Yuri began shoving the children, throwing his hat away to scare them; and seeing his forehead, they screamed and scattered. But Hound grabbed the hat and pulled it hard over Yuri’s head. “Don’t show yourself up!” he yelled. “Zeug’s safe, man.”
“Get these brats away from him!” Yuri yelled.
Leonora chivvied the remaining children away, shouting at Dirk to give them the last of the coins. The kids ran behind the camels, then disappeared into sandy hillocks. The camels groaned. The wind whistled and the sand hissed.
Zeug began waving his hands again. “Camels I like. Camels I like. They are twenty five metres distant. No! The nearest, twenty four sixty two. The furthest… twenty seven eighteen. Dirk Ngma, thirty metres twenty five.” He turned to face Hound, then yelled, “Mr Hound, I am watching you!”
Zeug’s voice was so loud Leonora winced. Hound ran off. Yuri froze. Then Leonora walked up to Zeug and tried to put her hand on his shoulder, but he yelped and walked off.
“Twenty two sixteen. Fix. Spin! Load. Fire. Speck. Brush. In! By! To! Nineteen oh five.”
“He’s having some sort of fit,” Hound said. “Do something, Yuri.”
For once, Yuri’s emotions came to the surface. “What like? Stuff some of your Negro common sense into him? Fuck you! I do not know what is wrong, except that those vile brats upset him. Now get some common sense!”
Leonora shook her head at Hound, but she knew from the expression on his face that he would not respond. Yuri never spoke like this. The incident could be dealt with as a one-off. Hound walked away, high-fiving Dirk, who approached.
At least Zeug was calming.
They clustered around him. Leonora glanced back to see Hound drinking bottled water next to one of the camels.
She looked at Zeug. “Did you panic?” she asked.
Zeug did not reply.
“Da action of dem children caused da incident,” Dirk said.
Yuri nodded. “The brats spooked him, as you Westerners would say, causing him to panic, or so I believe Mr Ngma.”
Dirk nodded. “Autistic.”
Leonora stared. “What?” Now she felt her anger rising. “What did you say?”
“It just a guess. Autistic mind. He focussing on distances, which I think he measure. With his senses. He not able to cope with kid who look like him. And like us. He like camel. Simple, stolid, boring camel. Predictable.” Dirk nodded, looking at her. “Kids never predictable. Zeug sense dat. I not like dis situation at all.”
“What d’you mean, autistic?”
“Mr Ngma,” Yuri said, “you are skating on very thin ice.”
Dirk shrugged, patting his pockets, but finding nothing to smoke. “Dere no ice in da desert, so I not care. It only a guess, lighten up! You know autistic savant?” He waited for a response, taking a stick of chewing gum and popping it into his mouth. “Yeah, da autistic savant, his mind is concrete. No generalisation. Little or no social skill. Safety in da lack – in, what you say… in exactitude. Exact is safe.”
“You are saying Zeug is autistic?”
“I guess he growing autistic. I use dis as analogy. Or I could be right. We wait and see.”
Leonora took Yuri by the arm and pulled him back to the camels. The heat of her own anger surprised her. “What is that man going on about?”
Yuri’s face was flushed, his brow furrowed. “I do not know Ms Klee, but I must confess to concern over–”
“Yes, me too, Dirk–”
“Concern over Zeug! Never mind Mr Ngma, he is just a man, a single man with his own quite interesting opinion. But Zeug is definitely changing, and there I do agree with Mr Ngma.”
“Zeug is not autistic.”
Yuri glanced over his shoulder. Zeug was running to catch up with them. Yuri said, “I agree with you that it cannot be true. Zeug is too noble. But we must take from Mr Ngma what we must, for he has been correct before.”
“I won’t!” Leonora said, gripping Yuri’s wrist.
“You are hurting me.”
She let go. Words failed her. She turned and ran back to the camels.
Hound raised his hands palms up as she approached. “I ain’t saying a thing,” he said.
She walked around the nearest camel, slumping on the sand out of view of them all. Why did she have the sensation of losing control? Was the genie out of the bottle? If so she had to put it back, but she did not know how; and she was just one woman. She did know however that she did not want anybody to help her. The AIteam was her vision. And Zeug was hers.
