[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos Read online

  ECHOES OF CHAOS

  Weapons of Chaos - 01

  Robert E. Vardeman

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  To Roy Tackett

  ONE

  “We are dying.” The gaunt, trembling figure turned and looked away from the others gathered around the long rectangular Table of Rules. Fordyne, advisor to the Council of State, statistician without peer, had never felt older and less able to deal with destiny. His burning amethyst eyes stared out the window of the towering Aerie and swept across the city stretched below him. From this height the chaos wasn’t visible, but Fordyne knew it existed.

  “You exaggerate,” came the Chief of Rules’ mocking voice. Fordyne’s exhaustion vanished in a heady mixture of anger and frustration with such stubbornness. He spun, his embroidered chamber robes swirling around his lean frame.

  “I do not.” The fire in his reply took the Chief aback. Never had anyone spoken to the ruler of all civilization in such a manner. Politeness, if not duty, dictated only serene responses, measured tones, orderly emotions.

  Fordyne had passed beyond accepted behavior. His world was dying around him and none of these fools believed!

  “The facts are incontrovertible. Examine them. Have others you trust more do so. You will see.” Anger faded, leaving only exhaustion—exhaustion and distress. He had worked hard for over three years, accumulating the evidence to support what his heart already had told him. The beige folders containing the results of the correlational study lay untouched in the center of the Table of Rules. No one at this meeting even dared open one and scan the first page abstract.

  In their hearts they, too, knew what Fordyne had feared and had now shown true.

  “Societal dynamics is a confusing issue, Fordyne,” the Chief of Rules said, lounging back to nest in his feather-encrusted chair. He stared at the Council statistician. “You of all people know this. These… disturbances. They’re random. No organized attempt is being made to overthrow us.” The Chief snorted derisively. He laid one finger alongside his thick, hard nose to accentuate the point. “The last attempt to subvert a government is almost two hundred years in the past. Memo is stable. The country is stable.” The Chief leaned forward, four-fingered hands gripping the edge of the table until the yellow-taloned tips turned white. “We are all stable.”

  “This madness has nothing to do with the toppling of governments by an organization,” said Fordyne. “It—its only characteristic is disorganization.”

  “Talk sense. You’re a scholar, not some giddy doomster on a park perch prophesying the return of feathered Larn, bringing his vengeance for our sins.”

  Fordyne noted several Councilors around the table stiffen at the mention of the mythical god. While the Chief of Rules scoffed at the ancient religion, Fordyne had learned that many—some in that room—had again embraced the old ways. They were less able than he to articulate their fears, and they reached out for solace, for explanations of why their secure nest/world was falling to pieces around them.

  “Very well,” Fordyne said, determination again rising within him. “A brief presentation. I trust its dryness will not unduly bore you.”

  Before the Chief could either approve or dismiss him, Fordyne reached into his robe and pulled forth a small projector. He aimed it at the far wall, and then stroked along its control surface. The window shutters closed, blocking off the deceptive serenity of Memo, the room lights dimmed, and a pale ruby beam stretched out over the surface of the wall. Tiny speckles set there burst into amorphous, colored life. To the eye came no scene; Fordyne’s picture formed within the minds of all present.

  “Fact: Accidental deaths have risen forty-six percent in the past seven years.” The charts burned hotly into their brains. Many stirred uneasily but Fordyne had trapped them. They had to stay and witness the progression of evidence.

  “Faulty control systems at General Guidance,” muttered the Chief.

  “Fact: Less than half of these deaths occurred during machine operation. Those that do have this profile indicate high probability, to the ninety-five percent confidence level, of operator error rather than machine malfunction.”

  “You’re saying that all of these accidents are just that, accidents,” pointed out the Chief. The others at the Table of Rules remained silent. They couldn’t evade the numbers marching like a burning army through their brains, but they might dull their impact by concentrating on other, less disturbing ideas.

