The Inquisition War (18 page)

‘Less reliable.’

‘Reasonably reliable.’

‘Reasonably is not enough. Your master’s astropath will be the very best on this world.’

‘Oh yes. Granted. Utterly true. Only the best for an inquisitor. Still, the priestly colleges in other cities boast of some fairly excellent specimens...’

Such would die too, along with many good priests. Was the
cause
sound enough, when the true nature of the hydra remained so opaque and ambiguous?

The hydra had to be sinister. The obvious response – of summoning in an exterminator team – just had to be wrong. Briefly Jaq entertained the notion that he was being tested by some Hidden Master of his secret order who had instructed Baal Firenze to send him to Stalinvast to assess whether Jaq possessed supreme courage and insight – enough for him to become a Hidden Master himself.

If so, that master must already have known about the hydra. Would even such a power squander a whole planet simply to test one individual? Maybe Jaq would send the signal for
exterminatus
– and that command would already have been countermanded, light years away. The red light grated on Jaq’s eyes as if his own eyes were bloodshot, dazed with the blood of billions.

He tried to spot any spy-flies lurking in this foyer, little spies which so recently had been his own to command, until they were stolen. The dire light and dark shadows foxed him. A spy-fly might be hiding in the open mouth of any gargoyle. It could be peeping from the eye-socket of any of the saurian skulls with jewels atip their horns mounted on the walls.

Jaq hadn’t told either of his companions exactly what he intended to do, and just then it occurred to him how Googol might resent the deaths of fellow Navigators caught on this world when the flesh-eater came.

‘Thus,’ said the fat man, ‘your message must be distinctly
urgent
...’

Aside from the pre-eminence of a governor’s own astropath, Jaq had one further reason for visiting Lord Voronov-Vaux’s domain. He would have felt it demeaning to condemn this world utterly without first paying a visit to the vicinity of its ruler.

Just so, did an assassin care to leave a calling card...

Nor had he wished to leave the capital a second time. Nor had he wanted to... The thought tried to elude him. He brought it into sharp, cruel focus.

Nor had he wanted to have recourse to the services of an astropath belonging to a pious and loyal fraternal organisation. Whom, and which, he must sacrifice to the flesh-eater.

Had he come here to the governor’s court out of cowardice? Out of craven abdication of his moral duty masquerading as brazen confrontation?

‘Don’t hinder me,’ said Jaq. ‘I demand access in the Emperor’s name.’ What name, Jaq wondered fleetingly, was
that
?

Meh’Lindi moved closer to the majordomo, her fingers flexing. Googol fiddled ostentatiously with the bandana round his brow as if toying with the idea of removing what masked his third eye, the warp-eye, a hostile glare from which could kill, as was widely known though seldom tested.

‘Of course you must be admitted to His Lordship,’ burbled the majordomo. ‘An inquisitor, oh yes! Though it’s inconvenient.’

‘If so, I don’t need to see the governor – only his astropath.’

‘Ah... His lordship must needs give consent. Do you see? Do you see?’ Not very well, thought Jaq. Not in this ruddy obscurity.

T
HE GOVERNOR’S SANCTUM
was a leviathan suffused with the same dreary red light. Above the tenebrous vault of the ceiling, sunshine must reign. Jaq doubted that even the most towering of storms could engulf the uppermost reaches of Vasilariov. Of that outside brightness, no hint existed.

Now Jaq understood the function of that helmet he had seen the governor wearing out at the spaceport under the open sky. Voronov-Vaux must see best at red wavelengths. Probably in infrared too. The governor must see the heat of bodies as much as the physical flesh.

That was a mutation, a deviation. Since this affected the ruling family, no one might dare oppose it. Conceivably it contributed to the family’s mystique.

Censers burned, further hazing the air. Goggled officials hunched over consoles around tiers of cantilevered wrought-iron galleries, listening to data, whispering orders. A string orchestra wailed as if in torment. Caged mutants with abnormally large eyes played complicated games on three-dimensional boards. Were those bastards of the Voronov-Vaux clan? Inbred freaks? Talented advisers, held in permanent captivity?

Jaq smelled the whiff of genetic pollution.

