The Fourth Empire s-3

by Mack Maloney

  Hunter simply yawned in reply.

  "But why?" Joxx asked aloud.

  Hunter just pointed back to the high priest, as if to say, He's about to tell you.

  'The Emperor hasn't had a really thorough confession in quite some time," the priest continued in a very hushed voice, enunciating every syllable to its long, painful conclusion. "This is troubling for some of us. Personally, I think he has entered a period of reflection. But that's just my opinion. In any case, that's why he asked for the best confessors that Peter's could offer. And that's why you two are here."

  This time Joxx did laugh. Out loud. Us? Hear the Emperor's confession?

  The priest nodded, again very slowly.

  He got up to leave. Joxx tried to grab him by his long sleeve, but his fingers went right through the material. Next, Joxx began to demand more information from the man, but this was not a part of the mind ring program.

  So the high priest simply ignored him, bowed deeply, and disappeared back into the cockpit.

  The stretched air car set down with a bump a few moments later.

  Hunter and Joxx stepped out to find themselves atop the highest building in the city; indeed, this was the highest building on the planet. It was 250 stories high, not counting the gigantic statue of the same faceless angel, arms outstretched, wings raised as if in flight, which adorned its peak. A force-field bubble protected the entire top of this monstrous structure, so wind and temperature were not a factor up here. They were so high up though, it wasn't too much of a leap to see how the notion to build floating cities came into being.

  There were more security troops here, green uniforms, angel-image shoulder patches in place. Two of them led Hunter and Joxx down a long tunnel that was crammed with dozens of flashing strobe-light security devices. By the end of this gauntlet, the security people were convinced that Hunter and Joxx were who they claimed to be.

  From here they were led to an enclosed chapel ten stories down from the roof. This place was staffed with a small army of novices — a different order here, so no veils — and each one looked more comely than the next. They were dressed in brief black habits with tiny green crosses emblazoned near the bodice. They presented Hunter and Joxx with the ritual snack of crackers and yet more bitter wine.

  Joxx was so enthralled by these servants he failed to see the huge portrait hanging above their seating area. Hunter now turned him around and directed him to look up at the almost 3-D painting. For once it was not a picture of the ubiquitous angel.

  "Just so you'll know," Hunter said. "That's who we are here to see."

  Joxx took a close look at the painting and nearly fell over.

  The man in the picture was the same man they'd seen partially revived in the hollow. The man who could only blink and smile. The guy they'd called Jimmy.

  "He's the first Emperor?" Joxx gasped.

  "I told you it got weirder," Hunter replied.

  Flash!

  The two mind travelers now found themselves in an enormous chamber where seven men sat around a very ornate, rectangular table.

  This room was very dark; only a few candles provided the light. Hunter had learned that this chamber was a few stories below the chapel.

  The men around the table were all wearing long, red garments with white collars that seemed too stiff to ever be comfortable. Several were wearing strangely pointed hats. The men were elderly, unfriendly. Some of them had faces as red as their garments. There were no introductions. It was just assumed that Hunter and Joxx knew who these people were.

  They were not invited to sit down. Instead, they stood at one end of the table, looking down at the men seated at the other.

  "You realize that you've been called here on a very delicate matter," the man sitting at the head of the table asked them. He was obviously in charge.

  Hunter and Joxx nodded on cue.

  "The Emperor asked for you himself," the man went on, clearly not happy about the situation. "Experts in taking confession — frankly, I'd never heard of such a thing."

  "We go where God thinks we are needed," Hunter told diem, delivering his line perfectly. "We can hardly question the Emperor's wisdom."

  The seven men looked like they'd just as soon throw Hunter and Joxx out the window than to be talking to them about this.

  The man in red who was doing all the talking cleared his throat dramatically; it was his way of reasserting dominance in the room. "At this time," he said, "we want to remind you what the official history of the Empire is. Any objections?"

  Hunter shook his head no. Joxx did, too. He wanted to hear it.

