Agent Shi Pei laughed shrilly, the marbled keek rolling wildly in its socket. “Who is there to inform? The HORUS colonies are in the hands of rebels. We have heard they have formed an Alliance throughout HORUS and the other stations; that they intend to bring this Alliance to Earth and declare war upon us. Some of my people think it has already begun. They hear things, they tell me—messages, rumors…”
Shi Pei snorted. “Rumors! New ones every day—stray radio transmissions, ’files sent from unidentified sources. Last month we even had a replicant arrive to tell us of an explosion at the Port Lavaca refinery—the replicant had no human escort, no point-of-origin program, nothing. In the middle of the night files appear in my bedroom with messages for me. The Autocracy is slain or scattered, HORUS is gone completely; HORUS has been retaken, the Autocracy is saved. What can I believe? The only thing I know for certain is that there was a coup on the Helena Aulis station. The energumens there rioted and murdered the entire station colony, and from ’files that were broadcast to neighboring stations, it appears that the victims were cannibalized. A single aviette escaped with Livia Marconi and her advisers aboard and landed at Vancouver three months ago, but I have heard nothing since then. And the city of Araboth is fallen, but you knew that.”
Suddenly Shi Pei’s face seemed immeasurably aged, as though the mere recitation of these horrors had been enough to exhaust her. She ran a hand across her forehead and sighed. “I’ve tried contacting my former superiors at the embassy at Kirliash in the Commonwealth, but so far there’s been no response. Two Aviators flew to the old capital, where you were last year; my last message from them was that the entire city was in revolt against the janissaries. There are other strange things, too. Six weeks ago I received a disturbing report from the Chief Architect at the Hotei station.”
She paused, ducking her head in the manner people of her country employed when embarrassed for another. “He said—well, he claimed to have seen that eidolon your people talk about.”
I frowned. “What thing is that?”
Agent Shi Pei flicked her fingers in distaste. “That millenial star, whatever you call it—”
“The Watcher in the Skies,” Captain Novus finished for her. “It was only a single report, Imperator, and a week later the Chief Architect went mad. Copper poisoning, we think.”
I shook my head impatiently. The Watcher in the Skies—another legendary apparition of the HORUS colonies. “Don’t tell me about phantoms. What else has gone wrong?”
Agent Shi Pei sighed. “Well, as for us—there hasn’t been a supply ship here at Cisneros in six months. It’s all I can do to keep my troops from defecting and joining the fantômes,” she ended bitterly. “There is justice in this, Imperator. Slaves always rebel; even geneslaves, it seems. With your education, you and the other Aviators should have known that.”
She spat the last words at me. I looked away, recalling the empty spaces between the stars where the HORUS stations should have been.
You should have known.
She was right, of course. If I had not been so driven by hatred and my need for vengeance in Araboth, I might have learned of this sooner. Only days sooner, but it might be that we had only days left. For a few minutes the room was quiet. I could hear Valeska Novus breathing, Agent Shi Pei prying the cork from another bottle of rice brandy. Nefertity remained motionless and silent, watching us with her calm eyes.
At last I said, “I wish to have an elÿon for myself and my server.”
Shi Pei’s hand shook as she poured another measure of brandy. She held the tiny cup up to me, then drank it in a gulp. Tears sprang into her one eye as she stared at me incredulously.
“An elÿon? After what I’ve told you? For what—yourself and a taomatan ? A fembot?”
I nodded and she hooted, banging her fist on the arm of her chair. Angrily I clenched my right, human hand. I had long before decided that I would simply kill anyone who tried to stop me, but to my surprise Agent Shi Pei rose and took a few unsteady steps until she stood before me. She bowed, arms crossed in her country’s mark of obeisance, then made a clumsy gesture with her fingers meant to be the NASNA salute.
“Of course, Imperator! Did you think I would refuse? But who else is left to command me?”
For an instant I saw a cold glitter in her eye—a look I had seen before in the eyes of traitors, a shaft of betrayal and guilt that quivers where it cannot be dislodged. Agent Shi Pei noticed my expression and quickly looked away. “Though it is madness, I think, to travel to HORUS,” she added with a sullen frown.
“I intended to go before I knew of all this. But now it seems I waited too long.”
I stalked impatiently toward the window, turned to look back at her. “Have you ever heard of a replicant kept by the Autocracy in one of the stations? An unusual construct, very old, very finely made. It might resemble that—”
I pointed at Nefertity. Agent Shi Pei regarded the nemosyne wearily, and finally shook her head.
“Never. But that doesn’t mean anything, Imperator. They might have any number of such things up there—” She flapped her hands, indicating the ceiling. “I have never traveled to HORUS; besides, I am a rehabilitated war criminal. I would not be privy to such matters.”
I nodded curtly. “Of course. Very welclass="underline" ready an elÿon for me.”
Agent Shi Pei’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “Ah! but which one do you want? I would advise against the Caesaria —”
She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I knew her adjutant in his earlier life as a saboteur for the Commonwealth. He suffered from hallucinations before he was chosen for his present position.”
Behind me Valeska cleared her throat. “Perhaps you should prepare a formal request, Agent—”
Shi Pei made a rude sound and glared at the Aviator, her prosthetic eye rolling wildly. “Haven’t you been listening, Captain Novus? Who would I petition? He is an Imperator—surely he has wonderful reasons why he wants an elÿon. Who am I to stop an Aviator—even a rasa Aviator—from going to a second death?”
Her laughter rang harshly through the room, and suddenly I saw the rage behind that single amber eye. Probably she had been a high-ranking officer in the Commonwealth before she was taken as a prisoner of war, rehabilitated, and then sent here as a test of her new loyalties. That would account for the keek. It would also explain her drunkenness—alcohol and drugs impair the stability of the prosthetic monitors—and her casual acquiescence to my request for an airship. I felt a fleeting kinship with Agent Shi Pei, and when I spoke again, my voice was less cold.
“The construct I am looking for is called Metatron. I believe it might have been brought to Quirinus two hundred years ago.”
Captain Novus shook her head. “We lost contact with Quirinus last month, Imperator.”
“Plague!” Shi Pei cut in gleefully. “A traitor got on board, a psychobotanist supervising the disbursement of provisions. Strain 975, irpex irradians, introduced via a shipment of rice from Mudjangtang. According to the notice of death filed by the station computer, only the energumens survived.”
She tugged at a flap of her uniform and removed a long black cigarette, lit it, and smoked in staccato fashion. “Of course you and your consul would not have anything to worry about from plague, Rasa Imperator.”
Irpex irradians: the radiant harrowing. One of the older microphages, dating to the Second Ascension. Even as the bodies of its victims succumbed to the quick wasting and dehydration of the disease, their minds grew more acute, seeing in the air subtle colors that have long been lost to the rest of us. In their last hours they rave ecstatically, of lights and angels and the thoughts of men darting like goldfinches through the air. Perhaps two solar days might pass between the plague’s inception and death. Survivors have described the smell of the corpses as being reminiscent of lilies. Not the worst of the plagues created by the Ascendants, except that without its serum antitoxin there was no survival rate whatsoever.