Jackers (2 page)

All of Earth was in mourning for
Tenno-heika,
the Fushi Emperor, the Emperor of Man. His body had been returned down the Singapore Sky-el, then placed in funeral procession aboard the Imperial hydrofoil yacht
Manaduru
for the voyage across the South China Sea and final cremation according to Shinto rite at the Imperial shrine at Kyoto.

If there was irony that the Fushi Emperor was dead—after all his
nengo,
or era-name, meant Immortality—none cared to comment openly. Even nation-states of the Hegemony that did not accept the godhood of the man occupying the Chrysanthemum Throne recognized that they had lost a friend and advocate, for the twin suicides of Konoye and his only son, his first heir, all but guaranteed that the recent trend toward including non-Japanese in Imperial affairs would quickly cease.

The Fushi Emperor’s successor ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne within the Tenno Kyuden on the fourth day of
Sho-gatsu,
the first month of the Common Era year 2543. Ichiro Takeda had already chosen
Tenrai
for his era-name, a poetic form meaning Heavenly Thunder. There was sharp symbolism in the choice; where the Fushi Emperor had striven for long-lasting stability, for the immortality of Empire and Emperor alike, the Tenrai Emperor would proclaim once again the power of heaven above the Earth and all the widely scattered family of Man.
Tenno-heika Tenrai
would be more god than man, elevated above the affairs of mortals, as befitted his station.

And he would be the warning thunder that would bring the squabbling enemies of the Imperial peace to heel.

The Nihongo word
gensui,
meaning Fleet Admiral, was both rank and title.
Gensui
Yasuhiro Munimori, commander of the Imperial First Fleet and Chief of the Emperor’s Personal Military Staff, nodded politely, a restrained formal response to his visitor’s bow. Munimori was a large and imposing man, his torso layered with slabs of fat and muscle that reminded
Chujo
Tetsu Kawashima of the man-mountain bulk of a sumo wrestler.

Approaching the Fleet Admiral, Kawashima thought, was much like seeking audience with a mountain, and often as productive. Munimori was a man who set his own course, who told others what he expected of them, and who rarely changed his mind simply because others of lesser rank dared to contradict him. Such contradictions were increasingly rare these days, for with his accession to Imperial Chief of Staff, there were few who could challenge his political position, and fewer still who would.

Vice Admiral Kawashima had been an Imperial Navy officer for nearly forty years, had reached his current position of Fleet Squadron Commander after serving four years as commander of a Fleet Carrier Group. He resented the rapid rise of younger men like Munimori, who’d been a junior
tai-i,
a navy lieutenant, back when Kawashima had been commanding his first ship, and he mistrusted their ambition. Still, with Kawashima now commanding the First Fleet’s
Ohka,
or Cherry Blossom Squadron, Munimori was Kawashima’s direct superior, and duty, honor, and the ancient demands of bushido all required unquestioning obedience.

“Konichiwa,
Kawashimasan,” Munimori said, his voice a rumble from somewhere deep within his vast belly. A hand gesture dismissed the genegineered female servant who’d ushered Kawashima through the door. “Welcome to my home.”

“Konichiwa, Gensuisama.
I am most honored.”

“Please, come. I have ordered
o-cha
for us.”

Kawashima knew that Munimori had orders for him but had no idea what they might be. He’d certainly not been expecting an invitation to the Fleet Admiral’s private residence within the Tenno Kyuden wheel. As he glanced about the anteroom, he was struck by the modest and restrained taste of his host, by the decor that a
gaijin
might call Minimalist. The Nihongo word for it was
shibui,
a word that meant the astringent pucker to the mouth caused by just-ripened persimmons. Bare walls, patterned after the quiet beauty of the lattice and paper
shoji
of a traditional house, woven
tatami
on the floors, gentle lighting from no visible source, these were the surroundings of a well-to-do merchant, perhaps, not a
daimyo
of the Empire. The only visible indicators of true wealth were the servants—humans rather than robots, and the women showing the too-perfect beauty of genegineered
ningyo.

Munimori must want something exceptional,
Kawashima thought as he followed the big man deeper into the warrens of his private residence. He had never known the Fleet Admiral to show such generosity to anyone save, possibly, to the highest ranking
daimyos
of the Imperial government.

