Empire's End (29 page)

There was nothing Lagguth could say. He bowed his head.

“So. Speak to me, Lagguth. Or I’ll drop the word. And either the Emperor’s goons will get you, or the mob. I almost feel sorry for you, you poor excuse for a life-form.”

“You’ll speak up for me?” Lagguth begged. “You’ll tell Sr. Sten I cooperated?‘

Cind let her voice soften. “Yes. I’ll speak up for you.” Then—cracking the whip: “Now.
Tell
me, Lagguth! Tell me everything!”

Lagguth talked. He told her about the strange program he’d set up for Sr. Kyes. Its ostensible purpose was to search for where the Emperor hid his AM2. This was what Kyes told his fellow members of the privy council, at least.

“But I got the idea he really wasn’t all that interested in AM2. His search was much deeper than that. Highly personal.”

“In what way?” Cind asked.

“Well, we did gather together everything that was known about AM2. From composition, to the few known courses AM2

shipments followed before they so mysteriously stopped. We fed it into this marvel of a computer he’d developed.“

He pointed to a small terminal in one corner of the library. “That’s linked to it,” he said. “It’s still functional. But, sadly, it can only be one of a kind. I doubt any being in several lifetimes would ever be able to decipher the program he created to run it.”

Cind prodded him away from reveries of Kyes’s genius. “Go on. I don’t have much time.”

“Yes. As I said, we fed in all that data on AM2. But we also fed in everything that was known about the Emperor. We had help on this from Sr. Poyndex.”

Cind’s eyes widened. “Poyndex. He was in on this?”

“Absolutely,” Lagguth said. “He got something on Kyes. I don’t know what. But, Kyes turned that knowledge back on him. Pulled him into our circle. It was he who made Poyndex a member of the privy council. So, obviously some kind of a bargain was made.”

“Obviously,” Cind said. The detail of the deal was interesting, but she doubted it was of any use. “Okay. So you fed all kinds of raw data into the computer. Then what? What did Kyes learn?”

“I’m not sure,” Lagguth said. “But I do know he learned something. He suddenly became very excited. He was a being, you realize, who rarely showed any kind of emotion. Anyway, he became excited. Ordered the program shut down. And then he left. In a great hurry.”

“Where did he go?” Cind wanted to know.

“Again, I’m ignorant. Except that I know he left Prime. For some far place. And when he returned… his brain… had died.”

Cind knew what this meant. The Grb’chev were the only known example of a higher species created by symbiosis. Their bodies—large, handsome things—originated in an exceedingly dimwitted race. Their “brains” were actually the result of a sort of virus that settled into the brute’s plentiful sinus passages. And prospered into tremendous intellect.

The curse of the Grb’chev is that the “brain” had a near-absolute lifespan of 126 years. Kyes was one of the few examples on record of a Grb’chev brain that had lived a few years longer. The tragedy was the body lived happily and moronically on for at least another one hundred years.

Cind had seen many examples of this living death shambling through the streets of the Grb’chev’s home world. Constant and horrifying reminders of what each member of this species faced

Cind pointed to the terminal. “Have you tried to learn what Kyes was doing, during those final days?”

Lagguth hesitated. Then he sadly shook his head. “I’m not a very brave person,” he said. He croaked laughter. “In case you haven’t guessed. I’ve been frightened every day of my life someone—like you… or worse—would find me. And I’d be killed, or brain burned for the little I know.

“And so… although I desperately wanted to learn what Kyes was up to… I never could bring myself to actually do something about it.”

A sound came from behind a door, just to the side of the computer terminal. Cind’s hand snaked down to the place where she had hidden her weapon.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Lagguth said. “He just wants to be fed.”

Cind’s brow furrowed. “
Who
wants to be fed?”

“Sr. Kyes, of course,” Lagguth said. “Would you like to meet him?”

“He’s here?” Cind was astounded.

“Why not? It’s a good enough home for what’s left of him as any. Actually, it’s a damn fine home. They’ve put him out to pasture, so to speak. Like one would a fine racing beast. He gets everything he could possibly want. Although, to be frank, he’s too stupid to really know what he wants. Sometimes… we have to help him with his treats.”

Lagguth rose. “I really should go feed him. It’s cruel to make him wait.”

Cind followed him into the room.