  As the six others lowered their heads, the lead man began reading from a missal: "So it was, on that Easter morning, by a miracle of God, a vision appeared to three brothers. This vision was that of an angel, the messenger from God. The messenger enlightened our Emperor, and with this enlightenment, the Emperor created our holy Empire. He is responsible for all that is good, for all that is just, for all that is spiritual in our Galaxy. He sits at the right hand of God. He is immortal. We shall praise him every day."

  The man closed the prayer book. An uncomfortable silence came over the room.

  On cue, Hunter asked, "Why did you want to see us before we saw him? Even the Emperor must salve the need to give his confession. It should be a private moment…."

  All seven men lowered their heads another notch. They couldn't even look at Hunter and Joxx now.

  "Well, because we must be frank with you," the head man said, staring down at the table. "The Emperor has not been feeling himself lately…."

  "He is ill?" Hunter asked.

  The men all shook their heads in unison. "He cannot get ill because, as the Emperor, he can live forever. He cannot die. He cannot get sick. But this does not mean that he doesn't have troubles of the mind."

  Joxx shifted uneasily from one foot to the other when he heard this.

  "We are simply here to listen to his confession," Hunter said. "And with penance, to hopefully relieve him of his sins and ease his mind."

  "Yes, that's all very well," the head man said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But there is one more thing we want you to do."

  He then lowered his voice so dramatically, Hunter and Joxx had to lean forward to hear him.

  "If for some reason, during the Emperor's confession, he imparts to you information that, shall we say, strays a bit from this official history, it is now your obligation to inform us."

  No matter how many times Hunter had passed through this part of the mind ring trip, he never failed to be stunned at those words. Joxx, too, was shocked.

  "Isn't that breaching a very holy confidence?" Joxx piped up unexpectedly. "It's just a very strange thing to ask—"

  Suddenly every eye was on him, including Hunter's. He was shooting Joxx a glance now that was as sharp as a ray gun blast. Its meaning was clear: Shut up.

  The seven men in red were plainly angry at his remark.

  "We weren't aware that you'd come all this way just to give us your opinion, Father," the head man said, voice thick with contempt.

  Joxx got the message. He was here to learn.

  "My apologies," he said with a slight bow. "I promise to better hold my tongue in the future…."

  Flash!

  They were suddenly inside yet another huge chamber. This one was more impressive, more imposing than the first two. Its ceiling and floors were layered with gold and silver, the most precious metals of the time. The walls were covered with huge tapestries depicting the Emperor in a multitude of heroic settings. Incense was burning at many locations along the huge stained-glass windows adorning the far wall. Somber church music was playing from somewhere unseen.

  At the far end of the room was a huge, ornate throne. It was surrounded by four columns of splashing water and a thick cloud of bitter incense. A man was sitting in the jewel-encrusted chair at the top, bathed in multicolored light coming through the stained glass.

  No one else was around him; he wa
s alone.

  "It is him!" Joxx exclaimed in a whisper.

  'Took me a while to believe it, too," Hunter admitted.

  "But how could this be?" Joxx asked. "How could he possibly make it from that muddy place to be ruler of the Galaxy? I mean, that tale about angels and enlightenment can't be true. We were there—"

  "Just keep your ears open," Hunter told him. "We still have a long way to go."

  They slowly approached the throne. Reaching a spot about eight feet away from the base of the divan, Hunter jerked Joxx to a halt. They both bowed deeply.

  Looking down at them was Emperor Jimmy. His body was still somewhat rigid, somewhat twisted. But he was still smiling, and still, he had a twinkle in his eye. Even though the incident in the hollow had happened almost one thousand years before, Jimmy looked no older than he did that day, probably no more than his midthirties or so.

  "I thank you for taking such a long journey just to see me," he told them. "Was your flight a pleasant one?"

  "The ocean was very green today," Hunter replied, knowing this was the best thing to say in order to move things along. Then he added, "So we are here. How can we help?"

  Emperor Jimmy sighed. "We all get to a point in our lives," he began, twisting his mouth to carefully form each word, "when it seems necessary to reflect on our situation. To question whether our place in the universe is as it should be. My friends, these days, I believe that time has come for me. May I tell you why?"

