The Hunt for Pierre Jnr

by David M Henley

  For Peter Lazarus it was as though the Prime himself had walked into his room. The most influential individual in the world, and he had sent a proxy so he was safe from the telepath.

  He didn’t know how long it took him to raise a reply. ‘I am not sure how to address you.’

  Ryu was quick to respond, then Gock repeated the words in his own slippery voice. ‘You will address me as Prime. I can tell it is painful for you to talk right now, so please keep your answers short. You can nod to indicate you understand.’ Peter nodded. ‘Are you aware that you are under suspicion of treason and sabotage?’

  ‘I knew I was under suspicion for something.’

  ‘Your trial is taking place now and everything you say or do will contribute to the determination. Do you understand?’ Pete nodded. ‘If at any time you wish to confess and spare Services the time and resources burden, your crime will be looked upon more favourably. Do you wish to confess?’

  Pete remained silent and did not nod.

  ‘As you wish. I have appointed Gock to shadow you for the length of your reorientation. You may contact me through him, but I will not always be available to you. I will work on your case as I can.’

  It was difficult to keep up. Pete had to remind himself that it was Ryu Shima who was speaking, not the sweating proxy who was just a relay. It was extremely disorienting to hold a conversation with someone who was thinking things contrary to what they were saying. ‘What’s reorientation?’ he asked.

  ‘Reorientation, Mister Lazarus, is when a Citizen is found unable to perform or has become confused about their civic duties and requires correction.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means you will continue your investigation. For now.’

  ‘But what about the others? Geof and Colonel Pinter?’

  ‘Mister Lazarus, Gock and I have put strain on you enough. If time wasn’t of the essence, we would have waited for your full recovery. Please accept my apologies.’

  ‘Okay ...’

  ‘A ten squad will collect you at dawn. Do you understand?’ Pete nodded. ‘Good. It will be hard for you at first. I have found that few have the discipline I demand, but most eventually learn to try. I also understand that this way of life is not what you intended and it is outside of your belief system, but you must prepare for reorientation. The only advice I can give you is not to resist. Allow us to help you and you will learn faster.’

  Gock bowed, reluctantly, but he was under duress. Pete did not know what to think about his new situation.

  ~ * ~

  Pete awoke with Anchali gently shaking him. ‘Mister Lazarus? Mister Lazarus? We must dress you.’ Wake up, Peter. Some men are here to take you away.

  Is it time already?

  Where are you going?

  I haven’t been told.

  ‘Do you think you can stand? That’s good. Gently now. That’s good.’ Slowly they managed to get him out of bed and dressed. He swayed on his own two feet; the ground under him felt like a raft at sea.

  Will you be okay? Anchali asked.

  I think so. It has just been a long time since I was last vertical. What will you do now?

  I’ll be reassigned. Back to a more normal hospital.

  Will you contact your people? Tell them what happened?

  I will. As soon as they find me. Good luck, Peter Lazarus. I hope we meet again.

  Thank you for nursing me.

  Be strong.

  Don’t look sad, Anchali. They are watching.

  Yes. She sniffed back her emotions. They are always watching.

  She helped him all the way to the landing area, acting as a crutch until he found his balance. She left orders with Gock that he should eat as soon as possible and then she left.

  Pete held onto their connection as she walked back to the hospital tent. They said nothing, only sharing the emotions that were going through them both.

  Thirty-one, thirty-two ...

  Pete had seen marauders before. On parade. Even out of their armour the team were of impressive size. Biceps as big as a regular man’s head, with shoulders that could pull a plough across a field.

  ‘This is the marauder team,’ Gock introduced them. ‘They’ll be your ten squad.’

  Pete didn’t need clearance to know the ranking of the small team. There were ten men, numbered for clear hierarchy. He reached into their minds as they saluted the air in front of them with metal-bound fists.

  Pete stood shakily before one of the soldiers, a swarthy man with a black stubble of hair. ‘You must be Ten,’ he said, though he knew the man’s real name was Clarence Daveraux.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Seventy-nine, eighty ...

  ‘And what are your orders?’

  ‘To take you to Yantz, sir.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘To help train you into proper physical condition.’

  Pete’s body did not like the sound of that.

  They helped him aboard a transport squib, one of the big berths that could hold twenty armoured Servicemen. As soon as they had him buckled in, they were in the air.

  One hundred and five, one hundred and six — the squib pulled him out of range.

  Goodbye, Anchali. It seems I can’t hold onto anyone.

  ~ * ~

  Busan was on the southern edge of the traditional territories of Korea, on a belt of coastline where the city existed half in the water and half on land. Stacks of buildings crept up the hillsides, their roots branching out over the bay in such density that a pedestrian could cross the bobbing expanse merely by stepping from platform to platform; a practice the older generation were trying to discourage in their adolescents.

