Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four Read online

  That question’s been answered by as many people as there are stars in the universe,” the count said. “But not one of them can claim to have the true answer. Perhaps ...”

  As Braujou paused, the left hand inquired, “Perhaps what?”

  It wouldn’t have been strange if the question had gone unanswered. Nevertheless, the count replied, “Perhaps we all knew what the real answer was. Or rather, we know even now."

  “Count Braujou, have you ever wanted something that you couldn’t have?”

  The count fell silent at this new and abrupt query. The left hand’s question seemed as effective as an arrow through the very heart of the Nobleman. The voice that issued from the coffin was terribly shaken. And it soon swelled with deep emotion.

  “Science, magic, civilization,” the count said, his words hanging like castles in the air. “We reached the pinnacle of each, yet one dream still remains unfulfilled—I can’t help but think that.”

  “An unfulfilled dream? A dream? Nothing as warm and fuzzy as a dream exists in your world,” the left hand sneered. “If you have a dream, then make it a reality. Accomplish your every desire—that’s the Noble way. Is that why you allowed the human race to survive? So that your unfulfilled dream wouldn’t be just a dream?”

  If the count had responded, he might’ve offered a valuable hint to an issue spanning the history of humanity and the Nobility. However, that was not to be. A warning siren sounded through the air.

  “There are life-form readings up ahead,” a woman’s voice informed them. “Two people and one cyborg horse. One is human; the other appears to be a synthesized life form. Distance: two miles.”

  “It seems we’ve got one of the kids and an assassin here,” the left hand said sourly. “We’ve been chasing D for two days now. Did we finally catch up to him?”

  Just as it said, the two of them—although technically one of them was only a fraction of a person—had left the fortress about an hour after D set off. Transformed into withered branches, all the enemy troops fell to the ground, leaving the fortress secure again. The cause of this was unknown. Having gone out of the fortress to assist D, Count Braujou quickly returned to Lamoa, got the Hunter’s left hand—which had been repairing the atomic reactor—and set out in his car. The assault on the fortress had already ceased. All that remained were androids, and the count and D’s left hand were solely concerned with the fate of the Dyalhis children and the Hunter’s whereabouts. A flying reconnaissance drone had also been dispatched, and it located where the earth had collapsed into the subterranean waterway, as well as where the battle had taken place. But the whereabouts of D, the Dyalhis children, and the assassins remained a mystery. Today, past noon on the third day out, the life-form radar had finally located someone they sought.

  “Give us a holographic projection,” the voice from the coffin ordered.

  The life-form radar didn’t respond to outward shapes; it perceived the chemical traces of living beings. It was the computer’s job to reconstruct their appearance.

  In the pitch blackness, a pair of figures appeared: Sue and a giant.

  “Is that you?” the left hand screeched toward the coffin, but realizing there would be no reply, it added, “No, I’m just kidding.”

  The giant was every bit as big as the count.

  “That guy calls himself Seurat. But with a big fella like that, that cyborg horse has gotta be strained to its limit. Are they taking a break or something?”

  “That is correct,” the female voice responded.

  “So, what do we do? Go outside and fight him?” the left hand asked sarcastically. Apparently it was rather peeved that its earlier joke had been ignored.

  “Stop the car,” the count said.

  Without a sound, without even a jolt, the car halted.

  It was now the sun-drenched middle of the day. What could the immobilized Braujou do? Making matters worse was the fact that their foe was the same giant, Seurat, who’d sent D flying.

  III

  Over the last two days, Sue had come to feel a certain sort of relief concerning Seurat. She couldn’t completely rid herself of the fear caused by his being an assassin sent by a Noble who wanted her dead, but aside from that she was convinced the giant would never hurt her. He hadn’t said a word to her. It was unclear whether he couldn’t speak or just didn’t feel like talking, but from the outset to this very moment he’d kept his silence. The source of Sue’s faith was the giant’s actions.

