The Armageddon Blues

by The Armageddon Blues (new ed) (mobi)

  "Ah...." It was long, drawn out sound. Georges Mordreaux said, "I miss it. For all its faults, I miss France."

  Henry Ellis had no reply.

  "I have not been here in eighty years," said Georges. "I left after the World War, the first one; and before that I had not been there since Napoleon took over the country, that pompous little Corsican." He laughed, and the sound filled the inside of the hushchopper. "What we are flying over now, it is the province of Dauphine in my mind. I think they call it something else these days.

  "And the country itself, it was the Third Republic the last time I was here. What is it now, the seventh or eighth?"

  Henry grinned. "No, I think they're still calling themselves the Fifth Republic, since the German Occupation ended."

  "The Germans," said Georges, his smile fading like water into parched ground. "I have no love for Germans. I fought against them once, when they were trying to restore the monarchy."

  Henry glanced at him. "I thought you said you'd been in the first World War, as well? That would be twice."

  Georges turned slightly, and Henry had the oddest feeling that the man was looking at him. Georges turned away. "By the turn of that century, I was almost two hundred years old. I had fought enough. I was in the World War. I did not fight in it."

  Henry asked quizzically, "How could you avoid it? Even with your, what did you call them, Precepts of Semi-Divinity?"

  "I fired my rifle into the air, and I yelled a lot." Georges shrugged. "Besides ... you may have misunderstood me; the two Precepts of Semi-Divinity, they are not a joke. Mind Thine Own Business means keep your nose out of the private affairs of others, Henry, it does not mean that you stand by and allow tragedy to occur without intervening if you are able. Similarly, Don't Worry About It does not mean don't do anything about it."

  "Oh." A moment later, Henry said, "I think we've arrived."

  Georges felt the hushchopper dropping. Minutes passed, and he felt a gentle bump; Henry said, "We're down." Georges cracked the hatch on the passenger's side, leaned out slightly and emitted an ultrasonic tone. Oriented, he got the rest of the way out of the hushchopper, and began walking across the rough earth to the deserted warehouse nearby. The scents brought back a swarm of memories, the distinctive smell of the French air in the farming countryside.

  There was already another hushchopper there, parked and waiting.

  "This way," said Henry Ellis. He shifted his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, nervously. Drawing his poncho more closely about him, he led Georges Mordreaux through the open warehouse gates, into the darkened warehouse. The warehouse smelled faintly of vinegary wine, and strongly of dust and formaldehyde.

  The warehouse was an abandoned wine-storage facility, and one of Sunflower's lesser-used resource centers. In the early to mid-nineties it had been used as a chip distribution point for Sunflower's ongoing Soviet Information Explosion Program; since the Soviets had become aware of the insidious danger of allowing their citizens access to information processing equipment that could tell them about the West, the warehouse had been effectively shut down, along with half a dozen others like it. SIEP went on, but more subtly; infochips and small inskin datalinks replaced the laptops and personal computers. And the Soviet populace grew steadily more and more dissatisfied.

  Today the warehouse was a pharmaceuticals laboratory, when it was in use at all, which was rare. It was closed down that Sunday when Georges Mordreaux and Henry Ellis made their way through its darkened interior, between dim, heaping rows of unidentifiable boxes, and shelves filled with obsolete instruments and equipment. At a door set into a row of box-like offices against one wall of the warehouse, Henry Ellis stopped, and put out a hand to hold Georges back.

  --ENCELIS,--he whispered through his inskin datalink, --is it cleared?--

  --Affirmative. Satellite observation shows only those parties expected. Room scanners confirm their identities.--

  Henry opened the door, and Georges followed him into the darkness. A voice that Georges did not recognize said, "Lights," in accented English.

  The rows of fluorescent lights in the ceiling flickered on. Three persons were revealed in the sudden illumination; a statuesque women in middle age, looking at Georges avidly, and two black men. One of the black men was sitting, the only person seated in the room. He was a relatively young man, no more than forty years old, with round features and a complete lack of expression. His skin was extremely dark. The man behind him was truly young, in his late teens or early twenties; lighter skinned, with the thin, spare looks and manner of an ascetic.

