by Neil Clarke
“Only four not responding, sir,” Cetuso said; for this operation he was the Assistant Supremor.
I like “sir “ better than “dear fellow.” Aurigar nodded. “We expected fifteen to twenty intercepts. This is good.” Modern warfare, Aurigar reflected, was now all espionage, remote sensing, and cryptography; with nanobots, quantum computation, and jump tech, you would be hit by every weapon that you didn’t detect before it was fired. The four lost weapons had been found and mined by the enemy, killed perhaps three nanomarqs after activation, before they could even deploy their nanobots. Right now, light was spreading out from the antimatter fizzles that powered the conversion, and as the light reached them, a hundred thousand sensors in each of the uninhabited systems would be relaying it through jump transmitters to the enemy. They would know the attack was under way within seventeen micromarqs—but the enemy would not exist within one micromarq.
Still, the enemy backlash must have started by now, their jumpweap-ons forming and leaping to revenge. Aurigar wondered whether the Imperial forces would take any hits at all; the last time, they had not, but intel estimated a 10 percent chance that the enemy had determined the location of Jinkhangy. To the Empress’s image in the plextank before him, he said, “Word on the enemy counterattack?”
Geepo said, “Consider yourself congratulated, sir. Crypto, intel, and search found twenty-six enemy weapon seeds and mined them; they detonated simultaneously with our attack.”
“Detonate” was not quite the right word; Aurigar’s silent mines had opened wormholes into the cores of blue-white giant stars, and the enemy weapons-to-be had vanished as planet-sized masses of stellar core had burst into existence within the asteroids on which they sat.
“Any jumpspace interceptions?”
“The usual. We sprayed the jumpspace approaches to Jinkhangy with interceptors. Thirteen hits, most of which were probably smugglers or ships that didn’t stick to the flight plan, which will certainly teach them a lesson. Our best estimate is that not more than three of them were enemy weapons. All in all, not just a successful operation but a cheap one, and—”
“Silence, please, from everyone,” Aurigar said.
They all fell quiet; his peculiar passion for dead silence at the moment of truth was legendary, and the legend was known to be accurate—as were the legends about what happened when he did not get that dread, respectful silence.
Ululara’s image ghosted over the hex arrangement of the six Cleanlist systems, arranged to show stars and inhabited planets as spheres and the major stations as points. The countdown in the center of the plextank reached zero.
Thirty-some stations flashed and were gone; an asteroid-mass of vacuum-energy receivers had popped out of jumpspace inside each one, converting instantaneously to relativistic nucleons. About forty million people, Aurigar thought, gone in less time than it takes a signal to cross a synapse.
The view, with Ululara still ghosted over it, switched to just-activated sleeper satellites over the seventeen planets. Aurigar had just time to think of all the continents and oceans, cities, mountains, deserts, glaciers, temples to a thousand gods, dew-scented mornings, and glorious stormy sunsets in progress, kisses never to be finished, and hands reaching for each other that would never touch, eighty billion people, and a trillion works of art.
The jumpweapons entering the cores of the seventeen worlds opened wormholes to the great black hole at the galaxy’s core. Within the space of one breath, planetary surfaces sagged and fell like a deflating balloon. Each place where a planet had been flashed white-hot as the energy just outside the event horizon escaped from the ripping apart and the brutal collisions of the last bits of matter. Then the spy satellites, too, plunged into the black hole.
The view switched briefly to more distant cameras; the black holes swelling from each wormhole were dark spheres, bending starlight weirdly around themselves, swelling for just a moment until the wormholes destabilized and the black ball of the event horizon contracted back to starry void.
There was no point in sending the stars into nova, except as examples. That was all the point the Empress required. The six stars flared brilliantly; over the next few days they would briefly reach far out beyond their former habitable zones, and then gradually recede. Nothing would ever live in those systems again. In a few dekamarqs, the inhabitants of neighboring systems would throw carefully orchestrated festivals to celebrate the brief flarings in their night sky—and be reminded that though she was called “the merciful and mighty,” she remained Her Supreme Might.
Aurigar sighed. He wondered how many of the eighty billion had been standing close to someone they loved, so that as that awful fall began, they had been able to clutch a hand or hug close to each other.
Total forever: 17,427. Good enough. Aurigar drew a breath and waited.
Geepo screamed.
Cetuso made a strangled sound.
Aurigar smiled. “That would be Jinkhangy,” he said. “Just a start; the provincial capital worlds are going even as we speak, and the galaxy is now swarming with self-replicating robots seeking out and blasting every instrument of Imperial authority into nucleons.”
Geepo’s and Cetuso’s slack expressions were amusing, but Aurigar took no time to relish them. “Oh, the Cleanlists had to go, of course—evil as the Imperium, and ten times madder. Now, for my next act of public service, I eliminate the Imperium. The homeworlds of the high aristocracy are vanishing at this moment, and billions of ships hurrying around on Imperial business are turning to plasma in real space, or unresolvabil-ity in jumpspace. The people of each individual planet will work out their own destinies. All the stars are free.”
