Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  He chewed for a moment, regarding me. He swallowed, shrugged, and went back to eating.

  “Suits me.”

  You don’t have to knock out anyone going in a clone tank, but it saves trouble. Admittedly, while a person can drown in one of the things, it’s hard to stay drowned. Anesthesia eliminates the problem. Edgar recovered from his nap while I waited by his bedside.

  Edgar opened his eyes and blinked a bit.

  “Good evening,” I offered. “You’re Edgar. I’m Doctor Dave. You’re in my hospital and you’re recovering from treatment. How do you feel?”

  Edgar peered around the room, still blinking, before meeting my eyes.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Good. What would you like?”

  “Waffles.”

  “One order of waffles, coming up,” Diogenes answered. Edgar’s head snapped up, eyes wide.

  “Who said that?” Edgar asked.

  “I am Diogenes, the master control computer. Do you want bacon with your waffles?”

  “Yes, please?”

  “Orange juice or milk?”

  “Both?”

  “Right away.”

  Edgar scooted a bit and sat up in bed. I touched the control to tilt it for him.

  “Say ‘Thank you’,” I prompted.

  “Thank you, Diogenes.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “Good lad. Now, did your grandfather explain who I am and why you’re here?”

  “He said you’re going to treat my leukemia.”

  “That’s all?” I pressed. Edgar nodded.

  “He shouted at Dad about it. I heard them arguing,” he added. I shrugged.

  “Well, I suppose I can’t blame him. After we eat, if you’re feeling up to it, we’ll walk over to Granddad’s room and see how he’s doing.”

  “Okay.”

  A robot wheeled in breakfast and he ate. Edgar had a few questions about what we did to him. I let Diogenes explain in Technical while I translated into General. Edgar didn’t follow the details, but he got the idea.

  He finished his food and wore a perplexed expression

  “Something wrong?”

  “I don’t feel bad.”

  “You expected to?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did we mention the part about being cured?”

  “Yes, sir, but my stomach’s been sick for a while. Mom says it’s the medicine.”

  “Get used to feeling healthy,” I suggested. “It may go on for quite some time. Now, come along. Let’s see how your grandpa is doing.”

  Edgar held my hand as we walked through the corridors. I knocked twice on Ted’s door and opened it.

  “Good evening,” I told Ted, and Edgar let go to run over to his grandfather. The two hugged for a moment, then Ted studied Edgar’s face, searching it minutely.

  “He’s fine,” I went on. “No leukemia, no diseases, not even sniffle or a hangnail. Now that I’ve done my good deed, I’m throwing you out. Go home and never bother me again.”

  “That was the deal.”

  “Good. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted. Come along.” I led them out of the medical building and back to the shift-booth area.

  “Mister vampire?”

  Okay, so the kid does know about vampires. My mistake.

  “Yes, Edgar?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome, Edgar. Just grow up to be a good man. That’s all I ask.”

  “I will.”

  I ushered them into the shift-booth.

  “Ted, when you arrive, get out quickly. The shed is going to catch fire and burn unnaturally hot and fast. You’ll have several seconds, but don’t dawdle. When you close this door, open it again immediately and get away. Any questions?”

  “Two.”

  I sighed.

  “What are they?” I asked, tiredly.

  “Why did you help us?”

  “Because it was the right thing to do. I know you don’t comprehend the idea of being kind, honorable, and noble, but I do. Someday, if you live long enough, you’ll understand why those are important. Second question.”

  “I do know how to be kind, honorable—”

  “Second question,” I snapped.

  “Uh. Right. Did you mean it, the thing about being willing to help us against the other vampires?”

  “I did, until you proved you were unworthy of my help.”

  “I’m—”

  “Those were your questions. I answered them. We will not debate my answers.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want to keep your tongue in your mouth or in your pocket?”

  Ted shut up. He learns. Apply sledgehammer to skull. Repeat as needed. I recognize the syndrome.

  They stepped into the temporary shift-booth. I held the door.

  “Remember. Close the door and immediately open it again. Don’t close it and wait. Closing the door starts the timer. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Go away.”

  Ted closed the door and I shook my head. The lengths I go to just to be a nice guy. Children are my weakness.

  Ooo, that sounds wrong. I have a weakness for children? No, that’s worse. You know what I mean.

  I flipped open my Diogephone and called my old phone. It rang five times and someone picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. Ted and Edgar are on their way back. However, the phone you are holding is about the explode. You have ten seconds to get away from it. Ten. Nine.”

  “Hey! You can’t do that!”

  “Eight. Seven. Six.”

  “This is a fantastic piece of technology! You can’t just—”

  “Five. Four. Three.”

  “Oh, damn!” Scrambling noises and shouting followed.

  “Two…” I said, drawing it out. “One…” There was a heavy thump, presumably from the phone landing somewhere.

  “Diogenes?” I prompted. The connection terminated.

  “Step one: Gassing the interior mechanisms now,” he told me. “The preliminary chemistry will destroy most materials and all the anachronistic technology. Nothing will be salvageable.”

