The Last Protector (20 page)

His bike, pilotless, wobbled and swerved, finally being crushed under the machine's immense wheels. Scrornuck dangled for a moment from the machine's undercarriage, and then hoisted himself onto its lower deck. In an instant the rubber-clad warriors were upon him. He pulled out Ol’ Red and hacked apart the first to get within range.

"Yuck!” Nalia said. “You said you were past the gross part!"

"Maybe,” Jape suggested, “you should tell her what the soldiers were."

"Oh, yeah,” Scrornuck said. “They weren't people, they were robots."

"Machines in the form of people...” Jape prepared to begin a long explanation.

"Oh,” she said, “like the mechanical sparring partners I had when I learned how to duel."

"You've got those here?” Jape asked.

She nodded. “It's too dangerous to learn dueling with a live partner—you might poke his eye out or something. Until we get the hang of it, we practice with machines that look like people. They're not very good partners; once you get at all good, they're real easy to beat."

"These were tougher,” Scrornuck said, “a lot tougher."

The mechanical warriors were strong, they fought hard, and there seemed to be no end to them. Scrornuck hacked his way through the robot army until the decks ran red and slippery with hydraulic fluid. He used the Hitchhiker's shield to shove them, four and five at a time, over the deck's edge to be crushed beneath the machine's wheels. Still, for every one he killed, two more appeared. As the oasis grew closer and closer ahead, he desperately searched for a way to get to the drivers inside the machine. He found none—even Ol’ Red couldn't cut through the craft's hull.

Something drew his eye to the machine's madly spinning front wheel. Hanging onto suspension parts, his feet trying to slide out from under him, he made his way down to the wheel. Very carefully and slowly, he extended Ol’ Red's blade several feet—and thrust it into the wheel's spokes.

The wheel disintegrated, the machine's front end collapsed, and Scrornuck went flying. He hit the ground, felt bones breaking, and looked up just in time to see the war-machine towering over him, about to run him over like a bug.

Yet again he found himself on his motorcycle, with the Hitchhiker standing nearby. He gunned the motor and prepared to head out for another attack, but the Hitchhiker placed a hand on his shoulder, signaling him to wait. Brilliant light flashed around the war-machine's front wheel, and its nose suddenly fell, plowing deep into the ground. Its rear lifted, as if trying to overtake the front, and then the whole machine disappeared into a cloud of dust.

Scrornuck held his breath. A moment later the back of the machine, wheels spinning insanely, rose above the dust-cloud. Just as the machine looked ready to cartwheel, it disintegrated in a ball of yellow-orange fire, so bright that Scrornuck had to shield his eyes. The glare faded, the dust settled, and all that remained of the war-machine was a crater in the ground littered with smoldering debris.

"This calls for a celebration!” The Hitchhiker produced two bottles of beer and handed one to Scrornuck. They stood for a few minutes, sipping and watching the remains of the huge war-machine burn. The Hitchhiker pointed to the smoking crater and said, “Congratulations, Mister Saughblade, you've done it!"

"Done what?” Scrornuck felt good about having won the battle, but had no idea whom he'd defeated, or why they'd attacked.

"Let me show you.” The Hitchhiker snapped his fingers, and suddenly Scrornuck found himself alone in darkness. Beneath his feet was the disc that had picked him from the desert highway. Its outside was dented, torn and battered as if it had been in a terrible battle. All but one of the little eggs nestled into its topside were gone, leaving in their place only dark holes surrounded by soot. Above him, the thin crescent moon hung in the jet-black sky, and in the space between he saw uncountable bits and pieces of twisted, scorched machinery and things that looked like fragments of rubber-clad bodies. In the distance, a big piece of wreckage tumbled slowly, sparking as if a fire burned inside it.

He felt strangely weightless and disembodied, and when he tried to look at his own hand he saw nothing. What was he? Beneath the disc he saw a vast expanse of deep, summer-sky blue with streaks and swirls of dazzling white. His viewpoint suddenly changed—the disc rushed away and vanished in the distance, and the expanse of blue shrank to a small globe half in light, half in darkness. He recognized it from paintings he'd seen in books—this globe was the earth.

And it was under attack. An immense devil-machine, many times larger than the disc and bristling with weapons, emerged from the blackness beyond the moon. Preceded by a swarm of smaller machines, it passed him and sailed toward the earth.

