Edward Llewellyn - [Douglas Convolution 03]

by Prelude to Chaos (epub)

I returned from my dream to my reality. The straps were hurting my wrists. The light was blinding my eyes. My mind was aching from the blow.

  “Gavin—are you all right?” Judith’s voice, anxious and insistent.

  I saw her face. Gray and drawn. “Yes. I’m okay. Safe to untie!” I sat up as the straps were freed. Barbara was staring at me as though I were a ghost rising from a grave.

  “You remembered?”

  “I remembered!” I put my face in my hands. Rubbed my aching eyes. I remembered Helga and Gloria. Both murdered by Futrell’s men. As he had meant to murder me. The Pen had saved me. “Every detail!” I staggered as I got down from the table.

  Barbara caught me, steadied me. “You’d better sit down.” There was compassion in her gray eyes, the first I had ever seen in them. “You look like hell!”

  “Feel like I’ve been there.” I recovered control of my legs. “I’ll be all right. The fighting? What’s happened?”

  “Fighting finished hours ago. Chuck Yackle arrived with reinforcements. Landed on the far side of the Point and came charging across it like the US Cavalry.”

  “Oh Christ!” I had seen religious fanatics charging Troopers. “How many killed?”

  “None! A lot of bruises and a few cracked ribs from falling on the rocks. That’s all. By the time Yackle got here Futrell had almost persuaded the soldiers that the best thing they could do was to fix those two gunships and take off. Yackle’s arrival with ten boats and eighty rifles convinced ’em. So they did—leaving most of the civilians behind. I’ve got ’em locked up in separate cells. Maybe they’ll tell us what all this is about.” If Judith wore her present expression when she asked them they’d tell her without further persuasion. “Where’s Futrell?”

  “By himself in your old cell. I’ve patched him up.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Are you sure?” She studied me with the uncertainty of a teacher eyeing an untrustworthy pupil. “Can you control yourself now?”

  “I think so. If I can’t—you’ve still got the Jetal”

  Futrell was lying on the bed; washed and bandaged he looked more like his TV image than the drowned rat I had dragged from the cabin of Sea Eagle. He sat up when I came in, and the hatred in his eyes matched mine. “Hello Knox! Still obeying your master’s orders?”

  Judith followed me into the cell, then stood with her back to the door, her Jeta at the ready. “No violence!” she warned.

  I sat down facing him and for a few moments we stared at each other. Then I said, “Grainer ordered me to protect you.”

  “Protect me?” His surprise changed to a sneer. “Protect me when you couldn’t protect him! Why the hell would Grainer tell you that?”

  “Then—I couldn’t imagine. Now—I know! Because you were the biggest bastard in his team. Because he could count on you not to crack in the crunch. Grainer saw the crunch coming. He must have known about Impermease. Did you?” My question caught him off guard. He hesitated, then said, “Only after the damage was done. When all we could do was to reduce its effects.”

  “By keeping people in line? By forcing industry to fill up these dumps?”

  “Of course! And we’re one of the few governments who managed to plan for survival.”

  “Like you planned for your own? And for your pals?”

  “For all America!” He clasped his hands around one knee. “Do you think I had Grainer killed?”

  “You had him murdered. Like you had Helga and Gloria murdered.”

  “Helga and Gloria? Who were they?”

  “Two of Grainer’s friends.”

  “There were a lot of people keen to kill Grainer’s friends—once Grainer was gone.” He smiled his ugly smile. “I wish to hell they’d killed you! But I didn’t arrange Grainer’s assassination. I just let it happen.”

  “You just let it happen? What the hell do you mean? If you didn’t arrange it, who did?”

  “Grainer himself!” He laughed at my expression.

  I heard the hiss of Judith’s breath and felt her hand holding me back as I started to rise. I shook her off, sat down, and spat, “That’s a lousy lie! Arnold wouldn’t have faked an assassination—”

  “Not faked—real. That bullet killed him instantly. As he had expected. As he had hoped!”

  Futrell must be lying. “Why the hell should Grainer let himself be murdered? Murdered on the eve of an election he must win to block the big shutdown?”

