Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense (7 page)

There were more roars of support from the videoscreen delegates. Rock had pulled the chestnuts of civilians out of the fire more than once. “Screw the rules,” Rock said emphatically, “the damned world can’t wait for niceties like Roberts’ Rules!” He smiled slyly, “Anyway, the emergency rules say I can call for end of debate. The hour is up. Let’s vote . . . now!”

He had the chairman there. Quickly there was a chorus of beeps from the walls. The lights indicating the vote by the rural communities and far-flung cities calling for approval of Rockson’s proposal was largely blue for yes. Rock’s motion was supported by a majority of the video-screen delegates.

The chairman paled and banged his gavel. “I’m sad to say, debate is ended,” he admitted. “We too must vote.”

Someone, not realizing the tide was already against the anti-Rockson forces, said, “When we win this vote, let’s throw Rockson and Schecter out of Century City! Let’s exile them and their anti-democratic friends.”

The chairman said, “I call the vote.”

“I second,” Bing-Ling chuckled out, knowing the truth.

The chairman said, “You all should press the yes or no buttons on your consoles. But let me warn you all to vote against—”

Detroit pulled the pin out of a grenade and held it up. He pretended to toss it at the chairman, who winced and ducked. Mary Smart shrieked. When McGrugle saw the grenade hadn’t actually been let fly, he muttered a few curse words. Detroit said between clenched teeth, “Call the vote properly.” He again waved the grenade. The chairman sputtered, “All in favor of giving Rockson his stuff and his blank check, press
blue;
those opposed to Rockson press
red,
for no.”

Rockson winked over at Detroit, who put his grenade back in his bandolier, and then sat down and pressed the blue button. The tally from Century City was going up on the board, and it was mostly red. Century City, according to the Re-United States of America’s lopsided constitution, had nearly as many votes as all the other free cities combined. This would be a close one.

“Mrs. Chen, would you count the dots?” Detroit asked.

It was an amazing fact that only a visual count was made of votes in the council. No one trusted computer tallys, not after the famous vote scam of ’96.

Bing-Ling started mumbling out a count, but Rock counted faster. His shoulders sagged He could see that he’d lost by the great majority in the Century City Chamber, though he’d carried most of the outlying cities by a large margin. That margin was not enough to swing the vote to his side because of a number of abstentions.

“The mad proposal by Rockson is defeated,” the chairman laughed. “I expressly forbid, by executive order, that Rockson leave the city for one month. Nor do I allow Schecter to enter his science labs, nor experiment with any nuclear materials for a month.” He banged the gavel. “Council is dismissed.”

“Is that legal?” Chen whispered.

Rock shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna do what I have to do.”

As the meeting broke up, the Ninja guards prevented any serious injuries when the “Pro-Rockson Three”—the owls—were attacked by several of the naysayers.

As the victorious “Slime-Faction” delegates (that’s what Rock called those who opposed him) slapped each other on the back in happiness, the Rock Team took the exit behind the dais. This exit was also being used by Mary Smart and her friend Chairman McGrugle.

Rockson brushed hard against the chairman as he passed him, and McGrugle lost his balance. The Chairman fell on his butt. Mary Smart rushed to help him up, saying, “Oh! Is my honey bunny hurt? Did that bad, bad man—”

Rock snickered along with McCaughlin, Detroit, and the others as they shuffled by their enemies. “Rockson, you shouldn’t have done that,” Chen admonished. But he also half-laughed.

Archer slammed Rockson’s back with his ham-hock-sized palm and said, “Meee
like
that!”

Six

S
checter was out in the corridor already, for he was determined to speak to Rockson and had come around the long way.

“How the hell did you get here so fast?” Rock asked.

“My high-speed artificial legs! I can go forty miles per hour.” Schecter’s legs had been blown off years ago in a Soviet attack. The scientist had created unique artificial limbs to compensate. They were, he claimed, better than the originals. “Listen Rock, normally I abide by council decisions. But not this time.” He drew Rockson aside from his men and leaned over to whisper in Rock’s ears, “Be at the southwest gate of the city at 9
A.M.
with your men and some good weapons. I’ll bring—well, you’ll see. The less you know now, the better. If we succeed in saving the earth, I want to be the only one who is shot for treason. If we don’t save it, there’s no problem about that. I’ll try to arrange for the plane, but there will be difficulties. Bring seven days’ trek gear. You and your team might have to walk to the rocket.”

