The Thousand Emperors

by Gary Gibson

  Less than thirty seconds after Jacob had placed the scrambler, emergency evacuation alerts began forming in the air up and down the boulevard, rippling softly as he passed through them. AI systems for a hundred kilometres in either direction proceeded to spontaneously reboot, only to be issued with new algorithms provided by the scrambler.

  The effect could only be temporary; according to Sillars, Coalition technology was astonishingly flexible when faced with the unexpected. He had nonetheless discovered that a very few parts of the world-wheel, such as this one, had not been improved or upgraded to any significant degree in centuries.

  In truth, much of Darwin’s world-wheel had become a relative backwater, the majority of the action having long since moved into the frozen depths of the outer system and the dark masses scattered throughout the Oort cloud. The wheel had been reduced to the status of a dusty attic, into which unwanted possessions could be thrown against the day when they might – just might – be needed.

  It was a vulnerability waiting to be exploited. And in order to maximize that vulnerability, it was necessary to cause the greatest damage possible.

  After another minute, just as Jacob approached a door that marked the end of the boulevard, gyroscopic motors designed to coordinate and balance this segment of the world-wheel proceeded to power down for the first time ever.

  Jacob felt a faint but distinct tremor running through the floor of the boulevard. His lattice informed him that within the hour, oscillations normally dampened by the gyroscopic systems would destabilize this part of the world-wheel, and ultimately tear it apart if drastic countermeasures were not taken by Darwin’s authorities.

  The door slid shut at Jacob’s approach, barring his way. He stopped to contemplate his next step. Things had been going almost too well up until this point.

  He sensed, rather than saw, defensive mechants emerging from slots in the walls of the boulevard behind him.

  He turned to face them. To call them mechants, he decided, was to do them slim justice. They constantly reshaped themselves with an organic fluidity he had never witnessed before as they bulleted towards him.

  Jacob felt subjective time slowing down as his lattice took full control of his body. He swept his hands outward, causing microscopic darts tipped with infinitesimal quantities of antimatter to erupt from his gloves, fanning outwards and tearing the mechants apart in a blaze of destruction that would have blinded him if he hadn’t immediately rolled into a ball and covered his eyes. His suit became as rigid as steel, protecting him as the force of the blasts picked him up and smashed him against the wall of the boulevard.

  When he looked back up, the blasts had wrecked much of the boulevard and shattered the doorway that had previously been barred to him. There was little left of the mechants beyond some fragments of white-hot metal.

  Jacob stood with care, testing his muscles and bones and finding he had suffered a few minor fractures. Under the circumstances, he could count himself lucky.

  Flexing his hands, he continued on through the doorway, stepping around a corner – only to find himself face-to-face with something from his deepest nightmares. Its features flowed like mercury, jaws distending as it reached out for him with a thousand spiny fingers.

  He recognized it as another defensive procedure, albeit immensely more sophisticated than any of those he had so far overcome: the monster wasn’t real, but was instead a virtual rendition of deadly software countermeasures designed to burn the lattice in his skull and render him mindless in moments.

  The passageway in which Jacob had been standing disappeared, and he plummeted down an abyssal well that reminded him uncomfortably of the fate to which he had assigned Kulic. The monster was there, swimming through the air towards him.

  He reached out both hands, brightly glowing katanas emerging from his fists, and slashed out at the monster’s throat. It died screaming, its corpse disintegrating into a jumble of subroutines and hopelessly scrambled cognitive algorithms.

  As suddenly as it had vanished, Jacob found himself back in the passageway, hands clenching swords that were no longer there.

  The emergency lights flickered, then momentarily brightened before fading altogether, leaving Jacob in pitch darkness. The artificial lenses in his eyes compensated immediately, rendering the corridor in pale and ghostly shades.

  He stood straight and flexed his hands before advancing, his suit feeding him a message that it had fought off a counter-attack by the local security networks. There was no need to worry about any further countermeasures – at least, not for another few minutes.

