Vortex (35 page)

The editor sighed. "You clottin' win. Go, already."

Ranett went low profile. She got a spare berth on a freighter bound for the Altaics. The only beings aware of her journey were her editor, the company clerk who made out the expense chits, and the freighter captain, a reliable drunk.

Ranett was one of those individuals who habitually find themselves in the right place at the right time. "I'm just lucky that way,'' she would tell her colleagues at the press club bar. They never believed it. They attributed her good work and fortune to "lies, bribes, and looks." Ranett didn't lie, would rather skip a story than grease a palm, and her looks were merely adequate.

Her luck struck again two E-days out of the Altaic Cluster, when she caught word of the disaster on Rurik. As she listened to the confused broadcasts on the ship's communicator, Ranett chortled. She would be the
only
major-league newsbeing in place to report on the incident and its certain nasty aftermath.

Ranett hustled off to her cabin to double up on her homework.

She had hauled along a big case of fiche on the cluster's dirty little history.

Eighteen E-hours out of Jochi, the captain came sober and shamefaced to her door. "Got some bad news, lady," he said. "We gotta go back."

Ranett pierced him with that look famous for buckling knees far sturdier than his. "Explain, please."

The captain shook his head. "I can't. Company veep wouldn't say why. Just said, do not deliver cargo to Jochi. And to get my butt back to Soward."

"So, forget the cargo,'' Ranett said. "You can still deliver me."

"No way, lady. Sorry."

"I'll pay extra. Double fare. Hell, I'll charter your whole damned ship!"

The captain sighed. This was wounding his mercenary soul. "I was ordered not to set down on Jochi. In any circumstances."

Ranett came to her feet. "You people have a contract with my company," she snapped. "And I expect it to be carried out—in full!"

She racked the captain up against the wall. "Now, get that buttwipe veep on the line. You hear?"

The captain heard.

She started with the veep and worked her way up to the president of the shipping line, scorching space from the Altaics to Prime in the process.

It was hopeless.

As the freighter turned maddeningly around and set off on its return journey, Ranett learned two things: The shipping line was as upset as she was at the action—there was an expensive and perishable cargo aboard the freighter. And the order had been initiated outside the company.

Meaning it was political.

Meaning the action could only be aimed at her.

Someone real important wanted to stop Ranett from getting the story on Jochi.

And there was nothing she could do.

Her editor was equally irked. "Nobody will admit it, but this has Imperial interference written all over it," he fumed on the deep-space hookup. "I jerked chains all the way up to Arundel, but it's no good. Everybody's scared."

"How'd they find out I was on the way?" Ranett asked.

"Snoops. Bugs. What else? I'm having our offices swept by security right now."

"What's our competition doing?" Ranett wanted to know.

"That's the only good news," the editor said. "It's not just us. Nobody but nobody with press credentials gets to the Altaics."

Enough details did leak out, however, to put the Emperor into a high rage.

BARRACKS BOMB TOLL SOARS
, read one vid screamer,
SHAME ON THE ALTAICS
, read another. And there were many, more:

GUARDSMEN
'
S
FAMILIES
IN
SHOCK
…
TRAGIC
IMPERIAL
FOUL
-
UP
ON RURIK
… The more thoughtful vid casts weighed in with: ALTAIC
TURMOIL
TIED
TO
ISKRA
…
QUESTIONS
RAISED
ON
EMPEROR
'
S
CHOICE
OF
OBSCURE
PROFESSOR
…
ISKRA
:
THE
SCHOLAR
TYRANT.

"Next time I write a constitution,'' the Emperor railed, "I want an Official Secrets Act with
real
damned teeth in it. I want prison terms. I want firing squads—I want clottin' torture chambers, dammit!"

The woman with the lush young figure and old pol eyes applauded. "No problem with that drakh," Avri said. "Last polls I ran on the media showed the rubes are with ya, boss. Ten percent think a free press is important. Sixty-five percent say kick those rabble-rousers off the sleigh. And the other twenty-five percent were so dumb they thought the Evening News was a livie sitcom.''