The whole speech rang curiously flat, considering that Aurigar had been mentally rehearsing it since the “dear fellow” count was less than one thousand. Well, no doubt it is neither the first nor the last line well-composed in advance to be spoiled when it is delivered.
Cetuso moaned, his jaw hanging open, and the mirrors and lenses in his eye sockets turned slowly and out of coordination; probably he had not yet understood. Aurigar considered taunting him—your favorite lackey, my dear fellow! was not what you thought. You and your adored Empress and the whole aristocracy and system of domination perish now! and I shall piss upon your steaming remains. But whereas the thought was swift as light itself, the words would have been far too slow, so before Cetuso’s moan of uncomprehending despair acquired even a hint of comprehension, Aurigar slashed the cutting laser vertically from the blue man’s head to his feet, so that he fell into two pieces with steam pouring from his flash-cooked guts in the middle.
Aurigar stepped forward, looked down into the red gap between the blue half-faces, and smelled the roasted reek of the man’s entrails. The mirrors and lenses now flashed and turned with the last of their momentum. He holstered his weapon, opened his trousers, and urinated, filling the eye sockets. “For every time you fed me, for every time you said I amused you, and for seventeen thousand four hundred twenty-seven times you called me ‘dear fellow.’”
Geepo was sobbing.
Ululara said, “He was my kinsman and you are far too flippant with his body.”
I sent four weapons after her physical location on Waystonn! The plextank displayed nothing.
Aurigar whirled. She stood behind him, rather disarming in pink pajamas, but quite well-armed with a cutting laser pointed at his face. He was acutely aware that he had holstered his own, and then modesty made him reach for his open fly.
“No,” she said. “Keep your hands away from your body.” She smiled, then, the genuine warm smile she’d had as Miriette, so long ago. “Poor Aurigar, we both had secrets we couldn’t tell. I actually knew that I really was the Empress after my fourth trip into the multimapped dwellspace you had Geepo build for me. A kidnapper and pimp like you, Aurigar, might not choose to pay attention to politics, but a businessperson with interstellar interests like me has no choice. Once I had confirmed that whatever I did as madam and CEO in my
dwellspace had an exact analogy in the actions of the new-crowned Empress, I knew the truth, and shortly I found my way out of the world Geepo built and into the real one. I have been ruling the galaxy directly ever since, just leaving a shell up to fool you, Cetuso, and Geepo.”
Geepo moaned, “I am stupid.”
“No,” Empress Ululara said, “I am competent.”
“You cannot stop the robots and replicators already at work,” Aurigar said. “You remain alive, and you may kill me, but you can no longer rule your empire; you are an Empress only in name.”
“That is exactly right,” she said.
And now Aurigar was certain, as he had been for so many marqs, since well before they put her on the throne, and he smiled broadly. “I am tired of this game,” he said, “and curious about what I have forgotten and will wake to. You may press that trigger at any time.”
“Of course I may,” she said. “An Empress does what she likes, always.” And she pushed the button down.
For Aurigar, the world ceased. If he had existed to feel it, he would have been startled beyond all words to find that he did not wake into any other existence.
Miriette lifted the dwellcap from her head and shook her damp hair. The clock showed she had been in the simulation for just under two micro-marqs. She had a few more micromarqs till old Phodway would come home; the kitchen and the kids were already clean and dinner-ready.
The image of Lord Leader Cetuso Sir appeared at the corner of her screen. “Any luck?”
“Another one who got a bad case of conscience and went radical— very cleverly, too. I’ve sent you the file. Quite ingenious and well worth study. He assassinated you, by the way, and it seemed rather personal. Generally a bad boy all around. How many more lost princess men do we have left to try?”
“More than a hundred to go, and this was only the twelfth one we’ve examined, Princess. We’ll find you the right one to get you out of the Krevpiceaux country, don’t worry. Never fear. At one or two per your day, it won’t even take very long.”
She felt like pouting, but she did not feel like it nearly enough to do so and spoil her dignity. “I’m getting very tired of caring for all Phodway’s fostindents, and having to keep him sober, and all that. I really want to start working my way out of hiding.”
“Oh, you’ll have to hide somewhere till your brother dies, in any case. I’ve told you that. And we’re working on that too, of course. Just remember that until your memplant woke up and told you to contact me, you had no idea you even were in hiding, or that you were anything other than a purchased orphan. Let alone who you actually are.” The mirrors in his eye sockets flashed and twinkled. “We will find a lost princess man who will stay loyal. And then we will get you out of the Krevpiceaux, but not out of hiding. I barely got you out of your mother’s palace ahead of the explosion, and your brother’s disposition, you may trust me, has not improved in the intervening twenty-nine marqs. Patience, Your Supreme Might-to-Be, patience.”
“I know. I know. It’s just I’m facing feeding four kids, sobering up a drunk, cleaning the shack as far as it can be cleaned, and sharing a bed with two of the other fostindents. But I can manage patience. I did have one question to raise—this was the third lost princess man in a row to figure out that he was in a simulation. Like the other ones, he thought it was his and he was the center of it.”
