The Thousand Emperors (6 page)

‘You don’t believe me,’ Luc said hollowly.

Lethe sighed. ‘It’s not a question of whether
I
believe you or not.’

‘Just other people.’

‘Even if there really was a transfer gate down there, Aeschere’s got a low enough average density that the explosion, or whatever the hell it was, brought the roof down on half the
complex. It’d take months, maybe years to dig down far enough before we could even
begin
to verify your story. Come to think of it, it was probably sheer damn luck you didn’t
wind up buried under half a million tons of rock along with everything else.’

‘So you think Antonov was never there, that I hallucinated the whole damn thing. Is that it?’

‘No, he was definitely there,’ Lethe replied. ‘We managed to get visual corroboration of that much, at least, from Black Lotus’s own security networks just prior to the
raid. It looks like he died there as well. Whether I believe there was a transfer gate or not doesn’t really matter, not without hard evidence. With no CogNet data and no proof to the
contrary, any committee you wind up in front of is going to dismiss every word that comes out of your mouth.’

Luc opened his mouth to protest, but then realized that if their roles had been reversed, he’d have said exactly the same damn thing. He’d have assumed the story about the transfer
gate was a delusion, triggered by the dreadful trauma of having half his body burned away.

But it
had
been real. He could feel it, deep in his bones. The proof was in his skull, put there by Antonov. All he had to do was tell them, but even the thought of doing so filled his
head with a furious ache.

‘I was pretty torn up, right?’ Luc managed to blurt. ‘When they pulled me out of that cryo unit, they must have scanned me pretty thoroughly, inside and out.’

Lethe frowned, then gestured at something behind him. A mechant drifted forward until it hovered just centimetres above the bed, its sensors directed at Luc.

The ache grew worse. It took all Luc’s strength just to force the next words out.

‘Listen to me,’ he gasped. ‘In my head. Antonov put—’

The pain escalated beyond all endurance. His body snapped rigid as something tore at the inside of his head. He was vaguely aware through the haze of agony that two human orderlies had come
rushing into the room.

The mechant reached out and did something to his arm where it lay on top of the sheets. Everything began to recede, as if he were seeing the hospital room and its occupants from down the far end
of a long, dark tunnel. The pain wasn’t any less, but he found he no longer cared about it.

He experienced a kind of fugue, and the next thing he knew lights were slipping by overhead as he was taken somewhere else. Then there were more mechants, and other, unfamiliar faces, and
finally another room where he was given into the care of a machine that pressed in close all around him.

Whatever they’d pumped into his veins, it felt good.

He came to, and saw Eleanor standing by a window, staring out across the rooftops of Ulugh Beg. Night had fallen. There was no sign of Lethe.

‘What . . .’

She turned and blinked red-rimmed eyes at him, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there.

‘. . . the fuck?’ he finished, his voice a harsh croak.

She came over to him. ‘You had some kind of seizure. They’re still not sure what happened.’

He managed to push himself upright in the bed, and saw he was back in the same room as before. ‘Well, that’s less than reassuring.’

‘They ran a bunch of scans on you to see what triggered it, but they didn’t find anything.’

Luc stared at her in disbelief. ‘What kind of scans?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’d have to ask one of the mechants.’ She nodded towards one that hovered inconspicuously by the door.

Luc did. ‘Deep tissue and tomographic scans were carried out,’ it replied, drifting closer. ‘No lesions or other possible causes of a cerebral seizure were found.’

‘What about Merlino, the medician?’ Luc asked, turning back to Eleanor. ‘What exactly did he say?’

‘He said they can’t be sure of anything until they carry out further tests. He didn’t exactly say it, but from what I can tell they don’t have the faintest idea just what
happened to you.’

‘But the scans must have found
something
,’ Luc demanded, turning his attention back to the mechant.

‘Nothing of note was found,’ the machine replied, its voice soft and neutral.

He turned back to Eleanor. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not possible.’

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Luc . . . what else
should
there be?’

