Emperor

by William F. Wu

  “Who’s there?” The innkeeper’s voice was cautious and fearful, but clearly wide awake.

  “Three of your guests,” Steve called. “We are well. Please open.”

  He heard the bar slide to one side. The innkeeper opened the door a crack and glanced at them all before opening it wide and stepping back. He bowed to them repeatedly, expecting them to come right inside.

  “Are your other guests awake?” Steve stayed where he was, with Hunter and Marcia behind him.

  “Eh?” He gestured for them to enter.

  “Your other guests, who took our woman friend. They came running back here, didn’t they?”

  “Oh, yes. They were all very excited about something when they first came back. Now they have all gone to sleep up in their rooms.”

  “We would prefer not to be seen by them.”

  “Of course. Please come in. Your friend is not with you?” He glanced past Steve.

  “No. But we are not blaming you. In the morning, we will remain in our rooms until you tell us they have left. Is this agreeable?”

  “Of course.”

  Steve turned to Hunter. “I really think we’ll be okay. In the morning, we’ll stay in our rooms until he tells us the others have hit the road. They won’t bother us.”

  ”All right. But I am concerned that you will take unnecessary risks.”

  “There shouldn’t be any risks,” said Steve. “We’ll just let the others get a head start on us in the morning. Then during the day we’ll make sure we don’t catch up.”

  “Is it okay?” Marcia asked. “I’d like to do this. I’m really cold.”

  “It is fine,” said Hunter. “I will go prepare my horse. I will take Jane’s, too.”

  “Good night,” said Steve. He stepped aside for Marcia to enter first, as Hunter left for the stable.

  “Night,” Marcia muttered, yawning as she turned and went inside.

  Steve followed her. Behind them, the innkeeper barred the door again.

  Several minutes later, Hunter forced his weary horse into a canter; the reins of Jane’s mount were tied to his saddle. He was not comfortable with the further splitting of his team, but he could also see that Marcia badly needed rest. Even Steve, though he was more accustomed to physical activity than Marcia, would quickly become too tired to act efficiently unless he slept for the remainder of the night.

  In the absence of a more pressing emergency, Hunter had to let them sleep in the relative comfort and safety of the inn. He accepted that Steve and Marcia would be reasonably secure at the inn as long as the other guests did not see them. He also trusted Steve to act wisely.

  At the same time, he felt he he’d failed to take proper care of his team. Wayne had already succeeded in interrupting their search for MC 5. Now Hunter had to prevent him from taking full advantage of the situation.

  As Hunter rode down the moonlit mountain road, he slowed the horses to a walk to preserve their energy. With his vision on maximum light receptivity, he identified the fresh tracks that matched the sounds he had heard earlier. The most recent donkey tracks leading south were much deeper than the same ones Xiao Li’s animal had made riding north; the horse tracks with them were deep enough to have been made by the horse whose heavy hoofbeats he had heard.

  Hunter had to plan his approach to his quarry. He chose not to radio Ishihara with any sort of threat or argument, since Wayne clearly had become more persuasive in making his case to Ishihara. Any such transmission would merely reveal to Ishihara that he was chasing them and give Ishihara some fix on the. distance between them. Hunter’s best chance to rescue Jane and apprehend Wayne would be to sneak up on them.

  Hunter did not know if Ishihara’s hearing ability was fully equal to his own. Since Hunter had been designed specifically to search for MC Governor, he had been given some abilities greater than most robots, but he had never specifically compared his hearing to Ishihara’s. However, he was certain that Ishihara’s aural sense was greater than any human’s. That lessened his chance of making an unheard approach.

  Obviously, Hunter’s pursuit would become obvious if he simply cantered up behind them, since even Wayne would hear that. Hunter could, however, draw closer slowly. When he heard the first faint sounds of hoofbeats up ahead, he could pace them at a distance until he formed a specific plan.