It was a bright and cheery place, filled with toys and decorated in the bright primary colors of childhood. Kyes was perched in a vastly oversized chair, giggling at the large vid monitor. It was showing a kid livie: small things scurrying about, smacking one another.

Kyes saw Lagguth. “Hungry,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got your yummies for you,” Lagguth said.

Cind shuddered as she watched Lagguth spoon-feed a being who had once ruled an empire.

Food dribbled from Kyes’s mouth. He pointed at Cind. “Who, pretty?”

“A friend come to see you, Sr. Kyes,” Lagguth said.

Cind came out of her shock and moved to Kyes’s side. She took the food from Lagguth. Kyes looked up at her. Eyes wide.

Not a clue of intelligence in them. He opened his mouth. Cind fed him. He smacked his lips loudly as he ate. Belched. Then giggled.

“Make funny,” he said.

“Very funny,” Cind said. “Good boy.”

Kyes patted her. “Happy,” he said. “Like happy.”

“Aren’t you always happy?” Cind asked.

Kyes’s head bobbed up and down. “Happy… Always.”

Cind braced herself. Only cruelty could follow. “What if the Emperor comes?” she said. “What if he comes to take you away.”

The innocent thing that had once been Kyes reeled back in horror. “No. Not him. Not take away. Please. Not go other place!”

Cind leaped on it: “What other place?”

“Other place,” Kyes moaned. “Bad place. Emperor there. Not happy me.”

“Let him be,” Lagguth pleaded. “He can’t tell you more. Can’t you see how frightened he is?”

Kyes had curled into a ball. Sobbing. The huge chair made him seem small and helpless.

Cind did not relent. “What did you find?” she gritted. “What did you find in this bad place?”

“Emperor. I say.”

“What else?”

Kyes shrieked at some dim memory. A genetic haunting. “Forever,” he cried. “Find forever.”

“You see what I mean?” Lagguth said. “It’s only nonsense you’ll get. He says that all the time when he’s frightened. ‘Forever.’ Over and over again, ‘forever.’ ”

Kyes nodded. “Not happy, forever. Not happy.”

Cind patted him. Soothing. Then turned to Lagguth. “Now, I want to see the computer,” she said.

As they left the room, Kyes was beginning to recover. He squirmed upright in his seat, dried his eyes, and started tentatively giggling at the little things on the livie screen.

The moonlet was a silent wilderness of destruction. Cind moved through bomb-blasted craters and twisted, melted hulks whose designed functions were barely recognizable.

The sensors on the small device in her hand were winking frantically, as they took in data. Cind scrambled over the surface of the moonlet, pausing here and there to scan wreckage with the device. The facts were fed to the mainframe aboard her orbiting ship. The conclusions were quickly beamed back. Chirping in her helmet com.

So far, they confirmed everything she had found in the data banks of the computer in the Kyes museum.

The moonlet had been an elaborately constructed communications center. A byway on the road to the mystery that led to the Emperor’s ultimate hiding place for the AM2.

But, Kyes hadn’t come to this desolation with this goal. Cind was sure of that. Instead, he had come to find the Emperor. A being, most others in those days, believed dead. And he’d found him. Here on this planetoid.

She imagined Kyes, driven nearly mad by fear of his impending “death,” pleading with the Emperor. Offering anything. Desperately begging him to rescue Kyes.

The gibbering hulk back at the Grb’chev museum was sufficient evidence his pleas had been rejected.

Cind worked the area for some hours. Finally she was done. It was time to tell Sten what she had learned.

The outpost was a place where the paths of two secrets had once intersected.

The first was the secret of AM2.

The second, the Emperor’s apparent immortality.

Cind was weary when she messaged for pickup. Not from the work. But from the depressing thought that although she had learned a great deal in this hunt… the knowledge didn’t necessarily add up.

And she prayed to all the beards of all the mothers of the Bhor, that she wasn’t exiting the same door she’d only recently come in.

Haines rattled the papers in her hand, coldly professional. “Once we put his files in order,” she said, “it became quite clear what Mahoney believed he had learned about the Eternal Emperor.”

“Which was?” Sten waved impatiently at the ex-homicide detective’s holo image. It was being beamed from the small Bhor resort he’d stashed her in—along with her husband and Mahoney’s treasure trove.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” Haines said. “Facts should be given their due.”

