The Hunt for Pierre Jnr

by David M Henley

  ‘Won’t that just compound the problem?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We can’t go backward, so we have to go forward. We have built machines to replace us in every facet of life, now we must become the machine. It’s the only way for us to regain our agency.’

  They returned to their respective projects and the room succumbed again to silence.

  Geof took a quill from the side table and began scrawling on a thought board, each question writ in fat black lines. What questions can I ask and how can I answer them?

  Manifestation = Pierre Jnr or another.

  If Pierre Jnr: Was he found by the team or was he waiting for us?

  If not Pierre Jnr: Who? + Why?

  If Pierre Jnr: Why?

  If found: How to find again?

  If ambush: Why?

  Every question and assumption had to be challenged. The dominant logic was that it had been Pierre Jnr and it was an intentional attack, provoked or not. What motivation could there be?

  Effects of the manifestation = Global civic turnover. The hunt

  disrupted. Lazarus under trial. Tamsin Grey disappeared. Large area of land decimated.

  Were these effects desired, accidental or incidental?

  Reactive or proactive?

  This was getting nowhere.

  If not Pierre = Entity X.

  Group or individual?

  Psionic or technically advanced?

  If Lazarus can be trusted = Pierre.

  If Lazarus cannot be trusted = Unknown.

  Conclusion = ?

  I know nothing.

  He tossed that aside and started over.

  In the centre of a blank field he placed an icon that represented Pierre, which he interlinked with the material gathered so far. In a ring around that he placed icons for Mary Kastonovich, Pierre Snr, Tamsin Grey and Peter Lazarus. After a moment’s thought, he added in the family from the midlands house, the Pembroke couple, the students from the school Pierre had visited in the Dakotas, and everyone from the PDP. This circle included everyone who was known, with certainty, to have come into direct contact with Pierre Jnr. It numbered one thousand, three hundred and forty-five individuals. Geof then set his symbiot to compile a second circle of people who had interacted with those in the first circle.

  The growth was exponential, growing to over one hundred thousand. A third ring, representing the people that the second ring had come into contact with, brought the count over three million. A fourth enlargement included most of the twenty billion souls upon the planet.

  It proved nothing. He was just making an infection model as if Pierre was a contagious disease. He shuddered at the thought, but at least it showed quite clearly that if that was the case the world would have been overrun long ago. Geof shrugged but flowed his schematic to Shen’s stream, then sat patiently as his mentor looked it over.

  ‘Where is time, Ozey? You always forget time. This measure is from when?’ Shen was standing by the board, pointing at the first event.

  ‘This is just confirmed contacts.’

  ‘Ah, this is useless then. What about the eight years you didn’t know where Pierre was?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Geof felt foolish. ‘If I add a chronology to the points of contact, there’s a chance that some change vectors might be patterned.’ He could have kicked himself. Without including the incidence of contact he was only getting half the information.

  ‘Then you could cross-reference external data to track a path of movement. Then you’d have something.’

  Geof nodded to himself. In his head he tried to see where this method might fall down. ‘We need more data.’

  Shen turned back to his own work and spoke offhand, ‘Of course, the challenge you and the Prime are facing is no longer about whether it is Pierre Jnr or not. Now it is about what the Will believes happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Geof stood and stretched. He archived the infection chart and started looking around for something to eat.

  ‘Well, let’s put Pierre aside for now and say that what you are patterning is the beginning of a psi revolution. The Prime and psis must be aware that the emergent narrative of history will affect the future Will of the people and each side must try to frame the story to suit them. Will it be the long-suffering psis seeking freedom from oppression? Or the innocent majority under threat by fanatical mind-raping telepaths? If support for the psis continues to build, and the restrictions on their activities are cast in a more sympathetic light, guilt for past actions may persuade the Will to shift to a more open position. If the swing goes far enough, say to a point akin to four decades ago when psionics were more fascination than threat, then everything that is being done now will be undone.’

  ‘And that is the true nature of the threat?’ said Geof.

  Shen shrugged. He went into one of the antechambers and Geof followed. It was a kitchen only a scientist would build. ‘It is the political threat. The Will controls everything. If the Will wants to believe it is Pierre, then it is Pierre. If the Will wants to allow psis equality in society, then that is what will happen. It is a battle for minds now.’

  Geof took this in while Shen built a pile of ready-made foods on the bench and began heating Serviceman trays.

  ‘Are you too young to remember the resistance that tried to block cybernetics? Or gene-selective breeding before that?’

