Timni transfers funds, and to her ship at Vana’s docks strides a robot still protectively wrapped in packing-foam, printboard and polymer wrap, only its joints left free enough to ambulate without difficulty.
Its head turns out to be a placeholder entirely of packing-foam.
She unwraps it with trembling, painstaking care, then fetches the box containing the Empress’ head and very gingerly lifts it out, placing it atop the grasping structural connector of the headless body, and watches the myriad connectors and interlocks probe and seat themselves, knitting the head and body together.
Even Timni can see on sight that it is not the bare-minimum body she had expected to buy. Unweaponed, but designed for the class of killer who requires none; fast, agile, deceptively lightweight — an enforcer’s chassis, no doubt the kind that the Cartel fit out their chop-henries with.
The Empress accepts it with little more than a proud arch of her neck and tireless hours of haptic acclimatisation kata, as no more or less than her due.
“Where am I to take you next, Effulgence?” TImni asks when the Empress finally emerges from the open and empty space of the ship’s hold, rolling her shoulders.
“I have been reviewing my position via obfuscated virtual network,” the Empress says carelessly. “I cannot speak to other contingencies or their success; I was created from my original without any knowledge whether they existed or what they might be, ab initio. Clearly, however, the allies I relied on for this contingency were either a mistake to rely upon, or too closely monitored by my enemies to move to assist me. I will begin retaking the Empire with a programme of covert movements through my usurped domains, to gather cached materiel and make overtures to deeply emplaced undercover assets.”
“The less I know, the less I can reveal, Effulgence,” Timni says. “Simply tell me where to take you, who to take you to.”
“You are a trader,” the Empress says, not bothering to even look direct at Timni. “I will provide you an itinerary of stops, spaced some months apart to avoid alerting any algorithmic dragnet. You will use your expertise to route between them in a plausible fashion for your,” and she makes some subtle gesture which would no doubt carry some wealth of meaning for her courtiers; Timni assumes crushing contempt, “subsistence commerce.”
Numbness spreads through Timni, so cold and consuming that she fears half-seriously that she has been poisoned.
“Your servant, Effulgence,” she says, somewhat choked, and backs out of the Empress’ sight, crams herself into the tightest niche of her ship’s interior she can find, created by the inevitable diffculty of fitting many items of square-cornered equipment into a curved hull; weeps in terror.
But Empress, her mouth closes over and refuses to shape: I was only to take you somewhere, and only even this far. It cannot be said; it cannot be thought. I am not a person of quality, Empress, I cannot. I dare not. I will be discovered. You will be discovered.
Timni cannot tell which of those inevitable discoveries seems more terrible.
The Empress is dead, she cannot quite articulate to herself, murdered; and currently she is, so far as she knows, the only person in the entire world to acknowledge the robot head, now roaming her ship, as a legitimate or even an existent survival backup. There could not be much consequence if Timni simply—
No.
After a while, something prompts her to look up through her tears, and she discovers the Empress standing some distance back and square on to her, looking at her with no expression. Timni closes her eyes and attempts to swallow her sobs.
“Your servant, Effulgence,” she chokes out. The Empress was Empress all her life; no doubt she’s well accustomed to equal overwhelm, if not worse reactions, at the prospect.
“Yes,” the Empress says, voice also without inflection, and stands for a while longer, as if there might be anything else to say, before she walks back toward the cargo hold, courteously making sufficient noise for Timni to tell without opening her eyes.
