Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors

‘So do you keep the mask on to avoid frightening people?’

The Ambassador hesitated a moment. ‘To avoid confusing them would be the more accurate statement. Is this relevant to your investigation?’

No, but it’s relevant to me. ‘You met with Vasili just shortly before he died?’

‘That is a matter of record.’

‘Where were you at the time he died?’

‘At a function, held in my honour, and attended by Councillors who had participated in the preparations for Reunification. Vasili’s absence, it should be said, was noted by all present.’

‘And when you last spoke with Vasili, what did you talk about?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary. We had regular meetings to go over whatever details or issues might come about on the run-up to Reunification. He seemed alert but tired that last time.’

‘He didn’t seem anxious, or worried about anything?’

‘If he had,’ the Ambassador replied, ‘we would have been sure to mention it upon hearing of his death.’

Luc could see he wasn’t getting anywhere. ‘Vasili was central to Reunification, but would you agree that the Temur Council is far from unified in their support for it?’

‘Perhaps not,’ the Ambassador replied, with just a hint of evasiveness.

‘The fact is,’ Luc continued, ‘Reunification remains a deeply contentious issue, even now. You’ve spent a lot of time dealing with members of the Council yourself, so you must have some idea who might have the necessary motivation to want to kill the one man seen as the architect of that entire process.’

‘We are far from being experts regarding divisions within the Council,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘And besides, there are limits to what we can discuss with a non-Council member.’

‘I speak for Zelia de Almeida. You can assume that when you’re speaking to me, you’re also speaking to her.’

‘Mr Gabion, we were at Vasili’s funeral service – and saw you there, as a virtual presence. You had conspired to hide yourself from the eyes of everyone else present, but not from us. You heard Councillor Borges as well as we did: he openly accused her of orchestrating Councillor Vasili’s murder. Are you sure it’s not her your questions should be directed at?’

Luc couldn’t hide his shock. ‘You saw me there?’

‘Indeed we did. It’s also our understanding,’ the Ambassador continued, ‘that Borges is not alone in believing your employer is guilty of perpetrating a murder.’

‘That’s still to be proven,’ Luc countered, wondering how he had so quickly gone from interrogator to the interrogated.

‘Then doesn’t it seem strange that the person regarded as a primary suspect would herself carry out an investigation into Vasili’s death?’

‘You knew this when she asked you to meet me here.’ He realized he was fast losing control of the situation. ‘Why did you agree to this meeting, if you had nothing to say on the matter?’

‘On the contrary,’ said the Ambassador. ‘We agreed to this meeting because we wanted to meet you .’

Luc’s own astonished face stared back at him from the Ambassador’s mask.

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps, Mr Gabion, you have something to hide. When we saw you there at Vasili’s service, we knew immediately that you possessed a lattice unlike any other in the worlds of the Tian Di except, perhaps, our own.’

Luc felt as if time had slowed to a standstill. The sound of his own heart beating seemed to fill the arboretum, like a pulse reverberating through the dense moist air.

‘At first,’ the Ambassador continued, ‘we thought it was Winchell Antonov himself standing there, but when we looked more closely we saw that we were mistaken – at least in part. We later made cautious enquiries and discovered your identity, as well as your involvement in Antonov’s downfall.’

Luc’s hands had started to tremble at his sides. ‘What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘Antonov is dead.’

‘Is he?’ asked the Ambassador. ‘And has he communicated with you since he “died”?’

Luc didn’t answer, and the Ambassador inclined his head. ‘We know that within the Tian Di only members of the Council and Sandoz Clans are permitted the use of instantiation lattices. Your lattice is therefore illegal. We saw Antonov’s shade within you when you entered this station,’ he continued, ‘and I can see that your lattice is new, but growing wildly out of control. Please don’t deny this is the truth.’

‘At the most there’s a – a ghost, an artefact, some remnant of Antonov’s conscious mind inside of me,’ Luc stammered. ‘That, and some random memories.’

‘We cannot help but wonder how you came to possess the memories of the man you were sent to capture.’

Luc fought the urge to reach out and rip the Ambassador’s mask away, but things had already gone badly wrong enough without compounding them with further errors.

‘If we’re going to be frank with each other,’ said Luc, ‘I know you met with Winchell Antonov. That’s a dangerous association to have, for a representative of what’s still technically an enemy civilization.’

‘How do you know we met with him?’

‘You said it yourself, Ambassador Sachs. I have some of Antonov’s memories, even if they are fragmentary. He seemed to be angry with you for some reason.’

‘Why don’t you ask him about it yourself, Mr Gabion? It appears the two of you are on far more intimate terms than he and I ever were. Otherwise, the details of that encounter must remain private.’ The Ambassador made to turn away, then hesitated. ‘Tell Zelia I’m sorry we couldn’t help more, but there’s nothing useful we could possibly tell her regarding Vasili.’

It appeared their interview was over. Luc watched as the Ambassador turned and stepped along a path leading deeper amongst the moist-leaved ferns crowding the dome; and then he remembered Antonov’s words, spoken in a dream: With the Ambassador’s help, we will both be reborn, and a terrible calamity prevented .

‘Antonov told me you could help me!’ Luc yelled after him. ‘He said you could prevent a calamity, but I don’t know what he meant.’

The Ambassador came to a halt but did not turn around. ‘He said that?’

‘Yes. No, not exactly. It was . . .’ Luc swallowed. ‘It was in a dream.’

He half expected the Ambassador to laugh.

Instead, the masked figure turned to face him once more. ‘In the Coalition, the distinction between dreams and waking are as fluid and meaningless as that which separates life and death. We make equally little distinction between that which you would not regard as objectively real, and what you would consider tangible and solid. The difference, from our perspective, is sufficiently negligible to be meaningless. Like yourself, each one of us speaks with the dead as a matter of course. In fact, the dead could be said to constitute the majority of the Coalition’s population.’

‘And the calamity? What did he mean by that?’

‘Something that is not of your concern,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘The knowledge would place you in a considerably greater degree of danger than we suspect you are already in.’

‘Tell me,’ Luc grated, ‘or I go to the Council and tell them everything I know, including that you met with Antonov.’

‘And if you do,’ the Ambassador pointed out, ‘they will surely pick your brain apart, neurone by neurone, once they discover that you have a lattice.’