Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  She had nothing else on her I could use. I had hoped for food and water but supposed that the prador just let them forage, or didn’t bother feeding them until it became an absolute necessity. Her twitching had died now, but she still moved slightly. I picked up my pack and got away from there just as fast as I could.

  Above the cliff, a flat plain extended for about a mile to another upslope. As I had discovered already walking in these mountains, the top was always higher than expected. I set out at a jog across it, the sun again shining in my face, my visor automatically polarizing to deal with it. What looked like dry grass lay underfoot, along with the dried-out remains of flying arthropods that floated up like confetti whenever I kicked one. I saw a snake, a genuine terran snake, and stopped to inspect it. The creature studied me back, jetted out its tongue briefly, then headed away as if embarrassed by the encounter.

  Soon reaching the next slope, I cut across it diagonally. It seemed ludicrous to keep going up over every mountain. I would circumvent what I could and keep generally towards the sunrise. Suzeal could correct my course once I got over the mountains, if she really intended to rescue me from this world. And if, the stray thought arrived, these mountains did actually come to an end in a few hundred miles. But I had little choice but to keep going – in fact, no other choice. And whatever Suzeal’s intent, getting to a human installation on this world seemed like a good idea.

  On this particular mountain I was very high up, though not into the snowline which I could see at its peak. As I rounded it, the vista opened out before me and my guts sank. Perhaps she’d been lying completely about the installation and how far I would have to go to reach it. Ahead was a mountain range that disappeared into orange haze. Valleys lay in between, packed with forests or jungles or whatever terms applied. Waterfalls glinted on a couple of slopes too, and silhouetted against the sky were flocks of birds … or flying creatures. Yet, even though the prospect was daunting, and it was highly likely Suzeal had been lying to me, my mood began to lift. Despite the danger, I could take pleasure in this beautiful view. I was about to move on when the coms unit buzzed.

  ‘My, you are a survivor,’ she began. She didn’t look happy, but whether about me surviving or some other matter. I wasn’t sure.

  ‘They’re not trying to kill me, just capture,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, the resolution from my satellites is quite good. I saw the stun gun. I expect Vrasan wants to play with you. Of course, he wouldn’t try to core and thrall you since you’re not infected with the virus – the procedure would kill you.’

  ‘Where are the prador in relation to me now?’ I asked, wondering if she might like to see how I would survive up against Vrasan.

  ‘I see that the other clones moved in on where you killed that Jill. They are of course heading after you but are still a little way behind.’

  ‘The prador?’ I asked again.

  ‘Keep heading towards the sunrise and you should be good. I’ll warn you if you go off course. You’re doing very well.’

  So she wasn’t going to tell me where the prador were. But I’d get as much more as I could from her.

  ‘And how are things up there?’

  She grimaced. ‘They’re still dug in. They had another railgun. It’ll be more difficult to remove them than we thought.’ Failure, then.

  ‘So you won’t be coming for me just yet.’

  ‘You seem able enough to survive.’

  ‘Something killed one of the Jills,’ I stated. She waved a hand airily. ‘A sleer, I expect, judging by the injuries. I didn’t see the actual event.’

  ‘Okay.’ This time, I wondered if my suspicions of her lies came from my own instinct or knowledge from my previous self. I kept trudging, trying to figure out why she might do so. She was playing games with me, that was clear, but why? What was in it for her? When I said nothing more, she disconnected.

  Rounding the mountain, I headed down towards a valley that would take me nominally in the right direction. As I descended, it got warmer. Soon I found myself slipping on strews of bubble grass and, from where this grew, gazed down into a packed mass of the cycad-like trees, where vines tangled intervening spaces. I headed across the slope, aiming to walk along above and alongside this mass. A hoped-for path failed to materialize in the steep valley sides; however, further along the vegetation below thinned out and I glimpsed an area clear of trees around a waterfall. I had emptied my water container some time before and also finished my food. Perhaps the time had come for me to risk foraging because I wouldn’t reach my destination on an empty stomach, especially labouring against a gravity here for which evolution had not designed me.

