FALLING LEAVES
CHAPTER ONE
The weather had been cloudy and damp for the past two days, but
today it was unseasonably warm for the middle of October. Samurai Jack
put on his hat against the heat and the glare of the brilliant sun in
the cloudless sky. He glided through a field of waist-high grass, heading west. He was already further west than he'd ever been in this world, and he had been noticing how sparsely populated the area grew the farther west one went. Even Aku's minions didn't seem much interested in the area. Jack hadn't been attacked in nearly a month, which was a pleasant change but not why he was heading west. He was seeking a phenomenon described to him by an itinerant peddler that had sounded as if it might have been the gate of time.
Directly ahead of him a gentle grassy hill rose. The high grass was thinning out, gradually being replaced by low, lush grass that looked like it would make excellent horse fodder, though the only animals he saw grazing were a herd of antelope well to the north. He wondered if he was the first human being to pass through this area--
No, he wasn't. Ahead of him something long and thin, too regular to be natural, was sticking up out of the ground. It looked like a pole that had lost its pennant, or perhaps the shaft of a spear which the caster hadn't retrieved for some reason.
Maybe he hadn't been able to retrieve it. Maybe he'd been killed. Jack dropped into a duck waddle and edged forward, slowly and cautiously. As he got closer, his approach became even more cautious. That shaft was indeed part of a spear, which had been driven through the upper part of the right shoulder of a man in a black gi, pinning him to the ground. That spear had been placed with great care. If the victim moved too much, struggling to free himself or to draw the sword he wore, he would rip out an artery and bleed to death. This man had not done that. He had chosen to wait in the hope someone would come along before he died of infection or dehydration. Here in this deserted region, that was a brave choice.
The man lay absolutely still, his head turned away. Jack couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. Maybe it was already too late. "Sir?" Jack said softly, glancing around meanwhile, for this victim might be bait being used to ensnare others. "Sir?"
Nothing happened. Jack inched a little closer. They seemed to be alone at the base of this hill, sweetly scented with warm grass, dotted with autumn asters.
Jack reached out to count the man's pulse. At the touch his head whipped around. Horrified, shocked, Jack leaped backward, staring into a demonic red pair of eyes shaped exactly like his own.
"You!" they exclaimed together.
Taking one last look around for other enemies, Jack stood up. The misbegotten duplicate of himself whom Aku had forged with some vile spell lay watching him quietly. It was entirely evil. Jack drew his sword. The double watched quietly and asked for no mercy.
There were little threads of blood in the cracks of the creature's dry puffy lips. It was entirely evil..and entirely helpless. Jack hesitated. Killing it seemed strangely like murder...but what else was one to do with it?
It watched him.
"How came you here?" Jack asked at last. "I got rid of you!"
"You're an idiot," the creature replied in a voice even raspier than he remembered.
Helpless and wounded as it was, Jack could not bring himself to kill it; aiding it would be madness. He rammed his sword hard into the sheath. "I may be an idiot, but I'm the one who's walking away," he said, regretting the speaking of useless words as soon as he had let them out. He continued on up the hill, feeling the doppelganger's gaze on his back, firmly resisting first the powerful temptation to look over his shoulder, then the even more pressing urge to return and--
(And do what?) Irritated with himself, he shook his head. The thing wasn't even human. (How do you know?) his mind whispered. (How can you be sure?)
At the top of the hill he paused, wiping a light sheen of sweat from his forehead; it really was very warm today.
(I wonder how long he's been lying in the sun with no water)
It didn't matter. Unless he were going to go ahead and kill the creature as it lay helpless, something Jack knew in his heart he couldn't do, giving it water would only prolong its suffering.
The air was still and dead, almost like high summer, though falling leaves were all around. By the time Jack got to the bottom of the hill he was thirsty. He got out his water bottle and felt absurdly guilty when he drank. He moved on, trying not to think about what lay behind him. At the bottom of the next hill there was a monastery; no signs, but the aura of peace was almost tangible. And while Jack's brain was debating with itself about whether Mad Jack was or was not a human being, his feet were carrying him steadily towards the monastery door.
He knocked, curiously regarding the cross design on the door.
Instead of a white or orange robe that bared one arm, the graying little man who answered the door wore a long black robe, and a cross-design pendant hung around his neck. The symbol must have something to do with whatever deity these monks worshipped; clearly, they weren't Buddhists.
Jack bowed. "Forgive me for intruding--"
"You're not intruding at all! Come in! I'm Brother Adrian. We get very few visitors around here." Brother Adrian ushered him into a small parlor. On the wall was a painting of a bearded man with brown hair and round blue eyes. "Sit down, please."
Jack sat down on a stool. "Is it safe for you to admit visitors?"
"It has been for the past few years," Brother Adrian said, seating himself on another stool. "Aku still won't tolerate churches or temples--" The monk looked unhappy. "--but he will allow the isolated religious community so long as we don't recruit openly and maintain a generally low profile. That's why we're out here on the frontier.
"Would you like something to eat?"
"No, thank you. I have come to ask for help," Jack said, wondering if he had finally cracked under the strain. "I need supplies to render first aid to an injured man."
"I'll be right back." Brother Adrian hurried out, quickly returning with a large white box, four bottles each labeled PURIFIED WATER, and two folded blankets. "I'll come along and help."
"Thank you, I don't think I will need help," Jack said, not wanting to expose the monk to a creature that might still be extremely dangerous. He looked in the box, saw that it held everything he would be likely to need, and latched it. "I will assist the gentleman and send him on his way."
"If you need to, please bring him back here, we can take care of him."
"Thank you." Jack snapped open one of the blankets for use as a furoshiki, bundling everything else up inside it. "I am indebted to you."
"No," Brother Adrian said, watching him knot the bundle, "you aren't."
