A Confusion of Princes (16 page)

‘If I’m in a nonaugmented body, no one will know I’m a Prince,’ I said slowly. ‘How could I get anywhere near an Imperial post, or inside a temple?’

‘Indeed,’ said Morojal. ‘I believe I told you this is a graduation
test
?’

‘If I still have some Psitek, will I be able to communicate my real identity to priests?’

‘If you’re close enough,’ said Morojal. She paused and then added, ‘Perhaps.’

‘Great. No Mektek or Bitek ID and only maybe Psitek. It’s impossible!’

‘Is it?’ asked Morojal. ‘Commodore Elzweko managed it, as have some forty-six others in the last twenty years.’

Elzweko the manure spreader was an Adjuster? I made a mental note, once again, not to judge by first impressions.

‘Yeah, but how many failed?’

‘You do not need to know that number. It is not an impossible test. Merely very difficult. Now, I must ask you for your decision.’

I rested my face in my hands and tried to think it through. Either way looked like a death sentence. But at least if I stayed a Prince, I’d be better equipped to handle whatever might happen. I mean, what if assassins tracked me down while I was in a nonaugmented body?

Surely it would be better to stay on the supply station? Maybe Haddad could think of something—

‘I need a decision,’ said Morojal. ‘One way or another.’

‘I’ll try out for Adjustment,’ I said. It just sounded more interesting than moving manure about while waiting to be assassinated, and at least there would be a chance, however slim, that I could stay alive and prosper.

‘Good,’ said Morojal. ‘We would have been sorry to lose you at this point.’

‘But . . . but you said I could go back to the supply station. . . ’

‘I lied,’ said Morojal. ‘That is part of the test. You mean you didn’t figure that out?’

I didn’t answer. I hoped this would be taken to mean that of course I had it all figured out.

‘So what happens now?’ I asked.

Morojal pointed at the stream.

‘All right,’ I said. I stood up, took off my clothes, and waded into the water that was not water, and once again I found myself falling into darkness lit by a multitude of beams of light.

When I returned to my body, or at least to
a
body, I was in total darkness, and as far as I could tell, I was alone. I felt incredibly weak, and it took an extreme effort to crawl out of—not the creek—but some sort of low bath full of a very salty fluid, which was irritating my eyes and mouth.

I collapsed onto the ground, which was cold and unrelenting, clearly a Mektek deck or installation floor. I lay there for quite a while, trying to stem the panic that I was barely keeping at bay. My body felt weird and clumsy, and my mind was slow and disoriented. I don’t know how long I lay there, because I no longer had an internal clock to tell me the time.

My senses were also greatly reduced, but after a while I noticed that I could see the outline of the bath I had crawled out of and a thin strip of light some distance away at floor level. But that was as good as it got. I no longer had the capacity to shift my sight across a variable spectrum. I wasn’t going to see any more unless I could find a source of light.

It was also very quiet, particularly inside my own head. I was used to being connected to the Mind, being able to query it, to pick up information, to view overlays about the world around me, to luxuriate in a constant flow of information, picking out whatever I wanted to know. Not to mention mentally chatting with Haddad and my other priests and fellow Princes . . .

All of that was gone. To all intents and purposes, I was no longer a Prince of the Empire.

It suddenly came home to me that perhaps I never would be again.

Slowly, I started to crawl toward the strip of light. At first, my muscles were so weak I could barely manage to drag my sorry self along the floor. I found myself trying to initiate Bitek glands that I no longer had, glands that would have provided stimulus to those pathetic muscles and glands that also helped a Prince overcome fear. Without the hormones and other infusions, I was thrown back to a primitive state, and I was faced by the two great fears that have always threatened humanity.

Fear of the unknown and its dread companion, fear of the dark.

