"I am the Emperor's servant," Zai said.
"He is afraid of us, and he will destroy us if he can," the Rix-woman said.
"Us?" Zai asked. "You and ... ?"
"The Lynx and Alexander. Us. We are bound together now."
Captain Zai placed his palms together. "The Emperor knows no fear," he began the catechism. "Not even death--"
"A lie," Herd said quietly.
Farre made a noise, as if she'd been struck with something.
"Silence," the initiate cried. "Captain, you must secure this room. Immediately."
The captain glared at the prisoner. Hobbes thought for a moment that Zai would turn and leave the madwoman in her lonely cell. However much the past months had changed him, Zai was still appalled by her blasphemy.
But instead he took a deep breath.
"Of what is the Emperor afraid?" Laurent Zai asked, his jaw clenched with the effort of the calumnious words.
"He has a secret," Herd said, "which Alexander discovered on Legis. If this information became known, it would destroy his power."
"Silence!" the initiate shrieked, again flinching as if the words were dealing her physical blows. Both her hands clenched around the remote.
The Rixwoman's form jerked horribly to attention within the straightjacket. She toppled against the wall and slid down to the floor, her body as stiff as a statue, her face frozen in a terrible rictus.
"Listen, Zai," she hissed, her accent becoming flat and Rixian. "The dead are--"
Then the collar overwhelmed the Rixwoman, her body thrashing like a corpse animated with electrical shocks. "Private," the captain said quietly.
Bassiritz adjusted his own remote, and the shock collar released the commando. Initiate Farre dropped to her knees, holding her head and shaking as if she'd been shocked as well.
Hobbes ignored the initiate and took a few steps toward the prisoner. She knelt, still a meter away, and looked into the commando's now slack face.
Saliva bubbled from her lips. She was breathing, at least. Hobbes glared back at Farre.
"Silence," the political insisted again, her voice reduced to a mewling cry.
Bassiritz gazed on the proceedings with a strange, horrified expression. Yet the marine looked strangely pleased, as if he'd just squashed some large and repellent insect.
"Cut the audio feed from this room," Zai said to the wall. "No more contact with this prisoner."
"Sir?" Hobbes asked.
"She may indeed know Imperial secrets, Hobbes. It's up to us to guard them."
Hobbes reached out a hand, and touched the woman's neck. She felt for a pulse.
"They have no hearts, Hobbes," Zai said. "Not the beating kind, anyway."
The executive officer nodded. The skin was room temperature; she remembered that Rix commandos were generally cold-blooded to prevent thermal imaging.
What a compromised human being.
"Come away from there," Zai ordered softly.
Hobbes stood, and retreated.
The Rixwoman moved, turning her head slowly.
"Wait," she croaked.
"For god's sake, silence, woman!" Zai pleaded.
Herd shook her head. "No secrets. Just a question."
Captain Zai looked at Hobbes, lost for a moment. The initiate lay on the ground, head in hands and beyond hearing, but Bassiritz stood ready with the other remote.
The executive officer turned to the prisoner, knelt again.
"What is it, Herd?"
The commando took a few breaths, swallowing, as if to wet her mouth. When she spoke, the words were tortured.
"Is it true that Rana Harter is alive again?" she said.
The woman seemed confused, as if she were speaking her own mind after a lifetime of prompting. Her words were halting.
"I must see . . . Rana Harter," she said.
Zai shook his head. "The Honored Sister is not to be disturbed. Not by anyone."
The prisoner nodded. "But she is alive."
Hobbes felt a strange sympathy for the Rixwoman. But the captain had no choice; the Emperor's orders were explicit. Not even the other honored dead were allowed to speak with Rana Harter. An adept of the Apparatus, the ranking political aboard the Lynx, was posted in her antechamber.
"He'll kill her," Herd said.
"Who will?" Hobbes asked.
"The Emperor," the woman said softly. "Your Emperor fears that she knows his secret. But she doesn't."
"Rixwoman," Zai said. "Don't speak of secrets."
"Let me see her," the woman pleaded, trying to rise from where she lay. But the attempt exhausted her, and her head dropped back to the floor.
"My orders are clear," Zai said. "Rana Harter is to be left alone."
He turned away from the prisoner and pulled himself through the door. Hobbes stared at the alien woman for a moment, looking for the signs of truth she might find in a normal human's eyes. But the commando's face had hardened again. Once more she seemed to come from some nonmammalian order, as inscrutable as a tortoise.
Hobbes signaled to Bassiritz to help the initiate out of the cell. What had affected the political like that? She knew that calumny against the Emperor was painful to the most heavily conditioned members of the Apparatus, even to lifelong grays like her Vadan captain, but she'd never seen anyone brought to their knees by mere words.
Hobbes followed Zai, wondering what to do. The room was sealed behind them, and the wall went blank, as impenetrable as stone.
As they strode toward the bridge, Zai said, "Rana Harter."
"Sir?"
"The order to keep her isolated. I've never seen such a command. It is very strange to imprison the honored dead."
Zai's voice shook as he said it. Hobbes knew that Harter's reanima-tion was dubious at best, in the eyes of tradition. The politicals occasionally used the symbiant for tactical reasons, to interrogate a traitor or reverse a local assassination that threatened stability, but the official fiction was that all the dead were honored. So it must wound Zai's Vadan soul to restrain a risen woman.
"Perhaps there are secrets that we're not meant to know, eh, Hobbes?"
"Almost certainly, sir," she answered.
He stopped short, turned to her.
"Do you think we need a weapon against the Emperor, Hobbes?"