Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “I do not know much about it,” Mitsuko admitted, “but my friend said it ended long ago, more than a century past.”

  “Can that be true?” Dax said, his ruddy eyes brightening. “The machines still fight.”

  “Yes, the caravan with which we were traveling had the misfortune to come between several of the big fellows,” Mitsuko said. “One was Gaulish, the other of Rus.”

  “And the winner of the conflict?” Dax prompted.

  “There was no winner,” Mitsuko replied. “There never is in a war, only losers.”

  “Who lost most severely?”

  “Those of us on the caravan,” Mitsuko snapped.

  Dax found himself more and more perplexed by Mitsuko’s answers, by her ignorance of what was his reason for being. His perplexion only increased when the elderly one, Ikeda Yoshaki, awoke and began plying him with questions.

  “The war ended,” Yoshaki said, “on the year that on your calendar would be 1817.”

  “Impossible,” Dax declared. “I have fought often since then.”

  “With humans or mechanicals like yourself?” Yoshaki asked.

  “Battle-robs like me mostly, rarely the dreadnought class,” the robot answered. “Humans only when they attacked me, as they seemed aligned with nether side.”

  “Did they fight your war,” Mitsuko said, “or attack from fear?”

  “I…” Dax hesitated. Momentarily, his logic circuits heated, but he shunted power from them. “I don’t know.”

  “You may have encountered ragged pockets of humanity, but they were not fighting any war except that of survival,” Yoshaki told the robot. “For all intents and purposes, the war for which you were created, ended in 1817, when Gaul and the Tribes of Rus exchanged fire with nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Neither Gaul nor Rus ever recovered from their exchange. According to every source of knowledge I’ve encountered, the lands are poisoned, the populations wretched, and day-to-day survival is an uncertain prospect.”

  “No one has ever answered my signals,” Dax admitted.

  “Your commanders are long dead.”

  “I thought the situation would be different in the south,” Dax said. “I hoped to link up with another unit.” He touched the symbol of Gaul upon his breastplate. “I have served Gaul for two centuries.

  “To the people of these lands,” Yoshaki said, “your war is ancient history.”

  Dax sat before the fire, his bronze head inclined slightly downward on his articulated neck. His eyes were like dull coals. He did not move. If he had been human, Mitsuko would have guessed he had entered a state of deep meditation. While it was obvious that Dax was not human, Mitsuko had had no interactions with synthetic beings (until Yoshaki had pointed out a worker-bot in Khmer, she had no idea mechanical people even existed) so she had no point of reference. Anyway, as inhuman as Dax obviously was, he was more human, in her opinion, than many of her fellow humans. At least he had cared for her, for whatever reason.

  Silently Dax sat until the fire became dying embers, while the great wheel of stars turned slowly overhead. Yoshaki and Mitsuko, recovered mostly from their ordeal, planned to resume their journey to the Caspian Sea.

  “What do we do about Dax?” Mitsuko asked. “We cannot just leave him here.”

  “I think he believes what we said about the war he thought he was fighting.” Yoshaki said, “I don’t know how he will incorporate the realization into his processing circuits.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Despite how he may look or act, Dax is not a human being,” the scholar explained. “We learn new things all the time, change our viewpoints, listen to differing ideas and make up our minds. Not so with mechanicals such as Dax, less so with the war machines we encountered in the desert. The patterns of behaviors they exhibit were programmed into them by the Roman and Hellenic artificers used by their masters, and their behavior is strictly controlled. Whereas we humans are greater than the sum of our parts, mechanicals are the sum of their parts.”

  Mitsuko looked to the motionless Dax. “Then what do you think he is doing now?”

  “He may be caught in a logic loop he cannot break,” Yoshaki answered. “Dax may be infinitely more sophisticated and complex than those wandering war machines, but his existence is severely delineated by the limitations built into him.”

  Dax finally moved.

  “Dax!” Mitsuko cried, kneeling next to him.

  Yoshaki frowned, crossed his arms and watched.