A small sob caught in my throat. I swallowed it down, acutely aware of the sound it made. Until I knew where I was, and what threats I faced, I did not want to draw any attention. Particularly since I wasn’t sure if I even had the strength to stand up, let alone defend myself.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I inched and wormed my way to the light. It seemed to recede as I approached, and I mourned the loss of all my target acquisition and ranging augmentation. I could not tell if the light was a weak one ten metres away or a powerful one at a much greater distance.

I struggled on and found myself growing stronger. It was as if my muscles were awakening from a long sleep. Eventually, I stopped crawling on my belly, and reaching above me to make sure I didn’t hit my head, I stood up.

As I did so, the thin band of light suddenly expanded into a doorway of blinding brilliance. I shielded my face with my arms and half shut my eyes, as I no longer had the additional eyelids of a Prince, nor the systems that would compensate and adjust my vision.

Slowly, the brilliance paled, and I made out a humanoid shape in the doorway. It raised one hand in welcome and spoke. The voice sounded familiar, but I could not quite place it—nor match the voiceprint against internal records.

‘You have done well to get so far, Khemri. Or as I will call you now, Khem.’

‘Khem?’ I croaked. My voice sounded strange. Everything sounded strange, for it was no longer filtered and ordered as it had been.

‘Khemri might be recognised as an Imperial name. Khem is suitably short and speaks of no particular origin.’

I nodded. This made sense. ‘Where am I?’

‘Arokh-Pipadh,’ replied the figure, and at last I recognised the voice. It was Commodore Elzweko. ‘Deep inside, at the Adjustment facility that is hidden within the supply station.’

Elzweko stepped through the doorway, and I peered at him, my eyes adapting very slowly to the light. He wasn’t in any kind of Imperial uniform, instead wearing a stained and patched coat with a fur-lined hood, padded trousers, and knee-high boots with metal knee plates. He had a weapon on his belt, but it was in a closed holster, so I couldn’t identify it.

He touched his hand to a panel on the wall, and the door closed behind him and lights came on overhead. I looked around to find myself in a large chamber of Mektek construction, typical of ship interior plating. The bath I had emerged from was no longer present, but a panel some three metres long and two meters wide was closing in the floor, marking the bath’s exit.

There was nothing else in the room. I looked down at myself and saw that I was naked. Apart from that I looked exactly the same as I had before, at least as far as I could tell.

But I did not feel the same. I felt weak, and small, and incredibly vulnerable.

:Can you hear this?: asked Elzweko in mindspeech. It sounded distant, even though he was only a few metres away, but it was clear.

:Yes!:

I answered in a mental shout, like a man calling for a lifeline.

:Good. Your latent psychic power is excellent. Follow me:

I followed him to the other side of the room, where another door sprang open. That led to a corridor that gently curved for a hundred metres or so, ending in an airlock hatch that was covered in warning signs. Doubtless it also had an overlay that would have been visible in tekspace.

The signs read DO NOT ENTER. WORMHOLE DRIVE RADIATION HAZARD. EXTREME RISK CATEGORY EIGHT.

Category Eight meant instant death for ordinary humans, slow death for hybrids like the mekbi troopers, and very unpleasant but probably not terminal sickness for a Prince.

Elzweko waved to the door, and it rumbled back. He went into the airlock and turned to face me. I followed very slowly, still learning to move my weaker, slower body.

‘It’s not actually a Cat Eight risk, is it?’ I asked. ‘Only now . . . it would kill me straightaway.’

‘No,’ rumbled Elzweko. ‘There is no Mektek wormhole drive present. It is just to slow down the inquisitive. Tell me, when you were in your Princely body, would you have thought so much about that warning?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘No. I am suddenly all too aware of how easy it is to die.’

‘Good,’ said Elzweko. The door shut behind us, warning lights flashed red for several seconds, then the inner door whined as it began to open. ‘Keep that in mind. Stay behind me.’

We exited the airlock, entering a guardroom. Six unusually equipped and strange-looking mekbi troopers watched us, not springing to attention. They were taller than any troopers I’d seen before, less thin-waisted, and instead of energy projectors they carried short, gleaming tubes that were obviously weapons but not ones that I knew.

