Synaptic Manhunt (30 page)

The six came cautiously through the mist with swords and pistols in their hands. Five went straight past him, some distance to his right, and were swallowed up by the mist. The sixth was moving in a direction that would bring him right by the rocks where Jeb Stuart Ho lay. He silently drew his sword, and pressed himself flat on the ground. The man was just on the other side of the rocks. Jeb Stuart Ho waited for the right moment. His adversary came round the rocks. Jeb Stuart Ho struck. The sword went up through the man’s stomach and into his lung. He died without a sound.

The body had fallen face down. Jeb Stuart Ho bent over it to remove the porta-pac and the gun. He rolled it over. Even in the darkness there could be no mistake. He found himself looking at his own face. The shock was immense. For a moment his mind was jolted off balance. Then he got a grip on himself. Somehow, A.A. Catto had managed to duplicate him. He knew it was possible, but he didn’t know how it had been accomplished. He examined the corpse’s arm. There was even a wound exactly like the one he’d received in the Leader Hotel. He realized that he was fighting six identical versions of himself.

An idea struck him. The very fact that he and his hunters were identical gave him a chance to outwit them, and complete his mission. He quickly stripped the body of its gun, its porta-pac and its nanchuk. He replaced the throwing knives that he had lost. When he had a full complement of equipment, he stood up. It would now be impossible for anyone to tell whether he was the real Jeb Stuart Ho that was being hunted, or one of the Ho replicas who were doing the hunting. He walked swiftly into the mist, looking for the other duplicates.

He didn’t have to search for long. He’d only been walking for a short while when he heard voices. He moved towards them. Three of the Ho replicas had gathered together and were debating their next move like novices on a training exercise. As Jeb Stuart Ho walked out of the mist, they swung round and trained their guns on him. Then they saw his own gun and porta-pac, and they relaxed. Jeb Stuart Ho looked from one to the other.

‘You have failed to find him?’

He had to fight to control his voice. Being face to face with three of himself was still a powerful shock. The replicas shook their heads.

‘He has obviously gone to ground in the mist.’

‘It is the logical answer.’

‘Should we spread our search?’

Jeb Stuart Ho took a chance.

‘We could return to the ziggurat, and resume our search at daybreak. Our task would be made easy if we had horsemen to act as beaters.’

None of the three seemed to find anything wrong with his suggestion. Jeb Stuart Ho knew it was sound. He also knew that the replicas’ thought patterns were exactly like his. If they went back to the ziggurat they would almost certainly report to A.A. Catto. That would give him the chance to kill her. He looked around for comment on his suggestion.

‘We should wait for the other two to find us. Then we can decide.’

‘One of them may already have completed the task.’

Ho nodded.

‘That is possible.’

Another replica appeared out of the mist.

‘Have you found Ho?’

The replica shook his head.

‘He must have moved further up the mountain.’

‘We were debating whether to return to the ziggurat or spread the search.’

‘We decided to wait until we were all assembled.’

The newcomer nodded.

‘There is only one of us to come.’

They stood in silence. The wait, however, wasn’t all that long. After only a few minutes, the sixth Ho replica appeared out of the mist. He was dragging a black-clad body behind him. Jeb Stuart Ho’s stomach turned over. He had been counting on the Ho replicas not finding the body. From now on, he would have to improvise. He quickly made the first move.

‘You’ve killed him.’

The replica shook his head.

‘I didn’t kill him. I just found the body.’

‘Then who did kill him?’

The replicas all looked at each other. Jeb Stuart Ho knew that they were all thinking in the same way, and that they’d quickly come to the same conclusion.

‘Nobody here admits to killing him?’

‘How did he die?’

‘He was killed by a single sword thrust.’

‘If none of us claims to have killed him, perhaps he committed suicide.’

‘That seems unlikely.’

‘We must assume that he is one of us, and not the subject. He must have been killed by Ho.’

‘Then one of the six of us is Ho.’

The six men looked carefully at each other. Jeb Stuart Ho voiced what they were all thinking.

‘We have no way of telling which of us is the subject.’

‘We cannot now return to the ziggurat under any circumstances. If we did that, it would give the one which is Ho the ideal opportunity to complete his own task and kill A.A. Catto. We cannot take that risk.’

