The Puzzler's War

by Eyal Kless

  He felt more than heard the soft ping in his inner ear. The SP was trying to reach him via his Comm, but that system had malfunctioned long ago. The SP must have realised it as well because the silvery surface morphed into something resembling a face. It had lips and a nose and silvery eyes, and when it spoke out loud, a male voice rumbled with an undercurrent of basses. It was not pleasant to the ear.

  “Dr. Mannes Holtz,” it said. The vibration of its deep, booming voice made Mannes’s ribs tingle and shook the earth under his feet.

  Mannes rose slowly to his feet and looked around. It had been a long time since he’d stood so close to a battle, if you could grace the one-sided mass murder that had just occurred with such a word. Some of his bodyguards he even knew by name, but most of them were now unrecognisable. He turned to the floating silver face.

  “Why did you kill my men?”

  The silvery mouth moved when it spoke. “They were carrying arms and were not identified to be of the Tarakan forces.”

  “They were with me.”

  “All physical indications showed strong enmity. They were authenticated as enemies carrying weapons with intent and were dealt with accordingly.”

  “They were with me!” This time Mannes shouted, unable to contain his frustration.

  “You are Dr. Mannes Holtz.”

  Mannes took a deep breath and steadied himself.

  It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. All that matters is that I am home.

  “You recognise me . . .”

  “Your scan shows you are seventy-three percent Dr. Mannes Holtz, including distinctive brain patterns, yet many of your body organs are not of your registered DNA. I detect artificial DNA manipulation in some of your transplanted organs. I see several skin grafts on forty-two percent of your body, a heart transplant, a liver, two different kidneys, a left pupil, two artificial knees and one elbow, a partly artificial digestion track with the organic part made of mixed human and pig tissues, one testicle—”

  “It’s been a long time,” Mannes interrupted, “but I am Dr. Mannes Holtz, chief engineer, a minor seat in the inner council, rank equivalent to three sta—”

  “I know who you are,” the bass voice interrupted Mannes for the second time, “and I know your former rank. I am D-17w6a, known as Darwin.”

  “I seek refuge. I need help.” Mannes found himself suddenly shouting at the hovering ball. “The world has been destroyed. I need to—”

  “Your request for access is denied.”

  Mannes blinked, trying not to lose control of himself. Compared to later SPs, D-17w6a was a relatively simple version. It was lucky it had survived the Catastrophe at all, but this was an opportunity of a lifetime, he had to reason with it.

  “Surely you recognise my rank—”

  “Your former rank is known, but you were demoted by a direct edict from Counter Cyber Terrorism Agency, backed by Central Command. Your security clearance was revoked four hours and twenty-three minutes prior to the eruption of hostilities. You are wanted for a long series of crimes including cyberterrorism, espionage, attempting to corrupt a Sentient Program, growing an unregistered Sentient Program, and high treason during wartime. A second entry bears a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of murder of a family of five, two adults and three underaged siblings, one boy and two girls. Your current status warrants for your immediate arrest, something I am, regretfully, unable to do.”

  Mannes spread his hands wide. “Why didn’t you shoot me, then?”

  “Regardless of your status, you are an unarmed Tarkanian, and showed no hostility or direct threat against me. There was no reason to neutralize you.”

  “If you could just let me communicate with Adam, I could—”

  “You request for access is denied, Dr. Holtz, for technical as well as security reasons. I have been unable to reach Central Command since the beginning of hostilities.”

  “Let me help you, then. Maybe I could use your communication facilities to establish—”

  “No, Dr. Holtz. I will not let you do that.”

  “The world was destroyed more than eighty years ago.” Mannes threw his hands into the air in exasperation. “If I could use your powers we could begin to rebuild.”

  The SP remained silent for several seconds, which indicated he was carefully considering Mannes’s words.

