The Thousand Emperors

by Gary Gibson

  Something silvery slid out of a recess in its belly.

  Luc grabbed the nearest, heaviest volume he could get his hands on and threw it towards the mechant. He scored a direct hit, and the machine wobbled slightly in the air. Before the machine could recover, he ran past it, diving into the shadowy recesses of the bookcases on the opposite side of the library.

  The mechant corrected itself and turned to follow. It fired as Luc dived into the narrow space between one end of a bookcase and the wall of the library, feeling heat sear the back of his neck.

  He kept moving, running back towards the light streaming in through the patio doors, the wall to his left and ranks of bookcases to his right. Glancing behind himself, he saw through gaps in the open shelves that the mechant had passed between two of the tall bookcases. It had come to a halt, as if suffering a moment of indecision.

  Luc dashed in between two bookcases, turning until he could see the mechant through more gaps between books. It didn’t appear to have spotted him yet. Pressing his shoulders up against the bookcase behind him, he then kicked at the one before him, feeling it rock slightly on its base.

  The bookcases were heavy, and therefore given to considerable inertia, but the one he’d just kicked was top-heavy, its lower shelves almost entirely empty.

  Kicking at it again, he lifted both feet up, pressing them against the top-heavy bookcase, pushing hard, and then tried again, grunting with the effort.

  The bookcase rocked away from him once more and tipped back towards him, before finally settling back into place with a thump. A few volumes slid noisily to the floor.

  The mechant hummed and ticked as it swivelled this way and that, apparently waiting to see whether he might come out of hiding. He guessed Vasili had programmed it to protect the books, placing the machine at an impasse.

  Luc drew on whatever reserves of energy he still had left and again kicked and pushed at the bookcase, yelling and cursing. It rocked away from him, and then back, yet more volumes crashing to the floor.

  He kept pushing. This time, the bookcase kept going the other way, finally overbalancing and sending a torrent of books falling to the floor as it toppled against its nearest neighbour. That one, in turn, crashed into the next, and so on, until the mechant was caught in an avalanche of paper and wood.

  Clouds of dust rose into the air. Luc pulled himself up from where he’d slid to the floor and heard the mechant buzzing as it tried to fight its way out. It was, however, clearly trapped.

  He turned towards the patio doors in time to see another mechant come crashing through them, sending splinters of glass flying everywhere. It aimed its weapons at him and Luc froze, expecting to die at any moment.

  There was a sound like a muffled grunt and the mechant spun, apparently out of control. A second grunt slammed the mechant against the ceiling. It fired wildly, a beam of energy cutting a burning swathe across one wall, nearly blinding Luc with its intensity. He dropped to the floor, heard a third grunt, and when he looked back up, bright spots obscured his vision.

  By the time he could see again, he found that the mechant had fallen to the floor, smoke trailing from several holes in its shell. One of Zelia’s monstrosities stood at the entrance to the hall, the weapon it had used to down the mechant gripped in both hands.

  The creature looked over at him, its head twitching from side to side as if it had difficulty focusing on him. A brief burst of static issued from its mouth-grille, and it returned its attention to the fallen mechant.

  Luc staggered to his feet, only slightly less afraid of Zelia’s machine-man than he had been of the mechant. He could hear the asthmatic rattle of its breath.

  The library was a wreck, half of its bookcases collapsed and innumerable volumes scattered everywhere. Luc stared around himself, again feeling a fool for thinking he stood any chance of finding Maxwell’s missing book. Surely the house mechants would have alerted someone that Vasili’s home had been invaded?

  But he still had to try.

  Think. Heading for the couches close by the patio doors, he tried hard to picture Vasili’s body just as it had been when he had first encountered it. The scorch marks on the floor of the library made that act of visualization a great deal easier than it might otherwise have been.

  He squatted down where Vasili’s body had been, staring around himself until his gaze alighted on a still-upright bookcase within easy reach. When he had suffered the seizure that had seen him spirited away by Zelia, he had leaned against it for support. He noticed for the first time that the bookcase, like all the rest of them, stood on legs, meaning a narrow gap of a few centimetres separated the lowest of its shelves from the floor.

  It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?

  Dropping down until his cheek was pressed against the cold flagstones, Luc peered into the darkened space beneath the bookcase.

  He could see something, wedged underneath. A book.

  His fingers soon worked their way into the gap beneath the bookcase, seeking out the nearest edge of the trapped volume, but in his desperation to get hold of it, he wound up pushing it slightly further out of reach.

  Pausing, he took a deep breath and tried again, working much more carefully this time. Teasing the book around until he could just about grasp the edge of the book’s cover between two fingers, it took him another minute or so to gradually slide it back out from where it had become wedged.

  Clutching the book to his chest, he was almost giddy with joy. Despite the scorch marks blackening the spine, he could still read the title: A History of the Tian Di, by Javier Maxwell. It must have slid out of sight, or been accidentally pushed beneath the bookcase when Vasili’s mechants had removed his body.

  A shadow loomed over Luc; he rolled onto his back in a panic, thinking he was about to come under attack from another mechant. But instead he saw Zelia’s creature standing over him, its rifle gripped in both hands like a club and held high over its head.

