Africa Zero

by Neal Asher

  I glanced at her again, wondering if she was lying.

  “Surely your body will accept grafts of its own tissue, vat-grown limbs and the like?”

  “No,” she shook her head, “my immune system was boosted to cope with doppleganger parasites. Apparently, as I grew up my tissue was marked in some way, the genome itself . . . that mark is impossible to find let alone transcribe, what with selfish DNA there to blur matters.”

  Not her words, but the look of bitter anger on her face, told me she was not lying. Her words gave me pause though. Had things gone so far downhill?

  “Ah, at least you have some body,” I said by way of consolation. Not something I am very good at.

  She looked at me. “For a moment I forgot... Collector.” She seemed to find the honorific difficult. “Your entire body, but for your brain and some nerve tissue is ... manufactured.”

  “Fair bit of that as well. It’s held in a mutating super-conductor web at zero K and connected into various sensory sub systems.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking ... How old are you?”

  “I do mind.”

  Which killed that conversation stone dead. I guess we are all sensitive about something.

  part two

  Hours of walking and pushing through tangled growth brought us to another clearing and the flicker of a fire in evening light. Three of the Pykani were cooking food that I assumed was for Jethro Susan. I squatted by the flames and removed my pack. She slumped by the fire nearer to the Pykani than to me. She looked exhausted. Only then did I realise how she must have struggled to keep with the pace I naturally set. I looked across at Spitfire.

  “Have you water?”

  The Pykani stood, took up a gourd, and handed it to me. I washed out my mouth with some then proceeded to wash the dried blood from my arms, my torso, and from under my fingernails. Only when I had finished that and was pulling pieces of shrapnel from my shoulder did anyone speak.

  “You have come,” said the Pykani next to Spitfire, who I recognised as her mate.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to remember his name. Had it been Hurricane? “How many mammoth have been killed?”

  “At our last census it was seven hundred this way. Twenty five by other methods.”

  At that moment I remembered to turn my sense of smell back on and with it came a flush of anger—redolent of fire smoke and the roasted mammoth flesh Jethro Susan was eating.

  “What more can you tell me?”

  “The Silver One has been seen.”

  I closed my eyes. And it comes to this: the obligations of life eternal.

  “I will find ... that one,” I said.

  Jethro Susan looked from the Pykani to me in confusion, but I felt no urge to relieve her of it. As I said before, there are some things to which even I am sensitive. And there is old pain.

  “The herds move south for the winter. I take it the killer moves with them?”

  “Thus far,” said Hurricane. Yes, it was Hurricane. I looked at Spitfire. “How long has this killing been going on?”

  “This is the second year, Collector,” she said, as wise in my ways as all the peoples of the plains, and not prepared to ask the questions she might. It was otherwise with Jethro Susan.

  “This Silver One... I have heard of it.”

  I looked at her and looked away. The Pykani observed her as if embarrassed by her gaucherie, but I could see that they were eager to hear how I might reply to her. I decided to tell them a little of it.

  “It is a call to me,” I said, “I think, perhaps, in the end this is my responsibility. What more might call me than the killing of my mammoth?”

  Jethro Susan looked at me calculatingly then down at her silver claw. I think it was then that she understood what the Silver One might be. The Pykani, there were four of them, two who remained silent, looked at me with burning eyes. They had caught the nuance: my mammoth. Again I looked at them, knowing they were owed an explanation.

  “Why am I called Collector?” I asked.

  An old, hairless Pykani, who until then had remained silent, was quick to answer. “You are called Collector because you collect the genetic heritage of those who might be driven extinct. You are the curator of species—saving what might be lost.” He looked to Spitfire. “My daughter has told me how you bearded the Great African Vampire in his home on the ice and collected tissue from the birth that comes after from his mate.”

  I nodded. “It has always been my purpose to preserve life.”