  “Good, good. What’s step two?”

  “You originally discussed using dioxygen difluoride, also known as ‘FOOF,’ as a destructive agent. It has handling problems, however, that we have not overcome. I have substituted chlorine trifluoride. I have over a liter being pumped at high pressure through the phone’s micro-gate. This should be sufficient to completely consume the phone’s interior and casing. It should also destroy the micro-gate, causing a localized, momentary disruption in spacetime in the vicinity of the phone’s remains.”

  “Let’s see them recover anything useful from that,” I muttered. More loudly, I said, “Thank you.”

  “Always a pleasure, Professor.”

  I headed back to the residence and the media room. Diogenes had Bob’s scroll waiting for me. I checked it over without touching it. It didn’t have any magic on it or built into it, so I accepted it. Unrolling it, I saw it was written in the Karvalen dialect of elven.

  Inconvenient, but I can puzzle it out. Diogenes and I are about to make sure we both have a better grasp of the written language.

  Mary came in while we were translating. She sat on the edge of the desk I was using.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “Teaching Diogenes elvish.”

  “Doesn’t he already know elvish?”

  “He knows Quenya, Telerin, and Sindarin. Those are well-documented in almost every world of Earth.”

  “I am also well-versed in Nandorin, Silvan, and Avarin,” Diogenes added. “They are related languages and similarly well-documented.”

  “And they have no relation to Karvalen elvish, I’m sad to say,” I finished.

  “Too bad. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Not at the moment. I’m struggling through the translation and Diogenes is memorizing it.” I sighed. “
What I need is a dozen elves for dinner and one for some tutoring.”

  “Or a dozen books for Diogenes to go all Rosetta stone on, and then some tutoring,” Mary suggested.

  “Yes, but eating the elves is easier. It’s like all those people I ate with martial skills. I picked up the fundamentals of various martial arts styles very quickly because I’ve already eaten oodles of people with good unarmed fighting skills. What I needed was a little guidance and far more practice. I already sort-of knew how to do it, but I needed to build muscle memory. Same thing with swords, musical instruments, or languages. I never took a class on how to speak the old Imperial tongue. I just swallowed several hundred thousand ghosts who had it as a native language.”

  “I don’t think Bob is going to want to give you any of the older elves,” Mary observed.

  “Maybe we can have him chain some condemned prisoners down and force them to learn elvish,” I mused.

  “How complicated is this elvish?”

  “Do you speak Chinese?”

  “Well enough for a tourist, but I’m not conversational. I’m better with Japanese.”

  “Imagine writing a poem in a mixture of Mandarin, English, Arabic, and Arapaho.”

  “No.”

  I chuckled and nodded.

  “Fair enough.”

  “What’s it say so far?”

  “He misses me, wants me to visit, and he has a report on the state of the kingdom.”

  “Why would he have a report on the kingdom?”

  “Didn’t I say? I guess not. I commissioned him to keep an eye on the place and make sure the Queen’s reign is… I don’t want to say ‘uneventful,’ but maybe ‘not marred by major problems’.”

  “So, he’s the head of the secret police?”

  “That’s not a bad description, I guess. Except he’s not officially working for the Crown. He works for me, personally.”

  “Then he works for the Crown. You’re still the King of Karvalen, remember?”

  “It’s only a technicality.”

  “A technicality upon which Lissette’s legitimacy as the ruler is based.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Mary kissed the top of my head.

  “You’re not nearly as bad as you think you are,” she told me.

  “What brought that on?”

  “Nothing. Just a thought. You go on and translate your letter. I’m going back to Flintridge to sign papers, make deals, and continue the orderly liquidation of assets.”

  “Thank you. Hey! Diogenes?”

  “Yes, Professor?”

  “Have you made any progress on the bio-bots?”

  “I presume you mean the lobotomized clones with electronic control circuitry in their heads?”

  “That’s them.”

  “The what?” Mary demanded, aghast.

  “Clones,” I repeated. “It occurred to me Diogenes has the technology to cyborg-ize a genegineered horse. I asked him to research how to use cloned humans as remote-controlled biological robots.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Why?”

  “They’re robot-zombie people! —no offense, Diogenes.”

  “None taken.”

  “They’re not people,” I argued. “They were never people. They were grown in a tank for no other purpose than to be biological bodies under computer control. They were never conscious, never aware, and, as we’ve noted before, clones don’t have souls.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still… still people with no brains, walking around!”

  “Possibly, but I still haven’t heard what sort of progress Diogenes has made. The state of the art might not be sufficient. Diogenes?”

  “Regrettably, Mary, the state of the art is more than sufficient. It is simply an application not publicly used in any of the worlds from which we have obtained technology. After thorough simulation and some tests on nonhuman life forms, I believe it highly likely I can adequately alter a clone in the tank. By using nanites, the clone will never develop any meaningful level of independent brain activity. The necessary control circuitry will be installed and grown in place during the developmental stages. After some experimentation and the development of a control application, I should be able to operate a human, elvish, or any sort of organic body as though it were simply a peripheral device.