  Hunter nodded. "On the most basic level, a confessor's job is to simply listen," he said.

  The Emperor sighed deeply again, then he indicated the elegance and pomp in the room and, by extension, everything else.

  "We have done so much," he went on. "We have fulfilled our dream of reaching every corner of our Galaxy. We can fly to either edge and back in less than a year. We've been able to puff nearly eighty percent of the planets. Ordinary people now live to nearly two hundred years of age. Our population is expanding by millions every day.

  "We are building the triads to save our land from the oceans. We are designing larger and more powerful star-ships. We are investigating the many wonders that our place here in space holds for us. There are no wars. No conflicts. We are all one with our Galaxy."

  "What is the problem then?" Hunter asked him. "Why your distress?"

  The Emperor twisted his partially paralyzed body deeper in his chair. The smile left his face for the first time.

  "The cardinals — I'm sure they reminded you of the official history of all this? The story of the angel in the hollow?"

  Both Hunter and Joxx nodded.

  "Well, here is my confession: It was no angel that came to us that day," he said. "Not a typical one, anyway."

  "I knew it," Joxx whispered.

  Again Emperor Jimmy twisted in his seat. The next words from his mouth would not be easy ones.

  "We were hiding from the Paras," he began gravely. "We'd just done a job up north. A car bombing. But they'd been searching for us for years — and we could hear them searching for us now. They were so close, we sent out some of the boys to set up an ambush. We did this only because we knew what would happen if the blokes ever caught us. No arrest. No trial. As the leaders of our cell, we would be executed on the spot. They had made that quite clear to us….

  "So we were laying low in the hollow, hoping the ambush would be a success, or even better, that the blokes would just go away. But of course, they didn't.

  "Now we were in a very isolated part of the old country, very close to the border, with few other people around. We would always see strange things in the sky, especially at night. Hear strange things, too. This early morning we heard the sounds of an aircraft, sputtering and rumbling as if it were in trouble. We thought for sure it was one of the Para helicopters, falling into the hollow. It was the only explanation.

  "We rushed out of the cottage, guns drawn, masks on, my two brothers and me. The noise was so loud by now, we thought a whole Para regiment was crashing down on top of us. But soon enough we knew these were not the blokes coming in for the kill.

  "No, this was something else. This craft. It was on fire and smoking heavily and coming out of the sky so fast, there was barely enough time to comprehend it before it went through the holly trees and boom! came down right in front of us.

  "There was a big explosion. All three of us were thrown to the ground. The smoke was so thick, I lost sight of both my brothers momentarily. When the smoke cleared, we saw this thing had driven itself right into the mud. It had a very odd shape. Hat, almost like a pancake, but not quite round, with a tiny bubble on the front and two very small wings in the back. It was colored dark gray, but it was also sparkling like gold, at the same time. And it had a strange glow around it. At first I thought, Well, this must be a secret weapon the Yanks are testing. A weird satellite or something, because obviously it had been made by human hands. And I knew it didn't belong to the blokes, because they're just not that smart.

  "We just stood there like fools, looking at it for a long time, then my brother Michael said, 'This might belong to the Yanks, but it's ours now.' I recall those words dis-tinctly: He walked right up to it while I stayed frozen in place about a hundred paces away.

  "Michael was the catter in our family. He was too dumb, too mean-spirited to ever get afraid. He found that this machine had torn a great hole in its side with its rough-and-tumble landing. So he crawled inside this thing, yelling to us over his shoulder as if we were right behind him. I could hear him describing what this thing looked like from within. He was using words like 'gadget' and 'gizmo' and was exclaiming at how bright and sparkling everything was. I cannot recall ever hearing him so excited.

  "But then he cried out — and again it was a sound I'd never heard come out of my brother Michael. A moment later, he came crawling back out of the crashed vessel, carrying a body.