~
Hound gazed up into black midnight heavens. Minuscule words danced around the constellations as the nexus told him which stars lay where. A satellite, invisible to him this late at night, passed overhead, its path tracked and visible like a string of neon in his spex.
With a flick of a tab on a wristband he reduced the info to a minimum (it was impossible to reduce it to zero short of removing spex). He gazed west. Nothing. East, also nothing. To the north lay the hallucinatory oasis, around which the mist-wreathed image of himself walked.
South…
He leaped to his feet. Southwards he saw a new figure.
An old man, small, pale, white haired. Without thought Hound reached out through the nexus, thumbing full throttle with his wristband, but the incarnation dissolved into a cloud of numbers. He stopped. This was something different. He initiated a full analysis of the nexus corresponding to the region he stood in. Seconds passed. Then a lead. He moved forward, following the man’s trail, but it was so well camouflaged he almost lost it. An expert, then. But who?
Then, for a millisecond, Hound saw a route into the old man’s machines. He risked it. He went in. The images in his spex became a jumble of land, air, sky and space as the old man’s smoke and mirrors tried to baffle him. But Hound was made of tough e-stuff. He took the beating.
Then he saw cities whirling by. Then Tunis. Tunis again, shimmering in midday sun! The old man’s computers were reacting to his presence, unable to shake him off but unwilling to give him free data, as Hound found himself following a trail through the nexus in ultrafast motion, heading west across North Africa at a thousand virtual kilometres per second. Following the route of the AIteam… then, with a heart-stopping instantaneous halt, he faced himself. And the nexus illusion shattered as the old man’s computers hustled him off their territory.
He lay on the sand, gazing up into black midnight heavens, minuscule words dancing around the constellations as the nexus told him which stars lay where…
His spex rebooted. Duration total: 8.472 sec. The whole episode had lasted less than a dozen heartbeats.
He dumped the trail file into a wristband then deleted the nexus signposts so the analysis could not be retrieved, or at least could only be retrieved by people who knew what to look for; witch doctors and the like. Nothing in the nexus could be deleted.
The trail was unambiguous. He was being watched, and that act of surveillance had created a trail in the nexus, so faint it was almost nonexistent. But he knew at once who had done this, for it was not the deed of a human.
So… Zeug was watching him.
Hound stood up and sauntered over to the sleeping group. Zeug, as ever, sat in opened-eyed trance. Hound bunched his right hand into a fist, drew back his arm and lashed out. Zeug’s left hand moved as if teleported from one position to the next: without apparent motion. Hound’s fist struck that hand. Then Zeug turned his head to stare into his eyes.
“You’re watching me,” Hound said, pulling his fist back.
“I don’t like you,” Zeug replied.
“Why are you watching me?”
“My master told me to.”
Hound stepped back, appalled. It only took him a second to decide who master referred to.
~
Hound strode past the souk’s ceramics and jewellery salesmen, then paused. The main souk of Annaba spread like a dazzling, multicoloured labyrinth through the remains of its old sector (bombed in 2033
by the European Community, then rebuilt by the European Community, so that it became the first augmented city in Africa). Like chandelier-reflected rainbows its myriad signs and advertisements struck his eye with an intensity almost physical – and this without spex. With spex, the intensity of the info would be breathtaking.
He took Leonora’s hand in his to guide her away from the hawkers. “You can see why epileptics are banned,” he said. He shrugged. “Warned, anyway…”
He was half surprised when she squeezed his hand back. “Where are we heading, Hound?”
“We need food. Calorific supplies, for energy. And water. Good water.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see Dirk trailing, a mini-bong in one hand, smoke wafting from his nostrils. He glanced at Leonora. She was looking at him.
“You alright?” he asked.
She nodded. “Just glad that we have got you.”
“Er… yeah.” He extracted his hand from her grasp, disconcerted. Leonora was not one for sentimentality. At least, that’s what he’d thought. He’d only known her a short while and savvied almost nothing of her time with Manfred.