  ‘I knew some people didn’t like it, but I didn’t know it was opposed.’

  ‘Oh yes. Violently. It was much like cloning is considered now, verboten. But still some do it. Eventually both sides in a conflict run out of ammunition, the leaders driving the emotions die off, or get replaced by more dogmatic successors.’

  ‘But what was the problem with cybernetics? Humans have been technologically enabled all through history.’

  ‘Come, come, Geof. No need to get defensive. At some point even clothes were technology, but eventually the technology becomes part of the animal. When cyberism became more than just replacement body parts and people like you, wired to a symbiot half your size, then cyborgs had an unfair advantage and others didn’t like that.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘The numbers changed. When cyborgs became the majority, it became the norm.’

  ‘I don’t really think of myself as a cyborg.’

  ‘Of course not. You came after the time when there was a difference. But as an incubator baby, your links to cyberism began before you were even born.’

  Geof filed all this away and began scooping mash and repro from his tray. ‘So is there a precedent for this kind of conflict?’ he asked.

  ‘The weapons always change, but there may be something in the annals of religious oppression, or media wars for mental domination ... though that’s unrec history, so the information is highly questionable.’ Before the latest Dark Age, very little of human events was recorded for replay. Nearly everything before the twentieth century was only verbally recounted or written retrospectively, so objectivity was non-existent. Most of human history was unrec. ‘I will say this though: it is natural for a group to defend what it thinks makes it a group.’

  ‘And what distinguishes the group in this case?’ Geof asked.

  ‘Well, for a start one group can read and control other people’s thoughts and push things without touching them. The boundaries of the individual are under threat. The majority — the World Union and all that they comprise — are a group of individuals. Groups of individuals that form a super-group, yes, but a psi society on the other hand may be something entirely different.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that individuality is under threat?’

  ‘Not precisely, but yes, in a way. If the sanctity of one’s own mind and the sanctity of one’s neighbour’s mind cannot be guaranteed, then where does one individual end and another begin?’

  ‘You could make an argument that people have always been under one another’s control.’

 
‘Influence perhaps. But that isn’t the same as disempowering one person to the status of a bot. A machine you can turn on and off and program to do what you want. To do that to a human is subjugation.’

  ‘And the threat of Pierre Jnr is the same as that from every psi. Only magnified.’

  ‘A thousand per cent.’ Shen nodded. ‘To be honest, I haven’t thought about the psi problem in a long time. It used to interest me but,’ he paused to hand Geof a second and third tray that had finished heating, ‘we just don’t understand psionics very well, scientifically speaking. We know what can happen and what can be done, but the mechanics behind it are still a mystery.’

  ‘Do you think the PD experiments contributed to Pierre being what he is?’

  ‘I wouldn’t discount it. If I understand Doctor Rhee at all, he was the sort of scientist who didn’t miss an opportunity.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’ Geof asked, peering around the kitchen.

  ‘There is little to like in that man. What are you looking for?’

  ‘I was just wondering if you had any chocolate.’

  Shen sighed and retrieved a block of foil-wrapped dark from the upper shelf. ‘Don’t eat it all. I only get an order once a month.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Geof said, breaking off a thick chunk with a knife. ‘Rhee performed every experiment he could think of to find a result. Diets, hormones, stimulants, gene surgery ... meditation. But they never found any concrete evidence and were shut down after Pierre’s escape.’

  Shen chuckled. ‘Shut down? Oh no, they wouldn’t do that. The PDP was appropriated by Services.’

  ‘If that was true, I would know about it.’

  ‘You can see behind every wall now, can you, Ozey? How do you think they train and control their psi operatives?’ Geof said nothing. ‘Embarrassing though it may have been, the origination of Pierre Jnr was a breakthrough. They found the hereditary link.’

  ‘No.’ Geof shook his head. ‘I don’t want to believe that.’

  ‘And that is your choice.’ Shen leant forward and flipped his oculars back. ‘Look at my eyes, Geof.’

  He did as he was told and looked eye to eye with his mentor. Shen’s pupils were contracted and the capillaries were etched in red. Too much close-up staring was making him look feverish.

  ‘Always question the data. Then question yourself. Then question the question.’

  ‘What is that one supposed to mean?’

  ‘There is always another level. There is always another wall to get through.’

  Geof stared into the focused pinheads of his mentor’s eyes, trying to see what he saw; to catch the hint he was being offered.

  Shen broke off and sat up straight again, snapping his oculars back over his eyes. ‘You should go. That is more talk than I’ve had to sustain in months. You wear me out.’

