Empire's End by Chris Bunch; Allan Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

lies would still stand up.
    He also felt a relatively unfamiliar “emotion,” to use the human term. Fear. If the slightest suspicion fell on Ecu, the Manabi’s main protection, absolute neutrality, would not help him stay alive.
    Ecu himself had broken that political and moral neutrality some time ago, when he had determined the Eternal Emperor was no longer qualified to rule, and that the Emperor was, in fact, destroying die Empire he had created. He’d then sought out Rykor, for confirmation of his theories and that he was not the first Manabi to go insane.
    And then he had sought out Mahoney and Sten, advised them of the situation, and, still worse, announced he, and therefore the entire Manabi race, would be willing to assist in any attempt to prevent the seemingly inevitable collapse of the Empire.
    Now Mahoney was dead and Sten was on the run.
    Just ahead could be the instrument of Ecu’s own dissolution into the nonmaterial racial presence. He wondered just who the Emperor’s inquisitor would be.
    Ecu’s long black body, red-tinted at the wingtips, three-meter-long tail ruddering skillfully, floated toward the Center. Ecu found his senses at peak. Perhaps, he thought, because this could be the last time he experienced the quiet joy of his home world. At times he wondered why he’d ever chosen his career, a career that took him away, off Seilichi and its lake-dotted single supercontinent and occasional jagged mountain ranges.
    Perhaps he should have stayed, and been no more than just another philosopher, drifting in his world’s gentle winds, thinking, teaching. His early sketches at forming a personal dialectic were stored on a fiche somewhere underground, where the Manabi kept whatever machines and construction necessary.
    The only artificial constructs to show above Seilichi’s surface were the three Guesting Centers, and they existed only as a courtesy to whatever non-aerial beings chose to visit the planet. And they were intended to appear, as much as possible, like huge natural extinct volcanic necks, with the landing fields hidden in the “crater.”
    The Center sensed Ecu’s approach, and a portal yawned. Ecu flew inside, tendrils flickering. He found traces of the signature scent he used, and followed those traces to the assigned conference room.
    Inside, sitting very much at ease, was the Emperor’s emissary.
    Solon Kenna was even fatter and more benevolent appearing, if in a bibulous fashion, than Ecu remembered. Those who had taken Kenna as an obese caricature of a stupid, crooked pol over the years had generally not survived in the political arena long enough to correct their thinking.
    Now Kenna was on Seilichi, as the Emperor’s hatchet man.
    “It has been long.”
    ‘Too long,“ Kenna said, coming quickly to his feet and smiling. ”I have been sitting here, lost in thinking of the marvels of Seilichi.“ Of course Kenna pronounced the word correctly. He still showed the regrettable love for flowery speech the Emperor had noted years ago. ”I should have found occasion to journey here many times, especially now that the Empire has returned.
    “But…” He shrugged. “Time creeps up and past all of us. And I have had my own concerns. You know that I am preparing my memoirs?”
    “Those will be most interesting.”
    Ecu was being more than polite—he was constantly wondering why humans had such a love for the convolutions of dishonest politics when, from his race’s point of view, a direct approach was far more likely to work. Not that the Maüabi ever allowed this belief to hamper their appreciation for circumlocution, nor their abilities to practice it. So, indeed, if those memoirs were in fact produced, Ecu would be fascinated by how many ways Kenna could find to avoid the simple fact that he was, and had been since he was a baby ballot-box-stuffer, Crooked to the Gunwales.
    “But now I am here on business,” Kenna said, mock-mournfully. “The business of the Eternal