He felt himself shooting past the machine, back to the blue of the world, down through the clouds on the boundary of darkness and light, to a little desert valley where a silver disc straddled a highway. A small puddle of yellow light, the headlight of his motorcycle, disappeared under the disc. Seconds later, in a cloud of smoke and blue flame, the disc rose into the sky.

Scrornuck followed the disc into the dark sky, to a great battle. The swarm of smaller war-machines advanced, and a single machine, one of the eggs nestled in the disc's upper surface, moved out to meet them. The egg, though outnumbered, fought bravely, swooping, twisting, spinning, and destroying two of the attackers before running into a third in a brilliant explosion.

So the battle went: one by one, the eggs launched themselves into the swarm of smaller machines, each destroying several before being blown up itself, until the smaller war-machines were gone and only one of the eggs remained. Then the disc and the enormous devil-machine met. Bolts of lightning, balls of fire, flashes of white light shot between them, rocking both machines, sending scraps of metal spinning into the darkness. A flash of light, intricately patterned like the pulsating energies of his sword, crackled from the surface of the disc and entered the nose of the approaching war-machine. For several seconds lightning flicked about within the craft, and then the evil ship shook, twisted, buckled, and split wide open in a blinding explosion.

"Do you now understand?” Hearing the voice of the Hitchhiker, Scrornuck found himself standing next to the short gray man, in a small room whose metal walls were covered with pipes, wires, and incomprehensible instruments. “This ship is a weapon,” the Hitchhiker said. “It is more than capable of destroying the enemy. But it needs a great warrior to guide it. For that mission it selected you.” He produced two more beers, and handed one to Scrornuck. “It appears to have chosen well."

"And that's a good place to stop,” Jape said, bringing Scrornuck back to the present. “We have places to go and people to see. We can't sit here listening to stories all night.” He signaled the server to bring their check.

Scrornuck nodded—but while he stopped talking, the last part of the story played itself out in his memory:

The Hitchhiker frowned as if he had some bad news to deliver. After a lengthy silence he spoke. “There is one more thing I must show you, Mister Saughblade."

Scrornuck found himself again floating in the blackness, the disc hanging beneath him, turning slowly. “The ship is a weapon,” he heard the Hitchhiker say, “but to be used properly, the ship and the warrior must become one. You must become part of the ship, the ship must become part of you. It is unpleasant. I am sorry we had to do what we did."

Scrornuck hovered over a hole in the top of the disc. The silvery metal was scorched, twisted, ripped open as if by some great explosion. Inside the hole, on the twisted remains of the metal couch, surrounded by pipes, wires, tubes and other devices, were chunks of meat and entrails that had once fit together to form him. The arms and legs were in pieces, thrown up against the walls of the chamber. The head, crusted with frozen blood, dangled from a mess of wires and tubes, one eye hanging from its socket. And from one ear, barely attached to the head, dangled a twisted, bent piece of gold: what remained of his earring.

"I still wonder where the rides are,” Scrornuck said, as they strolled down the broad avenues of the Guest Quarter.

"What rides?” Nalia asked.

"Roller coasters, whirl-a-hurls, tilt-a-pukes—rides that spin you around until you launch your cookies all over the guy in the next seat."

"There's nothing like that in town.” She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “But there are stories that when the True Guests come, they'll ride the Dragon's tail, and if we serve them well enough, we'll get to do it, too."

"Did they say where this Dragon's tail was?"

She again skewered him with that
well, duh!
look. “On the Dragon's butt, obviously."

As they entered Temple Square, a breeze blew up and thin, wispy clouds appeared in the sky.

"Rain coming?” Jape watched the clouds thicken and spiral together, forming a disk centered far above City Hall.

Nalia also watched the clouds. “Not this early. It's show time!"

A brilliant beam of white light shot up from City Hall's spire, lighting the underside of the clouds as dragons converged from many directions. A band struck up a brassy number with a pounding beat. The light split into beams of many colors, drawing pictures on the clouds and dancing with the dragons. Clouds swirled, lights flashed and spun, dragons swooped and flamed, until the sky over the Square was a pulsating, whirling storm of light.

