The Court of a Thousand Suns

by Chris Bunch

  "Ex-street thug," the Emperor mused, "to Captain of the Imperial Guard. Not bad, young man. Not bad."

  He shrugged back some Scotch. "What are your plans after this, Captain?" He quickly raised a hand before Sten blurted something stupid like "at your Majesty's pleasure," or whatever. "I mean, do you really like all this military strut and stuff business?"

  Sten shrugged. "It's home," he said honestly.

  The Emperor nodded thoughtfully.

  "I used to think like that. About engineering, not the clotting military, for Godsakes. Don't like the military. Never have. Even if I am the commander in clotting chief of more soldiers than you could… you could…"

  He left that dangling while he finished his drink.

  "Anyway. Engineering it was. That was gonna be my whole life—my permanent home."

  The Eternal Emperor shook his head in amazement at this thousand-year-old-plus memory.

  "Things change, Captain," he finally said. "You can't believe how things change."

  Sten tried a silent nod of understanding, hoping he was doing one of his better acting jobs. The Emperor caught this, and just laughed. He reached into the drawer of his antique desk, pulled out a bottle of absolutely colorless liquid, popped open the bottle and poured two glasses full to the brim.

  "This is your final test, young Captain Sten," he said. "Your final, ninety-cycle-on-the-job test. Pass this one and I okay you for the Imperial health plan."

  The Emperor slugged back the 180-proof alcohol and then slammed down the glass. He watched closely as Sten picked up the glass, sniffed it briefly, shrugged, and then poured white fire down his throat.

  Sten set the glass down, then, with no expression on his face, slid the glass toward the bottle for some more. "Pretty good stuff. A little metallic…"

  "That's from the radiator," the Emperor snapped. "I distill it in a car radiator. For the flavor."

  "Oh," Sten said, still without expression. "Interesting… You wouldn't mind if I tried some more…"

  He poured two more equally full glasses. He gave a silent toast, and the Emperor watched in amazement as Sten drank it down like water.

  "Come on," the Emperor said in exasperation. "That's the most powerful straight alcohol you've ever tasted in your life and you know it. Don't con me."

  Sten shook his head in innocence. "It's pretty potent, all right," he said. "But—no offense—I have tried something stronger."

  "Like what?" The Emperor fumed.

  "Stregg," Sten said.

  "What in clot is Stregg?"

  "An ET drink," Sten answered. "People called the Bhor. Don't know if you remember them but—"

  "Oh, yeah," the Emperor said. "Those Lupus Cluster fellows. Didn't I turn a system over to them, or something like that?"

  "Something like that."

  "So what's this Stregg swill like? Can't be better than my pure dee moonshine—you got any?"

  Sten nodded. "In my quarters. If you're interested, I'll send a runner."

  "I'm interested."

  The Emperor raised the glass to toast position.

  "By my mother's," he said through furry tongue, "by my mother's… What was that Bhor toast again?"

  "By my mother's beard," Sten said, equally furry-tongued.

  "Right. By my mother's beard." He shot it back, gasped, and held on to the desk as his empire swung around him.

  "Clot a bunch of moonshine," the Eternal Emperor said. "Stregg's the ticket. Now what was that other toash… I mean toast. By my father's…"

  "Frozen buttocks," Sten said.

  "Beg your pardon. No need to get—oh, that's the toasshtt—I mean toast. By my father's frozen buttocks! Sffine stuff." He lifted his empty glass to drink. He stared at it owlishly when he realized it was empty, and then pulled himself up to his full Imperial Majesty. "I'm clotting fried."

  "Yep," Sten said. "Stregg do that to you. I mean, does that you to—oh, clot. Time is it? I gotta go on duty."

  "Not like that, you don't. Not in this Majesty's service. Can't stand drunks. Can't stand people can't hold their liquor. Don't trust them. Never have."

  Sten peered at him through a Stregg haze. "Zzatt mean I'm fired?"

  "No. No. Never fire a drunk. Have to fire me. Sober us up first. Then I fire you."

  The Emperor rose to his feet. Wavered. And then firmed himself. "Angelo stew," he intoned. "Only thing save your career now."

  "What the clot is Angelo stew?"

