Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors

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.’