Sten grimaced. “Sorry.”

“First, I’m sending you a psychological profile of the Em-peror. Mahoney drew it up as a model. My husband and I confirmed it by our own work. And double-checked with Rykor. It’s absolutely dead on. Look it over when you have time.”

“I’ll take your word,” Sten said.

“Next, I’m sending you the matches Mahoney made against that profile. He set the guide against the other times the Emperor allegedly died… and then returned, big as life. Each time, it was definitely the same being. There was no possibility of a surgical double. Again… we confirmed all Mahoney’s data.”

Sten groaned. “That resurrection business again. That clottin‘ Mahoney reached out from his grave and converted you.”

“I’m no convert to anything,” Haines said. “But if these facts were clues pointing to a murder suspect… I’d bust the son of a scrote and lead him with confidence to my prosecuting attorney. Face up to it Sten. It’s a clear possibility.”

“I’ll face that ghost when I see it and touch it myself,” Sten said. “Meanwhile… where does this get us?”

Haines paused, considering how she was going to put this. “What it gets us, is a far more frightening puzzle. You see, my husband and I took Mahoney’s work and punted it one step forward.”

“What did you do?”

“We took that profile of the Eternal Emperor—the one we all agree is a perfect match. Updated it and ran it against the man we’re all ducking and dodging right now.”

“And?” Sten almost didn’t want to ask. “It’s still the same guy, right?”

“Yeah. It’s the same guy. But it isn’t The Emperor’s the same overall. But when you put a closer microscope on him, he’s
very
different in his behavior.”

“Clottin‘ wonderful,” Sten groaned.

“Sorry to dump it into your lap, Sten,” Haines said, her voice warming in sympathy. “But, as they say in the livies, ‘It’s just the facts, ma’am.’”

Sten thanked her, and broke the connection.

He leaned back, letting the information churn around. They settled into this uncomfortable equation: Same but different still equalled different.

The com buzzed. The watch officer said she had Cind on the line. It was important.

As Sten leaned forward to answer, a question tingled at his back brain: If it wasn’t the Eternal Emperor… who the clot
was
he fighting?

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

SOLON KENNA STOOD upon the broad speaker’s platform, a block of pure white marble tabernacling out from the far wall of the Hall of Parliament. Posed beside him at his handsome best was Tyrenne Walsh. Behind them was a three-story-high portrait of the Eternal Emperor.

Kenna’s powerful, polished voice rolled out across the hundreds of assembled politicians: “Distinguished Representatives… Loyal Imperial citizens… Gentlebeings.

“It is with deep humility that my colleague and I stand before you on this most historic day.”

Kenna’s voice dipped into an oiled, humble tone. A twitch of a finger signaled the dimwitted Walsh to bow his head.

“The people of Dusable have already enjoyed vast honors from our beloved Emperor,” he said.

Kenna’s old-pol brain made note there was not one titter from the group—which represented every nook and cranny of the Empire. Nor was there one whisper he could detect of the recent humiliation his people had suffered at the hands of the Emperor’s enemy—Sten.

Kenna gestured to the enormous portrait of the Emperor staring out at all of them. “For reasons only our wise leader can determine, the people of Dusable have been honored once again.”

Kenna’s trained eyes scanned the crowd, as he spoke. Sussing out his strengths and weaknesses. Supporter and enemy. He may have been humiliated by Sten, but humiliation did not diminish his skills as a manipulator.

He and Avri had prepared well for this moment. When he was done, the Emperor’s bill would be presented. A highly controversial bill, whose passage at one time had been difficult to assure.

Many favors and heaps of coin had exchanged hands in the dark corridors of the Hall of Parliament. The old mordida moved a plenitude of votes into the Emperor’s column. Poyndex—for reasons Kenna chose not to ponder—had also volunteered assistance. Old files on the opposition representatives had been sifted for pressure points and blackmail. More votes were added.

Still, the matter would be close.

But, in politics, close is enough to win a kingdom.

“Gentlebeings, I am here to put before you this remarkable proposal. We are being asked to lift the veil from our eyes. To see what we have been too blind to realize for so many tragic years.

“And that is, we live in so fortunate a time that a living god walks among us. And that god is our good and holy Eternal Emperor. Whose immortality stands as an unyielding shield against the hard blows of history.