by Marc Horne
Chapter 5
The court was interested. The counselors gathered from levels 7 up to Level 2. The level 1 counselor was in bed, resting for crucial moments. It seemed like he might need to be waking up soon.
“What is this nonsense?” asked Sultan Gukkool, loosening his bowstring and losing his focus.
“I don’t work for anybody. No one called me up and told me to come and get you. I have no grudge, either. Nothing personal.”
Xolo was not exactly playing for time, since no backup plan existed. He was playing for time’s cousin: probability. He knew the truth of his life was loaded with novelty and unlikelihood, and that the richer you were the more these were the greatest treasures life could provide. Once you have fucked, killed and eaten everything - often in one mammoth session - your beast mind retires and your baby mind dominates. Babies love to play peek-a-boo, but they love it more than anything if instead of Mommy or Daddy’s face appearing when the blanket comes down, it is the face of a scary monster.
Try this with a child, sometime.
But at any rate, sultans are strange fish and they like strange waters. Xolo span a story that just happened to be true.
“So why do you kill? Are you naturally evil? Do wish to make yourself more attractive to me?” asked Haja Gukkool, son of Old Haja.
“There’s this thing,” Xolo said, “called money. My goal is to have more of it than anybody else. When I achieve this then my second goal kicks in, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
“So: money. Through the usual piratical means, I made a lot of money in wars. But the money per head in a war is shitty. Eventually I would get tired and my earning potential would go down and eventually I would get potted and that would be that.
“But I noticed how the markets went up and down when one of you sultans were killed. I sat down with some great mathematicians that I hired. We came up with a great algorithm that could predict how the markets would swing when a sultan died. Very predictable. Practically a sure way to make a lot of money. The only issue was…”
“You could never know when a sultan was going to die!” said Gukkool. The counselors looked among themselves. These foreshocks of meaningful brain activity from the sultan were very, very worrying. This ‘Automatic Assassin’ talk would have to be shut down soon. But it was Gukkool who held the bow and now it was lolling around like an old teddy bear dangling from a kid’s hand.
“Precisely. But there was another complication. Let’s say a Sultan like you had access to this information. You’d start acting strange. You’d throw the map off. And as I became richer and richer I too would start to become part of the equation, right? So I set it up like this. The algorithm works. It figures the value of a dead sultan or duke or whatever. It moves my investments around. And when it gets to a point where the kill would return way above the market rate, it sends me a letter just saying who has to die and by when. Then I act.
“My client…? I’ll tell you who he is. He is the invisible hand of the market. A blind machine.”
Gukkool sat down on a stool of coral. It made a lot of sense. The sultans had come into a kind of balance during his father’s time. Once everyone had a planet or two, they calmed down. But an outside force like this could soak up all of the energy that it required just to do nothing to each other and capitalize on it.
“So, let’s talk more about this algortith…”
“Your majesty!” it was Magrega, one of the level two counselors, a tall jet-black woman with no hair in the public domain. “I would just like to remind you that there is a time limit on the immediate execution rule, and if you don’t kill this man within the next minute or so, this will move back into the coverage of the Standard Decision Making policy and, well…those arrows will be staying dry for at least a while.
Magrega’s counterpart, Dubloon, stepped forward too, booming his words through his beard…a beard that somehow amplified and clarified rather than muffled his words. Unless when beardless he had a voice of crystal purity. I suppose that’s more likely isn’t it. It was just a beard, not a trumpet.
“Magrega speaks the truth, sire. And I think we have got all of the juicy stuff out of this man now. His algorithm won’t work for us, and probably now he is exposed it won’t work at all anymore anyway. And look at those eye sockets, sire!’
Gukkool’s brain was now full of words that he didn’t like. He wanted to be done with this and masturbate into the ocean for a while. He lifted his bow, pulled back the string and locked his aim on the right eye. The eye did not blink or close. Awesome!
Just before the shot that everyone – almost everyone – was waiting for, a loud clear, bell-like voice filled the room. The little girl had got to her feet and spoke and her manner alone would have commended attention but she also said something really surprising.
“Listen all! I, Princess Sun-Moon of the Planet Earth, heir to the Terran Throne and the Human Empire, declare that this man is henceforth under my majestic service in the office of Royal Guard and that accordingly all the protections of my Father’s throne must be afforded him on pain of death and the surrender of your titles.”
Gukkool fired his arrow high in the air. It got close to the sun, as far as human perspective is concerned, then fell into the ocean.
Inside their cloistered selves, everyone was swearing.