Empire's End

by Chris Bunch

  Kea remembered a line from his early childhood. "What's time to a damned hog?"

  He thought of the piggish greed aboard Destiny I. Ruth murdering Fazlur and the Osiran. Her murder at Murph's hands. Murph's intentions on his own life. Kea had vastly refigured his concept of evil since that time. He had drawn up his own scale, and found civilization wanting. But shouldn't these things be left to a Higher Authority? To God? Maybe. But Kea had been to another universe… and returned. And found no god in either place. Perhaps there was Something. A god on his throne far beyond the stars. But until that god was found, this world would have to make do with Kea Richards.

  He started back down the hill. If he hurried, he would have time to change before he greeted the delegation. Kea picked up the pace. The guard beside him looked surprised. And began to lope. Kea ran faster. Feeling young… and lightheaded.

  Suddenly, there was a sound in his ear of a thunderclap. Distant, but somehow very close. A red haze fell before his eyes.

  His mind shouted, "Not yet! I'm not… done."

  Kea was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  A panicked guard knelt beside him. Tumbled him over. Clumsily felt for signs of life. Found the faint hammer of the pulse. Frantically she keyed her com unit. In moments, the hillside was thick with frantically rushing vehicles and people—fighting to save the life of their new President For Life.

  Ganymede—A.O. 2222

  "Your doctors made no mistake," the great physician said. "It was a stroke." Her name was Imbrociano. In the field of anatomical damage and regeneration, she had no peers.

  Kea unconsciously gripped the numbness that was his left arm. Remembered his helplessness on Destiny I when it had been bound to him. This time, however, it was his whole left side that was useless. Imbrociano nodded at his arm. "We can get that going again," she said. "Nerve implants will do the trick. Some rather complicated rewiring should take care of the rest. Although I should warn… you will be definitely weakened."

  Kea steadied himself. He needed courage now. "That was not my greatest concern," he said. "What about the remainder of their diagnosis?"

  The physician sighed. "Unfortunately for you, I have no quarrel with that either," she said. "There is a good chance it will happen again. There's no telling when. A week? A year? More? I can't say. But I can say… it is unlikely you will survive a second attack."

  Kea laughed. Harsh. "You're not much on bedside manner," he said.

  Imbrociano shrugged. "Lies are time consuming," she said. "And time is something you are definitely lacking."

  Kea laughed again. This time, it was a full-bodied chortle. The joke was on him. Hadn't one of his last thoughts been about the emperors who held dominance over time? But not all time, he thought. Not biological time.

  Imbrociano peered at him, then nodded, satisfied. "You're taking it well," she said. "No hysteria."

  "I'm not the type," Kea answered.

  "No. I guess you wouldn't be… Mr. President." She rose to go. Kea raised a hand to stop her. "My staff spoke to you about the need for secrecy?"

  Imbrociano shuddered. "They stressed it… quite intensely. Really, sir. There was no need for threats. President or not, you are my patient. I have my oath."

  "Forgive their enthusiasm," Kea said. Dry. Thinking that if his enemies got wind of Kea's illness, they could soon change her mind. "I'd be in your debt," he said, "if you stayed on… until I decide what to do next."

  "You're still considering surgery," she asked, "even though the ordeal is most likely to be pointless?"

  "I'll let you know," Kea said.

  She left, a puzzled woman. But no more puzzled than Kea. What was he thinking? What could he do? The best physician in the Federation had just told him he was doomed. His advisers were urging him to choose a successor. Meaning one of them. Unspoken—but implicit—in their constant hammering was that it was also time to reveal the source of Anti-Matter Two.

  If I die now, he thought, the system—that perfect system—he had designed would automatically shut down. All traces wiped. And the secret of AM2 would die with him. The system had been the only real protection against his enemies. A shield of knowledge against their assassins. But what was the point of it now? Without AM2, the Federation would collapse. All his work for nothing.

