The Thousand Emperors (16 page)

‘I want to show you something,’ said Offenbach, his face lit up with nearly palpable excitement. He sent data-sets flying by with disorienting speed, galaxies of information
vanishing into the darkened recesses of his office in rapid order. Finally a single, vast constellation appeared, orbited by dozens of other, smaller clusters.

‘What you’re looking at here,’ said Offenbach, ‘is the total data-set for the preparations for Reunification. I don’t need to tell you the predictive power of a set
like this, do I?’

No you don’t,
thought Luc, his eyes automatically tracing lines of real and potential influence. ‘You don’t need to work in Archives to guess a lot of things are going
to change following Reunification, Jared.’

‘But look here at these subsets. They show regions of unusually high activity surrounding Sevgeny Vasili over just the last few days, considerably more than might be expected even given
his role in making Reunification a success. Clearly
something
is up.’

Luc tried not to show his surprise. ‘You were already looking into Vasili?’

Offenbach clapped his hands in excitement, his eyes glittering from across the room. ‘Not officially, no. But that level of activity naturally draws our attention and raises flags. Now, as
for Vasili’s links to Antonov
,
all we really have to go on is a relatively scant quantity of publicly available data. You know, of course, that they were both on the Committee for
Reconstruction following the Abandonment.’

Luc nodded. ‘I know that before Antonov turned against the Council, the two men had worked together.’

‘In the early days,’ Offenbach agreed. ‘And later, of course, they became diametrically opposed when Father Cheng took power.’

Luc nodded. ‘I’m looking for something deeper than that,’ he said.

‘I thought you might be,’ Offenbach replied. Screeds of text appeared, flickering by at a speed even Luc, despite his experience, found difficult to follow.

For the thousandth time, Luc recalled Vasili’s last message to posterity, recorded on the pages of a book the head of Archives couldn’t prove existed:
Winchell, I was wrong, so
very wrong. I see that now.

A lifetime of questions were contained within that one simple statement.

‘What I can tell you,’ said Luc, ‘is that there should be a recent connection between the two men, possibly as recently as within the last year.’

Offenbach raised his eyebrows in surprise, suddenly sober. ‘
That
recent?’

Luc nodded slowly and Offenbach whistled. A moment later the window de-opaqued, letting afternoon light seep in. A thin layer of dust became evident, coating many of the ageing data-readers
stacked around them.

‘My guess,’ said Offenbach, ‘is that whoever decided to restrict your access to some parts of the data-sets doesn’t want you to find something out.’

‘They might stop me from finding those things out,’ Luc agreed, ‘but clearly that’s not a concern for you, since they can’t lock everyone out of those data-sets
without attracting too much attention. So anything you feel like telling me,’ he said, glancing again at the restricted threads, ‘is just between us.’

Offenbach’s fingers tapped at the arm of his chair. ‘All right,’ he said, as if coming to a decision, ‘then let me ask you a question. Were you aware that no one has seen
Sevgeny Vasili for days?’

Luc did his best to keep his face impassive. ‘How did you find that out?’

Offenbach gave him a sly look. ‘By inference, as well as observation. You know how we work: intelligent filters identify trends and highlight nodes of activity that at first glance might
only appear circumstantial or unconnected. Once Reunification gets rolling, there’s going to be a massive exchange of cultural and scientific data between us and the Coalition, all mediated
by Vasili. And Vasili has been at the heart of the preparations for Reunification for a very,
very
long time.’

‘And your point is?’

‘Up until several days ago,’ Offenbach continued with a note of triumph, ‘Vasili was all over Archives like a rash. That exchange of data I mentioned can’t take place
without Vasili’s direct involvement. But now Vasili’s vanished from sight, on the cusp of something he’s been working towards for longer than most of us here have even been alive.
And yet there hasn’t been a single adequate word of explanation from anyone in the Council.’

Offenbach shifted in his seat before continuing. ‘Now, I know you’ve been out of the loop since they brought you back from Aeschere, Luc, but you have to understand that unless he
pops up again sometime very soon, there is going to be a
major
stink. And then
you
turn up here asking about connections between Vasili and Antonov. I think that’s what any
self-respecting Master of Archives would call a
significant
correlation.’

