In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (6 page)

“That is not the most appropriate of phrasing,” Sajir said gently.

“Your Supremacy?”

Sajir sa-Tomond fell into the Terran language called Russian; they had a ridiculous number of languages, and used them all simultaneously, but it was an ability he had thought sufficiently useful to cultivate. Communication beyond the basics required more than translation of words; modes of thought and perception embodied in the underlying syntax must be understood.

“You implied a genetic relationship with myself, the Tollamune,” he explained gently. “This is a serious breach of protocol and may not be done even as a matter of metaphor. Further, you did not use the metaphorical mode.”

“My apologies, Your Supremacy.”

“While not forgotten, the offense is allowed to pass without repercussion, due to your ignorance of the Real World’s usages,” Sajir said formally.

Unnoticed by the Terran diplomat, the Expediter of Painful Transitions lowered the grub-implanter.

“Concerning the treaty—”

Binkis giggled and uttered two command code words. Lin jerked and stood stock still. Just below where his spine met his skull something glistened for a moment as it moved.

“Thank you, Your Supremacy,” Lin continued. “I request permission to return to my quarters. I . . . I have matters to consider.”

“Permission is granted with formal expressions of amiable goodwill. Let harmony be sustained!”

Binkis giggled again as the Terran walked away, shaking his head as if bothered by some annoying parasite . . . which, considering the ancestry of the implant, was not too far from the truth. Sajir sa-Tomond gestured in a manner that meant
anticipated reaction
. As Binkis was possibly possessed by the ancient entities, but was certainly a Terran with limited appreciation of the High Speech, he added aloud:

“How long before they begin to suspect? Eventually the knowledge that a Terran who did not arrive by spaceship is at my court will reach them. Not all are suitably infected by the neural controller. The high rate of fatalities is an inconvenience; the new model is still prone to prompting severe allergic reactions.”

“They already suspect something. It will not matter if we can interface your ancestors’ devices fully with the Terran power plant, their numerically driven controllers, and also with their weapons.”

“Ah, yes, the explosives dependent on deconstruction of nuclei in a feedback cycle and the expanding-combustion-gas propulsive missiles,” Savir said. “I am still somewhat dubious. Reducing territory to toxic dust seems . . . excessive if one wishes to control it.”

“A few examples will produce submission.”

“A good point. Force is always more effectively employed as threat than actuality; the greater the raw strength, the more this is so.”

“And they will give you leverage against the Eastbloc and against Terra as a whole. They were designed to counter possible USASF action; they have that capacity against Eastbloc ships as well. You will effectively dominate space near Mars.”

“True. There remains the problem of the interface, though. New devices are required. Mere selective breeding, or even enzymatic recombinant splicing of the cellular mechanisms of existing machinery is not sufficient; my savants are definite and unanimous, and my own judgment is the same. The very mathematics are different, and require neural devices of novel types, incorporating the target algorithms. The theory needed to produce such is known; practical implementation of such ceased very long ago.”

“You have the original cell-mechanism modification devices. The Tollamune genome will activate them.”

Ah
, Sajir thought,
he still longs for the repair of his consort, who arrived with him
.

The Terran woman was quite mad; only a form of synthetic hibernation had preserved her life this long. The Ancient-derived devices probably
would
suffice, if only it were possible to use them.

He frowned thoughtfully before he spoke. “There is a reason they have not been employed for so very long. They are quite old, they have been used intensively without maintenance, and as a result,
they
are . . . distressed. My genes are correct; my endurance, however, has diminished to the point where further contact would endanger my life.”

And that is all you need to know. The true secret, you do not know, nor shall you
.

He turned and left; etiquette did not require anything further for the Emperor, of course. His back still crawled slightly, as if in anticipation of the knife or the needle.

Yet that is one of my most familiar sensations
, he thought.
I cannot recall a time beyond infancy when it was not chronic. We have preserved the consensual myth of the absolute authority of the Tollumune Throne for so
long, yet was it ever more than literalized metaphor? Not in the opinion of my ancestors, certainly. And most certainly, not since the loss of the Invisible Crown
.