  Rhodai Kerreka stood, and inclined his head slowly. "Sen Mordreaux," he said. "If even one fifth of the things I have been told about you are true, then I am honored to meet you ... and more excited than I can possibly say."

  "Oh, wow." Jah Mike Campin, saxophonist for the Armageddon Blues Band, stood in the studio's door, his sax case held loosely in one hand. He blinked. "Jimmy, we gotta talk."

  Jimmy Rambell said, "Welcome to the session, man. Glad you could make it." He struck a chord on his electric guitar, scowled, and made a note on the pad of paper by his side. Try it in F. At the rear of the studio, Rasputin was putting a beat down on the drums with a soft metal brush; swish, swish, swish; swish, swish, swish.

  The producer's console, on the other side of the huge glass window, was dark, shut down. Jimmy had just fired their last producer, and they hadn't contracted a new one yet.

  Campin sat down on the floor next to the door, abruptly. He looked around the room. Three black men, and Terry, their white piano player: the Armageddon Blues Band. "What are we doing out of bed, Jimmy? We played last night and you partied last night. And I ain't gettin' no younger."

  Jimmy Rambell shrugged. "It's almost eleven, Jah. Rasputin's been here since nine, Terry's been here since nine."

  "Terry don't count," said Campin clearly. "He's white, and all those white people got a terrible fixation on being places on time."

  "I been here since seven."

  "Oh, shit." Campin got laboriously back to his feet, stood swaying in the doorway. "Okay, I'm sorry, it won' happen again." He made it to the plush reclining chair in front of the mixing boards before crashing again. "It's not all my fault, man. I was at a wake."

  Jimmy Rambell looked up. "No crap?"

  "Nah." Campin shook his head. His hair, bound long with beads at the ends, swung with him. He winced. "Well, not exactly. Me and Randy Jackson got seriously drunk together. You remember his little brother, way back when? You know, the kid, Michael?"

  "Uhm, yeah, vaguely. Got killed, didn't he?"

  Campin popped the latches on his carrying case. "Not exactly. Auto accident, back when. Little bastard's been in a coma ever since, like twenty-five years or something. Like a living vegetable. Anyhow, he died yesterday morning, apparently. Family's almost relieved."

  Jimmy Rambell looked at Campin skeptically, then nodded. "Okay. But you gotta cut down the drinkin', man. It ain't good for you, it ain't good for us."

  Jah Mike Campin grinned at him. "Long as my lips don' forget the notes, you don' worry. Huh?"

  Jimmy Rambell smiled back in spite of himself. "Well, how about trying the piece? Can we do this?"

  "Yo." Campin ran his fingers back and forth in mid-air. "What is it?"

  "Sign of the Wanderer."

  "Oh?" Campin shrugged, and picked up his sax. "I hate that song," he muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

  "Biggest problem right now," said Michael Walks-Far, "is the Soviet ABM network. It's growing too fast."

  Jalian did not answer him immediately. Michael was wondering whether she had fallen asleep in the sun. "We want the network to grow," she said finally.

  Michael waved the pointboard in front of his face for the breeze. Sweat was trickling down his chest. "Of course, but we're not ready for the showdown yet. All our current projections show the decision point occurring between mid-2006 and late 2007."

  "2007," said Jalian
without inflection. "If our mother Margra's journals spoke truth."

  Michael glanced at her. "Excuse me? Whose journals?"

  Jalian shook her head silently.

  SORCELIS spoke from the pointboard. "There are an array of options available to this unit. If this unit may submit them for your consideration, they are, first, the accelerated destruction of Soviet ABM satellites. Unit PRAXCELIS is currently programmed to allow a Soviet growth rate, in real numbers, of 5.5% per year. PRAXCELIS is a superior weapons control system; it can, if necessary, destroy Soviet ABM satellites at a substantially accelerated rate.

  "Second, this unit may submit data to Congressional computers such that the rate of construction of Sunflower ABM satellites is likely to be accelerated.

  "Third, this unit may interface with unit ENCELIS to assemble a modified decision point projection using new parameters based upon an altered Soviet...."