Most of the senior Imperial military officers maintained quarters here within the slowly rotating Palace of Heaven, close by the Chrysanthemum Throne itself. Munimori’s residence was located at the one-sixth-G level of the Tenno Kyuden wheel, and the lesser gravity—about what one would experience on the Moon—obviously was to his liking. He moved with an oddly graceful, sliding walk that carried his mass with surprising speed along the smooth, slightly curving floors, and Kawashima had to hurry—carefully for fear of falling and losing face—to keep up. He doubted that the big man would be able to stand in a full gravity.

They stopped in an austerely spartan room—but not the one reserved for the tea ceremony. There were no furnishings at all save a
tatami
on the floor, an antique sword rack, and a peculiar, twisting
inochi-zo
by itself in a small alcove.

“Please wait here,” his host commanded, and Kawashima was left alone.

He was drawn at once to the
inochi-zo,
a “life-statue” standing perhaps a third of a meter tall. Like some obscene plant, it grew from a pot of soil, but it appeared to be sculpted of living flesh, an exquisitely delicate homunculus crafted by a genegineer’s art. Its overall form was that of a nude man, but the limbs bent and folded about its artistically twisted torso, a part of the body they embraced. Lacking a head, the creature’s face had been grafted onto a broadened chest; the mouth gaped in a voiceless, breathless, and eternal scream, while the living eyes followed Kawashima’s every move.

He’d heard of such things, of course, but had never seen one, for they were quite rare and extraordinarily expensive. Though each was unique, as befitted a work of art, they reputedly fell into one of two classes, the
tanoshimi-zo,
which lived in continual orgasmic pleasure, and their dark counterparts, the
kurushimi-zo,
for which simply existence was unending agony.

This one, obviously, was in pain. Kawashima stared into those pleading eyes—their irises were pale blue—and shuddered. It seemed as though he was looking into twin wells of bottomless, endless horror.

“I am very proud of that one,” Munimori said at his back. Kawashima started. He’d not heard the admiral’s return.

“It is… most interesting.…”

“One of Tsuru’s finest masterpieces.”

“Ah.” Dr. Masanori Tsuru had been one of the greatest of all Nihon’s geneshapers, artists who used DNA as canvas and paint to craft living art forms of flesh, blood, and brain. “If this is one of his, my lord, it must be very old.”

“Almost ninety years. Still, I’m told it might live for centuries more. I hope so. I find it a most personal statement about Man’s eternal suffering beneath the Great Wheel.” Paternally, he laid a hand on the thing’s hunched and headless shoulders. Kawashima saw the flesh crawl and tremble beneath his touch. “Over ninety percent of this one’s genotype is pure human. Its nervous system has been tuned to transmit constant pain, something roughly on a level, I understand, with being burned alive except that the pain never overloads the organism’s brain and senses and never dulls. Its brain is fully functional, and according to its papers it was link-educated so that it could, ah, fully appreciate its predicament. That adds so much to the work’s meaning, you know. It is not simply a live sculpture, something pretty to look at, but a thinking, knowing soul trapped in a living hell.”

Kawashima felt dizzy, and the pale walls of the sparsely furnished room seemed to be closing in around him.
Why?
he wanted to ask, but to demand an explanation for this twisted horror would be to insult his host.

“Can… it speak?”

“Oh, no. No lungs, no voice box. The mouth is purely art. I have to provide it with a special nutrient each day, watering it like a plant, or it would lapse into a coma and die. The ears are functional, however. It can hear us and understand what we say. Beautiful, is it not?”

“Remarkable, my lord.”

“Actually, I suspect that after ninety years, it must be quite mad. But just look at those eyes. Mad or not, it still
feels,
after all this time! Occasionally I speak to it, promising release for it, one day. I don’t know if it believes me or not, but I permit myself the small conceit that it must continue to
hope,
through year after year of unendurable agony. Tell me,
Chujosan.
Do you believe in the transmigration of souls?”

The sudden change of topic left Kawashima off-balance. “I… I have never thought about it,
Munimorisama.
I have never considered myself a religious man. I am not sure that I believe in souls.”