The busy galleries were attached to the ribs of the leviathan. Between those ribs, at floor level, sub-chambers formed deep caves. At the heart of the enormous room an ornate marble building shaped like a pineapple squatted on a disc of steel. That disc must be a lifting platform which could raise and lower the governor’s sanctum sanctorum, his travelling tabernacle. Up into his government’s headquarters; down into his family apartments and bunker.

Give thanks that the sanctum sanctorum was present, not sealed away below.

Liveried guards admitted the majordomo and those he escorted into the marble pineapple. The fat man loudly prattled unctuous apologies. From a dim inner room Jaq heard flesh slap flesh. With a squeal, a scantily clad girl whose eyes were twice the normal human size scampered out, to be caught by one of those guards and led away.

Lord Voronov-Vaux followed bare-footed, adjusting a black robe on which dragons of seemingly purple hue writhed at the edge of visibility.

‘Y
OU’RE THE HEREDITARY
lord of a whole world,’ Jaq found himself saying presently. ‘Whereas I’m the emissary from the lord of the entire galaxy.’

‘Lord of parts of it,’ growled the governor.

‘Of the human parts.’ Jaq stared at those mutant, red-seeing eyes accusingly.

‘True. Well, I’m hardly rebellious! I placed all my loyal guard at the previous inquisitor’s service, did I not? Did I not sustain terrible losses?’

‘Much to your benefit, may I remind you? Otherwise, within a few decades genestealers would have begun to infiltrate your own family, polluting and hypnotising.’

‘I realise.’

‘Now I only wish you to place your finest astropath at my service.’

Standing before the man, Jaq’s various rationalizations evaporated. In coming here, he was actually following psychic instinct, an indefinable but insinuating impulse to visit the court of Governor Voronov-Vaux.

In the psychic economy of the universe a compensation must exist for the reverses Jaq had suffered at the hands of the Harlequin man. Something was going to balance his previous contretemps. Because he had prayed with a pure heart throughout the night, a tendril from the God-Emperor was now nudging him like a guardian spirit.

The monstrosity of the
exterminatus
he contemplated had eclipsed that thread of instinct until now, all be it that
exterminatus
was the correct course of action. Exhilaration keened through Jaq. Could the drug alone be responsible? No. He felt subtly in touch with higher forces, as though he had become the Tarot card that represented him.

‘Hmm,’ said the governor, ‘but why? What have you discovered?’

Voronov-Vaux, a stout, balding fellow, was plainly a sensualist. To rule a planet he must be capable of severity. Yet his curiosity as to Jaq’s request seemed to proceed from reasonable concern rather than from the paranoia which often afflicted rulers. Actually, the governor would have ample reason to feel paranoid if he did but know the gist of the message Jaq intended to send.

Led by the tendril of intuition, Jaq said lightly, ‘Let’s hope that, after all your loyal assistance, Inquisitor Obispal doesn’t report adversely to the Imperium about your mutation... I certainly shan’t.’

What need to? Voronov-Vaux and everyone else on this world would soon be dead.

The governor twitched. ‘Harq wouldn’t. He swore on his honour.’

There was the key! Obispal had virtually blackmailed Voronov-Vaux to allow him to root out the rebellion with wanton use of force, resulting in all those millions of deaths.

Voronov-Vaux’s red vision was his vulnerable flaw; for the Imperium might just decide puristically that a mutant should not continue as governor. His lordship was glancing askance at Meh’Lindi. Did he detect the heat-profile of an assassin?

Did he imagine he had already been judged and condemned? Lesser lords would be only too eager to step into his shoes.

‘So do I also swear on
my
honour,’ Jaq assured the man. ‘A good governor does as he pleases on his world, just so long as he pays his tithes in treasure and people. Or in your case, weapons. A minor mutation should be deemed an eccentricity and nothing more. Out of curiosity, how long has this variation been in your family?’

‘Since my grandfather’s time.’

‘May it endure until the end of the world! I promise. Harq promised. I suppose Zephro promised too?’

‘Carnelian, yes... A peculiar individual... He almost seemed to regret the necessary slaughter of my people as much as I did.’ Ha, it was proven. The Harlequin man was Obispal’s associate, utterly. Could Obispal really be loyal to the Imperium? It hardly seemed so. Surely here was the evidence that Jaq’s Emperor-sent impetus had been leading him toward.

