“Place your right hand on your 3Maggie’s remembrance plaque. Press firmly.”
Farstar did as he was told. A small opening above the plaque opened revealing a memory stick. He grasped the stick and inserted it in the receptor built into his belt. His wrist display requested the password, so he entered Arcturus. In his earbud the following message reverberated: “Frictenicht, the trillionaire, wants to meet on the asteroid UBR52498 as soon as possible. You must evade the constant surveillance of that astronomical body and camouflage your landing. Further instructions await you there. In five seconds this device will self-destruct. That is all.” Manny heard a soft fft sound. The device self-ejected to the ground where it transformed into a black pool that took the shape and color of its surroundings.
This was not the first such communication Farstar had received as a member of the resistance to the Federation. He had received one that sent him to interdict the imperial plot to wipe all life from designated recalcitrant rebel planets. The trouble was, any such use of biological agents would spread throughout the universe, eliminating all life forms without discrimination. Another had eventuated in his destruction of an imperial fleet guarding a secret chemical weapons cache in the Milky Way. The agents were cleverly disguised as single organic compounds that only became lethal when they were mixed in a specified way. The immensity of the cache should have been a sign of malevolent intentions, but propaganda defanged rebel attempts to get the truth out. Then, too, Farstar had been the key figure in neutralizing the imperial nuclear and radionuclide weapons stores. Such weapons could not be neatly deactivated, so he had pooled them intact in a collection point at the edge of the universe not far from the place where he would later lead the Spaceship Arcturus and the rest of the rebel fleet past the boundaries of the known.
Farstar completed his mourning exercise before he flipped down his visor to discover his current situation. The skies turned from blue to black, and all around him like red eyes of spiders the threats were ranged, poised for attack and awaiting the order to close in from all sides. The Edgemaster pushed his target priority button and summoned his hypersonic chariot. Then everything happened at once. He blinked the automated fire signal, and the first wave of his personal arsenal flew to the nearest targets. Above him hovered his spacecraft, but only for the moment it took him to launch himself into the pod extension below it. As the pod jerked him to safety, he saw the threat lunge toward his former position with uncanny accuracy. Since he was no longer present, the targets were focusing only on a point in space wherein the Edgemaster had left a nuclear device that detonated when Manny’s spacecraft had travelled a suitable distance from the site.
Manny switched on his plasma display to see a squid copter hovering above the cemetery that had held the remains and memorials to heroes and heroines. Then in the heat and blast, he saw the vicinity atomized. For numerous half-lives that place would now be known by its radionuclide signature. Farstar knew a nearby command center was monitoring what was happening, so he expanded his sensor range to its widest scope. There at the boundary of his field of view hovered an imperial surveillance drone. The Edgemaster was not sure whether the drone had transmitted its payload to its headquarters, but only one course of action lay before him. He steered directly toward the imperial vessel, jamming all its communications on strategic and tactical networks. Neatly, he fired space mines to hem in the drone in case it was ordered to flee. Surrounded, the unmanned ship remained in its location, as if inviting attack.
Manny devised a labyrinthine course for a space torpedo—one that masked the position of the unit that fired it. When he pressed “fire,” he followed the device to its target. The detonation had greater effect than he had planned. The drone exploded and cast out explosives to all sides, which exploded in cascades like intricate fireworks. The Edgemaster did not take his spacecraft on the trajectory nearest to his objective. He rather anticipated trickery in his enemy. He launched his own drone along the path that would draw maximum attention from the imperial forces. He waited until the drone had done its job of planting a pattern in the enemy’s sensoria. Then he took a course orthogonal to the axis between the enemy surveillance platform and the nearest known imperial base. As he flew stealthily towards a waypoint he had pseudo-randomly selected, his sensors detected an enormous explosion of his drone.
The Edgemaster laughed when he thought of the enemy platforms that had massed to defeat a worthless, unmanned drone. Now they had been destroyed by the unit they had been pursuing. Feeling relatively safe, he sped to his waypoint with all his passive sensors fully alert. He reflected on the advantage his spaceship had because of his not needing to communicate with any higher authorities. Indeed, the inverse was also true—a silent vessel was undoubtedly a rebel and therefore expandable.
Farstar sang to himself as he played out scenarios for his rendezvous with the asteroid. He also brainstormed about the nature of his secret mission. Above all, he had to defeat a large contingent of imperial forces while effecting a clandestine meeting. He also had to escape after the meeting. As he played out his games, he became nostalgic for the 3Maggie he had lost. Serious games had always been fun when they played together. Now he had to play alone a game of lethal solitaire.
After his third rope-a-dope maneuver by which he did a 360-degree turn to catch anything following him, Farstar was convinced no imperial flea was dogging his spacecraft from behind. He thought, “It’s possible that imperial headquarters has guessed I am dead. It’s also possible they suppose that if I had lived, I would not be speeding towards the asteroid but rather running for cover anywhere else. Even if they know my objective, they may be confident their defenses are impenetrable to such as me. In any case, those dullards will be scheming by their dim lights while I take out-of-box approaches for which they are wholly unprepared.”