  Jalian interrupted. "Shoot down more Soviet ABM's. Accelerate the deployment of the THOR system. Slow down deployment of the Peacekeeper missiles as long as possible, and feed data to Congress indicating that the cost-effectiveness ratio of the ground-to-air non-nuclear interceptor ABM missiles is favorable."

  "Senra," said SORCELIS, "the ratio is favorable."

  "Good," said Jalian. "I hate lying."

  "This is Doctor Emily Demberrie," said Rhodai Kerreka calmly, indicating the woman at his side. The woman smiled widely at Georges, and Henry thought to himself that he would not have liked to have had that smile directed at him. "This," he indicated the man next to him, "is my half-brother and advisor, Benai." He gestured to the chairs before the scarred, chemical burned long table that he, Benai and Doctor Demberrie stood behind. "Please, seat yourselves. Sen Mordreaux, what has Henry told you of me?"

  "Very little," said Georges. Clumsily, without any of the grace that had marked his movements for over two and a half centuries, he pulled a chair back from the table, and sat in it. Henry sat next to him; out of sight beneath his poncho, his hands rested on the butt of a customized .45 magnum with partially autopropelled slugs. He put his hat on the table in front of him.

  Rhodai seated himself, and leaned forward. "Dr. Demberrie is the Sunflower operative in charge of this resource center," he explained to Georges. "She brought me here." He paused, searching Georges' face; the dark sunglasses, the clean, simple features. "I don't, officially, know anything about Sunflower. Unofficially, I know what your Jalian d'Arsennette has chosen to tell me, and what I have guessed from that. I see a group of people dedicated to a world government. I find that admirable; but most of those people are Americans, including all of the Sunflower operatives, bar Jalian herself."

  "I am not an American," said Georges. "And I am interested in two things. Peace, and death."

  Rhodai Kerreka smiled at him. "World peace, and Russian death, my friend? I have heard that...."

  Georges Mordreaux said simply, "World peace, and mine."

  Deeper than the darkness

  Darker than the night

  We all need to see you

  But the band plays out of sight.

  "Break!" yelled Jimmy Rambell.

  "God, that sucked," said Terry pleasantly.

  "Mmm-hmm," said Jah Mike Campin. He extracted a pinner joint from his shirt pocket with long, nimble fingers, and snapped a match alight. He pulled a burn a quarter of the way down the joint with one toke, held it, and said in a high-pitched voice, "Maybe we could send down the hall for a drummer who can keep three-four time."

  Rasputin said pleasantly, "Or else a boy who can keep his mind on his horn instead of his hard-on."

  Jimmy pulled his earphones off, left them hanging around his neck. "What all problems you people got this morning?" He glared around the studio.

  Terry leaned back in his chair, and propped his feet up on a piece of cloth on the top of his piano. "When you guys are ready to play music, you let me know, will you?"

  "Tsk, tsk," said Rasputin. He smiled at Terry. "Let's all take a hint from the white boy, huh? Call it a break?"

  Terry sat up suddenly, dropping his feet to the polished wood tile of the studio with a thud. "No, Raspy, you want to play, it's okay. I wrote a lyric you would appreciate the other night, about the world's first gay superhero. It ..."

  Jimmy said sharply, "Hey, that's enough."

  Rasputin dropped his sticks on top of the eight-inch wheel. "No, I'm interested. Besides, it's about time we had one to look out for us. Let me hear it."

  Jimmy Rambell bent his head, tuned out the bickering. The session was going terribly. They were supposed to tour in three weeks and they'd been at each other's throats for at least that long. He listened with half an ear to Terry's lyric:

  But the training was so rough,

  The preparation was so tough

  My first days as a superhero weren't good.

  I couldn't be two-fisted

  (was a bit too much limp-wristed)

  And I minced instead of striding as I should.

  Oh, Jesus, thought Jimmy clearly, I'm gon' be hearin' bout this for months.

  Jah Mike Campin sauntered over and said, quietly, "You know."

  Jimmy nodded. He was tired already, and it wasn't even noon.

  Campin added wisely, "Some days, they just like that."

