The Last President by John Barnes

him at the skull-festooned outer gate. After almost an hour of too many sentries, skulls, and pompous Shakespearo-Tolkienesque greetings, he now stood before Lord Robert and his . . . lordlings? flunkies?
Flunklings
, Roger decided.
    Lord Robert smiled. “The door is closed, and everyone in here is past that ritual ceremony bullshit, ’kay? Let’s deal. So Daybreak is your enemy. It ain’t ours but it’s not exactly our friend either, and we don’t want it to own us like it does the tribes, got me? We’ve been using your James Hendrix’s pamphlet about turning off the seizures, and we want whatever else you know.”
    Roger said, “You don’t need to trade for any of that information, and you won’t even if we go to war with you later. We
want
people to free themselves.”
    Lord Robert tightened his lips and bared his teeth. “We’ve broke with Daybreak, and put all our necks in the noose. We’d like to ally with the biggest thug on the block.”
    Roger made himself speak calmly. “Lord Robert, as long as we are being truthful, we know you,
you personally
, tortured our agent Steve Ecco to death. You’re asking us to forgive a lot.”
    â€œYeah, it’s a lot to forgive.” In the warm, flicking lantern light, Lord Robert’s face was as innocent of lines as a little boy’s. “But
you
need allies too.”
    After a long silence, Roger Jackson said, “What did you have in mind?” He felt slightly sick.
    4 DAYS LATER. CASTLE EARTHSTONE. 1:00 PM LOCAL SOLAR TIME. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2026.
    Roger Jackson crouched comfortably in the slave shack where they had hidden him from view, trying not to listen to Lord Robert’s speech to the people of Castle Earthstone outside in the main yard.
He’s not much of a speaker, but then supposedly Moses wasn’t either.
    So far it had been an hour-long bragalogue on the career of Lord Robert, Mighty in Battle.
Quite a promotion for Robert Cheranko, electric company lineman less than two years ago, to Lord Robert, Torturer and Slayer of the Tied Up and Helpless.
    The slave shack in which Roger was concealed was a lean-to against the main wall. Clean rugs and blankets were laid carefully over the pea-gravel floor; the fire pan from an old outdoor grill was embedded in one corner, with a chimney-duct making a Z shape across the ceiling to the high corner above the door.
Probably fairly efficient,
he thought. He smiled at himself for that; you could make an engineering student into a scout but you couldn’t make him not be an engineering student.
    When Lord Robert finished bragging about what a brave guy he was, he revealed that he was also the true interpreter of the True Daybreak of Lord Karl, which had been perverted by the Council of Daybreak. True Daybreak was opposed to poverty, misery, slavery, and forced infanticide.
    I notice rape is still okay, though,
Roger thought.
    In a few sentences, Lord Robert freed all the slaves, granted them rights to marry and raise children, and commanded a cleanup for the boneyard of dead slaves and exposed newborns, with proper graves, a memorial, and freedom for everyone to pray and leave flowers.
    Of course “for the duration of this emergency, my officers and I will still need your complete loyalty—”
    The roar of applause made Roger wonder if Robert had arranged for claques.
Probably; he thought of everything else. Still, around here, a plain old feudal tyranny is reform.
    He watched through a crack in the shed as the crowd’s passion and joy mounted; at the height of it, Lord Robert raised the Castle Earthstone spirit stick into the air, and the crowd shrieked with pure ecstasy.
    â€œI free you! Follow the True Daybreak!” Robert smashed the spirit stick across his thigh, breaking it in half.
    A Daybreak seizure struck two thousand people in the courtyard simultaneously, the soldiers as helpless as the