The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (8 page)

“My Lord Emperor is generous, as I have said, but what could I want that is not already available to me?”

“There is one thing, is there not?” the Emperor purred.

“I have everything that I could want. If there
is
something, then even I do not know what it is.”

“You do. You simply don’t know that it can be done.

“I know that you have one regret, Salton Stoakes. I know that you secretly curse the fact that your F-Gene did not blossom sooner. Since receiving your Artifact, you have not aged a day, but nor did you regain those years lost to you.”

Stoakes jerked in surprise, momentarily losing his composure. He licked his lips. “They can be returned?”

“They can. What do you say, Salton Stoakes? Do we have a bargain?”

“We do, Lord Emperor. I am happy to be in your service and will complete the task as assigned, no matter how long it takes.”

“Excellent.”

The Emperor’s terminal pulled gently at the umbilical stem issuing from the top of his head to give himself some slack, walked to the wall and placed his hand within it, parting the fibers as if they were folds of silk. He turned to face Stoakes again, presenting something sitting on the flat of his open hand.

“Take them,” the Emperor said.

“What are they?” Stoakes asked.

“Yellow Diamond Spectacles. They will aid in your identification of targets.”

“
Yellow. . . Diamond
?” Stoakes said uncomfortably.

“Yes, these were Crier’s. One of his first pairs, crude and lethal to anyone but a Shade.”

Stoakes took the glasses and examined them. Two small, round milky yellow lenses, translucent at best, were held together by a thin but sturdy wire frame. They didn’t look like they were any good for aiding one’s vision, nor did they look the least bit dangerous. “These are lethal to normals?” Stoakes said.

“You will find them maddening yourself, I believe. The lenses provide several layers of augmented perception, which would overwhelm and destroy a human mind without an Artifact to help sort and translate the otherwise alien information. You will need to concentrate on some layers while trying to ignore others. What you will see most clearly is an overlay of faults and cleave planes upon reality itself. These faults and cleave planes you must try to tune out. If you find yourself too interested in one of them, you may find yourself drawn into it, and into the interstices that only Pylas Crier could navigate. And I will be in need of a new agent.

“You will also perceive my unique energy signature, which may act as a beacon to you, should you ever find yourself separated from the Empire.

“Most importantly, though, you will perceive open doorways. These are similar to wormholes, which will also be visible to you, but they are not physical. These doorways are distinct from wormholes, and the faults and cleave planes, in that you cannot go through them. When you look upon your target, you will understand.

“There will be many details to discuss in the future, but now we must get you to Planet 1401 as quickly as possible.”

“Lord Emperor, how is it at all possible? You have just made planetfall, have you not? There are no jump decks or relays in place between the old and the new systems.”

“You will go by jump deck to Planet 1398. From there, I will see you safely to Planet 1401. The trip will not be pleasant, but should only take two days. I give you leave to prepare your home. Once the jump system has been integrated into the new length of Vine, you will be free to return, but from now on you will reside in secret in the Root Palace, making advance forays when necessary.”

“Understood.” Stoakes was about to turn to leave, but was compelled to ask a final question. “Lord Emperor?”

“Yes, Salton Stoakes?”

“What do you fear would occur if Holson and the woman were allowed to meet?” Stoakes asked.

“They have met and more than once, but I believe that whatever is destined to happen has yet to run its course. I will confide and confess that I do not know the ultimate result of their coupling. But every fiber of my being—which you know to be of considerable size—screams out that it should not be.”

For two days, Salton Stoakes was subjected to hell. Travel through the old, disused phloem tubes was, as the Emperor had indicated, not pleasant, but never had Stoakes been inside so long or travelled so fast through the tubes. Though there were no jump stations, he knew that, under the Emperor’s control, he was making use of the fold zones at key stitch points to speed his progress. At journey’s end, he was disgorged, wet and exhausted, from parting Vine fibers into a hidden chamber in the Root Palace on Planet 1401 that would serve as his quarters for the duration of his assignment. He was given the leisure of a third day to use as he would before beginning, but only took half of it to clean up and to sleep.