  So? Giving them the secret would be worse, wouldn't it? There would be terrible wars over control of AM2. He'd run the progs countless times. Each time the death toll burst through the top of the scale.

  It was too late to produce an heir. Besides, he had dismissed that prospect from the beginning. He knew too much about kings and their children. They lived miserable lives waiting to succeed. Sometimes plotting against their parent. Almost always overseeing the death of the kingdom that parent had built. You had to look no further than the Bargetas to see the deterioration from generation to generation.

  Enough wandering. He had to make up his mind. Who should succeed him? Who could he trust with the secret of AM2?

  The answer came back: No one.

  I must decide, he argued. I have no other choice.

  There must be another option, came the insistent voice. There must be.

  But… everyone has to die… Eventually.

  But we're different, the voice said. Special. We know a thing no one else knows. A great pure thing that sets us apart from anyone who lives now… or has ever lived before.

  Kea wrestled with this insanity—for he thought he must have gone insane—for a long time. Finally, he slept. Floating. Dreamless. Aides and nurses monitored him. Noted the peacefulness of the bio charts.

  He awakened. Refreshed. Alert. Ravenous.

  He sent for his breakfast.

  And he sent for Imbrociano.

  She answered all his questions, then listened closely as he outlined his proposal. Calmly. Dispassionately. "Yes. I could do it," she finally said. "I could build a living body… a human form… exactly like yours. There are theoretical obstacles, to be certain. But with the right team and sufficient funds… it could be done."

  "Then you'll do it?' Kea asked.

  "No. I won't."

  "Why not, for godsakes?"

  "You can't deny death, Mr. President," she said. "And that's what you're doing. You must see this whole thing is highly irrational. I can make a copy of you. Duplicate you. But… I can't make that new organism be you."

  "What would be the difference?" Kea pressed. "If it had all my thoughts… my knowledge… my motivations… identical cells… all the stuff that makes me… then it would be me. Wouldn't it?"

  Imbrociano sighed. "I'm a doctor. Not a philosopher. A philosopher could better explain the difference."

  "I can make you very rich," Kea said. "Bestow many honors."

  "I know," Imbrociano said. "Enough to overcome even my ethics. But if I participated in such an endeavor—and succeeded—I can't help but think I would more likely be signing my own death warrant. It would be dangerous knowledge, you must admit."

  "I thought of that," Kea said. "However, for you to accomplish what I have in mind will most likely take the rest of your professional life. It will be a very secure, very lavish life. This I guarantee."

  Imbrociano thought for a long time. Then she said, "If I don't do this, you'll find someone else. Albeit not as skilled."

  "Yes, I will," Kea said.

  "Which would once again leave me in jeopardy. For knowing too much."

  "This is true," Kea said. Rat.

  "We'd better get to work, then," Imbrociano said. "We might not have much time."

  Ganymede—A.D. 2224

  His luck returned. Along with health, bestowed by Imbrociano's talents. The nerve rewiring was simple. The rehabilitation exercises torture. But it was worth it.

  Richards rose from his chair and walked to the far end of his office. He was alone. He watched his progress in a mirror. Approved. Now, only a slight limp betrayed the lingering traces of his paralysis from the stroke. It had been easy to hide this f
rom the public. Politics has long experience keeping those kinds of things hushed up. In FDR's time, Kea recalled, few people were even aware he was bound to a wheelchair for life. He walked back to his desk. Eased his fifty-nine-year-old bones into the soft chair. And poured himself a drink from a decanter on his desk.

  It was Scotch.

  He savored it. Just as he savored a few moments' peace from the breakneck pace of his duties. Then he tensed as a headache twinged. His heart fluttered—was this it? But the pain fled along with fear. Thank God, he thought, that worry will be over soon. One way or the other.