  It was a place of crowds and people packed into small rooms. There were two worlds here: where half spent its hours plugged into the Weave, the other half ignored it as best they could and spent their time engaging in energetic outdoor activities. The majority were Citizens, but non-participation was common.

  Geof technically could have spoken to Li over a safe connection, but Shen no longer answered outside calls. He kept himself locked in a subterranean basement and hadn’t been heard from in two years. At the least it would be good to let the world know that one of its gods of tech was not dead. Or was.

  To gain entry, he had to go through two sets of sterilisation showers. First shower, then through a hermetic partition, and then repeated a second time, followed by a long elevator ride downward. If Geof plotted it correctly in his head, Shen’s hermitage was like the inversion of a needle, underground and pointing toward the centre of Earth. It consisted of a five-hundred-metre elevator shaft ending in a chamber of prefab rooms at the bottom. Things were made down here so that they would never see the light of day.

  The elevator opened into a holding area and Geof stepped through. He pushed at the grille door and sparks flew off. He leapt back, stuck inside the electrified cage.

  ‘Sensei Li. It is me, Geof Ozenbach,’ he called out. Beyond the fence, from the other side of the cage, he could see the glints of camera eyes peering at him. A man approached. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of flat oculars and he turned his head from side to side, viewing him from different angles.

  ‘Ozey?’ The cage clicked off and Geof opened the gate.

  Shen had always liked his whiskers. Over the years they had just gotten longer. Twin moustaches hung down to his chest, complemented by long plaited twines from his temples, forehead and chin, like the barbels of a catfish. His face was dominated by large circular spectacles thick with enhancements. Shen was as Geof remembered him, though older and with more details about the eyes — but as alive as ever.

  The ‘gods of tech’ were interchangeable, like the Primacy, though for the last few years there were only three who had been named so. All the gods were synthesists of the highest order, at the peak of their prowess. They made connections between human wants and desires, and created technological innovations
and new paradigms for civilisation, time and again unleashing a string of code or production advance that changed the nature of possible human existence.

  It was an unofficial primacy in the data world and every action of the gods was watched, interpreted and reacted to. The gods themselves responded in their own ways to the effect of that ever-watchful gaze.

  Two of the gods had become rivals of sorts, taking great pleasure in their game of one-upmanship. Egon Shelley and Morritz Kay were both pioneers of the Weave age. In a constant search for serendipity, now the paths of their influence created connectivity wherever they went and it would be impossible for them not to be gods even if they wanted to stop. Shelley and Morritz disagreed on many things, from basic production methods to life philosophy.

  Neither could agree on, nor had they signed, the Digital Rights of Humankind, though both had been consulted on the treatise. The question that currently divided them was over the right to self-controlled evolution. Thus were the problems of the gods. They were called ‘gods’ because their actions were so sweeping and the problems they seemed to dwell on so abstract as to be meaningless to most.

  The longest-standing member, Shen Li, chose to live in seclusion and had barely left his grotto under Busan in two years. Sixty-three years ago he had fathered the early symbiots, the nearly animal wearable computers that were no more than a simple mollusc, and his position amongst the gods was assured.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Sensei Li.’

  ‘Ozey, please call me Shen. You know I don’t like protocol.’ Geof nodded assent. He did know this, but he liked paying his respects. ‘What brings you down here?’

  ‘I have come seeking your help with an urgent problem.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Shen grunted and crossed the room to take a seat at a workbench set up with a forest of tools and mini-floodlights. The room itself held ten workbenches of similar disarray and small piles of scrapped projects and parts. Geof hadn’t seen anything like it: a giant, squat egg-shaped room, made entirely of a poly-metal he didn’t recognise, perhaps a Dark Age design ... some sort of mass-produced bunker. Shen must have been delighted when he found it; the perfect home. He probably only used the one room, but the dark oval orifices on the walls must lead to sleeping areas and amenities. One of the portals was closed and ostentatiously secured with locks.

  ‘What are you working on?’ Geof asked.

  ‘Oh, many things.’ Shen waved his arms to indicate the workbenches covered in his thoughts taking form. ‘And you, Geof? Please, have a seat. Tell me about this problem of yours.’

  Geof found a stool and pulled it over to sit near Shen as he turned back to whatever he was tinkering with. He told him about Pierre Jnr, the rising psi rebellion and the task he had been set by the Prime.

  ‘Well, it sounds like you are doing very well for yourself,’ Shen murmured.

  ‘Thank you, sensei, but I didn’t come here to update you on my life. I wanted your help.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With everything I just explained. Weren’t you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I heard. There is a new and unstoppable threat to the world. What do you want me to do about it? These things happen.’

