Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain (23 page)

A supervisor handed me the delivery notice. “Here’s the last of them, sir. Just sign there, if you don’t mind.”

“Thank you. Just put them with the others.”

They unloaded the crates while I made some adjustments to a machine.

Snarg chirped as a shadow fell over me.

“Hello, Zala,” I said.

“Hello, Emperor. How did you know it was me?”

“Snarg only chirps like that for you. She really likes you.”

The ultrapede pushed against Zala, nearly knocking her over.

“You are a disgusting beast, you do know that?” asked Zala of Snarg.

Snarg squealed and licked Zala’s hand. She sighed, stroking Snarg’s antennae while attempting to wipe away the congealing mucus off the other.

“Emperor, would you mind?”

I paused to spray solvent. Then commanded Snarg to give Zala some space. Snarg skittered in a submissive posture and cooed.

“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “I like to keep her around because she’s useful.”

“Yes, well, I suppose she is at that,” said Zala.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” I chuckled. “I would’ve thought you’d have left for Venus by now to file your report. Is your new body giving you any problems? I’ve never cloned Venusian biology before.”

“No, it’s working fine.” She looked at her hands, wiggling her fingers. “Although it does feel a bit weird sometimes. There are some old aches and pains I’m missing.”

“I can clone you a new body with those included.”

“Not necessary.” She sniffed her arm. “Though I am enjoying that scent of newborn.”

“That’ll go away in a few weeks,” I said.

“Pity. Although I guess I can’t expect to be taken seriously as a warrior if I smell like a youngling. And I can’t complain. I think this body is a little younger than my old one.”

“Consider us even.”

“Even? You removed my brain.”

“Yes, and then I put it in a new body. That makes us even.”

“That’s not…” She smiled. “Forget it, Emperor. I knew you were a criminal when I agreed to protect you.”

“That’s a touch rude, isn’t it?” I said. “Especially since I had them leave out the obedience implant in your new body.”

Zala’s face went blank.

“I’m joking,” I said. “The implant is there. It’s just inactive.”

She remained unamused.

“If I wanted your obedience, I would’ve left you in the exo.”

She studied my face, wondering at that slight trace of a smile and its meaning.

“You can’t expect me to trust you, Emperor.”

“No, I don’t suppose I can.”

She nodded to the crates. “What’s in the boxes?”

I opened one to allow her a look at the contents: transparent globes containing the disembodied brains of the Council of Egos.

“What are you going to do with them?” she asked.

“I’m storing them here.”

“Isn’t that unnecessarily cruel? I didn’t think you were the vindictive type, Emperor.”

I pointed to the machine in the middle of the warehouse. “It’s a modified version of the telepathic ecstasy field generator. They’re still in a blissfully unaware state. Right now, they’re all living out their shared fantasy of galactic conquest.”

She closed the lid. “I don’t know if I find that cruel or generous.”

I replied, “They’re happy and no longer a threat. I leave the morality of their punishment and/or reward for others to decide.”

“Very pragmatic of you.”

I made some final adjustments to the machine while Zala watched.

“So if I understand this little adventure, you were the mastermind behind it all. The Atlantese assassins. The fiasco on Dinosaur Island. Your disastrous defeat in Paris.”

“All me,” I said.

“But how? And why?”

“After researching the potential of the anti-time radio, I knew that, if it fell into the wrong hands, someone might try to use it against me. So I planned a fail-safe, should the need arise. I would simply broadcast a message from the future myself, designing it in such a way that my opponents would think they had the advantage.”

“But you didn’t build the radio.”

“No, I didn’t. But the plan didn’t require me to. It only required me to build a transmitter at some point in the future and send the proper message to the past. Of course, the problem with this is that the party who built the radio in the past would be the only one to receive the message. This required that they believe the message to be genuinely from themselves in the future. So I couldn’t issue a direct message. I had to convince them that they were in charge and that the message was intended to lead them toward their ultimate goal while actually working toward my own.”

“But the assassins. And the dinosaurs. Those things could’ve killed you.”

“Seemingly. But, of course, plotting the outcome of all those events renders the threat meaningless. The Council of Egos understood this as well. That was why it was necessary to convince them that their goal wasn’t my death, but capture and enslavement. They needed to believe that they were manipulating me.”

“And the machine you had them build?”

“Busywork, a decoy. Needlessly complex and incomprehensible, and little else. Aside from the brain-jamming pulse components hidden in its design and fully activated by the components I left myself scattered as unnecessary bits I’d planted in their weapon designs.”

“But why did it explode?”

“They probably put it together wrong. Or maybe I designed it that way. Or I will design it that way. Haven’t gotten around to it yet. It’s on my to-do list.”

Zala chuckled. “This plan of yours seems needlessly complicated. There must have been a simpler way than to put yourself through all that.”

“If it were too simple, the Council would never have believed it. It had to be ridiculous, even unnecessary, in order to fool the Council. The heart of the plan was basically to have the Council build the machine that would destroy them, reveal themselves to me, and then allow me to activate it. But in order for that to happen, I had to convince the Council that they were manipulating and tricking me while the exact opposite was occurring.”

“You were tricking them into thinking they were tricking you into thinking you were tricking them into tricking you?”

“I think there’s one too many tricks in there,” I said. “The Council thought all my manipulations were intentional misdirections to stoke foolish overconfidence on my part. But in fact, all my manipulations of myself were really manipulations of them. And myself too. Except that they never bothered to question whether or not they were being manipulated. They just assumed they were ahead of the game and didn’t seriously ponder the possibility they weren’t.”