Now he dressed in his charcoal gray clothes as he reviewed the video record of Anis Lausden. A pretty girl. A giantess, but a girl nonetheless. And pretty. It was a shame. He went Dark and passed through the slit in the wall that was the only access to his quarters.

He emerged into a service hall that fed into one of the main corridors. He returned to normal and joined the light traffic walking the halls and made for the main gate. Many had the same idea. The Palace was still settling into the planet and expanding to its final proportions. Before that was done, no one could really start their proper work. There was a certain amount of restless excitement that had no other outlet than to lay eyes on Planet 1401. The courtyard, with its enclosing walls nearly complete, was filled with people wanting to get a look from the courtyard gates and just beyond. Many more were already atop the walls.

Stoakes snickered to himself. There was nothing to see, especially on a planet with no real threat to offer. The seas were past the horizon, the sun was weak, and the atmosphere was lazy, making for a boring sky. But they’d been cooped up for a year and scared senseless by Ty Karr. He understood their need, and their presence would make it easy for him to slip out unnoticed.

Holson was still being kept busy and would soon be sent on an assignment that should be a good start to taking his mind off of Anis Lausden. Stoakes wasn’t afraid of Holson, but when he thought of meeting the man, even in passing and even with Holson none the wiser to his identity or his deeds, he couldn’t help feeling an irrefutable sense of dread. Perhaps that was healthy. Though Holson was still new as a Shade, Stoakes couldn’t help but be impressed by his accomplishments. Stoakes had fought side by side with Laedra Hol, and if Holson was anything like his teacher, there was good reason to be impressed—and cautious.

Once past the courtyard gates, Stoakes drew his loose collar up over the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes exposed. With a quick look around, he went Dark, becoming a true animate shadow. He blended easily with the other shadows and no one thought to pay him any attention. He kicked off the ground and and propelled his significantly reduced mass—a single kilogram now—for kilometers at a time before having to touch down and kick off again.

Along the way, he overtook Barson’s marching tank troops in their mechanized centaur rigs. There appeared to be about two thousand of them, on their way to relieve Holson’s skeletons. A jump ship would be coming for Kapler to fetch him to the Palace. If Barson’s troops were allowed to wipe out the perimeter camps surrounding Kapler’s Tower, it would be simple for Stoakes to slip in and do his work unseen and unknown amidst the butchery, but the Emperor had promised Kapler his choice of genetic samples to later use to repopulate the planet once his term of service was finished. No matter. Stoakes preferred it this way. In and out, unseen and unknown. No witnesses—left alive, anyway—local or alien. The challenge appealed to him.

Once he was within sight of the Tower, he leapt high up into the air where he floated like a leaf, getting a clear perspective of the distribution of the locals and the skeletons. With enough wind, he could drift over the lines to the Tower itself, but he’d heard about the Lightning Gun and would make an easy target. He picked his entry point, and upon landing, he made for it, darting through the camp with its tents and its sentry giants, stirring only the wind. He passed through the skeletons and kept low to the charred ground, showing up against the Black Fields not at all.

Stoakes arrived at the Tower’s base and made a complete circle around it, noting the main entrance and several service entrances at intervals. Any of these, locked or not, would allow him entry, but he wanted to wait until he could be sure that the Lightning Gun was deactivated. Barson’s troops were to occupy the Tower and keep the would-be revolutionaries in check—it wouldn’t do to have them accidentally set the Gun off, so Kapler would certainly disable it. Without the threat of the Gun, Stoakes would have a wider choice of exit routes.

The metered stomp of the march started to sound across the Black Fields, and Stoakes could hear the whine of a jump ship approaching. He waited for Kapler to come out and greet the commander of Barson’s troops before slipping into the Tower through one of the service entrances. He figured he had some time—minutes at least—before the occupation of the Tower began and was complete.

Inside, he paused for a moment in a dark corner, reached into a pocket, and produced the Yellow Diamond Spectacles. He examined them one last time before putting them on. They were so plain and the lenses so cloudy that he had trouble believing what the Emperor had said about them. Still, the Emperor didn’t make mistakes. He might bend, twist, or hide the truth, but he didn’t make mistakes, at least not in Stoakes’s experience.