  Luc rolled out of the way just as the creature swung the rifle down in a long arc, the breath rattling from its grille mingled with static that almost sounded like words.

  Scrambling to his feet, he tried to rip the rifle from the creature’s grip before it could either take another swing or, worse, try and shoot him. They struggled, rapid bursts of static emerging from the creature’s throat. But its movements were slow and ponderous, and it took relatively little effort to tear the rifle from its grasp.

  Luc staggered back and fell onto one of the couches, then aimed the rifle at the machine-man, pulling the trigger. The creature clattered back against a bookcase before sliding to the floor, half its head sheared away, the buzzing from its mouth-grille diminishing into silence.

  For a few seconds all he could do was lie there on the couch, panting. Zelia had tried to double-cross him, letting him find what he was looking for so she could then steal it from him.

  The rifle’s readout told him it still had several slugs remaining. Standing back up, he slung it over his shoulder by a strap before making his way through the hall adjoining the library to the courtyard. There he found several more of Zelia’s monstrosities waiting, and they moved towards him as soon as they saw him.

  He ducked back inside the hall and slammed the door shut, then glanced to one side and saw a heavy-looking table nearby. Grabbing hold of one edge of the table, he tried to drag it across the door but it proved too heavy, so he went around its far end and managed, not without considerable effort, to finally push it into place.

  For a moment he reeled, sweat burning his forehead, and listened to the muffled bursts of static from the other side of the door as Zelia’s minions tried to force their way through. They’d manage it soon enough, but not, he hoped, before he had himself a good head-start.

  Looking around, he spotted another way out of the hall, and a few seconds later found himself back outside, in another narrow alleyway running between two buildings. He headed left until he came to a low wall running along the top of the cliff, below whi
ch lay the beach.

  Following the wall back around to where Zelia’s heavy-lifter was still parked on a slope, he found she had left only one of her monstrosities behind to guard it. It grunted static as it saw him, and came shuffling forward.

  Luc made for the steps leading back down to the beach, the rifle still slung over his shoulder, and sprinted for the waiting flier. The hatch hissed shut behind him as he boarded, and he took off immediately, driving hard towards the clouds lying low over the water.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jacob had seen such wonders in the past few days. Following his theft of the Founder artefact, he had hidden his flier in a kind of space-borne favela, populated by creatures that constituted a strange hybrid of the organic and inorganic. He had seen swarms of insectlike mechants moving at will through this orbital slum, engaged in what might have been warfare, or some intricate mating ritual.

  Despite the traumatic damage Jacob had done to Darwin’s world-wheel, it remained intact. His intent, after all, had not been to destroy the world-wheel, but to create a sufficient distraction that he could make his escape undetected. Even so, the aftermath of his actions had proved to be spectacular; Jacob had seen vast chunks of machinery and the shattered ruins of living-spaces burning as they tumbled down from orbit, sending up great clouds of dust and rock when they impacted on Darwin’s surface, thereby generating a second crisis for the Coalition authorities.

  He did not have long to wait before a Special Envoy from the Tian Di, only recently arrived from Temur, made his way up to orbit via a prearranged signal and allowed Jacob to board his flier. There, Jacob took from the Envoy a case designed to be entirely opaque to deep scans, and placed the stolen artefact inside it.

  The Envoy did not struggle as Jacob cut his throat. He held the man as he died, then dumped his body into the vacuum.

  After that, it was a simple matter of piloting the flier down to one of Darwin’s largest conurbations, a rippling tide of silver and grey spreading out from one of the world-wheel’s spokes. He touched down next to a residential building neighbouring a Gate Array serving half a dozen Coalition worlds. By the time he rendezvoused with the other Special Envoys waiting there, his face had undergone a series of subtle alterations that included changes in his skin tone and eye colour, in order to more closely resemble the man whom he had replaced.

  A few of the Tian Di Envoys greeted him with uncomfortable or even hostile glances. All of them were aware in advance that their new companion would be required to make a necessary sacrifice, even if they were not permitted to know the exact details of that sacrifice. It was clear to Jacob, however, that a few of them did not approve of his presence. He made a mental note of which ones appeared particularly disturbed by the circumstances of his arrival for future reference. It might prove necessary to terminate some or all of the Envoys at some later date, to reduce the risk of his mission being compromised.

  A few hours passed before they all departed for the nearby Gate Array, now equipped with a new transfer gate connecting to a station in orbit around Temur. On their way there Jacob saw squidlike creatures swarming down a tunnel apparently formed from the air, broad wing-like fronds wafting around their massive bodies. Their enormous dark eyes swept across the huddled crowd of Envoys, and as they passed out of sight and into the Array, Jacob found himself wondering how easy it might be for some truly alien species to hide undetected amongst the Coalition’s citizens. The thought was enough to make him shudder with horror.

  Jacob understood then that the pale, drawn faces of the Envoys accompanying him were not entirely due to his sudden appearance amongst them. Their time here in the Coalition had been enough to reduce the majority of them to a state of numb shock.

  They boarded a train that would carry them through the transfer gate and back to Temur, a journey of light-years in less than a moment. After that would come a short trip down from orbit, and then Jacob would journey to Vanaheim, in order to present his prize to Father Cheng in person.

