Recognizing the face, I grunted, “What is the meaning of this?”
“Who is it that you see?”
“Shwann.” What was he doing shrouded in a black overcoat?
“Yes, that’s right.” The young man smiled.
And then innumerable footsteps surged like a tide from the entrance, and a mob crashed through the door. There were more of them this time. The policemen that packed into the room exceeded a hundred.
Shrouded in black, Shwann remained collected as one might expect, and I too remained perfectly still, this time stunned by another face that confronted me. I uttered a name I did not expect to repeat. “Shwann?”
“That is the name of your apprentice.” Shwann brushed back his blue cloak, revealing gold insignia on the shoulder and chest of his armor underneath. Engraved on his chest was the insigne of a noble family that might be forever emblazoned in anyone’s memory.
It was the insigne of House Voyevoda.
“My name is Schranz, the 249,974,031st Lord of House Voyevoda,” said Shwann solemnly. “I became your apprentice because I thought it a shame to lose your skill and these creations with no one to succeed you. Your creations may serve my House in battle, but I will not allow them to pass into the hands of anyone who refuses to show his face.”
When I turned to where Shwann pointed, the second black-shrouded Shwann had pulled his hood over his face. “Forgive me, but I cannot reveal my identity at this time.”
Stepping forward, Shwann—or Lord Voyevoda—grabbed hold of the man’s hood and cried in disbelief the moment he pulled it off. The shouts of the policemen and my own that followed shook the workshop.
The black-shrouded figure now revealed a face that was mine. “Who do you see now?” he asked.
“Master Monde,” Shwann gasped.
“Indeed, I am he.”
The eyes of everyone in the room ricocheted between me and my doppelganger in the black shroud, as Shwann said, “But which is—”
“Do not be alarmed,” said my double as he pulled the hood over his face again. “Who am I now?” He pulled back the hood, and it was Shwann again. “And now?”
As he pulled the hood on and off again, he assumed the face of the policeman next to Shwann. And then the policemen next to him, and next to him.
Before any of us recovered our senses, the man, his face shrouded in the hood again, said, “I am each and every one of you. As well as the selves you do not know, and the totality of the worlds you have yet to know. One such world desires your two creations as its own. There, they together shall become an irreplaceable existence in the world’s history.”
“Where is this world you speak of?” asked Shwann in a thread-thin voice.
“I do not know, for my part is but to collect them and send them on their journey.” A blue hand rose and beckoned.
The policemen cleared a path, and my two creations rose several centimeters from the floor and glided to their places on either side of the black-shrouded figure.
Suddenly, Shwann swung his right hand over his head and brought down the gold knife and plunged it into the black figure’s chest.
“Now if you will excuse us.” The black figure bowed. The knife in his chest quivered. As the figure turned and headed for the door, the two steel shadows followed. No one dared pursue or stand in their way. We had all been paralyzed by terror.
As I watched the steel woman drift past me, I felt as if a spike had been driven into my eye.
My shock did not dissipate for a long while after they left and the echo of their footsteps faded. “Did you see?” I asked Lord Schranz Voyevoda—no, Shwann—my entire body dripping in a cold sweat. “What will befall the world after their arrival? I fear its history will be a cursed one.”
“What did you see?” Shwann asked.
Try as I might to answer with the dignity of a master addressing his apprentice, my voice quivered. I said, “The woman also grew fangs.”
†
In the end, my fate traced a path up the platform steps to the guillotine. The young lord did not appear at my beheading. When the cold blade was brought down upon my neck, I felt gratified for my fortunate end.
I intuited that those who would encounter my creations would never be so fortunate as to greet a death as peaceful and swift as mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba in 1949. He graduated from the Aoyama Gakuin University of Law and, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, began publishing supernatural fiction in the early 1980s. One of the most prolific authors in the field, Kikuchi has published over three hundred books and still produces multiple novels per year. He has enjoyed international success as a novelist, and much of his work has been adapted for manga and anime. Kikuchi is the author of the ongoing series Vampire Hunter D. Wicked City, A Wind Named Amnesia, and Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula number among his works available in English.
HAIKASORU
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
VIRUS: THE DAY OF RESURRECTION
—SAKYO KOMATSU
In this classic of Japanese SF, American astronauts on a space mission discover a strange virus and bring it to Earth, where rogue scientists transform it into a fatal version of the flu. After the virulent virus is released, nearly all human life on Earth is wiped out save for fewer than one thousand men and a handful of women living in research stations in Antarctica. Then one of the researchers realizes that a major earthquake in the now-depopulated United States may lead to nuclear Armageddon …
SELF-REFERENCE ENGINE
—TOH ENJOE
This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.
Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds. Note your position in space-time at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled “Japanese” is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.
From the mind of Toh EnJoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges.Do not operate heavy machinery for one hour after reading.
AND ALSO FEATURING WORK BY HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
—EDITED BY HAIKASORU
A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese! Includes Hideyuki Kikuchi’s “Mountain People, Ocean People.”
WWW.HAIKASORU.COM
Table of Contents
Copyright page
Dramatis Personae
Prologue: A FRAGMENT FROM A HISTORICAL TEXT
Chapter 1: GUARDIAN OF THE FRONTIER
Chapter 2: EXTERMINATING THE INTRUDERS
Chapter 3: THE PRIVY COUNCIL’S DECISION
Chapter 4: CRIMSON SONG
Chapter 5: THE ARCHER NAMED ARROW
Chapter 6: THE BENEVOLENT OVERLORD
Chapter 7: DUCHESS MIRCALLA
Chapter 8: RAIN OF JAVELINS
Chapter 9: CONSPIRATORIAL PURGATORY
Chapter 10: THE FIERY CHARIOT
Afterword
Bonus: AN IRREPLACEABLE EXISTENCE
About the Author
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Noble V: Greylancer Page 21