  The robot’s cabled hand grabbed a measure of gritty dirt from the ground and rubbed it against his breast plate, moving back and forth until his hand was a blur. In less than a minute, he had totally effaced the heraldic crest that proclaimed him a champion of Napoleonic Gaul.

  “Dax,” Mitsuko said. “Are you all right?”

  The robot swiveled his head toward Mitsuko.

  “What is wrong Dax?” she asked.

  “The conflict that was my reason for being is over,” Dax replied “I must discover a new imperative.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A reason to exist.”

  “You could travel with us,” she offered.

  Yoshaki frowned, but a sharp glance from Mitsuko made him throw up his hands in frustration and turn away.

  “What is the purpose of your trek?” the robot asked.

  “To find a new life,” she replied. “In the lands across the Western Sea, where the Catholic King rules.”

  After a moment the robot said, “I will accompany you until I find my own path.”

  Mitsuko glanced at Yoshaki, who now eyed the mechanical being with intense interest.

  “Quite remarkable,” the scholar breathed. “Dax’s artificers would have had to program some flexibility of behavior, given some basis for independent decision, if only to allow him to function on an often-chaotic battlefield. But how is it possible for a creature defined by war to give up warfare?”

  “Perhaps Dax is greater than the sum of his parts,” Mitsuko suggested. “After all, in some two hundred years of service he might have become more than what he was intended.”

  “A machine is a machine,” Yoshaki said with a measure of finality. “He cannot exceed his programming.”

  “As a caterpillar must always remain a caterpillar?”

  “We should go,” Yoshaki said sharply, to silence other words.

  Mitsuko looked back the way they had come, a tract of unrelenting dreariness. Yes, they must move on, she thought with sudden urgency, though there was nothing visible in her scope of sight that could inspire such a feeling.

  Their canteens filled from a nearby spring, they set out cross country and came to the Caspian Sea two days later. Heading south, they came to a fishing village at dusk.

  “What do you make of that, Komurasaki?” Kyozokura asked.

  Komurasaki bent down on one knee to examine the odd print. It was very nearly round, just slightly oblong, with narrow parallel ribs crossways on it. He had never seen the likes of it, and told his commander so.

  “Something that came out of the northern wastes,” Kyozokura mused. “Something old.”

  “A demon?” Komurasaki guessed.

  “A demon of metal,” the older samurai replied. “A battle-rob.”

  “A man-sized fighting machine?” Komurasaki frowned. “From the war? How could it have survived all these years? The big war-machines were almost self-contained factories, capable of self-maintenance and repair. From what little I know of battle-robs, they were dependent upon mobile maintenance centers. All I see is evidence of a single battle-rob.”

  “You are correct,” Kyozokura agreed. “We know very little of battle-robs. In fact, the very concept is heinous, a machine to fight a warrior’s battles. Can a machine wield the katana or wakizaski; can a machine bend the yumi? A machine knows nothing of honor!”

  Startled by the commander’s emotional outburst, Komurasaki asked: “Do you believe there is a connection between our quarry
and this machine?”

  Kyozokura scratched his chin. “I do not know. The tracks go west, but they might be old. I cannot be certain when the tracks are not made by the living.”

  Komurasaki knew Kyozokura was feeling no small measure of frustration now that trail-signs from their quarry were intermittent over the rough terrain. Several false signs had let them astray, and these odd tracks left by a battle-rob (perhaps left by a battle-rob, Komurasaki reminded himself, recently or long ago) were the first signs of anything in more than two days. The other warriors said nothing, of course, but Komurasaki knew their concerns.

  Komurasaki went to his horse, pulled from his saddle-bag the chart they had purchased in Samarkand and unrolled it before Kyozokura, covering the enigmatic print.

  “I think we are here,” he said, pointing.

  Kyozokura grunted his agreement.

  “To the north, nothing. To the south tracts of salt marshes and quicksand,” Komurasaki said. “To the west, the sea called Caspian, with several villages shown upon the shore.”

  “Your point?”

