The Thousand Emperors

by Gary Gibson

  ‘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.

 

 

 

  He transmitted the data he’d recorded and waited a minute until she came back.

 

  Her voice broke up into static.

 

  He waited for her to respond, but all he could hear was the terrible howl of the wind.

 

  Still nothing.

  He felt tendrils of panic reach out from his spine and wrap themselves around his chest, gently squeezing his heart. He tried again to contact de Almeida, but again heard only silence. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility that the storm was causing some kind of signal interference. At least, he hoped that was all it was.

  He kept moving, but the storm was coming down fast and it was getting harder to see where he was going. He tried to use the tracking signal from the flier to keep him headed in the right direction, but it failed to respond, as if it wasn’t there any more.

  Something was very, very wrong. If he couldn’t find his way back to the flier before the storm really hit, he was in serious trouble.

  He relied on his memory to guide him back the way he had come, but after another ten minutes the light was almost gone. The wind whipped thin skeins of snow into his eyes, half-blinding him. Before long it got to the point where he could hardly make any headway at all against the wind.

  ‘Zelia!’ he yelled into the maelstrom. ‘Goddammit, Zelia, where the hell are you?’

  He wondered if her subterfuge had been discovered, and she had decided to cut him loose rather than admit responsibility for bringing him back to Vanaheim against Father Cheng’s wishes. Whatever the reason, if he could get back to the flier he could at least get the hell out of there.

  By now, the mountain peaks had disappeared behind flurries of ice and snow raised up by the wind, and he had to fight for each step he took. A part of him wanted to lay down and rest, to be done with it all.

  But if he did that, he knew, he’d never get up again. So he pushed on regardless, leaning into the wind, face numb, teeth gritted. The sky had turned almost completely black.

  An eternity passed before he stumbled down a steep incline to where he’d left the flier. It wasn’t there.

  Looking around wildly, he squinted in the freezing dark. Maybe he was in the wrong place.

  Again, he tried to pick up the flier’s tracking signal, but still got no answer.

  He turned, and looked back up the slope of the hill he’d just descended. There had been a rockslide some time in the recent past that had scattered a couple of large, distinctive boulders nearby, and he remembered seeing them when he’d disembarked from the flier. He was definitely in the right place.

  The wind wrapped itself around him, as if trying to carry him off. He screamed his fury and frustration into a black and turbulent sky, but the words were lost amid the tumult.

  There was still one other option open to him. He could head back the way he’d come, make his way to that rock hangar and see if he could find some way inside Javier Maxwell’s prison. It was probably his one chance at staying alive.

  He trudged back up the slope he’d just descended, every muscle in his body protesting at the ordeal he was putting them through. His footprints had been almost entirely obscured by the storm. Sometimes the outline of the mountains became briefly visible, allowing him to confirm he was still heading the right way and hadn’t got turned around.

  It’s easy, he told himself. Just put one foot in front of the other, and repeat. Couldn’t be simpler.

  An eternity passed in this way, until his legs felt as stiff and unyielding as frozen rock.

  He almost cried with relief when he found his way back to the granite-topped hill, and tried not to think about the many kilometres he still had to go before he reached the hangar. The ridge he was ultimately headed for was, by now, almost entirely invisible amidst the storm.

  The night surged around him, howling and tugging at his shoulders like some predator determined to torture him before making its kill.

  At some point, he came to the realization he had no idea which direction he was headed in. He turned around, trying to see his tracks in the snow, but the storm had become so vicious they were obscured in seconds.

  Picking a direction, he started walking. It became harder and harder to maintain any sense of time. He might have been walking for an hour, or a whole day.

  He becam
e aware that he had collapsed to his knees in the snow, but couldn’t recall just when he had come to a halt.

  Forcing himself upright, he managed a few more feeble steps before feeling his legs give way beneath him once more. He collapsed, tipping forward onto the snow, the breath rattling in his throat.

  Lights flickered through the darkened haze around him. To his astonishment, Luc saw that the storm was starting to clear. The stars were revealing themselves, one by one, between drawn-out wisps of snow and cloud.

  Some of the stars broke away from the firmament and dipped down towards him, so that he could see they were attached to a dark outline that blocked out part of the sky. But before he could work out what it was, his thoughts had faded into darkness.

