Empire Dreams by Ian McDonald Read Free Book Online

men and fools. The citizens of the City of Man fall through the water to stand side by side in serried ranks of Grace and groveler, a submarine army waiting at attention on the silt and sediment of centuries for the fanfares of the Pantochrist on the Dawn of Resurrection when all will be summoned to the rising Land of Gold. The coffin rests in the blessed company of the Ancestors Beneath the Sea, those ancestors whose faces line the walls of the music room. It disturbs Dom Perellen that he cannot identify the armorial crest upon the sunken coffin.
    For two further mornings this vision is to come to him. He lies alone under the startled scrutiny of cherubs on clouds and virgins pursued by stags, for his vengeful intensity has so disturbed the Infanta Phaedra that she will not consent to any further nights with him. “Like poison,” she describes it. “Like a venom working behind the eyes.” Dom Perellen shrugs and returns to the elaborate drawing out of his revenge. There is no doubt in his mind that the unidentified coffin is that of his enemy.
    Just before noon on the second day the pneumatique delivers a message cylinder to his office. It states quite simply,
Work completed, awaiting your Grace’s disposal. Respectfully, Adam Ho
. In reply Dom Perellen gathers together four important pieces of paper: a Mercantile Letter of Credit for the sum of five hundred forents, an importation permiso from the Port Wardens valid for the period of five months, precise instructions on the delivery of the automata collection, and an accompanying letter to the Dom Merreveth in which Dom Perellen extends his apologies to his onetime patron for having been out of sorts at the pageant and begs, for the sake of old affection, that the good Dom overlook his breach of etiquette by accepting this humble gift to his children. He places the documents in an empty cylinder, addresses it, drops it into the slot, and thinks nothing more about it. While the cylinder crosses beneath the city, he amuses himself by composing a set of complex improvisations about a simple, repetitive theme. It entertains him for the remainder of the afternoon.
    * * * *
    Now the picture changes again, and we are in a Great House of grand halls and spacious galleries. Portraits of ancestors line its walls and the slow lap of water wears away at its stones, grain by grain, undermining the centuries. This is the House Merreveth, and we are in the nursery. Three children sleep by the glow of watch-candles, their faces folded to the pillows in simple dreams of childhood, nannies no more than a whisper away. It has been a good day; new toys to play with, a present from a friend of Papa’s, a gift to make even the most blasé of aristocratic children gasp in delight. A family of mice, perfect in every detail: Grandpa in nightshirt with pipe, Grandma with her glasses and knitting, Mamma and Pappa Mouse, Mamma in apron and mop hat, Pappa in working bib-and-braces, and the three children in their neat little school uniforms. But more wonderful still, by repeating a magic word whispered to them by a tall, soft-spoken artisier in a streetmask, the tiny diorama comes to life. Mamma sews and Pappa saws, Grandpa puffs his pipe, Grandma knits and rocks her tiny rocking chair, and the children scamper about playing Chase and Blind-Man’s Buff, tiny mouse voices squeaking.
    The adventures of the mouse family entertained the children until bedtime, and now the minute, intricate automata lie where play has left them, transfixed by slats of moonlight beaming through the nursery shutters. Then two tiny ears prick upright in the moonlight. And two more, and two more, and two tiny red eyes blink open, and a tail twitches. From the frozen postures of abandoned games the mice stretch into animation. They seem almost alive, scurrying across the nursery floor and under the door, but they are no more than precise mechanisms dressed in flensed mouse-skins. It is the boast of the Brothers Ho that