“The ship will be forfeit if an infestation is detected,” she said, “but your people and privileges will remain intact.” The Grand Inquisitor brushed past me. Not looking at me, she surveyed the bay: the static field gleaming in the open hatch below, the stars beyond, the levels and levels of gantries and catwalks and service arms rising toward the arched supports of the bulkheads far above. “Should something be detected, however . . . I pray you are only a victim in this.”
Sensing the unease in my officers around me, I took a step forward. “May I ask a question?” The Grand Inquisitor clasped taloned hands behind her back. I took her silence for assent. “Why is the Lord Director here?” I did not look at Breathnach as I asked the question, preferring to speak as though he were not mere feet from me.
The pale woman did not turn back, but continued her survey of the bay. “You have been invaluable to the war effort, Lord Marlowe. The Intelligence Director wishes to protect his asset, and we have allowed his team aboard to extract any and all useful intelligence from your systems under our auspices, so as to ensure that any information may be obtained under the safest conditions.” She did turn then, cape belling beneath her clasped hands. Was I mad? Or did her expression soften for the barest instant? “Lord Marlowe, rest assured. You’ve nothing to fear save fear, if you are blameless. If you are—as you claimed in your report to the Imperial Council—only a victim in this, we will determine who is guilty. And they will be punished.” She spoke with such earnestness that for a moment I wondered if she was only a pawn and no queen at all. Had Breathnach manipulated her as well? Manipulated the Chantry? Brought them here to find the evil seed he meant to plant?
Who is playing, and who played? I asked myself, and allowed myself to be led back to the apartments whence I had come. I knew their protocol. They would isolate my officers and question us each in turn, seeking discrepancies, cracks in our armor.
They would find some.
Try as I had to coordinate our deception, breakdown was inevitable. Only the truth can weather a siege forever. I could only hope that Lorian and Crim retained sufficient liberty to complete their investigation before Breathnach and his Grand Inquisitor could act.
The doors to my chambers hissed shut behind me, and I heard the faint whine of servos as the deadbolts were secured.
And I was alone.
* * *
Infestation.
It wasn’t one of the Twelve Abominations against human nature, though it might lead to consortation or possession. It was an ancient word, thick with connotation and innuendo, the sort of word that could kill a man merely by being breathed on him within earshot of another. To be infested was to be haunted—as by ghosts in the foggy age of ancients—by machines. Like rats in the walls, like spiders, machine intelligence might creep into any circuit, any system and there take root. One imagines the growth as a kind of cancer, a fungus swelling from the walls and banks of computer storage. Picturing Brethren’s bloated bulk and the nematodal swelling of its too-long arms, I think that image an apt one. The stench of corruption, of environmental decay, that rot which the Nipponese call kegare.
A kind of sin.
They would find infestation because they—the Inquisition or the LIO operatives who’d accompanied Sir Lorcan—had brought it with them: some captured Extrasolarian daimon bottled in the equipment they’d brought along in their shuttle. Under the guise of investigating the Tamerlane’s system, they would simply install it. They would have their infestation, and from there, it would be a small matter to prove my knowledge of the crime, and to charge me with possession or consortation, and a smaller matter to strike off my head.
Again.
It will surprise you perhaps to learn that I was not afraid, sitting in the gloom of my chambers, still in my greatcoat and wearing my belt. It was only that I could not quiet the roaring in my head. Wheels turned, grinding through their motions. All my hopes rested then on Crim and on Lorian Aristedes’s fragile shoulders.
There was more than one spider in the halls of the Tamerlane. And more than one web.
I must have dozed eventually, my nervous waiting turned to impatience, impatience to sleep. Whent’s eight-winged angel of retribution looked down from the walls, and all the items of my long life seemed to weigh heavily on the walls and shelves where they stood in attendance around me like candles lit before an icon in sanctum.
Someone pounded on the door—my guard, no doubt. A moment later the deadbolts whined and the door slid into its pocket in the wall.