His solutions came to Farstar in a dense matrix of designs. He saw that he needed a diversion so his spacecraft could land camouflaged on the asteroid. That meant firing a pattern of space drones and torpedoes that traveled from his destination outward in all directions. In the time and space window created by this counter-intuitive pattern, he would reach his meeting place undetected. His second pattern, almost identical to the first was to cover his exit. He had no idea what his subsequent movements might be, but he set a rendezvous point for his spacecraft where he might hide while his enemies searched for him on and around the asteroid.
When his spacecraft slowed, Manny launched his wide area space mine vehicle. As he prepared for executing his first pattern of feints, the space miner knit its weapons around the outer scouts of the imperial guards. Farstar was patient until the miner had finished its work. Then he launched his first feint and stood by to enter the sacred precincts of the asteroid.
Again waiting, the Edgemaster recalled the information he had stored on the asteroid. It was a unique combination of gold, rare earth elements and silver. He thought of it as an enormous, three-dimensional coin with two quadrillion credits. Hanging in an otherwise empty volume of space, this flying sample of precious materials was the kind of prize only the most powerful forces could presume to manage or control. What uses the empire attributed to this island of wealth, Farstar could not guess. He therefore had no idea why it was guarded as closely as the imperial nuclear arsenal had been.
The way was finally clear for Farstar to cloak his vessel and prepare to descend to the surface of the mysterious asteroid. He avoided the pattern he had created, so as his outward bound torpedoes became visible to the imperial guardians, he snuck inside the sensor net to land on the surface of the asteroid, his camouflage effectively masking his presence. He enjoyed watching the fireworks display of exploding imperial vessels all around the asteroid. His passive sensors indicated the imperial panic as the surviving forces searched frantically for the attacker.
A special rebel battle circuit became active with encrypted traffic wrapped in an open envelope with ARCTURUS as its header. Farstar decrypted the message and
established communication with the trillionaire he was looking for.
“Farstar, this is Frictenicht. My password is ARCTURUS. Welcome to my private cache.”
“Your cache, indeed, Frictenicht. If this giant rock is yours, why is it surrounded by a bevy of the empire’s best troops?”
Frictenicht laughed, and his face looked like an ancient mask of pain. “Can you think of a better way to protect my wealth than to have the imperial forces guard it?”
Farstar’s eyes squinted as he pondered this revelation. “Still, if the empire surrounds it, how can you consider it as yours at the same time?”
“It’s a long story, but the short version is that this and five score other such asteroids hold minerals worth the entire value of the universe. I am only one of the trillion Aires who allow the empire to hold our riches in proxy for us.”
“I don’t understand why the subterfuge.”
“What do you think would happen to the economy of the universe if all the precious content of the hundred and one asteroids were to be poured into the so-called banks all at once?”
“All current values would be reduced to almost zero, and we’d see the greatest inflation ever conceived.”
“Come now, Farstar. You know the ravages of inflation have already beggared the lesser players. Why do you think that happened?”
Manny tried to understand what the ancient man was saying. “Let me guess. The empire is already using the value of these asteroids because they are presumed to be imperial assets.”
“Now you are thinking like a member of the imperial treasury staff. I knew you could grasp the scope of what has happened. Yes. In his imperial wisdom, the emperor has decreed that all extrinsic repositories of value be used as collateral for his galactic and universal wars.”
Farstar nodded. “I begin to see why the empire knows no boundaries for its military exploits. What about all the currencies that have sprung up? How do they relate to the larger economic factors that roil the empire?”
“As you know, the cryptocurrencies were initially part of the rebel movement. They were postulated to have an alternative to existing currencies whose values were being decimated by political accidents.”
Farstar shook his head. “But suddenly all currencies had to be based on precious metals.”
“It was the only way to stabilize the economy in the face of what was fast becoming a free fall of values.”
“I’m sure you are aware I’m not at all interested in being rich.”
“That I am. I wouldn’t have accepted you as my emissary if it were otherwise. Greed has no place in the future universe.”
The old man hesitated to let the implications of this thought sink in.
“Yet you are richer than old Croesus was in Classical times.”
“That’s true enough, but I don’t wield my fortune to play for increasingly large possessions. I have enough to buy whatever I like. When I sneeze, the Empire catches a cold.”
“So why am I here? You seem to have everything figured out to your satisfaction.”
“You are here because only you can perform the miracle I require.”
“Maybe you should have asked one of the priests to meet you. I am not one of the charlatans who pretend they can wave their hands and make miracles occur.”
The old man said, “Tsk, tsk. Don’t become unpleasant with me. You managed to disguise your presence well enough to meet me here. I suppose you might also be able to disguise an asteroid well enough to make it disappear from the cosmos.” Again, the old man let Farstar contemplate what he had said.
The Edgemaster laughed. “Let’s for a minute suppose that your mad vision is correct—and I can make your ball of value disappear. What then?”
The ancient trillionaire said, “Then perhaps you’ll have your original 3Maggie again, just as you knew her before you sent her on her final, fatal mission.”
Farstar’s eyes blazed with hatred. “Were you the one whose orders led to her death?”
“I can see by your eyes, she meant a lot to you.”