  “An election he was likely to lose.”

  “Balls! Back in April, after New York, Grainer had enough delegates to get the nomination. You bastards may have thought he hadn’t—”

  "Us bastards thought he had. When he carried the Convention we were all sure he’d win in November. In October he learned he wouldn’t. That even if he won the Presidency he’d lose the game!”

  “Bullshit! Randolph ran on Arnold’s record. And took every State except Ohio. Roat wouldn’t have held even Ohio if he’d been up against Grainer.”

  “Roat had hard evidence tying Grainer to the veralloy scam.”

  “A dead issue!”

  “Involving a dead man.”

  “That old lie!” I hesitated. “You mean Shantz? He deserved what he got.”

  “I agree. But he got it from Grainer in person. And Roat had enough evidence to nail the killing on Grainer—even if Grainer hadn’t done it.” He studied me. “Why the hell did Grainer kill Shantz himself? When he had guys like you who’d have been glad to do it for him.”

  “Arnold was that kind of man. He did his own dirty work.” I hesitated, and stared at Futrell. “Where did Roat get his evidence? He was the dumbest Senator in Congress.”

  “And the smartest ward heeler in the United States. That’s how he clawed his way into the Senate. His intelligence was minimal but his instincts were unerring. Verbal assassination was his metier. And he’d built up a case against Grainer too convincing to ignore—if made public.”

  “I never heard a whisper of it. And I heard about most things.”

  “Neither had the rest of us—not until October. Roat and his pals held back until the Party—until all of us, including Randolph—were completely committed to Grainer. Then he followed his ward-heeler instincts and offered Grainer a deal. He showed Grainer the evidence and said, ‘Quit now and I’ll keep quiet.’ He thought he had Grainer cornered.”

  “Christ—he was lucky to leave Camp David alive!” I remembered the night of Roat’s secret visit. The stink of his sweat when I escorted him from his chopper; the smirk on his face after his meeting with the President. The smirk of a pol who has made a deal. At the time I’d assumed he’d parlayed a lost election into an Embassy.

  “We were on the verge of rapprochement with Moscow and Beijing. Both suspected that Impermease was one of our biological weapons which had backfired, but Lobachevsky and Chung trusted Grainer when he showed them the American statistics and proved that we were being hit even harder than them. He convinced them that the danger was universal and acute. He also persuaded them to trust Randolph. If Roat had become President, or if Grainer had been discredited, there’d have been a superpower confrontation and we’d have lost what little stockpiling time we had.”

  “Arnold should have told me to get Roat!” I breathed. “Still the simpleminded hit man, eh Knox?” Futrell laughed. “There were a dozen Pubs to inherit Roat’s role— and evidence. If Grainer’d won he’d have been the first US President indicted for murder while in office. Whether he quit or ran, the result would have been disaster. Grainer did all he could to postpone it. Pushed the Tripartite Pact through Congress and then let himself be assassinated before Roat could pull the plug. He’d already got planning for Impermease off the ground; he bailed out and left us to cope with the crash!” Futrell gave another of his ugly smiles. “Grainer didn’t give a damn about what happened to his friends. Or his enemies. Or his bodyguard. All he cared about was his own niche in history.”

  “You’re claiming he arranged his own death! T
hat’s suicide!”

  “Suicide dressed up as martyrdom! Grainer made sure he died a hero. That his mantle would cover Randolph and make him the next President. Even Roat and his gang had the sense not to slander a hero who’d been dead less than a month. And once Randolph was safely in, I was able to take care of Roat.”

  “That auto smash?”

  Futrell nodded.

  “And Grainer hired the gunman who killed him?”

  “No need! The gang who got him knew nothing about Shantz. They were fanatics who believed they were executing a Dictator. Grainer had great confidence in his enemies. And they didn’t let him down.”

  “Were you one of them?”

  “Of course not! I only did what Grainer asked me to do.” “Which was?”

  “Remove faithful fools like you from his immediate bodyguard. Appoint zealots like Sherry and terrorists like Sline. You almost fucked things up by charging back into the act You got rid of Sherry. I disposed of Sline later.”