Jack bowed and left, walking fast, wondering all the way back if the doppelganger was right, if he was an idiot. It was one thing to be unable to walk away and leave a human being to die in torment, but, despite appearances, he was nearly certain that Mad Jack was not really human. But Samurai Jack did not know all things, and because he did not know all things, because there might, indeed, be a human soul somewhere inside the wretch, he was going back.
When he reached his destination he thought he might have wasted this trip. Beneath the blisters, Mad Jack's lips were as pale as the surrounding flesh; his face had a waxy cast. As a samurai, the man gazing down on him was all too familiar with the look of approaching death.
Jack took out his sword and cut the spear shaft off close to the body. Catching the severed shaft, he tossed it aside. "Sit up and you'll come off it."
Mad Jack tried but couldn't even raise his head. "You're too late. I'm dying."
Probably he was right, and probably it was better so. As gently as possible, Jack lifted him off the spear shaft, supported him, gave him water.
"Avenge me," Mad Jack said.
"Why should I avenge you?"
"Idiot! Because I was killed by our common enemy."
"Our common enemy?" Jack repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"Aku!" the creature snapped, annoyed at his obtuseness, and then fainted in his arms. Jack eased him down, wondering. It must have cost Aku tremendous effort to create actual life, however warped; it was passing strange that he would then turn right round and want to destroy it. Normally he wasn't one to waste resources. Jack had encountered any number of killer robots that already bore dents and repair patches from where he'd chopped them apart once.
Still moved somewhat by compassion, but even more by curiosity, Jack wetted a cloth and eased it under the exit wound in the back of Mad Jack's shoulder. He wetted another and began soaking the hard caked blood and pus that glued the gi to the entry wound in front, frequently dribbling more water between the doppelganger's lips as he worked. It wasn't long before Mad Jack began to respond with weak swallowing motions. Soon he swallowed more eagerly. The clot softened, and the smell of infection grew thick. Finally Jack was able to pull the torn gi away in front. He rinsed out his mouth with the bottle of alcohol the monk had sent. Then he leaned over to do what had to be done, sucking and spitting out as much poison as he could. At one point during the disgusting task he glanced over and saw that his patient was conscious and alert, and seemed to be making an
effort to hold still. Evidently Mad Jack was capable of intelligent cooperation if such were in his own best interest. Of course all creatures had an instinctive bent towards self-preservation; even so, Jack was intrigued to find Mad Jack capable of any behavior besides wild, destructive anger.
"You can reason," he mused aloud.
"One cannot say the same of you," Mad Jack retorted weakly. "It seems fundamentally inappropriate that I, the world's greatest warrior, must die here while you continue your mindless existence."
"Good seeing you again, too," Jack said, and resumed his work. When he could suck out no more pus, he rinsed his mouth again and began working the gi off the back wound. "Why am I seeing you again?" he continued, sponging and pulling. "I ended your existence."
"Stupid! Life once created is not so easily destroyed. You could banish me, oh yes, and I'll not deny you weakened me, but you had not the strength to kill me, with either your weapon or your will."
"So then what happened?" Jack asked, wringing pink water out of the cloth. He wetted it again.
"You banished me to the outer edges of the Pit--and I owe you for that. It's not a pleasant place. First I had to escape it. Then I rested for a time. When I had regained my strength, I fought and killed when it amused me to do so." The fiend grinned malevolently.
Jack worked at the gi. Another bit came loose. "And then?"
"I heard from Aku. He was not pleased that you had defeated me." Mad Jack sounded as if he were tiring.
Jack let him rest, then gave him more water. "Go on."
"I told him that if you were so easy to kill, to go on and kill you himself. He was quite angry, but said nothing. He fears you. He fears us. Three nights ago, he came upon me as I slept. That is all, until you arrived."
"And he left you to die like this." Jack shook his head.
"That is why I ask that you avenge me."
"You aren't dead yet," Jack pointed out as more of the soaked gi came loose.
"I don't think it will be long. I feel very badly. Avenge me."
"I am tempted to agree. In effect, Aku has tried to murder his own son." The last of the cloth came loose. Jack considered how he would feel if his father tried to kill him, and found he could say honestly, "I am sorry for you."
The double's savage temper flared. "I don't need your sympathy! You may take your sympathy and shove it up your--" He broke off with a stifled gasp of pain as Jack poured alcohol liberally into and over the wound, and lay rigid while Jack cleaned, face immobile but for the occasional small twitch. Mad Jack's sole redeeming feature seemed to be that he suffered like a samurai.
"Can you sit up?" Jack asked when he finished.
Mad Jack tried. "No."
"Lift your shoulder as much as you can, then."
Mad Jack complied. Jack bandaged his wound, tied his arm up in a sling to keep the weight off the wound, shoved a folded blanket under his head, and evaluated him while giving him more water. One couldn't say he looked better, but he didn't look worse.
Brother Adrian had sent along two squat, wide-mouthed bottles of chicken broth. Jack opened one. It was made of some smooth, slick material he didn't recognize, but whatever it was, it held the heat in well. A little at a time, so it would stay down, he gave the patient the broth. Mad Jack was too weak to sit up and hold the jar, but his good hand clutched at Jack's wrist. Jack found it extremely creepy to watch what appeared to be his own left hand covering his left wrist.
"When I first met you...I wish I'd known what was coming," Mad Jack said suddenly. "We could have joined together and killed Aku. Together we could force the very gates of Hell, much less Aku's Pit."
"I was taught never to tell people I-told-you-so," Jack replied, "but in this instance I do not know what else can be said. You are the son of his magic, the creation of his mind. Surely you, more than anyone else, should know he cannot be trusted."
"When he created me," Mad Jack explained between sips, "he filled my mind with an overwhelming desire to kill you that excluded all else."