I’d expected Lorcan Breathnach, there to gloat. I’d expected the Grand Inquisitor, starting at the top. I had not expected Sir Friedrich Oberlin with his sad eyes and tired smile. Oberlin was clearly palatine, but possessed of that one trait indispensable to the lifelong bureaucrat: he was utterly forgettable. Smooth-featured and brown-haired, his nobile face left little impression on the mind, striking neither for its beauty or its ugliness. This drabness of person was only intensified by the simple gray suit he wore, its only device the shield emblem of Legion Intelligence pinned on his lapel, a picture only completed by the antique briefcase he carried in one hand. But whatever his apparent meekness, the man was a knight, and wore a highmatter sword in a neatly maintained holster strapped to his right leg beneath the long jacket.
He offered a tight smile. “The Director has asked that I sit in.”
“Sit in?” I asked, not standing to greet my fellow knight as custom would dictate. “On what?”
My answer came in the form of a trio of black-robed figures, one hooded and mantled in white, two blindfolded carrying a case between them.
Oberlin stepped neatly aside, allowing the Inquisitor and his cathars to advance. I eyed the case—a flat, metal lozenge half as long as the coffee table before me onto which they deposited it—as though it were a coiled serpent.
The Inquisitor threw back his white hood, revealing a shaved pate and deep green eyes, hairless as his superior, putting me in mind of the androgyn homunculi who served at the Imperial court. He did not bow. “Hadrian, Lord Marlowe.” His voice was flat, an almost pleasant calm that belied the threat and power he held. “My master has sent me to test you. I am called Gereon.”
Unsure whether or not standing was called for or might be taken as a threat, I did not move, but clenched my left fist on my knee, willing the bones to ache, to become real. Kharn Sagara’s gift had no electronics in it, but the bones were adamant, and while technically they were not machine—were moved only by the new-grown flesh—it might not matter. To take machines into the body was profanation, another abomination. How easy it would be to present Marlowe’s arm as evidence that he was in league with daimons!
“Test me?” I echoed. “To determine if I am guilty?”
Inquisitor Gereon shook his head once. “Only to determine if you are still human. Please stay seated.”
I had been midway through the act of standing to disarm, and told him as much, asking, “May I not put up my arms, Reverence?” With a gesture I indicated the brass hooks on the wall beside the sideboard and Jinan’s basin. The Inquisitor allowed this with a raised hand, and I crossed to the wall.
“Lord Marlowe.” Gereon’s pleasant voice stopped me before I could close the distance to the wall. I pivoted to face him, found a hand extended, palm up. “Your terminal, please.”
Matching his smile, I undid the leather strap and pressed the device into his hand without comment, and resumed my move to the wall, shrugging out of my coat, which I hung over the hook with an easy motion. Was it only protocol? Or had the man guessed I’d been about to activate the terminal’s dictator to record all that passed between us?
No matter.
Unruffled, I removed my belt, the heavy strap clattering with sword and sidearm, sabretache and shield-generator as I placed it over the hook. I paused a minute at Jinan’s basin, unscrewing the rings from my fingers for fear the ivory ban
d would remind the Inquisitor of Valka’s existence. What I’d have given to have her there then, with her eyes and ears to see and hear—and to remember with objective clarity.
“This is a lovely place you have made for yourself, my lord,” the Inquisitor said. “I see we share an admiration for the written word.”
I let him talk, guessed he was admiring the upper level that ringed the main chamber of my suite with its assembly of old books, film reels, and storage crystals, brights spheres like the one I’d given Crim. I lingered a moment, gripping the edges of the table as if to regain my bearings and steady myself.
“Reverence, may I sit?” Sir Friedrich asked. He could not have asked at a better time.
“Please, sir,” Gereon said.
Unseen by either man, I pressed the carved knot on the edge of the table that activated the room’s recording suite. They could take away my terminal if they liked, but they should have taken me out of my home first.
