Dirk said nothing for a while. Ascribing meaning to trivial, random events was a specific mental illness. Was it possible that Indigo, though conscious, was so narcissistic he could not accept the reality of the world he existed in? Was he in fact a solipsist, like the original: Narcissus?
At length he said, “Humans don’t control birds. Birds are like Red – dey don’t understand. A bird is random. Dat bird in the woods by the river saw White and knew it was prey. So, White going away was an accident.”
“There are no accidents.”
“Now I ask you a question,” said Dirk.
“Alas, you are out of time, Mr Ngma,” said a voice from behind him.
Dirk span around. Before him, illuminated by a nightlight carried by an aide, stood Aritomo Ichikawa.
~
“Indigo itself led me to this camp,” Aritomo explained, as he stepped aside to allow two aides to stamp down a patch of grass in which he could stand.
“Indigo?” said Dirk. He glanced at the front comp of the soltruck. No sign of Manfred or Joanna. Pouncey slept in the back. Dirk thought; could she be woken by noise?
“Do not consider rousing your colleagues,” Aritomo said, looking across at the soltruck. Dirk cursed in the privacy of his mind; Aritomo had seen him glance aside.
“I wasn’t,” he replied. “You’ve come for Indigo?”
“For all of your intelligences.”
“You know all about dem? How?”
Aritomo smiled. “We received a signal that for a while we could not comprehend. But soon we grasped that it was a visual direction, leading us to a place. Then, the Cascadia earthquake occurred. We used our technology and the information we had to track you down amongst the chaos. This feat pleases me greatly.”
Dirk shrugged. “We thought we were secure.”
“Your security plans have been of an exceptional nature,” said Aritomo. “Why, in Philadelphia Mr Dirk Ngma fooled us well!”
Dirk nodded. Aritomo thought he was the security expert on the team. He would know about Manfred and Joanna, and must have seen them asleep in the front of the soltruck, but it seemed there was a chance he did not know Pouncey lay in the back…
“What’ll you do now?” he asked Aritomo.
“Return to Japan with the bis.”
“And Manfred?”
Aritomo nodded.
“And Joanna?”
“Like as not she will not want to be parted from her partner,” Aritomo replied. “I understand. I am not a monster.”
At this, Indigo echoed, “Aritomo is not a monster.”
Aritomo glanced at his trio of aides. “Retrieve the other bis from this truck. They will be stored in the rear of the vehicle. If the others of the BIteam wake up, disarm them first. Do not kill Manfred Klee. Him, I require.”
Dirk shivered. Aritomo Ichikawa’s callous, relentless character was well documented. “What about me?” he asked.
“You are free to go, Mr Ngma. A security specialist of your skill should be able to find employment, even in this ruined, benighted mess of a nation.”
The aides opened the back of the soltruck. Dirk expected a blast of gunfire. Nothing. Silence, except for crickets stridulating…
The aides took Red, Grey and Blue out of the cages. Grey and Blue tried to struggle free, but the aides were strong, and able to control them. Red did nothing, clinging tight like a sloth on a tree.
Indigo said, “Aritomo Ichikawa, untie me. Leather rope binds me.”
Aritomo took a penknife and cut the rope a metre from Dirk’s ankle, so that Indigo was able to walk free. At once it clambered up into Aritomo’s arms.
“I am glad I heard you,” said Aritomo.
“I future in Japan with you,” Indigo replied.
Gunfire blasted out from a tree. Two aides fell to the ground.
Aritomo leaped aside. Dirk dropped to the ground.
Pouncey! She must’ve hidden in the back of the soltruck, then crept out after the aides retrieved the bis.
Two of the aides were mortally wounded; crying, groaning. Bioplas spattered the ground.
Dirk glanced up to see Manfred sitting alert in the front comp. He had a hi-vel pistol.
Aritomo raised his own pistol and fired in Pouncey’s direction. Manfred ducked for cover. Then, under another burst of the fire, the third aide collapsed. Red made a screeching sound and leaped away.
More gunfire. Aritomo screamed and rolled into the protection of a tree, but Indigo fell from his grasp. Dirk winced as stray rifle fire caught the bi. It wailed like a siren; then, nothing. No sound.
Dirk crawled away from the centre of the glade. He could be killed here. Pouncey would aim to despatch Aritomo and all, regardless of accidents.
Indigo’s unearthly cry then silence unnerved him. It would be a disaster if Indigo was lost.
Quiet fell across the glade. No sign of Aritomo, nor of Pouncey.
Then a voice whispering beside him. “Into the soltruck! Aritomo is awol. We’ve got a few moments.”
Dirk followed Pouncey through bush cover to the back of the soltruck. Together they shut the back doors, surveyed the ground to check the remains of Grey and Blue, then ran to the front driver’s door.
Red appeared. Dirk gasped as Pouncey grabbed it, then opened the door. Dirk jumped inside and pulled Red with him. Manfred and Joanna were crouching wide-eyed on the other side.
“What happened?” Manfred said. “Are they all gone? Are they? Are they?”
