Chapter Forty-one
Not Forgotten
Emperor Austin Burnell
"The latest reports are in, your Majesty. Identification confirmed."
Ian lays the PADD on my desk.
His voice is perfectly even. When I glance up, his face is so composed it's almost expressionless.
Over the years he's matured into the perfect PA. He's so efficient now he's become a vital part of the machinery of state. On most days I hardly notice how automatic my expectation has become that he will have the information I need almost before I know I need it, or that he will have background information to the essential stuff available on demand. Mostly, by the time information arrives on my desk, it's been condensed down to its absolute basics – I simply don't have the time to read through acres of detail – but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't need additional data in order to come to a final decision. And nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, if I ask a question, Ian will have the answer, or at the very least, the relevant parts of it, with the rest on tap if it should be required.
Neither his voice nor his face tells me anything, though perhaps that in itself is telling, despite the fact that his professional persona is a model of absolute discretion. Strangely enough, it's his hand that gives him away: the fingers that rest for just half a second too long on the PADD as if reluctant to release it.
Interesting.
My accession is so far back in the past now (nearly a decade – how time flies!) that sometimes I struggle to remember a time when I was merely a cog in the machinery of Imperial Security. At first, it must be said, there were days and even weeks when it felt as if every footfall was made on ice, some of it very bloody thin. Externally, I'm fairly sure I looked convincing; but even I'm not immune to the pangs of 'Impostor Syndrome', and sometimes I wondered how long it would be before I was found out.
Well, it hasn't happened yet, so hopefully it never will. The mask I assumed is growing closer and closer to my face, like that of the man in the old fairy story. My control is still tightening, slowly but surely, because the process had to be gradual, but it's getting there. Even now some of my plans are still decades from fruition, some won't come to it in my lifetime if they get there at all, but the motion is steady. And that's the way that permanent change works best: allowing people time to adjust and to find out that the new methods work.
The former Commodore Tucker taught me that. The best argument for change is results.
"Thank you. I'll have a look at it when I'm done."
He leaves the office, so quiet I can hear that his breathing is very controlled. On the way out he just fails to intercept Rama, who takes a flying leap onto my desk and, after inspecting everything (including me) to make sure we're all to his satisfaction, parks himself beside my monitor, wraps his tail around his four neat black feet and surveys me enigmatically. He's getting on a little now; he sleeps more, and jumping – you can see – is something of a considered effort, but he's still beautiful and elegant, and his eyes are still the most exquisite dark blue jewels in the dark mask.
Ian looks back to see if I want the intruder removed but I shake my head. If the cat makes a nuisance of himself, I'll have to have him ejected, but these days we seem to have reached an understanding.
"Are you missing a lap again?" I ask, scratching lightly at my visitor's forehead, which he permits as a favour. I saw him last night trying to make himself comfortable on what has replaced Hoshi's lap. When he first arrived, a tiny, enchanting kitten, he very shortly decided that her lap was his ideal sleeping-place, and Hoshi indulged him until her advancing girth made it impracticable. At the moment, however, there's once again no lap left to speak of, and she's becoming too uncomfortable with the additional weight of pregnancy to be happy with even the fairly modest bulk of a cat adding to it. I think he did once briefly contemplate trying mine, but Sharp and Saxon disabused him of that idea; they may tolerate his presence in the room, as they're doing now, but I'm their human, and they won't stand for him muscling into the pecking order.
Originally my plan had been that Hoshi should only be obliged to give birth to our first child, which she duly did (not that I gave her any choice about that, which is something neither of us has ever chosen to discuss). I'd intended, and told her, that future children would be carried by surrogates. However, a poll determined that many people would not accept a child born by a surrogate to be a true heir to the imperial throne, so after months of negotiation to reach a deal which included giving her additional powers and liberties (which I didn't mind her having, since I'd shrewdly withheld them during the negotiation of the marriage contract on the chance that I'd have to bargain for her co-operation on other vital matters) she finally consented to bear me another child. In the interests of thoroughly securing my dynasty, I felt four children would be enough, though it was mildly irritating to have to go through the whole negotiation process each time it was necessary to produce another child. I suppose it worked in my favour that she coped extremely well with pregnancy and thoroughly enjoyed the media attention that made her feel relevant again; many small women are rendered grotesque by late pregnancy, but Hoshi somehow managed to carry it off with not merely aplomb, but with genuine style. That, combined with a hefty dose of spoiling and attention every time, had reconciled her, but both of us are agreed that this will be the last.