‘Antonov put something inside my skull,’ he replied, then halted in amazement. The last time he’d tried to say those same exact words, he had been subjected to more pain than
he thought was possible. It didn’t make sense.

He told her everything he remembered about his encounter with Antonov, leaving nothing out this time, and she listened with one hand over her mouth. It felt like cauterizing a wound. Once
he’d finished, she called the mechant back over and asked it more questions of her own.

In response, it displayed projections of the interior of his skull. Beyond some minor lesions that might have triggered a
grand mal
fit, nothing untoward or unexpected had been found.

Luc listened in grim silence, and began to wonder if perhaps he really
had
imagined the whole thing.

‘If you think I’m crazy,’ he said after she had sent the mechant away, ‘try and keep it to yourself, will you?’

She regarded him with something like pity. ‘You mean, no crazier than you were before?’

He sighed. ‘What happened to Lethe?’

‘I told him I’d stay with you and let him know once you came to.’

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘For what?’

He shrugged. ‘For scaring you like that.’

She nodded, reaching out to brush her fingers across the new fuzz of hair growing on his scalp. ‘You scared us both pretty badly.’

He squinted at her. ‘But do you believe me?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘You saw those scans. Do
you
believe what happened was real?’

‘I don’t know any more. Still . . . I’m glad you came.’

‘Why? You thought I wouldn’t?’

He laughed softly. ‘After that argument we had?’

‘Luc, it wasn’t because my feelings for you had changed. You know that. But you were taking unnecessary risks, walking into a Black Lotus stronghold.’

‘Yeah, but in the company of an entire squadron of—’

‘Stop.’ She pulled her hand back. ‘I saw you, when they brought you back from Grendel. I couldn’t even recognize you.’ A brittle edge crept into her voice.
‘Sandoz warriors can be re-instantiated, but you can’t, Luc. There’s only ever going to be one of you. That’s why I didn’t want you to go.’

But I didn’t have a choice
, he remembered saying to her just a few days before, and that was all it had taken for things between them to start unravelling.

‘I’ll be honest with you,’ said Eleanor, breaking what had become an awkward silence, ‘Lethe thinks he might have to discount your evidence concerning what happened on
Aeschere. He’s not sure an investigation would accept your story about a transfer gate without solid proof.’

‘Then what am I supposed to tell people?’ he asked. ‘Maybe I can’t prove it, El, but you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that the transfer gate was real. All
of it was real.’

She sighed and sank down onto the edge of the bed, spreading her long fingers on the blankets. ‘Let’s say it’s all real, then. Remember what Lethe asked you – why
didn’t Antonov just kill you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Luc replied truthfully, then remembered what Antonov had said:
Access Archives, then open a record with the following reference – Thorne, 51 Alpha,
Code Yellow. ‘I’m calling in my favour.’

It occurred to him that there was a way to prove his story was true. But if he really
had
imagined it all . . .

‘There must have been
some
reason,’ she insisted.

‘If I could give you an answer that made any sense, I would.’

If that record really did exist, he’d find it in his own time. He decided not to say anything until he was sure one way or the other.

Eleanor shook her head and stood. ‘I need to go. Lethe says the Temur Council are snapping at Karlmann Sandoz’s heels, wanting to know how things could have gone so badly wrong. As
you can imagine, Lethe’s pretty happy about that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Aeschere was a fucking
disaster
for the Sandoz. And that’s good for SecInt.’

‘Technically, I was in charge of that expedition,’ Luc reminded her. ‘They could blame me too.’

She shook her head. ‘The comms records they managed to retrieve show that Master Marroqui went out of his way to countermand your orders every step of the way. He kept pushing to go deeper
into the complex when you said it might be safer to pull back until you knew what had happened to those mosquitoes.’

‘So I guess we’re in the clear.’

Eleanor regarded him with pity. ‘I don’t understand you. Lethe only put you in nominal charge of that expedition so the Sandoz wouldn’t grab all the glory. He didn’t care
about the danger he was putting you in. And yet you jumped at the chance like a puppy that doesn’t know it’s about to be drowned.’

Luc bristled. ‘I knew the risks going in. It was still something I had to do.’

