by Philip Reeve
Fishcake stopped at the last steep turn of the road above the lake-shore. He was cold and tired, footsore after the long trek from the hermitage, and very afraid that they would be challenged as they neared the outskirts of the city. He had insisted on walking most of the way, although his Stalker had offered to carry him, because he did not want her to think that he was weak. An ache had begun in the back of his knees after a few miles, and had now spread to every part of him, making it hard to walk at all. He knew that he should be happy that the journey was over, but he just felt afraid.
When his Stalker turned to find out why his footsteps had stopped he said, “Don’t go down there.”
“But Popjoy can mend me,” she whispered. “Then I will be Anna all the time.”
“You don’t need him!” Fishcake said. It seemed to him that she was mended already. She had been Anna ever since the day they climbed up on to Zhan Shan. He was dimly starting to understand that the Anna part of her was made stronger by memories; the fluttering flags written with prayers to her old gods had woken her again, and the familiar mountains and the talks with Sathya had made her stronger than ever; perhaps the Stalker Fang part had been crushed for good. Why risk trusting this Popjoy person?
But he was too tired and shivery to explain all that to his Stalker. She came and picked him up and said, “Don’t be afraid, Fishcake. Dr Popjoy will mend me, and then we shall go back to Sathya. Now be my eyes again, and tell me, is there anyone about?”
There was no one, and no one challenged them as she carried him to Popjoy’s gate. It was late. Batmunkh Gompa was a glittering curtain of lights drawn across the sky beyond the lake. Snow was falling, flakes patting Fishcake’s face like chilly little fingers; like the cold fingers of the ghosts of children.
The Stalker set Fishcake down and smashed the gates’ strong locks and Fishcake pushed them open, looking nervously at the lighted windows of the house which showed through the trees at the far end of a long drive. His Stalker took his hand as they stepped together through the gateway, the gates swinging shut behind them. “We shall ask Dr Popjoy to give you some food, before he works on me,” she promised.
“What if he won’t?” asked Fishcake. “Work on you, I mean?”
“I will make him,” whispered the Stalker. “Don’t worry, Fishcake.”
Fishcake looked again towards the house, and put a hand in his pocket to clasp the little horse she’d made him. He still didn’t want his Stalker to put herself at the mercy of this sinister-sounding Engineer. He almost pulled her back through the gates, but already it was too late. In the garden ahead, where shadows lapped beneath the trees, things were moving. Spiky shapes which had looked like statues suddenly turned their heads; green eyes lit like flames.
“Stalkers!” whispered Fishcake’s Stalker, hearing the clank and hiss as they came to life. She sounded scared.
“But you’re a Stalker,” Fishcake said.
“Oh, so I am. Thank you, Fishcake. I forget, sometimes…” She pushed him gently behind her, out of harm’s way, and unsheathed her claws.
The house had three guardians; big, polished battle-Stalkers customized by Dr Popjoy, finned and spiked like heraldic dinosaurs. Light silvered their spade-shaped, featureless faces as they loped across the snowy lawns. Fishcake’s Stalker limped towards them. They were stronger, but she was cleverer. She dodged their clumsy, flailing blows. Her blades flashed as she drove them through the couplings of each Stalker’s neck in turn. Sparks spewed and fluids squirted. The beheaded bodies lurched aimlessly about, colliding with each other and falling over, thrashing and clattering on the flagged path like armoured break-dancers as Fishcake’s Stalker turned towards him. She reached out to him with one hand, and then snatched it away, touching her own face. Her eyes flared; her head jerked.
“No!” she whispered.
“Anna!” wailed Fishcake. He squidged himself back against the cold bars of the gate as she struggled with herself. She shook herself and came towards him. She grabbed his chin, twisting his face upward. She was not Anna any more. What had made her change? Had the fight with the other Stalkers tripped some circuit in her head? Or had Fishcake done it himself, by reminding her of what she was? He shook with sobs, wishing there was some way he could bring Anna back.
“What is this place?” she hissed, listening to the wind in the trees, the lap of waves along the lake-shore. “How long was the Error in control?”