  “The only malfunction, according to extensive autopsy evidence, is with the people.” When the Chief said nothing to this, Fordyne pressed on. “Fact: Epilepsy has become epidemic among certain sectors of our population. It is my contention that the rise in accidental death is strongly linked to this factor.”

  “All these… freaks caused their own deaths? That makes them murderers,” blurted out a Councilor.

  Fordyne felt revulsion at this. Epileptics were not spoken of in polite society. This, in part, made it even more difficult to force the others to believe in the seriousness of the matter. They refused to stroke the pinfeather because of the proscribed affliction.

  “It has become an epidemic,” Fordyne repeated. He closed his eyes and calmed his rampaging emotions. To lose control, to clack your dental ridges wildly, insanely, to twitch and thrash about, to lose all civilized behavior seemed a fate worse than death. The stark embarrassment of such a seizure had, no doubt, caused hundreds—or by his numbers, thousands—of the afflicted to tread the only honorable path and kill themselves.

  “Epidemics can be blunted, the disease cured. Such unsightly behavior is not induced like a viral infection,” scoffed another of the Councilors. “To say that such disgusting behavior is induced—contagious!—denigrates all our medical science.”

  “I realize that it is difficult to speak of such things.” Fordyne squeezed his projector so tightly that the plastic began to warp. He controlled himself and relaxed his grip. “But the facts will not go away simply because we wish for some other cause.”

  “Wheeze!” The Chief whistled derisively through his dental plate. “There’s nothing wrong with this country, this world! We’ve never been so prosperous, our people so at peace with themselves and with their neighbors.”

  “Fact: Our population is in decline. The absolute number of our people is beginning to drop.”

  “A mere anomaly,” said the Chief.

  “The birthrate fell to less than replacement fourteen years ago. The latest flash figures from the medical division show that the replacement figure has dropped below one.” The projected image rustling through their brains contained sorrow, funeral processions, infinite cold untouched by the pure flame of rebirth.

  “Explain.”

  “For every two deaths, there is less than one born to take their place. The actual numbers.” Fordyne stroked the side of the controller. The ruby beam brightened as the images Fordyne desired insinuated themselves into the others’ heads. “For every thousand deaths, there are only four hundred and eighty-nine births.”

  “As I said, an anomaly. Time will ease this.”

  “There is more than an accelerating death rate, a declining birth rate, and the… seizure numbers.” Fordyne found himself unable to even mention epilepsy. His hand shook harder and fear rose within him, fear of personal shame. Nothing controlled his trembling, not even the illicit drugs he had been using. “These are to be considered restricted data.” The murmur around the Table of Rules showed the Councilors’ disapproval. Secrecy solved nothing. And from whom would they keep such knowledge? They had been at peace for well over a hundred years, war only a vague, disturbing memory.

&
nbsp; Fordyne pressed on. “Innovation and scientific discovery are on the wane.”

  “Really, Fordyne, don’t be absurd. You’ve carried this distasteful folly of yours far enough.” The Chief of Rules rose and leaned forward on the table, knuckles bent under and supporting his weight. “I want to hear nothing more from you on this.”

  “Denying our trouble will not erase it,” Fordyne said. “Look! Examine the figures. In the folders. Here!” He almost crushed the projector as he squeezed down hard on it. Columns of numbers, the correlational coefficients, the matrices laden with proof raced across the surface of their unwilling minds. “Begone. We have other matters to deal with.”

  “As you will it, Chief.” Fordyne bowed his head, both in deference to his leader’s command and in defeat. He stroked the projector and a sigh of relief went around the Table of Rules. Once more they could deny without the interference of truth.

  “They refused to listen?” Young Jerad stood staring at his instructor. Fordyne could only nod. “But the facts! The numbers! The high correlations!”

  “They meant nothing to the Chief. Or to the others.” Fordyne collapsed into an amorphous cloth cushion that threatened to swallow him whole. He almost wished that it would and put him out of his inner torment.

