Asian Lanterns: A Science Fiction Murder Mystery

By Dale A. Kagan

The Special Forces Council taught Governor Eccles how to develop a telepathic block. Now their telepaths cannot find out what he is trying to hide. Four members of the elite Council, an adjunct of the military, are summoned to Governor Eccles' estate on the Planet Dauropa. Eleven people are present at the Governor's mansion. One of them is a murderer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 15, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462833160

Book preview

*Mystery* CAST OF CHARACTERS

John Eccles—white-haired, Governor of Demner, ruler of Northern Continent

T’Ghere—Arbiter of Trade for all worlds, Judge and expert on investigating problems with world commerce.

N’Bron—Diplomatic Spy Delegate to Conference mourning Durgau, elected leader of Eta

Lim Miusov and her son, Pasha—Onyx Council. Telepath experts.

Lt. Steve Winters—Survival expert, Security Officer, assigned to protect the Councilmen

Jules Cajal—diplomat from Eta Cassiopiae, next star system to Dauropa

Bordau—diplomatic aide to Cajal

Robert Moncrief—Council agent, Onyx Council. He came to investigate a smuggler on Dauropa.

Aaron Tennyson—wealthy free trader from planet Jalug, next in line for Trade Arbiter of Federation worlds

Wendnagel—Heir to Northern Continent rule on Dauropa

Raymond Berquist—Onyx Councilman

Michael Westerman—Leader of the Onyx Council

Klemp—Second in command, Onyx Council, on Earth. He sent the Councilmen to investigate a mystery.

Chapter 1

DIPLOMATIC CONFERENCE

I

2730 A.D. The Oligarch from Dauropa, Northern Continent, dressed in her finest, entered the home of Governor Eccles, newly elected from the choice of many candidates. His residence was vacant for 20 years, because no former Governor would reside there. It was old fashioned, wood columns, fire places and many archaic pieces of furniture had little in the way of electnor4ic modern gadgets. The newly elected Governor promptly commissioned a wood carver to set up a modern technical marvel, a architect who would design and disguise modern hi tech in a low tech, mirrored room.

The fire place was lit, and tables were set up around the room with steins of beer and cordials for the Diplomatic Corps from Earth, Cassiopeia and Draconis. No Jalogans had been invited.

The Oligarch ruler of Northern Continent raised her stein and toasted the host, and his niece. She addressed the visiting dignitaries concerning the master plan to recover the economic fortunes of the estates of the land owners of the nearby cities.

Last year, the lost city of Jalog had emerged. After several centuries of isolation, trade with Terran and Jalogans had begun. Now suddenly, the plans suddenly became unworkable. The economy of both planets had collapsed. Trade with both city and planet Jalug had actually collapsed once before, two hundred years earlier, leaving the Terran colonists stranded on the planet with no support from Earth. They had become natives and spoke today only the Jalogan language, like their alien neighbors.

Jalug and Dauropa were sister planets in the Thok Jalug/Thok Dauropan systems. The emerging planets survived the economic crash, Eta Cassiopeia, the next star system over, near Draconis, broke away from Earth and Jules Cajal and Bordau were there to represent the Diplomatic Corps.

The Governor announced the tragic death of Durgau, father of his craftsman Aargau. Stunned silence followed. Durgau had been newly elected leader of Cassiopeia. The details were still sketchy. He had contested the leadership with the old guard who had served two oligarchic terms. The constitution had stated only two terms were possible. However, Durgau had not known that the old guard were planning to amend the constitution and when he ran he was eliminated. This was not the usual practice on Cassiopeia and Governor Eccles had called this meeting, originally, because he was worried about future problems in the sector.

Cajal sadly reported the absence of the senior consul to Dauropa, pleading illness. He had been appointed and was escorting no other than Eccles beautiful niece. He made an unusual spectacle of himself as he flirted with the woman who was half his age, trying to gain favor of her uncle. His side kick, O’Connor was dubious and puzzled, suspecting she was a plant trying to find out what was happening on his planet. He kept checking the data system on his palm for needles to indicate she was wearing a wire.

Last to enter were the kinsman of the oligarch, the founding lord of Demner, the last member of the ruling oligarch party. He was tall and well mannered, well advanced in age. He spent the time in deep thought and rarely spoke. His younger cousin was Wendnagel, a telepath and empathy who had little training. She had a mysterious cottage n the foothills of the mountain, beside a brook. No one except close members of the family ever went there. It was her retreat from the busy city.

The report from Eccles began: The last sequence of a master plan was n place. They would prop up the stock market with a massive infusion of funds. Then hope the economy would regain its momentum. Sadly no one thought it would be enough.

Local educators predicted population would expand faster than the businesses could make products. The resources to feed, cloth and educate everyone were not present. Either they cut back on growth or they would run out of coal, wood, water, sand for electronic circuits, and labor could not be released from any more farmland without creating a famine.

A Trade consortium had been established. The letter Eccles had received was a request to send a trade rep to a conference. They wanted to set up a system of payments between planets that would not cause a balance of payment deficit for one party.

It was a unique challenge. No one had ever set up a s system quite like this one.

Computers were running the markets. Parts ware ordered as products were built. Shipments were made at the last minute. Cost of everything went up or down at random, causing huge fluctuations in inventory costs, labor costs and profit or loss. The nerves of most business men were at the edge. Some had committed suicide.