The elevator was a bubble of warmth and color and light after the dank dimness of the pumping chamber. It had been repaired and resurfaced for his visit, and the murals were pleasantly pastoral; they showed small, four-legged creatures with silky fur and overlapping rows of teeth gamboling through reeds beside a lake while the tentacles of predatory invertebrates prepared attack. Idly, he wondered if the place still existed; probably not. The small creatures were extinct save for their preserved genetic data, and so were the invertebrates, except in derived weapon—and execution—forms.

“Rise to the Imperial Quarters level,” the captain of his bodyguards said, though this shaft was a dedicated one.

The elevator began to hum quietly as it rose through the Tower of Harmonic Unity. The tune was soothing but a little banal, though it covered the quick panting of the engine as it worked the winch on the traveling chamber’s roof. The ride was water-smooth otherwise; the engine had been replaced with a fresh budding as well, and the rails and wheels greased by lubricant crawler. The smooth efficiency was bitterly pleasant, as if he had fallen back through the ages, as if all Dvor Il-Adazar were so, drawing on the resources of a world. When it stopped, he pressed a hand to a plate that was warm and slightly moist; it pulsed as it tasted him and identified the Imperial genome.

When the door dilated and he walked through into his sanctum, the present returned on padding feet; murals ever so slightly faded . . .

One wall was glassine, as clear as ever and at the three-thousand-foot level. It showed the slopes of the western cliffs tumbling away below, carved into tower and dome, bridge and roadway, as far north and south as vision could reach. They had been wrought from living rock, black and tawny and golden, but always framed in the blood red that had given his lineage its name. Beyond stretched the Grand Canal that circled the huge volcanic cone and collected the water its height raked from the sky. On either side of the canal lay the greenish red and blue-green of life, with here and there the soaring white pride of a magnate’s villa.

Fliers drifted past, lean, crimson patrolcraft, diminutive yachts
with fanciful paint, plain, fat-bodied freighters; riders mounted on
Paiteng
swooped and soared among them. Landships by the hundred waited by the docks, or sailed the ochre-colored turf of the passageways that led through the croplands to the deserts beyond. Behind him rose the Mountain itself, towering near seventy thousand feet above, through layers of garden and forest and glacier, and then on to the thin verges of space.

If Dvor Il-Adazar was only a city-state now, it was at least the greatest that yet remained in the Real World . . . though from here you could not see how many towers and courts sheltered only dust and silence and fading legends. If the empty ones were fewer than they had been in the year of his accession, then the credit was his, the long struggle against entropy.

“Attend me,” he said to the guard-commander, and led the way into the Chamber of Memories.

A flick of a finger brought attendants who left essences and a bowl of smoldering stimulative and then withdrew. Sajir sa-Tomond sat in a lounger that adjusted to his frail length and began to administer warmth and massage. The room was neither very large nor very grand, except for the single block of red crystal shaped into a seat against the far wall; there was only one other like that in all existence, in the Hall of Received Submission.

He stared moodily at it as he sipped. The essence gave him the semblance of strength, and he closed his eyes for a moment to settle his mind. A game of
atanj
lay on a board before him, each piece carved from a single thumb-sized jewel or shaped from precious metal: ruby and jet for the Despots, black jade for the Clandestines, tourmaline for the Coercives, gold fretwork and diamond for the Boycotts.

“Sit,” he said to the Coercive. “Unmask. Refresh yourself. You have not made a move today.”

The commander did, raising the visor of his parade helm with its faceted eyes and golden mandibles. When the Tollamune opened his own eyes once more, sorrow pierced him to the heart at the sight of the face beneath, the steady golden eyes and the bronze hair in its jeweled war-net. So like, so like . . .

The Thoughtful Grace moved immediately; a Transport leaping a Boycott to deliver a cargo.

Ah!
Sajir thought,
daring, yet clever. I will not win this game in less than twenty-three moves now
.