The Emperor's rage turned to booming laughter. "That's what I liked about you from the start, Avri," he said. "You always cut to the chase."

"I got my masters in scalp hunting on Dusable," she said. "But I got my Ph.D. watching you in action… sir." Avri looked the Emperor up and down in frank admiration. "I never met or heard of a politician living or dead who coulda pulled what you pulled."

The Emperor made humble noises. "I didn't invent anything. I just stole from the masters." He gave Avri a wolfish grin. "Of course, I put a few new twists on the rules."

"I'll say you clottin' did, uh, sir."

"Knock off the sir," the Emperor said. "When we're in private, of course. There's no room for respect in a business that votes graveyards."

The Emperor had met Avri on his long road back from death to the Imperial crown. He had needed to fix an election on Dusable, and she was handling the perfect candidate for the job: an empty-headed pretty boy who would sit and heel and fetch in those votes like a good little political doggy.

At the time, he had mainly appreciated Avri's crooked brain. But as he looked at her now, poured into a black body suit, other areas of interest came to mind. Avri caught the look. She gave him a "don't mind at all" smile and stretched back in her seat to give him a better view. The Emperor felt a stir. He put it aside for a while. Let it age in the cooler.

"How are things lining up in Parliament?" he asked.

"Real nice," Avri said, a bit disappointed. But she brightened quickly as she took up her favorite game: counting yeas and nays. "Tyrenne Walsh has been practicing that speech we worked up for him. The dumb clot doesn't understand a word he's saying—but he
sounds
positively yummy.'' Walsh was the pretty boy Avri and the Emperor had put into the top job on Dusable—toppling one of the canniest and dirtiest old political bosses in the Empire, while they were at it.

Now the Emperor had called in Avri to launch his plan to turn the independent Imperial provinces into under-his-thumb dominions.

"Here's how I have it mapped," Avri said. "Walsh gives the lead-off speech, just like you said. He makes with the high-minded buzzwords to start: duty, loyalty, patriotism… all those words that hit the symbolism buzzer hard."

The Emperor nodded. "Fine. Fine. Then he makes the big statement, right?"

"That's what you wanted,'' Avri said, "but I think you're moving for the bottom line too fast. I mean, we don't want him to sound like your stooge."

The Emperor chuckled. "Heaven forbid."

"Well, that's how it'll sound," Avri said. "What we want him to do is announce that he's going to be the first big boss to turn over his system to you."

"You mean, to become one of my dominions," the Emperor said.

"Sameo, sameo," Avri said. "Of course, in Walsh's case it don't matter. He's already being run. By yours truly. But some of the other types are used to calling their own shots. They're not gonna go that easy."

The Emperor saw her point. "What did you have in mind?"

"A hero sandwich," Avri said. "If we put enough garbage in this bun, nobody'll notice how thin the slices of ham and cheese are. And they'll have voted and be halfway home before the heartburn cuts in."

"Go on," the Emperor said.

"Okay, so we wave the flag like you said." Avri made a crude pumping gesture with a closed fist. "Then we lay on some personal suffering biz. You know: the letter from the little old lady who's sending in her last credit to help bail out the Empire. And I did a vid layout on some starving infants. Good creepy drakh. Orange hair. Swollen bellies. Real neato heart ruggers."

"Blood, sweat, and baby urine," the Emperor said. "It always works."

"Sure. With your left hand. Okay, now get this. While they're still gaggin' on the screwed up kids, I wanna smack 'em good with an old soldier's routine I worked up."

"This is getting pretty interesting," the Emperor said. "I might vote for this thing four or five times myself."

"You better," Avri said. "You need
margin
on this sucker… Now. I dug up some old general of yours. Been retired thirty some years. More dirt in his head than brains. I got him all worked up about the quote 'plight of the Empire' end quote. Got him good and weepy. At the end, he struggles to his feet—I put him on crutches—and calls on all the beings in your Empire to pull together.

"He does a terrific unity whine. Says this is the greatest emergency in his lifetime. And that no sacrifice is too great to ratchetaratcheta—it'll work like a charm. I guarantee it. Laid it on a test group last night. Not a dry eye in the house. Best of all, the audience emptied its pockets for the Imperial relief fund. Best bucks per capita those frauds have ever seen."