  "You don't need to know. Wouldn't eat it if you did. Cures cancer… oh, we cured that before, didn't we… Anyway… Angelo stew's the ticket. Only thing I know will unfreeze our buttocks."

  He staggered off and Sten followed in a beautifully military, forty-five-degree march.

  Sten's stomach fumbled hungrily as he smelled the smells from the Eternal Emperor's private kitchen. Drunk as he was, he watched in fascination as the equally drunk Emperor performed miracles both major and minor. The minor miracles were with strange spices and herbs; the major one was that the Emperor, smashed on Stregg, could work an antique French knife, slicing away like a machine, measure proportions, and… keep up a semi-lucid conversation.

  Sten's job was to keep the Stregg glasses full.

  "Have another drink. Not to worry. Angelo stew right up."

  Sten took a tentative sip of Stregg and felt the cold heat-lightning down his gullet. This time, however, the impact was different. Just sitting in the Emperor's super-private domain, added to the fact that it was indeed time to get his captain's act together, had the effect of clearing away the boozy haze.

  The kitchen was four or five times larger than most on fortieth-century Prime World, where food was handled out of sight by computers and bots. It had some modern features—hidden cabinets and environmental food storage boxes operated by finger touch. It also was kept absolutely bacteria free and featured a state-of-the-art waste disposal system that the Emperor rarely used. Mostly he either swept what Sten would have considered waste into containers and returned them to storage, or dumped things into what Sten would later learn were simmering stock-pots.

  The most imposing feature of the room was a huge chopping block made of rare hardwood called oak. In the center of the block was an old stainless steel sink. Set a little bit lower than the chopping block, it was flushed by a constant spray of water, and as the Emperor chopped away, he swept everything that didn't make Angelo stew into the sink, where it instantly disappeared.

  Directly behind the Emperor was an enormous black cast-iron and gleaming steel cooking range. It featured an oven whose walls were many centimeters thick, a single-cast grill, half-a-dozen professional-chef-size burners, and an open, wood-burning grill. From the slight smell it gave off, the stove obviously operated by some kind of natural gas.

  Sten watched as the Emperor worked and kept up a running commentary at the same time. From what Sten could gather, the first act of what was to be Angelo stew consisted of thinly sliced chorizo—Mexican hard sausage, the Emperor explained. The sausage and a heaping handful of garlic were sautéed in Thai-pepper-marinated olive oil. Deliciously hot-spiced smells from the pan cut right through the Stregg fumes in Sten's nostrils. He took another sip from his drink and listened while the Emperor talked.

  "Never used to think much about food," the Emperor said, "except as fuel. You know, the stomach complains, you fill it, and then go about your business."

  "I understand what you mean," Sten said, remembering his days as a Mig worker.

  "Figured you would. Anyway, I was a typical young deep-space engineer. Do my time on the company mission, and spend my Intercourse and Intoxication time with joygirls and booze. Food even seemed to get in the way of that."

  Sten understood that as well. It was pretty much how he had spent his days as a rookie trooper.

  "Then as I went up the company ladder, they sent me off on longer and longer jobs. Got clotting boring. Got so the only break you had was food. And that was all pap. So I started playing around. Remembering t
hings my dad and grandma fixed. Trying to duplicate them."

  He tapped his head. "Odd, how all the things you ever smelled or tasted are right up here. Then all you got to do is practice to get your tongue in gear. Like this Angelo stew here. Greatest hangover and drunk cure invented. Some old Mex pirate taught me—clot, that's another story…"

  He stopped his work and took a sip of Stregg. Smiled to himself, and tipped a small splash in with the chorizo. Then he went back to the task at hand, quartering four or five onions and seeding quarter slices of tomatoes.

  "Jump to a lot of years later. Way after I discovered AM2 and started putting this whole clottin' Empire together…"

  Sten's brain whirled for an instant. AM2. The beginning of the Empire. What this mid-thirties-looking man was talking about so lightly was what one read about in history vids. He had always thought they were more legend than fact. But here he was having a calm discussion with the man who supposedly started it all—hell, nearly twenty centuries in the past. The Emperor went on, as if he was talking about yesterday.

