The Prey

by Joseph Delaney

‘So why didn’t your father call you Mozart?’

  Ada smiled. ‘That was the influence of my mother. My father might have been the head of the family, but she ruled it as only a woman can! She taught the History of Women in Science at the university, and it was shewho really chose my name. I was called after Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace. She was the first coder. Imagine! That clever woman wrote the very first program, and for a computer that hadn’t even been built!’

  ‘What’s a computer?’ I asked. The world that Ada came from was very different, and there was so much that was mysterious and unknown to me.

  ‘It was the forerunner of a lac, but was made out of dead, inert materials rather than flesh. A computer carried out complex calculations faster than humans and also stored vast amounts of data that could be searchedand retrieved.’

  ‘Were computers sentient?’ Deinon asked.

  ‘Not at first, but eventually they were made so; not long afterwards, what you call false flesh – that of lacs and djinn – was developed and the creatures born of it were also made sentient.’

  ‘Were you born of a shatek?’ Deinon asked suddenly. ‘After all, your own flesh is “false flesh”, isn’t it?’

  It seemed a very personal question, and I thought Ada might be offended. But I needn’t have worried: she took it all in her stride.

  ‘When the soul of a human is removed from Containment, a shatek is unnecessary because no mind needs shaping by the use of Nym coding. The body of false flesh is grown in a tank, and it is a replica of the originalbody. There is no essential difference between the flesh we are born with and that grown to accommodate a twice-born.’

  I said nothing, even though I knew that wasn’t quite true. I remembered Konnit showing me the gramagandar. That weapon could dissolve Ada’s false flesh just as easily as it could that of a djinni. Humans, however,were not hurt at all by its deployment.

  ‘You said the military created the djinn to fight on their behalf. But who were their enemies?’ I asked.

  ‘At first wars were fought between nations. Before the djinn rebellion, warring human states were highly militarized. Potential violence was diverted by the main leisure activity – arena combat where different types ofdjinni fought for the amusement of human spectators. Vast sums of money were bet on the outcomes of such contests. So what you have in Midgard – which is, by the standards of those times, an agrarian and relativelysimple society – is the remnants of that way of life: the Wheel with lacs in combat. But your lacs are less than true djinn.

  ‘However, by the time I was born, most of the world was unified under an imperial government – though we were already beginning to see what might become the next conflict. Pockets of djinn had rebelled and theywere growing in strength.’

  ‘Why did they call them djinn? It’s a strange name,’ I said. It was something I’d always wondered about.

  ‘In legends and folktales, djinn are daemonic entities with magical powers. I am sure they never existed, but coders love to use acronyms, creating from the initial letters of a sequence of words a new short form. Thiscould be applied to the words in which we converse and also the wurdes used by patterners. Thus djinn stands for digital janus interface nano node.’

  ‘That’s a mouthful,’ I said, bursting into laughter. ‘I prefer the shorter version!’

  Ada laughed with me. ‘There is much to be said for acronyms!’

  ‘But what does it mean?’

  She frowned. ‘There’s a lot contained in that five-word acronym,’ she said. ‘A nano refers to something very small, and Janus was an ancient god with two faces. This is very important because the essence ofsentience is to have two aspects of the self mirror each other – two faces regarding each other and entering into dialogue. Do you ever talk to yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Not when anyone else is around to listen,’ I joked.

  ‘We all talk to ourselves, whether we realize it or not. We call it “thinking”. Have you ever puzzled over a question or tried to reach a decision, to find that the answer has suddenly popped into your head? The otherhalf of your mind has supplied the answer, and that dialogue is the basis of consciousness. One day, when you’ve learned more, I’ll explain it fully.’

  But my mind was already flying in another direction. I hesitated to ask Ada what I really wanted to know. She might not want to talk about it. But my curiosity overcame my reluctance. After all, Deinon’s questionhadn’t bothered her.

  ‘What happened to you? Why were you placed in Containment?’

  Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, and then there was a scream of something in pain. We all turned our heads, but of course there was nothing to be seen. The high stockade wall lay between us and any threat– though I saw Ada shiver before turning back to answer me.

  ‘The djinn were starting to mount terrorist attacks against the government. At first it seemed little more than a nuisance. Nobody at that time dreamed that they would grow in power to the extent that they could defeatthe Empire and reduce us to this pitiful state. Their first major attack was on the Empress, but they failed to kill her. Then they identified a new target – the Imperial Academy, where artificers were trained. Nobodyexpected it at the time, but looking back now, it seems obvious.’

  ‘Why obvious?’ I asked.

  ‘Because djinn are patterned using wurdes of Nym, and knowledge of such wurdes represents true power. Strike there, and the advantage that humans had enjoyed over djinn would be undermined. So that’s what theydid. I was killed by a terrorist bomb. The next thing I remember is being interrogated, floating in darkness, aware that I was no longer within my body. They told me that I was dead and offered me the usual choice –oblivion or stasis in Containment.’

  ‘Why couldn’t they simply place you in a body of false flesh such as the one you have now?’

  ‘It was illegal. If everyone was permitted to adopt false flesh, the population would have increased unsustainably. It would have led to famine and the end of civilization.’

  ‘So why bother to place anyone in stasis?’

  ‘There was a faint hope that I would one day become one of what were known as the “twice-born”. By special imperial decree, a few gifted souls were reborn in this way. I was the High Adept of the academy, and Ihoped that I might become one of them. However, I almost chose oblivion: being “twice-born” in the future would mean leaving behind all my friends and family, who would be dead by then. But my fear of oblivionmade me choose stasis.’

  ‘It must have been terrible to wake up in our world knowing that everybody you knew was gone for ever.’

  ‘Not at all: before being placed in stasis, the memory is selectively wiped. This ensured that if you were awakened to be twice-born, you did not carry with you a crippling burden of emotion and grief. I can’tremember any individual that I was close to from my own time, so I cannot grieve. Though I found grief again soon enough. I grieve for Tal.’

  ‘You can’t even remember your parents?’ Deinon said, his eyes widening in astonishment.

  ‘Oh, I remember them very clearly, but they died years before I did. The wiping is to remove losses that might be felt upon awakening far in the future. For all I know I might have had a husband and children. I simplycannot remember.’

  There was a long silence, which I interrupted with another question. ‘When djinn were first created, didn’t anyone see the danger – that one day they might turn on their human creators?’

  ‘Yes, many feared and opposed their development. They had their own name for djinn. They called them Franks, after Frankenstein’s monster.’

  ‘What sort of monster was that?’ Deinon asked.

  ‘It was a fictional creation from an ancient book written by a woman called Mary Shelley. In the story, a man called Frankenstein makes a creature from the body-parts of dead humans. Then he infuses it with lifeusing the power of what we called electricity. But new developments do not always turn out for the best! Some humans would have prevented the creatio
n of djinn. Looking back now, they were probably right. Theywere certainly correct to fear what might happen.’

  When Tyron and Kwin finally returned, Ada announced that it was time to bring Thrym and the shatek together.

  The lac had spent most of the time in the deep sleep.

  ‘Awake, Thrym!’ Ada ordered, after we had released it from the jig in the second wagon, and the naked lac followed her across the compound and down the cellar steps. Tyron, Deinon and I were at its heels, but Kwinhad remained outside. The thought of what was about to happen turned her stomach.

  At a command from Ada, Thrym went into the cellar. I glimpsed the shatek quivering in the far corner, its long thin limbs glistening in the torchlight. Then we left, locking the door behind us.

  The screams began almost immediately: although lacs of Midgard were not fully sentient, their bodies could still both feel and respond to pain.

  ‘It’s cruel, but there is no other way,’ said Ada as we climbed the steps. ‘The lac will be rewarded for its sacrifice. It will be reborn to sentience and will not remember any of the pain.’

  Shuddering at the screams that followed me, I retreated to the far side of the stockade to find Kwin. Even there, the cries were carried faintly on the air.

