Ron Goulart - Emperor of the Last Days.rtf

Emperor

of the last

    Days

Ron GoularT

POPULAR LIBRARY « NEW YORK

Chapter 1

The man plummeted straight down past Dan Farleigh's only window.

"Hey!" Dan had been chatting with his cen­tral computer. He only got a flashing impression of the silentiy screaming man out of the corner of his eye.

"Only some guy doing the Dutch " said the computer's voice box. "Nothing to—"

"He must have jumped from some office di-

rectly above this one." Dan was running toward the oval plexiwindow.

Police aircruisers were already hooting some­place down below when the long lanky young man got across the huge, high and hollow Fax- Central Office to take a look out.

"I can see him sprawled on a pedramp at about level thirty-two," said Dan, craning his neck and pressing his forehead against the soft, tinted window. The walkramps and towering buildings of Manhattan made multicolored zig­zag patterns across the morning. "That means he fell something like thirty floors, Barney. Yeah, we're on sixty-one and he came from someplace up above." Turning away from the window, he went walking back across the enormous room, past the walls of built-in compact computers, the banks of data retrievers. "First time I ever saw anybody kill himself."

"You didn't see much of it."

"I saw his face, just for an instant." Dan thrust his hands in the trouser pockets of his two-piece lycra daysuit. "Wonder who he was."

"Want me to find out?" offered Barney, the central computer, who sat smack in the middle of the immense room.

Dan frowned, narrowing one eye. "I'm trying to break the habit of using FaxCentral equip­ment to play games."

"A sincere interest in the passing of a fellow human isn't playing games, Daniel," the wide, man-high computer told him. "Besides . . . have they ever caught us before?"

"Well, no, they haven't, but—"

"I'm the best damn computer in the state of Manhattan, am I not? And you, Daniel, if not the most brilliant employee of FaxCentral, are nonetheless the only one on this entire wing of our giant United States Fact System. So who's to catch on?"

"Yeah, but the National Security Office was due to run a shakedown inspection of us before last Christmas," said Dan as he approached Bar­ney. "Here it is April 2029 and they still haven't showed. It's bound to be any time now."

"My hunch is they probably won't at all. Even if they do, I can keep them from tumbling to anything."

"Of course, there's really not exactly anything illegal about what we've been doing," continued Dan, mostly to himself. "Being Chief of the Personal Data Wing of FaxCentral . . . well, since you and the equipment do most of the work, there isn't much to take up my time. I feel, mostly, like a watchman. So naturally when you suggested we play a few games to pass the time I—"

"As I recall, Daniel, it was you who—"

A police airship went hooting by at their level.

Dan said, "Okay, find out who the poor bas­tard was."

"Nathan Jaxon," replied Barney. "I've been

tracking it down while you've been soul- searching."

"Nathan Jaxon?" Dan raised his eyes toward the ceiling. "He's the head of the Spaceport Authority and an important man in the Third Party nationally. He has offices up on sixty-three of our Grand Central Tower. Why would he kill himself? He's always smiling when you see him on the news."

"Family troubles and concern over failing health."

"Failing health? He won the Men's AirSld Championship out in California North only last month."

"All I know is what I read in the suicide notes."

"You got a look at his suicide note already?"

"Scanning it right now," replied the computer. "I'm buddy-buddy with all the cop computers and most of the forensic androids. They're let­ting me siphon off a peek at the note Jaxon left."

"He wrote it?"

"Spoke it into his typer. Voice prints match. No possibility of a fake, they say. 'The burden of failing health coupled with pressing family problems is too much. Please try to understand, Helen . . Helen would be the recently ac­quired new young wife. 'Love to you and all our . . .' Ends there, in midsentence. More dra­matic that way, huh?"

Dan dropped into the floating Incite chair in

front of the computer. "You hinting at some­thing, Barney?"

"Who me? Not at all," said the blocky com­puter. "Does seem a wee bit odd, though, that the late Mr. Jaxon is the fourth high-ranking member of the Third Party to kill himself in the past six months."

"Lots of pressure in politics." Dan left the chair, began roaming the big gray-walled room. The data retrievers were humming, as usual; tiny red and green blisters of light were blink­ing off and on. Dan yawned. That continual humming, mixed with the regular pattern of blinking, always made him drowsy. And it wasn't even lunch yet.