  ‘But people have lost their lives, and more will if he is not stopped.’

  Shen waved that away. ‘People are always dying. Nothing to be done about that either.’

  ‘I don’t like to think that way.’

  His old master turned his head and grinned. ‘Of course you don’t, Ozey. You weren’t bred for it.’

  ‘Oh, not you too?’ Geof stood and paced away. Shen didn’t respond; he just continued to fiddle with the metal bauble he held in his tweezers. Geof found himself standing in front of the bolted hatch, reading the label that hung from the pin lock.

  ‘What is Kronos?’

  An arc sprang up between Shen’s tools and the metal sphere. He swore. ‘Now look what you made me do.’

  ‘My apologies, sensei. I was only curious.’

  ‘Well, don’t be. What’s behind that door is my failure and nobody else needs to see it.’

  ‘Yes, sensei.’

  Shen sighed, put his tools down and flicked the power off to the bench. ‘Alright. You can set up over there. Move everything from that table into one of the spare rooms, but don’t get it out of order. Don’t talk to me while I’m working and don’t mention the door. Agree?’

  Most of Geof’s internship with Li had been spent in the opposite corner of the room with the instruction to not interrupt.

  ‘Just like old times, sensei?’ Geof grinned.

  Shen grunted.

  ~ * ~

  For the next two days Geof worked behind Shen. While Li fused and fussed with his widgets, or fed and drained new symbiotic materials, or probed and tweaked the metal ball, Geof sat in near stillness, immersed in the data. He had to go back to scratch.

  Since the first hunt had only followed a few leads before discovering Pierre’s location, there wasn’t much left to pursue. Geof started a new file and tapped in what they really knew about Pierre Jnr. After removing as much speculation and supposition as he could, it amounted to very little.

  Pierre Jnr was born from a breeding and development program

  for psionics.

  Pierre Jnr was born to Registered Psionic Pierre Sandro Snr, and

  Registered Psionic Mary Kastonovich.

  Three months after his birth Pierre Jnr escaped and was lost to

  surveillance an hour later.

  Pierre Jnr is eight years old.

  He can make people forget.

  He can control people like puppets.

  He is a kinetic of unprecedented strength.

  Pierre Jnr is confirmed alive on April Seventh, 2159.

  Geof closed off these earlier strands as dry.

  One question leapt up at him. If it was Pierre — and he had been in hiding for eight years — why was it so easy to find him? Was it luck or had Pierre wanted to be found? Was it coincidence or circumstance? Or was it due to Peter Lazarus? The idea of a group entity as the threat quickly became the more elegant solution.

  Left to his own devices, he began approaching his task like a research assignment. A routine collsyn, or collect and synthesise, as they had been taught on the ranch.

  Most of the data about Pierre Jnr was old. No, he corrected himself. Data has no age. ’You can never step into the same data twice,’ he mumbled to himself.

  ‘What was that?’ Shen asked from across the room, where he was tending his slime jellies.

  ‘You taught me that one can never step into the same data twice,’ Geof began.

  ‘Why do you always forget the second part of that adage? You can never step into the same data twice, and you will never get the same answers if you try. Id est, Ozey, information theory isn’t an exact science. Empirical method doesn’t always work with data.’

  ‘That always seemed like madness to me.’

  ‘I know.’ Shen smiled at him. ‘But if you only follow the paths of logic, you will only discover logical things.’

  ‘You do love your adages, don’t you?’

  ‘They keep me on the winding path. Who knows what you’ll discover when you stray from the road of what everyone else knows? Take Kronos for example.’ Shen indicated the reinforced steel door that occasionally ticked as though a large grasshopper was fluttering against the other side of the hatch.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t tell me what’s in there?’

  ‘No, I honestly can’t. I don’t know what it is. A failed experiment, but I’m keeping him. I think there is something to learn in that unhappy accident. I just don’t know what it is. I feel sorry for it, of course. A part of me is in that thing.’

  ‘Another digitalis experiment?’ Geof asked. ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘Yes. I think it would be. But I’m not going to open the door again to find out.’

  ‘Why do you sti
ll pursue digitalis? What need is there?’

  ‘Don’t you see, Ozey? No matter what we try to do with civilisation it fails. The problem lies in the base animal.’

  ‘It’s not so bad. There has been peace for over fifty years.’

  ‘Yes, peace, but at what cost? Look what we’ve done to humanity. We make it easier and easier to live. Every job has an auto-generated procedure. All the human has to do is push a button. Our machines are better than us.’ Shen put down his watering can and looked over at Geof. ‘Cracking biological machines released a torrent of developments, leading to symbiots, weavers like yourself and independent mechalogical inventions. But the barriers between man and machine are still there — if the interface differences can be reduced close to the null point, then the difference will be irrelevant.’