‘So what is the answer to our problem?’

The answer came to Jeb Stuart Ho in an ugly flash. The six men were standing in a rough circle. The man standing opposite Ho put it into words.

‘The only effective way in which we can be certain to discharge our task is to …’

He hesitated. The others joined in with his final words.

‘… destroy each other.’

As the words were spoken there was a flurry of movement. Jeb Stuart Ho made his last possible move. He threw himself flat on the ground. Simultaneously there was a crash of gunfire. He looked up, surprised to be still alive. Four of the replicas lay dead. The man standing opposite him, however, was slowly getting to his feet. Jeb Stuart Ho sprang up, ‘We have both survived.’

‘We both decided to duck instead of fire.’

The two men faced each other. Their hands hovered over their holstered guns.

‘Why is it we didn’t think like the others?’

‘There is bound to be some variation in our thinking.’

‘That’s true.’

The replica looked hard at Ho.

‘The probability is that one of us is the subject. One of us is Ho.’

Ho watched the replica’s gun hand carefully. It was uncanny, facing and trying to outwit himself. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible.

‘It could be that neither of us is Ho.’

‘Less probable, though.’

‘Is it?’

The replica nodded.

‘The majority would wipe each other out, as we have seen. The subject would seek to preserve himself, if at all possible, in order to complete his task.’

Ho anticipated the next proposition.

‘One of the six might realize this and also attempt to preserve himself to prevent the subject escaping in this way.’

Ho smiled grimly.

‘Then you are the subject.’

‘I know I am not the subject.’

Their hands moved to their guns almost as one. The two .90 magnums exploded together. Jeb Stuart Ho felt the big bullet rip into him. The replica spun round and fell face downwards. Ho tottered backwards, swayed for a few moments, and crumpled to the ground.

A.A. Catto was celebrating. There had been an unbearable tension after gunfire had been heard at the ziggurat. A party of horsemen had been sent out to investigate. To Billy and the others, waiting for the horsemen to return was like being on the rack. Before the gunfire had been reported things had been difficult, but A.A. Catto had been preoccupied with ordering up dozens more Ho replicas and watching them troop out of the receiver.

Once the horsemen had been dispatched, she had returned to the throne, and sat drumming her nails on one of the arms. Billy knew that if they’d returned with an adverse report, A.A. Catto would undoubtedly have him, Reave and the Minstrel Boy killed. The Wanderer had wisely vanished.

The news had been good, however. The horsemen had found seven black-clad bodies on the hillside. Jeb Stuart Ho was dead. A.A. Catto was off the hook. She hugged Nancy, and the party began.

It was the strangest celebration Billy had ever seen. A.A. Catto went mad on the stuff receiver. A vast range of drinks, drugs, delicacies and entertainment poured from the receiver room. She ordered dancers, jugglers, dwarfs, plus the full range of exotic sexual types that could be found in the catalogue. She had also ordered a hundred or more extra Ho replicas. She seemed to be busily building herself an army. Once things had been arranged the way she wanted, A.A. Catto withdrew to her throne, from where she could survey the strange mixture of wild horsemen, black-clad assassins and spangled freaks.

A.A. Catto had, somewhere along the line, divested herself of her clothes. She sprawled naked across the cushions of the throne. Nancy sat at her feet, leaning against one of A.A. Catto’s legs, absently caressing the inside of her knee. Nancy was totally out on duramene. A tiny tattooed hermaphrodite perched on one of the arms of the throne, massaging A.A. Catto’s body. A pink chubby little boy in a toga and gold laurel wreath stood on the other side of the throne with a fistful of pressure injectors clutched in his fat hand. He’d bang a dose into her outstretched arm every time she snapped her fingers.

The effect of the sudden intake of stimulants and depressives on the horsemen and Ho replicas was the most startling feature of the whole event. Most were in a state of physical shock. Their systems were totally unused to such massive abuse, but A.A. Catto insisted that they all did what she did.

It affected them in a lot of different ways, as the drugs fought with their programming. A lot of the Ho substitutes who’d been filled with duramene and other uppers, simply became rigid and stood at muscle-cracking attention, like statues scattered round the room. Others, who had had a preponderance of downers, were slumped on the floor unconscious. Some had gone into comas and a few sat crosslegged and recited incomprehensible mathematic progressions.

