34
In another era of her life, Nkiruka would have taken great pleasure loitering in a public park at midday. Even now her deepest desire was simply to kick off her shoes with Jess and bury her toes in the grass. An obvious leisure, something her older, more pragmatic, evolved self just would not allow. Times change, even if people don’t.
Probably twenty years ago, just before the onset of two decades of family strife, she had visited this place. The park appear much the same now, still wide and hilly, with some very shallow canals. Several dense copses of trees occupied its center, their bases home to a few forlorn species of bush and brambles. It looked like a long time since it had been landscaped, another of the many things to be left aside with changing priorities. Even the outside areas were populated with tall shrubbery that obscured most of the few visitors from each other.
Surreal. The largest copse to the East, just under the rising sun, blinked in ultra green. That must be the place. She walked toward it.
The days since leaving the complex had been ones of stress and rest in tandem. She’d spent most of her time in London’s many parks, or walking from one to another after tiring of the one before. It was in this way that she tried to escape into her past, into a more natural and secure sense of living. And yet, Jess needed food and comfort. Two things difficult to provide to a child so young, with no home. During the first two nights Jess had shivered so badly in her arms that the next morning Nkiruka had stolen two jackets from a couple sleeping in the grass. Food was even more difficult to find for the first two days and though she had tried to steal something for them to eat, she was a rubbish thief, nearly getting caught every time. Then, on the third day, the contacts had pulsated and given her terse directions to a trash can and a brown paper bag stuffed with twenty pound notes. From then on, their stomachs were always full, and they had stayed out of sight as much as possible.
She wondered what she looked like to the generic, clean and orderly urbanite. Her hair was wildly unkept, unwashed, and she wore dirty and mismatched clothes and ragged trainers. Walking with Jess, she imagined she looked like a mad woman who had stolen a child. Every day she considered going to a store to buy new more normal clothing, but she just couldn’t bring herself to enter that other world, the world of consumption. It frightened her too much.
Keeping out of sight was easy enough in the parks and afforded her some time to think. Where were they now? Where was she? More importantly, where was her son? A chick flown the coop without full feathers. She tried to worry, tried desperately, and found it strangely difficult. She stepped and felt the heavy procession marching behind her in beating lockstep. All of the people she’d once known had left her, her friends, her family—dead or gone. She loved her husband so, and he was dead. Now Gus, her last friend, was dead too. Perhaps, she would die soon, too. Perhaps Faraji had been right to leave her, but had she been right to let him?
She was not without a charge, of course. She and Jess were strolling through the park now. The little girl, it seemed to her, did not yet understand that her father would not be coming back. Nkiruka hadn’t the heart to tell the young girl what Odin had shown her. They had cried together after it happened, there, still in the underground in who knows where, until she’d mustered the strength to carry on in spite of everything. She doubted Jess really knew her father had died. But the perceptiveness of children is often hard to judge.
The copse of trees was closer now. Was the Old Man already waiting for her? They paced forward another minute, then a small black shape dropped from a high up branch and quickly disappeared out of sight into the thicket of green needles.
As she reached the edge and stepped into the shade with Jess, the blinking green of her contacts disappeared. All the many shades of the bright day replaced it.
Nkiruka felt Jess squeeze her hand tightly.
We’re going in a minute, dear. Someone wants to talk with us.”
The little girl nodded trustingly and did not look afraid. Nkiruka hoped for a fleeting moment that her own apathy for this troubled world hadn’t infected Jess. She wanted to tell her that things might be different for someone so young and innocent, that the world might accept her into its fold with the same ferocity that it had rejected Nkiruka. She wanted to tell the little girl of all the injustice she need avoid, but said nothing, laughing at the idea’s asinine optimism—as if explaining all the world’s unexpected dangers could prevent them for this child. She shook her head, trying to focus her thoughts, and led Jess into the center of the trees. A lovely feeling, nature surrounding you.