  Seurat had been incredibly lax. When they were riding the cyborg horse, Sue would sit in front of him and rock from side to side without the giant laying a hand on her. She was equally unconfined when the giant would get off the horse and walk after it became crushed under his weight. When they rested, he would trap her in one of his bizarre “mazes.”

  She was worried about Matthew, and she wasn’t about to just stroll into the lair of the very Noble who wanted them dead. Twice she’d tried to escape. When they stopped, she’d jumped off the horse and run before Seurat could make his maze. Both times Sue had encountered supernatural creatures. Fortunately, she hadn’t been caught unaware. The first was a spider dragon, which moved from tree to tree snaring its prey in the mucus excreted by its spherical body. The second was a bewilderer—a creature that used an illusion of a human woman to lure travelers closer. If Seurat hadn’t rushed in just in the nick of time and worked his magic with his club, she would’ve been eaten twice over.

  After her rescues, Sue fully expected a beating, but the giant didn’t treat her differently than he had before. As they traveled, he continued to leave her unfettered.

  Though the giant seemed like an automaton, he wasn’t, judging from the thoughtful way he reached into his own robe and took out an ointment to put on Sue’s injured feet. The timid movements of the gigantic figure coaxed a smile from Sue. The previous night, the giant had tried without success to apply the same medicine to the wound left by D’s needle. Unable to restrain herself any longer, the girl offered to put it on for him. The giant remained silent and continued his attempts. Though the wound was deep, it was tiny. All he had to do was apply the ointment liberally, but what would’ve been a small brush to an ordinary person looked to be the size of a sewing needle in the giant’s hand, and he seemed to put it on timidly.

  I wonder if his motor skills aren’t very sharp, Sue couldn’t help but think. Watching him try to do it twice, only to fail both times, Sue finally told him, “I’ll do that. Let me out of here, please.”

  The giant thought for a bit before granting her request.

  Taking the brush, she daubed the medicine on him. It was amazing how easy it was to do. Not saying a word, Seurat had taken the brush back from Sue and drawn a maze around her.

  Seurat now stared at the cyborg horse, which he’d put inside the same circle as Sue—it was the horse D had been riding. Seurat looked like an owner watching over his beloved steed. Sue realized that the reason they’d stopped pressing forward in the middle of the day was because the horse was fatigued. Had she not known what the giant really was, she’d have been completely at ease with him. The trip would’ve even been enjoyable.

  Sue felt an overwhelming tenderness coming over her. The next thing she knew, a soft melody was issuing from her mouth.

  Light and breeze that fill the woods Kindly take these words Tell him our yesterdays are forgotten But our memories of today will be deeper still Tomorrow, the departed will lie beneath the whispering grass His voice mine and mine alone

  Once she’d finished singing, she realized that the giant was no longer concentrating on the cyborg horse but was looking at her instead. Sue was a bit surprised.

  “What is it?” ’

  In his great wall of a face, narrow eyes blinked as if struggling with the light. “Your voice ... is nice,” Seurat said. “It made me remember . . . I was born ... in the woods . . . too . . . Born in a forest... far from here ... on a mountain . . .”

  “What mountain?” Sue asked in spit
e of herself, feeling a closeness to the giant for the first time.

  “I forget. . . But... it doesn’t matter . .. anyway.”

  “That’s not true. Why, it’s your—” Sue started to say, but then she fell silent. Hadn’t they themselves left their hometown? A feeling of loneliness clung to her bones like a bitter winter wind, freezing Sue in place. Her body trembled as if trying to shake itself free of that spell.

  “That’s not true. The place you were born is—”

  The sunlight filtering through the branches soaked up her voice. Her words seemed to glow. That glow became an elongated object headed straight for Seurat’s chest that then vanished into thin air. The hand missile in question would probably keep going in another direction for all time.

  Seurat stood up. Turning to look, he glared with such intensity in his eyes that Sue felt her breath taken away.

  “Count Braujou?”

