Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style Page 5

  At last, color, a slight dash of it anyway, returned to Vassily’s face. And he motioned that he was all right, and for Rahallah to push on.

  “This way, Excellency,” the bemedaled admiral said softly, pointing with his arm for Rahallah to push to the left and through a wide set of oak doors where a huge band was waiting to welcome them. But as the Premier saw the three-hundred musicians all looking anxiously, waiting to begin the musical proceedings, he held up his arms stiffly and waved them around in the air.

  “No! No music!” he yelled, though only a feeble noise came out. But Rahallah relayed the message to the admiral, who was looking nervously at the scene.

  “He says ‘No music’,” the black servant spat haughtily. “His ears are sensitive. He listens only to classical music at home—very low, the quiet composers,” Rahallah said quickly. “Not this loud and rambunctious martial music.” The admiral’s smile zapped off his face as if it had fallen into his underwear. He had so wanted everything to go smoothly, and already . . .

  “No music,” he yelled out, cupping his hands, and the conductor’s face fell as well, as flat as a cake without yeast. The band of nearly three hundred let their various trombones, clarinets, tubas and what-all fall to their sides or dangle around their necks as they looked at one another in confusion.

  “Perhaps some food,” Admiral Chesovsky said. “We have an entire banquet room waiting for you. It’s right this—”

  “No; to my suite please,” Vassily said impatiently, snapping his fingers. The admiral was not used to responding to snapped fingers, but as the snapper could have his brass balls on wrecking table with yet another snap, the distinguished, gray-haired commander smiled dumbly and led the way.

  Vassily’s suite was in the bow of the vessel—the admiral’s special quarters, which had been given over to the Premier for the trip. Thus they entered a small vehicle which ran on rubber wheels along the single track the thousand-feet-plus to the bow of the boat. Here an elevator took them down ten levels—the entire ship had over twenty. With a retinue of over fifty, the crowd came to the door of the Premier’s suite. The admiral opened the door as if he were a bellboy. Rahallah stared at the assemblage and then the admiral.

  “The Grandfather will retire now. He thanks you all for this great reception.” With that, he wheeled the Premier in, and quickly closed the door behind him. The admiral, his dozen or so chiefs of staff, and a large number of Elite Guards stood around not quite knowing what the hell to do. At last most left, and just the Elite Guards set themselves up and down the corridor, setting up checkpoints at each end, clearing every other room for at least a hundred feet. Now that the Premier was behind steel walls, the Chief of Palace Security, Korlog, was breathing out for the first time that day.

  “Ah, it’s beautiful, Rahallah, is it not,” the Premier said as his black servant wheeled him into the grandeur of the main suite. Although usually quite luxurious anyway, they had added a few touches here and there. Like silk curtains with gold-framed paintings; embroidery, finely stitched. They knew Vassily was a lover and collector of art and fine arts . . . Beds of velvet, carpets from the far-flung Persian and Far Asian parts of the Soviet world empire.

  Rahallah parked the Premier by the large down bed that stood along one mahogany wall under a portrait of Prushkin, one of Russia’s greatest naval men. Large portholes, glass, two inches thick, ran across both sides of the room. As they were up in the bow area, the suite had portholes on both sides. They already were under way, the Premier having given instructions to waste no more time in protocol. Sunlight from the fractured clouds beamed down into the room, giving its riches a golden-painted look, as if an artist were going over the scene with his dappled brush.

  “Here excellency, sunlight!” Rahallah said, pressing some buttons on a central control panel that clearly was the operating console for an array of devices that filled the immense room. Suddenly the curtains, which covered both sides of the very front thirty feet of the boat where it curved to a single piece of steel slicing through the dark waters, slid back. They were looking out at the Black Sea, heading inexorably toward the ocean—and America.

