Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  A stream lay at the bottom of this valley too, running between wide slabs of rock below a cliff made up of similar slabs, and in which I could see occasional caves. I briefly thought the day must be ending because, coming clear of the trees, we entered twilight. I panicked when something else pattered against my envirosuit, until I realized the twilight was due to thick cloud and it had begun to rain. This seemed suitable weather for my situation. As we travelled further, I saw the first sign that the prador encampment might be near. A slab lay bare as we approached, yet something faded into existence on it as we passed. Sitting atop it was a tripod, riveted into the stone, supporting a blocky device that turned with the same regularity as the clones surveying their surroundings. My mind found recognition: the chameleonware device had of course first hidden itself, until we moved inside its field. I noted the cloudy sky had taken on a metallic tint while occasional ripples of iridescence passed over the surrounding rocks. And I recognized what might be another of Suzeal’s lies.

  She’d told me the clones were some distance behind me. She’d also implied, right from the start, that she knew the location of the prador base, despite being evasive with me when I asked where they were. But the fact that the prador used chameleonware indicated otherwise. The prador wouldn’t have started using ’ware just to cover a location in the hope she hadn’t tracked their course. They would’ve either started using it straightaway, as they departed the ship, or at some point soon afterwards while on the move. I reckoned she only had a vague idea that they might be in these mountains – they were ideal for concealment – but not exactly where. This now brought me around to her other lie.

  She had wanted me to be captured or killed. I could think of any number of reasons for the latter, including her entertainment, but the former was more interesting. I had no doubt she’d been watching from her satellites as the clones took me, and had followed their course through the mountains. But now we’d passed under a chameleonware shield, she wouldn’t be able to see us. Perhaps by allowing me to be captured, and knowing the clones would take me back to the prador, she hoped to locate them. It seemed logical, until you factored in that the prador didn’t want to be found. They wouldn’t lead those eyes in the sky directly back towards them. Chameleonware shields could cover wide areas, and be scattered where there was no other useful concealment, as well as blurred and laid along various courses. They could also work electronic chaff, projecting images of the prador encampment, or even the clones themselves, in the wrong locations. A short while after I’d pondered on this, the clones proved me right.

  They halted for a bit, just standing around, perhaps while the prador updated their programming, then abruptly crossed the stream. Up on the other side, they worked their way along parallel to the cliff, then used projecting slabs as steps to go higher, two of them now carrying my travois. And then they entered a cave. It grew steadily darker as we moved inside, then the lights came on. Beads of luminescence stuck haphazardly on the ceiling and walls made it almost painfully bright in there. These were shells of light-emitting meta-material, wrapped round a power supply that was activated by the presence of people – a Polity invention.

  Stalactites hung above, long and spindly in the higher gravity and scattered with crystals like amethyst and ruby. At first the clones walked on a mud floor, and I wondered how the mud had extended so deep. A side cave, which was particularly full of the stuff, revealed the source. It was shit. A loud clattering and cheeping started up. Bats, I thought, but the creatures that flew out I immediately identified as the flying insects whose papery corpses I had seen when crossing a previous mountain top. They had two sets of wings, wide heads bearing ugly-looking mandibles and numerous legs which hung from doubled thoraxes like a droon. I assumed them to be life from the same world, but didn’t recognize them.

  Deeper inside, I began to see signs of recent cutting: boulders sliced through, disintegrated to rubble and pushed to one side, as well as the regular marks of other cutting on some walls. And for a stretch, a whole tunnel had been bored through. All of this hadn’t been done to widen the cave for the clones, but for something larger. The prador had come this way, probably using intense geological scanning, and with a destination in mind. They had almost certainly scanned this world previously too, as the ship came down, and then retained that information. The journey went on and on. Sliding into a state halfway between sleep and waking, I lost track. My hunger, which had risen a couple of times, had now waned to a tight clench in my guts. I’d pay for this in terms of energy, since I’d been free of fat when I was first delivered to the prador and hadn’t subsequently had a chance to accrue any. My injured mouth felt horribly sore, as though burned, and virulent too, as if something might be incubating in my lips. When at one point small white worms issued from the hole in the injured Jack’s skull, I got the horrors. Then I must have slipped into complete sleep.