"I noticed," Jack said. "And I noticed that desire is no more."
"I'm dying myself, you fool; how then can I kill so much as a cockroach?"
"I mean," Jack said patiently, "that you did not come back and try again."
"Say what you mean, then. But you're right, for once. When I became a separate being, inevitably I also had the capacity for separate thoughts, feelings, desires... I don't believe Aku had anticipated that. Perhaps he had never before been a parent. Certainly I'd have done my best to kill you if I had happened to encounter you again, but chasing you down wasn't as important to me as it was to him. While I was recuperating I did consider chasing you, but the longer Aku and I were apart, the more I became my own person, and the more it seemed to me that he had an exaggerated sense of your importance. Why should I suffer privation chasing you, when there was good food to eat, sake to drink, men to kill who fought nearly as well as you, women to--"
"I take your meaning." Jack eased the double's head down on the blanket and screwed the cap on the empty jar. "If that stays down, I will give you some more in a little while. You should sleep now."
The red eyes closed. Jack settled himself to wait.
"I could not have killed you," Mad Jack said suddenly, without opening his eyes.
"Obviously."
"Nor could you have killed me. Each of us knows the other's fighting style as well as he knows his own. We would have been forever stalemated."
Jack couldn't see how that mattered now, so he didn't bother to respond, and nothing else was said for the rest of the afternoon. Jack moved around with the sun, using his shadow to keep the patient shaded. Mad Jack was already showing signs of developing a nasty sunburn on the face, neck, and hands. In the evening he gave Mad Jack the other bottle of chicken broth, still gently warm, and went foraging for himself. He caught a nice fat fish that he ate with wild mushrooms and wild onions; the three rice balls he had left he was saving for the sick man. Gods willing, getting some solid food into Mad Jack, tonight or early tomorrow, would get him on his feet and back out of Samurai Jack's life.
The divine kami were not willing. Jack could not coax Mad Jack to eat, and in the morning he was much worse; badly sunburned, blazing with fever, ominously still. At times he seemed to comprehend, distantly, what Jack said to him, but any replies he made were brief and disjointed.
Jack sighed. Having been stupid enough to take on this responsibility, he couldn't walk away from it now. He bundled everything up in the furoshiki and set it aside. Then he shook the patient's good shoulder gently until the eyelids fluttered. "Sir--" He couldn't bring himself to address this misbegotten duplicate of himself by his own name. "Sir, your condition has deteriorated to the point that I can no longer care for you in the field. I am going to take you to a monastery. I shall remain in the area to keep an eye on you, and I promise you, if you harm any of those monks in any way, you will answer to me."
Mad Jack must have understood; he smiled faintly, mockingly.
Jack slipped one arm behind his shoulders and the other behind his knees. "Can you put your good arm around my neck?"
Mad Jack tried but fell back weakly.
"Hang on as best you can. On three. Ichi--ni--san!" Jack stood up, staggering slightly under the sudden duplication of his own weight. It was a long hot walk back to the monastery. Dripping sweat, his arms and lower back aching fiercely, he stood on the front step and kicked the door gently. The head of the unconscious demon in his arms lolled against his shoulder.
Brother Adrian opened the door. "Oh, my. This is much worse than you made it sound. Bring him in." He hurried off, soon returning with two monks who carried Mad Jack away on a stretcher. Jack was glad to be rid of him.
"You don't look so well yourself," Brother Adrian said. "Here, sit down and rest."
"Thank you." Flexing and massaging his aching, trembling arms, Jack sat down on the stool. "He did get heavy towards the end of the walk. I shall rest a little and then go back and get your things."
"How far did you carry him?"
"Over your hill and then over that other hill back that way," Jack said, inclining his head to the east.
"Good Lord, sir, that's six miles! You must be exhausted! You're not going back to get anything," Brother Adrian said firmly. "One of us will go. We know the area, we'll find it. You stay here and rest." Brother Adrian eyed Jack thoughtfully. "May I ask why you didn't mention that the injured man you were aiding was your brother?"
"My--" Jack began, startled, and then he paused. Of course. With the red eyes closed, Mad Jack appeared to be his identical twin. "My brother is an embarrassment to the rest of the family," he said carefully.
Brother Adrian smiled. "There's at least one in every family. Including my own."
"Not like him."
"Care to talk about it?"
"No, thank you."
Brother Adrian considered. Finally he said, "Well, whatever your brother has done, he is still a child of God."
Jack thought the good monk would probably never know just how wrong he was.
"And it's never too late for a person to turn himself around," Brother Adrian continued. "Your brother's misfortune may be a blessing in disguise. Sometimes facing death gives a person a whole new outlook on life."
"That is so."
"What happened to him?"
"He was born that way," Jack said.
"No, I mean the injury."
"Oh." That question could not be answered truthfully without giving the monk the unsettling news that Aku had been very close by. Jack decided that a slight distortion of the truth would cause less alarm. "He was attacked by one of Aku's minions. I was not there at the time to help him defend himself."
"They're everywhere."
There was a pause, during which Jack struggled to hold back a yawn. Between the heat, the exertion, and the emotional strain, he was suddenly very sleepy...He awoke with a start as he began to fall off his stool, to find that they had been joined by a tall, thin monk of African blood.
"How long did I sleep?" Jack asked.
"About half an hour." Brother Adrian nodded towards the other monk. "This is Brother Genesius, our infirmarian."
"We thought about waking you up to ask if you'd like to lie down, but you seemed comfortable. Until you started to topple." Brother Genesius grinned, and Jack grinned back at him. Brother Genesius continued, "You may come with me now, I know you want to sit with your brother."
How wrong he was. Jack could hardly say so, though, without prompting a lot of questions that he did not want to answer, so he stood up and politely followed the monk through stone halls.