"Be something to do," said Barney.

"What?"

"We could investigate the suicide on our own, for fun."

Dan turned toward the mechanism. "Don't take this personally, Barney, but I'm . . . well, restless. Playing armchair detective . . . and all the other games we've been filling our shift with . . . well, I'm still restless." , "You've got a Rest & Recreation leave due in five weeks," the computer reminded. "Why don't you hop over to the Alps."

"I'm always hopping over to the Alps. I do that almost every R & R leave," said Dan. "Ex­cept when I went down to Texas2 for my uncle's cremation last year." "He was in the Third Party too, now I think of it."

"Uncle Rex? He died from complications of the Martian flu. That's not a frequently used method of committing suicide."

"They may be killing them off in different

ways."

"They?"

Barney said, "Don't know who they are yet."

Dan pointed a forefinger at him. "You're get­ting a little strange, Barney. Really. At least I get out of here two shifts a day and can teleport to my place in Boston. You, you're here all the time. It's making you . . . well, strange."

"Maybe I should go to the Alps."

"Okay, I realize you're stuck here," said Dan. "By the way, do you and Snelling play games on the Swing Shift?"

"Need you ask? Snelling isn't the type."

Dan wandered back to the chair. "Let's for­get Jaxon and his suicide." Sitting once again, he locked his hands behind his head and made a try at relaxing. "Do you know something about my uncle's death you never told me?"

"Me? I share everything I find out with you, Daniel," the mechanism assured him. "I did tell you the para-physician who attended your late uncle had vanished, didn't I?"

Dan sat up. "No, you didn't tell me that."

"Oh, thought I had."

"If you know . . . Nope, forget it. I'm not

going to go poking into stuff like that," said Dan. "I don't want the National Security Office and the American Police getting annoyed with me."

"I do have a couple computers I'm chummy with on the Texas2 State cops. I could very easily—"

"No."

A yellow bubble of light flashed on Barney's bright chrome surface. "We're going to have company."

"Human beings?"

"Yes, a girl. She's out getting her permits cleared with that twit of a robot in the Recep­tion Lobby."

"Is she police?"

"Media. Not bad-looking, if you like them on the thin side."

Dan left his chair and went quickly to the visitor's door. "We haven't had a human being up here to see us since February."

The door buzzed, hummed, and then slid open.

A pretty and slender dark-haired girl was standing there. She smiled, tentatively, at Dan. "I'm Janis Trummond from Newz Magazine," she said. "I'd like to talk to you about the sui­cide."

Dan beckoned her to come on in, said some­thing. He could never remember afterward what it was he said.

Chapter 2

The long, high room was filled with images, hundreds of foot-square images running from floor to domed ceiling.

"This is the SlugSis monitor room," Dan ex­plained to the girl as he guided her through, "we can shortcut this way to the caff."

It was like an alive art gallery, each image moving and chattering. On this tiny screen a cattle barons naked daughter being raped by

a half dozen shaggy sheep men, on that screen the Pope in his jeweled helicopter blessing the crowds thronging the silver and gold pedways of New Rome, on that screen three airfloat wres­tlers stomping a fourth two hundred feet above a crowd of gleeful Eskimos, on that screen an expedition cutting its way through the density of the Lost Brazil jungle, on that screen a nude ballerina dancing to the ragtime version of one of Emily Dickinson's poems, up there the Boston All-Robot Symphony in concert at an under­ground beer garden, down there a revival of The Front Page with a cyborg cast, up there a lecture on ponic gardening, across there con­tinually unwinding pictures of the American Police Office's Most Suspicious Characters, down there—

"Peter the Hermit," said the dark-haired Janis, halting and pointing to a waist-high monitor screen.

Dan hunched to look. "Yeah, that's him. Typ­ical West States lunatic with—"

"Listen to him for a minute." She brought up the sound on that particular monitor.