  FOURTEEN

  The journey to the well, the old man told Jacob, was likely to take the better part of a day, and quite possibly longer if the weather turned for the worse. For this reason they left not long after dawn the following morning, with Jacob once again hidden beneath a carpet in the back of Kulic’s horse-drawn cart.

  At one point, as Kulic guided the cart out of the village, cajoling his horse with whistles and muttered grunts, he drew to a halt by the roadside in order to exchange a few words with a fellow villager. That proved to be the high point of what was otherwise a cold and desperately uncomfortable journey, marked by spine-jarring jolts and bumps that did little to improve Jacob’s mood. He hated everything about Darwin he had so far encountered; the early years of his life had been spent in Sandoz combat-temples amidst wild and tropical forests and, despite his training, he had never quite shaken his distaste for the cold and damp.

  But what made it all so much worse was that the rag under which he was forced to hide for the first leg of their journey stank of shit and hay, while the only refreshment Kulic had to offer was a sealed clay jug of nearly intolerable home-brewed beer, alongside hard, unleavened bread that Jacob was forced to chew with grim determination before it became even vaguely digestible.

  Jacob finally emerged from beneath the blanket an hour out of the village, but soon draped it back over his shoulders when it began to rain, a freezing drizzle that shrouded the hills and forest around them in shades of grey. Kulic had given him some of his father’s cast-offs – a rough woollen shirt and a pair of patched cotton trousers, along with a broad dark coat that swept against his ankles. Underneath it all he still wore his one-piece combat suit.

  Kulic guided the horses along a dirt path that cut through the woods and ran roughly parallel with the course of a stream intermittently visible through the trees. Before long it became clear they were headed inland, towards a valley beyond which a Coalition city could be seen in all its shining technological splendour.

  They stopped late that afternoon so they could both take a leak. When Jacob returned from the woods, he saw Kulic rummaging around in the rear of the cart, as if searching for something. As Jacob watched from amongst the trees, the old man glanced around with a furtive expression.

  Jacob waited to see what the old man was up to, and watched as Kulic turned back to the cart, lifting out the case Jacob had earlier retrieved from his ship. Holding it carefully, Kulic turned it this way and that, as if trying to work out how to open it.

  Jacob stepped out from his hiding place and quickly slipped up behind the old man without making a sound. Kulic was pressing dirty fingernails against the surface of the case, apparently trying to prise it open.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Jacob, from directly behind him.

  Kulic let out a cry of shock, and span around to regard Jacob with an expression of terror. ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ his mouth trembled, the case still gripped in his shaking hands. ‘I was just . . . just curious.’

  ‘Curious about what?’ said Jacob, coming closer, so the old man was forced up against the side of the cart. Kulic’s mouth trembled with fear.

  ‘I . . . I just wanted to know what was inside.’

  Jacob stared at him in silence for several long seconds, then reached down to take the case from Kulic’s grasp without breaking eye contact.

  ‘It’s lucky you have no idea how to open this,’ Jacob said quietly. ‘It would have killed you even faster than I could. Now get back on that horse and let’s be on our way.’

  Kulic regarded him in much the same way a rabbit might a snake with its jaws fully extended. He swallowed and slid past Jacob, pulling himself back onto his ageing nag.

  Jacob stared at the back of the old man’s head, then climbed into the back of the cart. The case was unharmed, of course. It would open only in response to Jacob’s unique genetic signature. He kept a hold on the case as Kulic snapped the reins, and they began to move forward once more.

  The sky reddened as the evening deepened, and the first stars began to show themselves before they next spoke.

  ‘You asked me to tell you about life in the Tian Di,’ Jacob said, calling over to Kulic as the cart juddered and bounced beneath him. ‘Why don’t you repay the favour, and tell me something more about the people in the cities?’

  A minute or so passed before Kulic responded. ‘I said they came to visit us from time to time, in disguise.’

  ‘You said,’ Jacob commented, ‘they didn’t appear to be human.’

  ‘They came to us in disguise as animals.’

  Jacob smiled to himself. ‘Animals?’