  Kwin stared at me, her face twisted in horror. ‘The lacs that fight down in the Commonality scream too. Something that screams like that must feel pain,’ she said.

  I remembered the first time she’d taken me down into the Commonality. We’d watched an illegal fight between two lacs. One had died, cut to pieces by the blades around the arena. It had screamed just as Thrym wasscreaming now.

  ‘They’re more like us than most people realize!’ said Kwin. ‘Can’t you see that, Leif? Surely you must!’

  I nodded. She was right. Combat in the Wheel was an industry; it created jobs and made the gambling houses wealthy; it entertained the masses and added excitement to their lives. But nobody thought of the lacs.Nobody wanted to accept that they were in any way aware. If you believed that, how could you allow the fighting to continue?

  ‘If my father does nothing about that illegal fights down there, then I will. I’ll free those lacs! Just see if I don’t.’

  *

  It was late in the evening when we returned to the cellar carrying torches with which to drive the shatek back if it proved necessary. We hoped that it would now be sated.

  The scene inside was horrific and I started to tremble.

  Most of the lac had been devoured, but there were strands of its skin across the ceiling, spun by a method too terrible to contemplate. But when we saw what had happened to the remainder of the skin, Deinon and Iimmediately vomited our suppers onto the floor.

  It had been stretched in a taut triangle extending from the far corner of the cellar, where walls and ceiling met, to be anchored at two points halfway across the practice floor. Some fragments of bone and flesh werestill attached to it and the floor was smeared with blood.

  And there, at the centre of that cradle of skin, the shatek crouched, throbbing rhythmically like a beating heart; and at each convulsion of its body, the web of skin vibrated.

  ‘Why has it done that?’ I demanded angrily.

  ‘That is its birthing platform,’ Ada replied. ‘Within the shatek’s body is the egg that is already developing into what we need. Soon my work will start on a lac born of a shatek and a wurde which, in this fallen land, isthe only sure way to gift it with the sentience, skill and speed to defeat Hob. I will begin to shape it.’

  A GOOD PLAN

  The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

  Gang aft agley.

  The Compendium of Ancient Tales and Ballads

  The following morning Tyron slaughtered another ox to meet the demands of the shatek’s voracious appetite. It was still growing at an alarming rate, and was now very fast and dangerous. We always visited it in threes,pushing the meat into the cellar with a long stick before closing the door.

  On the seventh day after the death of Thrym, the shatek was waiting for us. As usual, Tyron carried the meat over his shoulder. I had the torch, and kept alert in case we found ourselves in danger. Deinon’s task was todraw back the bolts and open the door slowly to check that the creature was safely in its web of skin.

  This time it wasn’t.

  It was hiding behind the door.

  A thin, sharp-clawed leg lunged through the narrow opening towards Deinon.

  With a curse, he stepped back. I raced forward and stamped hard on the tip of the shatek’s leg. The door was swinging wider now, and I could see its fierce, malevolent eyes regarding us. It looked ready to attack.

  I thrust the torch into its face. With a hiss and a snarl, the shatek retreated, and Tyron quickly threw in the carcass.

  Only after the creature had eaten its fill was it safe to go in. This was when Ada went to work on the new lac.

  Occasionally Tyron, Deinon and I watched her.

  She stood facing the birthing platform where the sated shatek crouched, speaking wurdes of Nym at great speed. Sometimes it would open one huge eye and regard her warily, but even when it slept, Ada explained,those wurdes continued to do their work, shaping within its womb the form that the offspring would take.

  ‘I am weaving the warp and weft of my wurdes to create a labyrinth of high sentience,’ Ada declared grandly, ‘forming the singleton that will stand before Leif in the arena.’

  Tyron made no comment, but he shot me a glance that told me exactly what he thought about that. For now, he was humouring Ada, while striving to learn all he could. He would never allow me to fight behind thissentient lac. He believed that I was still too young and needed further training. If we were to destroy Hob totally, as well as winning victories in the arena, we had to confront his final selves in his lair. For that Tyronbelieved we needed more sentient lacs. One would not suffice.