"Your brother's the only patient I have right now. If you're tired, feel free to lie down on an empty bed. That way you can rest and still be with him."
"Thank you."
"Your brother's condition is very serious, and medical facilities out here on the frontier are primitive at best. The nearest hospital is four hundred miles away and we have no means of transporting him there except on foot. It's unlikely he'd survive the move. I don't want to alarm you unduly, but--well, if you have any other family in the area, we should probably send someone to fetch them."
"There is no one else."
"If he recovers, you might want to suggest that he see an eye doctor about that redness. Worst case I've ever seen." Brother Genesius stopped at a heavy oaken door, which he opened.
When Jack entered the infirmary, the first thing to catch his eye wasn't the patient, but a five-foot, unpleasantly realistic wall sculpture of a man being crucified. He had never seen anything like it. Such graphic violence seemed terribly out of place among these gentle men. Jack thought the sculpture might commemmorate some important martyr of their religion; his guess was pretty well confirmed when Brother Genesius bowed slightly to it.
Facing the sculpture, Mad Jack slept restlessly. If he had noticed it, no wonder he was restless. Jack thought that sculpture might well bring evil dreams even to a healthy person. Mad Jack's sunburnt face was covered with some white ointment, making him look a little like a kabuki actor.
"I'll do everything I can," Brother Genesius said sympathetically, and left. Effectively alone, Jack stared out the window, trying to think of a tactful way out of this.
Kindly assuming that he would want to stay by the side of his "brother," the monks brought Jack a tray at dinnertime. Brother Genesius half-roused Mad Jack and patiently coaxed broth and congee down his throat. Mad Jack was too sick to attack or even insult the monk, for which Jack was grateful. He was too tired tonight to want to have to discipline the creature. All he wanted to do was take a bath and go to bed. He would tell the monks--well, something--tomorrow.
He turned in very early, even before the sun had gone down, and some time later he was awakened by a weak, rasping voice urgently calling his name.
"Hai?" He sat up, reaching for his sword in the light of a full moon.
"Where are we? What people have captured us?" The unnerved double was pointing at the sculpture, starkly horrible in the cold moonlight flooding the room. "Is that how they kill their prisoners?"
"Oh. No." Jack sheathed the sword and put it back on the floor beside his bed. "This is a monastery. That's a martyr of their religion." He was grimly amused that a band of peaceful monks had, at least for the moment, put the fear of the gods into Mad Jack.
"Are you sick too?"
"No."
"Then why are you here? Why have you not gone to avenge me?"
"It is not my responsibility to avenge you." Jack lay back down, thumping his pillow, which was too soft, in an effort to pack it down and firm it a little. "And you are not yet dead."
"It is your responsibility--unless another samurai steps out of the closet."
"Do not presume to call yourself a samurai! I am not even sure you should call yourself a human being."
"Whatever I am, I am a samurai. Aku fashioned me from the soul of one."
"No," Jack said firmly.
"I would avenge you in like case--because we are samurai."
"No!" Jack said, even more firmly, and rolled over to signal an end to the ridiculous discussion. If Mad Jack, of all people, had the right to call himself a samurai, one might as well tell every bandit in the world to go ahead and cultivate a topknot. Heredity was not the only thing that made a samurai; there was also the small matter of conducting oneself honorably.
"Avenge me..."
"Shut up!" Jack snapped, thoroughly exasperated. "If you truly are a samurai, you ought to commit seppuku as soon as you can."
"Why?"
"Why?" Jack said rhetorically. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me. I have not betrayed my lord; I have none. Unless you are going to argue that Aku has the right to act as a samurai's lord."
"No," Jack said coldly, "I am not."
"Everyone whom I have killed died in open combat. I have taken no woman who came not to me willingly; I have no need to. I have stolen nothing. On what grounds, then, shall I open my belly? Because I have told you you're stupid? You are. Is speaking the truth now considered dishonorable?"
Responding to him would only prolong this. Jack said nothing.
"You are angry because you are me and I am you. Well, I'm not fond of you either, but we are still two samurai and as such you have a responsibility to avenge me against our common enemy."
Jack said nothing.
"Avenge me..."
Some people didn't know when to let a matter drop. Jack pulled his pillow over his head, but as he went back to sleep he could still hear the feeble voice rasping insistently, "Avenge me..."
The issue of Mad Jack's survival was in doubt all the following day, and the monks wouldn't hear of Jack's leaving. He couldn't get away without making them feel badly. He was trapped in the pretense of being the brother of the demon. He wished he'd kept on walking, but now there was nothing for it but to carry on. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one viewed the matter, Mad Jack seemed to have inherited his prototype's strong constitution, and that, combined with the care of a skilled doctor, began to turn things around on the third day. On Mad Jack's fifth day in the infirmary, when he could walk shakily by himself and had begun to develop a ravenous convalescent appetite, Samurai Jack hoped he could believably tell the monks that he was going to leave to pursue the party who had attacked his "brother" (which was, in a sense, quite true). This he did, and, to his great relief, they accepted the notion. He went back to the infirmary to have what he sincerely hoped would be his final conversation with Mad Jack, who was propped up in bed, regarding him with the usual hostility.
"I am leaving," Jack announced. "Remember my warning, and cause the monks no trouble, or I will be back to hurt you."
"I don't want you to go," Mad Jack replied. "I am regaining the ability to use my arm. I believe I will fight again. I want you to join me against Aku."
"I am not interested in fighting at your side. Your speech is foul, your conduct unbecoming a samurai. Abeyo." Jack started out.
Behind him Mad Jack said, "There is a secret back door to the Pit."
Jack's steps slowed.
"It's not like the others. It never moves around. It remains stationary."
Jack stopped.
