"And so... although I desperately wanted to learn what Kyes was up to... I never could bring myself to actually do something about it."
A sound came from behind a door, just to the side of the computer terminal. Cind's hand snaked down to the place where she had hidden her weapon.
"Don't be alarmed," Lagguth said. "He just wants to be fed."
Cind's brow furrowed. "Who wants to be fed?"
"Sr. Kyes, of course," Lagguth said. "Would you like to meet him?"
"He's here?" Cind was astounded.
"Why not? It's a good enough home for what's left of him as any. Actually, it's a damn fine home. They've put him out to pasture, so to speak. Like one would a fine racing beast. He gets everything he could possibly want. Although, to be frank, he's too stupid to really know what he wants. Sometimes... we have to help him with his treats."
Lagguth rose. "I really should go feed him. It's cruel to make him wait."
Cind followed him into the room.
It was a bright and cheery place, filled with toys and decorated in the bright primary colors of childhood. Kyes was perched in a vastly oversized chair, giggling at the large vid monitor. It was showing a kid livie: small things scurrying about, smacking one another.
Kyes saw Lagguth. "Hungry," he said.
"Don't worry. I've got your yummies for you," Lagguth said.
Cind shuddered as she watched Lagguth spoon-feed a being who had once ruled an empire.
Food dribbled from Kyes's mouth. He pointed at Cind. "Who, pretty?"
"A friend come to see you, Sr. Kyes," Lagguth said.
Cind came out of her shock and moved to Kyes's side. She took the food from Lagguth. Kyes looked up at her. Eyes wide.
Not a clue of intelligence in them. He opened his mouth. Cind fed him. He smacked his lips loudly as he ate. Belched. Then giggled.
"Make funny," he said.
"Very funny," Cind said. "Good boy."
Kyes patted her. "Happy," he said. "Like happy."
"Aren't you always happy?" Cind asked.
Kyes's head bobbed up and down. "Happy... Always."
Cind braced herself. Only cruelty could follow. "What if the Emperor comes?" she said. "What if he comes to take you away."
The innocent thing that had once been Kyes reeled back in horror. "No. Not him. Not take away. Please. Not go other place!"
Cind leaped on it: "What other place?"
"Other place," Kyes moaned. "Bad place. Emperor there. Not happy me."
"Let him be," Lagguth pleaded. "He can't tell you more. Can't you see how frightened he is?"
Kyes had curled into a ball. Sobbing. The huge chair made him seem small and helpless.
Cind did not relent. "What did you find?" she gritted. "What did you find in this bad place?"
"Emperor. I say."
"What else?"
Kyes shrieked at some dim memory. A genetic haunting. "Forever," he cried. "Find forever."
"You see what I mean?" Lagguth said. "It's only nonsense you'll get. He says that all the time when he's frightened. ‘Forever.' Over and over again, ‘forever."
Kyes nodded. "Not happy, forever. Not happy."
Cind patted him. Soothing. Then turned to Lagguth. "Now, I want to see the computer," she said.
As they left the room, Kyes was beginning to recover. He squirmed upright in his seat, dried his eyes, and started tentatively giggling at the little things on the livie screen.
The moonlet was a silent wilderness of destruction. Cind moved through bomb-blasted craters and twisted, melted hulks whose designed functions were barely recognizable.
The sensors on the small device in her hand were winking frantically, as they took in data. Cind scrambled over the surface of the moonlet, pausing here and there to scan wreckage with the device. The facts were fed to the mainframe aboard her orbiting ship. The conclusions were quickly beamed back. Chirping in her helmet com.
So far, they confirmed everything she had found in the data banks of the computer in the Kyes museum.
The moonlet had been an elaborately constructed communications center. A byway on the road to the mystery that led to the Emperor's ultimate hiding place for the AM2.
But, Kyes hadn't come to this desolation with this goal. Cind was sure of that. Instead, he had come to find the Emperor. A being, most others in those days, believed dead. And he'd found him. Here on this planetoid.
She imagined Kyes, driven nearly mad by fear of his impending "death," pleading with the Emperor. Offering anything. Desperately begging him to rescue Kyes.
The gibbering hulk back at the Grb'chev museum was sufficient evidence his pleas had been rejected.
Cind worked the area for some hours. Finally she was done. It was time to tell Sten what she had learned.
The outpost was a place where the paths of two secrets had once intersected.
The first was the secret of AM2.
The second, the Emperor's apparent immortality.
Cind was weary when she messaged for pickup. Not from the work. But from the depressing thought that although she had learned a great deal in this hunt... the knowledge didn't necessarily add up.
And she prayed to all the beards of all the mothers of the Bhor, that she wasn't exiting the same door she'd only recently come in.
Haines rattled the papers in her hand, coldly professional. "Once we put his files in order," she said, "it became quite clear what Mahoney believed he had learned about the Eternal Emperor."
"Which was?" Sten waved impatiently at the ex-homicide detective's holo image. It was being beamed from the small Bhor resort he'd stashed her in—along with her husband and Mahoney's treasure trove.
"Don't be in such a hurry," Haines said. "Facts should be given their due."
Sten grimaced. "Sorry."
"First, I'm sending you a psychological profile of the Em-peror. Mahoney drew it up as a model. My husband and I confirmed it by our own work. And double-checked with Rykor. It's absolutely dead on. Look it over when you have time."
"I'll take your word," Sten said.
"Next, I'm sending you the matches Mahoney made against that profile. He set the guide against the other times the Emperor allegedly died... and then returned, big as life. Each time, it was definitely the same being. There was no possibility of a surgical double. Again... we confirmed all Mahoney's data."
Sten groaned. "That resurrection business again. That clottin‘ Mahoney reached out from his grave and converted you."
"I'm no convert to anything," Haines said. "But if these facts were clues pointing to a murder suspect... I'd bust the son of a scrote and lead him with confidence to my prosecuting attorney. Face up to it Sten. It's a clear possibility."
"I'll face that ghost when I see it and touch it myself," Sten said. "Meanwhile... where does this get us?"
Haines paused, considering how she was going to put this. "What it gets us, is a far more frightening puzzle. You see, my husband and I took Mahoney's work and punted it one step forward."
"What did you do?"
"We took that profile of the Eternal Emperor—the one we all agree is a perfect match. Updated it and ran it against the man we're all ducking and dodging right now."
"And?" Sten almost didn't want to ask. "It's still the same guy, right?"
"Yeah. It's the same guy. But it isn't The Emperor's the same overall. But when you put a closer microscope on him, he's very different in his behavior."
"Clottin‘ wonderful," Sten groaned.
"Sorry to dump it into your lap, Sten," Haines said, her voice warming in sympathy. "But, as they say in the livies, ‘It's just the facts, ma'am.'"