"Then Walsh makes the announcement?" the Emperor asked.

"Then Walsh makes the announcement."

"Great job," the Emperor said. "But I have one wrinkle to add to your problem."

"What's that?"

"That boost I'm planning in the AM2 tax?"

Avri nodded. "Yeah. Good idea. Scare clot out of the holdouts. What about it?"

"I want to make it retroactive. To all the AM2 since the end of the Tahn war.''

Avri whistled. "Might scare 'em too much."

"Sorry. You're going to have to work around it, somehow."

Avri's eyes suddenly brightened. "Maybe if the general died at the end. On-camera collapse type of thing. So we're leading with quote 'dying last words' end quote. He's pretty feeble. I imagine the techs can give him a stroke for the retake."

"Bad idea," the Emperor said.

"Yeah. Somebody might find out. Leak it."

"I'm not worried about that," the Emperor said. "It's just his dying words will upstage Walsh. And he's the boy carrying this thing."

Avri caught his logic. "That's why you're the boss," she said. "I'll figure something. It'll be easy."

The interview over, Avri was giving the Emperor "the look" again—eyes misting over, squirming in her seat. "Anyway," she husked, "that's the plan."

"No quarrels from me," the Emperor said. "Put it into action. ''

He returned the look. Let his gaze run across her body. Starting from the toes… working slowly up.

"Will there be anything… else?" Avri asked.

The Emperor let it wait. Then: "Maybe… later."

"Did I mention my secretary?" Avri asked. She licked her lips. "She's been a lot of… help on this thing."

"I'll have to thank her some time," the Emperor said.

"I could call her… now."

"Make it personal?" the Emperor said, voice low.

"Real personal. Just the… three of us."

"Call her," the Eternal Emperor said.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

P
oyndex screened the report yet again. It had not changed since he had last read it, three minutes ago. If it had not come from a long-trusted—as much as any spymaster ever trusts a source—field agent, he would have thought either someone was trying to shuck him, or else the report was on a loop from years before in the days of the privy council.

Poyndex had promised himself, back on Earth, that he would be "good," that he would quit running agents and trying to figure out what was "really" happening. Of course, he could not. No one who had ever walked in the shadow world ever believed that the truth was what was in the spotlight.

According to the report, someone was putting large credits behind the Cult of the Emperor. Just as Kyes of the council had years earlier. And this someone was not an easily findable "anonymous benefactor.'' The credits were coming in through multiple sources, all of which could be traced just so far, and then hit a stone wall.

Poyndex idly ran the cult through an open-search function to see if anything else of interest was going on.

In a few minutes he had an answer.

A great deal was occurring. High-ranking cult members that a file had automatically been opened on, back in Poyndex's Mercury Corps days, were realizing their dreams. They were being promoted—frequently over the heads of their former superiors—quite rapidly.

Hair lifted suddenly on the back of Poyndex's neck. His fingers slashed keys, and he bailed out of the search. His forehead beaded sweat.

Poyndex considered, then grimaced.

He was probably being paranoiac. But the same sense of danger shrilled that had howled through his system after that bomb in the Imperial guts had been removed.

He was grateful he had programmed his computer to work with cutouts. The search, for instance, could be traced by a sufficiently skilled expert. But the trace would lead to an open library terminal on a faraway frontier world.

The Cult of the Emperor was active…

He slid open a hidden cover on the side of the keyboard and forced two tabs together, activating an override command and breaking a fingernail in the process.

There was but one being Poyndex could think of who could play that many cultists like puppets on a string, and who would also have that many sterile channels to pour money down…

His computer instantly wiped itself sterile and was overwritten, just as standard military procedure dictated. Then it was automatically wiped yet again… and again overwritten.

The Eternal Emperor himself…

Poyndex's computer clicked, and the third, final program was added, files and a program that excluded any action that Poyndex had taken within the last E-week.

But what benefit could the Emperor gain from the Cult of the Eternal Emperor?