Turning back, I found Sir Friedrich had set up in the chair at the narrow end of the table that Lorian and Valka were so fond of and was fussing with his own terminal, setting up a telescoping tripod and—to my vague surprise—a smattering of printed and handwritten notes which he arranged neatly at the end of the table.
At a gesture from Gereon, I resumed my seat in the middle of the couch and stared up at the Inquisitor while his cathars busied themselves with the kit.
“Have you been put to the Question before, my lord?”
“No.” And unable to help myself, I added, “But I have seen your people interrogate the Pale.”
Gereon shook his head again. “The Question is somewhat different from a standard interrogation procedure.”
The cathars opened the case, revealing a display screen and several smaller instruments packed in foam. I recognized electrode tape and spooled wire as holographs appeared above the device, fields meant to track heart rate, skin conductivity response, and various forms of brain activity I did not understand. Every story I’d ever heard about the Chantry came flooding back, every nightmare, every childhood fancy—each one tempered by the memory of Uvanari’s torment and the icy, mechanical precision of the interrogator’s questions.
“The purpose of my inquiry is to determine if you are operating under any daimonic influence,” Gereon was saying. “You are not accused of any crime at this time.” The Inquisitor swept the room with his gaze, as if he expected to find some shattered machine lurking in the corners. “Before we begin, have you anything to confess?”
I raised my left hand. It may as well come out now. “False bones in this arm to the shoulder, but no electronics.”
Gereon pursed his lips with clinical distaste. “This is known,” he said. “Carbon fiber. They’d been detected by millimeter wave on palace scans, and note was made in LIO medical files.” As he spoke, he seized a spindle-legged chair from the dining area and carried it back across Tavrosi carpets to place it facing me. He smiled kindly, “But your candor does you credit. Would you like me to explain any of our implements here?” He held his hands out over the console the cathars had brought in.
“I’m sorry?”
“Per the Protocols,” he replied, “you are entitled to an explanation of everything that is to be done to you.” One of the cathars stooped as Gereon was speaking and affixed the wireless electrode tabs to my temple, neck, and—parting my jacket—my chest. When I said nothing, he pressed on. “I am going to ask a series of control questions. You are to answer either yes or no. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He flipped a series of switches on his console, eyes never leaving my face. “Are you currently in a seated position?”
“Yes.”
“Are we currently on board a starship?”
“Yes.”
“Is your name Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
“Were you born on Delos, in Meidua Prefecture?”
“Yes.”
“In ISD 16119?”
“No.”
“In ISD 16117?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Gereon said. He studied his instruments all the while, observing holographs that tracked my electroencephalogram, heart rate, and pupil response. Beside us, Sir Friedrich scribbled notes on his papers. The questions continued in this vein for another several minutes, with Gereon plodding along politely, following his script with an efficiency any bureaucrat would admire.
At last the Inquisitor paused and made a note on a holograph pad inside the lid panel of his case. “Good,” he said again. “Very good. Let us proceed to the main test.”
“May I ask a procedural question?” I said, interrupting the Inquisitor for the first time. Gereon gestured that I should proceed. Meanwhile, he worked at unfolding some manner of scope from his kit and brought it up to the level of my chest. I ignored this, asked, “You’re measuring heartbeat, brain activity, and so on. I was under the impression that such methods were useless in determining truth or falsehood.”
The Inquisitor removed another round patch from its place in the foam lid and pinched it between his fingers. “They are. But we are not interested in your words, my lord. Only in your body’s responses. Your conscious assertions—regardless of their truth—are immaterial. We are interrogating your body, which cannot lie. Please lean forward.” I obeyed, and Gereon placed the patch on the side of my neck opposite the electrode tape. “You will feel a slight pressure.”
A moment later, my neck stung as the injection took. “What is it?”
“Adrenaline.”
