I felt a jolt of anger. Had he been another kind of man, I would have killed him. But his judgment was impaired; he had lost the neural inhibitors that should have kept him from speaking to me thus. And his term as adjutant was nearly ended; meaning, of course, his life. The adjutants were given careful doses of prions, brain proteins that attack the thalamus and intercept sleep. The permanent dream-state induced by this enables them to lose all sensory perception, so that their impressions can be better channeled into the elÿon’s neural web and so provide the mindless biotic vessels with a governing consciousness. The adjutant’s body was fed by the complex if primitive web of tubes. The simpler side effects of the prion disease—increased heartbeat, elevated body temperature—were regulated by monitors and a NET. The hallucinations do not usually interfere with the elÿon’s progress, although once in an elegant if destructive pas de deux two of the billowing craft seemed to have been controlled by the same dream, and collided. Their wreckage still spans the outer orbit of the HORUS station Advhi Sar. The only aspect of the navigational method that cannot be controlled is this inevitable disintegration of the brain, as the proteins cause the thalamus to shrink and leave spongy holes in the cortex. It is a relatively slow death, but painless, except for those rare occasions when sensory hallucinations set the navigators shrieking and tossing in their webs.
“It is an honor of sorts,” I said stiffly. “They are political prisoners who would otherwise be executed—”
“Innocent! Innocent!” His words were garbled almost beyond recognition by the speaking tube. A spew of nonsense followed, ending with a high-pitched yowl like a cat’s. Nefertity drew back from the wall, her eyes sparking alarm.
“It is the preliminary phases of his dementia,” I explained. “It is unusual for them to live for more than twelve months—I had hoped we might see him through his final voyage.”
As suddenly as they had begun, the adjutant’s screams stopped. “Oh, I will live,” he said, the speaking tube giving his words a hollow resonance. “I have already received notice of when I will die: not until after you disembark at Quirinus. I have a few more errands left to do.” His head flopped back and forth as another burst of raw laughter exploded in the chamber.
I wondered what those errands might be, and who was commanding him. Which of the colonies still had Ascendants governing the elÿon fleet? To my later grief I did not ask Lascar Franschii about this. Instead I turned to Nefertity. “Is this disturbing you? If so, you can join Captain Novus in her quarters.”
A rattling from the adjutant’s speaking tube brought more laughter. “Imperator! You are so solicitous of your fembot.” The last word came out as a derisive gasp.
The nemosyne turned her lantern eyes upon the man pinned to the wall. “I will go,” she said, and walked away. “Your cruelties sicken me.”
“So sensitive!” cried Lascar Franschii. “Tell me, Imperator, when did our masters order the creation of these softhearted constructs? I am moved, touched, fascinated beyond measure by such a thing! Are they all like this now, or is it only the Imperators who are given such delicacies?”
I took a step toward him, grabbing the coil of crimson and blue and green tubes feeding into the myriad slits in his body. “Be silent, Lascar Franschii, else—”
“Oooh, oooh!” The adjutant gasped and moaned, writhing within his webbed prison. “Be quick, be quick, be still my heart—” Above him the shimmering map glowed more brightly. A trailer of gold like flame shot from one end of the wall to the other. The optics that glittered where his eyes had been flared deep blue, nearly black, and his mouth twisted into a hateful grimace. “Paaugh—I curse you, Tast’annin, your eyes betray you—”
I felt a sudden weariness, a sickness with myself for reacting to the ravings of an adjutant, and dropped my hand. The tubes fell back against the wall with a thud. “My eyes?”
“Yesss—” The speaking tube quivered as he hissed. “My brothers fought you at the Archipelago. On Kalimantan. I was only a child, they kept me hidden in the caverns with the other children and the hydrapithecenes. But I saw you on the ’files—you did not laugh when the bodies ignited, as your troops did. The sight sickened you, did it not? It drove you to destruction! How can a man look upon such things and not go mad? Your eyes are the same now as they were then—they betray you, Imperator! What is it like to be a corpse, and have no tongue to cleave to your mouth in fear? Where does the fear go when you die?”
The optics rattled in his eye sockets, the speaking tube bulged from his twisted mouth as though he would disgorge it. Rage swept through me and I cried, “Silence, Lascar! I will engage another elÿon—be still!”
I raised my hand threateningly, but he took no notice. Why should he? After a moment I turned away and headed for the door. I had nearly reached it when the adjutant’s voice roared out, so heavily amplified that the nets of wires shook like vines storm-rent against the wall.
“Do not waste your efforts, Imperator! None of the other elÿon have clearance to attend upon Quirinus.”
I stopped and looked back. “Why not?”
Within the glowing interstices of the nav charts, the adjutant’s form twitched as he raised his head. “There is no one left to command them. No one but you. Besides, Quirinus should still be under quarantine. It was beset by plague, hidden in a rice shipment from the Archipelago. The station was sabotaged by a Commonwealth delator posing as a psycho-botanist.”
Spikes of greenish light flowed from his optics. It was easy to imagine triumph in his voice, though the speaking tube rendered nearly all emotion from it.
“Which plague?”
“ Irpex irradians. ” As the words boomed out, the adjutant’s head drooped upon his chest, as though exhausted. “Every one of them. Dead.”
“So I was told by commanding Agent Shi Pei. Is there any. danger of contagion?”
The adjutant’s shoulders twitched in what might have been a shrug. “Who knows? I would not rely on her word, though. Agent Shi Pei grows lax in her duties. I hear she spends much of her time in a hammock, smoking kef and reviewing ’files relating to the destruction of NASNA Prime.”
“But no official quarantine was ever declared,” I said.
The adjutant’s head tilted in a nod. “True. The energumens were immune, and there are no human survivors. The microphage can live for only seventy-two hours without a host. But you have no reason to fear, Imperator, you and your sentimental construct. Even our masters do not yet have organic plagues to attack the dead—and plague may be the least of your problems, if the Alliance succeeds with its plans.”
“I have a woman with me, Valeska Novus. I would not have her harmed—”
The adjutant’s voice came out in a dull moan. “Check with the Quirinus scholiast if you don’t believe me. There is little danger of contagion.”
I nodded. “Very well. Tell me of this Alliance.”
He raised his head, and this time I could see where his mouth was drawn in a cold, small smile, like a bloodless wound.
“It began on Sternville. The energumens rioted, and the cacodemons. They commandeered an aviette and attacked Helena Aulis and MacArthur, raising troops along the way. Cacodemons, mostly, and aardmen; also those argalæ intelligent enough to follow what was happening. Since then they’ve taken several of the Commonwealth stations, destroyed NASNA Prime and the Triton mining platform, and they tried to attack Urisa headquarters—anyplace where geneslaves outnumbered the human population, which is nearly everywhere in HORUS. The energumens lead them. They say that they have sent rebels to Earth, to organize geneslaves there in mass revolts. They say there has long been an underground network, of geneslaves and humans both, working to overthrow the tyranny of the Ascendants.”