  “But can’t they see what is happening all around us?” Jerad hadn’t learned patience. Fordyne closed his hot eyes and felt the welling wetness at the corners. Jerad would never learn. There wouldn’t be enough time. Not for Jerad, not for anyone.

  “They dismiss it all as anomaly, an unexpected singularity in the data. Such turnings in the number patterns have happened previously,” Fordyne explained, more for the comfort of hearing his own voice than for any other reason. More softly he added, “But never with such impressive force.”

  “The results of my research,” Jerad said, kneeling beside Fordyne. “Look!” The young statistician thrust out the folder. Fordyne laid his hand on the first page. Images flashed through his mind. He pulled his hand back and stared at his assistant.

  “Yes,” Jerad said, anticipating Fordyne’s words. “One reason our research has deteriorated over the past few decades is irreproducibility. A classic experiment, even one as well-documented as the light-speed determinators, give varying results with each new test. Even when the same instruments are used.”

  This shocked even Fordyne, who had thought himself beyond surprise. “How?”

  Jerad shook his head. Bright purple eyes blazed and his lipless mouth pulled into a thin, determined line. “Cossia thinks it might have something to do with the pass-by.”

  Fordyne frowned. What had been hailed fifty years earlier as the greatest event in scientific history had proven to be anticlimactic. Worse, the astronomers who had focused their telescopes on the cometary object had been ridiculed when the promised cosmic display of winter-sky-brightening coma had failed to appear. It had set space research back a hundred years and had, in Fordyne’s mind, been responsible for the Council canceling all attempts to reach either of the nearby planets. Since those days, research funds had gone into geophysical research, not astronomical. A race that had once soared on wings doomed itself to remaining planetbound.

  Fordyne sighed as he thought of missed opportunities. The data to be accumulated upon reaching a near orbit of the planet would have been immense. Even the geologists would have benefited. He sighed again. It wasn’t to be. The bulk of data accumulated by the specialists in volcanoes defied mathematical analysis, being of a subjective nature. Lost opportunities. So many. Too many.

  He shook himself from the sad reverie, and asked of Jerad, “What effect could the comet have had on us?”

  “Cossia is unsure. She says it may have been a potent force field, not unlike this electromagnetic field Illfon and the others speak of. The comet may have cast its unseen net in front of the planet, and we may have passed through it.”

  Fordyne did not call the theory far-fetched. What he had presented to the Chief of Rules and the other Councilors counted as far-fetched. Jerad merely theorized. A hypothesis and nothing more that might explain their data.

  “Fordyne, your pallor…” Jerad stood, flapping his arms futilely as if to take wing, as their ancient ancestors had done at the first hint of confusion.

  Fordyne tried to answer. He bit his tongue, felt the dental plate severing the rock-hard appendage, drawing blood, choking him. He reached out and found himself trembling uncontrollably. Panic seized him. Fordyne flopped forward, thrashing about, knocking over tables laden with folders and drinking saucers.

  “Help me,” he croaked. Froth coated his lips and caked on his chin, hardening with dried blood. The world exploded in vivid, crazy colors and his eyes rolled up. Back arching, limbs beyond command, Fordyne dissolved into misery as the seizure fully possessed him.

  “I am so ashamed,” Jerad said, his head hanging low between his thin shoulders. Cossia’s hand fluttered along a quaking arm. She stroked and soothed, as if Jerad were a fledgling who had fallen from his birthing nest.

  “Fordyne is at peace. He counts numbers in a land beyond our understanding. He is happy.”

  Jerad turned stricken eyes to his friend. “You don’t understand. He did not simply die. He was… taken.”

  Cossia pulled away.

  “Yes,” Jerad cried. “Like the others. He died in an”—he fought down his revulsion—“epileptic seizure.”

  “How awful! Such a great mathematician to be so dishonored.”

  “I did nothing for him.” Jerad pleaded with Cossia for absolution. He did not find it in her amber eyes.