  “It seems you’re safe and sound.” The count reached for a branch that hung in front of him and tried to snap it off, but the branch poked through his fist. “As you can see, I’m an illusion,” Braujou said. Though this three-dimensional representation was a collection of floating molecules, it seemed real enough.

  “That’s a maze, is it not?” said the Nobleman. “Whatever’s put inside it can’t be touched from outside. But you can’t strike back, either. Come on out of there.”

  Seurat’s massive form rose above the maze, making an unbelievable leap and colliding with the illusional Braujou before dashing clean through the Nobleman. In his right hand he carried his club, while a silvery pair of flaming arrows flew behind him, scoring direct hits just below either shoulder blade. It looked as if a boulder had bounded forward, and pillars of flame burst from either side of his chest. The instant the pair of hand missiles sank into him, the energy they contained transformed into million-degree shock waves.

  Seurat fell over, making the ground tremble. Unable to support such weight, the enormous tree that his gigantic form fell against toppled over, tossing up roots and soil in the process. Giant though he might be, Seurat couldn’t bear the million-degree heat waves spreading through his body. His form already shook with a death rattle.

  The missile attack had come from behind him—from the direction of the illusional Count Braujou. Indeed, they’d been launched from within his cape. Was the count not an illusion after all?

  Walking over to a form every bit as large as his own—one that now trembled with the pain of its death throes—the count grinned. “Depending on the level of cohesion of the floating particles, this illusion can approach solidity ... enough to launch real missiles or wield a spear. Hmm, you took two hand missiles and still aren’t dead? I shall have to take your head off now.”

  The count swung the long spear home with his right hand, but it passed through his fingers and jabbed into the ground about ten feet away at an angle. He’d put great power into his swing; it’d proven too much for the weak collection of molecules. That being the case, was the spear real?

  With a sheepish grin, Braujou pulled his spear out of the ground. His movements were cautious. Prodding Seurat’s torso with his foot, he rolled the giant onto his back. The wounds where the heat waves had burst from Seurat’s body narrowly missed his heart. That was what the count would be aiming for. Seurat pressed his right hand to the wound on the side of his chest. The spear was raised high.

  “Illusion or not, I’ll have you know it could be deemed an honor to be slain by someone bearing the likeness of Count Braujou,” the count jeered as he brought his spear down.

  Several hundredths of a second before the tip of it struck its mark, the Nobleman probably saw it—the unclosed circle Seurat had drawn over his heart with his right hand.

  The tip of the spear disappeared, followed by a good portion of the shaft.

  “What sort of foolishness is this?”

  The count’s mistake was trying to extract the spear. He had only about half of it back out when a sideways swipe of the club came toward his trunk. His spear went flying, and the club passed through his chest before the count made a great leap back, landing in the same place that his spear had fallen. Holding his weapon at the ready, he charged at Seurat. He appeared to be only a few steps from Seurat when something strange happened to the Nobleman. As if an invisible door had opened, he was drawn up into the air.

  Suddenly, there was silence. Seurat’s gargantuan form looked terribly out of place lying there in the golden sunlight. After about a minute of trying, Seurat managed to sit up and then put enough strength into his legs to stand. The two holes that had been blown in his chest were already fading. That was the unholy power of his replay cells.

  He intended to launch an attack on the count’s vehicle. Greater Noble or not, in this sunlit hour his foe would have no choice but to sleep in his coffin with nothing save the darkness for a companion. This was a perfect opportunity. No matter what kinds of mechanical security devices the car might be equipped with, it had to be worth a try.

  The giant was about to start walking, and then he looked over toward Sue. Normally as expressionless as a stone Buddha, his face rippled with shock waves.

  There was no sign of Sue.

  It was impossible to enter or escape one of his mazes, but in this case someone had completed the circle, which, ironically enough, made escape from it all too easy.

