The Return of the Emperor by Chris Bunch; Allan Cole Page A

maybe I am bonkers. But will you keep listening?"
    " 'Mought's well. Whae's time't' a clottin' hog?" Kilgour said. He poured himself a drink of quill—but still kept a wary eye on Mahoney.
    Mahoney went on. He had made his own plans that day. He was going after the privy council.
    "Did you consider maybe they'd think you were the type to carry a grudge?" Sten asked.
    "I did—and covered my ass."
    Mahoney put in for early retirement. The privy council, in the mad rush to get rid of the bloated and incredibly expensive military after the Tahn wars, was more than willing to let anyone and everyone out, few questions asked. Sten nodded—that was exactly how he and Kilgour had been able to slip into retirement and obscurity.
    The council was especially happy to be rid of Mahoney, who was not only the Emperor's best-loved Fleet Marshal, architect of victory, but also once head of Mercury Corps—Imperial Intelligence—for many, many years.
    "But I didn't want them to think I was going to create any mischief. I found a cover."
    Mahoney's cover, loudly announced, was that he planned to do a complete biography of the Eternal Emperor, the greatest man who ever lived. That plan fit quite well into the council's martyr-building.
    "What I was, of course, doing was building my stone bucket. Hell if I knew what I would do with it—but I had to do it."
    Mahoney dived into the archives—he planned to spend a year or so researching The Early Years. By then he figured the council would have lost interest in him, and he could go for the real target. A little sheepishly, he told Sten and Alex that he had always loved raw research. Maybe—if things had been different, and he had not come from a military family—he would have ended up poking through archives trying to figure out The Compleat History of the Fork. Or something.
    He was not the first, the hundredth, or the millionth person to bio the Emperor. But he discovered something interesting. All of the bios were crocks.
    "So what?" Sten asked, disinterested. "If you were up there on the right hand of God, wouldn't you want everybody to make nice on you?"
    "That is not what I meant." Mahoney said. He had seen a pattern. Biographers were encouraged to write about the Emperor. However, they were mostly of the type who would work hard to either find Deep-seated Humanity in Tamerlane, or else write a psychological biography of the poet Homer.
    "Let's say there might have been a great number of sloppy historians. But somehow their work was still encouraged. They won the big contracts. Their fiche were picked up for the livies. And so on and so forth.
    "I'm telling you, lads, no one was really encouraged to look at source material—what hasn't somehow, and I quote, vanished in the mists of time, end quote."
    "So what was our late leader trying to hide?"
    "Damned near everything, from where he came from to how he got where he is. You might spend a lifetime daring insanity trying to make sense out of the seventeen or eighteen thousand versions of events, each of them seemingly given the Emperor's imprimatur.
    "I'll just mention two of the murkiest areas, besides where the clot the AM2 is. First is that the son of a bitch is—or was, anyway, immortal."
    "Drakh. No such animal."
    "Believe it. And the second thing is—he's been killed before."
    "But you just said—"
    "I know what I just said. He's died before. Been killed. Various ways. Several accidents. At least two assassinations."
    "And you won't accept a double."
    "I will not. But here is what happened, at least concerning the incidents I was able to document: First, the Emperor dies. Second, there is, immediately afterward, a big goddamned explosion, destroying the body and anything around. Just like that bomb that went off after Chapelle killed the Emperor."
    " Every time?"
    "Every one I can find. And then—the AM2 stops. Wham. Just like that.
    "Then the Emperor comes back. As does the AM2. And things start back to normal."
    "Ian, now