  I awoke when the travois thumped against the ground. The sky roiled umber above me, while heavy rain splashed in the churned soil and granite slabs all around. It soaked my face but I was grateful for its coolness – I felt hot and my lips were burning. I just lay there for a moment, then raised my head to look around. I’d been abandoned just outside the cave, where it entered a shallow valley. The ground lay nominally level but hadn’t been that way before. At the end I could see a heap of rocks, earth and shattered banyan, with further untouched banyan lying beyond it. The five clones had moved over to my right and sat in the shade of an overhanging slab, eating food blocks with metronomic efficiency. The prador I’d seen escaping the ship were ahead of me, two of them installed in large machines. One seemed to be sitting at a thing like a large piano, but metallic, with a conveyor underneath and other machines clustered around. From there came the sizzle and hum of a matter printer. Another operated a scoop arm to hoist glittery rubble from a pile and drop it into a hopper. I assumed the rest of the equipment he controlled consisted of a furnace, forges, casting beds and other items for the production of technological items. Further equipment lay scattered here and there, including the grav-barges, particle cannons and other partially assembled weapons, and stacks of supplies. The Guard who had rescued Vrasan crouched behind one of the barges, setting up a missile launcher, but I couldn’t see any sign of Vrasan himself.

  Movement came in the corner of my eye, and the sound of rattling metal.

  I strained my neck to look round to my left and felt an immediate surge of panic. Here rested an item I’d really not expected to see. Under a protruding slab lay a hooder, fully a hundred feet long. It moved again, straining against massive chains riveted in place along its carapace at one end and bolted into the rock below at the other. The top of the spoon-shaped head of the thing had been opened, with a shield-shaped chunk of carapace discarded on the ground nearby. Heavy composite clamps secured the head immovably to the stone. In the head cavity lay purple wetness, but also the silvery glint of metallic items. I now noticed the segmented metalwork running all the way down its back. Vrasan bobbed up into sight behind the head, holding a large gleaming object like a metallized jellyfish – a hemisphere from which hung numerous tentacles and other protrusions. The tentacles were moving as he lowered it into place, eager to seek out their targets. The hooder shuddered as they went in, its feet scraping against the stone frenetically with a sound like numerous engines starting up. Vrasan ignored this as he next took up a deposition welder and sealed the hemisphere in place.

  He was thralling a hooder. I stared in disbelief. How the hell had they captured the thing? I guessed some form of stun – probably something that would kill or blow apart a normal creature. And what could they possibly want to do with it?

  When Vrasan had finished his work, he moved round from behind the creature and stalked over towards me. Even as he drew close, two of the clones appeared beside me and began undoing the wires securing me to the travois. They hauled me upright and the passing thought I’d had about trying to run was crushed as they had to support m
e. They all but carried me over to a frame rooted in the ground, and manacles clicked around my wrists, holding my arms above my head by chains to a crossbar. As I slumped, the manacles dug in, so I tried to force some life into my legs and stand, shakily. The rain pummelled down on me and I thought I would die here.

  Vrasan moved up to stand before me. His armour now bore camouflage stripes of black, grey and green. The eyes behind the visor didn’t match the creature underneath … this was supposing he had returned to his original form. He clattered and bubbled at me, then prodded me in the guts with one claw, driving the wind out of me. I understood a little of it. I expected him to be happy to have captured me and relishing the prospect of what was to come, but his speech included phonemes for ‘aberrant behaviour’, ‘fascination’ and ‘I need to understand’. He clattered for a moment longer, a deep buzzing ensued, then he spoke in Anglic through a translator maybe linked to his mind, for his mandibles grew still.

  ‘Your behaviour was not expected. You should have been incapable of the things you did, so what are you?’ he asked.