Rama gives me a small, surprisingly musical chirp by way of reply. I hadn't realised before Hoshi had him how vocal Siamese cats are; Rama seems to have an opinion about pretty well everything and even now he isn't shy about making it known.
"Well, there's a basket over there if you want to be comfortable. Or you can try your luck." My dogs are where they usually are, lying on either side of my desk, but now and again they'll allow him to use them as a cushion – as long as he remembers they don't appreciate being kneaded in the attempt to make them more comfortable as a lying-surface.
He chirps again but rather to my surprise, instead of getting down, starting to butt me for attention (he still does that occasionally) or looking around for something to knock off the desk as he still enjoys doing, he simply folds his forelegs and settles down on the desk, blinking inscrutably at me as I pick up the PADD.
For all that my dynasty now seems safely assured, with two sons and a daughter (and another son on the way), I've never lost my wariness for threats. And though ten years may have passed, every now and then there's been something – merely a quiver in the web, hardly felt before it's quiet again – that tells me the past is not over and done with.
Some of me wishes it was. There would be closure, of a sort, if I received the report that at first I expected daily. But the days became weeks became months became years, and it never came; only, now and again, the whisper that said I'm still here.
To begin with, he represented an enormous threat. Even as a hunted fugitive, he had more than enough information to give me nightmares about what he could do if he used it. Night after night, I lay awake wondering why I'd let him run, why I'd opened my claws and released the most dangerous enemy I could possibly have. I didn't for one moment imagine he'd feel any obligation to hold his hand from wreaking any vengeance he could for the way that I'd stepped in and put an end to the plans he and Tucker had made between them, taking the prize he must have thought by then was his.
True, I wasn't idle. I did everything I could think of to neutralise all the ways I could imagine that he might use to do damage. Equally true, I knew that he knew me so well – he'd trained me so well – that he would be fully aware of how I'd react and how to sidestep it if he chose. It was like fighting my own shadow. Most of all, I knew that even though I'd obeyed my Pack conditioning and ousted a more powerful rival, I'd failed to achieve the only type of victory that the Pack recognises as absolute.
I'd left him alive.
Whether he ever forgave me for that, I'm not sure. I don't imagine he ever would or could forgive me for the punishment meted out to then-Commodore Tucker, taken red-handed in diverting the Empire's superfluous goods to the poor and needy. Whether he knows even now that the poor and needy continue to benefit – rather more so than they did before, though Cole still operates very much on the downlow – is more uncertain. Perhaps he honestly believes that the expropriation of occasional lorries' worth of goods in the vicinity of the refugee camp (the one that had its operational areas so carefully and expertly cleared of mines shortly after his 'disappearance') has gone unnoticed; or that nobody is aware of the strictly unauthorised business done under cover of the establishment where Zenobia Towneley finally found her ideal modus vivendi.
Perhaps. Though I hope he doesn't underestimate me that badly.
Still, for all that I can't help feeling that there must have been some reason why he never attempted to wreak half the havoc he could have done (I'm not nearly vain enough to think he was deterred by my safeguards), that doesn't mean he no longer poses a danger, or that I can safely let him go his way unmolested. Ten years on he's still a rebel, still the first name on the Empire's Most Wanted list, and if I were to make no effort to put an end to the threat he poses, there would be those who wondered why. The Pack have long memories, and no tolerance for sentimentality.
Wherefore this PADD.
Of course Ian knows what's on it. But why, I wonder – merely out of curiosity – does it bother him so much, after all this time?
I can understand why he should take a distant interest in the ex-Commodore's welfare. Despite the fact that he was one of my staff, not Tucker's (per se), he couldn't have lived on Jupiter Station without absorbing at least some of the devotion to the man they all called 'The Chief'. I couldn't help but be infected by it myself; the man's charm was irresistible, though it never by one iota affected the efficiency of the ship he ran. If anything, it improved it, as I found out for myself when I tried out his methods on my own account. A lot of the changes I've implemented since stepping up to power have had their roots in his methods, extraordinary ones when measured against the standard hitherto but astonishingly simple in that they tap into the human need for belonging in a way that mere dread of the consequences of failure could never hope to achieve.
Reed, however…
I suppose at some points their paths would have crossed. But back then Ian was nothing like the mature, confident young man he is now. Even given the fact that after watching that demonstration of lingchi it would have taken a strong man to look the former General in the face unless specifically ordered to do so, I always suspected that my PA regarded him with something like superstitious horror.