Rock raised his eyebrows. “You want us to
walk
to the MILIS? Impossible.”

“C.J. will bring the ’brids, if he can,” Schecter said. “I’ll tell him how important it is to bring Snorter, your horse. But well all be watched tonight—especially you, Rock. So you do nothing until 8
A.M.
I’ll create a diversion then and you can gather your equipment then.”

“Will you get me the nuke device?” Rock asked. “They’ll surely guard the nuke materials in the storage depot with redoubled force, expecting a try at them.”

“Don’t worry,” Schecter smiled knowingly.

Rock went back to his men and told them something was up. He gave a few instructions as to what supplies to gather. Then Rockson told them to get some shut-eye. He instinctively started walking toward his room. Would Rona still be there? No . . . she was working the graveyard shift in the chem analysis department. They were working overtime, trying for a way to defeat a stubborn problem with the water recycling units.

He fingered the apartment key in his pocket. Charity’s key.
Hmmm.
The earth was three weeks from destruction . . . this was no time to sleep alone. Besides, it would be easier to go about his business in the morning if they didn’t know where he was tonight. Besides, Charity’s looks gave him a real hard-on, that was for sure. Rock decided to head for her room.

He knocked lightly on Nurse Charity’s blue door and got no answer. Then he used the key. As he entered, she switched on a dim lamp near the bed and sat up so the sheets slipped off her large, firm breasts. Her pink nipples looked succulent.

“It’s a little late,” Rock admitted. “So if you want, I could leave and—”

“No! Don’t leave. Come here. I’m glad you decided to see me,” she insisted. He noticed she had red silk sheets.

“Are you naked?” Rock pulled off the covers entirely and saw that she slept with nothing on but her gold jewelry. She also had a few tattoos, the ones she’d teased him about having. There were many, and they were very patriotic. Imagine: tattoos depicting the faces of all presidents! He kissed each of forty-six faces over ten minutes as she moaned. Then he was told in moaning tones to “search my body for the first seven.”

Rock found five easily, the sixth with some difficulty. But it was very hard to find the seventh. George Washington’s location was a real surprise. Rockson vowed that he’d never tel! anyone where he’d found Honest George!

Charity’s action belied her moaned-out claim to being a virgin. She must have been a
long
time without a boyfriend, Rock decided, for they went at it fast and furious, after his search for the presidents warmed her up. It was an exhausting but wonderful ride into America’s past!

Rockson felt he’d hardly been asleep for an hour when his watch alarm went off. “Gotta go, hon,” he mumbled, getting out of the sheets groggily.

“Where?” Charity demanded. She turned on the light, and saw it was nearly 8
A.M.
The light suddenly went off. Rock checked its switch. It wasn’t the bulb, either. All over the city there were shouts. Rock opened the door of the dark room and saw that the corridor was lit only by greenish emergency lights.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Rock grabbed a coveralled technician running by. “What’s up?”

“Don’t know,” the man gasped, “the power is cut all over the city. Got to go!”

Rock came back into the nurse’s room and stood in the glow of the flashlight she was shining at him. “Hon, it’s all right . . . it’s just a power outage. The usual snafu.” But Rockson suspected it wasn’t. This was Schecter’s doing. His distraction. The city was run mainly on nuclear power. Now Rockson knew where Schecter was going to get the nuclear bomb. The wily old man was stealing the city’s reactor core. He could convert it into a weapon, if anyone could. What a fox Schecter was!

Rock slipped into his rumpled pants and shirt. “I gotta go, hon. See you—soon.”

“Where you going? To help restore power?”

“Don’t count on power going back on for a long while, honey. I’m going—up there.” Rock pointed toward the ceiling. “Way, way up there.”

“Come back anytime,” she said. “And I mean it.”