At once my chest tightened, and I felt the vasoconstriction as blood was forced into my limbs. My eyes bulged. “Why?”
“To open the way.” Gereon still smiled, and peeled the patch away. Dimly, I felt warm blood run down my neck and bounce off my hydrophobic collar. I pressed fingers to the spot. “It will cease presently. There was a coagulant administered with the hormone.” I could feel my heart racing, pounding against my ribs as though they were the bars of a cage. “For this next part of the examination, I will show you a series of images. You are to tell me in fewer than five words what those images portray. We will move as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”
My eyes darted from Gereon to Oberlin and back. The quiet knight sat impassive, watching me with his bland face unmoved. “Yes.” The word came out ragged, raw thanks to the hormones pulsing through my bloodstream.
A holograph panel flowered in the air, a window that depicted my own face: gaunt and aquiline beneath its fringe of black hair. “Myself,” I said, still holding the bloody spot on my neck.
The image flicked, displayed a family—man and wife and children—standing before a small cottage.
“Plebeians,” I answered, and added, “a family.”
Flick. The window showed a sailing vessel under green skies.
“A ship.”
Flick. A Chantry dome with its nine minarets.
“A sanctum.”
Flick. An image of the gallows in some city square, men and women standing on the platform, nooses tied, ready to drop.
“Death,” I answered. “Crime.”
Flick. A bucolic countryside, winding hills and neat stone fences. Struck by the geometry of it all, the careful, naturalistic, imprecise precision of it, I answered, “Walls. Order.”
Gereon grunted. Flick. A crab lay on its back in the sand, smashed by some hammer for its meat. “Crab.” My heart was running faster then, and I almost forgot to add, “Death.”
Flick. A nude woman reclined on a divan, legs apart. Shocked, I looked away and hissed, “Private.”
Flick.
“A house.”
Flick.
“A castle.”
Flick.
“A gun.”
Flick. Suit footage—suit footage taken from my ow
n men, I was almost certain—showing the eyeless man on the Cielcin dining slab. Rage flared in me, and I spat, “Victim.”
Gereon flitted from one image to the next with the relentless pace of a childhood tutor drumming quotations into the head of his pupil. He kept his attentions on my EEG monitor while he spoke, one hand on the switch that advanced his slideshow one frame at a time. He was looking for the tell-tale abnormalities that might betray me as possessed, as not truly human. Perhaps under other circumstances, I might have been grateful for the examination. The Inquisitor’s Question was one way to answer forever the question of whether or not I was me or some simulacrum of Kharn Sagara’s.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
A Cielcin scahari warrior snarled at me, face masked, fangs exposed, a ceramic blade in its hand. A glittering bath house, men and women lounging naked in the steam. Three dozen human slaves hanging mutilated from hooks. A garden of jewel-bright flowers. A dead dog in the streets of some city, its stomach ruptured on the tarmac. The damasked face of a gas giant. Stacks of arms and legs like logs for kindling. The sunlight caught in the rigging of solar sails. A pillar of skulls.
What Gereon might have seen in his instruments I could not guess. Another Hadrian might have known, that Hadrian who had honored his father’s wishes. Perhaps along one of those rivers of light there was a table much like this one, where I sat in white mantle with shaven crown and put some other man to the Question, perhaps Gereon himself.
But whatever it was, he found it. Or did not find it. After what seemed an eternity of questions, minutes stretched to hours by the adrenaline pumping through my body, he ceased, banishing the holograph window like smoke. Moving with officious grace he folded the scope back into the kit.
Into the sudden silence I asked, “Well then? Am I human?”
“You have to ask?” Gereon cocked an eyebrow.
“Don’t we all?”
The Inquisitor actually barked a laugh, but instead of answering he summoned his cathars with a gesture. They advanced wordless as the Emperor’s Excubitors and retrieved the interrogation kit. “You may be many things, Lord Marlowe, that are not for me to decide,” he said finally. “But you are a man.”
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