"Makes me want to dance!” Scrornuck called. As if to accommodate his request, the band shifted to a familiar beat and played a familiar set of chords. He stood stock-still, a grin forming and steadily widening on his face. Jape, too, stood motionless for a moment, his mouth half-open in a combination of amusement and astonishment. Then Scrornuck joined the dance, in perfect step with the townspeople. Nalia stared for a moment, and then slid in next to him. They moved up, back, left, right, bump here, swing there, raising their arms for the refrain, singing at the top of their lungs,
"Why Emm Sea Aaayyy!"

After three more verses, the light show reached its climax. The multicolored beams came together, forming a single white shaft that pierced the cloud deck and made the whole sky glow. As the music reached its finale, the clouds were drawn into the center of the beam and blasted upward into space as the dragons turned and flew off toward the horizon. In seconds all was quiet and the sky was again clear, studded with stars and a bright, halfway-to-full moon.

"How the heck did you know this dance?” Nalia demanded.

"Mister Saughblade is a fan of disco music,” Jape said. “Can't understand why."

Scrornuck shrugged. “It's the beat—you either love it or you hate it."

"And I don't love it,” Jape said. “I'm not quite as bad as those guys in my world who exploded a bomb in a sports stadium to protest, but I'm close."

"A bomb?” Nalia said. “That's terrible!"

"I'll say,” Scrornuck said. “The home team had to forfeit the game."

"Hello, friend!” Rosaiah called from the Temple porch as they passed by. “Have you come to make your offering?"

"Offer this—oof!” Scrornuck shut up as Jape elbowed him in the ribs.

"You must present your gift eventually,” the Priest declared. “Those boots are far too magnificent for a mere mortal."

"You don't know the half of it, Rosey-palm!” Scrornuck wiggled his toes, the boots did their magic, and he jumped a good twenty feet straight up. Rosaiah's jaw dropped, and the crowd gasped. At the top of his leap, Scrornuck stuck his thumbs in his ears, wiggled his fingers, and blew a loud, wet Bronx cheer. “These boots are too good for your stuffed toy,” he called as he landed. “They're mine and they'll stay mine!” The Priest stared, his mouth moving silently, as if he expected a lightning bolt to strike the blasphemers.

No lightning bolts fell, and the three walked calmly into the Cast Quarter. Scrornuck couldn't resist thumbing his nose at Rosaiah one last time.

"What's your problem, anyway?” Nalia said irritably, glancing at Scrornuck's boots. “You don't have some kind of footwear fetish, do you?"

They arrived at Syb's and found the bar had entertainment—a mediocre singer, playing an out-of-tune piano and whining about the sad life of a sensitive, poetic songwriter. “If you're not having fun, get your ass off the stage!” Scrornuck muttered as he found an unobtrusive corner seat with a good view of Jape and Nalia's table. Pulling his floppy hat down over his ears, he leaned back and paid as much attention as he could to his beer. It was going to be a long night.

Tremmlowe arrived during the second set and handed Jape a sheaf of papers. The Ranger went through the papers, smiling and making notes to himself, not noticing as the information broker pulled his chair very close to Nalia's and began flirting openly. To Scrornuck's dismay, she seemed to enjoy the attention, laughing at his jokes, letting him hold her hand and buy her drinks.

The singer launched into a particularly whiny number about his love life. At least he's got one, Scrornuck thought, ordering another beer to cool his simmering anger.

After nearly an hour, the business was done and Tremmlowe got up to leave. Jape rose to shake his hand. About time, Scrornuck thought angrily.

"Tomorrow night?” Tremmlowe asked.

"Same time, same place,” Jape said.

Tremmlowe turned to Nalia, and with a gallant flourish he bowed and kissed her hand. “Then we shall count the minutes until we are back together.” She smiled and gazed up into his eyes.

Scrornuck started to lunge forward, but forced himself to stop and pretend he was simply waking up from a brief nap.

Tremmlowe pointed at Scrornuck. “Tomorrow, invite your bodyguard to join us. We will make sure he is properly watered and entertained.” Smiling an oily smile, he turned and walked out.

After consuming two more rounds in an uncomfortable silence, the three left the bar. Only Jape looked happy. Nalia stared at her feet, while Scrornuck staggered under the weight of a dozen heavy black beers. He looked at her, thought about his miserable evening and sighed softly.
Well, at least I didn't punch the little slimeball when he did that kiss-her-hand crap.