"My Lord," Oxham said, proud that she had managed not to kneel reflexively. Senatorial office had its privileges.
"Senator," he answered, nodding at her, then turning to kiss the captive cat's forehead. It stretched to lick his chin.
Outside of military casualties, most of the risen were, of course, quite old. Traditional medicine kept the wealthy and powerful alive for almost two centuries; disease and accidents were almost unknown. All the dead people whom Nara Oxham had met were ancient solons and wizened oligarchs, various relics of history, or the occasional pilgrim having reached Home after centuries of winding sublight travel. They wore their death gracefully, calm and gray of manner. But the Emperor had committed the Holy Suicide in his thirties (when structural exobiologists do their best work), in the final test of his great invention. No real age had ever touched his face. He seemed so present, his smile so charming (cunning?), his gaze so piercingly aware of Oxham's nervousness.
He seemed terribly ... alive.
"Thank you for coming," the Risen Emperor of the Eighty Worlds said, acknowledging the privilege of the Pale.
"At your service, m'lord."
The cat yawned, and stared at her as if to say, And mine.
"Please come and sit with us, Senator."
She followed the dead man, and at the center of the spiral path they sat, floating cushions taking up positions against her lower back, elbows, neck--not merely cradling Oxham's weight, but moving softly to stretch her muscles, undulating to maintain circulation. A low, square block of red marble sat between them, and the Emperor deposited the cat onto its sun-warmed surface, where the beast promptly rolled onto its back, offering the sovereign's long fingers its milky belly.
"You are surprised, Senator?" he asked suddenly.
The question itself surprised her. Oxham gathered her thoughts, wondering what her expression had revealed.
"I hadn't thought to meet Your Majesty alone."
"Look at your arms," he said.
Oxham blinked, then obeyed. Dusted onto her dark skin were silver motes that glistened in the sun, like flecks of mica in some black rock.
"Our security," he said. "And a few courtiers, Senator. We'll know it if you sweat."
Nanomachines, she realized. Some to record galvanic skin response, pulse, secretions--to check for lies and evasions; some to kill her instantly if she threatened the imperial personage with violence.
"I shall endeavor not to sweat, m'lord."
He chuckled, a sound Oxham had never heard from a dead person before, and leaned back. The lovely gravity cushions adjusted themselves indulgently.
"Do you know why we like cats, Senator?"
Nara Oxham took a moment to moisten her lips. She wondered if the tiny machines on her arms (were they also on her face? beneath her clothing?) would detect her hatred of the animals.
"They were cats who suffered the first sacrifice, m'lord." Oxham heard the dutiful cadence in her own voice, like a child repeating catechism; its unctuous sound annoyed her.
She regarded the lazy creature splayed on the marble table. It looked at her suspiciously, as if sensing her thoughts. Thousands of its kind had writhed in postdeath agony while the early symbiants of the Holy Experiments tried unsuccessfully to repair deceased nerve cells. Thousands had limped through the ghoulish existence of unwhole reanimation. Tens of thousands were killed outright--never to move again--as the various parameters of recovery from brain damage, systemic shock, and telomere decay were tested and retested. All the successful experimentation had been performed on cats. For some reason, simian and canine species had proved problematic--they arose insane or died of seizures, as if they couldn't deal with an unexpected return after life's extinction. Not like sanguine, self-important cats, who--like humans, apparently--felt they deserved an afterlife.
Oxham narrowed her eyes at the little beast. Millions of you, writhing in pain, she thought at it.
It yawned, and began to lick one paw.
"So it is believed, Senator," the Emperor answered. "So it is often believed. But our appreciation of the feline predates their contribution to the holy researches. You see, these subtle creatures have always been demigods, our guides into new realms, the silent familiars of progress. Did you know that at every stage of human evolution, cats were instrumental?"
Oxham's eyes widened. Surely this was some recherche joke, a verbal equivalent to the gravity-modified fountains in the surrounding garden. This talk was like the water running uphill--a display of imperial self-indulgence. She determined not to let it throw her off guard.
"Instrumental, m'lord?" She tried to sound earnest.
"Do you know your Earth history, Senator?"
"Earth Prime?" That far-off planet on the galaxy's edge was so often used to make political points. "Certainly, Sire. But perhaps my education is deficient on the subject of... cats."
His Majesty nodded, frowning as if this oversight was all too common.
"Take, for example, the origin of civilization. One of the many times when cats were midwives to human progress."
He cleared his throat, as if beginning a lecture.
"That era found humans in small clusters, tribal groups banded together for protection, constantly moving to follow their prey. They were rootless, barely subsisting. Not a particularly successful species, their numbers were less than the population of a medium-sized residential building here in the capital.
"Then these humans made a great discovery. They found out how to grow food from the ground, rather than chasing it across the seasons of the year."
"The agricultural revolution," Senator Oxham supplied.
The Emperor nodded happily. "Exactly. And with that discovery comes everything. With efficient food production, more grain was produced by each family than it needed to survive. This excess grain was the basis of specialization; as some humans ceased laboring for food, they became metal-smiths, shipwrights, soldiers, philosophers."
"Emperors?" Oxham suggested.
His Majesty laughed heartily, now leaning forward in his retinue of floating cushions. "True. And senators too, eventually. Administration was now possible, the public wealth controlled by priests, who were also mathematicians, astronomers, and scribes. From excess grain: civilization.
But there was one problem."
Megalomania? Oxham wondered. The tendency for the priest with the most grain to mistake himself for a god, even to pretend to immortality. But she bit her lip and waited quietly through the Emperor's dramatic pause.