Suddenly she could see a vague green silhouette in front of them. It shone through the trees like a ghost, dancing eerily toward them. It was undoubtably the Old Man, she could tell, even before Odin came into view; it stooped while walking, its left leg moved brittlely and buckled like dead wood. Its wide brim hat was tipped down. The silhouette even captured the disobedience of his few long hairs, which floated up and crashed down with each step. Finally, Odin sidestepped behind a large tree and was in sight. He looked different, not exactly older than the last time she’d seen him, but definitely more harrowed. He stopped with a thump and nodded his head to her in taciturn greeting.
Odin: You’ve covered ground well, better that I estimated.
Nkiruka: Hiding is not a skill I can forget. Well, sorcerer, why are we here? Have you returned to take something else from me? Have you come for another of my children? Are you also interested in my adopted children? Or have you come to answer my questions? I don’t think so.
Odin: We are here because soon I will be caught. I see no way around this eventuality, only that I must prepare for it.
Nkiruka: Is my son safe? Where is he?
Odin: Safe for now. He is still in Villa 4, with the two boys. He is learning very quickly, but too slowly to solve our problems.
Nkiruka: Don’t speak to me in paradoxes!
Odin: What you need to understand is this. Once I am gone—or at least defunct—none of you will have my protection. If you try to run, you will be caught. Few women or men can avoid the grid, and no one can avoid that man. He is too powerful.
Nkiruka: Then what? You die. Then we die. Why now? What is preventing you from stopping him now? You did it once before, didn’t you?
Odin: A great many things are different. My very nature is no longer a secret to him.
Nkiruka: Your very nature?
At this the Old Man demonstrated to her just what he meant. He held up his right hand for her to see, only about two feet from her now. It was bony, or it seemed bony, and wrinkled. The skin on his hand and fingers seemed loose, like an ill-fitting glove or bark deteriorating from a tree. Around them the light was dark, but his hand still appeared pale, almost luminescent—she had never notice it before. The Old Man kept his right arm extended with his hand in the air, and with his left hand began to peel down the skin on his right index finger. It came down easily, easier than peeling a banana, and revealed an amalgam of circuitous hardware and dense mechanical parts underneath. Odin continued until his whole hand was uncovered. Nkiruka looked closer, the material at the ends of his fingers and the center of his palm was black, almost charred as if some invisible fire had begun to consume him.
Odin: So you see now. I am quickly burning out, ceasing to be, losing power.
Nkiruka: Who made you? Can’t they repair you?
Odin: I am programed never to answer that question, never to know, only to recognize. In any case, to strive for life as a machine is futile. There is only function, and my function is set. I shall help you before I am done.
In perfect synchronicity with their conversation, the artificial raven flew down to perch on a low branch next to them.
Odin: This is Muninn, my remote memory. It will go with you where you go after our conversation. Remember, it will cease to function the same way after the moment of my destruction. From that point on it will function in stand-alone mode. You will be its master, and it will follow simple commands. “Give” is the most important. Saying that will eject Muninn’s hard drive, on which I have chronicled much of your story. Do this if you think it will be of use to you.
Nkiruka: And what might I do with that? Who could I trust with such a thing?
Odin’s eyes dulled momentarily, then returned to their normal cold luminosity. His face remained demure, expressionless as ever. But he spoke quickly. There was a clear need for haste.
Odin: I have miscalculated. It seems the Net is closing around us faster than I thought. You must leave, right now. Run, take the girl, don’t let him see you. Follow the bird until you’re safely away. Then, it will follow you. Go. Run that way.
He gestured with his unsheathed right hand behind him, toward the way he had come. Nkiruka did as she was told. She wanted answers, but she wanted freedom more. And for some reason, she trusted this thing; machine or not, he had saved them in the past. Human or not, he had demonstrated goodness and mercy before, if never emotion. She picked up Jess, who’d been standing dutifully the entire time at her side, and, whispering for the little girl to be as quiet as possible, snaked her way through the trees and toward the park exit.
