I

Research in Hell

Chapter 7

I

“Shouldn’t you tell the grand duke you’re taking some time off?” Vyken asked, and though the query was calm, there was no laughter in his eyes.

“I’ll write him a letter later,” Françoise replied. “Or maybe I should contact him with a wind comm?”

Vyken responded to her impish remark soberly, saying, “Like the rest of us, you came here of your own free will. If you’re turning your back on us, your brother must be mixed up in it somehow, am I right?”

“I don’t know, are you?”

Vyken’s lips moved the tiniest bit. Perhaps he’d said Françoise.

“Don’t try to stop me,” she told him. “Just let me go.”

“Wait a moment.”

“Until that gorgeous specimen slays the grand duke? Who was it that used the wind comm, I wonder?”

Vyken could say nothing to that.

“If the grand duke is destroyed, he’ll leave, too. But those characters from the Capital and their ‘contract’ will still remain. Do you intend to serve in the grand duke’s stead, Vyken?”

There was no reply.

“Vyken, do you think humans can do anything with the Nobility’s technology? Are they supposed to make a maglev highway work when they can’t even comprehend the concept of hyperconductivity? If they use an antiproton reactor before they know how to stop antiproton generation, they’ll destroy the whole universe. With all that at risk, what would be the price for handing it over to the characters from the Capital? Surely not blood, right? Money, then?”

“That’ll be quite enough, Françoise.”

“Yes, it will. So let me pass.”

“I told you to wait,” Vyken said, a look of sadness skimming across his features. “Your clothes and mine were given to us by the grand duke. Take them off, and good old Vyken Lovelock and Françoise Rene will be left. A man and woman from the village. If we explain things to the villagers, they’ll understand.”

“They’d understand even without us explaining anything if we were our old selves,” Françoise said softly, gently. “But it’s too late now, Vyken. You and I both changed when we came to the castle. And knowing that full well, I still intend to leave here. With that in mind, do you intend to stay?”

“Will you go to Jozen?” Vyken asked in a low tone.

Françoise’s eyes had a piercing gleam to them.

“Then he does still live, just as I thought,” Vyken said, raising his right hand. The weapon secreted in his ring wasn’t a paralyzer. It was a destructive beam that reduced anything down to atoms in the blink of an eye.

“I’m so sorry,” Vyken said, shutting his eyes.

A light enveloped the woman’s body. Through eyes squinted down to the tiniest slit, Vyken saw the light scatter.

“A dimensional barrier?!” the Nobleman’s servant said, frozen in his tracks. Françoise’s pale and beautiful face smiled back at him.

“Science and technology don’t exist for your benefit alone, you know.”

A blistering beam stretched between the two of them. As the dimensional barrier sent that off into another world, Vyken felt despair burning away at his heart. But despair can give birth to power. Vyken charged forward.

Graceful limbs narrowly dodged the vicious shoulder he threw at her.

“What the—?!” Vyken exclaimed, crashing into the stone wall.

Françoise was sprinting away. Vyken took aim at her back.

“How do you think it feels not to have dreams, but to appear in the dreams of others, Françoise?”

Already more than a hundred yards away, the woman suddenly lurched. In less than a second, she’d vanished.

Vyken’s expression wasn’t one of victory. Rooted in place like a criminal facing reproach, all he felt was the wind blowing down the corridor.

“Too late, eh?” the hoarse voice said, snapping Vyken back to himself. The young man in black stood behind him.

Vyken gazed at D without saying a word. He wanted to say something, but his voice failed him.

D turned his back to the man. The way he did it, it was as if Vyken didn’t even warrant a glance. As he watched the figure walking away, in his heart of hearts Vyken groaned to himself, Give him hell. My future depends on whether or not you can slay the grand duke. Beneath the castle lies a treasure to give rise to a ruler of the world of man. I don’t want it all. Even a millionth of it could make a ruler of me. I’m counting on you, D!

There were two people there in addition to the grand duke. One look at the tableau before them froze the gray-haired, gray-bearded one in awe, while the bald, middle-aged one trembled like it was the end of the world.

The scene before them was beyond imagining. And there should be limits to just how far beyond that things could go. They were in pitch darkness. Unbreathing and freezing cold, they yet lived. Stars burned in reddish or bluish silver. A vast nebula spread before the two men. From one end of the universe to the other, the result of hundreds of millions—perhaps even trillions—of stars glimmering, wiping each other from existence, growing, squabbling, devouring each other, and embracing was emblazoned into the retinas of the trio. But there was no life there. No, there was no one there at all. Nothing there to touch, nothing to hear them, and they couldn’t even move. All there was, was unspeakable solitude.

The bald one, Mayor Bezo, wept for the longest time. The gray-haired Professor struggled against falling into a similar state, but his knees quaked violently.

“This is the universe. A limitless space that’s a vacuum and as close as possible to absolute zero,” said the grand duke, a hint of contempt in his tone.

Just as I expected of these lowly humans. Here they fancied themselves on equal footing with us, but I warrant now they see.

“Of all the creatures born on Earth, we Nobility alone can live here,” Grand Duke Bergenzy continued. “And the two of you are like us at present—and by that I mean that you aren’t human.”

“To be honest, it’s frightening. Well, intellectually I realize that with your scientific might doing something like this is no problem, but seeing it with my own eyes is something else entirely,” the Professor declared with admiration. He was half serious, with the other half being lip service.

Your inferior race goes nowhere but toward its own extinction, Chaney thought to himself. Give us your accomplishments now and begone!

The Professor wondered if he’d have to continue putting on this front for much longer, but then there was an unexpected interruption.

“P-please . . . hurry up and . . . show us . . . the Noble technology . . . That’s why we came here . . . N-not to see this . . . this horrifying . . . lonely . . . whatever!”

Two pairs of eyes reflected the bumpkin authority figure balled up and cradling his knees. Both men resisted the urge to laugh in his face.

“There, there, of course we didn’t, Mister Mayor,” the Professor said, clapping the man on the shoulder. He then continued, “Your grace, if you would be so kind.”

“Very well. To do so, we must venture into that nebula.”