"And I know where it is."
CHAPTER ONE
The weather had been cloudy and damp for the past two days, but
today it was unseasonably warm for the middle of October. Samurai Jack
put on his hat against the heat and the glare of the brilliant sun in
the cloudless sky. He glided through a field of waist-high grass, heading west. He was already further west than he'd ever been in this world, and he had been noticing how sparsely populated the area grew the farther west one went. Even Aku's minions didn't seem much interested in the area. Jack hadn't been attacked in nearly a month, which was a pleasant change but not why he was heading west. He was seeking a phenomenon described to him by an itinerant peddler that had sounded as if it might have been the gate of time.
Directly ahead of him a gentle grassy hill rose. The high grass was thinning out, gradually being replaced by low, lush grass that looked like it would make excellent horse fodder, though the only animals he saw grazing were a herd of antelope well to the north. He wondered if he was the first human being to pass through this area--
No, he wasn't. Ahead of him something long and thin, too regular to be natural, was sticking up out of the ground. It looked like a pole that had lost its pennant, or perhaps the shaft of a spear which the caster hadn't retrieved for some reason.
Maybe he hadn't been able to retrieve it. Maybe he'd been killed. Jack dropped into a duck waddle and edged forward, slowly and cautiously. As he got closer, his approach became even more cautious. That shaft was indeed part of a spear, which had been driven through the upper part of the right shoulder of a man in a black gi, pinning him to the ground. That spear had been placed with great care. If the victim moved too much, struggling to free himself or to draw the sword he wore, he would rip out an artery and bleed to death. This man had not done that. He had chosen to wait in the hope someone would come along before he died of infection or dehydration. Here in this deserted region, that was a brave choice.
The man lay absolutely still, his head turned away. Jack couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. Maybe it was already too late. "Sir?" Jack said softly, glancing around meanwhile, for this victim might be bait being used to ensnare others. "Sir?"
Nothing happened. Jack inched a little closer. They seemed to be alone at the base of this hill, sweetly scented with warm grass, dotted with autumn asters.
Jack reached out to count the man's pulse. At the touch his head whipped around. Horrified, shocked, Jack leaped backward, staring into a demonic red pair of eyes shaped exactly like his own.
"You!" they exclaimed together.
Taking one last look around for other enemies, Jack stood up. The misbegotten duplicate of himself whom Aku had forged with some vile spell lay watching him quietly. It was entirely evil. Jack drew his sword. The double watched quietly and asked for no mercy.
There were little threads of blood in the cracks of the creature's dry puffy lips. It was entirely evil..and entirely helpless. Jack hesitated. Killing it seemed strangely like murder...but what else was one to do with it?
It watched him.
"How came you here?" Jack asked at last. "I got rid of you!"
"You're an idiot," the creature replied in a voice even raspier than he remembered.
Helpless and wounded as it was, Jack could not bring himself to kill it; aiding it would be madness. He rammed his sword hard into the sheath. "I may be an idiot, but I'm the one who's walking away," he said, regretting the speaking of useless words as soon as he had let them out. He continued on up the hill, feeling the doppelganger's gaze on his back, firmly resisting first the powerful temptation to look over his shoulder, then the even more pressing urge to return and--
(And do what?) Irritated with himself, he shook his head. The thing wasn't even human. (How do you know?) his mind whispered. (How can you be sure?)
At the top of the hill he paused, wiping a light sheen of sweat from his forehead; it really was very warm today.
(I wonder how long he's been lying in the sun with no water)
It didn't matter. Unless he were going to go ahead and kill the creature as it lay helpless, something Jack knew in his heart he couldn't do, giving it water would only prolong its suffering.
The air was still and dead, almost like high summer, though falling leaves were all around. By the time Jack got to the bottom of the hill he was thirsty. He got out his water bottle and felt absurdly guilty when he drank. He moved on, trying not to think about what lay behind him. At the bottom of the next hill there was a monastery; no signs, but the aura of peace was almost tangible. And while Jack's brain was debating with itself about whether Mad Jack was or was not a human being, his feet were carrying him steadily towards the monastery door.
He knocked, curiously regarding the cross design on the door.
Instead of a white or orange robe that bared one arm, the graying little man who answered the door wore a long black robe, and a cross-design pendant hung around his neck. The symbol must have something to do with whatever deity these monks worshipped; clearly, they weren't Buddhists.
Jack bowed. "Forgive me for intruding--"
"You're not intruding at all! Come in! I'm Brother Adrian. We get very few visitors around here." Brother Adrian ushered him into a small parlor. On the wall was a painting of a bearded man with brown hair and round blue eyes. "Sit down, please."
Jack sat down on a stool. "Is it safe for you to admit visitors?"
"It has been for the past few years," Brother Adrian said, seating himself on another stool. "Aku still won't tolerate churches or temples--" The monk looked unhappy. "--but he will allow the isolated religious community so long as we don't recruit openly and maintain a generally low profile. That's why we're out here on the frontier.
"Would you like something to eat?"
"No, thank you. I have come to ask for help," Jack said, wondering if he had finally cracked under the strain. "I need supplies to render first aid to an injured man."
"I'll be right back." Brother Adrian hurried out, quickly returning with a large white box, four bottles each labeled PURIFIED WATER, and two folded blankets. "I'll come along and help."
"Thank you, I don't think I will need help," Jack said, not wanting to expose the monk to a creature that might still be extremely dangerous. He looked in the box, saw that it held everything he would be likely to need, and latched it. "I will assist the gentleman and send him on his way."
"If you need to, please bring him back here, we can take care of him."
"Thank you." Jack snapped open one of the blankets for use as a furoshiki, bundling everything else up inside it. "I am indebted to you."
"No," Brother Adrian said, watching him knot the bundle, "you aren't."
