The Puzzler's War

by Eyal Kless

Trying not to dwell on the fact that I would most likely have to spend Galinak’s share without his consent, I changed the subject. “Have you heard of this Mannes?”

  Galinak scratched his growing beard and yawned. “Sure I have. Everybody’s heard of him, he’s like this other guy . . .” He furrowed his brow, fumbling with a memory. “Nakamura, that’s it. Yeah, like him, just on a bigger scale, if it’s possible. I mean, Nakamura unleashed a horde of Lizards and destroyed the entire Hive in Tarakan Valley. That’s a few hundred combat Trolls downed. Quite a big number.”

  I nodded. “That’s a hard one to beat, but Mannes created Cain, an untested Sentient Program that sought to destroy Tarakan. Whether by design or accident, it most likely caused the Catastrophe. According to Mannes’s logs, he even watched it happening”—I pointed upwards—“from space.”

  Galinak whistled softly. “Now that will rust your conscience.”

  “I’m not sure he has a conscience,” I said. “He ends up at the other end of the planet, in some godforsaken land, and vanishes, presumed dead. The next thing we know, a hundred years later, he’s crossed the great sea and he’s here.”

  “If that’s even true, that’s a long trek.” Galinak nodded to himself. “Guess he had some seriously unfinished business here.”

  “Only two things can make a man go through all that trouble,” I said. “Love or—”

  “—revenge,” Galinak completed the sentence. “Or both—who knows?”

  “I want to learn more about him, if I can,” I said. “He is seeking to take Emilija, and we might need to face him at some point.”

  “Surviving the Catastrophe and another hundred years, that’s no mere coincidence,” Galinak agreed.

  “I know a man called Gordon. He was a first scribe from the Guild of Historians, and he claims to be a survivor of a massacre that Mannes perpetrated in a monastery. The monks were like these Secluders, did not let anyone into their monastery, but they were peaceful folks, just collected old books. Unfortunately for them they were books that Mannes desired. He raided the place and apparently murdered everyone. Gordon was away on an expedition, when he came back he found nothing but corpses and smoldering heaps. He claimed it was well defended and had withstood countless attacks, yet Mannes overcame their defences and sacked it.”

  “Killing for books, now that’s a first,” Galinak remarked.

  “From what I’ve gathered, Mannes has a following wherever he goes, and apparently is indestructible.”

  Galinak’s brow furrowed even as his eyes remained closed. “No one is indestructible.”

  “True.” I hesitated. There was one more person who I knew could shed a little more light on Mannes, but there was no use in bringing her name up right then, or trying to explain how I knew about her. I hadn’t seen Fay in years—for all I knew, she wasn’t even working anymore. I said instead, “From the files I saw, he did not have much military experience, but he was a high-ranking specialized Tarkanian and apparently very smart. Who knows, maybe he’s responsible for all this mayhem and the war machines running around.”

  Galinak turned his head to me and opened his eyes. He looked tired—no, weary, and considering what we’d been through, it was no surprise. “So now you can communicate with Rafik through dreams?”

  I scratched my head, stifling my own yawn. “Apparently so, but I haven’t experienced it yet. What I saw was through the direct link I established with the helmet’s communication system.”

  “Yes, but you dreamt how to do it, that’s what you said.”

  “Yes. It was strange. Tell you what, it explains what happened to Rafik, you know, when he was just a boy, and that strange Pikok when they were both in the Hive. Maybe all the Puzzlers’ dreams of the great wall of symbols are just sort of a Tarakan teaching method, to get the Puzzlers trained and lure them to the Valley.”

  Galinak stretched. “Wouldn’t be beneath those buggers to mess with the poor souls’ heads like that. But thanks for the warning, if they come into my dreams when I sleep, I’ll have more than a few words to say to them.”

  I chuckled, although I suspected Galinak was actually serious. A few moments later, he was asleep. I took first watch.