If you aren’t there
, Lethe had said,
no one’s going to remember all the work you did finding Antonov.

‘And that’s why I said what I said to you before. You don’t even care when you’re being used.’

‘I was using Lethe just as much as he was using me.’

‘Did
nothing
I say get through to you?’ she shot back. ‘You’re filled with survivor guilt. You
wanted
to get killed on that damn mission, just so you could
feel better about not dying along with the rest of your family.’

He stared at her, shocked at what she had said. She reached up to pat the bun at the back of her head as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with her hands, her expression flustered and
her chest rising and falling from barely suppressed emotion.

‘I’m going to retire,’ he said abruptly.

Her eyes widened.

‘From active service, at least,’ he continued. ‘I’m serious. With Antonov gone, there’s no reason not to let other people deal with whatever’s left of Black
Lotus.’

‘You never said anything about this before.’

‘Because I didn’t know just what was going to happen on Aeschere. I couldn’t discount the possibility I was wrong, that Antonov wouldn’t be there.’ He looked at her
and smiled. ‘But he was.’

‘Then . . . you’re serious? No more risking your neck?’

‘I’ll stay on in Archives, but if I do any more field-work, I’ll stick to the kind of low-risk background investigations you and me used to do. But nothing like
Aeschere,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘That was more than enough for this lifetime.’

Eleanor looked almost dizzy with relief. ‘I can hardly believe you’re saying this. You were always so’ – she searched for the right word – ‘driven.’

Monomaniacal
, he remembered her screaming at him once.
Obsessed.
He couldn’t really deny the charge.

‘All I’m saying,’ he said, reaching out for her hand, ‘is that things are going to be different from now on.’

He half expected her to pull away from him, but instead she laced her fingers through his. Luc felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest.

‘There was another reason Lethe came here,’ she said. ‘You’ve been invited to the White Palace for a ceremony.’

‘Ceremony?’

‘They want to make you a Master of Archives, Luc.’

He blinked at her in confusion and surprise. ‘Seriously?’

‘Director Lethe thought you might like to hear it coming from me. Assuming you’ll actually accept a promotion this time.’

Well, I’ll be damned,
thought Luc. ‘The last time they tried to give me a promotion was different. They wanted to boot me up to the Security Division.’

‘But this time,’ she said, her mouth softening into a smile, ’you get to stay where you want to be.’

It took time for Luc to learn how to control his freshly grafted muscles, but progress was fast. Further treatments sped up the reconnection of nervous tissues, and simple
tasks that at first represented an enormous struggle rapidly became smooth and natural. Even the food Luc ate tasted different. After just a couple of days his skin had lost much of its patchwork
appearance, and the next time he looked in a mirror, he saw someone who appeared to have suffered nothing more than mild sunburn. He touched his new face, marvelling at the wonder of it all.

On the day his treatments came to an end, he made his way along a series of narrow paths that sliced through a small courtyard at the centre of the hospital grounds. The courtyard was filled
with small patches of greenery interspersed with koi ponds, their waters glittering under a noon sun. At first a mechant trailed after him, but he shooed it away.

He sat on a concrete bench and took a small case from out of a jacket pocket, opening it and extracting a new Archives CogNet earpiece. He fitted it carefully to the lobe of one ear. During his
therapy, he’d been forced to rely on a general-purpose piece rather than the secure model normally used by Archives staff.

He activated it, immediately sensing the pulse of humanity in the streets beyond the hospital’s perimeter, and soon found himself deluged with data-ghosted messages from colleagues and
well-wishers in Archives, including Offenbach and Hetaera. There were so many that their animated images jostled for space around him, some appearing to hover above the nearby koi ponds. He
listened to a few before dismissing them all. He’d have plenty of opportunity to go through them all later.

And besides, what he had in mind might be better done without witnesses.

Linking into Archives for the first time since his return from Aeschere, he ran a search for any files with the reference Thorne, 51 Alpha, Code Yellow – and stared numbly at the fish
circling in the pond before him when the search returned an immediate hit.