  "There I was, resting on my laurels and getting bored out of my mind. A dozen or so star systems down and working smoothly. A few trillion-trillion megacredits in the bank. So? Whaddya do with that kind of money?"

  He motioned to Sten to top up the Stregg glasses.

  "Then I realized what I could do with it. I could cook anything I wanted. Except I don't like the modern stuff they've been doing the last six or seven hundred years. I like the old stuff. So I started experimenting. Copying dishes in my brain. Buying up old cookbooks and recreating things that sounded good."

  The Emperor turned and pulled a half-kilo slab of bleeding red beef from a storage cooler and began chunking it up.

  "What the hell. It's a way to kill time. Especially when you've got lots of it."

  The Emperor shut off the flame under the sausage and garlic, started another pan going with more spiced oil, and tossed in a little sage, a little savory and thyme, and then palm-rolled some rosemary twigs and dropped those in on top. He stirred the mixture, considered for a moment, then heaped in the tomato quarters and glazed them. He shut off the fire and turned back to Sten. He gave the young captain a long, thoughtful look and then began talking again, rolling the small chunks of beef into flour first, and then into a bowl of hot-pepper seeds.

  "I guess, from your perspective, Captain, that I'm babbling about things of little interest, that happened a long time ago. Old man talk. Nothing relevant for today."

  Sten was about to protest honestly, but the Emperor held up an Imperial hand. He still had the floor. "I can assure you," he said quite soberly, "that my yesterdays seem as close to me as yours do to you. Now. For the crucial question of the evening."

  He engulfed half a glass of Stregg by way of prepunctuation. "How the clot you doing, Cap'n Sten. And how the hell you like Court duty?…"

  Sten did some fast thinking. Rule One in the unofficial Junior Officer's Survival Manual: When A Senior Officer Asks You What You Think, You Lie A Lot.

  "I like it fine," Sten said.

  "You're a clotting liar," the Eternal Emperor said.

  Rule Two of said bar guide to drinking with superiors: When Caught In A Lie, Lie Again.

  "No, really," Sten said. "This is probably one of the more interesting—"

  "Rule Two doesn't work, Captain. Drop the con."

  "It's a boring place filled with boring people and I never really gave a damn about politics anyway," Sten rushed out.

  "Much better," the Emperor said. "Now let me give you a little career advice…"

  He paused to turn the flame up under the sausage and garlic, then added the pepper-rolled beef as soon as the pan was hot enough.

  "First off, at your age and current status, you are luckier than hell even to be here."

  Sten started to agree, but the Emperor stopped him with a hard look. He stirred the beef around as he talked, waiting until it got a nice brown crust.

  "First tip: Don't be here very long. If you are, you're wasting your time. Second thought: Your current assignment will be both a huge career booster and an inhibitor. Looks great on the fiche—'Head of the Imperial Bodyguard at such and such an age.'

  "But you're also gonna run into some superiors—much older and very jealous superiors—who will swear that I had a more than casual interest in you. Take that how you want. They certainly shall."

  The Emperor finished the beef. He pulled out a large iron pan and dumped the whole mess into it. He also added the panful of onions and tomatoes. Then he threw in a palmful of superhot red peppers, a glug or three of rough red wine, many glugs of beef stock, a big clump of cilantro, clanked down the lid, and set the flame to high. As soon as it all came to a boil, he would turn it down to simmer for a while.

  The Emperor sat down next to Sten and took a long swallow of Stregg.

  "I don't know if you realize it or not, but you have a very heavy mentor in General Mahoney."

  "Yeah. I know it," Sten said.

  "Okay. You got him. You're impressing the clot out of me right now. Not bad. Although I got to warn you, I am notorious for going hot and cold on people. Don't stick around me too long.

  "When all is lost, I sometimes blame my screwups on the nearest person to me. Hell, once in a while, I even believe it myself."

  "I've been there," Sten said.

  "Yeah. Sure you have. Good experience for a young officer. Drakh flows downhill. Good thing to learn. That way you know what to do when you're on top."