  Chapter 28

  Mannes

  Mannes had already found a way out of the forest and was walking on a paved road when he finally lost contact with the shuttle. Honestly, he hadn’t thought it would affect him the way it did, considering the events of the last day or so. He tried to reestablish contact several times, then looked back at the woods as if it would make some kind of difference. He was suddenly all alone, unable to reach anyone at his will for the first time in—what, several decades? He looked around, fighting rising panic, and for no logical reason he suddenly howled, “Hello? Anyone here?”

  There was no response, of course.

  The wind brought up small clouds of dusts. Combined with the ever-increasing wail of the sirens, it made for a very eerie scene. Mannes picked up his pace, fighting the urge to turn back and head for the shuttle. The harsh weather had left the road worse for wear, including man-sized potholes filled with muddy water. There was a fallen, rusted sign in both Russian and Kyrgyz. His neural translator only had Russian but the picture on the sign was universal, so he knew there were land mines beyond the now long-gone fence.

  He decided to stick to the road and keep his mind preoccupied with Russian phrases. He did not want to think of Deborah and Nancy, crouching in a bunker. Frightened, wondering about him, thinking he was dead. He desperately tried not to think about the Guardian Angels. They were everywhere these days. Walking the streets, guarding the parks, protecting everyone against terrorists. What would happen if they all turned on the people they were supposed to protect? And why now? Why the fuck now? A world war, erupting just as Cain had been awakened. That was not a coincidence, but it also couldn’t have been Cain, could it?

  The Sentient Program had not been tested, and Daichi had said it would adapt, and the whole idea was to stop something like this from happening. Cain could have tried to take hold of subroutines that controlled the weapons of mass destruction, and if he did, Adam could have interpreted the move as a direct attack.

  Mannes stopped in his tracks, suddenly trembling. This could all be on him. Deborah, Nancy, his parents, billions of people. This could all be his fault. He was on his hands and knees for a while, dry-retching into a greasy puddle.

  “Keep it together, Mannes,” he said to his distorted reflection. It came out in Russian. Keep. It. Together.

  The task in hand was to get home, just to get home. If Deborah was alive, she would be needing him. If she’s not . . .

  Mannes got up and swallowed another sedative.

  Keep it together. Stay alive. Get help. For Deborah.

  He resumed walking.

  It didn’t take much longer to reach the place where the outpost’s gates must have been. They were gone now, but two long-range machine gun bases were still there and active, turning from side to side every few seconds. If machine guns were still mounted on the bases, Mannes reflected, he would have been long dead. Still, it was a good sign, he hoped.

  “Hello?” he called out again, adding the Russian phrase he’d memorized on his way, “Druz’ya, ya prishol k vam s oykrytymi obyatyemi v chas nujdy.” Friends, I come to you with open arms in time of need.

  No response but the metal squeak of the moving machine gun bases. The place seemed deserted, and that was perhaps a good thing. He could work in peace and salvage what he needed to repair the shuttle.

  The outpost was not a big place—several main buildings and a few barracks, two tall antennas, and a spacious outdoor garage for vehicles. Everything was peppered with bullet holes and fading graffiti. The bulk of it was different variations on a “Fuck the Russians” theme with the occasional “Screw the Russians,” “Kill the Soviets,” and several “Freedom for the Kyrgyzstani,” too. The siren inside the base was close to deafening, meant to awaken a soldier even from the de
epest of drunken stupors. Mannes decided to make finding the main computer and silencing it a priority, with brute force if necessary.

  Say what you want about the Russian former mighty army, he thought, they were certainly unimaginative when it came to constructing their bases. Mannes decided to head for the tallest building, three stories high, and to start his search from there.

  All three floors were in the same state of postraid. Anything that was not taken was destroyed. On the third floor he stopped and gaped at the only whole computer screen. It had been eons since he’d seen a flat-screen like that. This one was still working, barely. Only half of it was still functioning with numbers and what Mannes deduced were coded sentences in Russian appearing and disappearing in a warped fashion periodically.