At a Francophile mini-mart called Antoine’s Plaice he bought dried meat, Brie, nuts, packs of K-water. The water was not cheap.
“Imported from Kenya and sold to us at great profit,” he muttered.
The Berber manager grinned. “Massive fix!” he said. “Afrique getting its own back! ’Bout time too.” Then he gave Hound the finger.
Hound scowled, having assumed nobody here spoke English. “Let’s get back to whitey and three-eyes,” he said. “Man, they’d better be where I left ’em.”
He didn’t trust Zeug now. But nor did he trust himself to tell Leonora about his suspicions, in case she freaked. It was a quandary he didn’t know how to solve. His relationship with her was becoming complex now that she’d banned him from speculating.
He tried to smile. “C’mon. The worst is over. I can see you’re hating this.”
“I’m not used to it,” she replied in a small voice.
He took her hand again and led her through back alleys to the spice degrader where they’d left Yuri and Zeug. The machine, a colossal three-storey steel box, smelt of cinnamon and coke. The pair stood close to one another, with Zeug wearing shades so that his vision was restricted; earplugs in his ears. They didn’t want another freakout caused by people proximity.
“You two okay?” he grunted.
Yuri frowned, drew breath to reply, then looked away and said nothing, as if to imply his contempt. Hound shrugged. He’d had worse in his time.
When Dirk caught up he handed out their supplies, then said, “We need to move on. We’ve got a country to cross before we get to Morocco. Reckon we’ll be safe there. Maybe I can build us a new hide.”
“You had better,” Yuri remarked.
Hound tried to stop the dart of anger rising inside him, but it just popped out. “Why don’t you shut it?” he said. “Disappointed with my leadership? Fuck off then. See if I care, man.”
Zeug took a step forward and said, “Leave him alone. I don’t like you.”
“Yep, surely. We know what you think-“
Zeug struck without warning, with the speed of a cobra. Hound lay on the ground, winded but nothing worse. Yuri pulled Zeug back, a look of surprise – almost of horror – on his face, while Leonora uttered a scream and raised her hands to her mouth.
Hound leaped to his feet. For some reason the gesture infuriated Zeug, and with a shrug he was free of Yuri’s grip. “I don’t like you,” he repeated.
The street was empty. Hound pulled out his snub-nose. “I’ll kill you if you touch me again.”
“You will not dare use that on me,” Zeug said. “I am far too valuable.”
Hound gasped at the audacity. This was a different Zeug; almost sophisticated, albeit still unstable. Could Yuri be tweaking him to wrest control of the AIteam? He realised it wasn’t just him who could be in danger: Leonora too maybe.
He decided to take a risk. He aimed the snub-nose to the ground and fired. The ricochets echoed around them so loud everybody except Hound and Zeug ducked.
“I’ll do it if I need to,” he said.
“Hound,” Leonora breathed, staring wide-eyed at him and shaking her head.
He took a step back. Had he done enough?
Zeug leaped at him. Hound raised the snub-nose and aimed it at Zeug, but Zeug dived to one side, then stood still. Hound followed him in the sights, aimed to miss and fired again.
Zeug shrank back. Hound saw a micro-ladder on the side of the spice degrader. He ran, leaping up the ladder until he reached the platform three metres up: safe. Zeug stood at the bottom, his arms windmilling around the lowest step as if unable to decide whether or not to follow.
Yuri ran over and pulled Zeug away. Hound heard people shouting at the end of the street.
Then Zeug turned on Yuri, grabbed his head and in a single motion twisted it off.
Blood fountained. Leonora screamed. Zeug dropped the head and ran down the street.
Hound saw white-cloaked market traders approaching.
“Run!” he cried, leaping down to the street, rolling to take the impact, then jumping to his feet. “Dirk, run!” He grabbed Leonora’s hand and pulled. Ran in the opposite direction to the traders, following Zeug; but Zeug had already vanished.
He saw a stack of rotting cardboard boxes. Desperate, he pushed Leonora under them, then Dirk, glanced over his shoulder, saw a flash of white, then crouched down and pulled the largest box over his body.