Zala shook her head. “Nope. It’s still confusing.”

“Look at this way. In my battle of wits against the Council of Egos, only the person who triumphed in the future gets to broadcast the message to the past. And I won.”

“You won because you won. That’s a meaningless tautology.”

“Under normal circumstances.”

“And if the Council had won…”

“But it didn’t win,” I said.

“But if it had…”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” I replied. “But we are. That’s all you need to know.”

“So you knew all along what was happening?” asked Zala.

“The nature of the plan meant that I couldn’t be certain that my future self sent that message. It wasn’t inconceivable that all my careful obfuscating was the calculated machinations of another. That’s the nature of space-time. You really don’t know what the future holds until you get there.”

“But in Paris, you seemed so distraught.”

“I was distraught. It was necessary to design the plan so that even I would doubt it. If I could fool myself, then my odds of fooling the Council were all the better. Of course, now that we’re here, I realize my doubts were a manipulation of my own genius. And I find the contradiction very satisfying.”

She sighed. “Yes. You’re brilliant. I can’t even deny it anymore.”

“Curious. That’s even more satisfying.”

“Although I’m not sure how comfortable I am with the paradox of you inventing a scheme from the future after seeing it unfold in the past. It seems like you’re violating some law of physics.”

“Thermodynamics,” I said.

“Yes. That.”

“There’s a slight possibility that the use of the anti-time radio could have triggered an impending total quantum collapse. My data has been inconclusive. It will probably correct itself.”

“And if it doesn’t, I assume the universe will explode,” she said.

“I’m keeping an eye on it.”

“I’m sure you are.” Zala laughed. “You could have told me at some point that you were behind this.”

“I told you I had an idea who the agent was. I just didn’t tell you it was most probably me.”

Zala glared. “Might have been nice to know.”

“Why? What would’ve been different? If you’d known, you might not have taken the situation as seriously as required. And if I’d been wrong, you would’ve just used it as an excuse to ridicule me.”

“You sacrificed my battleguard,” she said.

I raised a hand. “First, I warned you about bringing them along. Second, I protected them as best as I could, despite your insistence.”

She sighed. “Yes, you did. But you also allowed a monster to rampage in Atlantis. You nearly got us killed numerous times. You let them remove my brain.”

“Yes, and I’ve rectified that.”

She held up her hands. “Let’s not start that discussion again. One last question: How did you get me involved in this? How did Venusian intelligence discover this plot?”

“I have no idea. I suppose some mysteries are just best left unsolved.”

“Surprising to hear you say that.”

“I have more important things to worry about. I still have to build my anti-time transmitter and broadcast the message to the past. Or is that rebroadcast? No matter. After that, I’ll see about saving the Great Gynoecium. Then I’ll have to check on the rebuilding of Shambahla, Paris, Atlantis. There’s a lot of cleanup to be done. And the Terrans still are going to need me around. To keep things from falling apart.”

“Are you certain of that, Emperor?” asked Zala. “It seems to me that you’re a danger to this world. Without you, the Saturnites wouldn’t have invaded. And the Council was only a threat because of technology stolen from you. Your efforts on Terra’s behalf seem to revolve around cleaning up your own messes.”

“Only seventy-four percent of the time,” I replied. “I ran an analysis.”

“Statistically, it seems like a losing argument.”

“Would it be preferable to let the planet blow up?”

She laughed. “I can’t argue with that.”

I closed the machine’s panel. We exited the warehouse, and I locked the door behind us, leaving the Council of Egos to their blissful delusion. I envied them for just a moment.

We walked toward my saucer, parked in the street. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“No, thank you. I’ve arranged my own transport to Venus,” she said.

“Regardless of the source of the danger, Zala, the Terrans are still in no position to defend themselves. If these are my messes to clean up, then you’ll admit that I’m the best Neptunon for the job.”

“And then there’s the fact that this is the last planet left in the system that doesn’t want to execute you.”

“That too.”

“But for how long?” she asked. “If you’re telling the truth and reversing the mind alterations you’ve done to them, then one day, won’t they wake up and realize that they only needed you because of what you did to them in the first place? I imagine they’ll be upset about that.”

“Most probably,” I agreed.

“What will you do then?”

“I haven’t given it much thought,” I said. “Perhaps by then the other civilizations of the system will have forgotten my crimes.”

She smirked.

“It’s conceivable,” I said.

A bolt from the sky blasted my saucer into so much scrap. Zala and I were just out of the range of the rain of falling debris. The shadow of a Venusian transport craft fell across us. It landed, kicking up dirt and wind, and only moments after setting down, three full battleguards, armed to the scales, disembarked and fanned out in a semicircle. They leveled omega-level proton cannons in my direction. A trio of powered war armors, each a heavy battalion in its own right, brought up the rear.

Zala half smiled. “Venus never forgets.”

Snarg curled around me protectively.

“The mission is over. Your life is no longer in danger. It’s time to answer for your crimes.” Zala drew her sword. “You must have seen this coming, Emperor.”

I gave Snarg the stand down command.

I grinned. “Yes, I must have.”

My exo began to beep.

“Self-destruct device?” Zala raised an eyebrow.

“Would I really be that unimaginative?” I replied.

The beeping grew louder, more insistent.

“You could be bluffing,” she said.

“I could be,” I agreed.

The beeping turned shrill. Snarg perked up, squeaking in time with the beat. Several of the less disciplined soldiers winced and covered their ears.

“Fall back,” said Zala.

A soldier protested, but she silenced him with a glance.