Up till now I'd have doubted whether anything more than his existence, his efficiency and his allegiances ever crossed Reed's mind, though anyone who had access to sensitive material at this level would have to have passed stringent security checks and he never took anyone at face value. If they'd interacted for whatever reason, I'd have imagined that on Reed's side it was carried out with the standard crisp, slightly chilly tones I remember so well, while Ian restrained himself with an effort from saluting every time he responded.
Now, however, I wonder. Had there ever been an occasion when some word or gesture was misunderstood? Or perhaps understood all too well?
Had something happened that Ian felt obliged to keep secret – or was ordered to?
It hasn't occurred to me before, but I frown thoughtfully. There was certainly a period when Reed – still to some extent recuperating from his injuries – had been allowed to roam at large around the station. I have the best of reasons to know he was bisexual, and that his instincts were predatory. Though he seemed docile enough in that respect, and his sexual needs seemed to be supplied by Ms. Cutler, I can't entirely rule out the possibility that he may have made some kind of approach to a young man who clearly gave off the signals of being vulnerable.
Rama makes a small, murmurous comment. For no reason at all I remember that Reed too had a cat: Beans (what a ridiculous name for a cat!), given him by Tucker as part of his rehabilitation programme. I could be faintly offended that he clearly thought it too much of a risk to leave the beast behind to my non-existent mercies (does he think I make war on animals?) but on reflection it was more likely to have been Cutler who insisted on taking her with them when they fled. That said, there was no time just then for issuing specific orders about small domestic animals when the Bunker was being invaded and searched, and maybe they were right not to take the risk.
I really don't have time for musing about the past, and I've already used up far too much. As for what may or may not have happened between my then-superior officer and a junior, I doubt if Ian would thank me for prying into it now. Still, the suspicion remains at the back of my mind as with an abrupt movement I open up the PADD and read the information it contains; and moments later I send out a set of highly specific orders.
Perhaps the former General would be flattered by the knowledge that even now the BII has a separate section purely devoted to attempting to pin down where he is. I chose the staff for it carefully – officers who could pore over page after page of seemingly random activity for day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, only partly relying on the computer to identify patterns and never becoming bored and jaded by trails that led nowhere and leads that led to dead-ends. Because there were always those, more than enough of them, and some were most likely random and some were little malicious gifts, but every now and then – just once in a while – there would be a smear of DNA on an empty coffee cup or a boot-print in wet mud that corresponded to the most up-to-date estimates the computer could produce of Reed's size, weight and biometric print. We all set our feet down naturally in a particular way, creating minute variations in an apparently uniform shoe impression, though my mentor was fully aware of that and perfectly capable of purposely adjusting his walk to confuse the data – to some degree. The security analyses he'd helped to build and perfect are desperately hard to fool, even for him, though even now it's impossible for me to say with any certainty whether these tiny discoveries had been accidental or a deliberate message.
It's unlikely they're accidental. He's far too good at his job for that. But if they're a message – what is he trying to say?
Pack fights to the death.
A nurse is harder to hide, especially one as gifted and devoted as once-Lieutenant Cutler. He does his best to conceal her presence, but now and again the trace gleams through, as it did in that refugee camp. I can only imagine that the two of them must have hidden under the covers in a tent somewhere when Amanda brought them supplies – as I am sure she did, because the opportunity to extend that kind of charity is the main reason she joined me. I can't believe she saw them and failed to report it, for after her testimony at Tucker's trial, she'd have been dead before she knew who killed her if she had bumped into them. Of course, I know that where Cutler is Reed will never be far away, but the game is not between her and me. To use her in that way would be to dishonour both of us. When I take my victory, I want it to be fairly won, me against him, as Pack law dictates.
I wonder, when he first set it down, did he ever think of how apposite it would become?
The BII team finally justified my faith in them. Slowly but surely, they identified a pattern.
It started with a tiny little village in the Sonora Desert that, literally overnight, shone measurably brighter on the nighttime surveillance satellites. More people were using electric lights. Then, gradually, activity in the non-visible spectrum started ramping up. People were using more power, running more appliances and charging more devices, vacuum cleaners and refrigerators, PADDs and video players. Greater power consumption generally corresponds to a better standard of living. The people in this village were suddenly doing better.