“D-doctor Popjoy,” was all that Fishcake could say, through his tears. “He lives here…”
“Popjoy?”
“Anna thought, she thought…”
“She thought that he could make her even stronger,” the Stalker whispered, and gave a hissing laugh.
“What about Sathya?” he said. “What about my horse? Remember…”
“Be silent.” She let Fishcake go and went over to the ruined Stalkers, who were falling still at last. Bending down, she felt across the ground until she found a wrenched-off head. She unplugged one of the cables from her own skull and inserted it into a socket on the head. The dead Stalker’s eyes began to glow again. She lifted the head and held it up in front of her like a lantern. As she swung it towards Fishcake he understood that she was looking out at him through its eyes. He wondered if she was disappointed, after all their time together, to see how small and frail he was.
“Come,” was all she said. “We will see Popjoy, as the Error intended. I will make him expunge her permanently.”
Fishcake wanted to run, but he went with her instead, as he always did. He didn’t know what “expunge” meant, but he could guess. He wanted to hold his Stalker’s hand, in the hope that his touch might somehow bring Anna back, but she was not in a hand-holding mood; she flapped him away and went limping fiercely along in front of him, still holding up the baleful head.
As they neared the house a dozen big Stalker-birds launched themselves from the trees outside and began to circle the intruders, closer and closer, slivers of light falling from their beaks and claws. Fishcake tried to hide himself in the folds of his Stalker’s filthy robe, but she just raised her arms and whispered to the birds in some battle-code, and they settled meek and watchful on the lawns, waiting for her next instruction.
The front door was ironwood, bound and studded with actual iron, but it splintered easily under a few kicks from the Stalker Fang’s good leg. Behind it lay a pillared atrium where a Resurrected butler lumbered out of an alcove to bar the way. “WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS?” it droned.
“I have come to meet my maker,” replied the Stalker Fang in her usual, cool whisper. She smashed the butler to pieces and left its wreckage scattered on the tiles. Fishcake scurried after her across the atrium, through another shredded door and down three stairs into a sunken den walled with soft draperies and lit by the toffee-coloured glow from three tall uplighters. A small, bald-headed old man was rising from his couch to ask what the commotion was about. He went very still when he recognized his visitor. A glass fell from his hand, splashing wine across the carpet.
“Keep away! My birds will fetch help! They’ll fly to Batmunkh Gompa and…”
“Your birds are under my control now, Dr Popjoy,” whispered the Stalker. “Stupid creatures, but they have their uses.” She moved towards him, swinging the head in her outstretched hand so that the light from its eyes swept the room. Fishcake glimpsed things running away – Stalkerized insects and animals, a dog with the head of a dead girl. On a plate balanced on the arm of Popjoy’s couch sat a neat wedge of fruitcake, which Fishcake snatched and crammed into his mouth. Eating messily, he pushed open a door in the far wall and looked through into some sort of workshop; cadavers on slabs and shelves heaped high with curious machinery.
“It wasn’t me!” Popjoy was whimpering, assuming that the Stalker Fang had come for revenge. “I didn’t know Shrike would attack you! It was all that girl’s doing; that Zero girl! She’s dead now; did you hear? The Townies got her, down in Africa. Naga’s quite cut up about it, they sa
y; sticks to his quarters and won’t issue orders. Everyone will be relieved to hear that you’re back! You’ll be on your way to Tienjing, I suppose? To reclaim power? I can help you…”
“Tienjing no longer matters,” whispered the Stalker, holding the head out to stare at him. “The Green Storm no longer matters. The world will not be made green again by air-fleets and guns and the squabbling of the once-born.”
“Of course not, of course not.” Popjoy edged away until he was pressed against a wall and could edge no further. His face shone sweatily in the green light. “So what can I do for you, Excellency? What small service can this feeble once-born offer…?”
The Stalker did not answer at once. She moved the severed head, following the flight of a Resurrected bee around a lamp on a side-table. Then, in a voice softer even than her usual graveyard whisper she said, “I remember things.”
“Ah…”
“I remember being Anna Fang.”
