A Confusion of Princes (15 page)

:Haddad. No connection to the Mind! Are we being blocked?:

:No, Highness. It appears we are too remote and have insufficient priests for the relay distance:

:Are there any hostiles in system? Do we have communication with the supply station? Why isn’t there a guard ship on this wormhole exit?:

:No hostiles on ship scans or Psitek reach. We’re deep in Imperial space, Highness. It is not unusual for the wormhole to be unguarded. Frekwo and Aleakh are sending to the station now, and will relay if we achieve comms:

:Should I launch?:

Of course, I just wanted to fly the Kragor. Even six months before, I would have just launched without asking for Haddad’s advice. But I had learned a little caution. Day by day, in a small way, I was getting smarter.

:Strongly advise against launch, Highness. We have connection with the station . . . and they are now relaying to the Mind:

I could almost sense an undercurrent of relief in Haddad’s mindspeech. Or maybe it was just an echo of my own feelings. After all, it could have been a big, nasty trap. Jerrazis could have had a ship waiting to take us out and, with no connection to the Mind, would probably have got away with it.

I guess I wasn’t worth that much trouble.

We docked at the supply station twenty-six hours later. I’d managed to get one short, seriously high-G flight in the Kragor, which was fun. And I’d blown up a chunk of cometary rock with a kinetic sliver, ditto.

Now, as I waited for my welcoming interview with Commodore Elzweko in my newly fabricated field uniform with a lieutenant’s green epaulettes and (unpowered) medal and wound badge, I internally said goodbye to all things fun.

The station was a metallic asteroid some two hundred kilometres long and eighty kilometres in diameter at its widest point, with the addition of an exterior layer of ice a few kilometres thick along two-thirds of its length. The ice had been removed in the last third in order to emplace various Imperial installations like the starship dock, though as per usual most of the base was bored deep into the asteroid itself.

The first thing I noticed on arrival was that the place stank, and I really mean stank. It had a stench that was worse than the Bitek sludge I’d fallen into at the Academy, and for a similar reason. The initial information I’d got from the Mind had failed to include the salient point that the Arokh-Pipadh Supply Station was a Bitek Resource Growth Centre, not a general storage facility.

In other words, the whole place was a cross between a vast botanic garden, a zoo, and a compost pit. It smelled of fertiliser, animal excrement, and the Emperor knew what else. Most likely some kind of horrible alien shit.

And lucky me was going to be one of the two Princes in charge of the whole place, as I discovered when I delved further into the Mind. There was just the Commodore and myself, some three thousand priests from the Aspect of the Kindly Gardener and the Aspect of the Companion of Life, an equivalent number of mekbi drone workers, and a single company of mekbi troopers, which would undoubtedly come to be my particular responsibility, bringing an awesome load of additional administrative tasks and the danger of being tracked into future Marine assignments.

‘Please enter, Highness,’ said the priest who opened the Commodore’s door. He appeared to be wearing a kind of smock and was holding a spraying device, fortunately pointed at the ground. I looked at it carefully for a moment, wary of some Bitek attack, but I was connected to the Mind and witnessing, and Haddad was close to me. I went in. The priest turned aside and began to spray a large trefoil plant near the door with nothing more complex than water.

The Commodore’s office smelled as well, but even more strongly, with good reason. It was a big room, but one half of it was occupied by a banked-up pile of earth in which there were numerous growing plants. There was also a pile of what could only be some form of animal manure.

The Commodore—and believe me, I checked his identity broadcast twice—was digging into the pile with a shovel. He was taller and broader than me; in fact he was considerably larger than most Princes, and as he was wearing only a pair of field uniform shorts, his impressive muscles were well displayed. He grunted as he lifted a shovel load of dung and flung it between a row of plants, then drove the shovel back into the pile and turned to me.

He smiled as I saluted, and waved several fingers in the air. Like many Princes of an older generation, he had a full beard and a long moustache, both of which had quite a lot of dirt caught in the yellow hair. At least I hoped it was dirt.

‘Lieutenant Khemri,’ he said jovially. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’

I snapped my hand down.

‘Thank you, sir. It’s . . . uh . . . good to be here.’