  If Ishihara’s hearing equaled his own, however, then Ishihara might hear Hunter’s horses at the same time. The question of stealth might in fact turn on uncontrollable variables, such as the direction of the wind or the echo pattern off the surrounding slopes. He would have to remain aware of those as he continued on his way.

  Now that he had identified the tracks, however, he did not have to study each hoofprint carefully. He could see the trail plainly enough. Instead, he turned his attention to the condition of his mount. The tired animal kept slowing down, and had to be prodded forward.

  After more than a mile, the tracks of his quarry still followed the road. Hunter had expected more effort at evasion, but postulated that Ishihara, under the First Law, could not take the risk of allowing the humans to flee through the mountains in the darkness. Another possibility was that Wayne had simply decided to forget about evasion. He might be taking his companions as far as they could go straight down the road before their mounts wore out.

  Hunter still expected that the two mounts ahead of him would tire more quickly than his own. All of them had traveled a long way earlier in the day, but the mounts ahead of him were, by his calculation, carrying two riders each; one was merely a donkey, whose short legs had to take many more strides to keep up with the horse. Maybe they were gambling that Hunter’s substantial weight would tire his horse first, instead.

  He considered that possibility unlikely, but the burden on his horse was real. To minimize it, he moved to Jane’s mount in order to rest his own. Wayne did not have that option.

  In the lobby the innkeeper gave Steve a small brass oil lamp before sleepily returning to bed. Leading Marcia upstairs, Steve was relieved to find the corridor quiet. He turned to Marcia to say good night. She stopped at the door to her room, looking at him uncertainly in the shifting light.

  “What’s wrong?” Steve asked quietly. “Everybody else here is asleep. We’ll be okay.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “But...”

  “What?” He could see that her arrogance had vanished. “What is it?”

  “I was thinking about your other missions. Were they like this?”

  “Like this? What do you mean?”

  “Well, how dangerous were they? When you talk about buccaneers and dinosaurs and everything else, were you really in serious danger?”

  “Yes. We were.”

  “I don’t think the risk became real to me until Hunter was kidnapped.”

  Steve nodded. “I know. All of you who live in cities in our own time have robots around you constantly.”

  “Yes. I never even thought about it before because I was so used to it.”

  “I think we’re in less danger now than usual. Hunter is between us and Wayne and Ishihara.” He gestured toward the rooms around them, “We should keep quiet and just go to sleep, so we don’t wake up the kidnappers.”

  Marcia nodded and opened the door to her room. “Of course. Sorry.”

  “Make sure you bar the door behind you,” he added. “Light your candle with this.” He carefully handed her the brass lamp and waited while she took it into her room. A moment later, she brought it back out, silhouetted by the candle flame flickering behind her on a small table.

  “Good night.” She yawned again and went into her room, closing the door behind her.

  Steve waited in the hall until he heard her slide the bar into place. Then he went into his own room and did the same. In a few minutes, he was sound asleep.

  As the hours passed, Hunter could feel Jane’s mount tiring. Both horses walked more slowly. He changed mounts again, but his horse now had to be kicked more often to keep up the pace. The m
oon was about to set. His magnified vision revealed that the tracks ahead of him remained on the road. However, his hearing no longer detected the sound of hoofbeats ahead.

  This puzzled him. Considering the amount of weight the mounts ahead of him had to carry, he had expected that he would either have drawn close enough to hear them by now, or else he would have seen the tracks leave the road for the forested hills. Since Hunter had already concluded that Ishihara would not take that risk at night, he was not surprised to see the tracks continue on the road, but he had apparently missed something.

  Hunter reined in and dismounted. He kneeled to examine the tracks. Even his magnified vision needed help now that the moonlight had faded.

  Carefully, he studied the depth of the tracks and then compared them to those of his own horses. He also saw that the hoofprints his own mount made now, shuffling wearily on the road, were much shallower than the ones just a few feet back, when Hunter had still been in the saddle. Suddenly he realized that the horse and donkey in front of him were no longer carrying the amount of weight they had been when he had begun tracking them. From the saddle, in the waning light, the difference in the appearance of the hoofprints had been too slight for him to see, but it was clear now.