  A final door opened at his approach with a satisfying rumble. He stepped inside and found himself within a vault crammed full of Founder artefacts, either suspended within slow-time fields or flickering in and out of shadow-parallels; empty universes into which they could be permanently banished should they somehow be accidentally activated.

  It took Jacob moments to locate the quantum disruptor he had been sent to retrieve: a dark, fan-shaped thing no more than a few inches in width, and somehow difficult to look at directly. The disruptor was held within its own slow-time field that, in turn, was contained within a kind of barred metal container, scarcely larger than one of Jacob’s fists.

  He picked the container up and placed it in a zipped pocket of his combat suit, before jogging back down the silent and devastated boulevard, every piece of sub-molecular circuitry for kilometres around by now scrambled beyond repair.

  SEVENTEEN

  Bottomless grief knotted every muscle in Vasili’s body. Every night for the past several days had been long and sleepless, every thought wracked with remorse.

  It was more than Luc could bear. He let go of the book Maxwell had left him with and fell back in his seat, the breath shuddering in his throat.

  The library around him was silent and still. Maxwell hadn’t returned yet, and Luc was starting to get the feeling he might not be back for a while.

  He took a breath, and again pushed his fingers against the pages.

  Bright sunlight illuminated the spines of the books all around Vasili where he stood in his library. Winchell Antonov stood with his back to the patio doors, his small, inquisitive eyes set above a thick black beard. Only the faint rainbow shimmer of light around his outline revealed the renegade to be a data-ghost. Some flaw in the projection made him appear to be hovering just a fraction above the floor.

  ‘I’ve already proved to you that Ariadna was deliberately murdered,’ said Antonov. ‘That is what you wanted, isn’t it? Proof.’

  For so very long, Vasili had been convinced of a cover-up over Ariadna’s death. The inquest had been filled with flawed and circumstantial evidence, while the final verdict implied she had been careless, ignoring and failing to take action on priority alerts issued by the very flier she had died in.

  But the more he had learned, the more convinced he had become that the verdict was a crock of shit. There were too many unanswered questions over how the flier’s navigational systems could possibly have failed without it alerting anyone else to the danger, and that led in turn to the suspicion that its programming had been deliberately altered – in other words, sabotaged. And on top of that, an overseer responsible for the maintenance of many of Thorne’s fliers had died under equally mysterious circumstances before he could provide vital expert witness testimony. Vasili’s own private researches had uncovered yet further, damning evidence.

  But who would have the motive or reason to bring about her death?

  Ariadna had been a Lost Russian like himself, part of that generation growing up on what had been the Russian Federation’s Pacific coast, prior to the Chinese occupation. Much, much later, long after she had become estranged from Winchell, and on the very day the Coalition’s occupation of Newton crumbled under the sustained assault of Cheng’s guerrilla armies, they had become lovers. Until then they had been only comrades in arms, working on strategies to trigger shutdowns in enemy military networks, their relationship up to
that point purely professional.

  The first time they made love, by the light of burning furniture tossed from the windows of a Coalition barracks, it had been a spontaneous act brought about by their shared revolutionary fervour. He remembered the triumphant shouts of their compatriots filling the air, the sweet ecstasy of victory mixing with the pleasure of Ariadna’s aroused flesh.

  ‘Proof.’ Vasili licked his lips, unable to keep a slight tremor out of his voice. ‘This was all so much easier when everybody thought I was insane.’

  ‘You weren’t insane,’ Antonov replied gently. ‘For a long time I hated you for taking Ariadna from me, but then I realized it was I who had pushed her away.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘When I found out what had happened to her, I instigated my own investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death, but it took a very long time to bear fruit. For a while I foolishly believed that you yourself might be her murderer, but my jealousy for your long life with her had blinded me. For that, I ask forgiveness. By asking as many difficult questions as you did, Sevgeny, you proved to me that you are an honourable man, and for that you have my respect, however much we might disagree on other matters.’

  ‘They told me I had lost my senses,’ muttered Vasili. ‘That I was unable to . . . to accept there was no meaning to her death.’

  ‘But you never stopped being suspicious, did you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Vasili snapped, slamming one hand against a bookcase, taking a certain relish in the sudden burst of pain.