  “Push me, Rahallah, right to the window.” The African did so. It was truly breathtaking. It was as if they were strapped to the very bow of the immense craft, just fifty feet above the water, shooting straight ahead into the falling light over the churning waters. Gulls flew on all sides of them, swirling in great confused and hungry circles, hoping to catch some of the moving city’s garbage. The clouds in the Russian sky were silver, like swords cutting the last of the life from the day.

  The world was in his hands. What he did would decide the destiny of a planet. For if he died and there was no peace in place, the earth would be plunged into a thousand years of darkness and death, from which it would in all probability never arise. This he believed, deep in his heart. Only he, Vassily, could bring peace to a torn and battered world.

  “Read to me, Rahallah,” the Premier suddenly said, feeling very weary and old. Hardly capable of bringing an entire planet into harmony. His body ached with the sharp pain that came from time to time from deep in his gut. It was here again, stabbing into him like a nail, hammering into his frayed and blistered intestines.

  “Yes, Grandfather,” the black manservant replied softly. He pulled out a book from behind the wheelchair, just one of its many hidden treasures, and, finding the marker where he had left off, began reading aloud. He spoke with great eloquence, almost like an actor, Shakespearean tainted. But then he had had a complete education—the Premier had seen to that years before. And now, talking as if he were on stage with a one-man audience more powerful than all the other men put together in the entire world, he read from The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe:

  “It is enough to drive one mad, Wilham! To think that there are people who have no feelings at all for the few things on this earth that are of any value! Do you remember the walnut trees under which I sat with Lotte when we visited the good vicar in St.—? Those magnificent trees that, God knows, always delighted me . . . how snug they made the rectory courtyard, how cool, and what marvelous branches they had! And the memories that went with them, back to the worthy vicar who had planted them so many years ago. The schoolmaster mentions his name frequently, he has it from his grandfather. What a good man he was, and his memory was sacred to me always under those trees. I tell you, there were tears in the schoolmaster’s eyes yesterday when we spoke about how they had been cut down . . .”

  Six

  Back in Colorado:

  Though Rock vowed to himself he was going to get a good night’s sleep—since what with fooling around with Rona under the sleeping bag and the stars, and fighting mutant carnivores, he hadn’t had much of said commodity for what seemed like a week. But he had scarcely had time to decontaminate, go back to his sleeping chamber and fall down, when his beeper began squawking madly by his bed.

  He looked at the clock. Six A.M. He had gotten four hours. Shit. Hardly enough. But from the insistent call of the beeper, Rockson knew he wasn’t going to see any more sleep, maybe for a long time.

  “Yeah, Rockson here,” he answered in not the friendliest of tones, pressing his mouth to the phone unit of the device.

  “Rath. Sorry to wake you,” the Intel Chief replied, sounding not at all sorry. “But the Council kindly requests your presence. They’re having an emergency meeting in one hour to decide what response to make to the Russian demands. Now they, the Reds, are demanding some sort of answer—yes or no. They say Premier Vassily himself is on his way here—will arrive in a week. Freefighting cities are communicating with us from all over the country. Got messages coming in by radio, telegraph code, pony express, even birds from some of the smaller towns. Whole damned country’s in an uproar. If this is a real chance, then . . . And if not, then what the hell are they up to? At any rate,” Rath said, “you’re expected, as Century City’s top military field man, to speak. So—” He broke off the connection.
>
  Rock had just started to ask, “And say what?”

  But Rath was already gone. It was a stupid question, anyway. He was tired, that was all. In his better days he had even had his moments at repartee. But right now he felt like grunting at anything anyone asked him. His brain felt like it was screwed on backwards. Maybe he was getting some dreaded radiation fever. Or maybe he was just getting old. Yeah, right, peaked before he hit his mid-30’s. No, he wasn’t getting old. But the constant fight against darkness, the ceaseless struggle that he and the others carried on, the conclusion of which he probably wouldn’t even be around to see—sometimes, sometimes . . . was wearying.