  Moving through a combination of trees like the ones I’d seen before, including a banyan from which I ate unsatisfactory ‘leaves’, and a pear trunk tree devoid of leeches, I came to an area scattered with actual cycads protruding pink fleshy-looking flower spikes. Underfoot, mosses squelched and slimy things like long leaves writhed when I stepped on them. I came to a mass of blue reeds throwing up twenty-foot-tall papyrus heads and heard a river beyond. Although I couldn’t see it, I followed its course. The sun had moved up overhead, then steadily behind when I saw something glittering on a slab of rock.

  The thrall unit had been smashed with a heavy stone lying beside it, while the burned remains of a Jack’s head lay next to it. I stared. The deliberate use of a rock to do this, and the burned state of the remains, told me at once a person had killed this clone. For a second I wondered if another had become fully conscious like me, then felt stupid because, if it had been cored, that wasn’t possible. I squatted down and scanned my surroundings but could detect no movement. Who would kill one of these? The prador had no reason to and I couldn’t think of anyone else. But maybe my assumption that only the prador, the clones and I were here had been a mistake. With the right equipment, it would be easy enough to survive. Suzeal had directed me to a human installation. Why were they here? Were they occupied? Perhaps she’d sent someone out to look for me. Even as I thought this, a cynical side dismissed the idea, both as a threat or a hope of rescue. There was little to no chance Suzeal, or any of those she ruled, would put themselves at risk to help me. And there were dangers enough here that Suzeal wouldn’t need to send someone against me. I noted a trail leading from the rock back between the cycads and cautiously followed the writhing green to its source, crouching beside one of the cycads. Someone was here!

  No.

  A small droon looked up. Just for a second it had seemed human, but when it shifted I saw the rest of its doubled thorax. It huffed its head but showed no inclination to attack. Instead, it jetted out a series of wormish pipes from the lower tier of its head and began sucking at the mess of bubbling fluid in front of it, which issued from the side of the half-dissolved corpse. Were they intelligent? My knowledge told me yes, about as bright as a dog. Maybe it had removed the thrall and smashed it because it’d writhed like the one I’d removed, while the burns I’d seen on the remains of the head were from acid.

  I backed away, pulse rifle pointed at the thing and then, when far enough away, turned and ran. Despite the boggy ground, I set a good pace and just kept going until I began to feel weary, slackening to a jog and then a walk. A clearing to my left revealed a bank beside the river, slow-moving at this point and deep. I went over, filled my water container and studied the water. Not seeing any fish, let alone having any idea how to catch them if I did, I moved on. Then I heard something running through the vegetation behind, sounding as though it had too many legs. I turned and squatted, raising the pulse rifle, not sure whether the carbine might have been a better choice. But I had no time to change as the droon came into sight moving fast, bouncing off the side of a cycad as it altered its course towards me.

  When the stream of white pulses punctuated a line to its head, I thought I’d fired, but then two more joined it. The droon crashed down, limbs all askew, most of its head and part of its upper thorax blasted away. It flailed, smoke and fire
rising from it, as another shot came in – a small missile. The thing flew apart on a hot blast, raining fragments all around me. I turned, trying to locate the source of the shots. A Jack stepped out from behind a tree holding up a weapon and its shot slapped my chest, as well as stinging my right cheek and forehead. I fell on my backside and wasn’t sure why. The side of my face had gone numb and weird coloured lights rotated in my right eye. I tried to raise the rifle but my right arm was dead too. I fumbled with it until a boot slammed into my chest, knocking me down on my back. He reached down, ripped open the front of my envirosuit and fired another shot from his stun gun into my chest. And then the world went away.