The tubes were pointing at us, which was also completely at odds with normality.

Elzweko made a complicated gesture with his hands and muttered something I didn’t catch. My hearing was dull now and could not be turned up or down.

Whatever he said, combined with the gestures, made the troopers raise their weapons and stand aside. As we walked past, I tried to hear their Psitek chatter, but either there was nothing or I just couldn’t pick it up.

In the corridor beyond the guard post, I asked Elzweko about the strange troopers and their mental silence. I was afraid that my inability to hear them meant that my natural Psitek was very weak indeed, and as it represented my only hope of getting into a temple sanctum, I really needed to know.

‘They have limited neural capacity and all Psitek is blocked,’ he answered. ‘So they cannot be suborned or commanded. They answer only to certain visual and auditory stimuli or particular situations.’

‘And their weapons? I’ve never seen those tubes. . . ’

‘They are shock tubes,’ said Elzweko. ‘Designed to immobilise a Prince’s tek systems.’

I thought about that as we walked on. Mekbi troopers that could fire at a Prince? With weapons specifically designed against Princes? I was beginning to realise that the test assignment might be only the beginning of the challenges that came with joining Adjustment.

‘You understand why?’ asked Elzweko.

‘I can guess,’ I said slowly. ‘I do not think most Princes would like the idea of Adjustment. Nor the knowledge that a Prince can be . . . unmade. If a Prince were to learn of this, and come here to find evidence—’ ‘They would find no evidence,’ interrupted Elzweko. ‘But we would prefer to lose a suspicious Prince than this Adjustment headquarters. Now, we are about to come to your home for the next four months. You will not leave it, under any circumstances, without direct permission from myself or the Imperial Mind. Note that shock tubes will simply kill an unaugmented human. You understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

A door slid back ahead of us, and we walked out onto a platform or balcony that was built into the side of a truly vast cavern. I could no longer tell exactly, but I visually estimated it as at least ten kilometres long, ten kilometres wide, and ten kilometres high. Lit by a small auxiliary sun high above, the vast space was quartered into four areas.

One was rich in plant life, a riot of both terrestrial and galactic trees, shrubs, and other forms, though here and there I also saw constructions of Bitek or Mektek origin, small huts or cabins, half hidden in what was basically a jungle.

The second quarter was a junkyard of crashed ships and vehicles, piled upon a desert landscape of red sand. I saw no complete ship, but there were hundreds of partial hulls, both Mektek and Bitek, mixed up with ship components; ground, air, and sea vehicles in various states of disarray; and many other bits and pieces that I could not even begin to identify from afar.

The third quarter was effected by a zero-G field—and other transformations—to create a cube of space. A partially complete orbital station hung there, a small one, perhaps three hundred metres in diameter and one hundred metres high. Construction vehicles floated near it, but there was no work going on.

The fourth quarter was directly below us, about five hundred metres down. It had been made to look like a planetary surface, one of cold tundra. There was ice and snow in abundance, and a large lake. On the shore of the lake there was a sprawling settlement of repurposed, grounded spacecraft and shanties of various materials set around an area of quick-set Bitek huts built in streets radiating out from a very large Mektek dome, probably the core of the original, ordered settlement that had succumbed to later, more careless development. Some distance away an orbital shuttle sat on a basic prefab runway, a long, straight line of dark Mektek surrounded by snow and ice.

Looking down at the frozen land below, I realised that I was very cold, that I could not regulate my temperature, and that I was still naked.

Elzweko opened a locker near the door and took out two contragrav harnesses and a pair of insulated coveralls with built-in undergarments, gloves, and a hood that were of an unfamiliar Bitek construction and definitely not Imperial issue. He handed the coveralls to me and put on one of the contragrav harnesses himself before handing me the other. I noticed that his was the standard Prince model, with the extra power supply. Mine was a lesser model, for servants and the like engaged in domestic activities, not even the heavy-duty mekbi trooper version.