  “That we should seek knowledge of the two in these villages as well as any others not shown on the chart before we seek elsewhere,” Komurasaki replied. “If we do not find traces of them there, we might yet gather information of value to us if they are hiding, or have perished in this wilderness.”

  After a moment, Kyozokura nodded and signaled for the warriors to mount and ride.

  The arrival of Yoshaki and Mitsuko created quite a sensation in the village of Azbahani, but, in truth, it was the battle-rob who stirred the inhabitants to a near frenzy. It was such attention as Yoshaki felt they could do without.

  At first, the robot inspired fear among those they encountered, for although these people had never seen such an automaton with their own eyes, the battle-robs were known through stories. Seeing it in the company of an old man and a young girl transmuted their fears into wonder, and in the space of a few moments the trio had become a mob of nearly a hundred.

  “This is not good,” Yoshaki told his young companion. “We cannot hide in a crowd. We should not be drawing such attention to ourselves.”

  “These people have never seen a robot,” Mitsuko said. “Will that be true farther west?”

  “No, it shouldn’t,” Yoshaki admitted. “And robots might well be common in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I have heard that it is a cultured and advanced realm — that is why we should go there, and from there to the Western Lands.”

  “Will we find a new life there?” she asked. “I know that’s what I told Dax, but will we?”

  “I hope so, Mitsuko-san,” the scholar replied with a kindly smile. “I pray so.”

  “Two days,” Kyozokura said, crumbling the charcoaled wood between thumb and forefinger. “Three at most.”

  “Mitsuko, Yoshaki and a battle-rob,” Komurasaki mused. “It could make things difficult.”

  “What do you mean?” Kyozokura demanded.

  “Just that if they are now traveling with a battle-rob, it could complicate the situation,” Komurasaki replied. “We know nothing of the battle-rob’s conditions, capabilities or armament. It could be a rusted hulk ready for the junkyard, but it could also be in good shape, a force to be reckoned with.”

  “It does not matter!”

  Komurasaki’s eyes widened. “How can you possibly say that, Commander. Even if only a quarter of the stories I’ve heard about these battle…”

  “Silence!”

  “But…”

  Kyozokura soundly struck Komurasaki across the face with his open hand, then gripped the hilt of his main word, waiting to see what his lieutenant would do next. Also frozen were the other, younger members of the samurai band. Komurasaki had challenged Kyozokura. While Komurasaki was more well liked by all the men, Kyozokura was their commander.

  Komurasaki’s clenched fists moved slowly to his sides. The muscles on his neck stood out like bunched cables. By jerk and starts, he lowered his gaze to the ground.

  “My commander,” he croaked. “I apologize.”

  Kyozokura turned and shouted. “Mount up!”

  Mitsuko awoke, barely able to breathe. The room was dark. She climbed from the rough slat bed, padded silently across the room and peeked through the shuttered window. A wash of stars peppered the sky, reflected in the silvery Caspian. The panic that had enveloped her upon awakening slowly subsided. Again, she had dreamed of relentless pursuit, of other lives in other worlds.

  Yoshaki had told her that worlds of dream carried the potentiality of reality, not necessarily in the precognitive sense, but as an analogue of the waking world. Who was she then? Which life was truly the dream?

  A quiet tapping sounded at her door. She slipped on her robe and answered the summons.

  “Quickly, get dressed and prepare your pack,” Yoshaki said softly, but with an edge of urgency. “We’re booked on a ship bound for the far shore. I’m told there’s a railway there that will ultimately take us to Jerusalem.”

  She nodded. “Where’s Dax?”

  “Downstairs, keeping watch,” Yoshaki replied.

  Mitsuko frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure,” the scholar admitted. “The villages along this shore of the Caspian have a crude communication system of coded electrical signals sent along strung wires which is used to share weather observations, fishing reports, news of all sorts. Strange riders have been reported by three villages. The information is scant, and I did not want to draw more attention than we already have by asking too many questions. But, by the descriptions, they could have been samurai.”

  Mitsuko sucked in a ragged breath.