Jack bowed and left, walking fast, wondering all the way back if the doppelganger was right, if he was an idiot. It was one thing to be unable to walk away and leave a human being to die in torment, but, despite appearances, he was nearly certain that Mad Jack was not really human. But Samurai Jack did not know all things, and because he did not know all things, because there might, indeed, be a human soul somewhere inside the wretch, he was going back.
When he reached his destination he thought he might have wasted this trip. Beneath the blisters, Mad Jack's lips were as pale as the surrounding flesh; his face had a waxy cast. As a samurai, the man gazing down on him was all too familiar with the look of approaching death.
Jack took out his sword and cut the spear shaft off close to the body. Catching the severed shaft, he tossed it aside. "Sit up and you'll come off it."
Mad Jack tried but couldn't even raise his head. "You're too late. I'm dying."
Probably he was right, and probably it was better so. As gently as possible, Jack lifted him off the spear shaft, supported him, gave him water.
"Avenge me," Mad Jack said.
"Why should I avenge you?"
"Idiot! Because I was killed by our common enemy."
"Our common enemy?" Jack repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"Aku!" the creature snapped, annoyed at his obtuseness, and then fainted in his arms. Jack eased him down, wondering. It must have cost Aku tremendous effort to create actual life, however warped; it was passing strange that he would then turn right round and want to destroy it. Normally he wasn't one to waste resources. Jack had encountered any number of killer robots that already bore dents and repair patches from where he'd chopped them apart once.
Still moved somewhat by compassion, but even more by curiosity, Jack wetted a cloth and eased it under the exit wound in the back of Mad Jack's shoulder. He wetted another and began soaking the hard caked blood and pus that glued the gi to the entry wound in front, frequently dribbling more water between the doppelganger's lips as he worked. It wasn't long before Mad Jack began to respond with weak swallowing motions. Soon he swallowed more eagerly. The clot softened, and the smell of infection grew thick. Finally Jack was able to pull the torn gi away in front. He rinsed out his mouth with the bottle of alcohol the monk had sent. Then he leaned over to do what had to be done, sucking and spitting out as much poison as he could. At one point during the disgusting task he glanced over and saw that his patient was conscious and alert, and seemed to be making an
effort to hold still. Evidently Mad Jack was capable of intelligent cooperation if such were in his own best interest. Of course all creatures had an instinctive bent towards self-preservation; even so, Jack was intrigued to find Mad Jack capable of any behavior besides wild, destructive anger.
"You can reason," he mused aloud.
"One cannot say the same of you," Mad Jack retorted weakly. "It seems fundamentally inappropriate that I, the world's greatest warrior, must die here while you continue your mindless existence."
"Good seeing you again, too," Jack said, and resumed his work. When he could suck out no more pus, he rinsed his mouth again and began working the gi off the back wound. "Why am I seeing you again?" he continued, sponging and pulling. "I ended your existence."
"Stupid! Life once created is not so easily destroyed. You could banish me, oh yes, and I'll not deny you weakened me, but you had not the strength to kill me, with either your weapon or your will."
"So then what happened?" Jack asked, wringing pink water out of the cloth. He wetted it again.
"You banished me to the outer edges of the Pit--and I owe you for that. It's not a pleasant place. First I had to escape it. Then I rested for a time. When I had regained my strength, I fought and killed when it amused me to do so." The fiend grinned malevolently.
Jack worked at the gi. Another bit came loose. "And then?"
"I heard from Aku. He was not pleased that you had defeated me." Mad Jack sounded as if he were tiring.
Jack let him rest, then gave him more water. "Go on."
"I told him that if you were so easy to kill, to go on and kill you himself. He was quite angry, but said nothing. He fears you. He fears us. Three nights ago, he came upon me as I slept. That is all, until you arrived."
"And he left you to die like this." Jack shook his head.
"That is why I ask that you avenge me."
"You aren't dead yet," Jack pointed out as more of the soaked gi came loose.
"I don't think it will be long. I feel very badly. Avenge me."
"I am tempted to agree. In effect, Aku has tried to murder his own son." The last of the cloth came loose. Jack considered how he would feel if his father tried to kill him, and found he could say honestly, "I am sorry for you."
The double's savage temper flared. "I don't need your sympathy! You may take your sympathy and shove it up your--" He broke off with a stifled gasp of pain as Jack poured alcohol liberally into and over the wound, and lay rigid while Jack cleaned, face immobile but for the occasional small twitch. Mad Jack's sole redeeming feature seemed to be that he suffered like a samurai.
"Can you sit up?" Jack asked when he finished.
Mad Jack tried. "No."
"Lift your shoulder as much as you can, then."
Mad Jack complied. Jack bandaged his wound, tied his arm up in a sling to keep the weight off the wound, shoved a folded blanket under his head, and evaluated him while giving him more water. One couldn't say he looked better, but he didn't look worse.
Brother Adrian had sent along two squat, wide-mouthed bottles of chicken broth. Jack opened one. It was made of some smooth, slick material he didn't recognize, but whatever it was, it held the heat in well. A little at a time, so it would stay down, he gave the patient the broth. Mad Jack was too weak to sit up and hold the jar, but his good hand clutched at Jack's wrist. Jack found it extremely creepy to watch what appeared to be his own left hand covering his left wrist.
"When I first met you...I wish I'd known what was coming," Mad Jack said suddenly. "We could have joined together and killed Aku. Together we could force the very gates of Hell, much less Aku's Pit."
"I was taught never to tell people I-told-you-so," Jack replied, "but in this instance I do not know what else can be said. You are the son of his magic, the creation of his mind. Surely you, more than anyone else, should know he cannot be trusted."
"When he created me," Mad Jack explained between sips, "he filled my mind with an overwhelming desire to kill you that excluded all else."