“I have a task for you, Notaj sa-Soj,” he said softly.

“Command me, Tollamune,” the man said.

The voice was different from
hers
, a little deeper, a little older—Vowin sa-Soj had been only fifty at the beginning of her long and bitter death. Notaj sa-Soj was her sire’s youngest brother by another breeding partner, and at a century young for his post. His eugenic qualifications were impeccable, and his record of action matched it.

“To recapitulate that which is universally known but rarely expressed: I have no heir,” Sajir said. “None of more than one-eighth consanguinity, and none of sufficient genetic congruity to be accounted of the Lineage or to operate the Devices. With me, the Crimson Dynasty ends, after eighteen thousand years of the Real World, and all hope of restoring
Sh’u Maz
in its true form.”

“This is true, Supremacy. With you will perish the significance of our existence and such meaning as sentience has imposed on mere event. There is little consolation in it, but the line of the Kings Beneath the Mountain will at least end with a superior individual.”

The nicating membranes swept over Notaj’s eyes, leaving them glistening. “I will preserve your life as long as event and randomness permit, your Supremacy,” he added, his voice firm.

Despite everything, Sajir sa-Tomond felt himself smile at the harmonics that underlay the flat statement. The voice of a Thoughtful Grace purebred could rarely be read for undertone by anyone but a Tollamune.

“At least, the official perception of matters is that I have no heir of closer than one-eighth consanguinity,” Sajir said, and saw the other’s pupils flare and ears cock forward.

Their breed had been selected for wit, not merely deadliness. They had been generals and commanders once, as well as matchless Coercives on a personal level. The implications and possibilities needed little restating.

“Vowin’s offspring survives?”

“Correct, Captain. Concealed here until relatively recently. When she matured, traces of the Tollamune inheritance became unmistakable.”

They shared a glance that said:
And then she must be hidden and exiled, for what crime is more reprobated than the theft of the Tollamune genome? But now, perhaps, the balance of forces allows
. . .

“The knowledge is no longer so closely held as would best suit my purposes,” Sajir went on. “You will understand that multiple factions wish the official and perceived reality to be made objective truth, lest the pleasantly empty field left after my long-anticipated departure should prove not so empty after all.”

“But you do not so wish, Supremacy?” the guard captain said, his voice neutral as the cool water in the fountain.

“I never did.” Sajir’s eyes closed again, this time against remembered pain. “As evidence, she lives.”

“But Vowin does not—interrogative-hypothetical?”

“Certain courses of action were . . . necessary. If she had waited longer to make herself receptive to fertilization, as I instructed . . . But you of the Thoughtful Grace are headlong. And there was doubt as to my own survival at the time. The arrival of the
vas-Terranan
machines disturbed a most delicate balance.”

Notaj blinked, integrating the information. “She must have been willing to undertake death by infestation in order to secure the Lineage,” he said; there was a hard pride in his tone. “She was, as you say, youthful and headlong, but a fine strategic analyst, and ruthless. And genetically ambitious. To bear the first outcross of the Tollamune line in ten millennia . . .”

Sajir sa-Tomond let his shoulders and head fall into a pose of acceptance. “So she said. Such pride was worthy of eugenic elevation. We of the Dynasty have hugged our seed too close, to the detriment of
Sh’u Maz
.”

The guardsman gestured agreement-with-reservations; unspoken was the reason for that—the tools of power responded to the genome, not the individual. Too many Emperors had died at the hands of their own close kin for any to forget it. So their numbers had dwindled across the millennia and their own long life spans.

As have the water and atmosphere of the Real World itself
, Sajir thought.
This is a congruity far too apt for comfort
.

“There are many factors to be considered,” Notaj said. “Your demise would, with a high degree of probability, be expedited if an
heir were anticipated, but not yet in place and aligned with effective power. Those disaffected elements content to wait now for their chance would act precipitately in that hypothesis.”

“True. Therefore the heir must be found, brought to Dvor Il-Adazar, and put in an unassailable position. Those who wish to kill or capture her—”