  “It is not certain,” Yoshaki admitted. “But it’s good our ship sets sail within the hour.”

  When Kyozokura sighted the distant Caspian Sea, he drove his men harder than he had thus far during their sojourn in the west. His features were those of a man possessed. No one dared speak against him, no one dared speak to him.

  The quest has consumed him, Komurasaki thought. It consumes every facet of our lives, and now it consumes our lives themselves.

  Beneath the star-washed sky, Kyozokura split his band of warriors into smaller scouting parties, the quicker to search the little fishing villages. To each they rode through the darkness, searching for the fulfillment of, and therefore respite from, the quest that had taken them too far from home.

  Kyozokura led his men toward a village that on the chart was called Azbahani.

  The pre-dawn village was quiet, so deathly still it was possible to hear the soft lapping of the sea against the quays, the movement of wood against wood as fishing boats and merchant ships shifted in their berths.

  Mitsuko, Yoshaki and Dax hardly detracted from the silence as they left the inn and headed for the waterfront.

  A curious feeling overtook Mitsuko as Yoshaki and Dax led her through a warren of narrow streets and shadow-infested alleys. She felt distinctly watched, even though she perceived no lurker in the darkness. There was not the slightest doubt in her that their footfalls were being stealthily dogged, but she could not decide whether she felt spied upon or watched over.

  She looked to her escorts. Though they both appeared cautious and apprehensive (or so she believed in Dax’s case) there was nothing in their behavior that indicated they perceived the watcher she knew was close by, perhaps cloaked by more than darkness.

  “There,” Yoshaki said softly. “That’s ours.”

  Mitsuko saw a long sloop dark against the silvery sea. Standing upon the dock next to it was a tall man with a long wavy beard smoking a long curve pipe filled with some aromatic blend.

  “We are ready, Ashanurbaal,” Yoshaki said. “These are the other two for passage.”

  “You did not say one was a mech,” the sea captain said.

  “Does it matter?” Yoshaki asked, counting coppers into the man’s open hand. “Does it really matter?”

  Ashanurbaal looked at the coins and shrugged. “I
guess not.”

  As they walked up the gangplank, they heard a peculiar, persistent sound, just at the threshold of audibility. It was oddly melodious, but was unlike any earthly melody. It came from nowhere, and everywhere, like faint music from a distant room in a large house.

  Dax’s head swiveled on his articulated neck, and various clicks and whirs sounded within him.

  Mitsuko listened intently, but the sound was so faint that it was some moments before she realized she no longer heard it.

  “What was that?” Mitsuko breathed.

  After a long pause, Yoshaki replied, “Nothing.”

  They boarded, set sail and were quickly swallowed by the vastness of the Caspian Sea.

  Komurasaki kneeled beside Kyozokura, pulled his helmet from his gray head, and touched the cold, pale flesh of his cheek. He kneeled in a pool of Kyozokura’s dark blood, but it did not matter. Blood covered his hands, his armor, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered except Kyozokura was dead.

  Komurasaki looked at the two young warriors who had fetched him. They kneeled in contrition not far away, ready to take their own lives if commanded to do so.

  “You saw nothing?” Komurasaki demanded again. “No one?”

  “Nothing!” they replied, not raising their foreheads from the cobbled pavement.” No one!”

  “Except...” Torimatsu murmured. “I heard…”

  “Yes?” Komurasaki prompted.

  Torimatsu raised his gaze just a fraction, no more. “Music, sir, odd music. Like no other. It was barely there, then it was gone.”

  A vague memory tugged at Komurasaki, of such a sound in Samarkand, but the remembrance vanished.

  How could Kyozokura die? Komurasaki’s sensibilities rebelled at the thought, but he could not deny the reality of the lifeless husk cradled in his arms. Who could slay a warrior who had survived three score campaigns, whose skill with a blade was legendary among the samurais of Nippon? And what sort of weapon could so cleanly penetrate armor at its strongest point?

  A warrior could not kill the great Kyozokura.

  Only a coward who struck stealthily from behind, with something other than a warrior’s weapon.