The Thousand Emperors

Policy.

The report also mentioned that de Almeida had been removed from her post following the incident, while an investigation blamed the whole incident on criminal negligence. There was nothing to connect any of it with Winchell Antonov; nothing to explain why he had asked Luc – in a dream, of all things – to come looking for this particular file.

Or maybe he’d come across the file in the past and forgotten about it, until he had incorporated it into a trauma-induced fantasy about secret transfer gates.

He stared hard at the report, visible only to him where it hovered in the air. You have a choice, he told himself. You can either decide the dream was just that, or you can act like it meant something real.

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-