  CHAPTER 4

  I

  After Seurat had scanned his surroundings twice and then run off, there was a rustling in the bushes near where the cyborg horse was tethered to a tree, and then Sue appeared. Something strange rested on her left shoulder. It appeared to be a man’s left hand. If someone took a picture, it could’ve passed as an example of spirit photography. But that wasn’t all, as it actually said to her, “He left, eh?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Sue said.

  “You know, considering I just freed you and everything, you look mighty displeased.”

  “I’m not. I’m really happy. But he’s not a bad guy.”

  “Probably not,” the left hand said, agreeing with Sue for the first time. “But he’s the enemy just the same. In which case, you should hope he gets his as soon as possible . . . but I don’t suppose you’ve got that in you. Get up on the horse. Let’s get going.”

  “Going where?”

  “There’s a set place for us to rendezvous with the count’s vehicle. No matter how hard Seurat looks, he’ll never find the car. Still, I’ve gotta wonder where the hell D is at. He ain’t doing much of a job of guarding you, little girl, if I had to find you first.”

  “Um, D—well, D was. . .” “What happened?” the left hand asked her, and apparently it sensed something in her tone of voice, because it put even more strength into its fingers. And then it flipped around from behind Sue, did a little hop, and skillfully balanced itself on her shoulder again.

  “He had this power used on him, and then got knocked into the water . . .”

  “What?”

  Sue recounted the battle between D and the giant.

  “Hmm, it’d take more than that to keep a man like him down, but water—and running water at that—doesn’t sound good. Okay, what do you say we go hook up with Braujou, then go out looking for D?”

  “Good enough,” Sue said with a nod. She’d been concerned about D all along.

  The two rode along for about ten minutes before they came across Braujou’s car in the forest. On entering the vehicle, the voice of the count immediately rained down on them, saying, “I see you’re fine.”

  Hearing the unmistakable ring of relief and concern in his words, Sue was a bit bewildered.

  “You sounded quite nice,” he continued.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When you sang that song. What’s it called?”

  The girl finally remembered what he was referring to. The count must’ve heard her singing from his car so far away.

  “It doesn’t have a title. My mother used to sing it all the time.”

  “Hmm.
Very well, then. Off we go. He’ll be coming.”

  “Good,” Sue said, feeling relieved. Her rescue could be concluded without Braujou and Seurat having to fight each other.

  “Good? What’s good?” the count inquired.

  “I—I don’t want to see either of you get hurt,” the girl replied, feeling safe.

  But the count’s response carried a force and hostility that made Sue grow pale. “Oh, so the abducted lass is concerned for the well-being of her abductor? How interesting! Now I shall have to stay and see what this fellow is made of.”

  “That’s not what I meant to—” Sue countered desperately. “It’s just—he’s really not a bad person.”

  “Bad or not, he’s the enemy. He’s out to take your life. And we must defend you.”

  Sue didn’t notice the anger and envy running through the Nobleman’s words.

  “Where might the enemy be?” Braujou asked.

  The car’s female voice responded, “Six hundred and nine yards north-northwest of here, milord, and he’s currently wandering the periphery.”

  “Very well, take us there.”

  “Wait!” another voice interjected. It was the left hand sitting on Sue’s shoulder. Its forefinger pointed straight up at the ceiling—in Braujou’s direction. “I could’ve sworn you just said defending her is your job. Stay and fight, and you’ll only be courting disaster. You’d also be betraying your own promise.” Its tone was rather dignified.

  After a momentary silence, Braujou’s voice rang out. He sounded somewhat crestfallen as he said, “Disregard that last order. Return to the fortress.”

  As relief settled over Sue once more, the left hand tapped her lightly on the shoulder.

  Seurat could make out the sound of the car’s engine in the distance. Though he’d been running after it at full speed, he hadn’t caught a glimpse of the vehicle before he could no longer hear it. Determined to set out after it again immediately, he went back for the cyborg horse he’d left behind, but the mount had vanished, most likely the work of whoever had taken Sue—the same person who’d beaten the iron walls of his maze.