The Return of the Emperor (9 page)

When the Emperor was murdered the supply of AM2 stopped. Sten had found that hard to swallow the first time Mahoney had said it. He was still having trouble. Back on Smallbridge, he had assumed that the privy council—for profiteering reasons of their own, as well as base incompetency—had merely been keeping the supply at a trickle.

"Not true," Mahoney had said. "They haven't a clue to where the goodies are. That's why the council wanted to pick you up—and anybody else who might've had a private beer with the Emperor—then gently loosen your toenails until you told them The Secret."

"They're clottin' mad."

"So they are. Consider this, boy. The
entire universe
is bonkers," Mahoney said. "Except for me and thee. Heh… heh… heh… and I'm slippin' away slowly if you don't find a bottle and uncap it."

Sten followed orders. He drank—heavily—from the bottle before handing it to Ian.

"Ring down for another one. If your prog circuits are DNCing now, it will get far worse."

Again, Sten followed orders.

"Okay, Mahoney. We are now on the thin edge."

Mahoney chortled. "Not even close yet, boy. But proceed."

There was a tap at the door. "Y'r order, sir."

Mahoney was on his feet, a pistol snaking out of his sleeve. "A little too efficient." He moved toward the door.

"Relax, Fleet Marshal," Sten said dryly. "It's open, Mr. Kilgour."

After a pause, the door came open, and Alex entered pushing a drink tray and wearing a disappointed expression.

"Did I noo hae y'goin't frae e'en a second?" he asked hopefully.

"You gotta do something about the way you talk, man."

"Thae's some think it charmin'," Alex said, mock-hurt.

Sten and Alex looked at one another.

"How close did they get to you?" Sten asked.

Kilgour told them of the near-ambush and the battle in the icy streets.

"Ah'm assum't," he said, "frae the fact th' warnin' wae in gen'ral code, nae whae Sten and I hae set up, y're responsible f'r tippin' me th' wink."

"I was," Mahoney said.

"Ah'm also assum't, sir, thae's reason beyon' y'r fas'nation wi' m' girlish legs an' giggle. Who d'ye want iced?"

"Quick thinking, Mr. Kilgour. But sit down. You too, Admiral. The debriefing—and the plan—will take awhile. You'll guess the target—correction, targets—as I go along. The suspense will be good for you."

Mahoney began with what had happened to him from the day of the Emperor's funeral, when he had looked at the Council of Five standing on the grassy knoll that was the Emperor's grave and knew that he was looking at five assassins.

He hesitated, then told them the impossible part. After the funeral, he had gone into the Emperor's study, dug out a bottle of the vile swill the Emperor called Scotch, and planned a quiet, private farewell toast. Stuck to the bottle was a handwritten note:

"Stick around, Ian. I'll be right back."

It was in the handwriting of the Eternal Emperor.

Mahoney stopped, expecting complete disbelief. He got it, masked on both men's faces by expressions of bright interest—and a slow shift by Sten toward Mahoney's gun-hand.

"That's—very interesting, Fleet Marshal. Sir. How do you suppose it got there? Are you saying the man who got assassinated was a double?"

"No. That was the Emperor."

"So he somehow survived getting shot a dozen or so times and then being blown up?"

"Don't clot around, Sten. He was dead."

"Ah. Soo he ris't oot'n th' grave't' leave ye a wee love note?"

"Again, no. He must've left instructions with one of the Gurkhas. Or a palace servant. I asked. Nobody knew anything."

"Let's ignore how the note got there for a sec, Ian. Are you listening to what you've just been saying? Either you're mad—or else you've joined up with that cult that goes around saying the Emperor has lived forever. And remembering six years plus is a long time for you just to be sticking around. Which is how long it's been."

"Neither one—or maybe I
am
bonkers. But will you keep listening?"

" 'Mought's well. Whae's time't' a clottin' hog?" Kilgour said. He poured himself a drink of quill—but still kept a wary eye on Mahoney.

Mahoney went on. He had made his own plans that day. He was going after the privy council.

"Did you consider maybe they'd think you were the type to carry a grudge?" Sten asked.