  But after his third cup of coffee, in one of the quick-serve breakfast bars that was open on the twelve-to-eight shift, he felt less crabby. Although he didn’t want to admit it, Rockson began feeling just a little bit better. Coffee—thank God for it. Half the other Freefighting cities didn’t have it. But, as usual, Shecter and his hydroponics boys—now taking up an entire level and reaching out for more—had recreated the brew. Actually, coffee had been grown in primitive troughs, under heat lamps and such, even when Rockson had arrived as a tough-as-nails mountain child who had made his way across the state of Colorado on his own. But with Dr. Shecter’s advances over the last few decades, the farming situation had improved dramatically. Now there were five kinds of coffee beans, not to mention ten fresh vegetables and four fruits. The bio-techs were feeding the entire city everything except basic protein needs. And even that—he had heard they were working on some sort of Nutra-paste, a by-product of the cellulose waste of the plants—that could take care of 90 percent of the body’s protein needs.

  He would take a pass on that. He had tasted one of the bio boy’s concoctions—grapefruit husk pulp mixed with ground citrus seeds, or some damned thing like that. Had tasted like— Well, he hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings so he hadn’t said. But he hadn’t drunk it, either.

  “Ah, Rockson,” a voice said. Rock turned to see Dr. “Shaky” Shecter himself, coming down the aisle between a few of the plasti-tables, heading straight for him. Since his accident of several years before, the doc had had to have his legs amputated. But his medical-prosthetics team had been doing intensive research anyway—to help many of the wounded Freefighters who in their battles with the Reds and the carnivores of the mountains and plains had suffered many lost limbs. Thus, they had been ready. And the top boss himself had volunteered to try the new “smart” breed of prostheses they had come up with. He had artificial bionic legs. Shaky, but effective.

  Rockson had to admit the damned things worked pretty good—considering. The tall, lanky doctor, smoking his omnipresent pipe, walked at a good speed. Only the slightest wobbling of the top of the body, as the hips shifted slightly above the fractionally unbalanced joint system, betrayed the fact: Below the thighs, the doctor was all alumni-glass and wires, microprocessors and tiny argonium batteries, which could power all systems for months at a time without a recharge. He had been the guinea pig—now the device was being used on a number of wounded and being shipped out to other parts of the U.S. Dr. Shecter had spoken of his hope that someday it would surpass Liberator rifles as C.C.’s main export.

  “Speak of the devil,” Rock said with a lopsided grin, reaching for another cup of steaming brew. “I was just wondering how many of those prosthethes you’ve been selling. Looks like yours works pretty damned good.”

  “Good?” Shecter laughed out of one corner of his mouth, keeping the pipe firmly lodged in the other. “Why, I’m the envy of half the teenagers in the place.” He did a little gyration with his hips and then hopped up and down rapidly on alternate feet as if he were skipping. A few of the early morning risers laughed from other tables as they tried to wake up. The head of all scientific operations in the city was a well-known ham—and with the addition of his bionic legs, it took little to get him into a song and dance. He stopped after about fifteen seconds, looking a little pale, and sat down with a thump on the chair opposite Rock, across a synthetic-formica table.

  “You okay, Doc?” Rockson asked with concern as he took the coffee cup away from his lips.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Shecter waved back, annoyed. “The legs are fine—it’s my damned heart that could use some rewiring. But I’m afraid we’re not equipped for that kind of operation—yet . . .” He had a twinkle in his eye as he reached for the filled and ready autopot.

  “So what do you think, Doc?” Rockson asked, looking the aging man in his clear crystal eyes. The man’s eyes never failed to amaze Rockson. Like his own they were impenetrable, filled with a burning power.

  “Think about what?” Shecter asked, taking a sip and burning his tongue so that he pulled back sharply. Rockson could see that the man was growing older. How long could he go on? The whole senior group of the city—soon they would all be gone. The younger ones would take over. Mostly mutants like himself. It would be a new world. He didn’t know if it would be a better one.

  “Come on—the Reds—the peace offering—the olive branch of love,” Rock said. “What do you think? Are the Reds serious?”