It was also morning in Peru. Killov’s chief scientist, Petrin Kraznov, led the KGB leader through a dank corridor of the secret chamber that his men had found far below the main Machu Pichu Pyramid, farther down than any archaeologist had even previously thought of digging. The tunnel had been spotted by earth sensor equipment much more sensitive than the crude twentieth-century detection devices. Killov had been quick to realize that somewhere in these hidden chambers might lie the secret of how the ancients had lifted the immense stones to build the city of Machu Pichu. Some of those stones weighed a hundred tons, yet they were raised to the top of the mountain to build the temple and walls. Killov’s hunch had proved correct. Last week, the digging teams had reached these dank, tomblike rooms and found records on ancient tablets of gold, records untarnished by time. Some were in a strange language, others in the ancient Inca dialect. His scientists had since been hard at work translating the tablets. Already they had produced results. The tablets had been about how to operate heavy-looking machines that lay dormant in the corners of the ancient storehouse. The so-called stone-moving equipment, it turned out, were anti-gravity devices.

Killov was anxious to have the rest of the records translated. What other secrets of immense power did the Incas have? Where did they get these fantastic-looking machines all around them? Krasnov pointed out a dozen dusty dull gray anti-gravity machines in his flashlight. “No ancient people built
those.”

Krasnov spoke in awed tones to his leader as they stepped carefully through the mossy corridors of calcified stone, taking in the wonders. “We know, your excellency, that the Incas were visited a thousand years ago by inhabitants of a small asteroid that swung by Earth, an asteroid known to the Incas as “Mu.” It was the asteroid’s highly advanced inhabitants—the Muans, a race similar to humans—that gave the Incas the anti-gravity devices they used to build Machu Pichu. Now we can use those devices. They still function. The Muans gave the Incas much other knowledge. The aliens made only a short visit to Earth, for the asteroid flashed by quickly. The Muans had to return to Mu before the asteroid was out of range of their means of transport.”

“What
was
that means?” Killov’s eyes gleamed.

“Some sort of light beam; not a rocket.”

“This is true, Krasnov? You’re not making this up? This is not just some legend?”

In answer to the KGB leader, Krasnov swept his flashlight beam across the vast array of ancient machinery. “All this is certain proof. Alas, they did not leave the secret of light-beam power on Earth. The asteroid people told the Incans they were not yet ready for that.”

“Not
ready,”
Killov muttered.

“We have reason to believe, Your Excellency, according to the ancient records stored here, that the asteroid is returning. It will again pass by the earth in a few weeks, maybe a month. Alas, all its inhabitants are probably dead by now. The Muans had come to Earth to ascertain if they could live here. They wished to abandon their dying home world. But the Muans had a germ-free environment, and Earth’s many germs and viruses made it impossible for the Muans to stay here. Indeed, there is mention in the ancient codex that the Muans carried a host of plagues back with them to the asteroid. Probably all have perished on that tiny world as a result.”

“The whole story,” Killov said, handling the fragile gold tablets they had come to, piled high on a table, “is on these sheets of gold?”

“Yes, Master—and we have verified the approach of Mu toward Earth with our space scanners. It is already inside the orbit of Jupiter, so our radio search picked it up.”

“Radio search? Don’t you mean telescopes?”

“No. The asteroid is emitting radio signals.”

“Are they intelligible? Are there still people—er—Muans there?”

“Today, Master, we cracked the language barrier. We have translated the signal in our new mega-translator, which was keyed to ancient Incan text words.”

“Get to the point,” Killov demanded, crushing a fragile gold page as Krasnov winced. “I suppose this means that there are still inhabitants on Mu.” Killov was greatly interested. He could see how this turn of events could help him in his aims for world power. If he could get
all
the secrets of the Muans . . . “Ask the Muans to return here,” Killov suggested slyly.

“Sorry, Your Excellency,” Krasnov lamented. “This wondrous race of beings—they’re all dead. The signals are automatic. A beacon set up at least a thousand years ago. There will be no visit. There—”

Killov motioned for the man to halt. The master-of-madness felt tired. He sat down, feeling suddenly dejected. This was all very interesting, and he could use the stone-lifting power equipment. But he had hoped, when Krasnov had spoken of the light-beam travel, that there would be so much more. At least a damned new drug. He needed a new drug.

“Imagine a world long dead broadcasting,” Krasnov said.