Aubry walked forward slowly, with measured step. He felt as if his hair were on fire, and with every breath, the heat stoked up to a higher level.
Phillipe Swarna was old, old, but there was no doubt that when the man had been young, and in his prime, when he had walked with full utility, when his eyes and heart had been his own, before he had required marrow transplants to keep himself alive, he had been Aubry Knight.
“Who are you?” Swarna quavered, his voice an old man’s voice.
“I am you,” Aubry replied.
Swarna shook visibly. “Tanaka!” he ranted. “Tanaka!”
And near Aubry, to the left, something rustled. Covered with dust, and bleeding from where an ear had been torn away, Tanaka stood. He raised a dusty pulse rifle. It was useless, now.
Aubry leveled his machine rifle. His finger tightened on the trigger.
No response. It was empty.
His hand shaking, Tanaka straightened his scabbard and drew steel.
“This man is my primary,” Tanaka said. “You may not pass.”
“You are wounded,” Aubry observed bluntly. “All I have to do is wait, and you will bleed to death.”
“But you can’t wait,” Tanaka said. “Your feint outside will fail. Everything will be for nothing. Reinforcements will arrive in minutes. To kill him you must pass me.”
Aubry turned, walked two paces, and plucked a rifle from the hands of one of the dead guards. He fired a short burst into the ceiling. Marble chips and plaster raised on them both.
“San told me that you were her teacher. That you are a man of honor. I would not kill you, unless you force me. You are armed only with a sword. Stand aside.”
“Will you?” Tanaka asked. “You are a warrior of your people, as I am a warrior of mine. It would be dishonorable to shoot me.”
“I am beyond honor,” Aubry said. “I cannot put my honor above the lives of my people. I have forsaken my family, my past life, my country. I will kill you, Tanaka.”
Upon his throne, Swarna cringed.
Tanaka’s great chest heaved. “I will make a deal with you, warrior,” he said. “If you will face me in fair combat.”
A deal. Aubry could almost laugh. “What do you have to offer me?”
“PanAfrica,” Tanaka said quietly.
Aubry lowered his rifle. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“I can give you the computer codes.”
“No!” Swarna’s voice broke on that scream.
“Shut up!” Tanaka said. “It is the only way.”
“He will kill you anyway!” Swarna screamed again.
“No,” Tanaka said. “I do not believe it.”
His eyes met Aubry’s and it seemed as if, once again, Aubry was meeting himself. Across a gulf of cultures, and a gulf of years and miles. Yes. He and Tanaka were the same man, born in different worlds.
“Yes,” Swarna said desperately. “I agree. All right. The code is my name, plus the letters QDX.”
“Why so simple?” Aubry asked quietly, his eyes on Tanaka.
Swarna wiped a string of saliva from the corner of his mouth. “You have one chance to enter it, and then the system shuts down for twenty-four hours.”
Aubry shifted his gaze back to Tanaka. “Is that the truth?”
Tanaka’s gaze met his levelly. “No, it is not.” His voice was as cold as the steel he held. “Do you agree to my terms?”
“And what are they. Exactly.”
“To face me man to man, without projectile or energy weapons. No tricks. No loopholes. You are a warrior, not a lawyer. You know what I ask.”
Aubry almost smiled.
“All right. I agree.”
“The code,” Tanaka said, “is a drop of my blood, and Swarna’s blood, on the sensor built into the seat of his throne.”
“Fool! Fool!” Swarna howled.
“Then why can’t you activate it? Why can’t you take over everything yourself?”
“The system is coded to Swarna’s genetic scan. Only he can operate it. It was devised as such, from the beginning. His code, and that of his head of security. I am bound by honor. And impossibility. There is no spoken code. If I were dead, and my body beyond recovery, technicians would have to be flown in from Osaka, the entire system rekeyed. It would take a week.”
“You crawling, puking imbecile. You traitorous shit! I’ll kill you, kill you. You’ll scream for months—”
Aubry’s eyes cast around the room. To the right of the throne was a wall of traditional weapons cast in modern materials. A plastic bow. A composition aluminum staff. And next to it, crossed one over another, was the pair of stainless-steel assagai, a present from the Zulu.
“I choose these,” Aubry said.
Tanaka nodded.
Aubry took it down from the wall. He balanced it in his hand and felt the spear come alive. It was for throwing. It was for stabbing. It held an edge as fine as anything made by man, an ancient fighting implement, refined to the standards of the twenty-first century.
He turned, and faced Tanaka.