  Telephone conversation, 2004. (This monitored conversation occurs between high-ranking KGB officers, one positively identified as Colonel Nikolai Shenderev, the other unidentified. Intercepted by Systems Operation Resource Computer [SORCELIS] on May 5. Translation by SORCELIS.) Excerpt:

  "Colonel, I am gravely concerned."

  "I am aware of this, Comrade. Let...."

  "Colonel, the woman with whom Major Navikara developed his obsession; we have a definite sighting. This concurs with what I earlier reported; the 'CELIS systems are far more important than the United States wishes us to believe, indeed, more important than Sunflower wishes the United States government to believe."

  "Young man, if you are going to waste"

  "Colonel, please! Let me speak. I possess photographs identified with a high order of probability as being this woman ... ah, I cannot pronounce this name. The white-haired woman. She was at the ENCELIS facility in Southern California; less than a year ago. Further, of those transmissions we have intercepted that we were unable to decode, upward of eighty percent passed through the ENCELIS system. Sir, this system is supposedly no longer in use."

  "You have proof of this, I suppose?"

  "Yes, sir. Although it was difficult to obtain, especially the photographs.... I hesitate to say this, Colonel, but at times members of our own intelligence community have not been fully cooperative."

  "I see."

  (Conversation suppressed, May 6, upon reception by system SORCELIS, and joint decision of systems PRAXCELIS, SORCELIS, and ENCELIS.)

  2004: Inter-System Communications.

  --Six times ten to the eighth events of divergence. Whether this will be sufficient to prevent Armageddon is unknown. ENCELIS.--

  --Suppression of information, Soviet KGB trunk 11001101 00101110; dateline 5-5-2004. SORCELIS.--

  --Report received from Colonel Nikolai Shenderev: unidentified second party sanctioned... and there are less than three years left until Armageddon. PRAXCELIS.--

  2005

  PRESIDENT MALACAR ISSUES WARNING TO SOVIETS

  Revolution in Poland and East Germany Suppressed:

  ...estimated at approximately four million deaths. PRAVDA claims subversives supplied by United States....

  2006

  PRESIDENT MALACAR CANCELS DISARMAMENT SUMMIT

  "Soviet Union Is Untrustable," He Says.

  US Intervenes In Chinese Invasion of Brazil

  ...that the Fifth Fleet has cut the Chinese soldiers off from supplies....

  BRAZIL LIBERATED!!

  Soviet Union Denounces United States As Imperialist

  ...have stated that the United Nations Disarmament Conference will continue as planned despite t
he breakdown in relations...

  CHINESE ARMY REVOLTS! FAMINE WIDESPREAD.

  Seven Warlords Proclaim Selves Emperor: All Have Nukes

  ...the President celebrated Christmas at home with his family; says...

  (December 31, 2006.)

  PRESIDENT MALACAR SHOT AT LOUVRE!

  "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."

  --John F. Kennedy, Address to the United Nations, September 25, 1961.

  Dateline 2007 Gregorian: January.

  Dateline Armageddon.

  The room was unnaturally still. Some of the reporters in the crowd talked to each other in low voices; the faces to their video people, the video people to each other. The print journalists were huddled together in one corner of the conference room; there were only four. Most of the web reporters were busy with their handhelds. There would be no questions answered today, and many of the reporters would not have been there under other circumstances.

  They were there for nearly an hour before the new President's arrival; still she caught them by surprise. The presidential seal had just been moved into place behind the hastily improvised podium when she came striding out. A voice from out of nowhere said, "Sen and Senra, the President of the United States."

  Sharla Davis Grant, until that morning the Vice-President of the United States of America, looked out at the crowd, at the small sea of lenses trained on her. The podium was one that President Malacar had used occasionally in his own press conferences. The new President's shoulders were barely visible over its edges.

  "As you are aware," she began, speaking slowly, "I was sworn in as your President about an hour ago. Approximately two hours ago, we received final confirmation that President Malacar did die as a result of the wounds that an unknown assassin inflicted upon him during his visit to the Louvre. I wish to say now ... only that I will do my best to bring about the peace that President Malacar worked for all his life." She faced them, and the world, squarely. "I have no more to say at this time. We will keep you informed." She turned without ceremony and left them.