Luc stared past the report and at the upwards-thrusting skyline of Ulugh Beg, feeling as if he were balanced on the edge of a precipice. He had requested, and been granted, further scans, but there was nothing inside his skull that shouldn’t have been there. If there ever had been, it was long gone.
He reached out, meaning to dismiss the record. Instead he opened it for editing, adding in five words: I’m calling in my favour.
He saved and dismissed it, feeling like a fool. With any luck, he’d never have to think about it ever again.
Luc found himself back home within another few days, staring around his apartment like he’d never seen it before. It might as well have been a million years since he’d last stood upon its threshold.
He ordered the blinds to open. They parted to reveal the city spread out before him, the fat spindle of the White Palace dominating the evening skies where it floated above Chandrakant Lu Park. The Palace itself was constructed from a series of stacked tiers, with a number of biomes arranged around its upper surface, each filled with the native flora and fauna of any one of a dozen worlds. The whole thing hovered above the park on enormous AG pods. Few people outside of the Temur Council were granted the opportunity to visit the White Palace, and fewer still got to pass through the private transfer gates in its upper levels that led to Vanaheim, an entire world reserved for the sole use of the Council.
Further out from Chandrakant Lu, bridges like spun diamond straddled Pioneer Gorge and the small, cramped buildings from the original, pre-terraforming settlement that had once been located there. People came from all corners of the Tian Di just to see a view like this.
Even though Reunification was still a few weeks away, holographic images of dragons and other mythical beasts were already being projected into the void of air surrounding the White Palace, along with images of the orbiting Coalition contact-ship that carried aboard it a transfer gate linking back to the Coalition world of Darwin. The park beneath was already a hive of activity as final preparations for the gate’s ceremonial opening were carried out.
The world had changed while he’d been looking the other way. Antonov was dead, and two centuries of enforced isolationism were coming to an end with the official sanctioning of this single, tentative but nonetheless permanent wormhole link with the Coalition.
Of all the times he wanted Eleanor with him, this was it. But this close to Reunification, everyone in SecInt was working overtime, including her. So Luc had his apartment form a chair facing towards the Palace, and collapsed into it, staring out into the early evening sky and wondering if the rest of his life was going to feel as much of an anti-climax as he was beginning to suspect it might.
Stop being so morose, he chided himself, and asked the house mechant to bring him a glass of warm kavamilch, sipping at it until he drifted off into an exhausted sleep.
He came awake sometime in the early morning, and realized he wasn’t alone.
‘You look surprisingly well for a man who’s been burned alive,’ said a voice from behind him.
The house had dimmed the lights some time after he had fallen asleep. He brought them back up, twisting round in his seat to see a man with short-cropped hair standing facing him in the middle of the room, his face maddeningly familiar.
Luc stared at him. ‘Who . . .’
‘I’m disappointed,’ said the man. ‘You don’t recognize me. Bailey Cripps.’
‘Bailey . . .’
‘I’m here on behalf of the Eighty-Five, Mr Gabion.’
The Eighty-Five. Father Cheng’s inner circle within the Temur Council, all of whom had been by his side since the days of the Schism.
Luc squinted. He could just about see the hair-thin line of rainbow interference surrounding Cripps like a halo that indicated he was talking to a data-ghost – nothing more than a projection, but an unauthorized intrusion for all that. Anger began to overwhelm his initial feelings of shock.
Luc stood, flustered, and turned to face him. ‘Of course I recognize you. You chair the Council’s Defence Subcommittee. But I have a right to privacy, even from—’
‘Sit back down,’ Cripps ordered him. ‘I’m here to ask you some questions, Mr Gabion. Necessary questions.’
Luc held his ground and remained upright. ‘If you wanted to talk to me, you could have just arranged an interview through SecInt.’
‘That isn’t possible,’ Cripps replied. ‘This meeting has to be strictly off the record.’
‘Why?’
Cripps’ eyes narrowed. ‘I think you’re forgetting your place, Archivist. I came here to ask you questions, not the other way around.’
‘How do I know you really are who you say you are? I could be speaking to anyone behind that data-ghost.’
Cripps nodded as if satisfied. ‘An excellent point. Feel free to check.’
Luc asked his house to trace the source of the projection, and soon learned that it originated from somewhere deep inside the White Palace itself. Further, the signal had been processed via a channel used exclusively by high-ranking members of the Council’s vast bureaucracy.
The chair reformed around Luc as he sat back down, facing Cripps. ‘Okay. You check out. So what exactly is it that’s so damned important you’d come into my house uninvited?’
‘I want you to tell me,’ said Cripps, ‘whether you think the Thousand Emperors should be in power.’
Luc felt his face grow red. ‘You mean the Temur Council, don’t you?’
Cripps raised an eyebrow. ‘Does the name bother you?’
‘It’s a highly pejorative term, used in Black Lotus propaganda.’
‘You still haven’t answered the question,’ Cripps replied, his eyes hard. ‘There are people, and not just Black Lotus supporters, who claim the Council has been running affairs throughout the Tian Di for much too long. Is that a view you agree with?’
Luc felt his stomach curl into a tight knot. ‘Have there been questions over my loyalty, Mr Cripps?’
‘You come from Benares, I understand.’ The way he said it, it sounded more like an accusation than a polite enquiry.
‘I think,’ Luc replied, struggling for calm, ‘that what I did on Aeschere proves where my loyalties lie.’
Cripps gave him a humourless smile. ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ he said. ‘That whole mess left more than a dozen Sandoz dead, their supposedly secure network compromised. Then there’s you, the sole survivor, with your miraculous escape and no clear explanation for just what happened to you while you were down in that complex. Given your background, it’s inevitable that people are going to start wondering if perhaps you were in league with Antonov in some way.’
‘If you want to ask me any more questions,’ Luc replied, his fingers gripping his knees, ‘you can do it in the presence of Director Lethe of Security and Intelligence.’
‘Let’s leave SecInt out of it and think of this as just being between friends. Haven’t you ever thought maybe the Council’s been in power too long? It’s been more than two centuries, now. Don’t you feel it’s time for some new kind of government to be put in their place?’
‘What I think, Mr Cripps, is that you’re testing me for some reason I don’t understand. I lost my family to Black Lotus when I was very young, so you’re out of your mind if you think I’m an agent for them. Go read my SecInt file. The word “exemplary” gets used a lot.’
‘That file also tells me the majority of people in the part of Benares you came from had sympathies for Black Lotus. When you came to Temur as a refugee, you lived in a part of Ulugh Beg with a strong Black Lotus presence.’
‘Black Lotus murdered a couple of million Benareans in a sustained assault that devastated half a continent. Believe me, Mr Cripps, I’ve got more reason than most to hate Winchell Antonov. Besides, everyone in SecInt gets psych-profiled to find out where their loyalties lie. So why are you really here?’