  Somehow, those he was following had dismounted and left the road without leaving footprints. Hunter had been fooled, most likely by Ishihara lifting Wayne and Jane directly from their mounts into the trees. He had also miscalculated Ishihara’s interpretation of the danger that the forested hills would offer to his human companions at night.

  That triggered his own First Law concern. If Ishihara’s judgment was questionable, then Hunter could not conclude that the humans with him were safe, as he had believed to this point. He hoped they were hiding in one spot, maybe for the humans to rest. That would be less dangerous than hiking through the mountains.

  Hunter concluded that Xiao Li was probably riding the horse now and leading the donkey. His weight was slight enough not to alter these hoofprints significantly. Certainly the tired animals would not have continued down the road all night on their own. At least one rider had to be urging them forward.

  Now Hunter had to decide how to investigate all these surmises. He had two essential problems: the near-exhaustion of both his horses and the deepening darkness. Both problems could be improved by waiting several hours.

  Once his horses had rested, even for a short time, they would move a little faster. Daylight would allow him to follow tracks even in the forest. Now that Wayne, Ishihara, and Jane were on foot, he would have the advantage.

  Hunter hobbled his horses and sat down by the side of the road to conserve his energy and wait for dawn.

  13

  Jane waited in the forest with Wayne and Ishihara. Neither of them insisted on holding her every moment. All three of them knew that she could not outrun Ishihara, so she did not bother trying.

  A short time earlier, at Wayne’s suggestion, Ishihara had lifted Wayne and Jane from their mounts to sturdy branches of trees near the road. Then he had followed them. Once they had all jumped to the ground on the far side of the trees, in the darkness away from the road, they waited for Wayne to decide what to do next.

  Meanwhile, Xiao Li had ridden on down the road with their mounts. Ishihara had allowed this because he knew that Hunter would not harm the boy. Since Xiao Li had followed them up here on his own, Ishihara felt he would be safe on this road a little longer.

  “We can’t fool Hunter for long,” Wayne said. His voice was strained and anxious.

  “What do you suggest?” Ishihara asked.

  “Well...I don’t know. But our mounts were about to fall over from fatigue. We had to do something. And if Hunter grabs me, my hopes are finished.”

  “You really don’t have that much to worry about,” said Jane. “I still think the Oversight Committee will handle their review of your robots responsibly.”

  “Don’t bother; I’ve heard it before.” Wayne looked at Ishihara. “You have any ideas?”

  “I have one.”

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “We can use the time travel unit to move all the way forward to Khanbaliq, arriving tomorrow morning. Since we know Hunter is behind us, and has no lead on MC 5, Hunter cannot gain on us during the period we are skipping.”

  “Say...that’s right.” Wayne nodded. “Before, I was always worried that Hunter would take the component robot during the interval we were jumping. This time we know where he is. And we’ll have the advantage.”

  “What about Xiao Li?” Jane asked suddenly.

  “What about him?” Wayne shrugged. “He’ll be all right. This is his time.”

  “Ishihara, he’s just a child. And he’s only riding around the mountains in the middle of the night because of you two. How can you just abandon him?”

  “I expect Hunter to catch him and protect him. With that likelihood established, my first duty is to you two, as humans from our time.”

  “But you don’t know he’s safe,” said Jane, wishing she had thought of this argument earlier.

  “Hunter is tracking him,” said Ishihara.

  “We’ll go back to the outskirts of Khanbaliq,” Wayne said firmly. “We’ll arrive tomorrow morning, back out by the village. Since they’ve already seen us appear like magic, we can do it again.”

  “They’ll ask about Xiao Li,” said Jane. “What are you going to tell them?”

  “That he’ll be fine,” said Wayne. “Besides, we didn’t bring him with us; he came on his own. He can find his way home if he has to.”

