"Which is the same self-absorbed arrogance you accuse us of. You reserve some special role for yourselves despite everything. This Bedlam Rose."
"They chose this world, Lord. This place, this combination this time."
"And they chose us to govern it. They accept—want—the solution we bring. By default, by implication, our decision will be theirs."
"But, Lord, I could say the same about Humans. They want the solution we bring. This Bedlam Rose they have made."
"Except that it remains our decision, our prevailing custodianship."
"Yes, unless that changes, Great Lord. Unless you accept the simple lesson of the flower. The evidence suggests it."
"Or doesn't, Josephine. Your world may have no special place in anything, is just another world they have chosen. The way it often is. We have been client Races for millennia."
"But what if there is a special purpose, Lord? What if the Nobodoi have not been Recalled? What if they are still here? Changed but here and watching? You've all considered it."
"This Lady Mondegreen is a dangerous Lady. You are a dangerous lady."
"Bad flower!" Fond Louie boomed.
Josephine ignored the outburst. "Or not, sire. Just showing natural curiosity. So new to no longer being at the top of the life hierarchy ourselves. What will you do?"
"Your question again?"
Josephine gestured to the Window, to the building around them. "Can we continue here? Will you leave us in peace?"
"This is not necessarily why we have come. Again, make your case."
"I needn't, Lord. The Window is not here, but here." She placed a finger against her forehead. "You know this. The Lady, whatever she is, however she is, is beyond one place, beyond facts from broken histories. The Rose is all around us."
"Very dangerous," Raine said, so keenly aware of the moment as this Josephine no doubt was, of the waving prairie beyond, of the distant roar of the force-walls, of the goldwire curling out of the Matt's chest, telling the moments of their lives.
"Lord, I am at that point where nothing I can say will save this place if you decide against it. But whether as fact, symbol or metaphor, the Window will remain. You know this of us. The Lady will stay, may even become stronger by seeming to be something worth destroying."
"Let us go outside," Raine said.
Fond Louie pulled back at once. Raine crossed to the entrance and stepped out into the day. The Matt activated its havel and followed.
"I can promise nothing," Raine said when Josephine finally joined them in the road. The sun was westering, already a fierce golden coin high in the washed sepia mirk of Rollinsgame. "Even if I withhold, Fond Louie and this house-lord will decide as they feel suits this special time."
"Lord, then there are a few possessions I'd like to retrieve before—"
The strike was like a scalpel of light, sharp and final. The temple was gone, shattered, just like that, the discardo, the dust, the shock wave and intense energy wash contained in a security sleeve that came an instant before and held nearly a full minute afterwards.
The strike echo came in those first seconds too, a tearing that snapped the day asunder but was quickly stolen away in the eternal roar of the corridor.
Fond Louie's summons rode that echo, a high-pitched keening that brought his choi running. The stink of hot-glass was instantly there as well: Raine's Elsewheres phasing in—three, six—their heads no longer averted, no longer in far-look.
"Agius!" the Matt house-lord said in its own tongue, one arm raised and pointing down the road.
And there moving towards them was a were-suit, the classic Nobodoi artefact: its off-white mummiform advancing with a roiling, twisting ground effect that almost but never quite looked like legs stepping out. Above its right shoulder, joined by a network of unseen energy, was the flattened horse-skull of the Snake. To its left, rolling along on a skirted four-ball platform, was the Companion, an elongated ovoid two metres tall, with a canted featureless dish at its top. Flickering about the whole triune were the ghostworks, the half-seen firefly glints that marked most things Nobodoi, made even more vivid by the shadowing early afternoon light of the corridor. Inside that dirty white mummiform talos was a soul-stone, a chalky ball with a leathery kernel at its heart, all that was left of its Recalled occupant.
Or not.
Fond Louie had made choi, trunks locked firmly in the spinal sockets of its four choi-mates, and now that mighty fighting wheel moved off the road to let the triune pass. Raine's Elsewheres did the same in one precise, mind-linked movement. All watched as the were-suit approached and passed them by.
Fond Louie humphed in pleasure. "So ends today's lesson. Holy roller come to play! Warn off piracy. Seamen on the Mount. Biggest pirate chip played."
"But why, Lords?" Josephine said. "Nothing changes. The Window is still there."
Raine gave the fierce Darzie smile. "Winning, losing. It is no longer easy to know who gets what?"
Then Holding-in-Quiet spoke, chest gleaming with goldpoint. "Build again, Josephine Cantal. It was not the Vanished One who took your house today."
"You, Lord? But why? Why?"
The hatch of the Matt's charabanc was even now lifting away, preparing to receive its master.
"What was said before. A Two-Door Rose. How can one resist this newest flower with two doors? It is the way through. Worth the intent. All coinage."
Josephine Cantal bowed her head, acknowledged the honour as best she could. "Thank you. Thank you, Great Lord, for this."
Raine listened to the exchange, wondering. He had not acted. And had, by not acting. Yes. Had kept to his task enough. In an instant he sent his Elsewheres back to Nobion, was vaguely aware of Fond Louie's troupe running off yipping and shouting through the grasslands to where the luda endlessly fired in the golden afternoon and the great force-walls of Rollinsgame and Bassantrae reared into the sky. He easily allowed that Holding-in-Quiet had departed, that only Josephine Cantal would be waiting in the road behind him.