  He could hardly believe he had consented to this meeting. Antonov represented everything he stood against – an enemy of order and sanity, a man who had proven himself more than willing to risk bringing the same destructive forces that had once destroyed the entire Earth raining down upon the colonies.

  And yet here Antonov was, in his very home, offering answers to questions he had come to believe would never be answered. Ever since that terrible day when Ariadna had died, he had focused on his work as a way to avoid the despair of grief, fulfilling his duties both to the Council and to the Tian Di to the utmost. But it still had not been enough to prevent his slow abandonment by Cheng, a man he had once considered the closest thing to a friend.

  ‘I’ve already given you a taste of what I know,’ said Antonov, his voice calm and steady and infuriating in equal measures. ‘Your wife was asking too many questions for the comfort of certain of your fellow Eighty-Fivers.’

  Vasili’s thoughts flashed back to a few days before, when an anonymous and heavily encrypted message had been delivered by a decrepit mechant, its hull pitted and rusted, its livery indicating it had belonged to Antonov prior to his fall from grace. God only knew where on Vanaheim Antonov had secreted it all these years.

  Despite considerable misgivings, Vasili had loaded the message into his sensorium, curiosity overcoming his normal caution. He soon found himself watching shaky footage from the point of view of a Sandoz missile flying low across Thorne’s rock- and boulder-strewn landscape, before homing in on a single flier as it passed over a range of crater-pocked mountains.

  ‘You said Sandoz forces were ordered to kill her,’ said Vasili. ‘But who gave them their orders?’

  ‘To find out the answer to that,’ Antonov replied, ‘you must first go somewhere I cannot.’

  ‘You said she was asking too many questions. Questions about what?’

  Antonov rolled his shoulders, as if one of them were slightly kinked. ‘I need to get access to the information stored in a private data-cache maintained by Cheng – one that nobody else knows exists, and that contains, or so I believe, damning proof regarding Ariadna’s death.’

  Vasili stared at Antonov, his eyes burning. ‘You’re using me,’ he rasped. ‘You never gave a damn about me before now, and I’m not stupid enough to believe you’re here solely for my benefit.’

  Antonov laughed. ‘Ever the pessimist, Sevgeny? Of course I’m using you. What kind of fool would I be, if it were any other way?’

  ‘You’re a devil,’ rasped Vasili. ‘When you go to hell, they should put you in charge. I swear you were made for the job.’

  ‘I seek evidence of a different kind,’ Antonov told him. ‘Proof that your beloved Father Cheng has not only discovered a second entrance to the Founder Network, but is exploiting its discoveries just as recklessly as the idiots who brought about the Abandonment.’

  Vasili stared open-mouthed at Antonov’s data-ghost. ‘Impossible!’ he cried. ‘I stood by Joe’s side through almost every major policy decision the Council has made since its inception. He—’

  ‘Used you,’ Antonov finished, ‘to get into power, then finally discarded you once you proved to be a liability. You know he always treated Ariadna with disdain; he allowed you to become part of his inner circle, but not her – and why? Because she asked the questions you refused to face. There’s a reason, Sevgeny, that people called us the Thousand Emperors – because that’s what we became, figureheads spouting the same old monopolistic bullshit to justify their grip on power.’

  ‘And who would you prefer we emulated?’ Vasili yelled. ‘The Coalition? Their decisions nearly destroyed the human race!’

  Antonov slammed a fist into the palm of his hand. ‘When we fought them to a standstill all those years ago, Sevgeny, they were tyrants – no doubt about that. They used the chaos of the Abandonment to take our colonies by force, and I fought them as hard as you or anyone else, but that was centuries ago. Centuries.’

  He stepped back slightly. ‘They’ve evolved so much during the long separation of our two civilizations, while we’ve stood resolutely still. Their old guard are long gone, dissolved in the sweeping changes that overtook them. It’s only us who call them the Coalition – they just call themselves the human race.’

  ‘Human?’ Vasili laughed. ‘Like that Ambassador of theirs? Have you or anyone else ever even seen behind that fucking mask of his?’