  “You know I don’t mix in politics, Rock,” Shecter said with a thin grin, taking a puff on the cherry-flavored tobacco so that the air was filled with a sweet fruity odor that made Rock’s stomach turn just a little. “I just play with my test tubes and try to wheedle as much funds and manpower as I can out of the Council to push on with my work. There’s so much to do, Rock, so—”

  “Yeah, sure, spare me the Einsteinian objectivity please,” the Doomsday Warrior said poker-faced. “You’re involved in every decision that’s made in this place.”

  “All right—but for your ears only. I’ve got a big appropriations meeting coming up for expansion of the hydroponics—and I can’t afford to have any enemies on the committee.”

  “My ears only,” Rock said, covering his mouth for a second like the dumb monkey.

  “I think—go for it,” Shecter said. “I’m a scientist, and we must always be willing to change—to allow new ideas to take hold, to germinate within us. A scientist must follow many routes, be bold, always, always risk the new, even the terrifying. I’m not saying the Reds have mellowed any—because we know basically they haven’t. But perhaps Vassily really is serious. The man is growing old. We know he’ll die soon. And—with Colonel Killov gone—he can afford to relax for a moment and look around him at what he’s wrought. Basically he sees a world still in mortal conflict. Especially here in the U.S.”

  Shecter paused, took a long puff on his pipe and looked at Rock so that he could feel the scientist’s will like a tangible object. “Yes—go, Rock. Take the chance. I know the macho side of the Council will scream that it’s just another Red trick—a chance to capture you and the top leadership of the U.S. But you know me—always the optimist. Can’t find the worm—unless you turn over the stone.”

  “Only problem is, if you’re the worm you get eaten by the crows. And I think I’m the worm on this fishing expedition,” Rock said, gulping down the last of the java.

  The man with streaked gray-brown hair said, “The meeting will come to order. Please, please, ladies and gentlemen. We have a vitally important problem to discuss.”

  No one quieted down. The speaker raised his voice.

  “If you don’t act with more decorum, I will have to call in the Council Guard and have you ejected. Please, please!” William Fabres, the acting chairperson of the Council screamed now. “Shut the hell up!" He banged his gavel on the speaker’s podium again and again, slamming it down as if he were tenderizing meat with a sledge hammer.

  The council chambers of Century City, where all decisions were made, was either a paradigm of American democracy at work in its most active and participatory form—or was the living proof that the system could never work, and degenerated, as usual, into anarchy, cursing and occasional fisticuffs. Council meetings were either famous or notorious at other Freefighting cities throughout the west. Delegates and visit
ors from the other hidden cities were always aghast that one of the most powerful and certainly influential rebel cities in the country was so—so insane.

  In the large semicircular chamber, where the elected representatives of the city’s inhabitants carried out their ordained duties, were now stuffed not just all fifty of them, but another five hundred or so citizens. And hundreds more were trying to get through the doors, to voice their opinions. People yelled, screamed, threatened. Fistfights broke out like ripples on a pond here and there—though they were just as quickly stopped by those around them. In fact, for all the noise and clamor, no one actually seemed to get hurt—other than an occasional busted nose from a punch that landed too cleanly. A mess, yes—but not a man, woman or child of them (for children were represented on the council as well) would have had it any other way. They believed in the full and enthusiastic vocal expression of their beliefs and desires. What were they fighting for, if not that? What had all the spilled blood and the pain been for—if not to let the whole damned place know just what the hell you believed in?

  Rockson’s presence often cooled them out, at least momentarily—either due to their tremendous respect for him, or the fear that he would lose his own temper amidst the screaming and leap like a panther at them and start banging heads together!

  Rockson walked in now, down the aisle and up toward the raised stage where he could see some of the other parties already represented; those around seemed to cool down a little, looking sheepishly at their hands around each other’s throats, and pulling them free. Rock walked through the crowd like Moses through a Red Sea of flesh. By the time he reached the stage, the place had almost quieted down.