No one thought a 24/7 system would last because as time went on, people burned out. So a plan was devised that all Internet and computers on financial banks would shut down for 24 hours at once. People would stop working for one day a week. The burnout of good people who worked around the clock was expected to stop. the lifetime of the average working person effectively was shortened by impossible business hours followed by failure to remember to rest at month’s end, cost the government thousand of hours in lost time due to health problems.

The shut down was due in four hours. The lights would not go out as they were automatic. All computers, including moving furniture, stoves, radios, Internet and TV would blackout. the Diplomatic Conference decidedly would be secret. No recording devices would go on or off.

TG’here was part of was a party of Oligarchs, the rulers of Demner, Northeast continent on Dauropa, and The Family, were the oligopolists, leaders of the six corporate bodies that ran, the economy or thought they did.

Next there were the Trade Arbitrators, the rulers of the business world and the court of last resort. Without them the world economic program was a disaster. In the past no single country could ship a product from an overseas plant, and expect to maintain any of the guards or safety measures required by the home world. Many businesses made unpopular choices, ran local natives salaries into low digits until their companies went bankrupt, or sold native products such as local delicacies without telling other consumers at other worlds the firm had genetically altered the product with cheaper molecules that actually could kill someone if eaten. No local court could overturn a product made in another place.

So the great overseeing body of the Trade Arbitrator changed the playing field. Everyone had to keep the same standards. This corrected most of the labor and product problems, making the consumer in charge instead of the producer.

Buyer Beware changed to what does the consumer want or need. This had created a 6 year boom. However, the 40 year draught cycle in the Mediterranean on Earth had untimely started, triggering world wide decline. No one had remembered there was such a problem. Each history book written after 2000 had left it out.

The return of smugglers to Thok system and other planets were a sign of troubled times. And our story begins . . . .

Aaron advised Lt. Winters to shut off his recording system for making reports. What Winters was about to hear was classified as For Eyes Only and not for anyone else to see.

Aaron explained, All of Dauropa and all of Jalug were once in a unified civilization that included contact with a group of loosely organized life forms called in Basic ‘GALFOS’. About four percent of the Jalug population participated in this advanced culture. Everyone; else were farmers. I have traveled all over Jalug and found homes of primitive people and nothing else . . . that is until I discovered this was for show for uninvited Earthers. Then I learned a whole other picture.

Aaron gripped his bottle of wine and poured a drinks but spared the rest for another day. He did not want to get drunk as this was his most important speech of the year, for the Council to hear. I was not reporting anything but farms and simple towns, until the daughter of a noble leader invited me to his home, not unlike all the other towns and provinces of Jalug. Also, it held no special significance on any map.

"Oh, well. Then I should explain there are three classes of Jalogan, one is a centipedal with round heads, one is a 6 legged near-centipede with dragon-like pterodactyl heads and one is a group of humans. The humans settled some time back and live barely above the level of the cities that have little or no plumbing or amenities above basic level. Now it appears the civilization collapsed several centuries ago and the GALFOS visitors all left, except for the beings called the Shades who were left on Dauropa.

"My final appointment was to see if I could establish trade relations to sell bicycles. For some reason the nobleman trusted me. So he took out a book that I had seen before that was for fortune-tellers. He did not do the usual ritual chants. I have seen them used all over Jalug except in the city of the Citadel, where nobody conducts business without keeping one eye over one’s shoulder. He un-wrapped this one, which was a page by page carefully hand-painted original of the other tools of the trade. I thought he just wanted to start out trade business with a good luck charm. I looked at the bars and spaces on each page, representing the concepts of good and evil, or male and female. The representations of these shapes are all over the tribal communities. The shapes are called I No Wan.

"I was given to look at them and study them for some time. That day I slept at the vast home of the nobleman. When I awoke, I remembered that they used to say there, that a jar was only useful for its emptiness inside. I also noted that the organization of the shapes resembled double number systems.

"My math is sketchy but I recall somewhere that a civilization on Earth used a number system based on 12, with E and T as the last two digits. It was called the base 12 system. My home uses base 10. Our host had an number system based on binary numbers and I’m afraid I failed to grasp it for several months until I came to the word GALFOS.

"The Galactic Federation of Space as we call them had been in the area of the sector for a long period before we humans came. We have a rule no high tech goes to the Jalogan culture. GALFOS did not seem to have any trouble with their technology level, however. And a pyramid. The ruins of a lost pyramid are in the hillside far from the villages.

"These are step pyramids in Jalog. One also exists or the base of one exists, in Wendnagel’s side of the Demner mountains on our sister planet, Dauropa. In the GALFOS empire, the ones they use in other systems all require a computer to construct.

"We are in serious trouble if we sell Jalogans anything more complicated than what we have already done.

"I figure we are 2,000 years behind them in computer applications. We are fooled by the appearance of all the primitive homes, also the lack of consumer goods as only 4% of the population are allowed to have most of the goods.

On Earth, this was also true of all ancient civilizations until the early 1400’s when a green revolution hit Europe and the three field system allowed more people to leave the farms. They then could feed the growing cities and mass production of goods became a way of life. We are fooled by a clever scheme because in Europe all inventions are eventually out in the open. But in other societies such as Jalog, all is secret. You have to know how to read the code in how many steps are in the front yard and what size the windows are, to construct the codes to read the binary math.

Aaron got up and poured the wine into Wendnagel’s glass and toasted her.

I have the pleasure to invite you all to visit me when I retire. I plan to visit the Thok" of legend and see if he is the last survivor of GALFOS. However, the natives have no clue about this and have evolved a myth and so have written stories that are so far from reality I am now venturing to be afraid to leave the main city. Let me tell you why. They think I