“Oh? Interesting.” Fishcake, who was watching from behind the sofa, could see that Popjoy really was interested, despite his fear.
“The memories overwhelm me sometimes,” the Stalker confessed. “It has been worse since I reached Shan Guo. Sometimes it is as if I become her…”
“Then the stuff I installed has started to work at last!” cried Popjoy triumphantly. “The damage you suffered must have dislodged something, or perhaps in repairing itself your brain has made some connection that I could not achieve with my crude instruments…”
“How is it possible?” demanded the Stalker. “Are they real memories?”
“Hard to say,” mused Popjoy. “How do you define a real memory? But it’s nothing to be frightened of. I think I can correct it… May I take a look? Inside?” He tapped his own bald head, and grinned, his fear replaced by a nervous excitement. “If you could wait till morning, when my laboratory assistants arrive to help me with my little retirement projects…”
“No.” The Stalker Fang was already moving towards Popjoy’s workshop. “No one must know that I am here. You will do it now. The boy can help you.”
The workshop stank of death and chemicals. Racks on the walls held shiny displays of scalpels and bone-saws. Fishcake, who still didn’t trust the old Engineer, helped himself to a long, thin-bladed knife and hid it inside his coat.
The Stalker Fang shoved a cluttered bench aside and knelt down on the floor, in the spill of light from a hanging argon-globe. Kneeling, her bowed head reached halfway up Popjoy’s chest. The Engineer circled her, licking his lips and fidgeting. “You, boy,” he snapped, holding out his hand to Fishcake without ever looking at him. “Pass me that tray…”
The tray was metal, covered with delicate, finely-made instruments. It rattled and clattered in Fishcake’s shaking hands as he passed it over. The instruments made a mockery of the crude tools he had used to repair his Stalker. He saw the Engineer wince at the sight of the cheap iron bolts with which he had fixed her death mask in place.
“Who made these repairs? A real bodge-job…”
“The child has done well,” said the Stalker, and Fishcake felt proud.
Popjoy had surgeon’s fingers; slender and clever. Within half a minute he had the mask off, baring the dead woman’s face beneath. Another half minute and the top of her skull-piece came free and was laid on a table. “Lamp, boy,” he said, and strapped the small torch which Fishcake passed him around his head. He peered down into the tangle of machinery and preserved braintissue inside the Stalker’s skull.
“Sometimes she is just Anna, for days and days,” said Fishcake, hoping that Popjoy would take the hint, destroy the Stalker part of her and save his Anna. “It was the Anna bit that wanted to come here, so you could help her. I think Anna Fang is trapped inside her somewhere, and sometimes when she remembers who she is the Stalkerish side shuts down…”
“The ghost in the machine…” Popjoy looked at him and winked. “I’m afraid not, lad. Nobody returns from the Sunless Country, you know.” He selected a long, thin probe from the tray and inserted it into a crevice of the Stalker’s brain. The Stalker’s head lifted with a jerk; her dry lips moved; she whispered, “Stilton… I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, but it was the only way…”
“Anna?” said Fishcake eagerly.
Her eyeless, desiccated face turned towards him. “Fishcake?”
“It’s her!” Fishcake told Popjoy, “Keep her! Hold on to her! Don’t let the other one come back!”
Popjoy was busy with his probes and instruments. He didn’t even bother to look at Fishcake. “You have it all wrong, boy,” he said. “These memories aren’t a person. They’re just residue which the Stalker-brain has scoured out of the dead brain-cells of the host. Eighteen years too late, mind, but better than never…”
Something sparked, down inside the Stalker’s head; the flash lit up the inside of her mouth, which had fallen open. She jerked again, and said, “No tricks, Popjoy.”
“What, you think I’d sabotage my finest work?” cried Popjoy, hurt. “I am just making a few minor adjustments.”
“You have found the Error? The memories? Remove them!”
“Great Quirke, certainly not!”
“Remove them!”
“But Excellency, they are what distinguish you from the mindless Stalkers, the battle models… They are what make you the finest Stalker of the age; the pinnacle of Resurrection technology…”
Either Popjoy’s words or the pleading tone that had crept into his voice caught the Stalker’s attention. She nodded cautiously, prepared at least to hear him out.
