The Killing of Worlds (35 page)

Oxham stiffened slightly, and the little beast on her lap betrayed her reaction with wide-eyed annoyance at the motion.

“Forgive me, Senator,” the sovereign apologized.

“I am your servant, Majesty.” Oxham stealthily jabbed the cat with a fingernail, but it simply purred.

She regarded the skull. At first, it seemed to be that of a child, but the cheekbones jutted ahead of the brow, and the teeth were arrayed in an uncorrected, pretechnology jumble. Along with the sloping forehead, these characteristics suggested the diminutive skull of an ancient hominid adult.

“Another history lesson, Sire?”

“An illustrative example, Senator.” He rotated the skull in his hand, tipped it to face him as if he were going to play Hamlet. Now its top was to Oxham, and she saw the holes.

There were four of them in a rectangle, each a few centimeters across, the two closer to the front much larger. Old cracks emanated from the holes. Only a sealant of gleaming transparent plastic kept the skull from crumbling in the Emperor’s hand.

Nara swallowed. This example might be a grim one.

“Some ancient form of execution, Sire?”

He shook his head. Another cat appeared from among the tulips and wound between the legs of her chair, then disappeared.

“Just an old story, for those who can read it.”

“I’m afraid I cannot, Liege.”

“This creature, one of our honored ancestors, lived on the African continent of Earth Prime.”

“In Egypt?”

“Farther south,” he corrected. “Before there were nations. At the edge of humanity’s existence, when tools were first emerging.”

Oxham nodded. This skull was old indeed. What a long, strange journey it had taken, to wind up here in this dead man’s hand.

“They lived in darkness, without language or fire. No agriculture, of course. Her people had no rudiments of civilization. They had no writing or spoken language.”

“What did they eat, Sire?”

“Wild plants, from the ground. Distasteful.”

“I’ve eaten wild plants, Sire.”

“Vasthold has a primeval charm.”

“It did when I left it.”

The sovereign turned the skull to face her. “She and her people lived in lava funnel caves, massive and deep, extensive enough to support their own food web. Our ancestors had a stable and protected niche. We would be there still if they hadn’t been driven outward into the sun.”

Oxham’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the holes again.

“The teeth of a predator, Your Majesty?”

“Dinofelis. Extinct long before the diaspora.”

The senator took a deep breath, realizing that the Emperor had returned to his favorite theme.

“I take it, Sire, that this animal is one of the great cats?” Until a few years ago, Oxham had always assumed the creatures legendary, created by the Apparatus at an Imperial whim. But the Imperial Zoo here on Home held a small, inbred family of lions that were generally believed to be natural. Awful beasts from a childhood nightmare, four times the size of any predator on “primeval” Vasthold.

The Emperor nodded happily. “A creature more than two meters long, when humans stood under a meter and a half. It possessed so-called false-saber teeth. Knives in its mouth.”

The Emperor of the Eighty Worlds made a claw of four fingers with his right hand, and plunged them into the holes. Oxham removed her hand from the purring creature on her lap.

“The great cats lived deeper in the caves than our ancestors, in the absolute darkness beyond the humans’ twilight domain.”

“They attacked from behind, apparently, Sire.”

He nodded, lifting the skull with his rapacious fingers, so that its empty eyes stared at her again.

“They grasped the heads of their victims with their jaws, penetrating the brain and killing instantly. Then they dragged the body back into the darkness.”

“And this danger drove us out of the caves, Your Majesty?”

“Exactly,” he agreed with flashing eyes. “But don’t think of these cats simply as some evolutionary pressure. This wasn’t mere natural selection; this was terror. The saber-tooths were utterly silent, invisible in the darkness. It’s possible that no human ever clearly saw one. They were original nightmare buried deep in our species’ psyche. They were death itself. This is the mark of the Old Enemy.”

Oxham looked down at the cat on her lap. She offered it a finger, which it licked once with its raspy tongue. The beast made a small noise in its throat and continued to purr, absolutely content.

“I see your love of felines has a darker side, Sire.”