‘Excellent! Excellent!’ boomed Elzweko. ‘Nice to meet you. Now I suppose you’d best go straight on through.’

He pointed to the far end of his vegetable patch or whatever it was. There were taller plants there, and even a luxuriant stand of bamboo. Looking closer, I saw a path made from wooden slats between the bamboo, a path that led into a darkness resistant to all my various visual faculties.

‘I see,’ I said, even though I couldn’t see.

I turned back to Haddad to ask him if he’d known about this all along. But he had gone, and so had the other priest.

‘Hurry along, Lieutenant,’ said Elzweko. There was no cheer in his voice now.

Still I hesitated. Could this be a trap after all?

:Take the path through the bamboo Prince Khemri <> it is our command <>:

There was no arguing with that. Avoiding the spread dung, I clomped through the loose earth, got onto the path, and went into the darkness between the overarching strands of bamboo.

10

I
FOUND MYSELF ONCE again in a bamboo forest, following a stream. After a few steps I was sure it was the same stream from the temple sanctum back on Kwanantil Nine and that this was the same bamboo forest, the same small bridge; and by this stage not unexpectedly, the Arch-Priest of the Aspect of the Emperor’s Discerning Hand was waiting for me.

Morojal.

This time she didn’t have a fishing pole, and instead of standing on the bridge, she was sitting on a folding chair by the stream. There was another chair next to her.

‘Welcome, Prince Khemri,’ she said. ‘Come, sit by me.’

I sat, while looking cautiously around.

‘How can this place be here and at Kwanantil, Great-Aunt?’ I asked in a very respectful tone of voice.

I’d learned a lot in the year since we’d first met.

‘This sanctum is a vehicle that goes where it is needed to be,’ replied Morojal, which didn’t really answer my question. How did it travel? How did it end up in the middle of an asteroid, or deep underground in a planet?

‘You have been brought here to be offered an opportunity, Prince Khemri,’ continued Morojal.

After my discussion with Haddad about how a new Emperor was chosen, I thought I knew what was coming. Surely I must be one of the chosen thousand Imperial candidates due to disappear over the next year? Which was both exciting and unnerving. Exciting because
I could be the Emperor
. Unnerving because no one knew what happened to the 999 candidates who didn’t make it . . .

‘A rare opportunity to serve the Empire,’ said Morojal, her calm voice lapping on the shores of my imagined promised land, where I had been elevated to the Imperial Crown. ‘You are aware of the seven Imperial services?’

Her question snapped me out of my daydreaming.

‘Uh,
seven
?’ I asked. ‘I know of six. The Navy, Marines, Survey, Diplomatic Corps, Imperial Government, Colonial Government . . .’

‘There is a seventh, secret service. It is called Adjustment. You have been selected to become an Adjuster.’

So I wasn’t an Imperial candidate after all. The Imperial Crown in my imagination fell off my head and dissipated into nothing.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked grumpily. ‘What does an Adjuster do?’

‘An Adjuster does what is required by the Imperial Mind to maintain the balance of the Empire,’ said Morojal. ‘Usually this means interfering in the plans of other Princes, sometimes to assist them in their objective, sometimes to deny them the same. To enable Adjusters to do this, they have particular powers not granted to regular Princes. For example, more priests, better access and communication with the Mind, the ability to present as more than one identity to other Princes, and so forth.’

‘To what? To present as more than one identity? What does that mean?’ I asked. I was deeply shocked. That meant the Imperial Mind really could lie to us, and not just in Haddad’s ‘levels of veracity’ way.

‘When necessary, the Imperial Mind can . . . recalibrate the information you broadcast to other Princes, indicating that you are in fact a different Prince or hold a different rank that is more useful, and so on.’

‘But what about if it’s to a Prince who already knows the Adjuster?’

‘Adjusters are also permitted to change their physical appearance, unlike other Princes. Under controlled conditions.’

‘I never understood that,’ I muttered, thinking of my own slightly too long nose. ‘I mean, the tek is there. Why not just let us all look however we want?’

‘Face sculpting allows surgeons—even priest-surgeons—to get far too close to a Prince’s brain,’ replied Morojal. ‘That is why it is only allowed even to Adjusters in circumstances where the entire medical team’s loyalty is both beyond question and under close observation.’

