So Vile a Sin (22 page)

163

Part Two

Cassandra

164

1

Janus

3 June 2982

Isotank technology had been pretty much the same for centuries.

A large container of water, maintained at a steady thirty-five degrees Celsius. A form-fitting suit which flared out to encompass the nose and mouth with a comfortable, soundproofed breathing apparatus. In a well-designed tank you couldn’t even hear your own pulse.

Genevieve’s psychoanalyst had recommended regular dips in the tank for their relaxing effect on the brain. The relaxation usually lasted about fifteen minutes before she got bored enough to switch on the biode in her left eye, the text flowing across her field of vision against the soft reddish-black background.

She had been in the tank for thirty minutes, moving through a maze of security protocols, selecting her route with a glance. If her shrink noticed the REM on his monitors, he probably thought she’d just fallen asleep. If security noticed her poking around, she wouldn’t receive more than a formal caution. The material she was searching through wasn’t actually above her clearance level.

Not much was. It just wasn’t meant for general distribution. Need to know, that was their slogan. Seek and ye shall find, that was hers.

There – she selected the securicam playbacks she wanted. A cascade of images, one lens after the other, tracking a quartet of 165

figures through the wide hallways of the Imperial Palace.

Genevieve imagined she was an insect, floating lazily along the roof of the corridor. She selected
audio on
.

THE DOCTOR: Nice art collection.

WSZOLA, IAOMNET: Thanks. I’m particularly fond of the Mogarian sculptures. It’s a shame they have to be kept in those gas containers: they’re meant to be touched.

He was a short white man in a tweed jacket; she was a tall, dark-eyed agent of Imperial Intelligence, imposing in her uniform. Genevieve could have looked at her service record with a flick of her eye, but for now she concentrated on the securicam playback.

THE DOCTOR: I saw a museum like this in Paris.

WSZOLA: Where’s that?

DOCTOR: Europe. Once upon a time. The spoils of conquest, treasures from Egypt and Europe. Very impressive, while it lasted.

WSZOLA: Why? What happened to the museum?

DOCTOR: The English came and took most of it away. The spoils of conquest.

WSZOLA: Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?

DOCTOR: Well, the list of possibilities seems pretty short.

You’re taking me to a dingy and purportedly escape-proof cell.

WSZOLA: Or?

DOCTOR: You’re taking me somewhere to stick electrodes in my head.

WSZOLA: Or?

DOCTOR: (pause) I suppose you could be taking me to your leader.

Genevieve’s point of view gently rolled to a stop. Wszola and her prisoner came to a halt before a huge, rococo door. An error message apologetically explained that Genevieve didn’t have the clearance to look inside.

DOCTOR: Oh.

WSZOLA: You’re lucky, Doctor. Very few people outside the Council and a few select staff get to go through that door.

DOCTOR: It doesn’t look very secure. Where are the guards?

The elaborate security devices?

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WSZOLA: We’ve passed all of them already. That’s why there’s no lock on this door. If we weren’t cleared to be here, we’d already be dead. Knock.

DOCTOR: Sorry?

WSZOLA: Go on. Knock knock.

The Doctor stepped up to the door and rapped on it twice.

‘Anyone home?’ he bellowed.

They stood there for a moment, the intelligence agent and her two armoured guards, watching the little man. He raised his hand, and was just about to knock again when the door cracked open, the two halves sliding apart and up like beetle wings. Green steam puffed out. The Doctor waved it away, muttering about theatrics.

The room inside was vast and dark. Genevieve couldn’t make out any details. She wasn’t sure if that was because it really was that dark in there, or because the securicam recording was quietly censoring itself.

The Doctor took off his hat and walked inside. More green steam puffed up from the floor, obscuring him. The door slid shut with a sigh.

Genevieve switched off the recording, snapped instantly back into darkness and silence. They’d just let him go in there. He’d been invited, he’d passed all the security checks.

Goddess, she
had
to find out what had happened.

She called up the tank’s menu and selected
finish session
. The tank cracked and hissed as the liquid gently drained out, lowering her to the bottom. She felt herself grow heavier and heavier, until finally she was lying on the curve of the isotank’s floor.

Her body servant, a Lacaillian with skin like the sky and the grace of a delicate insect, helped her out of the tank and the constricting suit and mask. She pulled on something practical and black, pulled her golden hair back into a practical ponytail, and sat down at her terminal. She was going to have to pull in a few favours to get access to the prisoner. Quite a few.

The Doctor sat in an ultra-security cell. Actually, ultra-security was supposed to involve enforced unconsciousness in a psi-proof cage, but after the media protests they’d decided to opt for a 167

normal high-security cell with a few additional bells and whistles. The Doctor had already done three interviews by the time Genevieve managed to get in.

One of the massive doors at the end of the cylindrical cell hissed open. The force shield inched its way towards where he sat on the bunk, until there was enough space to comfortably admit her.

He was like something from a horror sim. The cold-blooded and insane killer who looks entirely harmless, even comic. The sims about the year of the disaster were full of characters like him

– quite a small man, wearing very crumpled clothes. She stepped forward, and the force shield moved with her, until she was standing close enough to see his face clearly.

‘They tell me you call yourself “the Doctor”,’ she said.

He lifted his hat. ‘Unfortunately, no one seems to have heard of me.’

‘Soon everyone will have heard of you,’ she said. ‘Is that why you did it? So you’d go down in history?’

The Doctor allowed his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the
darkness. The room was bare, as though there was a corner of
the palace they’d forgotten to plaster with ornamentation and
plunder.

The room was huge, as though it had to encompass crowds.