“So.A practical, pragmatic man,
neh?
Well, I believe. I have seen too much
not
to believe. I sometimes wonder if, by providing the gene-tailored shells of the
inochi-zo,
we are not providing homes for the spirits of truly wicked men, men being punished for unimaginable sins in past lives.” He slapped the bare flesh with a meaty smack, and it writhed soundlessly as his hand lifted. “Perhaps after a small eternity of suffering here, of providing us with spiritual instruction, the way will be clear for this one’s final translation to Nirvana. Perhaps some pain here and now will be accepted later with joy, once the Great Wheel’s cycle is broken.”

Kawashima tried to formulate a polite response and failed. He felt trapped by those shifting, pain-filled eyes that begged him, soundlessly, for what he could not give, for what Munimori refused to grant. What kind of mind, he wondered, found fulfillment and contemplation in such a sight?

“I have two orders for you,
Chujosan.”
Munimori’s tone was brusque now, all business. “One for general circulation, the second for you alone.”

Stiff-armed, Munimori held out two message disks. Bowing, Kawashima accepted them. Pressing the first against the link circuitry embedded in his left palm, he felt the trickle of data feeding from the disk to his cephlink RAM. As he downloaded a keyword, the message decoded itself, expanding within his mind’s eye for his inspection.

The message was short, an Imperial edict under Munimori’s seal… and from its content, Kawashima was certain that Munimori had been the original author. It was blunt and to the point, calling for the resignation of all naval line officers who were not birth-citizens of
Dai Nihon,
the “Greater Japan” that included territorial enclaves such as the Philippines, Singapore, and the old Pacific Northwest, as well as the original home islands.

Kawashima had been expecting such an order ever since hearing of the Fushi Emperor’s death. Many of his
gaijin
officers had already offered their resignations, knowing the mind of the new power behind the Chrysanthemum Throne.

“Will the first order present difficulties,
Chujosan?”

“There will be no problem,
Munimorisama.
It will be welcome to many of my people.”

“Good. Please take the second order, and examine the introduction.”

Pressing the second disk to the flesh and circuit wiring of his palm, Kawashima felt the flow of a much longer document downloading into his cephlink RAM. This, he realized, must include fleet orders, complete with individual ship deployments and logistical directives. As he decoded the document’s first level and scanned its preamble, he knew his guess was correct. Ohka Squadron was being sent to war.

“How accurate is this information?” Kawashima asked, his eyes closed as he read the words hanging before his inner eye.

“Completely,” the Fleet Admiral replied. “We have long known of the rebel activities on New America and have agents in place there, monitoring the political situation.”

Filing the document, Kawashima opened his eyes. “This is most unexpected,
Munimorisama.
I was expecting orders for Chi Draconis.”

Chi Draconis V—Eridu—had recently joined the growing list of Frontier worlds attempting to cut free from the Terran Hegemony.

Munimori was frowning. “The situation at Eridu is stable for the moment. The planet’s surface and orbital facilities are still in the hands of rebels, but an Imperial squadron from Hariti has arrived and taken up orbit. A truce is in effect, at least for the moment.

“If we content ourselves with simply reacting to rebel provocations, however,” Munimori went on, “then we place ourselves in a box. It has become clear that 26 Draconis is the political heart of the rebellion. Take that system, take New America, and the rebel resistance will crumble.”

“Just how substantive is this rebel government we’ve been hearing about, my lord? The, um, official line is that the rebels possess little in the way of internal organization.”

“Though we dislike conferring any hint of legitimacy on the rebels by calling them a ‘government,’ ” Munimori said slowly, “we must be honest with ourselves and accept that a government is precisely what they hope to form. A number of representatives from various disaffected colony worlds of the Shichiju have been gathering on New America for months now, meeting openly in the planet’s capital.”

“Meeting, my lord?For what purpose?”

Munimori gave a humorless smile. “Our intelligence suggests that they themselves are not clear on that point. Some of the representatives evidently hope to refashion the Hegemony, possibly remove it from Imperial control, if such a thing is even conceivable. Others wish a complete separation, to create this Confederation of theirs as a separate state.” He shook his head. “Obviously, both factions will be in for a shock.”