Philip Reeve - Predator's gold

The door swung open.

Later Hester would learn that the Memory Chamber was a decommissioned fuel-tank: one of dozens of steel globes clumped in the corries of Rogues’ Roost, but at first sight it seemed just an insanely huge room, with rusty walls curving up to form a dome above her and down to make a bowl below. All over the walls big pictures had been fixed; grainy blow-ups of people’s faces, photographs of London and Arkangel and Marseilles, a silk-painting of Batmunkh Gompa in an ebony frame. Loops of scratchy film repeated endlessly on whitewashed panels: a little golden girl with pigtails laughing in a meadow; a young woman drawing on a long-stemmed pipe and blowing smoke at the camera.

Hester felt suddenly sick with fear, and did not know why.

A walkway ran around the edge of this spherical vault, and a narrow footbridge stretched from it to a platform in the centre, where a monk-like figure stood robed in grey. Hester tried to hang back as Sathya and Popjoy started along the bridge, but one of the guards was behind her, pushing her firmly forward. Ahead, Sathya reached the central platform and touched the arm of the one who waited there. She was crying silently, her face shining with tears in the dim light. “I’ve brought you a present, dearest,” she said softly. “A visitor. Someone you’re sure to remember!”

And the robed figure turned, the grey cowl fell aside, and Hester saw that it was — no, that it had once been — Anna Fang.

Dr Popjoy had done good work for his new masters. Of course, he and his fellow Engineers had spent many years studying Stalker technology. They had learned much from Shrike, the mechanized bounty-killer who had once adopted Hester. They had even made Stalkers of their own; Hester had seen squads of the Resurrected Men marching through the streets of London on the night MEDUSA went off. But comparing those lurching, mindless creatures to the thing that stood before her now was like comparing a tatty old cargo balloon to a brand new Serapis Cloud Yacht.

It was slender and almost graceful, and not very much taller than Miss Fang had been in life. Its face was hidden by a bronze death-mask of the aviatrix and the ducts and flexes which sprouted from its skull-piece were gathered neatly behind its head. The faint, curious twitchings of its head and its hands as it peered at Hester seemed so human that for a moment she almost imagined the Engineer had succeeded in bringing Anna back.

Sathya started talking, quick and brittle. “She doesn’t remember yet, but she will. This place acts as her memory, until her own memories come back to her. We’ve collected photographs of everyone she ever knew, everywhere she went, the cities she fought against, her lovers and her enemies. It will all come back to her. She’s only been resurrected for a few months, and…”

She stopped suddenly, as if understanding that her stream of hopeful chatter was only making the horror of what she had done more horrible. Echoes of her words went whispering off around the inside of the old fuel-tank: “And, and, and, and, and…”

“Oh, Gods and Goddesses,” said Hester. “Why couldn’t you let her rest in peace?”

“Because we need her!” yelled Sathya. “The League has lost its way! We need new leaders. Anna was the best of us. She will show us the path to victory!”

The Stalker flexed its clever hands, and a slender blade slid from each fingertip, snick, snick, snick.

“This isn’t Anna,” Hester said. “Nobody comes back from the Sunless Country. Your tame Engineer may have managed to get her corpse up and about, but it isn’t her. I knew a Stalker once: they don’t remember who they were in life; they aren’t the same person; that person’s dead, and when you stick one of those Old-Tech machines in their head you make a new person, like a new tenant moving into an empty house…”

Popjoy began to chuckle.

“I hadn’t realized that you were an expert, Miss Shaw. Of course, you would be referring to the old Shrike model; a very inferior piece of work. Before I installed the Stalker machinery in Miss Fang’s brain I programmed it to seek out her memory-centres. I have every confidence that we will be able to re-ignite the memories which lie buried there. That’s what this chamber is for; to stimulate the subject with constant reminders of her former life. It’s all a question of finding the right mnemonic trigger — a smell, an object, a face. That’s where you come in.”

Sathya shoved Hester forward until she was standing only a few inches from the new Stalker. “Look, dear!” she said brightly. “Look! This is Hester Shaw! Valentine’s daughter! You remember how you found her in the Out-Country and brought her to Batmunkh Gompa? She was there when you died!”

The Stalker leaned close. In the shadows behind its bronze mask a dead black tongue licked withered lips. Its voice was a dry whisper, a night-wind blowing through valleys of stone. “I do not know this girl.”

“You do, Anna!” urged Sathya, with awful patience. “You must! Try and remember!”

The Stalker glanced up, scanning the hundreds of portraits on the walls and floor and ceiling of its spherical prison. Anna Fang’s parents were there, and Stilton Kael, who had been Anna’s master when she was a slave in the salvage-yards of Arkangel. Valentine was there, and Captain Khora, and Pandora Rae, but there was no picture of Hester’s disfigured face. It focused its mechanical eyes on her again, and its long claws twitched. “I do not know this girl. I am not Anna Fang. You are wasting my time, little once-born. I wish to leave this place.”

“Of course, Anna, but you must try to remember. You must be yourself again, before we take you home. Everyone in the League’s lands loved you; when they hear you have returned they will rise up and follow you.”

“Ah, Commander,” muttered Popjoy, backing towards the bridge. “I think we should withdraw now…”

“I am not Anna Fang,” said the Stalker.

“Commander, I definitely think…”

“Anna, please!”

Instinctively, Hester grabbed Sathya and dragged her backwards. The claws scythed past an inch from her throat. The guard levelled his machine-gun and the Stalker hesitated just long enough for them all to scurry back across the bridge. As they reached the door the man stationed outside pulled a heavy, red-handled lever. Red warning lights came on amid a rising buzz of electricity. “I am not Anna Fang!” Hester heard the Stalker shout, as she bundled out after the others into the antechamber. Glancing back in the instant before the guards slammed and locked the door, she saw it watching her, its claws jerking and glinting.

“Fascinating,” said Popjoy, making notes on his clipboard. “Fascinating. With hindsight, it may have been a tad unwise to install the finger-glaives so early…”

“What’s wrong with her?” Sathya demanded.

“It’s hard to be entirely sure,” admitted Popjoy. “I imagine the new memory-seeking components which I added to the basic Stalker-brain are clashing with its tactical and aggressive instincts.”

“You mean it’s mad?” asked Hester.

“Really, Miss Shaw, ‘mad’ is such an unhelpful term. I would prefer to say that the former Miss Fang is ‘differently sane’.”

“Poor Anna,” whispered Sathya, stroking her throat with the tips of her fingers.

“Don’t worry about Anna,” said Hester. “Anna’s dead. Poor you is what you mean. You’ve got a mad killing machine in there, and your stupid guns aren’t going to keep it penned in for ever. It could climb down off that platform! It could reach the door and-”

“The bridge is electrified, Miss Shaw,” said Popjoy firmly. “The girders under the platform are electrified. The inside of the door is also electrified. Even Stalkers dislike massive electric shocks. As for the guns, I am pretty sure the former Miss Fang does not yet understand her new strength; she is still wary of them. That may well be a sign that she does indeed possess lingering memories of her earlier, human incarnation.”