“Of course, Senator. Their contributions to humanity, though always essential, haven’t always been pretty. Imagine being a predated species, Nara. At any moment, a family member, a lover, a friend might be hauled away screaming to die.”

“Like being always at war,” she said.

“And always on the front lines. But from this enemy came the necessity to evolve. We were defenseless against this beast, until we developed group cooperation, tools, and finally, the only useful weapon: fire.”

“The terror is what brought humanity up?” Nara Oxham said, then realized it at last: “Perhaps you are pro-death too, Sire.”

“Perhaps. The council faces another difficult decision.”

She took a deep breath. Was the Emperor contemplating another genocide already? “Sire, shouldn’t this be raised before the entire War Council?”

The dead sovereign narrowed his eyes. “Senator Oxham, the War Council is not a parliament of equals. I have enjoined twelve such councils over the last sixteen hundred years, and in each of them one counselor has arisen from among the others.”

Her eyes widened. Flattery from the Emperor? “I am your servant, Sire.”

“Don’t contest with me, Senator. You are nothing of the kind. You are the force that has risen up to balance my power. A natural occurrence in the evolution of this war.”

Oxham ordered herself to relax, trying to see into the man’s mind. There was more in his words than flattery. She spoke carefully.

“I agree, Your Majesty, that the council has achieved a balance now.”

He nodded. “That is its purpose, to be a microcosm of the Risen Empire. It must possess two parts, equal parts. But there are times when we must act together, you and I.”

She realized that the Emperor had taken the first person singular. He had dropped the imperial we for plainer speech.

The garden darkened, and the
Lynx
‘s war prize appeared in synesthesia.

“Our elevated hero Laurent Zai has concerns about this Rix artifact,” the sovereign said. “He believes it contains some sort of ghost of the Legis compound mind.”

“A ghost, Sire?”

“A doppelganger. A copy, transmitter from Legis. Captain Zai has been rather convincing on this point. If he’s right, the object is even more dangerous than the mind that occupied Legis. It contains all our secrets. And now it has a body as well.”

“Lucky, then, that the good captain has captured it.”

“We hope so. But the powers of this thing are unknown. It can change itself, Senator, at the lowest level of matter. Zai’s journey to Home will take almost two subjective years, ten Absolute. We don’t know what tests the
Lynx
may face over that length of time.”

Senator Oxham frowned. The official reports that the council had received about the object had couched their conclusions in very speculative language. Oxham wished that she could retain outside scientific counsel, but the reports were wrapped in the hundred-year rule. She couldn’t even access them outside the council chamber.

“In fact,” the Emperor continued, “it may be that the
Lynx
cannot control the object.”

“Control it, Sire?”

“The Apparatus representatives on board the
Lynx
believe that the object may be exerting an … influence. The thing is trying to subvert Zai’s crew. There is grave danger.”

What was the Emperor saying? Her empathy flared, and Oxham saw a bright shape in the Emperor’s mind, a point coming to focus: the culmination of a plan.

“Sire, aren’t there escort craft heading to rendezvous with Zai now?” she asked. Two smaller vessels had set out for Legis when the incursion began; they were now altering their paths, angling in behind the
Lynx
as it headed back toward Home.

The sovereign nodded. “Exactly. They will keep a greater distance from the object than the
Lynx
. And they will be under Imperial writ, outside of the usual chain of command.”

She saw it in his mind: the cold point of closure. Victory. Revenge.

“What are their orders, Sire?”

“They are fabricating several high-yield nuclear drones. If the need comes, they will destroy the object and the
Lynx
in a surprise attack.”

Nara Oxham felt blindness creep into the edges of her vision. Felt her own emotions rise: anger and desperation. She knew finally that the sovereign wouldn’t rest until Laurent Zai was dead.

“Sire …”

“Only if the need becomes immediate, Senator. I will make the final decision. I alone will take responsibility.”

The first person singular again.

“Shouldn’t the council discuss—”

“My oath is to protect the Eighty Worlds, Senator. Captain Zai’s warning is clear in this matter: This object represents a great threat to the Empire, even to humanity itself.’”