You are a wise and very dangerous woman, he thought to himself. By the Lady!
But he did not turn to her yet. Rather he watched the were-suit continuing down the road, forever wandering the world. Amid his eternal agony, in spite of it, he smiled fiercely into the remains of the day. Arm of Law.
FURY
Alastair Reynolds
I was the first to reach the emperor's body, and even then it was too late to do anything. He had been examining his koi, kneeling on the stone pathway that wound between the ponds, when the bullet arrived. It had punched through his skull, achieving instantaneous destruction. Fragments of skin and bone and pinkish grey cortical material lay scattered on the tiles. Blood—dark and red as the ink on the imperial seal—was oozing from the entry and exit wounds. The body had slumped over to one side, with the lower half still spasming as motor signals attempted to regain control. I reached over and placed my hand against the implanted device at the base of the neck, applying firm pressure through the yellow silk of his collar to a specific contact point. I felt a tiny subepidermal click. The body became instantly still.
I stood up and summoned a clean-up crew.
"Remove the body," I told the waiting men. "Don't dispose of it until you've completed a thorough forensic analysis. Drain and search the surrounding ponds until you've recovered the bullet or any remaining pieces of it. Then hose down the path until you've removed all trace of blood and whatever else came out of him. Test the water thoroughly and don't let the koi back until you're certain they won't come to any harm." I paused, still trying to focus on what had just happened. "Oh, and secure the Great House. No one comes and goes until we find out who did this. And no ships are to pass in or out of the Capital Nexus without my express authorisation."
"Yes, Mercurio," the men said in near-unison.
In the nearest pond one of the fish—I recognised it as one of the Asagi Koi, with the blue-toned scales laid out in a pine-cone pattern—opened and closed its mouth as if
trying to tell me something vital. I turned from the scene and made my way back into the Great House. By the time I reached the emperor's reception chamber the building was buzzing with rumours of the assassination attempt. Despite my best efforts, the news would be out of the Nexus within the hour, hopscotching from world to world, system to system, spreading into the galaxy like an unstoppable fire.
The emperor's new body rose from his throne as the doors finished opening. He was dressed in a yellow silk gown identical to the one worn by the corpse. Aside from the absence of injuries, the body was similarly indistinguishable, appearing to be that of a white-haired man of considerable age, yet still retaining a youthful vigour. His habitual expression normally suggested playfulness, compassion and the kind of deep wisdom that can only come from a very long and scholarly life. Now his face was an expressionless mask. That, and a certain stiffness in his movements, betrayed the fact that this was a new body, being worn for the first time. It would take several hours for the implant to make the fine sensorimotor adjustments that gave the emperor true fluidity of movement, and allowed him to feel as if he was fully inhabiting the puppet organism.
"I'm sorry," I said, before the emperor had a chance to speak. "I take full responsibility for this incident."
He waved aside my apology. "Whatever this is about, Mercurio, I doubt very much that you could have done anything to prevent it." His voice was thick-tongued, like a drunkard with a bad hangover. "We both know how thorough you've been; all the angles you've covered. No one could have asked for better security than you've given me, all these years. I'm still alive, aren't I?"
"Nonetheless, there was clearly a flaw in my arrangements."
"Perhaps," he allowed. "But the fact is, whoever did this only reached the body, not me. It's unfortunate, but in the scheme of things little worse than an act of vandalism against imperial property."
"Did you feel anything?"
"A sharp blow; a few moments of confusion; not much else. If that's what being assassinated feels like, then it isn't much to fear, truth be told. Perhaps I've been wrong to keep looking over my shoulder, all this time."
"Whoever did this, they must have known it wouldn't achieve anything."
"I've wondered about that myself." He stroked the fine white banner of his beard, as if acquainting himself with it for the first time. "I almost hate to ask—but the koi?"
"I've got my men searching the ponds, looking for bullet fragments. But as far as I can see the fish didn't come to any harm."
"Let's hope so. The effort I've put into those fish—I'd be heartbroken if anything happened to them. I'll want to see for myself, of course."
"Not until we've secured the Great House and found our man," I said, speaking as only the emperor's personal security expert would have dared. "Until the risk of another attempt is eliminated, I can't have you leaving this building."
"I have an inexhaustible supply of bodies, Mercurio."
"That's not the point. Whoever did this. . ." But I trailed off, my thoughts still disorganized. "Please, sir, just respect my wishes in this matter."
"Of course, Mercurio. Now as ever. But I trust you won't keep me from my fish for the rest of eternity?"
"I sincerely hope not, sir."
I left the emperor, returning to my offices to coordinate the hunt for the assassin and the search for whatever evidence he might have left behind. Within a few hours the body had been subjected to an exhaustive forensic analysis, resulting in the extraction of bullet shards from the path of the wound. In the same timeframe my men recovered other fragments from the vicinity of the corpse; enough to allow us to reassemble the bullet.
