For the first time in six years, I did not dream about Eyclone. I dreamed of a blinding darkness, then a light that refused to go away. There was something dark about the light. Nonsense, I know, but that was how it felt. Like a revelation that actually carried some grimmer, more profound truth. There were flashes, like lightning, around the edges of my dream's horizon. I saw a handsome, blank-eyed male, not blank-eyed like one of Eyclone's drones, but vacant like an immense, star-less distance. He smiled at me. At that time in my life, I had no idea who he was.
I went то see Carpel at noon the next day. It was always noon in the Sun-dome, but this was real noon by the clock. By then, Lowink, Aemos and Betancore had all dredged up new information for me.
I shaved, and dressed in black linen with high boots and a formal jacket of scaled brown hide. I wore my inquisitorial rosette at my throat. I intended to show Carpel I meant business.
Aemos and I descended from the landing platform superstructure by caged elevator and found yellow-robed custodians waiting to escort us. Despite the rancid white light all around, they still held ignited light poles. We made short, hard shadows on the dry rockcrete of the concourse as we crossed to an open limousine. It was a massive chrome-grilled beast with pennants bearing the Hubris crest fluttering on its cowling. There were four rows of overstuffed leather benches behind the centre-set driver's cockpit.
We hummed through the streets on eight fat wheels. The boulevards were wide and, needless to say, bright. To either hand, glass-fronted buildings rose towards the blazing plasma sun-globe high above, like flowers seeking the light. Every thirty metres along every street, chemical lamps on ornate posts strained to add their own light to the brilliance.
Traffic was sparse, and there were at most a few thousand pedestrians on the streets. I noticed most wore yellow silk sashes, and that garlands of yellow flowers decorated every lamp post.
The flowers?' I asked.
'From the hydroponic farms on east-dome seven/ one of the custodians told me.
'Signifying?'
'Mourning.'
'Same as the sashes/ Aemos whispered in confidence. 'What happened last night is a major tragedy for this world. Yellow is their holy colour. I believe the local religion is a solar belief
The sun as Emperor?'
'Common enough. Extreme here, for obvious reasons.'
The custodial hall was a glass spire close to the town centre, a solar disk overlaid with the double-headed eagle of the Imperium decorating its upper faces. Nearby was the local chapel of the Ecclesiarchy, and several buildings given over to the Imperial Administratum. It amused me to see they were all built of black stone and virtually windowless. Those Imperial servants stationed here obviously had as little track as me with the constant light.