  Jethro Susan looked at me as if I had just told them I was a giraffe. I smiled. “Yes, life, not individuals.” I looked back at the Pykani. “Your myths are true. I tell you this because of your trust in me. It was I whostripped viable DNA from the corpses of mammoth taken from the Siberian tundra and made it whole enough to inject into the eggs of elephants.”

  With this they would have to be satisfied. I did not tell them that it was also I who spliced human DNA with that of the vampire bat to produce a people capable of utilising the reusable resource the mammoth represented, or that it was I who created the Great African Vampires to cull the human race. There is such a thing as too much knowledge. I looked to Jethro Susan and saw stunned awe registered on her face. I had answered one of her questions. She now had some idea of my age.

  * * *

  That night I sat and watched the stars as the mutilated face of the electric moon beamed down and Jethro Susan slept. Lost in philosophical thought I wondered how the face of that moon, changed so certainly by the human race, might affect the minds of all those born to see its light. It occurred to me then that I had seen changes I had not registered until that moment. Many people now, I felt, lived with a greater assurance of their position in the universe: a higher sense of worth and an acceptance of responsibility. I looked at the huddled form of Jethro Susan and realised I would have to acknowledge this and that I could not just march south now as arbitrary judge and executioner. For the sake of humanity, at last, I would have to delegate some of the responsibility and accept a companion. That decision made I stared at the far stars until morning, guessing what wonders unfolded in the colonies.

  * * *

  The bloody, hung-over eye of time breached the horizon to a strident chorus of black frogs. Knowing human frailty well, but distantly, I waited for Jethro Susan to wake. While I waited, the Pykani returned from a night’s feeding and flying. Shortly after they arrived, greeted me, then went to doze in the groundsels, Jethro Susan thrashed in her sleep and grabbed at her ceramal hand as if it were a source of torment to her, then she woke.

  She jerked and rolled over, staring at the mossy ground as her breathing quickened with her wakening. I watched her as she coughed and spat and pushed herself upright, and I felt a pang of something half forgotten, something human. Bleary-eyed, she took up a gourd, drank, then looked at me.

  “Do you never sleep?” she asked me.

  “Infrequently,” I replied, then, “do you wish to come with me?” I was anxious, now that the night had passed, to be on my way.

  She shook her head as if dispelling cobwebs before replying. “I had hoped as much. Would I delay you?”

  I considered that. Every moment of delay would mean more dead mammoth, yet I estimated the mammoth population to be over a hundred thousand, so they were in no danger of extinction, though I knew that what killed them could eventually bring them to it.

  “Responsibility,” I said, and it was a key word. I let it rest there for a moment, but I could see she did not understand me.

  “Do you think I am responsible?” she asked.

  “No, but you are human.”

  Again she looked at me in confusion. I suppose it was a bit unfair of me. I had all but forgotten things like aching muscles, blood sugar levels, and a full bladder. I said to her, “I saw the human race reach its limit, on this planet, of twelve billion, and the hell that produced. I saw them step into space as a last resort, before collapse, and save themselves. I watched the space habitats
being built and the bases on the moon. I travelled to Mars and watched Phobos and Deimos being ignited for the great terraforming project, and I saw the seed-ships set out for the far stars. Forty or more colonies now thrive at distances from us that are unimaginable and Earth has become a backwater. I say to you that the nigh immortality of the human race is assured. But I ask you: is that the limit of our responsibility? That we survive? No. I say no. I say that as survival becomes much more easy for us we should take on responsibility for others not of our genome.”

  “The mammoth,” said Jethro Susan, standing up, then, “I need a piss.” And she wandered into the jungle leaving me sitting there embarrassed by my pomposity. Shortly she returned.

  “You know, that’s really easy for you to say. For everyone it is their own survival which is of most importance. You, of course, can take this moral high ground because survival for you is so easy.”

  She had me there. There was no getting away from it. I could have stood up then and gone my way and done what I had to do and in a century or so she would have been so much decaying matter. Then, for reasons other than my purported morals, I decided I wanted her as a companion. I saw that here was a woman who might counter the greatest threat to my life, which was boredom.