  The stew was done now. The Emperor rose and ladled out two brimming bowlsful. Sten's mouth burst with saliva. He could smell a whole forest of cilantro. His eyes watered as the Emperor set the bowl in front of him. He waited as the man cut two enormous slices of fresh-baked sourdough bread and plunked them down along with a tub of newly churned white butter.

  "So here's what you do. Pull this duty. Then get thee out of intelligence or anything to do with cloak and dagger. Nobody ever made big grade in intelligence. I got it set up that way. Don't trust them. Nobody should.

  "Next, get thee to flight school. No. Shut up. I know that's naval. What I'm saying is, jump services. Get yourself in the navy. Learn piloting."

  The Emperor slowly buttered his slice of bread and Sten followed suit, memorizing every word.

  "You'll easily make lieutenant commander. Then up you go to commander, ship captain, and—with a little luck—flag captain. Form there on in, you're in spitting distance of admiral."

  Sten took a long pull on his drink to cover his feelings. Admiral? Clot. Nobody but nobody makes admiral. The Emperor topped the glasses again.

  "I listen to my admirals," the Emperor said. "Now do what I say. Then come back in fifty years or so and I may even listen to you."

  The Emperor spooned up a large portion of stew.

  "Eat up, son. This stuff is great brain food. First your ears go on fire, then the gray stuff. Last one done's a grand admiral."

  Sten swallowed. The Angelo stew savored his tongue, and then gobbled down his throat to his stomach. A small nuclear flame bloomed, and his eyes teared and his nose wept and his ears turned bright red. The Stregg in his bloodstream fled before a horde of hot-pepper molecules.

  "Whaddya think?" the Eternal Emperor said.

  "What if you don't have cancer?" Sten gasped.

  "Keep eating, boy. If you don't have it now, you will soon."

  Chapter Five

  The Emperor had two problems with Prime World. The first was, Why Was His Capital Such A Mess? He had run an interstellar empire for a thousand years. Why should a dinky little planet-bound capital be such a problem?

  The second was, What Went Wrong?

  Prime World was a classic example of city planning gone bonkers. In the early days, shortly after the Eternal Emperor had taught people that he controlled the only fuel for interstellar engines—Anti-Matter Two—and that he was capable of keeping others from learning or stealing its secret, he'd figured out that headquarter
ing an empire, especially a commercial one, on Earth was dumb.

  He chose Prime World for several reasons: It was uninhabited; it was fairly close to an Earth-normal habitat; and it was ringed with satellites that would make ideal deep-space loading platforms. And so the Emperor bought Prime World, a planet that until then was nothing more than an index number on a star chart. Even though he controlled no more than 500 to 600 systems at the time, the Emperor knew that his empire would grow. And with growth would come administration, bureaucracy, court followers, and all the rest.

  To control the potential sprawl, owning an entire world seemed a solution. So the finest planners went to work. Boulevards were to be very, very wide. The planet was to have abundant parks, both for beauty and to keep the planet from turning into a self-poisoning ghetto. Land was leased in parcels defined by century-long contracts. All buildings were to be approved by a council that included as many artists as civic planners.

  Yet somewhat more than a thousand years after being set up, Prime World looked like a ghetto.

  The answers were fairly simple: greed, stupidity, and graft—minor human characteristics that somehow the Eternal Emperor had ignored. Cynically, the Emperor realized he did not need the equivalent of the slave who supposedly lurked on Caesars during their triumphal processions to whisper "All this too is fleeting."

  All he had to do was travel the 55-plus kilometers to Fowler, the city nearest to his palace grounds, and wander the streets. Fowler, and the other cities on Prime World, were high-rise/low-rise/open kaleidoscopes.

  To illustrate: A building lot, listed in the Prime World plat book as NHEB0FA13FFC2, a half kilometer square, had originally been leased to the luxury-loving ruler of the Sandia system, who built a combination of palace and embassy. But when he was turned out of office by a more Spartan regime, Sandia sublet the ground to an interstellar trading conglomerate which tore down the palace and replaced it with a high-rise headquarters building. But Transcom picked the wrong areas and products, so the building was gradually sub sublet to such "small" enterprises as mere planetary governments or system-wide corporations. And as the leases were sublet to smaller entities, the rent went up. Annual rental on a moderate-size one-room office could take a province's entire annual product.