Waited… heard voices, the sound of feet clattering up, then cries as they discovered the body. Some voices faded, others stayed around, talking, wailing, then fading. Silence… just distant street hubbub now. Nobody near, or so he hoped as he raised the box a centimetre and peered out.
Nobody.
“Man, we got lucky,” he said. “Never try the cardboard box trick, never, you hear me? Okay, out now while the coast’s clear.”
Leonora and Dirk pulled themselves out of the reeking mass of cardboard, vegetable gunk covering their clothes. Hound brushed them both down then looked up and down the street. He saw kids in the distance, an old man walking away, a couple approaching. Possible danger.
“Walk on like nothing happened,” he said. “Ain’t no street cams I can see. Next alley, we dive in. Gotta get away. Hopefully no satellite’s pinged us. My spex’ll guide us.”
“But where’s Zeug?” Leonora whispered.
“Zeug’s gone.”
“But Yuri…”
“He’s gone too! Leonora, move.”
He led them away, taking her hand and his, not looking back once, until a narrow alley appeared and they were able to slip into it.
Hound’s spex led them to safety. With red blips flashing north and east – police on their way – he wiggled along passages, over a roof, down a tunnel, then out through a storm drain onto a monorail track.
“There’ll be cams here,” he said. “To deter metal thieves. We’ll dodge back and head down to the freeway. Then spend the night with the bums. Ready?”
~
Leonora wept.
Dirk did not weep, but tears trickled down his face. Hound said nothing, gave nothing away, looking to either end of the bridge beneath which they skulked – mounds of boxes, metal junk, algae-sheened puddles… He said he was looking through his spex for police, for local crims. His mouth was a thin line; teeth compressed, jaw tight. Those terrible moments had shaken them all.
The AIteam was shattered. All that work…
She felt as desolate now as she had when she realised Manfred had left her in Damascus. As she wept, memories flashed before her mind’s eye, like journo photos: that Damascus bazaar; Manfred’s white face; seeing Hound for the first time. The sense of abandonment, of shock. Then anger when the shock departed, anger that she could not express.
They called her stuck-up when she was at school because she was shy, brainy, seemingly aloof, unem
otional. Well, that had changed. Now, she didn’t care – she didn’t care who saw her upset. What mattered was that she was upset. Something had to come out.
Eventually, she slept, chilled, uncomfortable. Dirk muttered in his sleep. Hound sat alert every time she woke and opened her eyes, on guard like a bird of prey, peering this way and that.
They ate bread and cheese next morning, and drank water. Hound said, “We need new clothes. There’s nothing on my radar, but Yuri’s body ain’t gonna go away. Police’ll be tracking. Street cams might pick us up shopping in the souk. We need new clothes, then get away, and fast.”
“Clothes?” she said.
“Dat not easy when you on da run,” Dirk added.
Hound stood up, took off his trousers and jacket, reversed them, then put them back on. “It’s just you two,” he said, stroking his chin. He took out a beanie, put it on, then said, “Stay here. I’m more worried about satellite goons than anything. The police’ll have the area watched, keyed to our appearances – if they’ve seen us.” He grimaced. “Keyed nexus style. Ha! And the Japs said the nexus’d make everything so easy…”
He ran off, leaving Leonora looking at Dirk, half reassured, half scared.
“What you thinking?” he asked her.
“You?”
“I ask you first.”
She did not like his tone, so she shrugged and said, “It’s over, Dirk. The end of the AIteam.”
“And Zeug loose.” Dirk sniggered. “But he won’t last long. He’ll be caught. It’ll be on da news. Dey won’t do him for murder though ’cos dey won’t know what he is.”
“Thanks for that,” she murmured.
Dirk nodded. “Dere’ll be blood on him–”
“Enough!”
Dirk took a metal case from his pocket, pulled out a cheroot and lit it. “You ever thought Leonora,” he said, “dat anything might go wrong?”
His voice was mellow, conciliatory. She replied, “Not until the copters came in Malta.” Tears began trickling down her face. “There’s an old saying… a can of worms?”
“I know it.”
She nodded. “I understand now. We could not control him. You are right, I suppose. They’ll capture him before the day is out, then they will cut him open and analyse him.”
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