Avri's eyes suddenly brightened. "Maybe if the general died at the end. On-camera collapse type of thing. So we're leading with quote 'dying last words' end quote. He's pretty feeble. I imagine the techs can give him a stroke for the retake."
"Bad idea," the Emperor said.
"Yeah. Somebody might find out. Leak it."
"I'm not worried about that," the Emperor said. "It's just his dying words will upstage Walsh. And he's the boy carrying this thing."
Avri caught his logic. "That's why you're the boss," she said. "I'll figure something. It'll be easy."
The interview over, Avri was giving the Emperor "the look" again—eyes misting over, squirming in her seat. "Anyway," she husked, "that's the plan."
"No quarrels from me," the Emperor said. "Put it into action. ''
He returned the look. Let his gaze run across her body. Starting from the toes... working slowly up.
"Will there be anything... else?" Avri asked.
The Emperor let it wait. Then: "Maybe... later."
"Did I mention my secretary?" Avri asked. She licked her lips. "She's been a lot of... help on this thing."
"I'll have to thank her some time," the Emperor said.
"I could call her... now."
"Make it personal?" the Emperor said, voice low.
"Real personal. Just the... three of us."
"Call her," the Eternal Emperor said.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Poyndex screened the report yet again. It had not changed since he had last read it, three minutes ago. If it had not come from a long-trusted—as much as any spymaster ever trusts a source—field agent, he would have thought either someone was trying to shuck him, or else the report was on a loop from years before in the days of the privy council.
Poyndex had promised himself, back on Earth, that he would be "good," that he would quit running agents and trying to figure out what was "really" happening. Of course, he could not. No one who had ever walked in the shadow world ever believed that the truth was what was in the spotlight.
According to the report, someone was putting large credits behind the Cult of the Emperor. Just as Kyes of the council had years earlier. And this someone was not an easily findable "anonymous benefactor.'' The credits were coming in through multiple sources, all of which could be traced just so far, and then hit a stone wall.
Poyndex idly ran the cult through an open-search function to see if anything else of interest was going on.
In a few minutes he had an answer.
A great deal was occurring. High-ranking cult members that a file had automatically been opened on, back in Poyndex's Mercury Corps days, were realizing their dreams. They were being promoted—frequently over the heads of their former superiors—quite rapidly.
Hair lifted suddenly on the back of Poyndex's neck. His fingers slashed keys, and he bailed out of the search. His forehead beaded sweat.
Poyndex considered, then grimaced.
He was probably being paranoiac. But the same sense of danger shrilled that had howled through his system after that bomb in the Imperial guts had been removed.
He was grateful he had programmed his computer to work with cutouts. The search, for instance, could be traced by a sufficiently skilled expert. But the trace would lead to an open library terminal on a faraway frontier world.
The Cult of the Emperor was active...
He slid open a hidden cover on the side of the keyboard and forced two tabs together, activating an override command and breaking a fingernail in the process.
There was but one being Poyndex could think of who could play that many cultists like puppets on a string, and who would also have that many sterile channels to pour money down...
His computer instantly wiped itself sterile and was overwritten, just as standard military procedure dictated. Then it was automatically wiped yet again... and again overwritten.
The Eternal Emperor himself...
Poyndex's computer clicked, and the third, final program was added, files and a program that excluded any action that Poyndex had taken within the last E-week.
But what benefit could the Emperor gain from the Cult of the Eternal Emperor?
Poyndex felt a little safer.
Did he want to have himself made a god, for pity's sake?
And now there was a chill beyond zero Kelvin, and Poyndex felt that never again would he be safe, never again could he not look over his shoulder knowing what he now believed true.
Sr. Ecu, the universe's diplomat emeritus, banked, nearly spun out, and wished that his race understood the unquestionably leavening benefits of profanity and obscenity.
Below him was arctic desolation.
Gray seas crashed high against a solitary rock pinnacle to his right. To his left a monstrous iceberg floated. It was bright blue on the slate seas-the only primary color as far as the eye could see. An achingly lonely color.
Ecu did not wish to judge this world, but he found it had all the charm of the Christian religion's hell, with the fires out.
On an ice floe far below, a dot moved. He focused on the dot, and the dot became a huge, obese aquatic creature, a creature whose blubbery hide, tusks, and skin suited it for this frozen hell, who probably thought the weather a pleasant spring freshet.
It made little sense that the unknown being on that ice cube below appeared to be a primitive fish-eater—but in fact could well be one of this world's premiere philosophers. Or poets.
A shearing gust caught him, and Ecu almost lost control once more. His three-meter-long tail thrashed air, trying to stabilize, as his great white wings curled, reconfiguring lift areas to the blast—their red-tipped winglets trying to damp Ecu's overcontrolling.
He was too old and too dignified for this nonsense, solo-flying through a polar storm as if he were a spratling who had just discovered flight.
He also thought that everything to do with this self-appointed project of his smacked of the low-grade melodramas that children and bumpkins appreciated, with clearly marked heroes and villains—One Being against the Forces of Evil, and so forth.
Let alone that Sr. Ecu actually believed, and winced from the belief, that he was the only being who seemed to be aware of this great evil, an evil that could bring everything shattering down. This, his thoughts continued, was absurdity, and he prided himself on being someone who had learned that there was seldom truth and almost never light. Everything was shades of gray, to be analyzed and interpreted most carefully.
Perhaps Rykor would have attendants waiting, who would skillfully sedate the Manabi and escort him to a padded room where he could spend the rest of his days babbling about the Eternal Emperor.
Perhaps that was why he had sent the material ahead of him, material that he had laboriously transferred into an exotic code they'd used back during the days of the tribunal—when the members of the privy council were to be brought to trial for their crimes.
Sr. Ecu tried to bring his thoughts under control, just as he wished, with equal lack of success, that he could cause this williwaw to subside into a calm. He thought, ruefully, that one reason his mind was so undisciplined was that he was frankly terrified. Fear was a feeling that always prevented logical analysis.
Not that he was irrational to feel it.
Sr. Ecu might have served the Eternal Emperor on many occasions, and even convinced his race to ignore their long-held neutrality and clandestinely back the Empire during the Tahn war, but he was under no illusions as to what the Emperor would most likely do if he was aware of Sr. Ecu's thoughts, beliefs, and mission.
Which was one reason he had vanished from his own world, telling no one his mission or destination. His passage to Rykor's home world had been made on one of the Romany free-trading ships. Another relationship, he realized, that had come from the tribunal days, and had originally been created by that man who had wanted anyone to be able to fly: Sten.