“She may have been merely a machine to others. She meant the universe to me.” A tear coursed down the Edgemaster’s cheek.
“You loved a robot.”
“In a word, yes.”
“And she loved you?”
“Who can ever know the answer to that question?”
The old man said, “Unfortunately, I’m beginning to like you, Farstar. You may be the only creature in the universe who believes in love and the old values.”
“Since you won’t be able to deliver my original 3Maggie, what do you offer for my service in cloaking this asteroid from the imperial surveillance?”
“Young man, you’d be surprised what I can do. I am not a god, but I’m close enough to being one for government work.”
“Are you an agent for the imperium?”
“Not hardly, though I know enough about court politics to carry significant influence.”
“And if I should decide to cloak the asteroid and kill you? What then?”
“What has it been like for you to avoid death under the current decrees of the imperial court? I’ll answer my own question: it has been a form of continuous hell.”
“I asked you a question. Please answer it, or I’ll terminate our conversation.”
“Well enough. Do your job. Then come after me if you think you can. I’ll only promise I won’t strike back if you decide to kill me. And if you do what I ask, I’ll do everything I can to make your replacement 3Maggie better than your wildest imagining.”
Farstar was caught in a matrix of anger, anticipation and bewilderment. His choice seemed to him to be fore-determined.
“I need your answer now. The imperial forces can be fooled for a while, but they’ll discover your feint before long.”
“I agree to your terms though I have no idea how I could say otherwise.”
“Good. When you have completed your mission, I’ll find you. Then you’ll receive your reward.” The discussion was terminated on the other end. Farstar was left wondering whether it had happened at all. Then the surface of the asteroid became pitted with hostile fire.
Farstar executed his second feint. The torpedoes ran out from the asteroid as before, and the imperial guards were wholly engaged in pursuing them. In the chaos of the moment, Farstar snuck back from the asteroid and took position where he had planned to wait out the battle he had incited. A ghost track indicated where the trillionaire’s vessel was located during its retreat. Like Farstar’s spacecraft, the old man’s took position to observe while the battle raged.
Manny decided it was not against the rules for him to send a surveillance harpoon toward the old man’s craft. The harpoon successfully lodged in the port side of the trillionaire’s spaceship. It subsequently fed a continuous position and intended movement read-out to Manny’s ship via its neutrino communicator. Until the harpoon was removed, it would give Manny a continuous track and make it easy to target any time the Edgemaster chose to engage it.
“The problem,” Farstar mused to himself, “is not to make the asteroid disappear but either to hide it in plain sight or to make it untouchable—by anyone. The sphere is already hidden in plain sight. It therefore must be made untouchable. And if that happens, I’d better be prepared to kill the old trillionaire immediately. Before I do those things, I’d better find out where the other hundred asteroids are.”
Farstar had learned early in his career that sometimes it paid to get distance from a problem to discover its solution. So it was that he sought refuge on the wisdom moon, called Phobos. There lay the largest repository of information in the universe. Since imperial forces hated learning in all its forms, Phobos was one resource they avoided. Farstar checked into a spa next to the library. He consulted with the head librarian and his assistants in charge of economic volumes. He also resorted to the virtual baths to deal with his stress. Daily, he checked on the position of the trillionaire’s spaceship.
The Edg
emaster was importuned often by the beautiful humans who sported on Phobos. They seemed gifted in body and mind. Yet Manny Farstar kept his mind on his quest. He did not find answers in the normal way. Not only were answers not available to those searching in linear fashion, but also the secrecy of the answers made them encrypted in riddles and further questions, ad infinitum.
A particularly gifted nymph led Farstar to the sequence of resources that gave him answers. She was a qualified universe asset, and her tricks of persuasion were like nothing Manny had encountered before—except through his 3Maggie. He felt sad on account of his robot’s loss, but Hygeia sympathized.
“Manny, I know what you seek. I cannot restore your 3Maggie, but I can help you get to someone who can help.”
Manny shook his head. “No one can help me. I have been promised things by a person who has more resources than anyone in the universe, but his promises seem hollow to me.”
The next day Hygeia took Manny on a labyrinthine journey through the library. She expertly picked up details from manuscripts and analyses, all open to every universal citizen. No one had put together such complex information into a seamless whole like she did. That evening, she came to Manny’s room at the spa and laid out what they had discovered together.
“You see,” she said as she showed him her drawing of the locations, “the hundred small bodies in the universe that are known to contain the precious substances you seek.”
That night, the two talked late. One thing led to another, and Manny had the best physical experience of his life since 3Maggie’s death. He memorized every expression on Hygeia’s face. “You are the marvel I’ve been looking for.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not what you’re seeking, Manny Farstar. But I now know what that is.”
Before dawn, she had given him the precious knowledge he desired. Then he fell asleep and she disappeared before the sunrise.
Manny was not a neophyte at dealing with classified information. He was acutely aware that Hygeia had given him was priceless. She had been the perfect lover and friend, and she knew that she was missing something he lacked—and needed desperately. She was found hanging from a Corinthian pillar in the library portico just before noon. She had left a note, “I have done what I can in the way I know best. Long live the resistance.”
Weird Tales About the End Page 4