  ‘A human being,’ I replied.

  ‘Insufficient answer. Further insufficient answers will be punished.’

  I thought hard about my reply, seeking advantage, and only answered when he advanced towards me threateningly.

  ‘Knowledge began loading to my mind from when I woke up aboard Suzeal’s ship.’

  I kept the answer brief because that would elicit other questions from him and the longer we kept talking the longer it would be before he did something nasty to me.

  ‘Suzeal put an implant inside you,’ he stated.

  ‘She did not.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Because I believe I know the source of that knowledge.’

  He watched me for a long silent moment then said, ‘You will tell me the source of this knowledge and you will make your answer elaborate and detailed. If your answer is brief I will remove your foot.’

  ‘Okay, no need to be so pushy. I’ve had a traumatic life thus far and it’s difficult to get my thoughts in order.’ He began to reach down towards my foot so I continued hurriedly, ‘As far as I understand it, Suzeal used the DNA of a Polity agent whose name was Jack. I call him Jack Zero. She copied the sample to produce the other clones but used the original to make me.’ Now I began to see something to my advantage. ‘When I met your king he told me that the Polity is using quantum processing crystals in its human agents to record data – just like memplants. He told me this before sending me away, but also revealed to me how to escape the slave unit attached to my neck.’

  Vrasan withdrew his claw sharply. ‘So you are effectively this Polity agent?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It has been my experience that I don’t have that agent’s memories, just his knowledge. I know much of what he knew, but I have no idea how he knew what he did. I know, for example, that hooders are devolved war machines, and understand some of their biology, the way they behave and how resistant they are to most weapons. I don’t know when or how Jack Zero learned this – whether through experience or mental upload. This is why, incidentally, I’m curious about how you managed to subdue that beast – it must have been quite a feat.’ I nodded towards the hooder.

  Vrasan shuffled round and looked back towards the hooder. ‘I lured it here because I knew it could not be subdued for long. We hit it with sonic stun grenades on every segment, while simultaneously blowing EMPs underneath it. It had to be timed perfectly to generate a neural surge through its spinal cortex – the blasts starting at the tail and working their way up. This effectively knocked it out for three minutes, in which time we moved and secured it with bonds already prepared. The spine frame went on next, set to generate further surges to suppress it and prevent it tearing free.’

  Good, I had sparked his ego and he liked to talk about his work. Perhaps it was the white armour, but I now had an impression of him as the prador equivalent of the white-coated scientist working in his laboratory. Probably brilliant, and maybe a bit unstable.

  He swung back towards me. ‘The king told you how to escape?’

  ‘My mind wasn’t as functional then as it is now. I didn’t realize that the slave unit only forced me to comply with orders and didn’t stop me from doing anything else, like tear the thing off.’

  ‘And you claim the king told you this?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me to tear it off, but he did inform me that I had independent action outside of its orders. Perhaps it was a whim – he seemed bored.’

  Vrasan made a strange bubbling sound suspiciously like a sigh. He moved forwards and reached out with one claw. I tried to get away but he closed its tips hard on either side of my skull, but then gently turned my head. No doubt he was inspecting the scar on my neck.

  ‘I don’t see what use a hooder could be to you down here,’ I risked, hoping to provoke him to tell me more.

  He released my head. ‘The hooders are incorrectly described in the Polity as devolved war machines. They were converted from their original wild form into biomechs. When the Atheter chose their cowardly retreat from civilization, they shut them down and also returned their facility to breed. Thereafter, over two million years, they did not devolve but evolved, adapting as wild creatures do to their environment. However, like all life, their ancestry is written into their genome. This includes their biomech component, which is still in there in recessive genes or alleles. They were formidable weapons, capable of manipulating matter and energies to a level seen neither in the Kingdom nor in the Polity. In their old form, they would be easily capable of flight from the surface of a world, and disabling the weaponry of an old Polity station.’