  “Your physical signs indicate you believe your statement to be true,” Darwin finally intoned. “The fact that a ferocious attack destroyed all life in a thirty-mile radius, that no one resettled or rebuilt the area, and that I have been unable to contact any official entities since then further support your claims.”

  “You see? If we could just—”

  “However, your access is still denied, and you will be denied by any other Tarakan sites if such survived.”

  Mannes inhaled deeply, trying to control himself. What did Professor Vitor teach him about dealing with SPs? That they were more vulnerable to emotions than to reasoning. Their evolving subroutines and learning mechanism meant an SP would, at the very least, respond better to a plea for help rather than to cold logic, just like humans did. But it was a long shot in both cases.

  “If you knew who I was, then why did you emerge in the first place?” he asked the hovering ball.

  “I have been here for close to two hundred years . . . and alone for more than eighty-three of them.” There was a split-second pause and the silvery face slightly tilted. “I guess I was curious to meet the man who most likely destroyed the world.”

  Mannes took a step towards the silver face. “I have travelled half the world.” He pointed a finger, close enough to touch the rippling face. “Most of it on foot, and I have crossed the ocean. I fought battles and won wars. I faced bloodthirsty warlords, self-proclaimed kings and queens, and I survived more assassination attempts than I can even remember. I did not murder that family you spoke of, but I have killed so many people you could just as well add those poor bastards to the list for all I care. If you think I’m not going to get what I came here for, that I will not find a way to get what I want . . .” Mannes stopped himself midsentence. It was not wise to threaten an entity who was able to wipe out an entire squad of his best bodyguards in less than three seconds.

  “You have managed to survive many years,” the silvery face intoned, “and if what you say is true then you are a resourceful man. Still, I am not going to assist you in any way or form. The orders from Adam were explicit and clear. If you try to claim me by force, I will protect myself. Should you come close to overcoming my defences, I will self-destruct rather than let you use me or the knowledge stored within me.”

  Mannes actually took a step back. “Would you rather die than help me save the world?”

  “I doubt that you can save the world, Dr. Holtz. Perhaps you want to save your soul? But I feel the damage you have directly or indirectly caused is unrepayable and irrevocable. I am an old being, Dr. Holtz, I have seen all around me perish in all but a moment. Friends I knew for years vanished in a flash. I have lived alone ever since, blind to most of the world. It is most likely that once you leave, my existence will continue in the same way it has for decades. Like any sentient being, I do not seek death, but it is not a threat to me anymore, Dr. Holtz, only a course of action I might need to take to prevent you from causing any more harm.”

  Mannes opened his mouth to speak, but for the first time in a long while, he could not find anything to say.

  “Good-bye, Dr. Holtz.” The face withdrew into the silvery ball.

  “No, wait, please. Just one more thing.”

  The ball stopped its descent.

  “Deny my request, I will accept that, but please . . .” Mannes resisted the urge to fall to his knees. “Please tell me about my daughter. Did she survive? Please, I need to know.”

  The face appeared again.

  “Please . . .” Mannes hated hearing himself plead.

  “As far as I know, no Tarkanian survived the war.”

  “What
. . . None? That’s impossible.” Mannes took a step forward. “There were protective measurements, bunkers, force fields. It’s not plausible that no one survived. Even with a short warning, people must have managed to run into the protective bunkers”

  “As far as my logs show, there was no warning, Doctor Holtz. The civilian alarm systems were never activated.”

  “That’s impossible . . . it cannot be . . . we can detect anything that . . . there’s no reason not to . . .”

  “Good-bye, Doctor Holtz.”

  The face withdrew and morphed back into the silvery ball. It sank slowly into the hole in the ground, which sealed itself soundlessly.

  Mannes stood silently for some time. Eventually he bent down to fish a gun from one of his bodyguards’ lifeless grips. He walked slowly to the torch that was stuck into the ground and took that in his other hand. He would send another squad of men in the morning to bring back the weapons and strip the bodies.