  ‘We could argue forever, Sevgeny, and we’d never see eye to eye, because we’ve become set in our ways, as impermeable to change as Joe, and that is precisely why none of us should be allowed to rule any longer.’ He reached out a hand. ‘Accept my offer or not. It’s your choice, and one I cannot force upon you.’

  ‘Damn you,’ Vasili hissed, his hands twisted into claws. ‘Damn you to hell.’

  ‘No.’ Antonov shook his head, eyes glistening. ‘Damn them to hell, Sevgeny.’

  Something inside Vasili gave way, as if he were no longer able to contain so much anger. He collapsed into a chair in exhaustion, and stared out past the patio towards the courtyard and the ocean beyond.

  ‘All right,’ he said, too weary now even to be angry, ‘where is this data-cache?’

  ‘That’s where it gets complicated,’ Antonov replied. ‘You first need to go to Javier Maxwell. A set of communication protocols are hidden in that library of his; these will lead you straight to the location of the data-cache.’

  Javier Maxwell. Sevgeny shook his head and sighed. He should hardly be surprised Maxwell was involved in all of this somehow.

  ‘Why do you need me to do your dirty work, Winchell?’

  ‘You know I’d be risking detection if I data-ghosted into his prison, Sevgeny. You, however, have the right to enter his library at any time.’

  It all suddenly became clear. ‘So that’s why you’re here,’ said Vasili. ‘Javier knows about these protocols?’

  Antonov shook his head. ‘I’m far from sure he has any idea whatsoever that they exist. But remember, he acts as custodian to data-repositories to which you also have access. My researches show that the protocols are buried deep inside them, and I can tell you just how to locate them with his help.’

  ‘And what do you expect me to do, once I’ve uncovered this hidden goldmine of reputed scandal?’ Sevgeny asked, feeling suddenly tired and old. ‘Bring the curtains down on the Temur Council? Inspire a fiery revolution and watch the worlds burn?’

  ‘I’ll leave revolution to others younger than
myself,’ Antonov replied. ‘I need solid, independently verifiable proof of Cheng’s secret exploration of the Founder Network, which I believe this hidden data-cache will supply. All I’d been able to find until recently were hints – pieces of a puzzle that together implied a much greater picture. While you’ve been out in the rain – metaphorically speaking, of course – Cheng, Cripps and his fellow conspirators in the Sandoz Clans have been getting up to things that threaten the existence not only of the Tian Di, but of the human race as a whole.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Vasili demanded.

  ‘They have been searching for weapons,’ Antonov replied, ‘that Cheng believes will help him maintain his power and turn back the changes reunification with the Coalition would otherwise force upon the Tian Di. Or do you really believe Cheng is suited to survive those changes, Sevgeny?’

  Vasili sighed and looked away. ‘Perhaps not,’ he admitted, feeling as if treason were spilling from his lips.

  ‘I’ll leave my mechant in your care for now,’ said Antonov. ‘Use it to get back in touch with me once you’ve spoken with Javier – and maybe you and I can work together again, the way we used to, back in the old days when we were young and burning with life.’

  His data-ghost vanished, and Vasili sank deeper into his chair, staring at the cold stone walls surrounding him. More than ever, his home felt like a mausoleum, with him its premature guest.

  He thought of Ariadna, and wept.

  Luc found himself back in the library, the book in his lap, fingers aching from gripping its pages. He let out a shuddering breath, then pushed the book onto a table.

  From the outside, Vasili had appeared an entirely cold and unlovable figure, his face bent into a permanent scowl; and yet his love for his deceased inamorata had burned with such intensity that Luc’s own feelings for Eleanor seemed pale by comparison.

  But that wasn’t what made his hands shake as he lifted them from the book. In a few minutes his world had, almost literally, been turned upside down. A secret entrance to the Founder Network, one that was being recklessly exploited by the leaders of the Tian Di? It sounded absolutely preposterous. And yet it didn’t explain the hammering of Luc’s heart, or the sick feeling welling up in his chest.