  Jethro Susan breakfasted on cold mammoth meat while I looked on. When she was finished she took up her pack and looked at me in readiness.

  “We follow the trails of the herds south to the plains,” I said, standing also and taking up my pack.

  * * *

  And so we set out, with me leading the way, pushing through the jungle until we crossed a mammoth trail as wide as a three-lane motorway, where the chewed remains of cycads littered the crushed vines, and where hundredweight piles of dung swarmed with busy scarab beetles. We left the Pykani dozing in the trees, but that night they came to speak with me and play a game with red seeds on a gridwork board while Jethro Susan slept. As we played and talked I wondered how rationalized my reasons were for allowing her along and what the Pykani thought of my delaying for her. That night I asked Spitfire.

  “It is our wish-that you keep Jethro Susan with you.”

  I was surprised, though I should not have been, obviously there was some sort of bond here. I waited. Spitfire continued. “She is sworn to the herd and we have braided debt with her. We wish her the opportunity to repay.”

  “Only those who partake of the sustenance can be sworn to the herd. She drinks blood?”

  “It is so. We saw her when she had left JMCC. She was being hunted by the GAV himself and had not time to hunt for herself. She ran far and craftily while we watched and nearly killed the GAV with her rifle. He gave up on her for easier prey to the east. She could barely walk by then, but she still had her rifle, and then she came upon one of the little Thunderers.”

  Hurricane took up the dialogue. “She raised her rifle and we were ready to fall on her, but she did not shoot. She lowered her rifle and told the little one to go in peace. Then she collapsed.”

  I nodded—so and thus, at the edge of starvation she had refused to kill one of the baby mammoth for meat. I wondered why. In such a situation I would have killed, but the point was moot.

  “We came to her then and she was as weak as a fledgling. We gave her the fledgling’s drink. The blood of Thunderers restored her.”

  I winced at that: regurgitated blood.

  “Hence her swearing to the herd,” I said. I looked to where she lay. She was awake, I could tell, but she did not move. “How did the debt become braided?”

  “Twice now she has led corporate hunts astray. Once she killed one of her own to prevent him killing. And we saved her from pursuit by driving an old bull to stamp a JMCC ground car.”

  I smiled and wondered just how long she had been with the Pykani. I had seen stranger matches.

  * * *

  On our third night-time stop Spitfire and her father flew in with news for us just as Jethro Susan was bedding herself down. They swept in, to land in a small clearing next to the one we had made for the fire, and with their eyes averted, they approached. I gathered it was their intention to be off again, else they would have been more sociable. But they were nocturnal by nature and did not want to ruin their night vision with the light of the fire.

  “What is it?” I asked, expecting news of more dead mammoth.

  “The herds move to the east,” said Spitfire.

  I waited.

  Her father said, “In the east there are large cycads and by going there they miss difficult terrain. It has always been so.”

  “We’ll follow their trail, as we have been.”

  Spitfire shook her head regretfully. “In a few days they will turn to the west again then resume their course to the south.”

  I began to entertain a nasty suspicion. “This difficult terrain they are avoiding. Would it have a name by any chance?”

  Spitfire and her father looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. It was Jethro Susan who spoke.

  “Z’gora.” She said it like a curse.

  The name was familiar.

  “Z’gora . . . Z’gora ...” Then I remembered. “The Zag people. They’re the ones with some unusual pets. I got a sample there about fifty years ago. Don’t they have some nasty habits?”

  Spitfire and her father made quick warding gestures.

  Jethro Susan said, “If we went through Z’gora we could make up a day, perhaps more...”

  I looked at her. “I know I should not ask this, but are you up to it?”

  She snorted contemptuously and tapped the side of her rifle. “I’ve been through there before. They’re easy enough to handle. You just don’t let them get too close.”

  “Very well then. We go through Z’gora.”

