The Centurion's Empire (50 page)

"Impossible," said the marshal smugly. "Anything like that would have come through me first."

"Wrong. Lord Wallace arranged it himself, merely by applying money. He bought contract hit squads through the
Luministe accounts."

"Impossible," the marshal -sighed again, confident that she was lying.

"I'm a Luministe agent—and traitor," she admitted. "I was in a position to know,
and
I was able to give the Ward Lords
and the Yakuza a very convincing audit trail."

She suddenly smiled broadly, as if she had just taught a very important lesson to a very slow child. The marshal's calm
had vanished, but he was unable to articulate his fury.

"They paid me a fortune," Lucel continued, "yet all that I had wanted to do in the first place was kill Lord Wallace.
Kooky world, don't you think?"

"Who the hell are you really working for?" shouted the marshal, standing up and knocking his chair over. "The
Luministes?"

"No. / am working for Vitellan, the Eternal Centurion of Durvas. True, I have made use of the Luministes for a long
time. They're awfully earnest, just like all other religious folk that I've met."

The marshal picked up his chair and sat down again. He squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the armrests so tightly that
the joints creaked.

"Lady, I'm rather strung out and probably in a fairly psychotic state just now. Just stop these fucking riddles and come to
the point. Why are you here?"

"Whatever I say, you are not going to believe me," Lucel declared coyly, settling back in her chair and crossing her legs.

"As soon as I've said my piece it will be
splat!"
She fired the rail pistol with a sharp clack. It struck a charcoal portrait of
the late Lord Wallace squarely between the eyes.

"Hey! That's a Breugon original, it cost a hundred thousand—"

"Compared to what his Lordship did to Vitellan, that's nothing. Dr. Gulden, you can come in now!" she called.
Gulden entered with the missing director of surgery, Cas-sion. The Icekeeper was holding a command remote and
Cassion was wearing a penal control collar.

"Dr. Cassion and I had a little talk with the Icekeeper last night," Lucel began to explain, but Burgess shouted her
down.

"Gulden! You knew about this, you sat through an
entire
meeting of the Village Corporate without telling me
anything!"

"My loyalty is to the Centurion, not you," said Gulden tersely.

"The point is that the Icekeeper of Durvas thinks that I am worth a fair hearing," Lucel cut in as Burgess was drawing
breath. "Dr. Cassion, would you say your piece, please?"

The director of surgery seemed uninjured, yet he was pale and haggard. When he spoke the stress was evident in his
voice.

"Marshal, what she says ... is true," he said slowly. Burgess waited, but Cassion just stood staring blankly, his eyes
slightly crossed.

"Dr. Cassion will be available for further consultations after your interview with Ms. Hunter," Gulden finally added.

"Come on, Doctor, walkies."

The marshal watched as the Icekeeper escorted Gulden from the room, and Lucel could hear the grinding of his teeth
from where she was sitting.

"Don't think too badly of Dr. Gulden," she said as she pocketed her rail pistol. "I approached the Icekeeper first because
he would guarantee me a fair hearing if it involved Vitellan's safety. Icekeepers are like that."

"What? I'm marshal, damn you, Vitellan's safety is my life's work—"

"Marshals are merely vigilant where Vitellan is concerned. Icekeepers are psychopathic. Now, bear with me for one
more riddle. Who organized the attack on the Durvas clinic last November?"

"The Luministes, I suppose, but you're probably going to tell me I'm wrong so do it now."

"Yes, you're wrong. The Luministes only did the attacking; Icekeeper McLaren did the organizing."
Burgess gasped so hard that he breathed some of his own saliva. He flopped back in his chair coughing, with the heels of
his palms pressed into his eyes. When he spoke again his voice was barely a whisper. "Are you going to tell me any
details, or do you want to play more humiliation games? I can have security send in a whip and a leather cat suit if it
makes you happier."