“Naturally. What man doesn’t think he’s the center of the universe?” Cetuso’s image on the screen paused for not more than a hundred nano-marqs, then shrugged, the immense blue muscles of his shoulders rising and falling like waves on the sea. “I’ve scanned his moments of recognition, and I don’t think we can change policy; our lost princess man will have to be smart enough to do what we need, simulations cannot be perfect, and many of them will see through it. At least none of them so far has figured out where or how we read and recorded him, or why we’re doing it, so there’s no danger that one of them will leave behind any warning for the others, and as long as they don’t, it doesn’t complicate the task, really.” He smiled warmly. “And everything really is on course, Princess. Regrettable as it is, just put in another—”
“Miriette!” Henredd was calling from the kitchen. “Miriette, the water is boiling!”
“Drop the noodles in and I’ll be there in a moment,” she said. Cetu-so’s image looked disgustingly pitying, so she stuck her tongue out at him before she blanked the screen.
Through the kitchen viewwall, she watched the Krevpiceauxi mistral wail and shriek its way up into a full-blown black-dust storm, the kind that was equally likely to strand them inside for days or blow over before bedtime. Phodway would appreciate a hot meal and a clean bed after making his way home through that, anyway. At least he was not unkind and he thanked her often.
Henredd stood beside her, his bony shoulder pressing against her lower ribs, arm around her unself-consciously, and said, “I like being here when you cook.” They’d gotten Henredd from an illegal dealer, and the first year they’d had him, he’d barely spoken, mostly just cried; a little kind attention and some efficient care had brought him around, and Miriette had to admit she’d learned how to do that from Phodway’s treatment of her when she was young, back before he’d fallen into the bottle. She turned the fish cakes over and rubbed Henredd’s head; he snuggled more closely against her.
Once I’m on the throne, I will have Cetuso take care of these people, very, very generously. An empress does not have much need for love, but it is good to know about it, and an empress must show gratitude.
The boy under her arm squirmed and ran off to play; she contemplated her skill in the kitchen with proud dismay. Patience, patience, patience.
Cetuso could feel nothing from his extended hand; to get the maximum bandwidth for accessing Aurigar’s mind and memories, he’d had to turn every available nerve to the purpose. The lost princess man’s facial expression showed that the filaments rushing through Aurigar’s body to his heart and brain were painful and distressing; it could and would all be erased at need, if the man lived. The plate of mussels and noodles lay inverted and broken on the floor. Aurigar’s boot touched it and slipped slightly, and Cetuso made that foot move to a secure spot on the dry floor behind.
Cetuso had no fear of being disturbed, knowing as he did that everyone in the place feared to disturb him, or even to look at him to see what he was doing. He relayed the copy of Aurigar to the princess’s computer, waited through the micromarqs while she played Aurigar out in simulation, and talked her through the usual disappointment. He might have pointed out that they needed a man of extraordinary abilities to accomplish what was needed, and also one who would not resent how he was used, one who would understand the Imperium as well as the Empress herself and yet feel only deep loyalty. There would be such a man, he was confident, but this was not he.
A few micromarqs later, when he knew she was feeling better, and she had been called off to cook supper for the miner’s brats, he turned his attention back to Aurigar. A few people had gotten up and left quietly, not wanting to be witnesses; the rest looked at their drinks, their plates, or the wall.
Cetuso proceeded systematically. First he erased the simulation data from Aurigar’s brain, then the memory of their conversation, then all the memories, and finally the instincts, the sensory processing, and the autonomic processes, before his filaments slashed Aurigar’s brains into wet chopped meat beyond any possibility of neurodissection or nanorecon-struction.
Cetuso’s filaments withdrew, merging into thin tentacles between the corpse’s ribs, then broad thick strands outside the chest. As the tips popped free, they reshaped into fingers splayed on the man’s chest. Cetuso pushed lightly.
Aurigar’s corpse crashed to the floor. No one looked up, but a number of people winced; Cetuso recorded their reaction and relayed it to the political police. Probably they just had weak stomachs (you never could tell what would bother even the most normal, practical, hardened heart), but better safe than sorry.
>
He flashed the main mirror in his left eye to draw the bartender’s gaze. Cetuso pointed to the accounting screen behind the bar, using his mind-link to add a few month’s revenues to the bar’s receipts. The bartender looked down, saw the numbers, looked up, and was mindful enough not to do anything but look away. Cetuso smiled; silence, like all good things, was at its best and costliest when absolutely pure, and it never paid to skimp on it.
He would have nodded nicely enough at anyone who looked up as he left, but as usual, no one did. Out on the street, where everyone could see him and what he was, he walked as if invisible.
Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. She studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories, which garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. Works include The House of Shattered Wings (Roc/Gollancz, 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award), a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, and its upcoming sequel The House of Binding Thorns (April 2017, Roc/Gollancz). She also published The Citadel of Weeping Pearls (Asimov’s Oct/ Nov 2015), a novella set in the same universe as her Vietnamese space opera On a Red Station Drifting. She lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and a set of Lovecraftian tentacled plants intent on taking over the place.