  “Then Sherry was a traitor!”

  Futrell shrugged. “In a way we were all traitors.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. He could have done a dozen things to keep Roat quiet without getting himself killed.”

  “No!” Judith burst out.

  We had forgotten about Judith, and we both swung round to stare at her, towering above us, her eyes blazing.

  “No!” she repeated. “It’s all starting to make sense!”

  “What the hell do you mean?” I demanded.

  She advanced into the cell, standing between us. “Grainer was a Caesar on the surface, but he was a pagan at heart. He saw himself as the Leader sacrificing himself for the people. The King must die! The Royal victim! One of the oldest and most universal of human myths.”

  “And the biggist pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard!”

  “Bullshit perhaps.” Futrell was smiling up at her. “But bullshit of a superior quality.”

  “Grainer was either a megalomaniac—or else he was inspired! He saw himself as the Chosen One. That might have been blasphemous—but it wasn’t crazy. Not for the man who had held the fate of the world in his hands. Twice. Once on Moonbase. Again when he arranged rapprochement. Especially when the second was a result of the first. Lobachevsky trusted him because he had saved Lobachevsky’s life.”

  She was making a terrible kind offense. But a sense too silly to consider. “He must have gone mad!”

  “He wanted to go out as a hero. To be remembered by history—if there is any history after this mess—as the President who saved civilization long enough for the Affluence to get its act together. Not as the President who went down with the chaos.” Futrell looked at his hands, cracked his knuckles. “He left me to do the rough stuff.”

  “He picked the right man for that!” I was still groping for Grainer’s logic. His planning had always been so exact, his ideas so definite. Old questions were reviving in my mind. Why had so many people let themselves be involved in the assassination? Why had he exposed himself so openly at the end of that red carpet? Why had Sherry turned traitor? Had she known that Grainer was seeking his own death? If she had, then my killing of her had been true murder, even if she had hated him as she had claimed. But perhaps that had only been another of her stratagems. The image of her slumped on that sofa, the blood running down between her breasts, swamped my vision. I put my head in my hands. I would never know! I would never know!

  Judith’s fingers were stroking my hair. “Forget it all, Gavin! Arnold Grainer’s death was his personal sacrifice—whatever his reason. Randolph was the only man who could persuade people there was hope for some kind of a future, who could persuade them to work for it. He gave meaning to many lives which otherwise would have become meaningless. And Futrell here was the kind of man needed to drive them on after hope was running thin.” She turned to him. “Where is President Randolph?”

  “Dead!” Futrell gave another of his ugly smiles. “I strengthened Sherando to serve as his refuge. After two days there he shot himself! Not as any sacrifice. From despair!”

  I lunged toward him. I wanted to smash his smiling face. Judith held me back. “Let him be, Gavin. He carried on with Grainer’s plan.” Then she swung on him. “Was persecuting the Settlements part of that plan?”

  Futrell shook his head.

  “Then why have you been attacking us?”

  “Not my doing! The Government’s response to popular re-

  quest. Five years ago most Americans regarded Believers as a bunch of religious nuts, heretics, or quasicommunists. During the draft your Settlements were bolt-holes for draft-dodgers hiding behind a fake religion. Or cowards who’d taken to the hills during some nuclear scare. Americans who had dropped out of mainstream America while claiming the rights and privileges of American citizens.”

  “We paid our taxes! We never caused any trouble.”

  “But you had your private radio network with Settlements in foreign countries. An international conspiracy, but too unimportant to become an issue when the Affluence was in full flood. Just a bunch of misguided fools trying to live the simple life. The woods were full of survivalists preparing for some giant shitstorm.” He looked up at Judith. “You know what changed that, as well as I do.”

  “We escaped Impermease.”

  “Most people had never heard of Impermease. All they could see were Settlements still full of kids while maternity wards were closing down for lack of business. So they made a natural assumption-—you Believers were somehow responsible for their daughters’ sterility. That if you were left alone you’d inherit the Earth within a couple of generations. And that you’d planned it that way.”

