Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors

‘And the Ambassador had just come from a meeting with Carter, who heads up an advisory committee on deep space research,’ said Luc, feeling a prickle of unease.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said de Almeida. ‘Believe me, there are no Founder artefacts anywhere in the Tian Di. I’d know if there were.’

He looked at her carefully. ‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’

Her expression became uncertain. ‘Let’s just stick to the facts we have and not get distracted by speculation. Only one way inside the Founder Network has ever been discovered, and that’s still deep inside Coalition territory. As far as Ambassador Sachs is concerned, we need to figure out just how he managed to fool my systems so completely.’

‘There was something you said back at Vasili’s funeral service, about rumours of secret negotiations with the Coalition. Maybe we need to start speculating: what if the rumours are true? And what if Carter, Tidman, Kowallek and the Ambassador are all involved in some capacity? And . . . what about Cheng?’

She looked at him. ‘What about Cheng?’

‘I just heard a rumour he’s been asked to relinquish control over the Council.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

She didn’t seem angry, just curious. ‘Through a contact in SecInt,’ he told her. ‘Is it true?’

She shook her head as if in sorrow. ‘There’s some truth to it, yes.’

Luc felt suddenly light-headed. ‘Borges was right, wasn’t he? Something really is going on – something bigger than one Councillor winding up dead.’

De Almeida sighed, all of her usual swagger gone. ‘I really don’t know, Mr Gabion. If I did, I probably wouldn’t need you here. I already told you I’m not always privy to everything that goes on in the Council, particularly where its higher echelons are concerned. Sometimes I have little more than rumours to rely on myself.’

‘What I’m beginning to wonder,’ Luc continued, ‘is whether there’s something more to Reunification than is being publicly admitted. What if it’s not just about reuniting the human race – what if there’s some other reason the Coalition are here?’

Just a few days before, the idea of speaking to a member of the Temur Council in this way would have been unimaginable to him. So much had changed in such a very short time. Even so, Luc held his breath as he waited for her to reply.

‘I think you’re on the right path,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t necessarily know more than you do. But I want to know what’s going on, because whatever it is, the Eighty-Five are keeping it hidden from the rest of us – from the rest of the Council, I mean. But like I said, you have an advantage since you can still go places I can’t.’

‘You and the rest of the Council are more powerful than anyone else in history, but you keep telling me you need me .’ Luc shook his head and laughed, overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the situation. ‘Just how many friends do you have left here on Vanaheim, Zelia?’

She opened her mouth to frame a retort, then instead stepped towards a nearby table, leaning against it and folding her arms over her chest as if hugging herself.

‘Not as many as there used to be,’ she said quietly. ‘Look – what you have to understand is that the one thing still uniting the Council is that we are all survivors. Most of us were alive when Earth died, and we lived through the fighting before and after the Schism. After that, things were in such an appalling mess that we had no choice but to try and hold everything together, and Cheng was key to making that work. We’ve all shared so much with each other over the centuries that you couldn’t possibly understand the loyalty most of us still feel towards the very idea of the Council.’

She gripped the edge of the table, her expression bleak. ‘But now everything’s about to change with Reunification – and I mean everything. It’s possible the Council itself might not survive the transition, let alone Cheng. And as much as I hate to admit it, it’s possible our time is past.’

‘How could reconnecting with the Coalition cause so much change? They’re just people, same as us.’

‘Are they? Can you really say that about Ambassador Sachs?’

‘I admit the costume he wears is ridiculous, but I’m sure there’s an ordinary human being under there.’ But even as he spoke, Luc felt the lack of conviction in his words.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said before, Gabion? The Coalition are vastly more technologically advanced than we are. We could end up swamped by them, and there are those like Borges who’d be prepared to commit violence in order to try and turn back the tide of history.’

Something occurred to Luc as she spoke.

‘I have an idea,’ he said, gesturing towards the spinning globe. ‘According to what I can see here, the Ambassador’s flier was in a circumpolar orbit when he was last seen, right?’

She nodded. ‘He’d have reached Liebenau in another hour or so if he hadn’t vanished.’

Luc looked again at the globe. The Ambassador’s flier would have passed over icy wastes stretching for thousands of kilometres. Stepping closer, he saw a chain of white-clad mountains amidst an otherwise featureless void of snow.

There was a brief twinge of pain behind his eyes. Something about those mountains . . .

‘What about here?’ he asked, fingers brushing through the air where the globe was projected.

‘No, there’s nothing there, except . . .’

She paused, and turned to look at him, her mouth half-open.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There is something out there.’ She made her hands into fists and pressed them against the sides of her head. ‘Stupid,’ she muttered to herself, ‘ stupid .’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘There,’ she said, stabbing one finger toward the chain of mountains, just a thousand kilometres shy of Vanaheim’s north pole. ‘That’s where Cheng’s kept Javier Maxwell locked up all these centuries.’

Luc felt a sudden tightening in his chest. Javier Maxwell. The greatest renegade of them all, after Antonov – and the author of the very book Luc had found on Vasili’s body. A book that, according to no less an authority than Vincent Hetaera, shouldn’t even exist.

‘Is it possible . . . ?’ he asked.

‘That this is where the Ambassador disappeared to? I can’t think of any other possibility,’ she said.

‘Perhaps if I data-ghosted there—’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘If Sachs can fool my surveillance networks that easily, he can certainly trick a data-ghost into seeing whatever he wants. This is going to require eyeballs on the ground.’

‘What about your armies of micro-mechants? Can’t you use them?’

She shook her head. ‘Cheng gave the Sandoz sole responsibility for handling security for Maxwell’s prison. That means I’m not allowed to have my own surveillance anywhere near it.’

‘So unless you plan on going out there yourself,’ said Luc, ‘you’re going to need me to go out there.’

She nodded. ‘Unless there’s something else out there I don’t know about, Maxwell’s prison is the only place Ambassador Sachs could have gone.’

‘And if we do find him there?’

‘Then we have the evidence we need to prove he’s been carrying out clandestine meetings, without putting you in any danger. And if we can confront him with that evidence, maybe we’ll be able to find out where he really was the night of Sevgeny’s murder.’