Lucel giggled, then shrugged. "Sounds like fun, but this is meant to be a business meeting. As you know, some of the
Corporate wanted Vitellan kept frozen until the appointed year of 2054, others wanted him revived to help with the crisis
of the Luministes. Six years ago an agreement was reached to revive his bodily functions without consciousness,
primarily for surgical work. He was carrying a lot of battle injuries, and had been drinking a degraded, caustic version of
the Oil of Frosts for a long time."

"I was not on the Corporate then, but I know about that decision. Whenever the Centurion was to be actually awakened,
it was to be in perfect health: no pain, no infections, and no parasites. The surgery and healing took a few weeks, then he
was refrozen."

Burgess clasped his fingers beneath his chin, waiting for Lucel to fall into the trap.

"He was not refrozen," said Lucel.

"Damn!" he snarled, looked away from her.

"Sorry?"

"Nothing, go on."

"McLaren refroze a cadaver of identical build with a mask bonded onto his face and dermal mockup scars in all the right
places. Lord Wallace, Cassion, Anderson, and McLaren had set up a tight little team of systems medics and agents from
outside Durvas. Over six years McLaren imprinted Lord Wallace's whole consciousness on the Centurion's brain, leaving
only gate-access memories so that his total overlay could mimic being the Centurion. If it had not been for the Luministe
raid he would have his own life

functions terminated during a final imprinting session, and been awakened as the Centurion himself. Don't worry about
reviving Vitellan's crushed body, Marshal, it's only a stale version of Lord Wallace."
Burgess treated her horrifying revelations with grudging acceptance. She knew so much about what should have been
secret that this story was probably true as well. He was eager to know more, in spite of himself.

"So what about that Luministe imposter that, he paraded in front of us at the Village Corporate meeting last
December?" he asked.

"I'm coming to that. Lord Wallace had everything sewn up, but there was only one thing that he did not understand: the
fanatical loyalty of the Durvas Icekeepers. Any of the other ten dozen Durvas Icekeepers would have shouted the truth
from the manor's chimneypots, but for some reason McLaren kept quiet and helped. I don't know why, but it
must
have
been something to do with Vitellan's welfare. Can you help here—and please, no tricks."
Air hissed between the marshal's teeth as he drew breath. He took his time, thought carefully, looked to a portrait of
Icekeeper Guy Foxtread for inspiration, then decided that he had no alternative. He had to share information with Lucel
Hunter.

"I probably need my head read for telling you this, but... the Centurion's body was frozen near rocks of relatively high
natural radiation in 1358. That did a lot of damage to his tissues over six centuries, and Icekeeper Gulden tells me that
McLaren and Dr. Cassion probably had quite a battle to keep his body alive from 2022 to the first Luministe attack."
Lucel "sat forward eagerly. "Yes, yes!
The good Icekeeper."

"Good Icekeeper? He was bloody awful, he was the first traitor in 120 appointments—"

"No, just the opposite. McLaren was behind the entire scheme, he probably planned it back in 2016-when he first
realized that Vitellan would die of cancer only a few years after being unfrozen. Lord Wallace was his stooge. While his
Lordship was being imprinted on Vitellan, the same resources were being used to imprint Vitellan onto Robert
Wallace. McLaren was sending Vitellan to safety, into a young body in near-perfect health. I've done some rough
calculations, and they show that two total overlays would cost only about five percent more than one—if done together.
The difference is noise. I doubt that our late peer knew the truth about Vitellan's condition until after McLaren died.
What else can you tell me?"

"The imprinting cost a lot. There are vast amounts of credit missing from the Durvas books, billions. We are not
bankrupt, but our economic health will be delicate for at least a decade. The money has been hard to trace, but it appears
to have gone to medical and CPU service wholesalers. Whole-brain imprinting would account for it. How lucky for
McLaren that Robert Wallace was at hand, and in a comatose state."