  Imbrociano was almost ready. Everything was in place. He only had to say the word and great, shadowy forces would be put in motion. Kea had worked feverishly to reach this point. Shifting staff. Pulling strings. Creating and collapsing whole bureaucracies. Covering his tracks in a hailstorm of governmental actions and decrees. Vast industries were at his disposal, with no one manager aware of what the other was doing. Starships had been flung here and there at his bidding. He had spun an elaborate, supersecret network, with cutouts and switchbacks and complex electronic mazes created by canny old spies. During that time Imbrociano and her team had worked at equally as furious a pace. With the entire Federation's treasury at their disposal as a budget.

  Kea sipped his Scotch, letting the warmth tease the kinks in his side.

  The first part of his plan to cheat death had been relatively simple. Imbrociano would build a walking, talking, thinking duplicate of Kea Richards. The second part—yet to be put into motion—was simpler still. Horrifically so.

  He steered his mind away from yowling terror. He'd have to deal with it when the moment came.

  The third part of his plan was vastly complex. To begin with, he'd had new improvements of the old model in mind. Tinkering with several genes to make his alter ego invulnerable to disease and aging. When the organism was in place, the aging process would be gradually reversed. He had picked thirty-five as the place to stop. Kea thought that had been the best time for him. His peak in many ways. With the process spread out over many years, his people would barely notice their President For Life shedding middle age like a snake its skin. In theory, the new Kea Richards would be able to go on and on throughout the centuries without wearing out. Virtual immortality.

  "In practice," Imbrociano had said, "I doubt very much this is possible. An organism—especially a thinking organism—is too complex. Vulnerable to many things we are ignorant of. Not just physically vulnerable, either. There is the psychological to consider."

  "I could go mad," Kea had said. With no emotion. Imbrociano had only nodded.

  "I could also be assassinated," Kea had said. "Or, held against my will. Forced to do and reveal things."

  "There is that, too," Imbrociano had said.

  These problems had led to the key part of the grand scheme. An engineer at heart, Kea had started with a machine. A judgment machine. Fitted with powerful reasoning programs. Remote sensors to monitor the alter ego. Judging mental and physical conditions, as well as outward threats. The organism itself would have a bomb implanted in its gut. Threatened by torture, brainscan, or fatal attack, the bomb would blow with an enormous force. Killing all within its range. The same would happen if the judgment machine decided he was no longer mentally fit to rule the Federation. Kea called it the Caligula Factor. He had no wish to become a tyrant who ruled over an endless hell.

  He had been proud of himself for thinking of that. Proud of it still, he thought, touching up his glass with Scotch. It was his own secret gift to his forever kingdom. If he was absolutely honest with himself, however, he would have to admit he was a little broad in his definitions of mental disturbance. But during these fits of honesty, he had rationalized that his future self might require some leeway to survive. It was impossible to imagine all the circumstances he might face over the centuries. What seemed insane today might be expeditious in the far tomorrow.

  The machine orchestrating all of this was contained in a completely automated hospital ship; a ship not only built with redundancy on redundancy, constructed with bus bars a meter thick when a centimeter would give a lifespan of decades, but given complete self-analyzing and repair capabilities.

  He had hidden it where no enemy could ever find it—the alternate universe. The source of his AM2 operation.

  He thought of it as N-space.

  And just in case his enemies ever tracked the ship down, it was defended by the best weapons of this age. It was unlikely anyone who attacked would survive. The hospital ship would sit in readiness, waiting for the signal to call it into full life. At that signal, the ship's robotic staff would build yet another Kea Richards—to replace the one that had just been… removed. The flesh would be grown from the genes Imbrociano was even now stockpiling from frequent biopsies. The mind—the id of Kea Richards—would be perfectly reconstructed as well. Right up to the final thoughts before… death.

  "This will take time," Imbrociano had warned him. "A little more than three years before the duplicate is constructed. You'll have to be aware of these gaps."

  He had overcome the problem by having an elaborate library computer installed. It would constantly monitor every newsfeed and knowledge resource in the Federation. All this data would be fed to the new organism after the awakening—during tutorials. But he must be wary. The organism would be new. Untried. Imbrociano's psych techs told him too much pure knowledge without practical experience could doom it before it started.