  Spitfire and her father moved away from the fire and took off into the night.

  “When will we get there?” I asked.

  “Midday tomorrow,” said Jethro Susan, and rolled herself up in her blanket.

  I sat through the rest of the night with the patience of a machine.

  * * *

  In the morning Jethro Susan climbed an ambatch tree to take sightings back from the Atlas Mountains, and from some mountains she said should be to the southeast of us. Once she had scrambled back to the ground again she looked at her compass and pointed to a wall of jungle to our right.

  “That way,” she said, then removed her pack and dropped it on the ground. I wondered what she was doing for a moment until she removed a formidable looking panga.

  “You carry my pack. I’ll start.”

  I let her lead on. I picked up her pack and followed. She was being foolish, and I think perhaps she realised this, but she was a stubborn woman with a point to prove. She started on the wall of jungle as if it had offered her personal affront. For two hours she hacked a path for us before she started to show any signs of slowing. Of course it was not her arm that was tiring, but the rest of her musculature—the part of her that was flesh. I let her go at it for another hour before I called a halt.

  “Okay, I’ll take over now,” I said.

  Jethro Susan turned and looked at me as if suspecting me of sarcasm. There was none to find. I took the panga from her and handed her our packs. I tried not to let the next few hours look easy for me, but I guess what gave it away was my lack of sweat. When we broke through into thinner growth we could push through I handed her panga back and congratulated her on its keenness. She accepted it with a look of annoyance and threw my pack at me. I caught it and put it on.

  At midday we had not reached Z’gora as predicted and we halted so Jethro Susan could rest. I took the opportunity to do some scouting. We were close to the Zag peoples and some of them might be about.

  “I’m just going for a look around.”

  Jethro Susan rubbed at her shoulder and nodded acquiescence. I left my pack by her and moved off into the jungle as quietly as I could. It is surprising how quietly you can move when you have accumulated decades of experience, a
nd when there are no fatigue poisons in you, and no lungs. I circled our stopping place looking for signs of movement. Like Jethro Susan I climbed a couple of trees. As I crept back I saw Jethro Susan sitting on a log rummaging through her pack. I moved very quietly, not for her sake, but for the man decked out in feathers and dyed hyrax skins who was creeping up behind her.

  I got to about three feet behind him when he was the same distance behind her. He raised a wooden spike with a suspicious-looking green tarry substance on it. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me.”

  He yelled. Jethro Susan yelled and fell off her log. Annoyed, because he had passed me without me seeing him, I broke his neck.

  “Jesu!”

  Jethro Susan came up from behind the log with leaves in her hair and in her mouth. She spat them out and looked down at the man. Then she looked at me with annoyance.

  “Did you have to make him yell like that?”

  I could not help it. She had fallen off the log and there she was with leaves in her hair asking questions like that. I started chuckling. Her look of disbelief turned that into a laugh. I just stood there and laughed.

  “You’re a monster!” she said.

  “Oh dear,” I said, shaking my head and gradually getting myself under control. Still grinning I stooped down and picked up the wooden spike the man had been carrying. Then I drove it into the log in front of her.

  “I remember now,” I said, “that tarry substance is a derivative of curare. It will leave you paralysed but it won’t kill you. They like to keep their prey fresh.”

  Jethro Susan looked at the spike in horror. I picked up the Zag tribesman by his broken neck and tossed him up into the forked branch of a nearby acacia. Let him serve as a warning. Or was I just being melodramatic?

  Two hours of travel across relatively-easy terrain from our rest site and first encounter with the Zag we came out on an open hill top and looked down on Z’gora. It had once been a city of the third millennium, only the name had been different then. It had been called New Babylon in defiance of all that was Western. To the right of it was a wide flat area on which very little grew. From there, a thousand years in the past, had been launched the vanguard of the African space effort. The buildings of the city still stood, but now they were over-grown with vines and dwelt in by primitives, Jethro Susan and I found a path down into it and proceeded with caution.