"I noticed," Jack said. "And I noticed that desire is no more."
"I'm dying myself, you fool; how then can I kill so much as a cockroach?"
"I mean," Jack said patiently, "that you did not come back and try again."
"Say what you mean, then. But you're right, for once. When I became a separate being, inevitably I also had the capacity for separate thoughts, feelings, desires... I don't believe Aku had anticipated that. Perhaps he had never before been a parent. Certainly I'd have done my best to kill you if I had happened to encounter you again, but chasing you down wasn't as important to me as it was to him. While I was recuperating I did consider chasing you, but the longer Aku and I were apart, the more I became my own person, and the more it seemed to me that he had an exaggerated sense of your importance. Why should I suffer privation chasing you, when there was good food to eat, sake to drink, men to kill who fought nearly as well as you, women to--"
"I take your meaning." Jack eased the double's head down on the blanket and screwed the cap on the empty jar. "If that stays down, I will give you some more in a little while. You should sleep now."
The red eyes closed. Jack settled himself to wait.
"I could not have killed you," Mad Jack said suddenly, without opening his eyes.
"Obviously."
"Nor could you have killed me. Each of us knows the other's fighting style as well as he knows his own. We would have been forever stalemated."
Jack couldn't see how that mattered now, so he didn't bother to respond, and nothing else was said for the rest of the afternoon. Jack moved around with the sun, using his shadow to keep the patient shaded. Mad Jack was already showing signs of developing a nasty sunburn on the face, neck, and hands. In the evening he gave Mad Jack the other bottle of chicken broth, still gently warm, and went foraging for himself. He caught a nice fat fish that he ate with wild mushrooms and wild onions; the three rice balls he had left he was saving for the sick man. Gods willing, getting some solid food into Mad Jack, tonight or early tomorrow, would get him on his feet and back out of Samurai Jack's life.
The divine kami were not willing. Jack could not coax Mad Jack to eat, and in the morning he was much worse; badly sunburned, blazing with fever, ominously still. At times he seemed to comprehend, distantly, what Jack said to him, but any replies he made were brief and disjointed.
Jack sighed. Having been stupid enough to take on this responsibility, he couldn't walk away from it now. He bundled everything up in the furoshiki and set it aside. Then he shook the patient's good shoulder gently until the eyelids fluttered. "Sir--" He couldn't bring himself to address this misbegotten duplicate of himself by his own name. "Sir, your condition has deteriorated to the point that I can no longer care for you in the field. I am going to take you to a monastery. I shall remain in the area to keep an eye on you, and I promise you, if you harm any of those monks in any way, you will answer to me."
Mad Jack must have understood; he smiled faintly, mockingly.
Jack slipped one arm behind his shoulders and the other behind his knees. "Can you put your good arm around my neck?"
Mad Jack tried but fell back weakly.
"Hang on as best you can. On three. Ichi--ni--san!" Jack stood up, staggering slightly under the sudden duplication of his own weight. It was a long hot walk back to the monastery. Dripping sweat, his arms and lower back aching fiercely, he stood on the front step and kicked the door gently. The head of the unconscious demon in his arms lolled against his shoulder.
Brother Adrian opened the door. "Oh, my. This is much worse than you made it sound. Bring him in." He hurried off, soon returning with two monks who carried Mad Jack away on a stretcher. Jack was glad to be rid of him.
"You don't look so well yourself," Brother Adrian said. "Here, sit down and rest."
"Thank you." Flexing and massaging his aching, trembling arms, Jack sat down on the stool. "He did get heavy towards the end of the walk. I shall rest a little and then go back and get your things."
"How far did you carry him?"
"Over your hill and then over that other hill back that way," Jack said, inclining his head to the east.
"Good Lord, sir, that's six miles! You must be exhausted! You're not going back to get anything," Brother Adrian said firmly. "One of us will go. We know the area, we'll find it. You stay here and rest." Brother Adrian eyed Jack thoughtfully. "May I ask why you didn't mention that the injured man you were aiding was your brother?"
"My--" Jack began, startled, and then he paused. Of course. With the red eyes closed, Mad Jack appeared to be his identical twin. "My brother is an embarrassment to the rest of the family," he said carefully.
Brother Adrian smiled. "There's at least one in every family. Including my own."
"Not like him."
"Care to talk about it?"
"No, thank you."
Brother Adrian considered. Finally he said, "Well, whatever your brother has done, he is still a child of God."
Jack thought the good monk would probably never know just how wrong he was.
"And it's never too late for a person to turn himself around," Brother Adrian continued. "Your brother's misfortune may be a blessing in disguise. Sometimes facing death gives a person a whole new outlook on life."
"That is so."
"What happened to him?"
"He was born that way," Jack said.
"No, I mean the injury."
"Oh." That question could not be answered truthfully without giving the monk the unsettling news that Aku had been very close by. Jack decided that a slight distortion of the truth would cause less alarm. "He was attacked by one of Aku's minions. I was not there at the time to help him defend himself."
"They're everywhere."
There was a pause, during which Jack struggled to hold back a yawn. Between the heat, the exertion, and the emotional strain, he was suddenly very sleepy...He awoke with a start as he began to fall off his stool, to find that they had been joined by a tall, thin monk of African blood.
"How long did I sleep?" Jack asked.
"About half an hour." Brother Adrian nodded towards the other monk. "This is Brother Genesius, our infirmarian."
"We thought about waking you up to ask if you'd like to lie down, but you seemed comfortable. Until you started to topple." Brother Genesius grinned, and Jack grinned back at him. Brother Genesius continued, "You may come with me now, I know you want to sit with your brother."
How wrong he was. Jack could hardly say so, though, without prompting a lot of questions that he did not want to answer, so he stood up and politely followed the monk through stone halls.