  ‘You think I’m naive and foolish,’ said Kulic, his tone defensive, ‘but I’m not. We know how powerful the people in those cities are, and how lucky we are that they permit us to live our lives the way we choose; we know they can take any form they wish. One of Bruehl’s disciples came back with stories of multi-legged things that flew and crawled, of tiny darting machines that spoke with the voices of men.’ Kulic’s tone had become hushed, full of wonder and fear.

  Mechants, in other words, thought Jacob. Or possibly extreme body modifications of a type not permitted within the Tian Di.

  ‘They’re not really people any more,’ Kulic continued. ‘Not in the way that you or I understand them. Villagers tell stories of walking through the woods and encountering beasts – sometimes just deer or birds, except that they have an uncanny intelligence about them that betrays their otherness. Sometimes the beasts are nightmarish things that have little to do with anything in God’s Creation, things that glow or fly or crawl on the ground.’

  ‘So why do they come?’

  Jacob laughed, the sound harsh and bitter. ‘They are spectators come to gawk at the exhibits in a circus,’ he said.

  The woods had become denser, the path veering off from the river, which had slipped between tall, crag-like rocks so that its passage could now only be distantly heard. ‘Did any of your people communicate with them, or them with you?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘No.’ Kulic shook his head. ‘Too many people in the villages are frightened they’d be carried away to the cities, which is silly, of course. There are regulations preventing any interference with our communities. Should any one of us make the free choice to leave the villages and make a new life in the cities, that’s another matter, but we can’t be forced to make that decision against our will.’

  Kulic turned to look back at him. ‘If I may ask – is your mission to destroy the Coalition? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘No,’ said Jacob, ‘that’s not my mission.’

  Kulic turned back and said nothing, but Jacob could sense the old man’s frustration. Here he was, Jacob Moreland, a mysterious stranger from another world, full of answers to questions that must have been stirring through the old man’s thoughts ever since his father’s deathbed revelations.

  Despite himself, Jacob felt a touch of pity for Kulic, and decided there was probably no harm in telling him a little more than was strictly necessary. Besides, he had come to a decision after catching the old man trying to prise his case open.

  ‘However,’ said Jacob, ‘I am here because of the threat of war between the Coalition and the Tian Di.’

&nb
sp; Kulic stared round at him, suddenly desperately fascinated. ‘You mean like what led to the Schism?’

  ‘That wasn’t really a war,’ Jacob replied. ‘It was more of a standoff. Severing the transfer gates linking our worlds to yours prevented an outbreak of war.’

  ‘Then . . . where’s the danger?’ asked Kulic. ‘If all that either side needs to do is shut down the new transfer gate linking Darwin to Temur, then there can’t be any war.’

  ‘At the same time that Father Cheng has been ordering agents such as myself to Darwin,’ Jacob replied, ‘the Coalition have been sending their own secret missions to the Tian Di at sub-light speeds. There are offensive machines lurking in the cold outer reaches of our star systems, ready to strike if we do not agree to certain demands on the Coalition’s part.’ He had received this newest information from the transceiver hidden in Kulic’s basement.

  Now that he had started, Jacob found it very nearly impossible to stop the flow of words pouring from his mouth. Even though only days had passed from his subjective point of view since he had been first loaded on board the tiny starship that brought him to Darwin, it felt as if it had been much, much longer than that. In truth, it felt as if he had not spoken with another human being for years. He knew this was ridiculous, a kind of delusion. And yet he could not help himself.

  ‘What kind of demands?’ Kulic asked in horrified yet fascinated tones. The path took a sharp turn downwards and the old man was forced to duck as they passed beneath low-hanging branches. They were entering the valley now.

  ‘The Temur Council has enemies, even amongst its own people,’ Jacob explained, ‘that want to bring chaos and anarchy raining down on all of the Tian Di. To prevent this happening, the Council’s wisest minds decided to seek out the means to defend themselves. And that means I must . . .’

  Stop. You’re telling him too much.

  Jacob felt abruptly ashamed of himself. ‘The details aren’t your concern,’ he said, quickly changing the subject. ‘How long before we reach this well?’

  ‘We’re just about there,’ said Kulic, leaning forward to mutter in his nag’s ear as the road took another sharp turn.