  "I somehow found the strength to walk toward him, very slowly, splashing across the stream as if I wasn't even getting wet. He lay the body down, and we just stared at it, not quite sure if it was real or not. It was a man. Tall and gangly, long arms, long legs. He did look strange. He had almost totally white hair. He was wearing a strange silver uniform and had very odd cloth shoes on his feet. 'Sneakers' they used to call them."

  He paused to gather himself.

  "But you see, this person was also wearing a cap, like a ball cap. And across the bill, it said: 'Angels can do it forever.' Those crazy words. And a piece of cloth, attached to the sleeve of his uniform, also had written onto it: 'Call sign: Angel.'

  "You can see it all now, can't you? That's how the story about an angel coming to us got started. But he wasn't an angel. He was a pilot and his code name was Angel."

  He paused for a long moment. Joxx was riveted by the story. And though he had heard it many times, Hunter was, too. At this point in previous trips, Emperor Jimmy would break down and weep, sometimes uncontrollably. Hunter didn't have time for that now.

  "So what happened next?" he prompted the Emperor.

  With a loud sniff, Jimmy went on: "Michael laid this poor soul on the ground and somehow I got me arms and legs moving again. I made an attempt to revive him, even though I was sure he was dead already.

  "I remember becoming angry at my younger brother at that moment. I knew that he had read about things that Michael and I had little interest in. He knew all about rockets and jet airplanes and the kind of choppers the blokes were looking for us in. I really needed his help at that moment, and though he'd walked up to the craft as well, he was still standing stiff as a board and being of no help at all.

  "So, not knowing where I got the moxie to do so, I bent down, cupped my hands, and drew some water into them. Then I tried to pour some of it into this dying soul's mouth. That's when he moved… and that's when everything else just got crazy.

  "We were all in close contact with that vehicle, you see, and it came back to life the second this pilot did. It exploded in a tremendous flash of light. I was thr
own into the air a second time. We all were. I hit the ground hard — and the next thing I knew, I couldn't feel my body anymore. Everything, from my neck down, was just numb.

  "But that's when I saw a beam of light come out of somewhere. It was brighter than anything I could have imagined. The universe at its creation — when God said, 'Let there be light'—I daresay that light was not as bright as this one. And I remember seeing so many strange things in that incredibly bright light. Faces, storm clouds, suns exploding, people flying through the air — even the shadow of the Yanks' space shuttle, passing over my head. I saw visions of beautiful girls that must have been from my dreams because they were perfection itself. Flowers. Waterfalls. Beautiful oceans. Incredible sunsets. Total bliss. I thought I was dead and gone to heaven, as impossible as that might be for my soul….

  "But then, at the same time, I also got glimpses of weird creatures with their entrails being sucked out of them, mooing and carrying on, as if they were still alive at the time. And people being taken from their beds. Their bodies being probed. And there was a formation of airplanes, flying along, as if nothing was wrong, even though they were actually somewhere deep under the ocean.

  "I know it sounds strange — and it is probably impossible to convince you that I saw all these things in just the short period of that flash, but I did — with about a few billion more. It was like I was getting a split-second education on everything that existed, universal knowledge being rammed right down me throat. All I can say is that, suddenly, I was brilliant. I knew every secret of the cosmos. I became immortal. But at the same time, I also thought that some kind of mistake was being made. Like I wasn't supposed to be seeing any of this, neither the good or the bad. And how could the crash of this flying pancake have the power to infuse me with the secrets of the universe? That's just about the only thing I do not know….

  "That's really all I remember from that day. I recall the boys finding me not quite dead but not quite alive, either. They took me away, I recovered — somewhat — into what you see before you. But the gift I received that day has stayed with me. How to describe it? I don't really know. Any dream I have becomes a reality. I think it, and it is done. It's really as simple as that. And I've tried my best to use this knowledge, this power, this blessing for the good of everyone — not an easy task as I was not exactly a choirboy before all this took place. I'll tell you, my friends, the universe must truly be a random place, because if the stars were to pick a more unlikely candidate to build a Galactic Empire, it was me…."