The old man seemed incredibly tall and nar­row, seven feet high at least. Hie hot, gritty desert wind was whipping at his flowing gray beard and hair and at the homespun robe he wore. ". . . is coming and there is no way to avoid it, my friends," he was saying in his harsh, dry voice. "The Last Days roll ever closer, the pillars of your world grow ever shakier. Soon, very soon, all across the world it will come. All will collapse and be blown away, blown away as the wind blows grains of sand across this benighted land. Then, my friends, the Last Days will be here and then will come the Great Trans­formation and then will come one thousand years of peace, peace, contentment and fulfill­ment. One thousand years, my friends, a millennium. There has never been anything like it, and it is going to happen in your lifetime. Soon. Soon!" The image of the old man vanished from the screen, replaced by a smiling Chinese.

"Let's update the weather picture," said the smiling Chinese anchor man, "with Peaches and Daddy up in the puppet weather room."

"This must be SlugSis' Continuous News," said Dan. "They give quite a bit of time to quirky people like—"

"What Peter the Hermit's saying is true," said Janis.

Dan took a step back from the girl. "Oh, so? You mean the world's going to end, angels are going to—"

"Not that way," she told him. "No magic or miracles, but it's going to happen. Unless some­body does something about it." Giving a final glance to the screen where Peter the Hermit had been, she started moving for the far door.

Swallowing, coughing, Dan followed her. She was a very pretty girl, seemed intelligent. But

you couldn't really believe in someone like Peter the Hermit, an old nitwit with whiskers down to here. "SlugSis offers its customers one hun­dred shows to pick from," he said as he caught up with the girl. "It's the largest multiple choice pay television system in the—"

"You can stick SlugSis," she said over her shoulder. "And I'm not goofy."

"Okay, you're not." The door opened for them. "Down the green ramp to the left."

The green ramp curved and turned down to another inner-tower level and faded into shad­ows and then darkness. Floating in the darkness were the illuminated words Chez Ambiance.

Dan took hold of Janis' arm, which made him swallow again, and led her into the blackness. A door opened in the dark and a silver robot, surrounded by pale light, smiled out at them.

"Booth for three?" inquired the robot.

"Two," corrected Dan.

"Excuse it, my sensors need a tuneup." A wider smile cut across the silver ball-head of the greeter. "You can have either twenty-six or fifty-one."

"We'll take twenty-six."

When they were inside the square white-wall cubicle Janis hopped, suddenly, up on the table. Taking a silver rod from her shoulder bag, she pointed its tip at the plain, bare ceiling and walls. "No bugs," she said.

"It's illegal under the Public Privacy Act of 2016 to install eavesdropping equipment in—"

"You're sitting on all the information in the world and you don't know from nothing." She, slim long legs flashing, climbed down to sit in a plain white body-fit chair.

"I know journalists have to goad some people to get them to talk, but with me you—" "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. Sit down, Dan." Watching her, he took the opposite chair and picked the ambiance box off the table. "What sort of atmosphere are you in the mood for?" "This one."

"This isn't an ambiance. I usually dial New England Inn on a Rainy Night, although you might prefer—"

"I prefer, Dan, to talk to you. I want you to tell me about Jaxon's suicide."

He continued to scan the list of possible room atmospheres on the box lid. "I hear Private Din­ing Room in Nineteenth-Century Viennese Restaurant is quiet and—"

"Put down that insipid box and talk to me." "Maybe I'll go out and chat with the robot. I guess I'm not used to people. You're pretty damn feisty for—"

"Tell me about Jaxon's jump." "He jumped," said Dan. "That's about all I know. I didn't see him go out his window, only saw him when he went whizzing by our window. We got curious as to—"

"We?"

"Barney and me. Barney's my central com­puter, you met him upstairs. He and I have got­ten to be pretty good friends. See, I don't run into many people in this particular—

"What did Jaxon look like?"

"He looked like Jaxon. What do you mean?"

"Was he conscious?"

"Yeah, he was wide awake. He was screaming. At least when he passed our window he was screaming."

"Not their usual method." She had a habit of stroking her upper lip with her forefinger while she was thinking. "How'd they do it this time I wonder."

"Wait now," Dan said. "Don't you think this was a suicide either?"

"Who else thinks it isn't?"

"Well, Barney. He has some odd idea about the Third Party being the target of some kind of conspiracy."

