Free The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld Page B

civilization-killing idea."
    Zai smiled, his eyes roaming to take in the grandeur of the palace around them. "We don't seem to be a dead civilization yet."
    "Seventeen hundred years ago, the Eighty Worlds were the most advanced technological power in this arm," she said. "Now look at us. The Rix, the Tungai, the Fahstuns have all surpassed us."
    Zai's eyes widened. It was a fact seldom spoken aloud, even by Secularists. But Laurent Zai, a military man, must know that it was true. Every war grew more difficult as the Risen Empire continued to be outpaced by its neighbors.
    "But seventeen hundred years ago we were no empire," he argued. "Merely a rabble of worlds, like the Rix, but far more divided. We were unstable, in competition amongst ourselves. We're stronger now, even with our technical ... disadvantages. And besides, we have the only technology truly worth having. We can beat death."
    " 'The Old Enemy,'" Oxham quoted. That was what the Political Apparatus called it. The Old Enemy whom the Risen Emperor had dared and vanquished.
    "Yes. We have beaten death, and yet the living still progress," Zai continued. "We have the Senate, the markets."
    She smiled ruefully. "But the weight of the dead is choking us. Slowly but surely, they accrue more wealth every year, more power, and a greater hold upon the minds of the living."
    "Minds like mine?" Zai asked.
    Oxham shrugged. "I don't presume to know your mind, Lieutenant-Commander. Despite what they say about my abilities."
    "You think the Empire is dead already?" he asked.
    "No, not yet. But change will eventually come, and when it does, the Empire will snap like a bough strung with too many corpses."
    Laurent Zai's mouth gaped; he was appalled at the image. Finally, she had managed to shock the man. Nara remembered when she had first used that simile in a speech on Vasthold. The audience had recoiled, empathically pushing back against her words, filling her throat with bile. But she had seen new thoughts swarming in to fill the spaces that horror made. The image was powerful enough to change minds.
    "So, you want us to go back to death?" he asked. "Two hundred years of natural life and then ... nothingness?"
    "Not necessarily," she explained. "We just want to reduce the power of the dead. Let them paint and sculpt, travel the Eighty Worlds on their pilgrimages, but not rule us."
    "No Emperor?" he said.
    She nodded. Even with her new senatorial immunity, it was difficult to speak traitorous words aloud here in the Emperor's house. Even those born on Secularist worlds had the conditioning of gray culture; the old stories, the children's rhymes were all about the Old Enemy and the man who had beaten it.
    Laurent Zai was silent for a while. He acquired two more glasses of champagne for them from a passing tray and stood there, drinking with her. A few of his military clique remained close, but they didn't dare come unbidden into this conversation with a pink senator.
    Nara Oxham looked at the man. The Navy dress uniform, with its coordinated horde of subunits, certainly embodied the grossest aspects of Imperial power: the many made forcibly into one. But like much of the Imperial aesthetic, there was an undeniable elegance to the lockstepped fit of myriad elements. Zai's body didn't have the squat look of most high-gravity worlders. He was tall and a bit thin, the arch of his back rather tempting.
    "Let me ask you a question," she said to interrupt her own thoughts.
    "Certainly."
    "Do you find my words treasonous?"
    "By definition, no. You are a Senator. You have immunity."
    "But immunity aside..."
    He frowned. "If you weren't a senator, then by definition, you would have just committed treason."
    "Only by definition?"
    Zai nodded. "Yes, Senator. But perhaps not in spirit. After all, you are concerned with the welfare of the Empire, in whatever form you imagine its future."
    Oxham smiled. Throughout the conversation, she had thought of Zai as unsophisticated, never having met a