‘In case of what?’

‘In case of the introduction of alien or enemy Psitek components into a Prince’s brain,’ said Morojal. ‘Which might then invade other Princes or even the Imperial Mind.’

‘So even priests can’t be trusted?’

‘Not all the time,’ replied Morojal. ‘Most priests who are not relay communicators are not regularly in contact with the Imperial Mind, and some are only mentally inspected and adjusted on an annual or even less frequent basis. Loyalty conditioning breaks down. Things happen.’

‘That’s for sure,’ I said feelingly. ‘Or they don’t. Happen, that is.’

‘You are a very young Prince,’ said Morojal. ‘However, unlike many Princes who never bother to learn anything beyond satisfying their immediate desires or ambitions, you appear to be capable of wider thought. I think you have the capacity to be a much more significant Prince of the Empire, should you choose.’

‘What happens if I don’t want to be an Adjuster?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Morojal. ‘You go to work here at the Supply Station. In a few months, you will probably be assassinated, or die in something that appears to be an accident but will in fact have been engineered by Admiral Jerrazis, who
knows
that you permanently killed his protégé Huzand.’

‘What?’ I yelped. ‘How does he know that?’

‘He was informed,’ said Morojal, her eyes cold, the blue fluid roiling around and around inside her head.

‘You told him. To bring pressure on me,’ I said. ‘To make me choose to be an Adjuster.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Morojal. ‘Partly. An Adjuster had been working at the Academy to remove Huzand in a way that would dishonour House Jerrazis. Assisting you on your path to becoming an Adjuster was a second objective. Elegantly, she used you to achieve both objectives.’

‘I suppose I don’t really have a choice, then,’ I said, furious at being manipulated in this way.

‘There is always a choice,’ said Morojal. ‘Even if the alternatives don’t appear to be equal. In the interests of your making a fully informed choice, I should tell you that if you do volunteer for service in Adjustment, you must pass a graduation test.’

‘What test?’ I asked. I was wondering who the secret Adjuster at the Academy was. Morojal had said ‘she,’ but this could be misdirection. Who could have made me more of a target for Huzand? I mean, more than I did myself?

‘It is not an easy test,’ replied the arch-priest. ‘First, we transfer your consciousness to an unaugmented version of yourself.’

A
what
?
I thought.

I opened my mouth to ask a question, but Morojal didn’t pause to let me speak.

‘Then we put you in an obsolete one-person life capsule of inferior, copied-Imperial tek and drop you in some sparsely inhabited system well beyond the borders of the Empire. For a year, or thereabouts.’

I shut my mouth with an audible click, nipping the end of my tongue.

‘If you can make it back to the Empire, you will be returned to your augmented physicality and welcomed into Adjustment. In your case, we would probably also give you a Naval cover story and promote you to lieutenant commander. You might even get another medal. Questions?’

Questions? I had enough questions to keep the arch-priest busy for the next three days, but since I doubted I’d be allowed that time, I rapidly sorted them out into the top three or four.

‘Does this happen straightaway? I mean, I get “transferred” into a . . . nonaugmented body . . . and
wham!
Off I go?’

‘No. The transfer is immediate, but you would then have a period of training and orientation, to become used to the lack of augmentation and also to be familiarised with how ordinary humans live, or typically live, outside the Empire.’

‘What about the genetically programmed Bitek improvements I grew up with, and my natural Psitek ability?’

‘The unaugmented version will have some of the viral programming of your early growth, but not all, as some sequences can be detected and identified. All the additional Bitek organs and glands that you have now will not be present. You will have whatever your latent Psitek ability was, which may be considerable in your case. You will have no internal Mektek shielding or reinforcement, of course, nor will you have the internal monitoring you are used to.’

I shuddered at the prospect of losing all of this, and remembered the feeling I had when my arm was cut off. Could I deal with a whole year of being even more reduced? But if I didn’t take on this graduation test, I would be shovelling shit, or at least watching shit being shovelled, for months before getting killed anyway, and now I could not be at all confident I would be reborn. Somehow I didn’t think that Princes who knew about Adjustment but weren’t Adjusters were allowed to wander about and potentially inform the Princely community about what was really going on.