  “You were his friend. While he lived, he conducted himself honorably. None can do more than Fordyne.”

  “I’d just told him of your theory concerning the pass-by.”

  They gazed at the funeral tree, now ablaze and consuming Fordyne’s remains. They backed from the heat, waiting for the flames to die. In older times the trees had been real, but with the need to deal with thousands of deaths every year in the city alone, the funeral pyres had become increasingly symbolic. The trees were now of steel, and gas jets fueled the cleansing fires.

  Jerad spun and stalked off, hardly trusting himself. His nose spasmed with the smell of Fordyne’s cremation. Did that nose twitch signal the onset of a seizure? Or did he merely react to the odor of his mentor and friend’s funeral? How could anyone tell in time to avoid dishonor?

  Jerad shuddered.

  Cossia’s strides lengthened. She matched his bobbing gait perfectly. “We have no evidence, but much became confusing when the comet passed so close.”

  “Close?” Jerad shook his head. “It didn’t even come near enough to the sun to leave a tail. What sort of comet is that?”

  “My point, Jerad,” she said, gripping his arm. “What if it left a gas in space and the planet swept through it? We might have been poisoned. The”—she swallowed and avoided naming their friend’s affliction—“unfortunate disease might be curable, as many have suggested. We might find an antidote to this poison.”

  Jerad sucked in a deep lungful of air. Only the taint of Fordyne’s passing marred the perfect spring day. Cool breezes blew off the ocean and pure rain would fall before sunset. He had always cherished the rain, enjoying its wetness against his thick hide. Jerad flexed one yellow hand, pushed back the sleeve of his robe and let the strong radiation from the sun bathe him.

  “Why has no one detected this poison?” He didn’t put into words his feeling that such a fine day put the lie to Cossia’s claim. It felt good in the sun. She caught the sense of his emotions.

  “We are dealing with problems beyond our understanding,” she said. “Fordyne believed that nothing could be known unless it could be quantified. He failed. And from that we learn a valuable lesson. We must trust our instincts. Not in science but in emotion.” She thumped her rounded chest. “Here lies the answer, not here.” Cossia tapped her skull.

  Jerad shrugged. Fordyne’s death had left him stunned and peculiarly hollow wit
hin. Such dishonor for a researcher he had so admired.

  “We must try. We must solve this problem or we will all end up stripped of life and dignity.” Cossia glanced over one of her sloping shoulders. The heavenly flight crews had already prepared the death tree for another funeral. They had developed an efficient system for their task; too many left this world for the promise of clear skies and limitless flight.

  “We must try,” Jerad repeated listlessly. “Perhaps Dial’s project is the answer.”

  Jerad doubted any answer to their problems existed, especially such a feather-headed one as Dial pursued.

  * * *

  The riots raged only a few blocks down the street. Cossia and Jerad peered out through a slit cut in the thatched wall of their refuge.

  “It’s no use, Cossia. They are caught in the throes of hysteria. The mob will destroy all Memo before dawn.”

  “If only we could understand. The answer is so close. I feel it!”

  Jerad nodded. He, too, sensed their nearness to understanding. They had taken Fordyne’s folders and gone over them, the numbers burning into their brains throughout long nights until they saw the clean, neat columns intruding into their dreams—and their nightmares. But they had studied these past two years since Fordyne had died in disgrace. To no avail.

  The Chief of Rules had been assassinated. The Council’s attempts to restore order had failed with the rise of one demagogue after another. Each subsequent fanatical leader brought civilization closer to the brink of dishonor. Any would-be leader who attempted to preserve discipline in the capital was not a leader for long. The mobs usually rebelled and destroyed them, as everything of worth was being destroyed.

  Worst of all, even those such as Dial with his strange notion of escaping the planet had vanished in the ensuing years. All that remained to them was preserving what they could of their culture in hopes of a reborn society at some later, less chaotic, time.