"I did—and covered my ass."

Mahoney put in for early retirement. The privy council, in the mad rush to get rid of the bloated and incredibly expensive military after the Tahn wars, was more than willing to let anyone and everyone out, few questions asked. Sten nodded—that was exactly how he and Kilgour had been able to slip into retirement and obscurity.

The council was especially happy to be rid of Mahoney, who was not only the Emperor's best-loved Fleet Marshal, architect of victory, but also once head of Mercury Corps—Imperial Intelligence—for many, many years.

"But I didn't want them to think I was going to create any mischief. I found a cover."

Mahoney's cover, loudly announced, was that he planned to do a complete biography of the Eternal Emperor, the greatest man who ever lived. That plan fit quite well into the council's martyr-building.

"What I was, of course, doing was building my stone bucket. Hell if I knew what I would do with it—but I had to do it."

Mahoney dived into the archives—he planned to spend a year or so researching The Early Years. By then he figured the council would have lost interest in him, and he could go for the real target. A little sheepishly, he told Sten and Alex that he had always loved raw research. Maybe—if things had been different, and he had not come from a military family—he would have ended up poking through archives trying to figure out The Compleat History of the Fork. Or something.

He was not the first, the hundredth, or the millionth person to bio the Emperor. But he discovered something interesting. All of the bios were crocks.

"So what?" Sten asked, disinterested. "If you were up there on the right hand of God, wouldn't you want everybody to make nice on you?"

"That is not what I meant." Mahoney said. He had seen a pattern. Biographers were encouraged to write about the Emperor. However, they were mostly of the type who would work hard to either find Deep-seated Humanity in Tamerlane, or else write a psychological biography of the poet Homer.

"Let's say there might have been a great number of sloppy historians. But somehow their work was still encouraged. They won the big contracts. Their fiche were picked up for the livies. And so on and so forth.

"I'm telling you, lads, no one was really encouraged to look at source material—what hasn't somehow, and I quote, vanished in the mists of time, end quote."

"So what was our late leader trying to hide?"

"Damned near everything, from where he came from to how he got where he is. You might spend a lifetime daring insanity trying to make sense out of the seventeen or eighteen thousand versions of events, each of them seemingly given the Emperor's imprimatur.

"I'll just mention two of the murkiest areas, besides where the clot the AM2 is. First is that the son of a bitch is—or was, anyway, immortal."

"Drakh. No such animal."

"Believe it. And the second thing is—he's been killed before."

"But you just said—"

"I know what I just said. He's died before. Been killed. Various ways. Several accidents. At least two assassinations."

"And you won't accept a double."

"I will not. But here is what happened, at least concerning the incidents I was able to document: First, the Emperor dies. Second, there is, immediately afterward, a big goddamned explosion, destroying the body and anything around. Just like that bomb that went off after Chapelle killed the Emperor."

"
Every
time?"

"Every one I can find. And then—the AM2 stops. Wham. Just like that.

"Then the Emperor comes back. As does the AM2. And things start back to normal."

"Ian, now you've got me playing loony games on your turf," Sten said. "Okay. How long does he usually vanish? Not that I am believing one damned word of what you are saying."

Mahoney looked worried. "Accident—perhaps three or four months. Murder—as long as a year or two. Maybe time enough for people to realize how much they need him."

"Six years an' more hae gone noo," Alex pointed out.

"I know."

"But you still believe the Eternal Emperor is gonna appear in a pink cloud or some kind of clottin' seashell in the surf and the world will be happy and gay once more?" Sten scoffed.

"You don't believe me," Mahoney said, pouring himself a drink. "Would it help if I let you go through the files? I have them hidden away."

"No. I still wouldn't believe you. But set that aside. What else did you get?"

"I worked forward. And I got lucky, indeed. Remember your friend Haines?"

Sten did. She had been a homicide cop, and she and Sten had been up to their elbows unraveling the strange assassination plot that had inadvertently sparked the recent Tahn wars. She and Sten had also been lovers.

"She's still a cop. She's still on Prime. Homicide chief now," Mahoney told Sten.