  “That’s very callous,” said Jane.

  “Let’s go now,” said Wayne, ignoring her.

  “All right,” said Ishihara.

  Steve slept late the next morning. Even when he woke up, he lay in bed listening to the sounds elsewhere in the inn. He heard doors opening and closing on his corridor; downstairs, footsteps clunked and a chair scraped on the floor, accompanied by muffled conversation.

  None of the voices sounded excited. He had not heard Marcia’s door open. Quietly, in no hurry, he got up and dressed.

  As the morning passed, Steve finally heard the other guests go outside one by one. Soon the clopping of horses’ hooves reached him as the other patrons rode away. Then a lone set of footsteps walked up the stairs and down the hall.

  “Sir?” The innkeeper rapped quietly. “The other guests have taken their leave now.”

  Steve opened the door. “Thank you. I’ll get my wife. We will have two breakfasts.”

  “Of course.” With a quick bow, he hurried away.

  Marcia opened her door, already dressed. “I’ve been listening. Everything’s okay, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Steve. “You okay?”

  “Basically. I’m sore from all that riding yesterday.” She winced as she walked out into the hall.

  “I’m afraid we have more of the same today. But before we go downstairs, I want to call Hunter.”

  “All right.”

  “Hunter, Steve and Marcia here. How are you?”

  “I am well but have had no success. How are you two? And where are you?” Hunter’s voice was faint and almost drowned out by a great deal of static.

  “We just got up at the inn. The other guests have left, so we’re okay. Where are you?”

  “I am down the road but on my way back toward you,” said Hunter. “I waited for dawn to rest my horse and to have more light.”

  “You’re coming back?” Marcia asked. “That’s great, but what happened to Jane?”

  “Ishihara fooled me in the darkness. I followed the tracks of Xiao Li and the animals long after the others had left the road for the forest.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They moved to the trees directly from their mounts. It is a move familiar to me from our missions to the Late Cretaceous and to Roman Germany, but in the darkness I failed to spot the location.”

  “Where’s Xiao Li now?” Marcia asked. “Did you catch up to him?”r />
  “No. I backtracked at sunrise.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Steve asked.

  “I believe so,” said Hunter. “My first duty is to Jane, in any case; it must take precedence over my First Law concern over a local human.”

  “Are you sure?” Marcia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So what happened?” Steve asked.

  “Not much,” said Hunter. “I had to examine the tracks closely in order to see where they suddenly became shallower, indicating less weight. Eventually, I was able to find the area where the others had moved into the trees.”

  “Why aren’t you still following them?” Steve was puzzled. “You wouldn’t just give up.”

  “A short distance from the road, all the tracks and marks in the trees and brush vanish.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Marcia. Then her tone changed. “Uh, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Hunter. “After carefully reviewing my observations, I can only conclude that Wayne took Jane and Ishihara to another time.”

  “Oh, no,” Steve muttered.

  “They left?” Marcia stared at Steve in horror. “Now what do we do?”

  “Ishihara still has to protect Jane,” Steve reminded her calmly, “no matter where they went.”

  “But where are they?”

  “Theoretically, they could be anywhere in history and geography,” said Hunter.

  “What do you think they would do?” Steve asked. He was more worried than he wanted to reveal to Marcia.

  “Wayne still wants to capture MC 5,” said Hunter. “They have probably gone right back to Khanbaliq.”

  “You said you’re coming back toward us,” said Steve. “Why don’t you go back to Khanbaliq after them? We’ll go on to the Great Wall to find the Polos. After we learn if they can help us with MC 5, we’ll rejoin you in a day or two.”

  “I dare not. Because of losing Jane, I am again suffering from a feeling of failure. I must reunite with you two as soon as I can.”

  “Well, we’re still going to have breakfast, but...how far are you?” Steve asked. “If we sit here and wait, we’ll lose a lot of time.”