  I sagged a bit on my chains. This seemed utterly insane yet the things I’d seen and experienced pointed to the truth of it. ‘You intend to commission this hooder?’ I asked weakly.

  ‘The process has already begun,’ Vrasan stated. ‘The thrall submits it to my control while, inside, it is re-expressing its ancestral phenotype.’

  I forced some strength back into my legs and stood straight. ‘You seem to know a great deal about hooders. I’m not sure this is something even a Polity AI would attempt.’

  ‘How do you know Polity AIs have not attempted or are attempting it?’

  I didn’t really, I just wanted to keep the talk going. ‘You’re correct. My knowledge of what they do is limited.’ My head sagged again and it seemed, with my reserves depleted, I had hit a low ebb. I snapped it upright when one of the clones moved up beside me, desperate to find something more to say. ‘But you won’t destroy the station, at least at first, because you want to know which Old Families Suzeal has been trading with,’ I babbled. ‘I also expect that returning to the king with such a war machine will be … helpful.’

  The clone undid the manacle on my right wrist, then slid the chain attached to the other manacle along the crossbar and down a side post. I collapsed on my backside into the mud, glad to rest, and relieved Vrasan hadn’t yet decided to start any prador games.

  ‘You have an interesting mind,’ he said, peering down at me.

  ‘You wish to stop the trade in human blanks out of Stratogaster and catch the culprits they are being sold to. Why did the king not take Suzeal and her ship when she came to you?’

  ‘Her greed and the possibility of greatly expanded trade drew her to us personally. But she warned us that she would destroy herself, her compatriots and her ship if any attempt was made to seize them. We expected this.’

  ‘It all seems very just, and perhaps altruistic. Yet you cored and thralled living human beings to reach your goal.’ I regretted saying that at once.

  Vrasan showed no reaction for a moment, then waved a claw at the two clones. ‘They were merely human shells – no more sentient than a mudfish with some extra programming laid down in its brain. Humans have a curious attachment and attitude to their flesh despite being quite capable of leaving it.’

  ‘What are you going to do wi
th me? I am a sentient human being.’

  ‘You may possess useful data. I will remove the quantum storage inside you and study it and, if feasible, record it. I can make the search and removal process painless, but your attack on me and your interference in our plans requires a response, so I will not.’

  ‘I only shot you to survive – you attacked me.’

  ‘But you had no need to disrupt our attack on Stratogaster.’

  ‘What chance did I have of survival if you’d occupied it? Of being rescued by my own kind?’

  ‘You hoped for rescue?’ he wondered, then abruptly moved away, the two clones following.

  The rain was trickling down inside my suit so I put up my hood. I’d begun drinking from a nearby puddle, also probing my swollen lips, which seemed better now, when a clone walked over and dropped a food block beside me. I was about to say thank you but then felt stupid to be so inclined. Vrasan probably wanted to keep me healthy until he took me apart. I ate anyway, while inspecting the chain and manacle. And, sitting there, I thought of various things which didn’t make sense.

  These came to me as I watched the prador working the machines for a while, then I turned my attention to the hooder, studying the hardware along its body. Was it feasible, in the time that had passed, for the prador to hatch a plan, to commission an ancient alien biomech war machine and put it into action? My knowledge of the war and of prador society told me they were industrious, technically adept and could work very fast, but surely doing something like this required more than that? The schematic of the biomechanical component of this machine, written into its genome and an alien technology, needed to be reinitiated. This required deep knowledge, AI-level planning and calculation, highly specialized components and programs, and more I couldn’t think of right then. Vrasan’s brilliance? Possibly, but not without laboratory research and the support of lots of prador technology. Even the thrall itself had to have been heavily redesigned to incorporate alien biology. I didn’t think it was something they could have designed and built in the days available. Was it likely that a few prador, with some equipment grabbed from a crashed ship under attack from hooders, could simply capture a hooder, slap on a thrall and then restart genome programs inside it that had been somnolent for two million years? No, it was not. Vrasan’s actions here had required careful preparation.