"Your brother's the only patient I have right now. If you're tired, feel free to lie down on an empty bed. That way you can rest and still be with him."
"Thank you."
"Your brother's condition is very serious, and medical facilities out here on the frontier are primitive at best. The nearest hospital is four hundred miles away and we have no means of transporting him there except on foot. It's unlikely he'd survive the move. I don't want to alarm you unduly, but--well, if you have any other family in the area, we should probably send someone to fetch them."
"There is no one else."
"If he recovers, you might want to suggest that he see an eye doctor about that redness. Worst case I've ever seen." Brother Genesius stopped at a heavy oaken door, which he opened.
When Jack entered the infirmary, the first thing to catch his eye wasn't the patient, but a five-foot, unpleasantly realistic wall sculpture of a man being crucified. He had never seen anything like it. Such graphic violence seemed terribly out of place among these gentle men. Jack thought the sculpture might commemmorate some important martyr of their religion; his guess was pretty well confirmed when Brother Genesius bowed slightly to it.
Facing the sculpture, Mad Jack slept restlessly. If he had noticed it, no wonder he was restless. Jack thought that sculpture might well bring evil dreams even to a healthy person. Mad Jack's sunburnt face was covered with some white ointment, making him look a little like a kabuki actor.
"I'll do everything I can," Brother Genesius said sympathetically, and left. Effectively alone, Jack stared out the window, trying to think of a tactful way out of this.
Kindly assuming that he would want to stay by the side of his "brother," the monks brought Jack a tray at dinnertime. Brother Genesius half-roused Mad Jack and patiently coaxed broth and congee down his throat. Mad Jack was too sick to attack or even insult the monk, for which Jack was grateful. He was too tired tonight to want to have to discipline the creature. All he wanted to do was take a bath and go to bed. He would tell the monks--well, something--tomorrow.
He turned in very early, even before the sun had gone down, and some time later he was awakened by a weak, rasping voice urgently calling his name.
"Hai?" He sat up, reaching for his sword in the light of a full moon.
"Where are we? What people have captured us?" The unnerved double was pointing at the sculpture, starkly horrible in the cold moonlight flooding the room. "Is that how they kill their prisoners?"
"Oh. No." Jack sheathed the sword and put it back on the floor beside his bed. "This is a monastery. That's a martyr of their religion." He was grimly amused that a band of peaceful monks had, at least for the moment, put the fear of the gods into Mad Jack.
"Are you sick too?"
"No."
"Then why are you here? Why have you not gone to avenge me?"
"It is not my responsibility to avenge you." Jack lay back down, thumping his pillow, which was too soft, in an effort to pack it down and firm it a little. "And you are not yet dead."
"It is your responsibility--unless another samurai steps out of the closet."
"Do not presume to call yourself a samurai! I am not even sure you should call yourself a human being."
"Whatever I am, I am a samurai. Aku fashioned me from the soul of one."
"No," Jack said firmly.
"I would avenge you in like case--because we are samurai."
"No!" Jack said, even more firmly, and rolled over to signal an end to the ridiculous discussion. If Mad Jack, of all people, had the right to call himself a samurai, one might as well tell every bandit in the world to go ahead and cultivate a topknot. Heredity was not the only thing that made a samurai; there was also the small matter of conducting oneself honorably.
"Avenge me..."
"Shut up!" Jack snapped, thoroughly exasperated. "If you truly are a samurai, you ought to commit seppuku as soon as you can."
"Why?"
"Why?" Jack said rhetorically. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me. I have not betrayed my lord; I have none. Unless you are going to argue that Aku has the right to act as a samurai's lord."
"No," Jack said coldly, "I am not."
"Everyone whom I have killed died in open combat. I have taken no woman who came not to me willingly; I have no need to. I have stolen nothing. On what grounds, then, shall I open my belly? Because I have told you you're stupid? You are. Is speaking the truth now considered dishonorable?"
Responding to him would only prolong this. Jack said nothing.
"You are angry because you are me and I am you. Well, I'm not fond of you either, but we are still two samurai and as such you have a responsibility to avenge me against our common enemy."
Jack said nothing.
"Avenge me..."
Some people didn't know when to let a matter drop. Jack pulled his pillow over his head, but as he went back to sleep he could still hear the feeble voice rasping insistently, "Avenge me..."
The issue of Mad Jack's survival was in doubt all the following day, and the monks wouldn't hear of Jack's leaving. He couldn't get away without making them feel badly. He was trapped in the pretense of being the brother of the demon. He wished he'd kept on walking, but now there was nothing for it but to carry on. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one viewed the matter, Mad Jack seemed to have inherited his prototype's strong constitution, and that, combined with the care of a skilled doctor, began to turn things around on the third day. On Mad Jack's fifth day in the infirmary, when he could walk shakily by himself and had begun to develop a ravenous convalescent appetite, Samurai Jack hoped he could believably tell the monks that he was going to leave to pursue the party who had attacked his "brother" (which was, in a sense, quite true). This he did, and, to his great relief, they accepted the notion. He went back to the infirmary to have what he sincerely hoped would be his final conversation with Mad Jack, who was propped up in bed, regarding him with the usual hostility.
"I am leaving," Jack announced. "Remember my warning, and cause the monks no trouble, or I will be back to hurt you."
"I don't want you to go," Mad Jack replied. "I am regaining the ability to use my arm. I believe I will fight again. I want you to join me against Aku."
"I am not interested in fighting at your side. Your speech is foul, your conduct unbecoming a samurai. Abeyo." Jack started out.
Behind him Mad Jack said, "There is a secret back door to the Pit."
Jack's steps slowed.
"It's not like the others. It never moves around. It remains stationary."
Jack stopped.
"And I know where it is."