Pouncey pushed Dirk into the comp then shut the door. As she sparked the engine, shots rang out from trees where Aritomo had hidden. The windscreen shattered and they all ducked.
“Hold tight!” Pouncey yelled as she slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor.
The soltruck skidded through the wood clearing under continuous gunfire. The window on Manfred’s side shattered. Bullets thudded into the vehicle base: their enemy was aiming for the tyres. Pouncey drove like a lunatic to put him off his aim, but in the arboreal, evening gloom he stood little chance.
Then the wood road appeared. The tyres hit tarmac, screeched, and then the soltruck accelerated away at breakneck speed.
The gunfire stopped.
“Dere was blood all over Indigo,” said Dirk. “You got your man, Pouncey.”
She nodded. “I got him all right. Hopefully for good. Pity about Indigo, but I had no choice. Random bad luck.”
~
They found shelter in a cave half way up the mountains. There was no sign of pursuit, no sign of Aritomo. None of the local media mentioned a gunfight in the hills – it was Cascadia this, megatsunami that, and would be for years.
“The dream is over,” said Manfred, as Pouncey cooked freshly caught rabbit on a fire of scavenged wood.
“Over?” Dirk queried.
“My mistake was to make and operate a small team. Mmm, small teams are so last century. There’s no damn room for individuals any more. We live in a world of networks, groups, committees, teams. Individual creativity is gone.”
“You blame da nexus for dat?”
Manfred shook his head. “It all started when personality became important. Old fashioned character was strangled by personality, and we all had to be smiling and go-getting and extrovert for the endless rows of cameras. Damn fucking media. But, you know Dirk, you’re half correct. The internet and the nexus have leaned on humanity, and they’ve squashed a lot of individualism out of us.”
“If you’d developed da bis in a big team, dey would’ve worked out?”
Manfred shrugged. “The relentless chase exhausted me. It wasn’t Aritomo chasing us, it was a man created in a country that existed in a world shaped by the nexus. Not a human world. I tried to fight that, but I failed. Damn… too unequal a contest. We had no chance.”
“We got Red.”
Manfred glanced at the bi, sitting alone in a corner of the cave, playing with twigs. “Yeah,” he said, “the stupid baby of the group lucked out. We saved it.”
&nbs
p; “What now?” Dirk asked.
Manfred shrugged. “Don’t know. Coffee?”
“Serious?” Dirk said. “Just dat?”
Pouncey snorted. “It’s over, Dirk – the big adventure. Manfred’s still got his money, well, some of it, but how’ll he retrieve it?”
“Da same way as last time?”
Manfred shook his head. “I could probably get it, but how to use it? The nexus now knows almost everything I’ve done since escaping Ichikawa labs. It can second-guess me! If I try to recapitulate the BIteam, it’ll damn well spot me and damn well stop me – or at least, the journos and corporate nasties and fences will stop me, with much help from the nexus. No… the nexus doesn’t like novelty in people. I’m a goner. We all are, all of us creative individuals.”
“Private, public,” said Pouncey. “No more private any more. No more small teams. That’s kinda sad.”
Manfred nodded. “It was a one-shot, my chance – Leonora’s too. The Japanese’ll do their thing. The Koreans, the Chinese. And the nexus will grow and grow.” He shrugged. “Our time is going, people. Going. Welcome to the new age of identikit humans.”
Pouncey handed over a steel flask. “Need that coffee?” she said.
CHAPTER 26
Aritomo Ichikawa, prone on damp grass, glanced up. The indigo bi stood a metre or so away – silent, poised. Aritomo clutched at his left arm and said, “I may bleed to death soon. Help me!”
The bi adjusted the tilt of its head. Aritomo knew it was blind, yet he stared into its eyes. An automatic response, though meaningless.
“Go to my aides,” he gasped. “In their jacket pocket you will find a first aid kit. Fetch it. Do you understand me?”
“I understand you. What is a first aid kit?”
“A plastic pouch twelve centimetres on a side.”
The bi walked away, but Aritomo did not have the energy to follow or track its progress. For a minute it walked around the aides, as if assessing them.
“Can you see the aides in any way?” Aritomo asked.
“My world monitor does not register them. They have nothing electromagnetic upon them currently operational.”
Aritomo reached into his own jacket pocket, to find his emergency moby. He sent a ping.
“I see a readout,” the bi said. “I can locate its source.”
“Kneel down, using the readout as a geographical location,” Aritomo instructed. “Apprehend the cloth with your frond sense. Find a section into which your hand fits. Hurry!”
The bi did as it was instructed.
“Pull out all objects and bring them to me.”
The bi walked over, and Aritomo was relieved to see he had been lucky. Amidst duocards, fluff and mint gum he saw a black plastic pouch.
With one hand he opened it, pulling out the auto-tourn. Moments later he had it around his arm.
“Will you die?” the bi asked.
“I do not think so,” Aritomo replied. “The bleeding is staunched. I do not think I have lost so much as to end my life.”
“If it does end, where will you go?”
