18
WHATEVER ELSE the Interdict was, he served as an excellent distraction and human shield for our trip back through the Sacred City to the Hera. Indeed, the vicars, and the armed vicars who served as Inquisitors, didn’t truly know what to do with us, or to us, as we carried him away.
We shut our ears to the cries of grave sin, and threats of excommunication, and we shuffled the limp, old—very, very old—man onto our ship. Then we tore away from the towing cables and launched into space.
Tyrus flipped on a med bot, then paced back and forth briskly next to the unconscious Interdict. His heartbeat was so frantic, I could see it in his neck. “This is the most insane thing I’ve ever done.”
He’d played the madman for half his life, so that was saying a lot.
“If it doesn’t work,” I said evenly, “then we follow my plan. Turn around and take him sightseeing.”
Tyrus jerked his head in a nod.
Then . . .
A moan.
The med bot was rousing him.
I hastened to Tyrus’s side so we could present a united front in this mad tactic. When Orthanion sat up, he froze at the sight of us.
“Most Ascendant One,” Tyrus said coolly. “Welcome to outer space.”
The Interdict launched to his feet, took in his surroundings, and sputtered with disbelief. “What in the . . . Are you . . . are you utterly mad?” he demanded.
Tyrus gave a crooked smile. “I’ve been called that once or twice.”
“You are kidnapping me? This won’t get you what you want! This is a crime against the Living Cosmos! Every Helionic in the galaxy will turn upon you for this!”
“Not with you right in reach of us,” I said coldly.
“And they won’t have a chance,” Tyrus affirmed. Under pressure, he showed only a cool, unshakable demeanor, as though we were passing a pleasant interlude, not committing a terrible crime. “We are not kidnapping you with the intention of continuing our lives as they are. You seem to think I am mercurial and young, that something will change if I am accorded another twenty years. Well, I won’t wait that long. If Nemesis and I cannot be together as people, then . . . Then we are going to seek oblivion together. Along with you.”
The Interdict paled. “What are you doing?”
“My cousin is doomed. I am the last Domitrian. And you—you may be the last Interdict. We disappear together.” Tyrus shrugged. “Or whatever you call it. What does happen to people thrown into a black hole?”
All color disappeared from Orthanion’s face. He whirled about and dashed faster than I would have thought he could move. He reached the window and saw the curvature of unfathomable black we were aimed at.
Tyrus and I exchanged a tense look behind his back. Our hope was to terrify him into giving me personhood, and therefore his tacit consent to Tyrus holding his scepter. We would record it, and then leave here—and broadcast it to the galaxy. My personhood would obliterate the grounds for the vicars to object to Tyrus holding the scepter. By the time a vicar came out of the Sacred City with the Interdict’s decree in hand saying he’d been coerced, well, a vicar could be intercepted easily enough. We would keep the truth a secret until the scepter was Tyrus’s to command, and then the truth would not matter.
Nothing terrified a Helionic more than the ultimate death.
Flying into a black hole.
Orthanion’s strangled gasp gratified me, as did the raw terror on his face when he said to us, “Turn us around. You have to turn us around.”
“Not going to happen,” Tyrus said, unmoved. He had to notice, as I had, the way the jostling of the Hera grew increasingly violent all about us. We knew there was a point of no return, a point where even light could not escape.
We hoped to terrify the Interdict into submission long before that point.
“I have to admit, I’m rather curious about what will happen when we reach it,” Tyrus said to me conversationally.
“It will be so interesting,” I agreed.
“FOOLS!” shouted the Interdict, rushing over to us. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“I know exactly what I’m doing!” roared Tyrus. “I am not waiting twenty years! It is a short time to you, but the rest of us do not live five centuries!”
“You think . . . you think I am so old?” sputtered Orthanion, looking between us with disbelief. “I am but ninety-one.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “There’s a statue of you, of your exact likeness, and it bears your name. It is half an eon old. We have both seen it at the Chrysanthemum.”
“Yes,” he snapped out, “I posed for it. Five hundred years ago—for you. For me, it was mere decades ago.”
I looked at Tyrus, trying to see if this made sense to him. He was looking at me, doing the same thing.
Orthanion surged toward the window looking onto the ominous curve of black and activated the magnifiers, amplifying the view again and again and again. “Look. Just look here. Do you see it? Do you see anything there?”
“No,” I said sharply, for I had excellent eyesight.
“That is lucky,” rasped the Interdict, “for if we get closer and closer to that black hole, you will see something: the tomb of the Emperor Amon von Domitrian.”
Tyrus made an incredulous, sputtering sound.
“That’s not even possible,” I cried. “He was excommunicated centuries ago.”
“Yes. For you, centuries have passed.” The Interdict trained his gaze on Tyrus’s face. “For Amon, close as he is to that singularity? He’s passed mere minutes. A thousand years from now, if an onlooker glimpses Amon falling into the black hole, Amon will have passed another second. Time is not constant. Do you understand? Gravity bends time. The closer we get to the black hole, the slower we creep through existence!”
I saw Tyrus go deathly pale as it all fell into place for him, just as it was forming coherence for me. The ageless vicars, the ancient Interdict, the sheer remove of the Sacred City from the rest of us. . . .
They literally existed in a slower time frame.
And we were in it now, too.
“Oh stars no,” Tyrus breathed. He leaped over to the navigation panel. The Hera gave a ferocious jolt as it turned about, but I couldn’t make sense of it.
“He’s making this up,” I said uncertainly to Tyrus. “Time is time. It doesn’t . . . It can’t just change. It makes no sense.”
The Interdict stared at me.
“Are you just making it up?” Tyrus said to the Interdict hopefully. “Be honest. I will take us back either way, I swear—”
“I am not inventing the theory of relativity!” the Interdict roared. “I am not Albert Einstein. Are you telling me that you, Tyrus—the Emperor—do not know the basic laws of physics?”
“How would I know them?” cried Tyrus. “You made such things blasphemy. Where would I learn of this?”
“My reforms weren’t meant for the likes of you! And they weren’t aimed at destroying all understanding of basic sciences! I meant only to eliminate those destructive technologies that . . .” The Interdict fell deathly silent, his face blanching.
He didn’t realize this. The thought crept over me. He never intended us to become so ignorant.
Strange.
It had been infuriating to think the Interdict had meant to change the galaxy, meant to render everyone so ignorant.
But to realize he’d been as shortsighted and blundering as the rest of us . . .
That was vastly more frightening.