  ‘Yes, sensei.’ Geof stood and returned to the main chamber to collect his things. It was not the first time he had been booted out of Shen’s presence. The old man often waned into a mood after too much conversation. ‘May I return to discuss any developments?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes. You can always come back.’ Shen was tired and seemed shorter now. He moped behind Geof as he went to the gate. ‘Did I help you, Geof?’ Shen asked.

  ‘Yes, sensei. Very much so.’

  The old man nodded to himself. ‘Good. Perhaps you will forgive me for the rest of it then.’

  ‘“There is always a lesson to be learned”,’ Geof quoted.

  ‘And some to unlearn,’ Shen replied.

  The doors of the elevator shut and Geof returned to the world above.

  ~ * ~

  That night Geof was dozing when a message came in from an unexpected source.

  Pinter: I’ve been keeping up with your progress.

  Geof: Colonel! It is a welcome surprise to hear from you. Where are you? I don’t have a visual of you.

  Pinter: My location is classified, Geof. I’m being rejuved.

  Geof: I am in shock and disbelief. You?

  Pinter: It is hard to believe, I know. I’d sworn against it, but I didn’t feel I could perform my duty with what I had left in me.

  Geof: What is it like? Is it painful?

  Pinter: There are moments.

  Geof had read widely on the subject. Rejuving was still fairly new; rebirth, some people called it, or internal cosmetics. There were reports that suggested one should proceed with caution. Some psychological side effects had been reported, but without a control group they were unverifiable and most likely the natural result of a second youth and a doubled lifespan.

  Geof: How young will you be when I see you next?

  Pinter: I’m going back a long way. I think I looked my best at thirty.

  Geof: So I guess this is getting serious then.

  Pinter: Do not tell Peter Lazarus. He is not to know about me.

  Geof: As you command, sir.

  Pinter: I’m contacting you about your report.

  Geof: You’ve seen it?

  Pinter: Let’s not waste time on redundant questions, shall we?

  Geof: No, sir.

  Pinter: Tell me your reasoning for the infection graph.

  Geof: I was following a hunch, sir. I am not sure what I was aiming for.

  Pinter: I want you to do something for me. Take the approximate psi population density and apply that to your connectivity spread.

  Geof: And in the centre?

  Pinter: It doesn’t matter. Like Li said, it’s the idea that counts.

  Geof: Yes, sir.

  Geof duplicated the diagram and ran it again based on the Colonel’s instructions.

  Pinter: I want to know how many telepaths would be needed to forcefully bend the Will in their favour.

  Geof: I can tell you that without a run, sir. Anywhere between one and ten billion.

  Pinter: That’s a big fluctuation, Geof. Can’t you do any better than that?

  Geof: Colonel, it depends on what the average abilities of a telepath is. If they can only control one other person, then only half the population is needed. But if they can control ten, then only two billion. Etc.

  Pinter: And if you include existing influence vectors?

  Geof: Impossible to predict. The environment of the Will is as reliable as the weather. It could be as few as one.

  Pinter: One.

  Geof waited while Pinter processed this information. One telepath. In other words: Pierre Jnr.

  Pinter: Okay. Thank you for your help, Ozenbach.

  Geof: Will you be coming back, Colonel?

  Pinter: Only if it gets to the worst case scenario. Until then, you have to step it up.

  Geof: I will. Out.

  Pinter: Out.

  He seemed like such a nice old man ... Geof reflected. But in his younger days, in more desperate times, he knew that Abercrombie Pinter had been a man of action and that many of those actions were still brought into question fifty years on. A hundred-year-old man whose glory days involved ending the Örjian assault with a single act of devastating violence.

  One of Geof’s proclivities was history. Of most interest were the periods before all the global wars. He was fascinated by the great loom of cause and effect that eventually crashed under its own weight; the cresting wave of causality. This wasn’t the first time he’d asked himself the question, but each time it felt heavier and heavier: was this one of those moments?

  As was his routine, Geof closed off his working files, typed in his last thoughts and lightly scanned over what had been happening on the Weave. One item caught his eye. At the site of the manifestation people had begun to lay flowers. He wondered if they were flowers of mourning or tribute.

  ~ * ~

  He can make

  us forget

  ~ * ~

  Pete passed out during the journey to Yantz and woke as he was lifted up by one of the marauders. His symbiot warned him the weather was about to brea
k and the soldier —Five, he thought — broke into a run before the clouds turned over and dumped their waterfalls.