  And after that, a new age would dawn for the Tian Di. Jacob knew only a very few would ever know the nature of his mission or even his name, but he bore the burden of anonymity gladly. He would happily die unknown and unloved, so long as it was in the service of his beloved Father Cheng.

  NINETEEN

  The flier juddered as it accelerated upwards, soon rising above a sea of clouds that dwindled beneath it. Luc closed his eyes and let his head sink back against his seat before letting out a rush of shaky breath.

  I should have realized Zelia might turn on me.

  But then again, Zelia had been right about one thing: he would never have got past Vasili’s house mechants without her help, even if the only reason she had done so was in order to betray him.

  Pulling Vasili’s book out of the netting where he had secured it, he weighed it in his hands before opening it, placing his fingers against its cool, faintly metallic pages.

  He sat still for several seconds, his breath gradually evening out. Navigating the memories and other information encoded within the book was far from intuitive. He had flashes once more of Vasili’s last moments before his death, including, he noted with grim satisfaction, a glimpse of Cripps’ own face as he entered Vasili’s home. But he could sense other information buried in the pages, in essence almost indistinguishable from his own half-remembered thoughts . . .

  He let go of the book with a gasp, blinking and shaking his head, and then laughed. He had them: the coordinates of Father Cheng’s secret data-cache, hidden in orbit above Vanaheim.

  All he had to do now was feed them into the navigational systems via his lattice, and the flier would take him there immediately.

  The cache might as easily have been hidden somewhere far more inaccessible, such as the Red Palace back in Liebenau. In that case, Luc would have been forced to admit defeat. But to keep it so close to home would, he suspected, have invited a greater risk of discovery. Whereas if Vanaheim’s orbital space was as clogged with junk as Maxwell had claimed, there probably wasn’t a better place for Eighty-Fivers to hide their dirty laundry.

  The same light that Zelia had used to make contact with him following his escape from Maxwell’s prison began flashing once more. Luc stared at it for a few moments, then ignored it, setting the flier on a new course.

  Before long, he was on his way to high orbit.

  An hour or so later, the flier’s external sensors gave Luc a view of what at first appeared to be a zero-gee junkyard. Much of what he could see had been jury-rigged from discarded fuel tanks and temporary accommodations, and looked it. But a query to the station’s datanet – unexpectedly still functioning – reassured him that although it was entirely abandoned, having apparently served for some decades as a kind of orbital storage depot, it was still pressurized. At least he wouldn’t have to suit up.

  The flier thumped gently against the station’s one airlock, followed by a rumbling hiss on the other side of the hatch. The hatch unfolded a moment later, revealing a claustrophobically narrow metal passageway. Long-dormant emergency lights flickered into life, tinting the interior of the station with a soft red glow.

  Luc made his way along the passageway, propelling himself along with his fingertips in the zero gravity, until he found himself inside something that looked like it had started life as a cargo flier. The interior of the flier had been stripped and converted into a makeshift storage depot; he could see a few dozen plastic crates still lashed to a bulkhead to prevent them from floating away, while an ancient-looking fabricant was mounted on a wall, printed machine-parts still stacked on a plastic pallet beside it. Three more passageways radiated outwards from this central point, giving access to the pressurized fuel tanks that constituted much of the station’s bulk.

  Luc carefully picked his way over to the lashed-together crates and pulled himself into a sitting position next to one. Unzipping his jacket, he again withdrew the book Maxwell had given Vasili, slipped one arm through a cable securing one of the crates, and then sh
ook the book open, placing it on his lap before opening it carefully and touching the revealed page.

  Vasili hit the auto-mechanism for the airlock and listened to the distant hiss of air as the ancient satellite re-pressurized for the first time in years. He made his way down a narrow passageway, before emerging into a makeshift bay.

  Here, he studied his surroundings with an engineer’s eyes. The station had been designed to be nothing more than a temporary structure, a pressurized orbital dock where mechants could store materials for later use. After that, the station should have been disassembled and destroyed.

  But in this case, the station had remained intact. It had even been carefully maintained, though you couldn’t tell from the outside. If it had been truly abandoned, Vasili knew, it would long since have fallen out of orbit and plunged into Vanaheim’s atmosphere.

  He moved deeper into the station until he came to a maintenance port, a cramped alcove tucked away at the far end of a branching passageway, where an interface panel newer and considerably more up to date than anything else aboard the station could be accessed. Pulling himself into a narrow seat, he touched a hand to a virtual panel.

  Verification took just a moment, and he was in.

  Luc opened his eyes and pulled himself loose from the cable. It took him just a minute or so to make his way down the same branching passageway and pull himself into the same alcove Vasili had found.

  A virtual panel shimmered into existence the moment he sat down. It didn’t look like anything much out of the ordinary, little more than a standard interface for the station’s AI systems. But then, Cheng would hardly have gone out of his way to advertise the presence of his secret data-cache.

  Screw it.

  Luc reached out and touched the panel. In response, something slid out from the alcove next to his right hand, a metal bar that had also appeared when Vasili had been here before him.