Stoakes pulled the lenses close to his eyes, hooking the wireframe ends over his ears. Instantly his eyes throbbed and his head hurt, bombarded by dynamic, intruding imagery, which his brain scrambled to process. The faults and cleave planes the Emperor had spoken of were everywhere, shifting softly like the in-and-out rhythm of respiration. Besides hurting his head, this movement seemed to reach into his stomach, take hold, and nauseate him.

The walls of Kapler’s Tower meant nothing to the lenses. Beneath the cleave planes and beyond the walls were several discrete worlds of imagery attempting to break every restriction of order and discipline Stoakes had ever learned or come by naturally. He saw the blazing black light of the Root Palace and the Vine rising up interminably into the sky and out into space. He saw the intricate patterns of Kapler’s technology woven throughout the Tower. He saw the pale, waning light of the surrounding Sarsans and confirmed what he already knew, that they were a race essentially dead already. Only one thing competed with the layer of the cleave planes in brilliance and intensity, though. High up in the Tower, a blazing funnel of light was spiraling, growing by infinitesimal but consistent increments.

He memorized the route and took off the glasses, the act of separating the lenses from his eyes easing what felt like an immeasurable weight upon his brain. He put the glasses back in his pocket. They would be  more of a hinderance than a help since he was already rather adept at infiltration.

He made his way up the Tower, taking the memorized route, the most direct way through seams between walls, through rooms that would otherwise not allow progress to his destination, and sometimes through actual doors.

He stopped briefly when he came into a room with a man floating in a thick glass cylinder filled with fluid and lit with eerie green light. Stoakes had heard about Kapler’s brother and knew that he was being kept alive in this way, but to Stoakes he looked dead. He shrugged and continued on his way up the Tower.

After a mere total of three minutes, Stoakes slipped through the seam between door and jamb into the apartment he sought. He hugged the wall, sliding liquidly along it, and made not the slightest sound. He rounded a corner and saw her. Anis Lausden stood at the window looking out at the new troops filling the Black Fields below.

Slowly, silently he retrieved the glasses again and put them on. This time, this close to the source, the funnel issuing from Anis Lausden’s head overwhelmed all else. He couldn’t remember in all his thousands of years of life ever seeing anything so beautiful. Anis Lausden was beautiful, sparking the beginnings of lust in him, but the funnel was. . . was
divine
. There was no other way to describe it. The sense of warmth, of welcome, of satisfaction coming from the furious little cyclone touched him in a way that he thought impossible. A single tear dropped to the floor. There would be no more, of course. Stoakes could be ashamed of what he was about to and still do it. He had agreed to a contract and his will was iron. He noted the origin point of the funnel, its depth and orientation, and once again removed the glasses.

Stoakes reached for the small of his back, gripped the hilt of the Suicide Knife with one hand and the end of its sheath with the other. The weapon was thirty-three centimeters long and eighteen of that was blade, dark and glittering, and which whispered now as he released it.

Anis turned from the window, thinking she’d heard something or someone, but she found herself alone. She moved forward as a shadow slid along the wall, positioning itself behind her.

“Jav?” she said, tentatively.

The spell of the Suicide Knife had taken her.

Stoakes frowned. Holson moves fast, he thought to himself. The fact that she was seeing Jav meant that she trusted him. This kind of work wasn’t beneath Stoakes, but it still seemed a shame. She was so pretty and so young. She’d done nothing to deserve this, but such was the way of assassination. Stoakes crept up behind her, seeing what she was seeing and knowing that it wasn’t real.

Jav Holson rounded the same corner that Stoakes had. He moved in slow motion and put put a finger to his lips.

“Jav,” Anis said. “It’s so good to see you. What’s the matter?”

“Shhh,” he seemed to say, and Anis thought that it was for the second time.

She cocked her head in confusion, but did not disobey. Indeed, her confusion gave way to comfort and a feeling of safety with the person she trusted above all others before her and within arm’s reach.