He had gone to her for permission to access the files on Chapelle, the Emperor's assassin. He'd had the highest clearances—volume one of the biography had been published to great acclaim. "Complete tissue, of course," he assured them.

"Anyway, your Haines. She's still as honest as ever, boy."

Mahoney had asked some questions—and one day Haines had gotten the idea that the ex-Intelligence head was not in his dotage, indulging a private passion.

"She said the only reason she was doing it is because you'd spoken well of me. For a, ahem, clottin' general. You remember a young lad named Volmer?"

Sten did. Volmer was a publishing baron—or, more correctly, the waffling heir to a media empire. Part of the privy council. Murdered one night outside a tawdry ambisexual cruising bar in the port city of Soward. The released story was that he had been planning a series on the corruption around the war effort. A more cynical—and popular—version was that Volmer liked his sex rough and strange and had picked up the wrong hustler.

Haines had something different. She had been stalking a contract killer for about a year—a professional. She didn't give a damn about a triggerman, but wanted to know who had hired him. She got him—and with enough evidence concerning the disappearance of a gang boss to get at least an indictment.

The young man evidently agreed with Haines as to the worth of the evidence. He offered to make a deal. Haines thought that a wonderful idea. She might not care, particularly, if underworld types slaughtered each other on a daily basis. But when they kept leaving the bodies out on the street to worry the citizens—then action had to be taken.

The man offered her something better. He confessed that he had killed Volmer. The word had been that the freako was an undercover type. There had been an open contract. The killer had filled it—and then found out later whom he had touched.

Haines wanted to know who had paid. The man named an underworld boss, now deceased. Haines punted him back to his cell, told him to think about corroborative evidence, and tried to figure out what it all meant. The assassin "suicided" in his cell that night.

"That's all she had?"

"That's all she had."

"So who terminated Volmer?"

"Perhaps his brothers on the privy council? Maybe Volmer wasn't going along with the program? I don't know—yet. But there was the first member of the council dead.

"Then Sullamora. Blown up with the Emperor.

"Something funny about that lone hit man, Chapelle. He came out of Spaceport Control. I did a little research on him, as well. Seems he felt the Emperor was after him personally."

"Yeah. I saw the livies, too. A head case."

"He was that. But he was set up to become one. Somebody—somebody who could have played with his career—arranged for him to get his face shoved in it every time he turned around. To this day nobody knows, for instance, why he suddenly lost his job and ended up on bum row.

"Spaceport Control. Ports, shipping—that was Sullamora's responsibility on the privy council. And now he's dead, too."

Sten started to pour himself another drink, then thought better of it and walked to the viewpanel and stared out.

"All right, Mahoney. You've got some interesting things. Maybe. And maybe you're a head case like this Chapelle. Maybe all you've got is that thieves fall out. A Mantis op on his second run could tell you that.

"Fill in the blanks. What happened next? And come to think about it, what
happens
next?"

Mahoney told them. About the time he had talked to Haines, he had started feeling a bit insecure. The council, he had realized, had not a clue as to the source of AM2. Mahoney thought it was a matter of time before they started rounding up the usual suspects and probing their brains for this had-to-be-somewhere secret.

"Brainscan's an uncomfortable feeling, I understand. Frequently fatal. So I died. Laundered my investments by somehow getting swindled. Paid the swindler ten percent of the money he stole. Then I drowned. A stupid boating accident. There were whispers that it was because I'd lost my entire fortune."

Dead and invisible, Mahoney went to work. Part and parcel of his research was looking up all his old service friends, anyone who might have had any knowledge of the Emperor.

"Many of them still serve. And most of them think we are heading for absolute chaos unless the council is removed."

Sten and Kilgour exchanged looks. Removed. Yes.

"Then… then we have access to everything the Emperor left on Prime. I know—knew—that man. He would have hidden the secret somewhere. Hell, for all I know, in one of those glue pots he used trying to make a gutter."

"Guitar," Sten corrected absently.

"Because that's the only chance we have," Mahoney said. "Probably you were right. Probably I am quite mad believing the Emperor will return. Maybe that he ever did. Indulge an old man's eccentricity.