  8

  They had tied me with wire to a travois made out of branches and one of them was towing it. As I became fully cognizant of my surroundings, the events that had led me to this point returned in a disjointed fashion. It was as if my brain had been programmed to record events but hadn’t allowed them into my consciousness while they were happening. One of the clones had picked me up and slung me over his shoulder and they’d proceeded thus for a while. Somebody had said something, over to one side in the trees, words that didn’t make any sense, and gunfire had ensued. They’d run for a while, then stopped and made the travois. I reckoned it was so the one now pulling me could have his hands free to use his weapon. Five of them surrounded me, as far as I could see: three Jacks and two Jills.

  All of their actions could be construed as those of intelligent people. They’d reacted to a situation in a logical manner. But I knew that the logic lay some distance away from here in the mind of the controlling prador, probably Vrasan. From the tra-vois, where I still lay paralysed, I could see the four walking behind. They were robots. They walked with steady monotonous precision, their heads turning regularly as they scanned their surroundings and their eyes blinking with the same regularity. One of them stumbled on a rock and an appreciable delay followed before he righted himself. He showed no reaction to the obstacle, didn’t even look. Another had lost her slipper, but it made no difference to her pace. The state of one of the Jacks really brought home to me their lack of sentience. Something had taken a bite out of the side of his head. A chunk the size of a fist was missing, taking with it one eye and the bone in that area, and I could see the silvery legs of his thrall braced inside. But he carried on, regardless.

  The paralytic had waned just enough now for me to be able to blink and move my head slightly, while my limbs felt like lead. I wondered if, once I could move them, one of the clones would step over and put another stun shot in me, or whether the controlling prador thought my bonds enough, so I didn’t try. I just lay there, trying to decipher some way out of this and trying to ignore that there might not be one. Then I heard it again: that nonsense voice in the vegetation.

  ‘Umber stroobergak-fraggle,’ it said.

  It sent shivers down my spine. It made absolutely no sense yet seemed as though it ought to. It didn’t sound quite human and my adopted knowledge finally provided an answer. It was the gabble. Creatures from many other worlds had been dumped here from Stratogaster’s Zoo. Hooders, and Suzeal had mentioned mud snakes, as well as a siluroyne. These were all vicious dangerous predators from the world of Masada, but other nasty things came from there too and it seemed one of them might be trailing us. The gabbleducks were the devolved descendants of the ancient alien Atheter. They spoke like the thing I was hearing, in pseudo-Anglic, and nobody knew why. Often they just seemed wrapped up in their own concerns and ignored any humans that came within their compass. But they were still predators and did kill people on that world. Sometimes they took it into their heads to pursue particular victims over hundreds of miles and would even try to break through township defences there to get to them. They’d tear them apart, chewing on the remains, but not swallowing anything. Or sometimes they pursued people for miles, caught them, only to lose interest afterwards.

  My mouth regained some feeling and at last I could summon up enough saliva to moisten it. Maybe I could speak, but what would be the point? The Jack who’d lost part of his head carried my pack and weapons. Why was he bothering? Perhaps Vrasan was curious about me and wanted to examine my belongings. I took this as a good thing. If I got the chance to escape, I might be able to get them back. I certainly wouldn’t be able to survive without them. And perhaps this indicated Vrasan’s intentions weren’t only to give me a hard death. Maybe he wanted to question me – wanted information. I grimaced. Prador never asked nicely. Whichever way this went, I’d have to be ruthless and take any opportunity to escape as fast as possible. Cynical me opined that I was unlikely to be given a chance, I was as good as dead.

  I had no sense of how much time had passed, and it came as a surprise when the vegetation faded around me and I found myself being towed across a flat plain scattered with boulders the size of buildings, blue-silver in the light of a moon I’d not seen before. The clones didn’t stop and I drifted off, then jerked awake to the sound of pulse rifle fire and the sound of a gabble-duck grumbling nonsense. It then retreated behind a mass of contorted stone decorated with trees like saucer-shaped spreads of foliage. I lay utterly still, hoping none of the clones had seen me jerk, because I could now move my limbs. Despite that, however, my bonds gave me little freedom of movement. The night proceeded with no further sign of the gabbleduck.

