Empress of the Sun by Ian McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

location: it stood where three rivers joined. On Earth 3, these would have been the Thames, the Seine and the Rhine. On Earth 3, those rivers ran into the English Channel and the North Sea. On Earth 7, the English Channel and the North Sea were gently rolling chalk downland, cut by the wide and wandering rivers. Britain was not an island, but a peninsula on the western edge of Europe. Where the three waterways joined, Heiden stood on a cluster of rivers and islands and canals, a city of bridges and embankments: gracious squares lined with steep-pitched roofs; church steeples hung with the city’s famous thousand bells; narrow, twisting streets loud with the hum of electric moped-cabs and the horns of tandem bicycles, the thrumof barge engines echoing under the elegant bridges and the swish of taxi boats up and down the three rivers.
    ‘Heiden is the culinary capital of the Plenitude,’ Charlotte Villiers said. ‘I have a favourite restaurant on Loud-engat in the Vereel Quarter. Bijou and charming.’
    ‘I was at a place in Raandplass last night,’ Paul McCabe said. ‘Good, but the portions were enormous.’
    ‘Yes, they find the concept of cooking for one person disturbing,’ Charlotte Villiers said.
    Brilliant light illuminated the jump-room: a Heisenberg Gate opening. Ibrim Hoj Kerrim descended from the gate. One step had taken him from the strange England-off-the-coast-of-Morocco to this England-not-an-island-at-all. His brocade coat was immaculate, his turban pinned with a silver plume, beard precisely trimmed, nails manicured. He greeted his fellow Plenipotentiaries from the Plenitude and Earth 10, an Accession Candidate.
    ‘Good, we are all here …’ Jen Heer began.
    ‘… so I will show you the Plenipotentiary suites,’ Heer Fol finished.
    Earth 7’s Praesidium buildings occupied the whole of one of the many small islands that lay at the confluence of the three rivers. The building had been a monastery – Heiden’s strange, two-headed saints and angels looked down from pillars and paintings as the Jen Heer Fol duo led the Plenipotentiaries through shaded courtyards and under baroque domes.
    Charlotte Villiers fell into step beside Ibrim Hoj Kerrim.
    ‘I hear you’re thinking of standing for the Primarchy,’ she said.
    ‘Direct as ever, Ms Villiers.’
    ‘I consider it a virtue,’ Charlotte Villiers said. ‘The Plenitude of Known Worlds would be graced with you as its head.’
    ‘You flatter me.’
    ‘I understood that Al Buraqis value flattery.’
    ‘We like it to be genuine, Ms Villiers.’
    ‘Surely if it’s genuine then it’s not flattery?’
    ‘Exactly so, Ms Villiers.’
    ‘I just want to reassure you that you have my unqualified support, Ibrim,’ Charlotte Villiers said. E7 workers scurried in pairs with trolleys and electric carts, shifting the daunting piles of equipment and documents that accompanied a move of the Praesidium and all its many offices and ministries.
    ‘And your Order?’
    ‘We are concerned only with the security of the Plenitude.’
    ‘Yes, I’ve seen your concern, Ms Villiers. It cost me forty spahis. Forty men sent through that gate, and nothing ever came back, not even a rumour. They had families, wives, lovers … No, I’ve seen what you’re trying to do on Earth 10. I’ve seen your Order at work. I do not require its support.’
    ‘That’s direct, Ibrim.’
    ‘But not flattering, Ms Villiers.’
    The two of them paused a moment on a covered stone bridge over a canal to allow a group of Plenitude staffers to pass.
    ‘You may not need us as supporters, Ibrim, but you certainly don’t want us enemies,’ Charlotte Villiers said.
    ‘What are you saying, Ms Villiers?’
    Jen Heer Fol and the Earth 10 Plenipotentiaries were waiting at the end of the bridge.
    ‘There is damaging information we can keep to ourselves, Ibrim,’ Charlotte Villiers said.
    ‘This is blackmail.’
    ‘It is.’
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘You don’t want to join the