If this information had been brought to me immediately and if I had remembered Reed's hobby of tinkering back on Jupiter Station, we might have caught them then and there. But one point does not make a line, much less a map with an x on it marking a treasure, or the hideout of a wanted man.
Then there was the West Havens refugee camp. It was unfortunate, what I'd had to do to those people, but when the Empire's main manufacturer of weapons components said he needed to expand his factory, I was not yet in a position to deny him. A year later, and things would have been different, but as it was, I'd had to order an entire town full of people out of their homes and off their land. It might have been a different story if they had worked at the plant – I could have ordered the manufacturer to arrange housing for them, possibly even by building it into the addition – but as it was, they were only there because in the shadow of the plant was the least desirable, most affordable real estate in the area. So, I'd had to put them somewhere, and the only places available were places nobody wanted.
It was shockingly convenient that the manufacturer held the deed to a large plot of no-man's land left over from the last global conflict. It was riddled with landmines and the groundwater was contaminated from chemical warfare, but he assumed the government had the resources to remedy that. He was more than happy to part with it at just over double the market value, which arrangement would provide him the necessary funds to expand his factory without eating into his profit margins.
At the time of the relocation, it was predicted that most of the people in West Havens would die from accidents with the land mines, the effects of the toxic conditions or simple malnutrition within two to three years, and then we would be able to move the survivors into work camps and comfort houses. In reality, they have lasted more than a half a decade now, with some of the older children completing their education and finding employment that allowed them to move their families out of the camp. If we had employed a better, more caring physician, or even just a more honest one, who kept accurate records, I might have realized sooner from the unexpectedly low rates of cancer and deficiency diseases and the surprising lack of deaths by land mine that Reed and Cutler were in the vicinity. But two points can only define a straight line, and Reed was never that predictable.
Then Reed got bored, I suppose. That was his downfall. Back when he was still in the service of the Empire, he always had to be moving, always doing something. Always wreaking havoc. And that gave us our third data point. Three points define a plane, and with enough information, enough of the right information, a team of clever analysts can turn that plane into a map.
There are always resistance cells. Generally, I tolerate them, for they act as a pressure valve; if one can channel one's activism in minor acts of rebellion, one is that much less likely to commit dangerous and potentially disruptive acts of sabotage. From time to time, I acknowledge the irritation they cause by ordering a raid or a purge of a particular district where they have been active, but though only the careless actually get caught I arrange for them to 'disappear', proof positive to those who escape the net that the effort was worthwhile and that the lost were martyrs to the Cause. If the martyrs themselves presently find themselves relocated to distant worlds where they find rewarding work among the less well off (after all, rebels are always idealists at heart), a lack of communications facilities prevent them from ever announcing that their fate was rather different to what might have been expected for the Empire's convicted felons.
Reed, of course, knows all this. He had more intel about the cells than he would ever have revealed, more than the resistance were ever likely to guess, and a few years after his 'defection' my hunters noticed sporadic increases in the activity of individual cells. The disruption they caused would suddenly spike – ever so slightly, and not for long – and then suddenly go back to normal levels, as if something, or someone, was acting as an accelerant. Their activity during these spikes showed an increase in directedness, and consequently in impact. They knew what to hit and how to hit to do the worst possible damage, and above all how to avoid detection.
The gamekeeper had turned poacher, with devastating effect.
We positioned spies in the locality of the cells that had not yet displayed one of these spikes, equipped with the most sophisticated surveillance equipment available in the Empire. And we waited, as patient as death, for the first sign of anything that could possibly herald the arrival of the mischief-maker who refuses to lie down and disappear.
The PADD has the news I've been waiting for so long. The team has already been assembled, ready for immediate despatch. All it takes is my thumbprint and the jaws of the trap will open, ready to close with deadly force.
Reed the Fox has played a stealthy game for a long, long time, but he can't run forever. If I don't set the hounds on him he may think I've forgotten, or that he can consider himself safe; and if that happens, he may become a nuisance I can't afford.
Sooner or later, I will take the victory I denied myself. Who knows when it will be? I'm playing chess against a mirror image that looks back at me out of the darkness and laughs as he plays the only game he knows.
Conscious of a dozen conflicting emotions behind the expressionless mask that looks back at me from my monitor screen, I know that my first duty is to the security of the Empire. And as I press my thumb firmly into the message pad I think that perhaps in the course of it I'll take a small vengeance on behalf of a young man who's become not only my irreplaceable servant but also my selfless lover.
And maybe, this will be the time.