  Dawn twilight revealed the loom of mountains all around us as the clones dragged me down a scree slope onto an animal track winding down into yet another valley. The sun burned a lump out of the horizon to my left, just before we entered the shade of growths which were either plants or fungi. Branches from their pure white trunks spread grey masses, like a cross between fungus brackets and lichen, but sprouting small red globes on short stalks. No memories of these rose for my inspection, just comparisons. I wondered if they were something else from Stratogaster’s Zoo. Besides prey animals, he had also kept native flora to complement his vicious fauna. Or just maybe these were part of the original life on this world, presuming it had had any in the first place.

  As we passed underneath them, I felt something land on my face, with others pattering on my envirosuit and a rain of them all around. The clone directly behind me, the Jack with a big gap in his skull, walked along oblivious to a white segmented worm stuck to his head. The thing seemed to possess a pincer head at each end and writhed through the ginger stubble of his hair and into the cavity, disappearing out of sight. I tilted my head slightly, seeing similar creatures worming their way up my suit towards my face. Meanwhile, one that had actually landed there started probing the edge of my mouth, then using its pincers on my lip. The horror of it overwhelmed me. Would the Jacks just continue walking while this thing tore at my mouth and finally wormed its way inside? I groaned out loud.

  The Jacks remained oblivious as blood ran down my chin and my neck. I yelled and the thing took the opportunity to shove between my teeth. I bit down, crunching, acrid fluid flooding my mouth to suck the moisture from my tongue. I spat it out, but even then another reached my collar. I shrieked and fought against my bonds, managing to dislodge one of the things lower down. This was no good. I needed the clones to act.

  ‘Do you want me alive or not?’ I bellowed. ‘These fucking things will eat me!’

  The clones did nothing for a long while. I saw one worm force its way into a Jill’s mouth, while another had begun chewing at the orbit of a Jack’s eye. Perhaps this last motivated the prador, for he wouldn’t want his slaves to start losing their senses. All at once, they started to brush the creatures off themselves. The Jill reached up to pull at the one in her mouth, which had a grip on her tongue. It snapped in half, and she reached inside to tug out the rest of it. The Jack who now had one within his skull only got rid of those on his clothing or head. I supposed he couldn’t reach the one inside, or the controlling prador wasn’t aware of it. Another worm at my neck crawled up the side of my face, and I shook my head, shouting as I tried to dislodge it. The thing decided my ear might be a nic
e place to be and started chewing there to widen the gap. I yelled again, and at last one of the clones stepped forwards.

  She stood over me and inspected me from head to foot. Even as I yelled and struggled, she removed all the worms that had fallen on me or the travois, starting from the feet upwards. This more than anything expressed her lack of awareness, or perhaps it showed an amused cruelty on the part of the prador. Finally she took hold of the thing boring into my ear, pulled it out and discarded it. I lay there sobbing. Such horrible pain from such small creatures, and just a fraction of what might be in store for me.

  As we progressed under the strange plants or fungi, more kept falling and the clones continued to brush the things away. The Jill stayed attentive, plucking them off me even as they landed. Soon, banyan, and then the occasional pear trunk, displaced those growths and leeches were the things that dropped when we passed under the latter. They probed the clones for only a moment then fell away. Perhaps they found their flesh too tough or perhaps, controlled by the virus and finding their potential host already occupied, they knew to seek elsewhere. One landed on me, down on my leg, and stabbed ineffectually with its wad-cutter mouth. Then inevitably it began to crawl up towards my face, but the Jill plucked it away too. I felt conflicted about this, as I knew the leech bite infected its recipient with the virus. So, if I was bitten, I would in time become as rugged and strong as the clones. But did I want the kind of resilience it imparted, when being taken to the prador, as this would also facilitate being cored and thralled?