The Thousand Emperors by Gary Gibson Read Free Book Online Page B

orderlies had come
rushing into the room.
    The mechant reached out and did something to his arm where it lay on top of the sheets. Everything began to recede, as if he were seeing the hospital room and its occupants from down the far end
of a long, dark tunnel. The pain wasn’t any less, but he found he no longer cared about it.
    He experienced a kind of fugue, and the next thing he knew lights were slipping by overhead as he was taken somewhere else. Then there were more mechants, and other, unfamiliar faces, and
finally another room where he was given into the care of a machine that pressed in close all around him.
    Whatever they’d pumped into his veins, it felt good.
    He came to, and saw Eleanor standing by a window, staring out across the rooftops of Ulugh Beg. Night had fallen. There was no sign of Lethe.
    ‘What . . .’
    She turned and blinked red-rimmed eyes at him, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there.
    ‘. . . the fuck?’ he finished, his voice a harsh croak.
    She came over to him. ‘You had some kind of seizure. They’re still not sure what happened.’
    He managed to push himself upright in the bed, and saw he was back in the same room as before. ‘Well, that’s less than reassuring.’
    ‘They ran a bunch of scans on you to see what triggered it, but they didn’t find anything.’
    Luc stared at her in disbelief. ‘What kind of scans?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’d have to ask one of the mechants.’ She nodded towards one that hovered inconspicuously by the door.
    Luc did. ‘Deep tissue and tomographic scans were carried out,’ it replied, drifting closer. ‘No lesions or other possible causes of a cerebral seizure were found.’
    ‘What about Merlino, the medician?’ Luc asked, turning back to Eleanor. ‘What exactly did he say?’
    ‘He said they can’t be sure of anything until they carry out further tests. He didn’t exactly say it, but from what I can tell they don’t have the faintest idea just what
happened to you.’
    ‘But the scans must have found something ,’ Luc demanded, turning his attention back to the mechant.
    ‘Nothing of note was found,’ the machine replied, its voice soft and neutral.
    He turned back to Eleanor. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not possible.’
    She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Luc . . . what else should there be?’
    ‘Antonov put something inside my skull,’ he replied, then halted in amazement. The last time he’d tried to say those same exact words, he had been subjected to more pain than
he thought was possible. It didn’t make sense.
    He told her everything he remembered about his encounter with Antonov, leaving nothing out this time, and she listened with one hand over her mouth. It felt like cauterizing a wound. Once
he’d finished, she called the mechant back over and asked it more questions of her own.
    In response, it displayed projections of the interior of his skull. Beyond some minor lesions that might have triggered a grand mal fit, nothing untoward or unexpected had been found.
    Luc listened in grim silence, and began to wonder if perhaps he really had imagined the whole thing.
    ‘If you think I’m crazy,’ he said after she had sent the mechant away, ‘try and keep it to yourself, will you?’
    She regarded him with something like pity. ‘You mean, no crazier than you were before?’
    He sighed. ‘What happened to Lethe?’
    ‘I told him I’d stay with you and let him know once you came to.’
    ‘Sorry,’ he said.
    ‘For what?’
    He shrugged. ‘For scaring you like that.’
    She nodded, reaching out to brush her fingers across the new fuzz of hair growing on his scalp. ‘You scared us both pretty badly.’
    He squinted at her. ‘But do you believe me?’
    She hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘You saw those scans. Do you believe what happened was real?’
    ‘I don’t know any more. Still . . . I’m glad you came.’
    ‘Why? You thought I