  “Lies—and you knew it!”

  “Sure—but why should we worry about a gang of bolters who’d already opted out?” Futrell gave another ugly smile. “Anyway, by then our credibility was nil. A statement by us that you weren’t involved would only have convinced people you were.”

  “So you sent in your thugs to rape our women!”

  “We sent in disciplined troops to rescue your women. To free your brainwashed girls and give them a chance of living decent lives. Married to men. Not mated to doves!”

  “Doves that drove off your Troopers and put you in this cell!”

  Futrell scowled. “That was bad luck.”

  “And good shooting!” Someone was tapping at the door. “Judy, who the hell’s that?”

  It was Chuck Yackle. He stepped into the cell, breathing heavily, his bald head gleaming. “Ahh—there you are, Mister Gavin. Ranula's due to arrive in an hour. Where are you going to put the mothers with young babies?”

  Where was I going to put them? I stopped myself from telling Yackle where he could. “Have ’em stay aboard until Enoch’s got the tunnel clear. Tell the crew, and any other freedom fighters you can round up, to lend Enoch a hand. This place won’t be secure until we’ve got those gates closed.” “Yes—of course!” Yackle mopped his forehead, hitched up his gunbelt, and noticed Futrell. “I’m Chairman Yackle. Er—who are you?”

  “Meet Gerald Futrell,” said Judith. “Attorney General of the United States.”

  “The Attorney General! I hope they’re looking after you properly, Mister Futrell.”

  “I’m just deciding whether or not to hang him,” I said. “Hang him? I trust you won’t. There have been too many killed already today.” He sighed. “Remember Mister Gavin, revenge debases just anger.” And he departed on that platitude.

  Futrell looked after him. “Who’s that wimp?”

  “Our spiritual leader. One of the doves who grounded your vultures!” I turned to Judith. “How long before this bastard’s fit to travel?”

  “About a week.”

  “Then tell Midge he’s all hers. Tell her to take him away as soon as he’s strong enough to survive. Turn him loose, as you promised, unharmed. And unarmed! Dump him at Fairhaven. Let him take a walk through the woods.”

  “He’ll go to Sherando.”

  “If
he makes it—he deserves it. And Anslinger deserves him!” I looked around my old cell, then I went to ease off the ventilator grill and reach up the duct. My manuscript was still hidden round the elbow and I pulled it out. Filthy with dust, it was still legible. I flung it on the bed. “Here’s something to read while you’re waiting.” I stood in front of him, staring down at him. “And here’s something to remember. Grainer told you to protect Helga and Gloria. And you can’t even remember who they were! Well—they were two beautiful women who were murdered. For that you’ll pay. Here or in Hell!”

  Judith tugged my sleeve. “Come on! Leave him! There’s still lots to be done.”

  There was still too much. I needed time to think, and time was the last thing I was allowed. Because I wns credited with capturing the Pen people were asking me how to consolidate our victory and what to do with our prisoners. Because I was the combat commander I must count our dead, comfort our wounded, and console our bereaved.

  Statistically our losses had been light; in human terms, tragic. The only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost. I returned to the Surveillance Center exhausted and depressed. Judith was monitoring activities throughout the Pen and issuing instructions with her usual competence. “Barbara wants to see you,” she said, without looking up from the displays.

  “Everybody wants to see me!” I snarled.

  “Barbara deserves to. She’s waiting for you to praise her heroics.”

  “Heroics—hell! She did one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “Then go and tell her so! She’s brooding somewhere in that wilderness of an orchard. Go and give her a pat on the back!”

  “I’ll go and give her a pat on the ass!”

  Barbara too was suffering from post-combat depression, and she greeted me with a scowl when she saw me coming through the underbrush. “Well, we’ve won! So what now?”

  “We’ve grabbed the Pen. I don’t know how long we’ll hold it!” I subsided onto the bench where Judith and I had once pretended love and plotted escape.

  “Not long if you sit here drooping while the other oldsters argue whether to praise the Light or mount the launchers!”