"I'd bet anything that McLaren staged the car bombing and had the boy drugged and abducted to the clinic—where he
was sedated and mocked up to look braindead. Recent scans of Robert's body show only cosmetic surgery. His personality
was murdered to become a host for Vitellan's mind."

Burgess whistled. "Icekeepers are dangerous where the Centurion's welfare is concerned, that's a Durvas tradition, but
this is the worst example of it that I've ever seen. All the Icekeepers I've known have been a bit strange, maybe it's in the
job outline."

"Maybe I'd make a good Icekeeper," Lucel responded. "You male chauvinists have never appointed a woman in two
thousand years. Anyway, by November both overlays were complete, but Vitellan's body was close to death. McLaren
contacted the local Luministe operative—me— and said that if we were quick we could abduct Bon-homme's greatest
potential rival. We acted without authority and attacked. If we'd asked for authority it would have been refused because
Lord Wallace was pulling the Luministe strings all along, but we were not to know that—officially."

"I—ah, go on."

"There's a funny thing about that attack. We did not let off the bomb that brought down the building and crushed
Vitellan's body—"

"So that's when it happened!"

"Yes, and it must have been McLaren destroying evidence. I do know one thing for a fact: McLaren did not intend us to
take Robert's body. That was just an accident. My group leader was confused, she thought she had abducted the
Centurion. My own role in this was . . . covert. There was a lot of confused and secret dealing with the body of the
Centurion in Durvas, and I found that the best way to keep tabs was to work for the enemy. I wanted Vitellan safe, so I
rescued him from the Luministe hospital in Paris. Knowing all that I did, though,I was reluctant to return him to
Durvas."

"So, the pieces are fitting into place with the exception of you, Ms. Lucel Hunter. Who are you? What is your interest in
all this?"

"Ah, now that would be telling."

Burgess got up from the chair and walked across to his desk. He waved a recorder into life, then realized that Lucel was
still there and might not approve. He killed the recorder with another wave.

"So what now?" he asked.

Lucel stood up and took the rail pistol from her jacket, then walked across to the portrait of Guy. She loaded another
shot into the magazine while looking up at Vitellan's old friend and servant, then put the gun away.

"I had to make sure that your standard of care was back up to the standard of 1358," she said with a gesture to the
portrait. "The Centurion is alive, as a t6tal overlay on a host brain."

"So, the overlay was the man I met at a meeting of the Corporate. Nice chap, very charismatic and sensible, I thought.
Nevertheless, I repeat: what now? The Village has failed him, Lord Wallace failed him, I failed him, every stupid bastard
in Durvas employment has failed him. Only Icekeeper McLaren and you haven't failed him, and I'm surprised that you
even bothered to come here and talk to us. We're no use to Vitellan."

Lucel leaned against the desk and shook her head. 'Try asking why I'm here again." -
Burgess exhaled loudly. "If the Centurion is alive . . .

you would probably want the resources of the Village to protect him. That's fairly silly of you, given our track record,
but—"

"Precisely!" cried Lucel, turning and smashing a fist down on his desk. "If Vitellan is to come back here, there must be

no
petty power struggles and disputes,
every single file and database
must be opened and decrypted, every account must be
scrutinized. Durvas betrayed Vitellan, now Durvas must make it up to him."

"Now just a minute, I had no part in any of that!" the marshal exclaimed angrily.

"Maybe not, but the Village Corporate needs to be restructured so that secret plots cannot
ever
happen again. There is
more at stake than just Vitellan."

"Allow me to congratulate you on your nomination to the Village Corporate of Durvas," Burgess responded.

"I—I'll take that seriously, Mr. Burgess," responded Lucel, caught off-guard.

"It was
meant
to be taken seriously, Ms. Hunter."

Los Angeles: 18 February 2029, Anno Domini

Lucel sauntered slowly down the soiled, stained concrete LA sidewalk. A drab bundle of rags held up a grimy foam cup
without raising his head as she passed.