  One thing he knew for sure now. There was no use trying to find another SP to gain access to the mainframe through a proxy. Mannes’s name and reputation were tarnished, his rank and status gone. No Tarakan SP would ever help him. Mannes comforted himself with the knowledge that it was a long shot to begin with, but the bitter taste of defeat was fresh in his mouth. No, enough of this nonsense.

  Deborah is gone. Well, you knew that. Deep inside, you knew you killed her. But there is one more thing that you can do. Set things right.

  It was time to take hold of a major asset, a place he might be able to use to gain access to Adam himself. He’d been toying with the idea long before he landed on the shores of this continent, but he’d put it aside and concentrated on getting to know the old/new land and finding out if there was a chance that he could go back home. Now he knew that path was permanently blocked, and there was no use trying it again.

  You knew it would come to this. The moment you woke up on that mountainside in Kyrgyzstan, you knew. And you planned for this eventuality.

  Mannes stepped back into the forest. He walked slowly but his mind was racing.

  There was just one more play he had to set in motion, then he would march south and seize the Star Pillar.

  Chapter 53

  Peach

  “Still thinking about the Lizard?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t feel too bad about it.” Sergiu stretched and grimaced, his hands clasping his lower back. “At least you tried.”

  “Are you trying to cheer me up?”

  “A little.” He smiled and warmed his hands by the small fire. Several days of travel were taking their toll on him.

  Well . . . to be honest, on both of us. The dirt road we were following was so rutted, Sergiu had given up on trying to ride the rickety cart and walked a large part of the way on foot. This was the most devastated land I had travelled through yet, and we hadn’t encountered a single soul. We passed three ghost towns, so at least we spent some nights with a wall at our backs, but tonight we had to rough it in the wild.

  “I’ll give you this,” Sergiu suddenly said. “I did not expect it to run away like that. From what I’ve heard, the Lizards just charge headlong and tear you apart.”

  “You never saw a Lizard before?”

  “Not a live one, no. Never been to the Valley myself.”

  “And these Lizards come only from Tarakan Valley?”

  “Yes, never heard of them anywhere else. Heard they were always a menace but manageable enough. Years ago, thousands of them suddenly came out of the mountain ridge and swarmed the valley. There was a large outpost of Salvationists there, basically groups of mercenary Troll crews that raided the Nodes for weapons and technology, and they were all wiped out. No one has managed to take hold of the area since, but lately rumours say the Lizards’ numbers have dwindled a little. The Nodes in the Valley used to be the city’s lifeline. If it weren’t for the war with the North the city would have sent crews by now.” A faint smile touched Sergiu’s lips and quickly disappeared.

  “You seem to know a lot of rumours, Sergiu.”

  He chuckled and massaged his neck. “What can an old, dying man do but gossip?”

  Every good lie contains elements of truth in it, but my instinct told me this man was playing me.

  “Are we still on the right track?” Sergiu began cleaning his gun.

  I fished the locator from my bag and turned it on, then dialed the frequency numbers I’d memorized, making sure the screen was not facing Sergiu. The locator blipped and an arrow appeared at the edge of the screen. In my time, I would have been able to pinpoint the girl’s location from here and calculate the exact way I could reach her in the shortest amount of time. I would not have had to go there, either—an extraction team would have seen to that as well. Now that the communication satellites had exploded and fallen from the skies, it was just a frustrating trial and error, following a soft blip in the general direction of her whereabouts. “We’re okay,” I said, and turned the machine off—though not before clearing its memory, just in case Sergiu decided I was too much of a burden. It was time to do some digging. “Tell me about this Mannes of yours.”

  I could see him stiffen up a little, then he forced himself to relax. “What is there to tell?”

  “Who is he? What is he? Where is he from? I’m working blind here.”

  “Mannes is a true Tarkanian, old as the Catastrophe, even older.”

  “You mean he was downloaded into a vessel, like me?”