  There was no keyboard attached, and the power cable ended in a hole in the wall. Mannes leaned down and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Perhaps there was a power switch somewhere in the base, although he assumed such a switch would be locked and protected.

  When he straightened and turned around it was too late. Two men were already in the room and the third was just entering. All three were dressed in Russian army camouflage suits, the sort that reduced their heat signatures. Mannes noted the earmuffs all three were sporting. He also noted they were aiming their weapons straight at him.

  Mannes spread his hands wide, his heart racing. “Druz’ya”—he tried the phrase he’d rehearsed—“ya prishol k vam s oykrytymi obyatyemi v chas nujdy.”

  Perhaps the earmuffs blocked their hearing, or perhaps it was his clunky Russian pronunciation, but as Mannes was finishing the sentence for the third time, the first man who reached him turned and drove the butt of his rifle straight into Mannes’s jaw, knocking him out cold.

  Chapter 29

  Peach

  We were moving away from the unloading area when I saw the angry merchant being carried out from the main tent by two burly Trolls.

  “Agh, he’s done for, the poor bugger.” Gret stopped Summer and shook his head. “You have to be careful around the purple-and-golds—they can be as vicious as the Trolls.”

  The merchant was carried to a pole, where he was tied and his upper body exposed. His protestations soon turned into pleas. As if I were watching a virtual depicting ancient times, a guard with a whip approached the pole. Everyone ceased their work and turned to watch the spectacle. The officials in purple and gold came out from the tent as well. It was obvious what I was about to see was ordinary, and the younger-looking men and women used this time to relax, share a joke or two, and even pass a drink among them.

  “For offending a clerk of the merchant guild and a public servant,” the whip-holding guard declared, “punishment of six lashes, a thirty-metal coin fine, and confiscation of half the haul.”

  The guard lashed his whip in the air for a few practice shots and perhaps to increase tension for the spectators.

  “Well . . . he’s definitely not going to come back and trade here anymore,” I said as the first lash hit the merchant’s back. He shrieked in pain and fear and defecated on himself to the sound of laughter from the guards and the clerks. Several drivers honked their horns in protest but stopped when guards approached.

  “You ain’t from around here, Mistress.” Gret began manoeuvring the cart so we would not drive too close to what was happening. “Otherwise you’d know that they declared all merchandise must be sold to the city.”

  “You don’t say.” It made sense, of course.

  Gret shrugged and scratched his head through his woollen cap. “They cancelled the local markets, and hoarding food will get you hanged. The villages and farmers are taxed dry to their last coin, so they have to sell anything they grow. With the city the only buyer, they can pretty much set the price outside and inside the walls.”

  We were leaving the horrid scene behind us but I turned my head back. The merchant lost consciousness by the third lash and had to be revived. A guard decided urine was better than wasting water and was in the process of delivering it on the head of the collapsed merchant to the merriment of the officials and guards.

  I turned my head back.

  “Take my word for it, he’ll come back,” Gret whispered. “He has nowhere else to go, and he won’t be haggling over price again. I tell you, might as well be a slave to the Oil Baron, I hear he, at least, warms his people in the winter.”

  We drove in silence until we reached the bridge of light, where we dismounted, took Summer by her bridle, and began walking up. It felt like stepping on the remains of an old corpse. The only remnant of the bridge’s former glory was its wide base, but the power projectors were either gone or not working. Since the bridge was located outside the security zones of the city, it was a miracle that even that had survived the onslaught.

  On top of the bridge’s base, humanity had improvised a new version of a walkway, made of planks of uneven wood and rusty, warped metal, which were balanced on and tied to the central tracks of what were once conveyor belts. There was nothing to prevent you from falling off the sides, that is, if you hadn’t misstepped and simply plunged to your death through the many man-sized holes or loose planks.

  Having to help Gret pull the reluctant mule between other nervous beasts of burden, and scores of half-naked men who carried impossible amounts of bulk on their shoulders, left no time to dwell again on how far humanity had fallen.