The horsemen were more of a problem. For some reason, they seemed to have particularly homed in on the booze and downers. Many had collapsed, but the remainder blundered about shaking their heads. Now and then one of them would chop down one of the glittering pleasure mutants with an off-hand knife blow. Now and then, one of them would stumble into a Ho replica and try to start a fight. The Ho replica invariably cut down the horseman with an air of precise fastidiousness.

The various freaks, although programmed to participate in some bizarre entertainments, were unable to handle the situation. They were confused and terrified. A few cracked. A dwarf rushed at the legs of a bunch of horsemen and started beating at them with his tiny fists. He was rapidly kicked to death for his impudence. The majority, however, simply clustered together in groups, moving round the throne room like panicky sheep, trying to avoid the violence. The floor was rapidly becoming littered with bodies, and slippery with blood.

Billy, Reave and the Minstrel Boy stayed firmly in a quiet corner between the throne and the receiver room. They were out of danger, for the moment, as far as A. A, Catto was concerned. They still had the problem of avoiding mutilation at the hands of her out-of-control warriors. This required so much concentration that even the Minstrel Boy left the vast selection of stimulants, for the most part, alone.

Somewhere in A.A. Catto’s whirling brain an idea hatched. She sat up, pushed the hermaphrodite out of the way and shook Nancy by the shoulder.

‘Nancy!’

Nancy opened one eye.

‘Huh?’

‘Nancy, it’s come to me.’

Nancy blinked.

‘What?’

‘It’s come to me, the whole purpose of my life,’

‘No shit?’

A.A. Catto pouted.

‘Don’t talk to me like that. It’s unkind.’

Nancy sat up quickly.

‘I’m sorry, what’s this that’s come to you?’

A look of bliss came over A.A. Catto’s face.

‘I’m going to rule everything. It’s my destiny.’

Nancy shook her head to clear it.

‘Huh?’

A.A. Catto wasn’t pleased that Nancy didn’t immediately join in her enthusiasm.

‘I’m going to rule everything.’

‘You’re going to rule everything?’

‘Quahal is only a start. I am destined for much greater glory.’

Nancy nodded.

‘Yeah, glory.’

‘I have new men that I invented.’

Nancy glanced up at her in surprise.

‘I was under the impression that the Wanderer, if anybody, invented them.’

A.A. Catto swayed a little as she waved away the suggestion.

‘That’s beside the point. They’re mine, and with them I can conquer everything.’

She started to wax eloquent. Her voice rose a little and her eyes turned upwards.

‘Imagine, just imagine. My warriors suddenly pouring out of the nothings. Swooping down on defenceless towns and cities. Overrunning them and enslaving the population. Can you picture it, Nancy, the power and grandeur of it, our choice of everything we wanted? We could have anything. That’s why they wanted to kill me. They were afraid. They suspected what I was going to do before I even knew it myself. They didn’t manage it, though. They failed. They can’t destroy me. I’m destined to succeed. It’ll be a jihad, a crusade, a holy war to the greater glory of me!’

At the end of the speech A.A. Catto’s voice had risen to something near a shriek. Nancy looked at her in wonder and awe.

‘I’ll say one thing for you. You don’t fuck around.’

Billy, who had caught part of the outburst, slid up close to the Minstrel Boy and nudged him.

‘We got to get the hell out of here.’

‘Don’t I know it.’

‘I mean now.’

‘How?’

Billy looked around.

‘We could nick a couple of porta-pacs from unconscious Ho replicas, and just walk away.’

‘Walk through the nothings?’

‘I’ve done it before.’

The Minstrel Boy shook his head.

‘Not here, you haven’t.’

‘It’s not possible?’

‘This isn’t the inner ring. You can trot off into the nothings there and be sure of landing somewhere while you’re still sane. Out here you can’t. If we tried walking from Quahal, I’d go mad even if you wouldn’t.’

‘So what do we do? We can’t take delivery of a ground car in a place the size of the receiver room.’

The Minstrel Boy thought about it.

‘We could probably get something smaller.’