“Those memories have always been there, submerged beneath the surface,” the Engineer explained. “They give you levels of experience and emotion which no other Stalker of mine can draw on. Recently, thanks to the damage Mr Shrike inflicted, they have become intense, overwhelming your conscious mind. But we should soon be able to strike a healthy balance.”
“What are they?” insisted the Stalker. “Where have they come from? Why do I remember being Anna?”
“I’m really not sure,” admitted Popjoy, groping for a tiny pair of pliers and setting to work. “The fact is, the brain I fitted you with isn’t quite like anything else I’ve ever seen. Certainly not one of those clunky modern models we London Engineers built, and not like old Mr Shrike’s, either. It’s much older, and much stranger.
“You see, when your friend Sathya first took me to Rogue’s Roost all those years ago and ordered me to bring Anna Fang back to life, I panicked a bit. I knew it was impossible. So to buy myself some time I set up an expedition and took a Green Storm airship out into the Ice Wastes, hunting for an Old-Tech site that I’d heard rumours of ever since I was an Apprentice in dear old London. The Engineers had looked for it, but never found it. I had better luck. Right up to the top of the world we went; so far north we started going south again. And there, half buried in the snows of a tiny, frozen island, we found a complex built by some forgotten culture which must have flourished in the days before the Nomad Empires. Inside the central pyramid sat a dozen dead men and women on stone thrones. Some had been crushed by roof-falls or encased in ice, but there were a few who, when we entered their chamber, began to whisper to us in languages we couldn’t identify. They were Stalkers, of a sort, although they had no armour or weapons, and they’d clearly not been built to fight.”
“Then why?” asked Fishcake’s Stalker.
“I think they were built to remember,” said Popjoy. He rummaged in a drawer for a set of Stalker’s eyes and started wiring them into his patient’s empty sockets. “I think that when a great leader of that culture died, their scientist-priests would take the body to the pyramid at the top of the world and stick a machine in their head and there they’d sit, remembering. They’d remember all the things they’d done in life, and pass on those memories to their successors, and tell the stories of the times they lived in so they’d never be forgotten. Except they were forgotten, of course; their culture vanished from the earth, a
nd the Nomad Empires who came after them picked up a crude version of the same technology and used it to build undead warriors like old Mr Shrike.
“That pyramid was the only relic of the first Stalker-builders, and I’m afraid my Green Storm minders dynamited it for fear some other scavenger would stumble on the secret. But in one of the smaller buildings, among a lot of religious paraphernalia and irrelevant old texts, I unearthed an almost complete Stalker brain. I took it back to Rogues’ Roost for study and repairs, connected it to a brain of my own design which controls your motor functions and such-like, and installed the whole caboodle in the carcass of old Anna Fang.”
The Stalker tilted her head on one side. “So am I Anna Fang?” she asked.
“No, Excellency,” said Popjoy. “You are a machine which can access some of the memories of Anna Fang. And they give you strength.” He replaced her mask and skull-piece, fastening them into place with neat new bolts. “You want to make the world green again; you yearn for it. That’s not because you have been set to obey Green Storm instructions, like some brainless battle-Stalker, but because you can subconsciously remember how much Anna Fang wanted it; you can remember what the townies did to her, and to her family, and how it felt when those things happened. Her memories, those feelings, are what drive you.”
“I remember dying,” said the Stalker, not in the hesitant voice of Anna but in her own harsh hiss. “I remember that night at Batmunkh Gompa. The sword in my heart, so cold and sudden, and then that sweet boy kneeling over me, saying my name, and I couldn’t answer him… I remember it all.”
She unplugged her cable from the severed Stalker head and slung it aside. When she reinserted the cable into her own skull her new eyes filled slowly with green light. “Now it is time for us to go.”
She stood, and turned, and Popjoy’s smile faded. “Excellency, you can’t leave now! I need to make further tests and observations! With your help I might be able to make more like you! I’ve spent so many years trying to repeat my success with you, and all I’ve been able to turn out are tin soldiers and silly curiosities…”