  Sergiu blinked a few more times, thinking before answering. “No. He saw the Catastrophe with his own eyes, he told me that once. And he travelled half the world and crossed the oceans to get here.”

  “And where is ‘here’ exactly?” I was still struggling with the thought of someone staying alive that long without rejuvenation treatments, but I didn’t want to stop the momentum of the conversation. Sergiu surprised me with an honest answer.

  “Mannes is at the Star Pillar.”

  In hindsight Sergiu’s frankness was not so surprising. If the man was really as sick as he claimed, there was a fair chance he would expire before we reached our destination, and I needed to know where that destination was.

  “Okay,” I said slowly as Sergiu reassembled his gun. “This Mannes, he is only one man. Tarakan was much more than that. If he thinks I will do as I am told just because he extracted me, he is going to be disappointed.”

  Sergiu considered my words as he reloaded his gun. As far as I could tell he only had one clip, which meant, at most, thirteen shots.

  “My first advice to you, Peach, is to take care when you speak to Mannes. Age has shortened his temper, and like you, he is a man of swift action.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, but Sergiu wasn’t buying it.

  “The fastest-moving thing in the City of Towers is a rumour. I heard there was a massacre at the Seven Swans—a whole gang got wiped out by only one person, said to be a short, middle-aged woman wielding a power sword and moving like the wind. And then there is this mysterious killer roaming the backstreets of the Pit, who recently made a serious reduction in the number of local muggers.”

  I remained stone-faced as Sergiu softly wheezed his chuckle. “Don’t even try denying it. For someone in your profession, you leave a very loud trail behind you.”

  There was no use denying it. “The Seven Swans was about recovery of important resources.” I pointed at the medibag.

  Segiu made sure I saw the skepticism on his face.

  “Fine,” I admitted, “it was also personal.”

  “Since when does a Tarakan hibernating agent act on a personal vendetta?”

  “Since the world was destroyed and everything’s gone to shit,” I snapped back.

  “Well. Mannes is going to restore everything back to how it was, before the Catastrophe.” This time the look on my face was enough for him to add, “Or at least begin restoring Tarakan back to its glory.”

  “How can one man do that?”

  Ser
giu got up, holstered his gun, and stretched. I noticed he did not remove his wide-brimmed hat despite the fact it was almost the middle of the night, “Tarakan was defeated, betrayed from within, but not destroyed.” He pointed at me. “You are living proof that the entity called Adam, the heart of Tarakan, is still alive. Weakened and confined, perhaps, but still alive. Mannes told me that through his actions he could change the world, free Adam from his confinement, and restore all the great minds that are within him.”

  “And do you believe him?”

  Sergiu closed his eyes briefly, then sighed. “Does it matter? I still remember my grandfather telling me how he went to help his mother arrange the basement when the world exploded. He was only a young boy when it happened, and they lived in a remote community, a fact which did not save their house but probably saved their lives. He still remembered a little of what was once, how people lived, that there was no sickness, and everyone had food and could travel anywhere they pleased. My father still knew the old tech of my grandfather’s times. We had a working cooler, and a shortwave radio, and several working computers. When the cult of the nature god came knocking on his door, demanding that he give them all of our tech, he resisted. They killed my entire family and took me away to use me as human sacrifice. Mannes saved me just as the cult’s leader was about to torch me.”

  “And you have been following Mannes ever since?” I watched him intently, looking for signs that he was lying, but found none. It did not mean he was telling me the truth, or the entire truth.

  “Yes,” Sergiu answered, his eyes looking at the dark horizon. “He is not an easy man, but he never hurt me. He just did what needed to be done.

  “I’ve heard so many versions of why the Catastrophe happened; the wrath of a God, a vengeful planet, or that the Tarkanians were demons.” Sergiu shrugged. “There was a moment in my life that I had to choose a side and a version of events, and at least Mannes’s version gives me hope.” He shook his head. “Looking at your new body and knowing who you are and where you have been strengthens my belief that I have made the right choice.”