Luc sighed and let his shoulders sink in defeat. ‘Fine, now that you put it that way, I suppose it’s obvious I’m interested in Vasili’s . . . recent absence.’

Offenbach leaned towards him, his manner theatrically conspiratorial. ‘This isn’t official Archives business, is it, Luc?’

‘No, it’s a commission, from a member of the Temur Council.’

‘And of course you can’t talk about it. Am I right?’

Luc shook his head ruefully. ‘I know you’re itching to find out the details, because all your stats indicators are saying something significant is up.’

‘Well,
that
much is obvious,’ the other man huffed. ‘A word of warning for you. Sometimes, when ordinary people get caught up in Council intrigue, their strings get
yanked so hard their heads get pulled off.’

First Eleanor, and now Offenbach was taking the trouble to give him essentially the same warning. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for that delightful image.’

‘Just an observation.’ Offenbach fidgeted for a moment, and Luc sensed he was leading up to something. ‘You know, a lot of the data recovered from your trip to Aeschere is
still strictly embargoed, despite our department’s protests. It leaves us just as handicapped in the fight against Black Lotus as we were before, and I have no idea just how long it’s
going to be before we can get our hands on that data – assuming the Sandoz ever let us have access to it.’

Luc nodded. Offenbach wanted something in return.

‘I think I can do something for you, Jared.’

Offenbach’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Such as?’

‘I still have special access privileges to Sandoz’s own archives.’ Those privileges had been hard-won on Luc’s part, and had fostered what Vincent Hetaera had hoped would
become a new era of inter-agency cooperation. From what Luc had been hearing since his recovery, that era was already proving short-lived.

‘You can get hold of the Aeschere data?’

‘It’s the least I can do,’ said Luc. ‘Is there anything else you can think of that might be useful to me?’

Offenbach thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps. But it’s not something that can necessarily be corroborated. You’d just have to take it at face value, I’m afraid.’

‘Rumour, then.’

Offenbach moved his head from side to side. ‘More than rumour, less than verifiable fact.’

‘Listening at doors, in other words.’

Offenbach leaned forward, his voice dropping to a husky half-whisper. ‘It’s my understanding that over the past several decades, Vasili became isolated not only from Father Cheng,
but from the rest of the Eighty-Five. A pariah within Cheng’s inner circle, essentially.’

Luc thought about it for a moment. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘If that were the case, Father Cheng would hardly have given him such a prestigious job as preparing the Tian Di for Reunification.’

‘But then again,’ said Offenbach, ‘who amongst his trusted advisors
would
Cheng have given the job to? None of them would have wanted the job. Recall that the
Eighty-Five first came into existence as a pressure group within the original Temur Council, agitating for complete separation from the Coalition. And out of all of them, Vasili was easily the most
vocal in that regard. Don’t you think it’s strange that one of the primary architects of the Schism wound up being given the job of rebuilding our links with the Coalition?’

‘So giving Vasili that job was a kind of punishment?’ asked Luc.
And a very ironic one, if true
. ‘That’s genuinely fascinating, but I can’t see the
relevance.’

‘Wait,’ said Offenbach, still clearly enjoying the moment, ‘there’s more.’

He waved a hand, and the window behind him opaqued yet again, the room becoming dimmer.

‘What,’ asked Offenbach, peering from out of the shadows, ‘does the name Ariadna Placet mean to you?’

It took Luc a moment to place the name. ‘She was Director of Policy for Thorne at some point, wasn’t she?’ As, he recalled, had been Zelia de Almeida, although Placet had held
the post first. ‘I seem to remember something about her suffering permanent death while she was there – an accident of some kind.’

‘But before that,’ Offenbach prompted. ‘What is it that links her to Antonov?’

‘I’m aware that she was in a relationship with him a long time ago,’ Luc replied, wondering just where Offenbach was leading him. ‘Starting from not long after the
Abandonment. They were both engineers, and sided with the Tian Di Hui resistance fighters when they fought the Coalition occupying forces here on Temur.’

‘And?’

Luc sighed. He wished Offenbach would get to the point. ‘Their relationship ended long before the Schism. After Cheng took power, she enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the Temur
Council until her death.’