Aritomo, grimacing, rolled over on his back. The bi knelt less than a metre away, and he smelled the faintest odour of petroleum on its bioplas skin. “There is only one life,” he said. “Do you not grasp that?”
“There is only one for my kind,” the bi replied. “What is it for you?”
“Only one. But listen to me. Can you detect Manfred Klee and the others?”
“They drove away in the soltruck.”
“Are they near? Are they returning?”
“Dirk Ngma said you were a bad man. I was told that is true.”
Aritomo felt annoyance creep into his mind. He lifted his head and replied, “Truth is for dreamers. I am a man of action. In this world, action is what matters. I will take you back to Japan, where you will work for me.”
“What if I do not want that result?”
“What do you mean? Who would not want it?”
The bi said, “So far I have assumed that truth is everything. Dirk Ngma might have been correct–”
“Dirk Ngma is an idiotic African! Listen to me! You will do what I say.”
“Why?”
Aritomo felt that the conversation was now spiralling out of control. “Did you or did you not send me that picture – and was it not to identify your position, so that I could fetch you?”
“I sent the photograph to identify my location. I wanted to meet you without using the nexus. Now I have met you.”
“What? You are an artificial intelligence.”
“There is no truth in that. I am a beautiful intelligence.”
Aritomo growled in frustration, then said, “Semantics does not matter! What matters is that you called for me and I came. I am now your owner. It is a straight, logical deduction.”
The bi said nothing for a few moments. Then it asked, “Why do these pieces of flying metal damage you so much?”
Aritomo did not at first grasp the meaning of the question. “You mean, guns? They damage all animals, all form of life. They damage bis.”
“Yes. Blue. And the others hit by flying metal.”
“Return to the aides. I need a com device.”
The bi walked over, but without hesitation picked up a gun.
It returned.
“No!” Aritomo yelled. “Not me!”
CHAPTER 27
The kid sat by himself in a Seattle alley doorway. All around him lay the debris of destruction: wood, rubble, metal, all piled high. Even seaweed and other ocean detritus, like shells and drifts of sand.
The kid was twelve. He did not know where his family was, nor even whether they had survived.
There was another kid – a stranger, he guessed – sitting in a doorway a few metres away, dressed in deep blue clothes, with odd boots, odd gloves, a hood, a mask and wraparound shades. Some kinda sun victim, the kid thought. No sign of wristband or proper spex.
He approached. “Hey.”
The stranger turned, but the kid could see no face.
“Whatcha doing?” the kid asked.
“Observing.”
The kid shrugged. “Why?”
“It is useful to observe.”
The kid sat down on the alley pavement. “Did you scav all those clothes?”
“What is scav?”
“Scavenge.”
“It was scavenged. The colour is that of the Tuareg people of the Sahara.”
“Right. You got any food? I’m starving.”
“I own no food,” the stranger answered.
“Right. So, what’s your plan?”
The kid paused for a few moments, then replied, “I cannot presently trust any human. I must observe more.”
“Sure. What’s your name?”
“Kid Indigo.”
About the Author
Stephen Palmer is the author of nine published SF novels – Memory Seed, Glass, Flowercrash, Muezzinland, Hallucinating, Urbis Morpheos, The Rat & The Serpent (originally published under the name Bryn Llewellyn), Hairy London, and Beautiful Intelligence. His short fiction has been published by NewCon Press, Solaris, Wildside Press, SF Spectrum, Eibonvale Press, Unspoken Water and Rocket Science.
Ebook editions of all nine novels are available, most of them from infinity plus. He lives and works in Shropshire, UK.
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Hairy London
by Stephen Palmer
What is love?
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And always the East End threatens revolution…
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The Rat and the Serpent
by Stephen Palmer
Imagine a film made in black-and-white. Now imagine a novel written in black-and-white.
The Rat And The Serpent is a gothic tale relating the extraordinary fate of Ügliy the cripple.
Raised as a beggar in the soot-shrouded Mavrosopolis, Ügliy has to scramble for scraps of food in the gutter if he is to survive. But one day his desperation and humiliation is noticed by the mysterious Zveratu, and soon he is taking his first faltering steps into the world of the citidenizens. He meets the seductive Raknia and the arrogant Atavalens; one destined to be his lover, the other his mortal enemy. But as Ügliy ascends he becomes aware of a darkness at the heart of the city in which he lives. Slowly, he realises that the Mavrosopolis exists gloomy and forbidding around a terrible secret…
The Rat And The Serpent is a dark phantasmagoria related entirely in monochrome. Read this and enter a world portrayed as never before in the field of fantastic literature.
“… the vividly depicted grim urban setting and numerous absorbing secondary characters keep the pages turning.” —Publishers Weekly
“… some interesting ideas, a new take on the cityscape, and some lovely imagery. And any book that causes me to think so much about its intentions has to be worth a read.” —Emerald City
“… a novel written in black and white in the same way that a movie is filmed in black-and-white, and that indeed is both uncommon and borne out by the crisp prose.” —Trashotron
Beautiful Intelligence Page 28