  A month later the shatek pushed out a glistening, brown, tubular egg over six feet long, and attached it to the platform of skin with a gelatinous green compound from its mouth. As soon as this was done, the shatek died,and we faced the task of removing its body from the cellar before it began to rot.

  The creature had grown to the size of a small ox, and we had to cut up the body before dragging the pieces up the steps and burying them outside the stockade.

  One week later the egg split and, but for one significant difference, a perfect human emerged, crawling on hands and knees. At first glance it looked like a muscular man, with strong, well-developed limbs, the armsexceptionally long. But when Tyron and I helped it upright, we saw that the thickened neck and throat-slit marked it out as a lac created for combat.

  It was kept in the deep sleep in the jig in Tyron’s wagon, but woken for an hour each day to be fed, washed and exercised. But while the lac slept, Ada spent hours by its side, pouring a torrent of wurdes into its ears.From time to time Tyron and Deinon sat close by, trying to learn more about the process – though Deinon confided that much of what she said was beyond them.

  ‘She speaks the wurdes so quickly that they merge into one and it’s almost impossible to make any sense of them,’ he explained.

  ‘But you must be learning something?’

  Deinon grinned. ‘Oh yes, we are. I never thought I’d make so much progress with my patterning in so short a time. But that’s only when she teaches me directly or Tyron passes on what he’s learned. Even Tyron can’tglean much from her when she’s in full flow. He questions her at length afterwards.’

  One evening Ada invited us to witness the final stage of her labours. She placed her hand on the forehead of the lac, which lay supine and relaxed upon the jig, clothed only in a loincloth, its arms and legs free.

  ‘Thrym is self-aware,’ she declared. ‘He knows who he is and has a basic knowledge of our world. But in some ways he is like a child who must learn through experience.’

  I noticed then that she referred to the lac as ‘he’ rather than ‘it’; clearly she viewed it as more human t
han the previous Thrym.

  ‘Awake!’ she commanded, then, ‘Selfcheck!’

  The lac turned his gaze upon her, but did not give the usual reply.

  ‘Listen,’ she instructed. ‘Listen well. The flesh of my warm hand is resting upon the skin of your forehead. Do you feel it?’

  ‘I feel it,’ the lac answered softly.

  ‘Then you live,’ she told him. ‘You live to serve, to fight and to feel. You live to feel the life beating within you. To fight and win are your reasons for being. To feel and know life will be your rewards.’

  ‘Whom will I fight?’

  ‘You will fight others like yourself. You will fight them in ritual combat. And Leif will be with you. You will fight together. Then, in time, you will face a special enemy – one who is very powerful and dangerous.His name is Hob and he must die. That is your purpose. That is why I have made you what you are. You belong to Leif and you will do his bidding. Look at Leif now! He is your master!’ Ada ordered, placing her otherhand upon my shoulder.

  At that, I heard Tyron suck in his breath in disapproval – but it was already done: the lac slowly turned his head towards me, his eyes glittering in the torchlight. And the expression in them radiated unmistakableintelligence.

  I felt Kwin’s eyes upon me, and when I glanced at her, she gave me a strange smile.

  ‘Leif is your master!’ Ada repeated, staring at the lac. ‘And your name is Thrym!’

  ‘So is it done?’ asked Tyron.

  ‘Yes, the process is finished. Now we need to get Leif and Thrym working together as efficiently as possible. We could clean up the training floor and do it here.’

  ‘Yes, but my house would be better,’ said Tyron. ‘There we have all the facilities necessary. Not only that, people will be wondering at my absence from the city and some might get curious. I need to get back into myroutine. You could be my guest and live in comfort. I’m at your service.’

  Ada smiled and nodded. ‘I’ll take you up on that offer.’

  Later, well after dark, I walked around the stockade walls with Kwin. I was carrying a torch to light our way. We often went for a stroll together after supper and talked over the day’s events. I always enjoyed our chats.