  There was no gentle slope or conveyor belt in the middle of the bridge to help pedestrians reach their destination. Instead the bridge curved upwards, and at several points climbers used their hands as well as their legs to progress. We were halfway to the top when the wind suddenly blew from the side with dangerous force, and I braced myself against Summer and held on. One of the men, in his haste, had walked too far from the centre and was not so fast to react. The wind slammed into him and he lost his balance. Perhaps if he had not been carrying so much on his back he would have managed to save himself, but the weight of the haul carried the poor man over the edge. His scream echoed for a while but the wind masked any sound of impact. When the wind died everything resumed as if nothing had happened.

  The side wind hit us twice more before we got to the top of the wall, where we were thankfully protected from the wind by the city’s shields, which acted as climate control. The entire day took its toll on my vessel, and at least one entrepreneur had anticipated the immediate needs of the climbers. Located several steps from the landing area was a food stall, and for what I guessed was an exorbitant price of three towers I bought bread, butter, stale hard cheese, and a cup of steaming vegetable broth for both myself and Gret. He bent his head in gratitude and we both ate in silence, too exhausted to speak. Everything tasted awful, and my vessel informed me of the low nutritional contents of the food.

  I looked around as I slowly chewed the tasteless food. The entire top of the wall was an unloading area, and a sort of a market, where local merchants haggled with clerks over the prices of goods. The city was making a double profit here, first buying cheaply from outside the wall, then hitching the price up for the merchants inside. There were more guards and Trolls, some wearing full battle helmets and carrying power machine guns, marking them as elite compared to the others. Nevertheless, despite the security, the area was too chaotic to control. I was sure many shady deals took place here, feeding the black market that surely exists. There should have been another security post but there wasn’t. If indeed war was looming, this was a weak spot from which spies and saboteurs could infiltrate the city. Sure, I planned to use the very same weakness should I need to smuggle myself in or out of here, but this was still my city, and the security breach bothered me on principle.

  When Gret finished eating he bought some hay for Summer and bartered for a while until he got a decent price for the rest of his onions. He came back smiling and happily tapped the small bulge of a coin bag on his belt.

  He gave Summer a tired-looking carrot.

  “That climb is hard on both of us,” he
said, brushing the mule gently, “but it was worth it. My onions will go straight to the Upper Spires, and I got something to get by for the next moon.”

  Tired, but obviously proud of the fact that his onions would be eaten by rich people, Gret mounted the cart. “Let’s go. We can’t take the rope bridges because of the cart, so we’ll go the long way, but the route to the Middle Spires is quite nice.”

  As we slowly drove away from the market the sun was going down, and the city’s lights, or what was left of them, were turning on. The centre of the plateau was lit enough but the area around it was completely dark. The City of Towers used to be a place of marvel, a place built not just to assess and accept new applicants to Tarakan but also to dazzle, awe and delight the people coming to visit. Every night dozens of open-air concerts and plays were staged, free to the public. Every week a different festival was held: art, poetry, dance, literature, gaming, virtuals, and sports. Tarakan wanted to convey to its millions of visitors a simple message: “If you are good enough, if you are smart enough, if you can help move humanity forward, this could be your life.”

  In the last decade before the war, with international embargos and tension rising, the festivities were smaller in scale and more difficult to produce, but the nightlife was still spectacular. The city used to sparkle. Now it was mostly dark and filled with people dressed as if they’d come out of the Middle Ages. A light breeze touched my face. At least the city’s climate control was still functioning; otherwise, I would have been in danger of freezing.

  As I turned around, trying to take it all in, I saw a line of standing carts, each tied to a mule or a horse. What used to be a tourist attraction in some old European cities had become the main means of transport in what was once the most modern, sophisticated city in the world.

  What the fuck had happened? How could this be even possible? If the city was still intact, then where had all the Tarkanians gone? I suspected I would not have liked the answers, if there had even been someone there to give them to me.