  “However, I must point out that most robots have internal processors. They can operate themselves within limited parameters, thus reducing the necessary command and control functions on my central data net. Due to a variety of constraints, I am, at present, unable to install sufficient computer power in a human or comparable skull. While the brainstem will maintain basic life functions, I will have to maintain a real-time connection and full control to operate them.

  “I also suggest,” he added, rather diffidently, “that you not observe the process as I learn to drive a human body.”

  “I won’t!” she agreed, shivering. “I love you, Diogenes, but the good professor has come up with a horribly gruesome idea, here!”

  “Thank you,” I told her. “I’m always glad to know I can still surprise you.”

  “This is not in a good way!”

  “I probably shouldn’t mention I came up with the idea for your benefit.”

  “You what?”

  “Well, if Diogenes can drive a human body, he can visit other worlds with a clonebot, talk to people, sign papers, shake hands, negotiate, make agreements, appear in court or at a meeting—all the things you spend time doing when you could be casing the Tower of London.”

  Mary stared at me with a mixture of admiration and horror. I wasn’t sure which was more prevalent.

  “I don’t know if that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever done or the most terrifying,” she admitted, finally.

  “How so?”

  “It’s horrible and gruesome and I need a thesaurus to express it.”

  “Horrible, gruesome, terrible, awful, dreadful, shocking, appalling—”

  “Thank you, Diogenes. My point stands. It’s a dreadful thing you’ve come up with, and you did it to make life easier for me. It’s like saying you ate the Elders back on Nexus and eradicated all their descendants, cleansing the world of vampires just so I could go visit safely.”

  “Do I need to?”

  “No! That’s not—” she broke off, sighing. “Just remember, in the future, that horribly gruesome gifts are much appreciated, but still horribly gruesome.”

  “I don’t see it as horribly gruesome,” I admitted, “but I acknowledge you find them disturbing. Would it suit you if Diogenes kept clonebots away from you whenever possible?”

  “Yes!”

  “Diogenes?”

  “Protocol established, Professor. Mary, I apologize for the emotional distress and will do my best to keep you from being exposed to clonebots when they come on-line.”

  “Thank you, Diogenes.”

  “I also apologize,” I added. “I had no idea you would feel this way.”

  “I guess I don’t think of clones the way you do.”

  “I guess not. I look inside them and see vitality, but I don’t see a soul. They’re alive, but they’re… they’re meat. They aren’t people.”

  “I can’t make the distinction. I see people floating in the tanks. I don’t see souls.”

  “Someday, maybe,” I consoled. “I’m told we grow in power as we get older.”

  “So I’ve heard, but, strictly speaking, I’m older than you are.”

  “Not by much.”

  “But you’re way more powerful.”

  “No argument. I’ve already boosted you with my blood, obviously, but you haven’t been through the things I have. Decades in an Ascension Sphere, dragon blood, troll blood, a temporary ascension to godhood—it hasn’t always been a pleasant journey. We could hunt down some exotic, powerful entities and see if you like the way they taste, if you want.”

  “No, thanks. When you put it like that, I can wait,” she assured me. “Maybe I can wait f
orever.”

  “I am sorry it bothers you.”

  “I’ll get over it, eventually. Diogenes, when you have a fully-functioning… clonebot?”

  “Clonebot,” he agreed.

  “I’ll want to meet you when you drive one. When you’ve got the hang of driving it. Once. Maybe never again, but I want to give it a chance to be… not-creepy.”

  “I will do my best,” he assured her.

  “Now I’m off to Flintridge. You two enjoy being mad scientists, and do try not to blow anything up.”

  “No promises.”

  Diogenes and I finished translating the elvish. He speaks it better than I do, now. He remembers every word, never misses a rule of grammar, and has inferred a great deal about how the language is put together. I just babble whatever comes to mind. To an elf, I have no doubt I sound like a second-year language student trying to hold a conversation.

  I wonder. If I import an elf and have it talk with Diogenes for a couple of days, how much better will he understand the language? Maybe I should.

  Bob’s message bothered me.

  In it, he complimented me on my foresight in having him look out for Lissette’s reign. I was pleased to note there was no mention whatsoever of questioning her right to rule. However, half a dozen nobles of greater or lesser degree hinted about replacing her, declaring independence, or arguing about taxation.

  Before these hints could develop into action, they were each encouraged, in fashions ranging from subtle to brutal, to think differently. He didn’t go into detail and I was glad of it. Not only is the political problem not my problem, I’m almost certain Bob’s idea of brutal is something I don’t want to think about, much less discuss.

  He also shared with me his suspicion that he was not acting alone. From conversations, tone of voice, ideas let slip, and other indications, he believed there was another organization working behind the scenes in the kingdom. Their influence, while not as subtle as his own, was nonetheless carried out by persons well-hidden. Who was in charge of it, what their ultimate goals might be, even the names of anyone connected were merely speculative. Possibly it was an organization evolved by Lissette, herself, although he felt it likely the Knights of Shadow were involved to some extent.