Faraji caught sight of his mother rushing away with Jess in her arms. He sunk to his knees, there in the dining room. Not for the first time this week he prayed they would not become the next causalities of the inexplicable hunt, but this time his worry caught him in a very real and visceral embrace. There they were and then there they weren’t. Disappeared behind the trees. Who’s eyes were they seeing through? Who was it that had been marked for death this time?
With his left eye he noticed Jay had risen from his seat and gone to his bedroom. His face was ghostly pale.
Then on his right, a hand. Withered and dying hand. It must be Odin’s. What is he? There. Again. Another hand. Peeled, exposing miles of coiling circuits from underneath the skin. Then the green text began:
>>>As you can see I am simply a machine. One whose life expectancy has passed. Soon they will be here and I will die, as much as I can.
A slight pause followed this first proclamation. Faraji could almost hear the leaves rustling around the Old Man. Then again:
>>>When this happens, you all will cease to be protected. The signals on your contacts will be tracked back to you and, they will catch you—if you do not destroy them. If you do: the security grid will catch you.
>>>I dare not sync what I know of each of you. So, as of now you are all alone.
Come on. We’re leaving.” A voice, Jay’s voice, pulled Faraji back into his own body.
Where . . . where to?” Faraji asked hopelessly.
We’re going to do what we planned to do.”
But now, they’ll catch us for sure. He’s gone now.” Faraji’s voice broke.
It. It is going to be gone. This doesn’t change anything except how much time we have. You ready to go?”
With his vision split, Faraji felt like his mind had also diverged onto two opposing paths. One side, full of green and leafy movement, his mother and Jess, restless hunters prowling through the forest—on the run. Suddenly Jay returned from the door to where Faraji was still kneeling. The older boy wound his arm and knocked Faraji onto the floor. Faraji fell toward the onto the cold floor. Back to Oz, and into the fray. He got up. His cheek smarted.
Jay and he were out the door in one eye, just as darkly clad masked men drifted through the green and into sight. They were circling like wolves.
He clung to her now, like the babe she had once been in his arms. Both Blake’s eyes were closed as he watched the shapes draw nearer to the Old Man. He walked as best he could using Rosie as his guide. Closer and closer they came, gone behind trees and there again, unsustained notes in a symphony of horror. There must be at least twelve of them, always circling, never in focus.
One figure wasn’t dancing. He walked toward Odin slowly, meaningfully, and unmasked for them all to see. The dark metal slivers on his head glinted wickedly in the morning sun. The angles of the Old Man’s gaze never wavered, a camera’s unblinking stare. When the other man reached about two meters distance he stopped where he was and spoke.
>>> A strange fate for a such a machine. Dismantled in a city park.
Odin must be transcribing them, he thought; the words appeared almost fast enough for him to read them on the man’s lips.
>>> Indeed.
>>> Who made you? His name could save lives.
>>> Regrettably I am unable to answer that question.
The look on the dark figures face was a cool veneer of expectation.
>>> I thought as much. At least this proves human and machine will always triumph over machine.
>>> An interesting idea.
The Colonel seemed to have had enough of the other’s fruitless answers. He raised his arm swiftly and let fly with something that Blake could barely make out—it looked very much like a circle of lightning that emanated from the man’s palm. It landed with a scream and a thud, shaking everyone’s point of view momentarily. Then everything went black.
They were on their own.
Colonel Hurn kept his eye on the wreckage of the machine while the au natural members of the team began to disassemble it. After a complete disassembly they would find and extract the core processors, memory drives and any other hardware they could recognize as well as any cached history still remaining on the system. He hoped it might even be possible to glimpse some of the software used to create this thing’s personality, which might even give them clues as to who made it, though he doubted such a person or organization could be caught.
Men picked through the smoking remains carefully, wary of making any technical mistakes. Truly a masterpiece of engineering, he thought, sophisticated as anything ever made, a sculpture with a ghost.
An interesting idea, it had said.
Now it was time to hunt the others. Even without Bellick’s motivations and his own personal vendetta, the group knew far too much about them to escape to tell their story.
Book III
The city does not know that its only moments of generous abandon are when it detaches from itself, when it let’s go, expands.
Italo Calvino