She swallowed. The dead man was hanging Laurent with his own words. He would use them later to justify his decision. Now that he had warned her, the Emperor could even claim that he had consulted with his counselors before emergency action. Although he couldn’t depopulate a world without the political cover of a War Council vote, the sovereign could certainly order a single frigate destroyed.

The people would remember that the Emperor had pardoned Zai. Making him a martyr would maintain a certain symmetry.

“I know you will keep this information confidential, Senator. The hundred-year rule still applies, of course, to this conversation.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

The cat leaped from her lap and crossed to rub itself against the Emperor’s legs. Nara Oxham rose, her mind numbed by the depth of the sovereign’s hunger for revenge against Laurent. She forced herself to look again into the arid space of his emotions, searching for what he feared so much.

But there was nothing there but satisfaction.

After the rituals of parting, as she walked through the obscenely gilded garden, Nara’s mind rang with one imperative. She had to warn Laurent. The
Lynx
could handle two escort craft, provided her captain was wary. But if he assumed they were friendly, they could overwhelm the frigate with a single stroke.

Then, as her eyes traced a swath of red flowers decorating an inverted sand dune, Oxham saw it, the shape hidden in the Emperor’s satisfaction. It grew clearer with every step away from his icy presence.

This was the trap. This was the mistake of which Niles had warned her. It had nothing to do with Laurent Zai.

The Emperor wanted her, Nara Oxham. He had somehow learned of their relationship, their previous communication. He knew that she would warn Zai.

And, of course, he was right.

There was no choice but to walk into this trap, eyes open.

It was the only way to save her lover.

Laurent Zai stood at the extreme of the observation blister.

He looked up at the object, its shape ominously black this far from the Legis sun. It boiled like a dark cloud presaging a storm. According to the DA staff assigned to monitor its movements, it had grown gradually more active over the last few weeks. Its attempts to signal the
Lynx
had grown in number and subtlety: There were signs scrawled huge upon its surface, old codes flashed at obscure frequencies, cryptic phrases in local Legis dialects that somehow made their way into the ship’s internal channels. It was all the
Lynx
‘s Al could do to forestall the mind’s attempts at communication. Finally, Zai had been forced to cut off all but the crudest level of sensor scrutiny of the object.

The
Lynx
had shut its ears. The Apparatus had demanded it.

Ever since the Rix prisoner had attempted to deliver Alexander’s “message,” His Majesty’s Representatives had behaved as if they were victorious boarders on a captured enemy ship. Their watchful gaze seemed to penetrate every deck of the
Lynx
. It was all ExO Hobbes could do to track the various bugs that the Apparatus had placed in the ship’s functions. This invasion of his ship appalled Zai, but he was powerless against the imperative of an Imperial writ, the scope of which seemed to expand daily.

Adept Trevim had sealed up the Rix prisoner’s cell as tight as a tomb, and posted an Apparatus guard with her at all times. The Adept had also taken personal control over the
Lynx
‘s external communications. Every outgoing message required her approval now. And, of course, Trevim had commanded that the frigate blind itself from any and all signs emanating from the object.

Of course, there were rumors. Some crew thought they knew what the Rix artifact was trying to say. But the stories were contradictory and absurd, just the chatter of a bored crew. ExO Hobbes had even detected a rumor that the suicide of Data Master Kax a few weeks ago had been related to a message from the object that he had deciphered. But the theory conveniently ignored the fact the man’s immune system had rejected his artificial eyes; a lifelong data analyst, he had simply gone mad from blindness.

Zai touched the plastic membrane between himself and the void, feeling the cold on the other side. He wondered what weapon the object had offered him.

Then he pushed the disloyal thoughts aside, and turned to his more important business here.

A senatorial missive awaited his attention. From Nara Oxham, His Majesty’s Representative from Vasthold. August and luminous, the message hovered against the blackness of space, its security icons slowly coiling around themselves like tree snakes crowding a branch.

He opened it.

Zai smiled as his lover’s words appeared. He imagined her voice.