The Thousand Emperors

the second flier. It lifted up almost immediately, sending dead leaves spinning into the air as it ascended.

He’s in a hurry, thought Luc. Ambassador Sachs must have departed the Sequoia only shortly after he himself had. And now he was on his way somewhere else.

‘You’re telling me the Council seriously don’t mind you being able to see every damn thing they’re up to like this?’ he asked, keeping his eyes closed.

‘Apart from the Eighty-Five, you mean?’ She laughed dryly. ‘The system is set up so they’re aware if I’m watching, or can find out easily enough. That way I’m accountable for everything I do.’

So you say, thought Luc. The micro-mechant had lifted its lens to follow the flier as it dwindled into a deepening blue sky.

‘So what do you do if you need to know what they’re up to, but you don’t want them to know?’

‘I spy on them regardless.’

Luc opened his eyes and looked up at her. ‘And they’re seriously all right with that?’

‘If I can prove at a later date that it was necessary to do so, of course,’ she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Privacy is always respected, but there are times when such things do prove necessary. You can get up now,’ she added, standing back.

Luc swayed a little as he stood upright. He reached up to touch the side of his head, and when he brought his hand back down found it speckled with blood.

‘Somewhere I can wash up?’

She nodded towards a sink and tap a few metres away. ‘Over there.’

Luc ran lukewarm water across his stubbled scalp and down the back of his neck. He glanced up at a mirror over the sink and saw de Almeida putting her roll of instruments away, but started when he realized the exact same hunched figure still stood in the same corner he had seen it days before. He froze, chilled by the sight.

‘Zelia,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the creature, ‘I really want to know just what that thing is.’

De Almeida looked around, confused, then walked across the laboratory until she could see the same pathetic hunched figure.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘does that bother you?’

Luc turned from the sink to stare at her, appalled beyond belief. ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s nothing. A criminal, a malcontent.’

Luc studied her features, entirely free of guilt or empathy. These are the people you chose to serve, he reminded himself.

‘Just tell me who he is,’ he demanded, his voice ragged. ‘He’s been standing there for . . . for days. What the hell could he have done, to deserve winding up like that?’

Her mouth pinched up. ‘Damn it, Gabion, these are people who’ve been sentenced to death. I can make good use of them this way.’

‘Make use of them?’ Luc laughed, but it was a dismal, half-choked sound by the time it emerged from his throat.

‘You don’t approve?’

‘Look at him! Doesn’t it bother you, to reduce a human being to something like that?’

‘Have you ever thought,’ she asked, her voice cold, ‘about the struggle the Tian Di faced in order to achieve as much as it did, over the centuries? Things like the CogNet, instantiation lattices, data-ghosting, or any of the hundreds of other networked symbiotic technologies that make our lives easier?’ She nodded towards the huddled figure. ‘This laboratory isn’t here just for show. The Council still supports original research into new ways to integrate flesh and machinery.’

‘There must be other ways to—’

‘Other ways?’ she barked. ‘It’s precisely that lack of insight, that refusal to commit to necessary sacrifices that tells me you could never be a member of the Council yourself. You’ve seen Ambassador Sachs, haven’t you? Whatever’s under that mask of his, it’s evident the Coalition has become a fully post-human society. We need to understand them and what they’ve become before their culture overwhelms our own because, let me assure you, their technology is far in advance of ours. That, right now, is the central focus of my research.’

She gestured towards the hunched figure. Luc looked on as, very slowly and carefully, it turned on the spot, its feet shuffling and scraping on the bare floor. He watched it lumber towards a curved balustrade set against a far wall, then slowly make its way down some steps and out of sight. Luc found it hard to contain his horror; it was difficult to believe that pathetic, shambling form had once been a person with a name and a history.

‘Where is the Ambassador now?’

Luc forced himself to turn back to de Almeida. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Ambassador Sachs,’ she repeated with obvious impatience. ‘You are still keeping tabs on him, aren’t you?’