur Council. The same penalties also apply to anyone with whom you share this information, and anyone amongst their immediate family, social or work groups suspected of coming into possession of this information.’