An hour later, against all my expectations, we had the assassin himself. They found him with his weapon, waiting to be apprehended. He hadn't even tried to leave the grounds of the Great House.
That was when I began to suspect that this wasn't any act of mindless desecration, but something much more sinister.
"Tell me what you found," the emperor said, when I returned to the reception chamber. In the intervening time his control over the new body had improved markedly. His movements were fluid and he had regained his usual repertoire of facial expressions.
"We've found the assassin, sir, as you'll doubtless have heard."
"I hadn't, but please continue."
"And the weapon. The bullet itself was a goal-seeking autonomous missile, a very sophisticated device. It had the means to generate stealthing fields to confuse our anti-intrusion systems, so once it was loose in the grounds of the Great House it could move without detection. But it still needed a launching device, a kind of gun. We found that as well."
The emperor narrowed his eyes. "I would have thought it was hard enough to get a gun into the Nexus, let alone the Great House."
"That's where it gets a little disturbing, sir. The gun could only have been smuggled into the grounds in tiny pieces—small enough that they could be disguised by field generators, or hidden inside legitimate tools and equipment allowed the palace staff. That's how it happened, in fact. The man we found the gun on was an uplift named Vratsa, one of the keepers in charge of the ponds."
"I know Vratsa," the emperor said softly. "He's been on the staff for years. Never the brightest of souls. . . but diligent, gentle, and beyond any question a hard worker. I always liked him—we'd talk about the fish, sometimes. He was tremendously fond of them. Are you honestly telling me he had something to do with this?"
"He's not even denying it, sir."
"I'm astonished. Vratsa of all people. Primate stock, isn't he?"
"Gorilla, I think."
"He actually planned this?"
"I'm not sure 'planned' is exactly the word I'd use. The thing is, it's starting to look as if Vratsa was a mole."
"But he's on the staff for—how long, exactly?"
There'd been no need for me to review the files—the information was at my immediate disposal, flashing into my mind instantly. "Thirty-five years, sir. In my estimation, that's about as long as it would have taken to smuggle in and assemble the pieces of the weapon."
"Could a simple uplift have done this?"
"Not without help, sir. You've always been very kind to them, employing them in positions of responsibility where others would rather treat them as subhuman slaves. But the fact remains that uplifts don't generally exhibit a high-degree of forward planning and resourcefulness. This took both, sir. I'm inclined to the view that Vratsa was just as much a puppet as that body you're wearing."
"Why the bullet, though? As I said, Vratsa and I have spoken on many occasions. He could have hurt me easily enough then, just with his bare hands."
"I don't know, sir. There is something else, though." I looked around the walls of the room, with its panelled friezes depicting an ancient, weatherworn landscape—some nameless, double-mooned planet halfway across the galaxy. "It's delicate, sir—or at least it might be delicate. I think we need to talk about it face to face."
"This room is already one of the most secure places in the entire Radiant Commonwealth," he reminded me.
"Nonetheless."
"Very well, Mercurio." The old man sighed gently. "But you know how uncomfortable I find these encounters."
"I assure you I'll be as brief as possible."
Above me the ceiling separated into four equal sections. The sections slid back into the walls, a cross-shaped gap opening between them to reveal an enormous overhead space—a brightly lit enclosure as large as any in the Great House. Floating in the space, pinned into place by gravity neutralisers, was a trembling sphere of oxygenated water, more than a hundred meters across. I began to ascend, pushed upwards on a section of flooring immediately beneath me, a square tile that became a rising pillar. Immune to vertigo—and incapable of suffering lasting damage even if I'd fallen to the floor—I remained calm, save for the thousand questions circling in my mind.
At one hundred and thirty meters, my head pushed through the surface tension of the sphere. A m
an would have started drowning, but immersion in water posed no difficulties for me. In fact, there were very few environments in the galaxy that I couldn't tolerate, at least temporarily.
My lenses adjusted to the differing optical properties of the medium, until I seemed to be looking through something only slightly less sharp than clear air. The emperor was floating, as weightless as the water surrounding him. He looked something like a whale, except that he had no flippers or flukes.
I remembered—dimly, for it had been a long time ago—when he was still more or less humanoid. That was in the early days of the Radiant Commonwealth, when it only encompassed a few hundred systems. He had grown with it, swelling as each new territory—be it a planet, system or entire glittering star cluster—was swallowed into his realm. It wasn't enough for him to have an abstract understanding of the true extent of his power. He needed to feel it on a purely sensory level, as a flood of inputs reaching directly into his brain. Countless modifications later, his mind was now the size of a small house. The mazelike folds of that dome bulged against drum-tight skin, as if about to rip through thin canvas. Veins and arteries the size of plumbing ducts wrapped the cerebellum. It was a long time since that brain had been protected by a cage of bone.
The emperor was monstrous, but he wasn't a monster—not now. There might once have been a time when his expansionist ambitions were driven by something close to lust, but that was tens of thousands of years ago. Now that he controlled almost the entire colonised galaxy, he sought only to become the figurehead of a benevolent, just government. The emperor was famed for his clemency and forgiveness. He himself had pushed for the extension of democratic principles into many of the empire's more backward prefectures.
He was a good and just man, and I was happy to serve him.
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