"Sounds like a very smart computer. What exactly does your pal Barney base his suspicions on?"

"Oh, he was pointing out that several im­portant Third Party people had died by suicide in recent months." Dan picked up the ambiance box again. "Barney even thinks my Uncle Rex didn't die from natural causes."

"Rex Farleigh was your uncle?"

Dan frowned. "Would you like to turn our

room into a Monterey Waterfront Bistro or maybe a Seventeenth-Century Sussex Coach House Inn? I don't want to get involved with stuff like this. My uncle died of a respiratory ailment. That's it."

The girl stroked her upper lip, watching him. "Maybe so," she said finally, "but Nathan Jaxon sure didn't. He was made to leap."

"And made to talktype his own suicide note?"

"Those can be faked."

"No, they can't."

"You didn't see my article in Newz six weeks back. Anything can be faked, including a voice print."

Dan tapped his fingers on the box's surface. "Okay, suppose somebody made Jaxon do it. What's the reason?"

"I don't have all the answers, Dan. I've been working on this thing for nearly two months for Newz; I think I'm on the edge of getting some­body to . . . Never mind that now," she said. "You saw Peter the Hermit up in the SlugSis room. I think he's intended as a diversion, to make the Millenarian Brotherhood seem like simply another West States lunatic group."

"There are rational people who believe the world is going to end next week sometime? Those people are somehow tied in with Jaxon's suicide?"

"I was supposed to interview Nathan Jaxon this afternoon," said Janis. "He'd heard, through

the Ombudsman Foundation, what I was dig­ging into. He told me he wanted very much to talk to me."

"He was killed before he could, that's what you think?"

"It's not the only reason they got rid of Jaxon," Janis replied. "Might be, though, one of the reasons."

"The Millenarian Brotherhood," asked Dan, "what do they get out of all this?"

"When the still-surviving countries of the world collapse, or are made to collapse, then the Millennium starts. They intend to rule then, rule not just one country but all of them."

"An old idea, ruling the world."

"Sure, an old idea. One with considerable appeal yet," said the dark-haired girl. "You could help me, Dan. With the resources you and Barney have, you could find out a hell of a lot I—"

"Nope. No. I don't think I can do anything."

She gave a small, rueful shrug. "All right."

"Suppose I think about the whole thing?"

"Don't help me if it's going to get you into—"

"What I want to do, Janis, is see you again after today," Dan said. "Could we do that while I'm wrestling with this?"

"Yes, we could," the girl answered. "I five out in Reconstituted Brooklyn. We might have din­ner tomorrow night."

"We certainly might," said Dan.

Chapter 3

They were all at once in San Francisco.

The actual San Francisco, on a plateau above the darkening Pacific where rocky cliffsides went sliding down to gray sand and foamy surf.

Janis had taken hold of Dan's hand when they'd stepped onto the teleport platform back in the Safe Sector of Reconstituted Brooklyn. She kept her fingers, warm and smooth, tight around his as they stepped off the San Francisco  platform. "Still unsettles me," she said, "even though I've teleported just about everywhere. Keep thinking I'm not going to come out the other end."

"Yeah, I used to get a sort of roulette feeling when I first started commuting between Bos­ton and Manhattan. I've, I think, adjusted."

The walkway led, slanting mildly, to a castle­like restaurant built at the edge of the cliff. A high, towering structure of amber-tinted neo- glass bricks. Smiling people in bright clothes seemed to be floating up there in the foggy twilight.

"That's not where you're from originally, Bos­ton?" asked the girl.

"Not exactly, no. I'm from MidWest2."

"I know, I looked you up on the Newz data­bank."

"You did? I found out some things about you, too, with Barney's help. Your father was Morris Trummond. I remember reading his books when

I

was—

"I inherited my crusading bent from him, no doubt. Did Barney inform you how my noted father died?"

"Yeah . . ." The neoglass doors opened in front of them.

"Maybe I've inherited that trait, too."

A human waiter with a one-piece scarlet ca- sualsuit greeted them, escorted them to an al­cove on the seethrough castle's second level.

Janis sat for a moment watching the blue fading away out of the sea, the night and the fog come sweeping in. Her cheekbones were promin...