Ariadna Placet had been one of the few Council members for whom the instantiation technology had failed. When she had died in a flier accident on Thorne, her backups proved to have been lost or
corrupted.

Just like Vasili’s
, Luc realized with a start.

‘What if I told you,’ Offenbach continued, ‘that there were accusations of foul play regarding her death?’

‘There was an inquest, wasn’t there?’ asked Luc, feeling a rush of adrenalin. ‘I don’t recall hearing about any such accusations.’

Offenbach grinned. ‘Then you might also be interested to know that not very long after her relationship with Antonov ended, Placet became Sevgeny Vasili’s lover.’

Luc thought of icebergs grinding together in a half-frozen sea, their vast bulks hidden in shadowy waters. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Vasili has a reputation for being a very private man,’ Offenbach continued. ‘Few people outside of the Temur Council knew about the relationship.’

‘Who made the accusation of foul play?’

‘Vasili did. He never accepted the inquest’s findings. He’s always insisted the flier Placet was in when she died must have been sabotaged or shot down on purpose, and her
backups deliberately vandalized.’

Luc stared at him in amazement. ‘Why the hell have I never heard about any of this?’

‘Because it’s inner circle gossip,’ said Offenbach. ‘The kind of thing that rarely trickles down from the Eighty-Five to the likes of you and me. From what I gather,
Vasili wasn’t the kind to keep quiet about his suspicions. He was absolutely convinced Placet had been murdered, along with a couple of other passengers unlucky enough to be on board the
flier with her at the time.
That
, I think, is the reason Vasili became so isolated from Cheng and the rest of the Eighty-Five.‘

‘But if that were true, what would be the motive for murdering her?’

‘Assuming all this is true, and Vasili isn’t as crazy as the rest of the Council seem to think he is? I have no idea.’

Luc rubbed at his temple. Antonov, Vasili and Placet. ‘You’ve given me even more than you realize, Jared.’

‘That’s the beautiful thing about data,’ said Offenbach. ‘Things that only at first appear to be unconnected frequently prove, at a later date, to be intimately
intertwined.’

I couldn’t have put it better
, thought Luc, rising to his feet. ‘Thanks, Jared. I’ll get that Aeschere data through to you as soon as I can.’

‘I can only hope I’ve been able to help,’ replied Offenbach.

Luc headed for the door. ‘More than you can possibly imagine,’ he said as he departed.

In the three days since Jacob Moreland’s ship had crash-landed on Darwin, he had taken to hiding in a deep cave a few kilometres away from where that same craft had
quickly set about destroying itself. He sustained himself by sucking brackish moisture from the pocket-like leaves of bushes that grew up the side of the hill below the cave, until it began to rain
on the second day, an incessant downpour that continued well into the next evening. He passed the time huddled deep within the cave’s recesses, staring out towards the distant flicker of
light that betrayed the presence of Coalition mechants still searching the nearby forest and shore.

They were looking for him, of course. His ship had evaded detection on the way down from orbit by disguising itself as random orbital flotsam, but whoever was controlling the mechants must have
realized there was a chance at least one of the spy-ships had made it past their defences.

Jacob continued watching through the night until the lights eventually passed into the next valley, and only then allowed himself the luxury of sleep.

He emerged from the cave at dawn on his fourth day on Darwin, by now ravenous with hunger, climbing to the top of a tree and crouching low on a branch in order to peer out
across the forest canopy. He could see that the search for him continued to move further and further away from his hiding place: beams of light flickered across the mouth of an estuary several
kilometres to the north.

From time to time, as he waited to be rescued by whichever Tian Di sleeper agents picked up his transceiver alert, he would glance up at the impossibly vast bulk of the world-wheel that
straddled Darwin’s equator. Patterns of light danced around the wheel’s inner curve, and up and down the spokes that connected the wheel to the continents and oceans below. From time to
time displays of light, not unlike auroras, encircled the wheel like a phantasmagorical wreath, billowing like silk sheets cast into a turbulent wind. Whether it were some strange natural
phenomenon, a byproduct of industrial processes, or indeed some form of artistic display, Jacob could not begin to guess.