‘Now may I use your astropath without further ado?’

‘Yes. Yes, inquisitor.’

‘I’m glad you are so loyal.’

Your reward, thought Jaq grimly, will be
exterminatus
.

As soon as Jaq met the astropath he guessed that there was more awaiting.

EIGHT

T
HE PRIME ASTROPATH
of Stalinvast was a small, thin, dark-skinned woman. And she was old,
antique
. Deep lines grooved her prune of a face. Her hair, which shone so brightly red, must really be purest white. Due to the long-past agony of soul-binding her blind eyes were opaque and curdled.

She leaned on a staff as tall as herself, and could not see the visitors to her fur-lined chamber, but her nearsense informed her. ‘Three more come,’ she sang out. ‘One with the vision. One with the sense. And one who is more than she seems!’

Momentarily Jaq imagined that the majordomo had led them, in error of mischief, to a soothsayer. However, the old woman’s dark purple habit would, in true lighting, be some hue of green appropriate to an astropath.

‘I’m the one with the vision,’ agreed Googol. ‘It’s warp vision – the Navigator’s eye.’

And I, thought Jaq, am the one with the sense. Whereas Meh’Lindi... she’s the one who will presently cause this old woman’s heart to stop.

The astropath reached towards a fur-cloaked ledge; and the fur shifted. Glowing eyes opened. Sharp small claws flexed. She toyed with an animal, which must be her companion. The creature looked both voluptuous and savage. Would it defend its mistress fiercely?

‘What is that?’ whispered Jaq.

‘It’s called a cat,’ Meh’Lindi told him. She also answered his deeper question. ‘It will merely look on, observing what it sees. Who knows what it understands? Its actions are usually self-centred and autistic.’

‘Why do you keep such a creature?’ Jaq asked the old woman.

‘For love,’ she replied bleakly. ‘I have kept at least a score of them during my life here, until each decayed in turn. They are my consolation.’ She held up a wizened hand. ‘Look, here are some of its recent scratches. I can
feel
those.’

‘Leave us now,’ Jaq told the majordomo. The fat man withdrew, drawing a baffle-curtain across the mouth of the astropath’s furry womb-cave.

Meh’Lindi whisked an electrolumen from her sash to supplement the dull rubescence of the single glow-globe. In true light the old woman’s skin was brown and her hair indeed was white as cotton, while her eyes were the boiled white of eggs. The fur lining the cave was a brindled orange; that of the cat creature too. The animal’s pupils widened into black marbles at this sudden intrusion of a wholly novel radiance, then narrowed to slits. Its jaws widened, baring sharp little teeth.

It was, however, yawning. A yawn, in the face of a whole new world of light!

‘Your name?’ Jaq asked the old woman.

‘People call me Moma Parsheen, perhaps because I have no children except for...’ She stroked the cat creature.

‘I’m Inquisitor Draco.’

‘An inquisitor? Then you probably know how much was burnt out of me. I neither see nor smell nor savour any tastes. I only touch.’ The cat writhed sensuously, throbbing. To kill this woman might indeed be a blessing to her...

‘Moma Parsheen, I wish you to send a message to the Imperial Ravager Space Marines’ headquarters, orbiting Vindict V.’

That fortress-monastery was the nearest roost of ultimate warriors capable of obliterating a world. Jaq already had his fatal signal concisely formulated:
Ego, Draco Ordinis Mallei Inquisitor, per auctoritate Digamma Decimatio Duodecies, ultimum exterminatum planetae Stalinvastae cum extrema celeritate impero.
The triple-D code phrase, sometimes vulgarised as DeathDestruction-Doom, would itself suffice to launch
exterminatus
. Thus the Inquisition mission stationed on the orbital fortress would advise. Jaq had included the phrase
Ordinis Mallei
by way of double indemnity; the mission was almost bound to include a covert member of his own Ordo. Never before had he sent such an order, never. This weighed on him like an inactive dreadnought suit of combat armour, imprisoning him; and he sought his enhanced clarity, as it were, to restore power to that suit.