  The return to power would be gradual. A ladder of experience. With awareness fed in along with each step upward. And at any point, the judgment machine could decide the new organism was lacking in some way and destroy it… to start again.

  Oddly enough, the easiest of all his tasks in preparing for immortality had involved the political.

  Because his hole card was AM2.

  When he died, the AM2 shipments would automatically halt. There would be no more for a usurper until Kea's rebirth and return. Economic chaos would result. A three-year power drought. The throne stealer would be so weakened, he would topple at a touch when Kea Richards rose from the dead.

  A hero reborn.

  It was a powerful legend to build on.

  Kea looked up at the antique clock on the mantel. It was time to start.

  Imbrociano was waiting.

  He finished his drink. Replaced the glass on the tray and pushed the whole thing away. And he buzzed for Kemper—his chief of staff. They went over the things to be done in his absence. Last-minute legislative details. Appointments to higher office. That sort of thing. His staff was grudgingly getting used to his mysterious absences. He had slipped away regularly to add to that tolerance. Sometimes in his guise as the common engineer—Raschid. Sometimes with a few chosen people for a little stealth diplomacy.

  "What if there is an emergency, Mr. President?" Kemper said dutifully. He knew the answer, but thought he'd be remiss if he didn't ask. "How can we reach you?"

  Richards gave him the usual response: "Don't worry. I won't be gone long."

  After Kemper departed, Richards pulled a bulky travel kit from a drawer. Then he pressed a stud beneath his desk. A panel swung away in the wall. Kea plunged into the dark passage. The panel closed behind him. A short time later he was aboard a small spaceyacht, listening to the captain chatter with the first officer—waiting for tower clearance. He turned in his seat to see if Imbrociano and her people were comfortable. Imbrociano waved to him. Smiled. A sad smile. Kea waved back. Settled in for takeoff.

  There was the shock of the thrust… a roaring in his ears… then weightlessness. Kea savored every sensation of the flight as if it were to be his last.

  Imbrociano's voice came in his ear: "Would you like a sedative?"

  He turned to her. Motioned for her to sit next to him. She did. Her eyes were hollowed from lack of sleep. "I'd rather not," Kea said. "Somehow… I don't know… I want to be aware."

  "I understand," Imbrociano said. "But we won't
reach our destination until tomorrow. Why not get some rest?"

  "If this doesn't work," Kea said, "I'll have a lot of time for that. Permanent rest."

  "You can still call this off," Imbrociano said. "Really. I urge you to."

  "I've made up my mind," Kea said. "There's no need for you to feel guilt."

  Imbrociano grew silent. Picked at her sleeve. Then she said, "If it eases your mind any, there will be no pain tomorrow. No sensation. I'll inject you with trancs first. So there will be no fear. The lethal dose will come next. You'll inhale… and by the time you fully exhale, you'll be… dead."

  "Reborn, actually," Kea said with forced lightness. "Or, as some might say, exchanging one vessel for another."

  "But it can't be really you!" she exploded. "Perhaps by casual definition, yes. It will talk, walk, and think like you in all matters. But it still can't be you. The essence in each of us. That makes us individual. The soul."

  "You sound like a preacher," Kea said. "I'm an engineer. A pragmatist. If it walks like a duck… talks like a duck… it must be Kea Richards."

  Imbrociano put her head back. Tired. Defeated. Then she patted his arm. Rose. And returned to her seat.

  Kea felt genuinely sorry about what had to happen next. He fished out the travel case. Peeled away a small panel of material to reveal a depression. A heat-sensitive switch. He liked Imbrociano. Despite her stiff manner, she was genuinely human: afflicted with the curse of empathy.

  His affection for her was the second reason he had chosen to alter the plan. The first reason was pragmatic. It was best to begin with maximum impact. A suspicious accident. Triggering finger pointing and political purges. Government in disarray. The cheers at his miraculous return would drown out many questions. Some of those he would get around with obscure hints of enemies in hiding. The rest he would erase by simply rewriting history.