Now there was no one there. Just him.

‘Excuse me?’ He took off his hat. ‘Is the Empress Gloriana at
home?’

Directly opposite him, a pale circle of green light appeared.

Ten feet across, a few feet above the floor.

He walked towards it, carefully, half expecting a bit of
furniture to unexpectedly smack him in the shin. But his first
impression had been right. There was nothing in here.

Nothing but him, and the gnarled scrap of a woman floating in
the green sphere.

‘I know you,’ she said.

‘No,’ said the Doctor.

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‘I’m sorry,’ said Genevieve, ‘I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Genevieve ap Gwalchmai.’

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, with a small smile.

‘I’m Duke Walid’s personal aide.’

‘I can’t have made your job any easier,’ said the Doctor. ‘I suppose I’ve thrown everything into confusion out there.’ He gestured vaguely at the palace, all around him.

She nodded. ‘The Council have been in session for hours. But they already have long-standing plans they can put into effect.

They’ve been waiting for the Empress to die for a long time.’

‘So what are they talking about?’

‘Well,’ said Genevieve, ‘what to do with you, of course.’

‘I see,’ said the Doctor.

‘You’re a bit of a problem, you see. In cases like this – not that there’s been a case very much like this one, not for a long time –

it’s usual for the guards to rush in with guns blazing. No time is wasted trying to interrogate or sentence a puff of vapour. I’m afraid you threw the guards into confusion by surrendering.’

‘Poor things.’

‘The Council know you’re to be executed; they just can’t make up their minds about how to do it. They’re falling all over themselves to show their loyalty by coming up with worse and worse methods. When I left the meeting, the Pontifex Saecularis was partway through describing a complex technique involving virtual-reality simulation, advanced surgical techniques and drawing and quartering.’

‘They want to be careful, or I may vent my spleen.’

Genevieve managed not to laugh. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it –

everyone’s eyes were glazing over. Personally, my money’s on slow electrocution.’

‘Thanks.’

‘What did you expect?’ Genevieve said. ‘You killed the head of state of half the galaxy. What did you think was going to happen to you?’

‘I suppose I thought she had a plan,’ he said. He scowled.

‘Some people have no gratitude.’

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The Empress had no voice of her own. She spoke in a jarring
mix of words, snipped from media sources. The sim images
travelled across the surface of the sphere, colours in an oil slick,
distorting and disappearing.

‘I,’ she said, in the voice of a little girl. ‘Know,’ said a deep-voiced man with a Southern accent. ‘You,’ said an elderly
woman.

‘Hello,’ said the Doctor, raising his hat. His reflection was lost
in the colours travelling across the glass. ‘Your Effulgence, I
presume.’

‘I. Am. The. Empress,’ she confirmed. ‘You. Are. The. Doctor.’

The Doctor rapped on the sphere with a knuckle. It chimed like
a champagne glass. ‘Now we’ve got that out of the way,’ he said,

‘why don’t you tell me why you brought me here?’

The sphere flared with light, the images beginning to solidify.

They showed scenes from the planets the Empress reigned over,
flashing in rhythm, like a slide show. Hundreds of images. A
waterfall on the Skag world. A great oxygen factory on Lacaille
8760. A citadel on Sense-Sphere. Solos. Japetus. The
Androzanies. The images pulsed steadily.

‘This is who you are, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor softly. ‘Your
body’s kept alive while your mind is slaved to Centcomp. The
computer runs your Empire.’

The images stopped, the sphere’s surface a rich luminous
black.

‘It’s true, isn’t it? You can see into every corner of the Empire
you’ve built over the last century and a half. You can watch every
planet as its population is killed or enslaved, its resources ripped
free. You can see every act of genocide.’

‘I like to watch.’

The Doctor jerked back at the voice. ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ he
said, very quietly. ‘It’s all you can do.’

‘Yes.’

He breathed on to the surface of the globe, wiping away an
imaginary speck. The Empress’s skull face rested on the glass
inside, looking at him with hollow eyes. ‘It seems like a fair
exchange,’ he said.

‘Explain.’

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‘You have absolute power over the human-occupied area of
this galaxy. You’re an insane, genocidal lunatic whose random
word can kill a million people. In exchange for which –’ He
waved at the globe.

‘So what did she say to you?’ said Genevieve.

I love you.

‘Nothing in particular,’ said the Doctor.

I’ve been dancing with you for centuries. Always dancing so
fast, my love, a flashing, flickering movement just out of my
reach.

I am the first Empress. I contain the memories of every
President of Earth. Downloaded into me, or rather the bloated
mass of records I have access to. Oh, I know you destroyed so
many traces of your existence. You went to great lengths to cover
your tracks through our history.

But I followed your dance. A sighting here, a paragraph in a
military report there… I reconstructed some of what you’d
destroyed, and guessed the rest, imagining what you had done,
what you might have done. What clues you might have left for me
to find, your partner in the dance, distant in time but always
watching, watching.

Did you know I was there? Did you know a pair of sunken eyes
and an electronic mind were staring, wherever you went,
whatever you did? You must have known, my love. Must have
known that the records were what it was all for. The lives you
saved were nothing – they would end anyway. The places you
saved would be built over, forgotten. Only the records remained.

Only I was left. Watching, watching.

That’s why I wanted you here. That’s why I was delighted,
overwhelmed with grief and joy when I realized you were here,
here at last, in my space, in my time, in my grasp.

You’re the outsider, you see. That’s what the dance was all
about, always – the free agent interacting with the soldiers, with
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the ministers, with the corporate raiders and the spies, but
coming away untouched, still free, never part of the system.